What were they thinking? A few crazy college stories.

Nassau Hall; Princeton University; Princeton, NJ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This seemed to be the spring for craziness on the college newsfeed. If you happen to follow loads of college stories, you’ve likely seen one or two of these, but just in case…

Find a husband.

One of Princeton’s first female attendees, Susan Patton, class of ’77, participated in a Women and Leadership conference on campus and, in the breakout discussion afterwards, saw current Princetonian “girls glazed over at preliminary comments about our professional accomplishments and the importance of networking,” yet who “asked about the value of our friendship, about our husbands and children.”

Ms. Patton took this opportunity to write a letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian, Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had. In short, “Find a husband on campus before you graduate.”

My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless. Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

Really.

My favorite response, by Maureen O’Connor in NY Magazine, Princeton Mom to All Female Students: ‘Find a Husband’, includes this,

What an excruciatingly retro understanding of relationships she has. If men are happy with bimbos, but women aren’t happy with “men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal,” then the conclusion is that a successful heterosexual relationship requires the man to be smarter than the woman. This is the same logic used by teen girls who feign stupidity to attract dates for the homecoming dance.

Suzy Lee Weiss.

SLW on the Today Show.

There are any number of steps a high school student can take in response to college application rejections, and if one’s older sister used to develop features for the Wall Street Journal, the student can even get an essay to leap into the college admission zeitgeist of the moment.

First, the essay: To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me

Second, the media tour: Rejected high school senior: colleges lied to me

Note:  it’s easy to spot a well-coached media guest when her very first response is not to the question asked, but to thank the interviewer for inviting her on.

Third, cue the backlash: simply Google her name and dip in.

One of my favorite admissions bloggers (Jon Boeckenstedt, DePaul) followed up his initial post about Weiss with this one: Let’s agree to knock it off, already, reminding us,

In short, it reads like it was written by a 17-year old kid whose cerebral cortex is not yet fully developed. Which, I’ll remind you, is perfectly normal.

Yet, I really liked this response from Seth Taylor, who blogs as Dad Overboard, An Open Letter to my 11-Year-Old Daugher in the Hope that She Never Becomes Suzy Lee Weiss.

1)  No one in this world owes you anything.  Sure, I think you’re smart, creative, talented, and unique. I think you’re a sparkling unicorn in a world of plain ol’ ponies, and I think any Smarty-Pants college would be lucky to have you. But if you ever, ever feel entitled to something just because you really want it, think again.

And this, a bit of a poem posted by Christoper Lee-Rodriguez on his NothingIsNeverGood Tumblr:

Your rejection from opportunity
Has blinded you from the millions of opportunity
Already in front of you

Mocking applicant essays.

Penn had to let go one of their admission officers, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, in Former admissions officer mocked applicant essays:

In the posts, which were made available through a collection of Facebook screenshots sent anonymously to Dean of Admissions Eric Furda and The Daily Pennsylvanian on Dec. 3, Foley mocked a number of student essays she had come across in her work.

. . .

In another excerpt, she quoted an essay in which an applicant had described the experience of overcoming his fear of using the bathroom outdoors while camping in the wilderness.

“Another gem,” Foley wrote of the student’s topic choice.

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, here,

Surely it’s not uncommon for admissions officers, who may read thousands of such essays, to poke some gentle fun in the privacy of a cubicle or a bar booth. However, copies of Ms. Foley’s excerpts, along with her snide comments, made it as far as the College Confidential Web site, where students find and share information about institutions they may apply to.

Which brings me to finally share a blog that could help provide a reality check for students and parents across the land. Admissions Problems offers admissions officers an online outlet to poke some gentle fun — without calling attention to specific students or mocking specific their essays. See, especially, the tagline:

NO, YOUR KID ISN’T SPECIAL AT ALL, ACTUALLY…

Related articles

• Princeton Mom Calls Feminists “Bullies,” Women in Their Thirties “Man Repellents”

It’s testing season: AP Exam weeks.

All high school students in the US taking an Advanced Placement [AP] course will be taking the College Board AP Exam for that course sometime this week or next. Right now, when this is scheduled to post, thousands of students across the country are working their way through the AP Chem exam.

The 2013 AP Exam schedule.

In our household, AP exams mean the past few weeks have been filled with drills (notes painstakingly detailed by Mod Squad Julie, drilled by M.S. Dad*), mock exams, and study sessions with classmates.

Many of the AP teachers have offered review sessions on Saturdays, giving away their own weekend time to help their students.

High school students and their parents tend to have a love-hate (or even hate-hate) relationship with APs. For students aiming for a selective college, if their high school offers AP courses, they’re a necessity. Most admissions officers will cite the importance of students taking the toughest course load available to them.

Students and their parents may stress about how well the student will do.  Students and their parents may stress about how many AP courses the student needs to take.

• See College Connection’s Escape from the Planet of the APs for a Q&A on how many to take.
• See the UNC University Gazette’s Study finds that more AP classes may not be better, which suggests that UNC says five is enough.

This year, for the first time, our high school’s guidance department offered an introductory session on APs for parents, providing an opportunity for questions prior to next year’s course registrations. Kudos to the counselors for that.

There’s much more to be said about APs, the cost, the opportunity cost, whether credit should be provided — more on all of that to come.

For now, good luck to the students taking APs this week and next. M.S. Julie has two exams this week and one next Wednesday. And with that, the highest stress points of her junior year will be behind her. I think.

* Note added to clarify:  any and all drilling for these and other exams is instigated by M.S. Julie, not either of her parents! We have been known to recommend reviewing to her brothers, but Julie is the one, so far, who takes advantage of the opportunity.

Related articles

• AP Exams are Here – Time to Bust a Move!
• AP Exam Distractions
• What Happens When? The College Admissions Calendar.

What Happens When? The College Admissions Calendar.

For college admissions May 1st marks the New Year — the end of one college admissions year and the beginning of the next. This is a great time to look at what happens throughout the year for anyone on a path toward college. (Note:  I’m sure to have missed some vital elements in the timeline. I welcome your additions or corrections — email me or list them in comments below.)

May

• May 1 is the deadline for students to accept an offer from, and pay a deposit to, the college of their choice. Most, but not all colleges, that is. Here’s why (and no, it’s not for the benefit of the students): Random thoughts on May 1.
• First two full weeks of May:  AP exams. All HS students taking AP courses take the exams at the same time.
• SAT & SAT Subject tests (aka SAT IIs) offered. Typically SATs are offered every month except April, July, August, and September. SAT Subject tests are offered every time SATs are offered except March, but not all subjects are offered each time. Specific details on APs, SATS, and SAT Subject tests can be found at the College Board’s website, Big Future.
• Parents and college counselors urge HS juniors to request recommendation letters from teachers before school lets out. (Note: typically teachers write the letters in the fall and upload them to the Common App interface after the student has specified his or her colleges. However, many teachers appreciate the advance notice and the opportunity to prep for the letters during the summer.)

June

• Orientation for new college students begins, this usually includes help with registration. Parents are usually invited and are offered their own orientation track.
• Parents of HS students may want to visit campuses while on summer road-trips.

July

• AP scores are sent to exam-takers; exams are scored on a scale of 1 [low] to 5; 3 is considered a passing score. The more selective the college, the higher score required for credit. Some colleges do not provide credit, but may still use the scores for placement. See college websites for each college’s AP credit policy. Here’s what UVa accepts in the College of Arts & Sciences.
• Parents and college counselors urge rising seniors to start drafting essays. Some students do. Read: How to Write a College Essay (in 10 Steps).

August

• The Common App goes live for the new application season. Some students actually apply in August. (Nobody I know.) Bookmark this site:  Common Questions for the Common App.
• For new college students:  first tuition payment is required!

September

• Many HS guidance counselors provide detailed information to seniors, including how much time is required for transcript requests, recommendation letters, etc.
• Many HS guidance counselors will also provide guidelines on scholarship applications.

October

• Earliest Early Admission and Early Decision deadlines occur. (Note: the 2012-13 Common App listed October 30 as the earliest application deadline. However, many college counselors will advise students to submit at least two weeks prior to the published deadline.)
• Many high schools offer PSAT/NMSQTs to sophomores (mostly for practice) and juniors (for National Merit Scholarship qualification).
• The October SAT date is typically the latest that will get scores reported to colleges for Early deadlines.
• Parents need to check financial aid requirements for early applications. Some will require an application in the fall.

November

• Early application reading season for admissions officers, extends into January.
• Parents and college counselors may urge seniors to finish essays over Thanksgiving break. Some students do.

December

• The December SAT date is typically the latest that will get scores reported for regular deadlines.
• Early decisions start to be received in December. Some HS students face rejection for the first time. (Deal with it and move on.)
• Important:  many college decisions will be provided via the college’s SIS, requiring the student to log-in. Keep a file of the log-in IDs used for different colleges.
• Important:  now is when HS seniors need to check email regularly. See Calling All Texters: Read Your Email!
• December 31 is the deadline for the majority of regular admission applications.

January

• The new FAFSA goes live January 1st. Some families actually submit that day. (Nobody I know.) Read: Catch-22: How and When to Complete the FAFSA and Your Tax Returns.
• Regular application reading season for admissions officers, extends through March.
• Sophomores and juniors receive PSAT scores. Approximately three hours later they start to receive emails and marketing mailers from colleges.
• HS course registration may begin for the next school year.
• Summer enrichment opportunities often require applications by January or February. See a very long list our local school division provides here.

February

• Many colleges require the FAFSA submission by the end of February. Parents need to prepare preliminary, or draft, tax returns in order to submit the FAFSA. Bookmark this site: FAFSA FAQs.

March

• Regular admission decisions should be received by the end of March.
• Once parents file finished tax returns, they must change the FAFSA and/or link it to the return via the FAFSA/IRS interface.

April

• HS juniors may want to spend their spring break visiting campuses.
• HS seniors may want to attend admitted day programs for specific questions, to help aid their final decisions. Read: Who should attend an admitted student event?
• Many communities hold college fairs, bringing a large number of campus reps to one location.
• Financial aid letters, in all their confusing glory, may be received through the month of April.
• HS juniors who have qualified for National Merit recognition are notified.
• Last two weeks of April:  many HS students put life on hold to prep for AP exams in early May. Except for Prom, spring sports, part-time jobs, and, like, hanging out with friends.
• Last two weeks of April:  many HS senior families square up to the college decision.

What did I miss? Write in comments below. Thanks!

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• Scary trend shows more colleges requesting SAT Subject Tests
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• The Choice Blog: April College Checklist for Seniors

May 1st = National College Decision Day

If you (or your student) is a senior, you don’t need any help identifying the import of May 1st — the day most colleges across the country require a decision and a deposit from accepted students. From the other side of the desk, it’s also the day admission officers take a deep breath and look at their reports to see how well their offers yielded acceptances.

A few students will have made their commitment a long time ago. Early Decision applicants sign a commitment to accept an early offer. Recruited athletes operate on their own timetable.

But the majority of HS senior households have spent a good part of the past month looking at a variety of financial aid offers, revisiting schools during admitted day programs (aka “yield events”), and thinking through the choices the senior faces.

If you’re in that position, and the decision is going down to the wire, here’s counsel from a few different sources.

If you’re reading this to prepare for a decision to be made in the future, it may be useful to think about what you or your student will face.

Old Main, Augustana College. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1.  Questions that really matter when making a final college choice, by W. Kent Barnds, Augustana College. Barnds is VP of Enrollment, Communication, and Planning for a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. He provides a number of questions related to the college experience; here are a few:

Will smaller classes benefit me in the field I wish to study?
Do faculty member in every major fieldwork one-on-one with students? What are some examples that the college I am considering can provide?
Will faculty members make time to talk with students about their future goals and career plans? Who advises students to make sure they take all of the required courses to ensure on-time graduation?

2.  Tip Sheet: Making the Final College Decision, is by Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in New Hampshire, writing for the NYT’s The Choice blog. He wrote, “For many students, the college choice represents the first time that they have had to make a weighty decision.” Here are a couple of his considerations:

After the Facts, Go With Your Gut

The balance between critical analysis and gut instinct is a tricky one. Thoughtful decision-making involves an assessment of the facts and outcomes, while allowing for knowledge of self to guide your final choice.

Yes, it may be necessary to consider cost of attendance and distance from home. After these, considerations, however, quiet your mind from overanalyzing and fixating on the external. This will allow you to truly listen to what you know to be the right decision.

3.  Seeking Your Questions on Making the Final College Decision offers five posts of Q&As, including comparing financial offers, with answers by Mark Kantrowitz and Marie Bigham writing for the NYT’s The Choice. Here’s one of the questions facing many families:

Private University vs. State Institution

Q. My son’s top choice happens to be the most expensive (private) school. Even though it has the best offer of aid, the out-of-pocket cost would still be $40,000 to $45,000 a year. As a middle-class mother (not rich, not poor), how do we compare that with a state school where the overall cost would be $25,000 a year? I think the experience, education and connections would be superior at the expensive private school, and my son would be more likely to graduate in four years. But is it worth $80,000 more over four years?  — CA mom

I am a big fan of Kantrowitz’s clear and sometimes blunt reports on colleges and financial aid. You can learn a lot at his FinAid website. The response to the above question is lengthy and nuanced; I recommend reading it in full at the link. However, this brief calculus from the answer is worth remembering:

Total student loan debt at graduation should be less than the borrower’s expected annual starting salary, and ideally a lot less. If total debt is less than annual income, the borrower will be able to repay the student loans in 10 years or less.

Last year MS Pete made his commitment a day before the deadline. Once the decision was made, he could focus on enjoying the rest of his senior year. As Brennan Barnard wrote:

Send the check, buy the sweatshirt and celebrate the future

Even if it was not your first choice when you applied, invest yourself in your college as though you mean it. Try to remain open and trust that the universe will take care of the rest.

As always, good luck to the HS senior students and their families!

Related articles

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• More colleges are putting college applicants on mid-year acceptance for enrollment

How to send poor kids to top colleges? 2 Suggestions

Last week, in the New York Times, David Leonhardt wrote about an analysis of SAT takers, which indicated that more low-income, high-achieving students,

• do not apply to selective colleges for which they have the aptitude, and
• often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they do attend.

I wrote about his report and two others here. I really hadn’t planned to write about this again, but I must admit to a weakness for studies followed-on promptly by possible solutions. This week, these articles presented ideas on how to help change this.

1.  Tell them:  Make better efforts to inform. 

Leonhardt returned to the topic with How to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges. He presents the results from an effort to identify whether high-scoring, low-income students didn’t want to apply to selective colleges or they didn’t know about the opportunities available to them.

THE packages arrived by mail in October of the students’ senior year of high school. They consisted of brightly colored accordion folders containing about 75 sheets of paper. The sheets were filed with information about colleges: their admissions standards, graduation rates and financial aid policies.

. . .
Among a control group of low-income students with SAT scores good enough to attend top colleges — but who did not receive the information packets — only 30 percent gained admission to a college matching their academic qualifications. Among a similar group of students who did receive a packet, 54 percent gained admission, according to the researchers, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Sarah E. Turner of the University of Virginia.

. . .

Perhaps most important, the packets presented a series of tables making clear that college is often not as expensive as many students and parents fear. Selective colleges frequently cost less for low-income students than local colleges, because the selective ones have the resources to offer bigger scholarships.

At the less-selective campuses in the University of Wisconsin system, for example, the average net annual cost for a year of tuition, room, board and fees in 2010-11 was almost $10,000 for families making less than $30,000, Ms. Turner said. At the flagship campus in Madison, by contrast, the equivalent net cost was $6,000. And at Harvard, such students paid only $1,300 a year.

That last bit — about understanding the different net costs for colleges — shouldn’t be surprising. Even those parents and students who study the process closely can have a difficult time predicting what the net costs at a variety of schools might be, since much depends upon the interest/value a particular student in a particular cohort holds for that college. College pricing is closer to the multiple prices-per-seat-on-a-plane model than one might imagine.

Illustration by Ted McGrath, for the New York Times.

2.  Sell them:  Follow recruiting methods used by the military.

Responding to this same topic in an op-ed piece, Elite Colleges are as Foreign as Mars, published in the New York Times, Claire Vaye Watkins, a writer and English professor at Bucknell, wrote

For deans of admissions brainstorming what they can do to remedy this, might I suggest: anything.

By the time they’re ready to apply to colleges, most kids from families like mine — poor, rural, no college grads in sight — know of and apply to only those few universities to which they’ve incidentally been exposed. Your J.V. basketball team goes to a clinic at University of Nevada, Las Vegas; you apply to U.N.L.V. Your Amtrak train rolls through San Luis Obispo, Calif.; you go to Cal Poly. I took a Greyhound bus to visit high school friends at the University of Nevada, Reno, and ended up at U.N.R. a year later, in 2003.

Ms. Watkins provides a role model:  the military recruited very well by sending uniformed alumni back to the high school and by providing guidance on how to enlist, while the school provided classroom time to take the Armed Services aptitude test.

Granted, there’s a good reason top colleges aren’t sending recruiters around the country to woo kids like me and Ryan… The Army needs every qualified candidate it can get, while competitive colleges have far more applicants than they can handle. But if these colleges are truly committed to diversity, they have to start paying attention to the rural poor.

Until then, is it any wonder that students in Pahrump and throughout rural America are more likely to end up in Afghanistan than at N.Y.U.?

No wonder, indeed.

Related articles

• On Recruiting Underprivileged Students
• College rejection letters, how colleges boost their rankings, and funny math.
• Q&A: Son is a HS freshman – Where to begin?

Q&A: Son is a HS freshman — Where to begin?

A friend and parent of a high school freshman recently wrote:

Q.  I googled a college-related question a few days ago and by chance stumbled upon your Dr. StrangeCollege blog!
In the time it took me to find an answer to my question (partially from your blog and other online sources), I discovered that I am alarmingly overwhelmed by my complete and utter lack of preparedness. Clearly, I should start reading something about college, since L. is now in high school. I found it strangely comforting to think that I could go back and read your blog from the beginning. I feel calmer already!
Do you, in fact, have someplace that you recommend us poor, frightened, slightly nauseous newbie parents start learning about the whole process? Books? Websites?

A.  I have a lifelong habit of looking to books when I have a question. Here are a couple I would recommend for an overview:

1. The College Solution, a Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price (2nd ed.), Lynn O’Shaugnessy.

O’Shaugnessy has a website with the same name as the book; she also blogs for CBS Money Watch. While her focus is financial, she writes succinctly and with a good deal of common sense about most college-related topics. It’s a good quick introduction.

What’s fascinating is the motivation behind a school’s decision on which applicants capture a price break and which don’t. I can’t delve into this topic without at least mentioning this fact: Private and public colleges and universities routinely employ in-house enrollment managers or hire consultants who devise ways for colleges to use their institutional cash as strategically as possible to assemble their freshman classes. Typically this means helping institutions leverage their own revenue to attract the kind of teenagers they covet. Enrollment management practices have turned financial aid from primarily a utilitarian way to help disadvantaged students into a powerful tool to attract high-achieving students and the wealthy.

2. Crazy U., One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College, Andrew Ferguson.

Ferguson is a journalist and magazine editor, but this is his story of the eighteen months from his son’s junior HS year through to leaving for college. He writes beautifully about the emotions involved (for parents and child), tells very funny stories (especially about the things parents say to each other), and digs deeply into areas you’ll probably want to know about, like college rankings, standardized testing, etc. This is what it looks like to parents today. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry. We made Mod Squad Pete read this one and it’s time for me to put it on M.S. Julie’s reading shelf.

It wasn’t until Christmas was upon us that I realized why he’d been so calm about writing his essays. He hadn’t been writing them.

“It won’t take long,” he said, after I pointed out that he hadn’t much time left. He had logic on his side, as he often did — inadvertently. It wouldn’t take him much time to get it done because there simply wasn’t much time to get it done. QED. By mid-January, when the last of the essays was sent off and all creation seemed to relax with a sudden release of held breath, a mother told me that she and her daughter had put in three solid months of work on the essays, “every day after school and weekends.”

“We did three months of work too,” I said, ” in twelve days.”

You might start here.

If/when you want to read more about things your son could be doing right now, you might look at Elizabeth Wissner-Gross’s two books. Her sons were both skilled and interested in a math/science track, so there’s an emphasis on STEM competitions, but there are plenty of gems in both books. I like these for cherry-picking tips related to a child’s specific interests:

What High Schools Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know), Create a Long-Term Plan for your 7th to 10th Grader for Getting into the Top Colleges

Keep in mind that grades are the currency by which opportunities are bought in today’s meritocracy. No matter how many after-school activities or advanced level courses your child has on his résumé, no most-competitive college or selective summer program will be impressed if your kid earns less-than-top grades.

What Colleges Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know), 272 Secrets for Getting Your Kid into the Top Schools

The important picture to keep in mind is that admissions officers read hundreds of applications, and sameness is detrimental.

This might be the time for a few readers of this blog to call me out as an obsessive. Accepted. Especially when I admit that these are merely the books one might read to get ready to read about the specifics of selection, application, essay-writing, and financial aid. Recommended reading for those topics still to come.

This is also probably a good time to reiterate a few beliefs I hold:

1. What the kid brings to college in motivation, study habits, and acquisition of real-life skills will make much more of a difference than getting into a top-ranked college (especially when the rankings are based upon such ridiculous criteria as college administrators ranking each other).
2. There is a college for every student — if college makes sense for the student. “Only 2% of institutions accept less than 25% of their applicants. Those 60 elite schools (out of 2,421) educate just 3% of the nation’s full-time undergrads who are attending four-year institutions.” That from Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s blog here.
3. Start thinking about finances — and what your family thinks makes sense to pay for a BA or BS — now. Talk about it with your student when he or she is still building the long list of colleges, before winnowing that down to a short list.

Good luck, newbie parent, to you and your student!

Related articles

• Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?
• College Rankings Aren’t Meaningless; They’re Just Misleading
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Q&A: Does a college look at what type of diploma my student earned?

January and February are prime time for high school guidance counselors, parents, and students to meet and discuss course selections for registration. A number of friends wrote with questions about courses and choices. Here’s one.

Q.  Do you know if universities pay attention to whether a high school student is going for the regular Virginia diploma vs. the advanced one? Would having almost all, but not quite all, of the required credits for the advanced diploma be sufficient?

For non-Virginia readers:  rising 9th graders are asked to select which diploma they hope to achieve. The advanced diploma requires four years of Math, Lab Science, History/Social Science (rather than three), and three years of a Foreign Language (rather than two). There are other smaller differences (and you can read all about them here if you wish; heaven help you), but those are the key factors.

A.  The short answer:  I doubt they pay specific attention to whether or not the student hit every target on the Advanced Studies diploma, but they probably pay close attention to whether or not the student hit every target on their own list — which, for selective schools, will be very similar to the Advanced Studies list.

For the second question, about having almost all of the requirements — that would likely not be sufficient for a super-selective school, but would be sufficient for other schools. That’s where the standard disclaimer, “it depends,” comes into play. A student who did not get accepted to a school that only takes 15% of applicants could be a star at a school that accepts 45%.

Now, a few thoughts and questions for you as further information (which may or may not be useful).

1.  Does your high school include which type of diploma the student achieved — or attempted — on their HS transcript? Our high school’s transcript changes in response to changes in policy, so it has the potential to be different for almost every graduating class.

Western’s profile is online in the Counseling Dept. files.

Mod Squad Pete’s and M.S. Julie’s transcripts have a note at the top that says, “Student has completed the Early College Scholar Program agreement.” I think that refers to their signing off with the guidance counselor that they were going after the Advanced Diploma.

Also, find your school profile. This accompanies the student’s transcript when it’s sent to colleges. I would assume it is similar to our HS profile, which provides the context for the student’s experience, listing the grading scale, size of school, National Merit and SAT results for the school, class ranks, AP Exam results, and graduation requirements (both standard and advanced). You should be able to pull a copy of this from your school’s website. Your HS counselors should be able to give you a copy of a sample transcript. Admission staff certainly looks at each student within the context of his or her own school and how the course list compares to courses taken by other students in the school.

This is all so you can see, ahead of time, exactly how the colleges would see the information you’re asking about.

2.  Next, look at colleges to which your daughter may wish to apply. Every college must make reams of admission data public when they submit it to the government. Many, many websites provide that data in easily-searchable formats for students and parents to see. (This is also the source for the college guidebooks.) One of my favorites is CollegeData (owned by a bank, but offering an excellent format of search results) but there are loads to choose from.

Take UVa for example. They specify the courses they look for on the HS transcript, as in how many math, science, English, foreign language, etc. You can see that here, broken down by “required” and “recommended.” They also publish the priority of student data — which is most important to them and which is less so — lower on that same page. See Selection of Students and Factors: top on UVa’s list is rigor of HS record.

***

Now, a question for readers of this blog:  Do students in others states have to choose a type of diploma or state a college-oriented goal in some way? Please let me know in comments.

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3 reasons to apply to college early. Get one done.

I chatted with my brother last week. His older son — we’ll call him Starsky — is a senior in a small high school in the rural Midwest. Starsky is still working on his longish list of colleges, still visiting a few, and recently developed a plan for what he might like to study in college.

Mod Squad Pete and Starsky in August. Pretty sure they weren’t talking about college applications.

All this is great.

Then I asked, “Is he applying anywhere early? Not early decision, since he’s still working on where he wants to apply, but early action.” My brother said, “Not yet.”

I did not scream over the telephone, but I’m sure I strongly suggested that Starsky consider applying somewhere early.

(Both my brother and I would agree that I obsess about these things more than he does. I’m sure his approach is healthier. [Cue the emails from friends reminding me of this blog's tagline.])

Truth be told, Starsky is an excellent student, a superb athlete, and an all-around great kid — he’ll do well wherever he decides to go to college and the school will be fortunate to have him.

However — and Starsky, I’m talking to you now — here are three reasons why you should apply to at least one college via early action:

1.  Get one done now, so you have that great sense of accomplishment. Most students and parents have heard war stories from other families about missed deadlines, computers or websites crashing, lost recommendation letters, late night stressed-out arguments, and more. It’s not insurmountable, it’s just tough. There’s a huge difference in how it feels to be almost done with an application and how it feels after you’ve clicked on “submit.” That high can take you through however many more applications you plan to complete.

2.  Get one done now, so you’ve seen and completed the Common Application interface through to the end. The Common App has made it much easier to apply to a number of colleges, but no one working their way through it the first time would call it easy. It requires your full attention:

• Many colleges require supplementary applications and many of those require supplementary essays.
• Some elements need to be written separately, then cut-and-pasted into the interface. Other pieces need to be uploaded.
• Some colleges require the fee paid prior to submission, others vice versa.
• Printing the App for proofreading leads to confusion: not all colleges require every question the application provides. However, the printed App includes those questions, showing them unanswered.

Completing the Common App all the way through one time will make all the subsequent applications much easier. Plus, now’s the time to figure out how to submit different versions or how to correct something for another college.

3.  Get one done now, because early action provides early responses. It’s difficult to describe the feeling you will get when you receive that first acceptance. It doesn’t matter so much which college it is — that’s when you know you will go to college. Receiving an acceptance in December is worth busting your gut in October. Plus it makes the January 1st to April 1st wait for regular action responses that much easier to take.

If you think I’m being hard on you, Starsky, just text your cousin, Mod Squad Pete. He’ll tell you this is nothing compared to having to live with my “encouragements” day in, day out.

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Coming to a University near you: 5 stories of higher ed disruption.

It doesn’t take much time or effort to find examples of economically-driven disruption in higher ed, whether those examples are related to changes in financial aid plans, remodeling tuition policies, chasing after the Massive Open Online Course [MOOC] train, or trying to attract a particular demographic of students.

1.  The President of Metro State University in Denver, CO, explains the different strategies undertaken by Colorado’s institutions, in a recent Denver Post article, Colorado’s colleges make tough decisions to ensure survival:

“They’re all part of long-term strategies that we’re all making — really tough decisions that will ultimately determine, in many respects, whether those schools survive or not,” Jordan said. “I see that playing out in all our institutions around Colorado. We all have different missions and different sets of problems, but ultimately we’re all in the same place: What are we going to do to ensure the long-term survival of our universities?”

Colorado’s strategies include:

• changing colleges to universities (to attract more out-of-state students),
• possibly building a $250 million football stadium (to raise Colorado State University’s profile),
• creating a new tuition rate for undocumented students (more than in-state, but less than out-of-state), and
• attempting to increase visibility with Latino students (becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution has the potential to double federal funds available to the University).

2.  Last year Sewanee received national attention by cutting tuition; last week it was Concordia University, which cut its tuition for 2013-14 by $10,000 or about thirty-four percent. The Minneapolis Star Tribune subhead tells it all: The St. Paul university hopes that a lower sticker price will impress a public weary of the high cost of college.

Just a handful of Concordia undergrads now pay the full $29,700 in tuition and fees. But Concordia hopes to attract families who are being scared off by the published price.

“It’s been a bigger and bigger challenge for us to get those individuals to even consider us,” said Prof. Eric LaMott, Concordia’s senior vice president and chief operating officer. “The high discount isn’t fixing the problem, because they don’t even look.”

Concordia believes it’s making a bold move toward greater affordability and transparency in a marketplace that’s demanding both.

Publicity stunt or reality check? Enrollment management professional and consultant, Dan Lundquist, wrote about Concordia and the college sticker price on a college marketing firm’s blog: Dan Lundquist on Concordia’s Tuition Reset. It’s an interesting read, both for more information on Concordia’s “right pricing” experiment and some historical context:

Back before the federal government busted the so-called Overlap Group (the Ivies and MIT) for collusion and price-fixing, we in the admissions office would compare prices and financial aid offers with our core overlap group (AKA “competitors”) in hopes that we could minimize the role the cost would play in college choice. But there was another result; one that I honestly believe at the time was unintended. Penn’s president Martin Meyerson said it best: “We were building up a kind of notion about colleges and universities that the higher the price, the better they were.” (Stanford’s finance vice president Bill Massy was blunter: “The theory was, basically, we will increase tuition as much as the market will bear.”)

3. Meanwhile, a new state law in Ohio –  which currently awards a degree to only 56 percent of their students in six years — requires the public universities to show students how they could earn a bachelor’s degree in three years. See Public colleges told to outline 3-year grad plan, by Meagan Pant in the Dayton Daily News.

“College is not getting any cheaper,” said Jim Petro, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents.

“One sure way that families can bring that cost down is by doing it in a shorter time span,” Petro said. “I don’t know when it became almost practical in Ohio that many students take five, six years to get a degree, but that really drives up the cost.”

The law didn’t set goals for the number of three year degrees — those range from one to three percent of students now. One hope expressed by state officials is that, by showing students the path toward completing a degree in three years, the universities will increase the number of students earning a bachelor’s degree in four.

4.  A few months back I wrote about Wesleyan University’s move away from need-blind admissions. Here’s an Inside Higher Ed story about that change. This summer Cornell reversed its previous no-loan guarantee to families earning under $75k, beginning with the 2013 school year. From the Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell Kills Portion of Financial Aid Guarantee.

The revised aid policy will add thousands of dollars more in loans for families. Where they previously would have had to take out no loans, students whose families make between $60,000 and $75,000 annually will now take out up to $2,500 in loans.

Other income brackets will be affected by the policy, too. Those making between $75,000 and $120,000 will take out up to $5,000 — not the current $3,000 — in loans. The only group not affected by the changes are families making more than $120,000 annually, who, as in previous years, will receive up to $7,500 in loans.

5.  Finally, let’s circle back to Colorado, specficially Colorado State University-Global Campus, which announced last week it will be the first US university to accept transfer credits for Udacity, the Stanford University MOOC spinoff. Katherine Mangan writes, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, A First for Udacity: a U.S. University Will Accept Transfer Credit for One of Its Courses.

The university decided to accept the transfer credits after a committee of four faculty members in information technology reviewed the Udacity course and its methods of assessing student learning.”We believe that as a public university, affordability and accessibility are key,” said Becky Takeda-Tinker, president of the Global Campus.

A few minutes searching online could bring up five more examples. Or, here in Charlottesville, one could simply pick up the daily paper. Coming soon:  more on the still-evolving story of disruption at the University of Virginia.

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HS students: 4 questions about getting ready for college applications

While it seems like school just started — with Back to School night last week — our HS calendar points out a couple of college-related dates for juniors and seniors.

1.  Have you started thinking about it at all? Next week our school’s Counseling Department will offer College Planning Night for parents, with break-out sessions depending on the student’s class year. There’s really only time for general information, but if a family is just getting started in the process it’s a good place to begin. Each family / student will need to determine for themselves how deeply they want to dig into the details.

From collegeboard.org

2.  Will you take the PSAT? Next month Mod Squad Julie (11th grade) and all other juniors and sophomores at her school will take the PSAT. Sophomores take it for practice, to get a sense of what the SAT is like, and to get an idea of which areas of the test they may need to work on. Juniors take it for prep for the SAT too, but for them it is also the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarships — this could be truly significant for their access to selective colleges as well as merit funding.

3.  Will you take the SAT this fall? Seniors are likely to be taking the SAT in early October — if you need to do that and you haven’t registered for it yet, run to CollegeBoard’s site for late registration — so final scores can be reported for Early Acceptance or Early Decision deadlines. Tests taken on October 6th will report scores beginning October 25th.

4.  Have you drafted any essays? This is probably one of the stickiest pieces of the college application process. Well, essays and the short answer Common App question and dealing with the Common App user interface and, yes, deciding which colleges to apply to — they’re all sticky. But the one that seems to take the longest for many seniors is to write well and eloquently about one’s self for the personal essay. If you — or your student — haven’t started essay drafts yet, now would be the time to do that. Today.

And just think, this time next year, you could have this all behind you, living the college life, tweeting something like:

M.S. Pete tweet, Sept 2012.

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