College Admissions Help Blog

If the answer to the first question is yes, this study says that the majority of your generation will also say yes to the second question. Who needs a sense of smell if you have a laptop and cell phone? Is this an accurate description of your generation? (more…)

Happy September!

September means it is officially back-to-school time.  New clothes, books, pens, teachers and classes. Here are some back-to-school facts for the 2010-2011 school year:

Students

• 76 million – The number of U.S. residents enrolled in schools, from nursery schools to colleges.
• 56 million – The number of students projected to be enrolled in the nation’s elementary and high schools grades K-12 this fall. That number exceeds the total in 1969 (51.6 million) when the last of the “baby boom” children expanded school enrollments.
• 1.1 million – Number of students who are home-schooled, or 2 percent of all school-age students ages 5 to 17.
• 9.1 million  - The projected number of students enrolled in the nation’s colleges and universities this fall. This is up from 12.4 million a quarter-century ago.

Technology

• 100 – Percentage of public schools online with Internet access. In 1995, the proportion was 50 percent.

Tuition

• $14,915 – Average tuition, room and board (for in-state students) at the nation’s four-year public colleges and universities for an entire academic year, more than double the amount from 1990.
• $40,640 – Average tuition, room and board at the nation’s four-year private colleges and universities for an entire academic year, more than double what students were paying for college in 1990.

Earnings

• $83,144 – Average annual earnings of workers age 18 and older with an advanced degree. This compares with $58,613 a year for those with bachelor’s degrees, $31,283 for those with a high school diploma only and $21,023 for those without a high school diploma.
• $75,621 – Average starting salary offer to bachelor’s degree candidates in petroleum engineering, among the highest of any field of study. At the other end of the spectrum were those majoring in the social science; they were offered an average of $39,476.

As the school year begins, remember that a new year is a clean slate and the perfect time to focus on goals you can achieve this year, and beyond. Education is a crucial investment for the future, and with the population growing and tuition costs rising, it is important to know that there are many resources and people willing to help.

What are your thoughts about the resources available to today’s students?  What tips do you have to stay ahead of the curve?

[Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau's Facts for Feautures: Back to School 2010-2011]

As high school students deliberate over which college to attend in the fall I have been doing some research on the college admission trends of 2010. Here are three that I found particularly interesting:

1: It pays to be able to pay: Colleges are being more lenient on students who do not need financial aid. B average students who can pay their way are coveted this year. This is not to say that they do not want A average students who need a little bit of assistance, but most schools are experiencing budget crisis’s and appreciate the money up front.

2: SATs don’t matter as much as A’s: 4.0 GPA students with less than perfect SAT scores are being given a pass. The importance of SAT scores is decreasing. In fact, the number of schools that do not require SAT or ACT scores at all is growing.

3: Public universities are HOT: Highly ranked public universities are first choices for many students this year. This is because they are inexpensive, but very well respected. Which schools fall into this category? Two examples are the University of Virginia and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

What other trends have you noticed this year? Let me know by leaving a comment below or sharing your thought in the college admission forum!

ScholarshipPoints Bonus Code: 2010TRENDS

Hi everyone! I hope you are all having a great week! In today’s post I want to talk about a little myth in the college admissions world.

It is a common misconception that schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford only offer admissions to student who grew up and live far away from the school’s location. Many people think that if you live in CA you have a much better chance of getting into Harvard than if you live in MA and if you hail from the east coast you have a much better chance at getting into Stanford than a West Coast resident.

This notion is a definite myth. While Ivy League and other top ranked schools do admit students from all over the country, they are more local than you may think. Take Harvard for example; a new study from the University of Denver suggests that more than one in every three American freshman at Harvard grew up within 200 miles of Cambridge. Additionally, less than half of the school’s students were from more than 500 miles away. And Stanford? 40% of Stanford’s 2008 freshman class were from the state of CA. Finally, remember the quadruplets who were all accepted to Yale this year? They are right from the state of CT!

Don’t think that you can’t get into Columbia because you live in New York. Although these schools are looking for diversity in their population, they are also looking for the students with the best SAT scores, grades and other qualifications. So if the school next door is on the top of you college search, apply! You may be just what they are looking for.

ScholarshipPoints Bonus Code: AAGWEEK13

Boston Globe
March 15, 2009

Like wary suitors, colleges are searching for signs of commitment from applicants before they extend admissions offers, hoping to find out whether their affection is mutual.
In the increasingly tense courtship of college admissions, more selective schools are smiling upon high school students who show sincere interest in attending, closely tracking such things as whether they visited campus, responded to recruiting messages, or even joined an online chat with an admissions officer.
"You're going to want those students who also want you," said Gil Villanueva, dean of admissions at Brandeis University. "Everything else being equal, between a student you know and a student you don't, you will go with the known commodity."
Villanueva, like many admissions officers, said keen enthusiasm for a school is no guarantee but can sometimes tip the balance in students' favor.
The growing importance of "demonstrated interest" is the product of a number of overlapping factors. High school students are applying to a greater number of colleges to better their odds of acceptance, which has made it harder for colleges to estimate how many actually plan to come. This year, the financial downturn and the credit crunch have further complicated the process, with families expected to base their decisions more on cost.
Amid such unpredictability, students who seem excited at the prospect of arriving on campus in the fall are in high demand, admissions officers say. In an ironic twist, the volatile nature of admissions has given students a measure of control over the process.
In its annual survey of admissions trends, the National Association for College Admission Counseling found that 22 percent of colleges gave interest "considerable importance" in admissions, up from 7 percent in 2003. Another 30 percent of schools rated it as moderately important.
In terms of influence, it outranked such admissions standbys as counselor and teacher recommendations, interviews, and extracurriculars, and was narrowly behind class rank and personal essays.
"We track every single contact we have with students," said Kelly Walter, executive director of the admissions office at Boston University.
Parents and applicants take note: Walter and other college officials said they do not hold it against students who cannot afford to visit campus, particularly in the slumping economy. There are many other ways students can let colleges know they are among their top choices, including attending a college fair or reception in their hometown. Even better, they said, is introducing themselves to an admissions officer and striking up a conversation.
"I remember," Walter said, speaking of such chats.
Admitting more students who truly want to be there, college officials say, creates an energetic and close-knit culture on campus. And by producing loyal alumni with soft spots for their colleges, it also pays long-range dividends in fund-raising.Continued...
Giving preference to students whose interest seems genuine also helps colleges boost their image. By targeting students who are more likely to attend, they can admit a smaller percentage and still fill out their freshman class, making them appear more selective and more desirable.
Families have caught on to the new approach. John Mahoney, director of undergraduate admissions at Boston College, said parents who visit the campus often scan the premises for the sign-up sheet that will let them make their presence known.
"We tell them we're not tracking that," he said. "But they want to make sure they let us know they were there."
Mahoney said BC does not consider student interest and said he suspects some students feign interest to boost their odds.
"Students are being conditioned to express interest, but if they are doing so at 16 Northeastern schools, how good of a barometer is it?"
But some say that students who cultivate relationships with schools - through the delicate art of admissions flirting - gain a much better chance of winning their hearts.
"It's almost like a dating game," said Phil Meisner, founder of CAPS, the College Application Processing Service, in Washington. "No one wants to commit, but everyone's looking for a signal. Why shouldn't students be able to let colleges know they want to go?"
College officials say students rarely go overboard in their self-marketing campaigns, although they fear more will as the practice becomes more prevalent. Others worry that judging students by expressions of interest could unfairly help wealthier students whose parents and counselors know the system's subtleties and how to exploit them.
"We don't want to penalize students who don't know that 14,000 contacts with an admissions officer could tip the balance," said Gail Berson, dean of admission at Wheaton College in Norton.
This spring, a student whom Berson met at a New York City high school has become a "steady pen pal," even sending her copies of his latest short stories. His persistence convinced Berson he would attend, and his writing ability convinced her he should be admitted, despite a so-so academic record.
Alex Michel, a senior from Weston, said she knew that Wheaton was her top choice as soon as she visited the campus, and she immediately made her intentions known. She visited campus several times, including an overnight stay with students, and e-mailed admissions officers with questions. In December, she was accepted, and now she chats on Facebook with her eventual classmates.
"I know colleges are looking for students who are enthusiastic," she said. "When I visited campus, I always made sure the admissions office knew I was there."
By Peter Schworm

In case anyone is interested, the most popular colleges based on visitor traffic on HowToGetIn.com are:

http://www.howtogetin.com/colleges/ohio-state-university-columbus/

http://www.howtogetin.com/colleges/university-of-florida-gainesville/

http://www.howtogetin.com/colleges/university-of-texas-at-austin/

http://www.howtogetin.com/colleges/george-washington-university

http://www.howtogetin.com/colleges/penn-state-university/

To search for colleges that you are looking at, you can visit:

http://www.howtogetin.com/colleges/search/

See our list of the Top 10 Colleges and Universities

By ALAN FINDER
New York Times, August 17, 2007

Richard J. Cook, the president of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, will not say precisely how he used to rate his college’s competitors when the annual U.S. News & World Report peer review questionnaire showed up in his mailbox. What he will say is, “I filled it out more honestly this year than I did in the past.” “I checked ‘don’t know’ for every college except Allegheny,” Dr. Cook said, adding that he gave his own institution an outstanding rating.

U.S. News & World Report releases its annual rankings of America’s top colleges today, under attack as never before by college officials who accuse it of using dubious statistics to stoke the intense, even crazed, competition among colleges and universities for students and prestige. Still there is little sign that the rankings race is diminishing. While more than 60 presidents of liberal arts colleges signed a letter over the last few months pledging to stop participating in the most heavily weighted component of the magazine’s rankings — the survey of colleges’ reputations — virtually none of the most select and highly ranked colleges signed on.
Indeed, the rankings are so influential, two decades after they were started, that one clause in the contract of Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, promises a $10,000 bonus if he can raise its standing. Frustrated college officials and high school guidance counselors say the magazine is not only reporting on how colleges perform, but is also changing their behavior as they try to devise gambits to scurry into the top ranks.

Take admissions. A college’s acceptance rate, or the proportion of applicants it admits, counts towards its rank, and the more selective the college is, the better. So some colleges try to increase the number of applicants they receive — and turn down — by waiving fees and dropping requirements. Some send out applications by e-mail, with most of the student’s personal information already filled in. Others send out persistent e-mail appeals to high school sophomores, with breathless subject lines like “Time is running out.”
“It’s pumping up the numbers, it’s making colleges look more selective, and it’s contributing to the frenzy,” said Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment at Dickinson College. “What if we become ridiculous and just go out to a shopping mall and hand out applications?”

Then there is that survey that asks college officials to rate other colleges and universities. The survey, which counts for 25 percent of a college’s overall ranking, is the most heavily weighted factor. That has spurred colleges to send glossy promotional brochures and updates on new programs to high-ranking officials at other colleges around survey time in hopes of impressing them. Despite such efforts, college officials say they suspect that some in their ranks deliberately downgrade their competitors to try to drive down their showing.
“I see where the temptation comes,” Dr. Cook said. “So rather than be tempted to game the system, I think it’s better to drop out.”

The magazine’s editors say that the rankings provide a valuable service and that rather than blame the magazine when colleges manipulate their numbers, people in higher education ought to look in the mirror.
“We get blamed for a lot of things that are demonstrably not our responsibility,” Brian Kelly, the editor of U.S. News, said in a interview. “I find it a little shocking, given the problems in the higher education world these days, that this is the thing, U.S. News, that these presidents choose to focus on.” Editors at U.S. News acknowledge anecdotal evidence that some colleges try to affect the rankings, but they insist it is not widespread. The editors say they have added myriad safeguards over the years from specific definitions of what counts as an application to adding questions that can sniff out fudging.

Some colleges used to drop athletes’ SAT scores from their computation of incoming students’ scores in order to increase their averages and make their institutions look more selective, Mr. Kelly said.
In response, U.S. News helped to create common definitions with organizations like the College Board so that data reporting would be standardized and harder to fudge. Still, critics say that the magazine, which does not verify information submitted by the colleges, bears some responsibility for the litany of tactics that colleges employ.

James M. Sumner, dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell College, said a counterpart from a well-regarded institution told him that when computing average SAT scores he excluded the SAT’s of students accepted as “development cases,” whose grades and test scores are often below average but whose families are likely to make major donations. Mr. Sumner declined to identify the university. U.S. News reports the proportion of a university’s alumni who contribute money each year, as a way of measuring consumer satisfaction. Michael Beseda, vice president for enrollment at St. Mary’s College of California, said he knew someone whose college sent him a $5 bill, asking him simply to send it back so it would count as a donation. Several colleges have admitted taking a single donation and spreading it over two, three or five years, to raise their annual numbers.

Many of the tactics used by colleges involve admissions because they have more control over it than they do over other factors in the rankings, like endowments or reputation. One gambit involves the so-called “snap-app” or “fast-app,” an application sent by e-mail to high school seniors in which their personal information is already filled in by the college. The University of Portland in Oregon, Ursinus College in Pennsylvania and the University of Vermont are among those to use this kind of application. Washington & Jefferson College, a liberal arts college outside Pittsburgh, began five years ago to seek more applicants by dropping fees and some requirements, and searching for high school students relentlessly through an e-mail effort. The college switched to a two-part application; the first part can take as little as five minutes to fill out, and in some cases is counted as a completed application.

About 1,100 students applied in 2002 to Washington & Jefferson. This year, nearly 7,400 did. The acceptance rate plummeted, almost in half. College officials acknowledge that they wanted to go up in the rankings but also say that increasing the pool of applicants was part of an overall strategy, along with building new dormitories and a fitness center and adding academic programs, to help Washington & Jefferson enroll better and more diverse students and to grow to 1,550 students from 1,100. “It’s worked,” said Alton E. Newell, the vice president for enrollment. “My institution is a better place, a healthier place, a more vibrant place.”

But to many college and university officials, Washington & Jefferson and other colleges that have engineered huge increases in applicant pools in recent years, are recruiting vast numbers of students primarily to reject them. The gambits enable an institution to appear more selective, but it is unclear that they can significantly affect a ranking. The U.S. News editors argue that a college’s acceptance rate counts for only 1.5 percent of the overall evaluation. Washington & Jefferson, for instance, has generally stayed in the same ranking range in the 90s and low 100s among liberal arts colleges. Last year it shared 104th place on the list with several other campuses. Then again, does all this really measure an education? Mr. Beseda of St. Mary’s said, “I think what the rankings do is to poison the sense of what a genuine education is. False gods get worshiped.”

Original post by Jeannie Borin, M.Ed, college-connections.com

A new report entitled “College and University Ranking Systems, Global Perspectives and American Challenges” was released by the Institute for Higher Education Policy. This report is in 3 parts including a historical review of the US News rankings, a review of university rankings from around the world and an evaluation of the effect the various rankings have on students choices of colleges.

This report provides a good overview of the rankings systems and the effect they have had on higher education. If you are just starting the search for the right college and believe that rankings have a place in that search, you might want to start with this report to get another view on the ratings.

Original post by College Admissions Partners

The Annapolis Group, a group of many of the selective liberal arts colleges, has put out a group statement on college rankings. Basically this group of colleges have agreed to develop a format to present data to students and parents that will provide much of the same information as available in the US News rankings, without actually ranking the colleges. The majority of the presidents of the colleges at the meeting agreed to not participate in the peer rating requested by US News for their college ranking edition. This is significant because the peer rating accounts for 25% of the US News ranking formula and is the most important piece of the formula. Losing this information, particularly for some of the most selective liberal arts colleges will put the validity of the rankings further into question.

The US News rankings can be helpful as long as you use the information presented to compare colleges based on your own criteria. What is not helpful is the artificial ranking of colleges. If the Annapolis Group can put together the information in a useful format without the actual ranking of the colleges, they will have accomplished something worthwhile.

Original post by College Admissions Partners