Carnival of College Admissions: 1st Edition
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Welcome to the first edition of the Carnival of College Admissions. Eleven articles were submitted and nine have been selected for publication. I am pleased to be able to host the first ever carnival and bring you all the submissions. Click on the graphic above for more information about this cooperative effort or to submit a write-up of your own for next week's edition.Read on for all of the excellent articles from The Carnival of College Admissions: 1st Edition: Read More
Have a question or comment? 2 people do.How Many Colleges Should I Apply To?
Reader John J. read my earlier article about the increased number of applications colleges are receiving, in which I reveal that the average student applied to more than a dozen universities this season. He asks a question I hear frequently from students:
It seems like colleges are becoming more selective with their applicants because each of them are receiving a lot more applications each year. Does this mean I should apply to even more colleges? My counselor recommended that I apply to 3 reach schools, 3 good matches, and 3 safeties, but I'm afraid that 9 isn't enough. Does this sound like a good number? Can schools see how many colleges you've applied to? Do they care?
Hi, John. Great questions. I'll start by answering your last ones first.
Yes, colleges are able to see how many schools you have applied to. They can do this by looking at your FAFSA -- the form you filled out for federal financial aid. Because you have to list all of the universities you may potentially attend on the form, admissions officers have figured out that looking at your list will reveal how many and which other colleges you are applying to. And, yes, some do care.
Choosing the number of students to accept in any given year is a difficult art for admissions committees. They must make sure to accept enough students to make up for the fact that many will decide to attend a different school, but not so many as to over-enroll the university. As a result, they like to minimize their risk as much as possible. They do this by selecting qualified applicants who also seem likely to attend the college. If an overqualified student applies to their school and also to 20 others, the admissions officers may decide that the applicant is not worth the risk and deny their application. This is why some students experience rejection from colleges they thought were "safeties".
Put yourself in their position: would you ask a girl out on a date if you were almost certain she would say 'no'? A college doesn't want to take that risk either.
Your counselor gave you good advice. However, applying to 9 colleges should be the absolute maximum. I generally recommend about 5-7: 2-3 reaches, 2 good fits, and 1-2 safety schools. However, you have to be realistic in your categorization of colleges. In other words, Harvard is never a 'safety' no matter how good of a student you are.
Stick to those magic numbers and you are very unlikely to be penalized for over-applying. It might be tempting to send out tons of applications, especially since it's easy to apply online to most universities. However, resist this temptation. Pick the 5-7 colleges that interest you the most and focus your attentions on them. Your time is better spent refining those specific college essays anyway.
Good luck!
Have a question or comment? 4 people do.Five Tips to Make Financial Incentives for Your Son/Daughter Work
Colleges already are paying your son or daughter for academic success in the form of merit-based scholarships. Should you be doing the same? Some parents scoff at the idea, and call these rewards "bribery," forgetting that there is a difference difference between bribing and reinforcing. Others are still fooled by the outdated 70's belief that rewarding achievement will undermine your son or daughter's natural will to succeed. In actuality, your reinforcement will strengthen his or her drive and influence positive academic growth.
I believe in the power of academic incentives, and Deborah Fox of Pay for College Blog agrees. Here are five tips to help you create your own academic incentive program:
- Reward improvement rather than offering awards for specific letter grades. By recognizing only As or Bs, siblings who cannot perform as well feel left out. Give every child a chance to succeed by rewarding improvements like more time devoted to homework, increased test performance, or better behavior in class.
- Be uniform in your rewards so that your son or daughter always knows what to expect and so that there is no accusation of favoritism from siblings. It can be as simple as a, "if your grade goes up, we'll all go out for ice cream" promise, or as complex as a list of rewards on the refrigerator.
- ...but also be spontaneous. "Variable ratio reinforcement" may sound like psychobabble, but it is a tool of positive reinforcement that slot machine designers use to great success. Rewarding your son or daughter in unpredictable ways has a powerful effect on his or her desire to succeed. Consider "catching" your child studying hard one day, and surprising him or her with that new toy they've been wanting. It may sound crazy -- and your child might think that you are when you do it -- but it really does work.
- Involve the entire family in the rewards process. Instead of padding your son or daughter's piggy bank, plan a family dinner at the rewarded child's favorite restaurant, or let him/her pick the next family movie. Not only will this help avoid siblings' hurt feelings, it will also give the child a greater sense of accomplishment and inclusion because the entire family is joining in the celebration.
- Encourage a supportive atmosphere for your child with his/her peers and siblings. Parental praise is great, but a congratulations from an equal gives a huge boost to a child's self-esteem.
Reinforcement can be powerful in shaping your child's will to succeed. Use these techniques to maximize your academic incentive program and you'll have a child driven to achieve and ready for college in no time.
Have a question or comment? 1 person does.Is ‘Free College’ Just a Pointless Gimmick?
I have been very excited over the past three weeks as college after college announces financial aid renovations that offer free tuition for students from low income families. In fact, Pennsylvania's Lehigh University and New York's Vassar College just joined the group this week. But another blogger is less enthusiastic, saying:
Recent news reports about Ivy League colleges offering "free education" to students from middle-class families paint a highly unrealistic picture of the challenges facing the majority of college-bound students.
His primary indictment is that "less than one-half of one percent of young people entering college next fall will actually benefit."
I disagree. While it is true that few students will benefit from the Ivy Leagues' financial aid changes -- simply because few students gain acceptance to Ivy League schools -- I think it is necessary to look at the bigger picture. Non-Ivy League universities like MIT, Stanford, and other well-respected colleges have mirrored the Ivy League approach to free tuition. The philosophy is spreading. To that point, a much larger percentage of students benefit from the Ivy League's financial aid programs -- even if only indirectly -- than he suggests.
He further contends that "[i]t is disingenuous to suggest that de facto merit scholarships at these institutions create more access and opportunity." Remember, though, that no one is suggesting that unqualified students can suddenly find a home at Harvard or Yale. Rather, it is the supremely talented and bright young adults who previously were barred from higher education simply because of an unaffordable tuition price tag have who benefit. While the number of these students is small, there are still several hundred who have gained access where previously they had none.
I do have to agree with his closing points, though, when he says:
[T]he formula for affording college expenses is fairly simple: find institutions that value the student for what s/he does well. Colleges that are good "fits" will invest in the student's success [...] [F]ocusing on "fit" instead of famous names will reveal that the "long overdue help" for middle class families has been within reach all along.
The new tread of Free College should not influence students and their families to reach beyond their realistic goals. Finding a university program which matches with a student is an important objective, and one that will ultimately pay greater dividends than pursuing a potentially unreachable Ivy League dream. "Famous names" are, indeed, not everything.
In closing, I believe that this Free College fad is beneficial in many ways, even if only because it encourages colleges across the nation to invest more of their substantial endowments in financing their students' educations. This is good for all students, even those that just save a few thousand dollars from a loan-to-grant conversation program. In the end, however, the strategy for college admissions remains the same: find a university that is a good fit first, and leave financial concerns for later consideration. The wave of Free College is good news, but it shouldn't override your other university objectives.
Have a question or comment? 2 people do.The Easy ‘A’ vs. the Honors ‘B’: The Myths and Lies of High School Class Selection
Reader Jason S., a high school Junior soon selecting classes for his Senior year, asks:
I have to choose between two classes, one that is IB/AP and will be really challenging, and one that's much easier and I'm sure I'll get an A in. People keep telling me that I should always take the hardest classes I can, but my GPA can really use a boost, and I'm afraid that if I don't get an 'A' in the class I pick, my GPA won't be good enough. What should I do?
Excellent question, Jason, and one almost every student has had to face at some time in their schooling. If anyone ever tells you to, "always take the hardest class," you're getting bad advice. Similarly, if anyone ever tells you to, "get the guaranteed 'A'," you're getting bad advice. The right answer, unfortunately, is "it depends."
There are two considerations you must make: balancing the numbers game of the college admissions process and the academic expectations the colleges will have. Which side of the balancing scale you put more weight on depends on your current status as a student and the college you want to get into. In general, if your target university has a particularly competitive application pool, it is more likely that the admissions officers will expect to see greater academic rigor. In these cases, they are already looking at a lot of very successful candidates, and need to use the strength of an academic program to further compare students.
In other words, if a specific college will deeply consider all applicants with a GPA above 3.6, it may prefer a student with a 3.8 who took rigorous courses over a 4.0 student who opted for an easier route. This, however, is no consolation for another applicant with a 3.4 and a history of great academic rigor who was rejected in favor of the 3.8 student who took an easy load.
You should absolutely not automatically register for the hardest classes available. Rather, you must know your scholastic capacity and move to the next reasonable, appropriate level of rigor for you personally in each academic discipline.
In practical terms, this means you should be comparing your GPA with the 25th and 75th percentiles of accepted students at the colleges you are interested in attending (these statistics are usually published by the admissions department and are available online). Let's say a hypothetical college has a 25th percentile admitted GPA of 3.42 and a 75th percentile GPA of 3.76. If your GPA is currently 3.8 (something above the 75th percentile number), you should aim to take the most challenging courses available to you, because a slight drop in GPA will not significantly hurt your chances. If, however, your GPA is 3.3 (under the 25th percentile), you should switch to an easier load to raise your GPA and make you more numerically competitive. Finally, if your GPA is somewhere in-between the two numbers, you should balance these two interests and aim to earn a GPA as close as possible to the 75th percentile while also maintaining a reasonably challenging course load.
Don't forget, though, that part of high school is about preparing yourself for the rigors of college. Wherever you end up going, you will likely find that academic expectations exceed what you were used to in high school. By constantly increasing the difficulty of your high school classes, the step up to college will be more comfortable. Not only does this make for a smoother first year, but it also increases your likelihood of a higher college GPA.
So, Jason, I wish I could say that there was an easier answer to your question. Naturally, I must suggest that you take the harder class and strive for an 'A' as this would be the most preferential outcome, but I understand that it might not be feasible. You must look at your own situation and consider your current competitiveness at your selected universities. Only then can you devise a plan which maximizes your chances for admission at each. Good luck!
Have a question or comment? 2 people do.Columbia Is Final Ivy League to Offer Free College
Joining its Ivy League brothers, Columbia University has announced its new financial aid plan starting in the 2008-2009 academic year which includes the Free College program I've discussed several times over the past few days.
Columbia currently leads the Ivy Leagues in the proportion of its students who receive Pell grants at roughly 15%. With the new changes, which increased its financial aid budget by 17%, Columbia University has become even more generous with aid. Already $260 million of the sought $440 million for the undergraduate financial aid endowment has been raised.
According to Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nicholas B. Dirks, "[Columbia's] new financial aid policies reflect a more realistic view of the challenges that lower- and middle-income families face in paying for college." The changes include four main areas:
- Students from families earning less than $60,000 a year will have no financial obligation for tuition, room, board, or other college fees.
- Students from families earning between $60,000 and $100,000 a year will see a significant reduction in the Expected Family Contribution (EFC).
- All students, regardless of income, will have all loans replaced with University grants.
- All aid recipients may receive exemptions work-study expectations if they participate in community service or accept unpaid research or internship opportunities. Students studying abroad will have work-study expectations replaced with grants.
All in all, Columbia's new financial aid program is phenomenal. With now every one of the Ivy League universities offering free college programs for students of low-income families, and also programs of substantially reduced or subsidized tuition for all students, access to education is more open than ever. I look forward to these philosophies trickling down to other colleges, as has already happened with MIT, Stanford, Washington, and others.
Have a question or comment? 1 person does.