10 Reasons to Go Canadian: the Quebecois Addendum

After writing yesterday about the benefits of Canadian universities, I thought I might revisit this briefly,  1) to provide specific tuition information, and 2) to highlight the specific benefit of being born in Quebec. The Mod Squad was born about 3300 kilometers too far west to take advantage of that benefit.

Our three students were born here:

Royal University Hospital, Saskatoon, SK

If they had been born here [or anywhere in Quebec]…

Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, QC

… tuition at McGill would be low enough that we might be saying, “La province de Québec possède une université très fine; c’est le seul endroit où vous avez besoin pour vous inscrire!”* With predictably bad accents, that is.

Arts & Sciences BA tuition and fees for 2011-12 at McGill, excluding room and board:

• Quebecois (born in QC):  $3,731.
• Canadian (born elsewhere in Canada):  $7,472
• International (born outside Canada):  $16,690.

Strathcona Music Building, McGill. Image via Wikipedia

Room and board costs are subject to specific housing offerings and specific meal plans; freshman are required to live on campus.

Add a rough average of $11,500 to estimate cost of attendance. [Almost all students move off campus sophomore year.]

• Quebecois:  $15,231.
• Canadian:  $18,972
• International:  $28,190.

*The province of Quebec has a very fine university; that’s the only place you need to apply!

Related articles

• McGill ranked top university in Canada (calgaryherald.com)

How HS Parents Talk: Recruiting counselor chimes in.

Mod Squad Pete is on his way to the airport to make one last college visit. [Wait a minute — if I actually publish ‘last’ am I setting him up for more visits after the Early Action deadline? Pondering this…]

Image by Chris Devers via Flickr

For this visit, he’ll stay with family, tour the college with a favorite cousin, meet family friends who are current students, and he’ll be visiting one of his favorite cities [he’s wearing a Boston Red Sox cap]. I’d say it’s likely he’ll have a great time, no matter the response to this particular college. Given the stress we’ve all been under the past couple of weeks, I hope he has a great time.

[Oh, and about that stress and how it relates to the title of this blog: that ‘stop worrying’ bit, you knew better all along, right?]

Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to chat with a couple of college counselors yesterday, one independent counselor and one who helps athletes through the recruiting process. I’ll probably write more about the conversation later. For now, here’s a quote as an addition to the guide on how high school parents talk:

When a parent says, ‘I just want my child to be happy,’ really it means, ‘If they don’t get into an Ivy league, I’ll kill myself.’ It becomes apparent they’re really gaming for an elite school — and if this isn’t realistic for their student, it can take months to talk them off the ledge.

We’re trying to listen to him [here’s one of our convos] and stay off the ledge. Of course, just like all the other stages of parenting, we’re making this up as we go.

Related articles

• 6 Reasons to Re-Visit a Campus (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)

Wednesday Weekly Reader: Community Colleges and more

Recent news from the college search / admissions / finance front.

1.  Since many seniors, including Mod Squad Pete, are in the middle of writing applications right now, here’s timely information from the Unigo Expert Network, via US News & World Report, on red flags seen in applications.

Regarding essays, if the quality of one far exceeds what might be expected from a candidate, the admissions office will access an applicant’s SAT essay (which is readily available online) for comparison purposes. If the essay really appears “DDI” (“Daddy did it”), the admissions office might request from a student a graded paper from a recent English or history class.

2.  An exceptional blogger, Dean Dad, who blogs under Confessions of a Community College Dean at Inside Higher Ed, wrote about how some four-year colleges are offering prospective students a choice between acceptance and rejection: read about the Purgatory of one year at a nearby community college. With an acceptable GPA at the end of the year, the student is automatically admitted. A couple of attractive points to this option:  the prospective student gets to live on campus at the four-year college and participate in campus activities, except NCAA sports.

This kind of thing has happened informally for years. Students who more or less coasted through high school have a hard time convincing their parents to shell out big money to go away to college, so they strike a deal: spend a year at the cc, and if you show you’re serious by doing well there, then transfer. What’s new in this program is that the four-year college is initiating it, and blessing it with both its imprimateur and an explicit promise of admission.

3.  See The College Puzzle blog for a study abstract on how well students who are unprepared for college work at the community college make the transition to being prepared for transfer to a four-year college. Our higher-ed system increasingly looks to community colleges to provide an effective alternative track to college. The community colleges’ ability to help move unprepared students toward better outcomes with college-level work is limited.

Conclusion: Community colleges can serve as a democratizing force in higher education; however, their ability to overcome inadequate academic preparation with which some students enter higher education is limited. Improving academic preparation in K–12 is thus a crucial component of enhancing transfer.

4.  Our local community college, Piedmont Virginia Community College, was featured recently in Money magazine. The September issue offered How I Saved $50,000 in College Costs. That link takes you to the third student featured, Ebonee Parrish, who studied at PVCC and transferred to the University of Virginia. With her GPA and course of study, the UVA costs are covered by grants, bringing her savings to $95,000. As the PVCC representative noted in a comment,

PVCC was mentioned in the article since community colleges are a viable way to begin a bachelor’s degree. Many PVCC students transfer to U.Va., Va. Tech, James Madison University, VCU, William and Mary, and other institutions to complete their four-year degree.

In Virginia, and in some other states, students attaining a certain GPA at the community college earn an automatic transfer acceptance into the state universities. UVA provides a document about the guaranteed transfer from VA community colleges here. I looked it up because I couldn’t recall the required GPA (it’s 3.4 with no grades below a C and the English 111 and 112 must be a B or better). One of the most financial-savvy and only [I think?] guaranteed way for a VA student to get a top-25 college education. The diploma doesn’t say “transfer from CC”.

What have you been reading? Let me know in comments, below.

Related articles

• Completing College: Harsh Realities (diycollegeprep.wordpress.com)
• 4 Out of 5 in Community College Want to Transfer, Report Says – NYTimes.com (computinged.wordpress.com)

How to Apply to College… and When.

Some time ago we thought there were only two choices in applying to college:  early or regular. Then we learned about Early Decision, and after a while I could keep Early Decision [binding] straight from Early Action or Admission [non-binding].

A couple of weeks ago we ran into our first Early Action/Restricted. Of course, the way these things go, after we saw it once, it seemed to be everywhere.

Now I’m ready to build a list of what I know [so far] of application choices.

• Open Admissions
• Rolling Admissions
• Early Decision
• Early Action
• Early Action, Restricted
• Regular Admission

[Plus we’d heard about a Gap Semester application from Elon; I don’t know if any other college has picked up that idea.]

Just so I remember where to find this two years from now, when Mod Squad Julie will be applying, here’s the breakdown.

Open Admissions means just what you would think:  if you want to enroll at an open admissions college, simply complete the forms. Our local community college, Piedmont Virginia CC, makes it clear here.

Rolling Admissions, often offered by large, public universities, provides a larger window for the application submission, followed by reported results within a few weeks. For example, a student could apply to Indiana University in the Fall and hear back from them in four to eight weeks. They provide deadlines for scholarship considerations, and applications received after April 1 are accepted on a space-available, case-by-case basis.

Image via Wikipedia

An Early Decision application requires the student and parents to sign a document attesting that if the student is admitted, he/she will attend that college. Here’s how the College of William & Mary spells it out:

Students who are admitted to William & Mary through early decision must confirm their enrollment by making a non-refundable deposit within two weeks of receiving the admission letter.  Furthermore, admitted students must withdraw applications from all other colleges to which they have applied.

Early Decision is, in my mind, one of the toughest choices to consider. The double-edged sword of ED offers higher acceptance percentages at many of the most selective schools. See Duke, for example, here on CollegeData.com. Their ED admission rate is 36%, versus their regular admission rate of 19%. So the odds are in your favor to apply via ED, but you’d better be absolutely certain that’s your first choice — and that you are willing to pay whatever the amount listed on your financial aid letter. The commitment required from the student up front doesn’t leave any room for negotiation in April. The financial advantage lies with the university.

Here’s another reason colleges like Early Decision, from US News & World Report:

Image via Wikipedia

The programs are without doubt a boon for the colleges. ED, in particular, is the proverbial bird-in-hand for admissions staffers facing increasing uncertainty in picking a freshman class as high schoolers hedge their bets by applying to 10 or more schools. By securing in some cases nearly half of the incoming freshmen by December 15, as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania do, colleges can avoid coming up short after May 1. They also boost their yield, the percentage of admitted students who enroll, which has become a key indicator of popularity.

Another ED question:  how well does a 17  or 18 year old know his or her own mind? Is that student ready to commit in October for the following year, given the incredible changes of opinion from day to day in the teenage brain? The requirement for an ED choice:  this is the one college you love above all others.

Early Action is a much easier choice:  how about applying early and getting a response early and being done with it? Sounds good to me. Students can apply early, usually by around November 1st, and receive a response from the university mid-winter — anywhere from mid-December to the end of January. Here’s a news release from UVA when they changed from Early Decision to Early Action, explaining how and why. According to Greg Roberts, UVa’s Dean of Admissions, “This provides, in our opinion, the most flexibility and freedom to students.”

Students might not hear back from their college of choice before the regular decision deadlines, so numerous applications may still be required. However, a letter of acceptance in January may be much more attractive than waiting til April first.

Image via Wikipedia

Early Action, Restricted is the one that was new to us. It is not binding, like Early Decision: if the student is accepted, he or she still has a decision to make. However, choosing to apply to a college via Early Action/Restricted means, well, that there are restrictions. Stanford University spells this out very well here.

Restrictive Early Action Policy

• Applicants agree not to apply to any other private college/university under an Early Action, Restrictive Early Action, Early Decision, or Early Notification program.
• Applicants may apply to other colleges and universities under their Regular Decision option.

Exceptions

• The student may apply to any college/university with early deadlines for scholarships or special academic programs as long as the decision is non-binding.
• The student may apply to any public college/university.
• The student may apply to any college/university with a non-binding rolling admission process.
• The student may apply to any foreign college/university on any application schedule.

So far, I’ve only found this with selective private colleges. If you see Early Action/Restricted elsewhere, please let me know in comments, below.

Finally: Regular Admission! This is the standard admissions practice most parents are familiar with from their own experience. Submit your application (and all the multiple supporting parts) by December 31st, receive a response by April 1. Simple enough.

One thing to keep in mind for regular admission:  last year the Common Application website set a new single-day record on December 31, 2010, when students submitted 127,175 applications. Might make sense to complete and submit the app a day or two ahead?

Watch me try and recommend that to Mod Squad Pete…

Related articles

• Early Decision (mycollegemamablog.wordpress.com)
• Know if Applying to College Early is Right for You (usnews.com)

We keep learning…

Mod Squad Pete is in the midst of writing applications. Since school started, he’s focused on college stuff mostly on the weekends and homework during the week. A couple of weeks ago he changed his mind about which colleges he was going to apply to when. Quickly, every night required attention to both school work and college work.

Here a few things we’ve learned since that change of mind. What seems obvious now, in hindsight, offered us surprises almost each day.

1. Changing your short list of colleges for early action admission can make life exciting.
2. Making that change in mid- to late-September increases the excitement.
3. No matter how many college admissions sites one has read, someone has to dig deep into the new one.
4. We thought we knew all the varieties of application options — who knew there was Early Action, Restricted?
5. Though many colleges list November 1st as their early action deadline, a few (with November 1 listed as their deadline) will tell you they start reading in October and recommend you submit all materials by October 15.
6. The dice fell just so: the new college added in late September strongly suggests materials arrive by 10/15.
7. The high school guidance office would like a month’s notice for transcript requests.
8. Great guidance counselors will do whatever they can to help a student who has changed his mind.
9. Getting up to speed with a new college’s needs does not mean the deadlines for the original colleges can be ignored.
10. Adding a quick visit to the new college does not mean homework or essay drafts can be ignored. Nor the SAT.
11. Even though recommendation requests were made months ago, actually getting enough and appropriate information into the teachers’ hands is a real chore. [Though not the chore it must be to write dozens of recommendation letters.]
12. No matter how many times one has checked the resume / cover letter / arts resume / counselor questionnaire / recommendation request form or whatever, one can always find another way to improve it. Just press send.
13. No matter how many times one has explored the Common Application, there will still be blanks, questions, and parts that just don’t accept the accurate answer.
14. I am convinced we still have much more to learn.

Homework: ‘Beyond Getting In’ at The Atlantic

Pardon us while the DrStrangeCollege household focuses on all the bits and pieces of applying to college via Early Action. Yes, I just wrote about the FIVE steps to applying to college, and sometime soon I may write the more detailed version, spelling out 127 steps.

Meanwhile, I would urge you to run, not walk, over to The Atlantic, to read their Special Report on College Admissions,  ‘Beyond Getting In.’

For example, see ten charts about the value of college here.

Read The Atlantic‘s take on the millions of bits written about the rankings:

The bottom line is that college rankings aren’t the monster here.They’re gnats on the back of a monster. After all, if you pay attention to college rankings, you’re already doing something rare. You’re caring enough about college to consult a ranking!
That makes you pretty elite, from the start. Thirty percent of 18-year olds don’t graduate from high school on time. Of those who graduate, half will drop of out of college. Of those who enroll, only nine percent will start at an institution that admits less than half its applicants. Only three percent will attend a school with an admission rate below one-third. The admissions rate at Harvard is six percent.

There is the US News ranking problem. And there is a college crisis. There’s a big difference. Here is the breakdown of 21-year olds in 2009. Sixty percent aren’t in college. Twenty percent didn’t graduate from high school. One percent is going to the kind of schools that make headlines in rankings.

Why is college so expensive? The former President of George Washington University, who nearly tripled tuition during his twenty years there, discusses the costs here and  here.

From The Atlantic.

And what about a nutrition-style fact box for each college? Click on the chart for that post.

More articles have been posted each day; there are nine so far and all of them, at the very least, informative. Most of them thought-provoking. Let me know what you think in comments.

Addendum: Thanks to @ksaedconsult, the Twitter feed for Kimberly Shepherd at KSA Educational Consulting, for calling my attention to the series.

Related articles

• America’s College Gap (outsidethebeltway.com)

Wednesday Weekly Reader: The College Rankings, Redux.

Recent news from the college search / admissions / finance front.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the soon-to-be-published 2012 Best College Rankings from US News & World Report. It was long and a bit ranty, but it can be found here.
Here are a few follow up (post-publication) articles and one excellent article from last February that I’d completely forgotten about…
1.  Inside Higher Ed reported on a meeting held with US News & World Report in ‘Thanks, but No Thanks.’ A committee of the NACAC [National Association of College Admission Counseling] looked at the way USN&WR composes its annual rankings, didn’t like it, discussed it with the publisher, and nothing about it is going to change, “regardless of how admissions counselors and higher education admissions officers feel about them.”

“The committee believes that the research and discussion about the imprecision of ordinal rankings in the ‘Best Colleges’ list has reached a point where not proactively acknowledging the limitations of the ranking formula through vigorous consumer education and flexible ‘ranking’ options risks misleading consumers and has compromised the journalistic integrity of the publication,” the report states.

Here’s the position from Robert Morse, who oversees the rankings:

As long as colleges and universities continue to weight test scores and class ranking as a crucial component of admissions criteria, Morse said, it is hypocritical for institutions to ask U.S. News not to do the same.

2. The New York Times blog on college admissions, The Choice: writes about the rankings and provides advice on how to use them.

The fact is that however much the rankings are wrapped in a gauze of science, there are any number of subjective judgements at play here, including the assembly of an “undergraduate academic reputation (100=highest)” and the various weights apportioned to students’ SAT and ACT scores, as well as rankings for institutions’ “financial resources,” “alumni giving” and even “average alumni giving rate.”

3.  Lynn O’Shaughnessy, who blogs at The College Solution, likens the rankings to a ‘Weird Beauty Contest.’

Every year, the magazine sends out three surveys to each institution in a particular category, such as national universities or liberal arts colleges. Three administrators in the office of the president, admissions and provost are supposed to fill out the surveys. The folks stuck with this chore are expected to grade each of their peers on a 1-to-5 scale. The best score is a 5 and the worst is a 1.

Any guess which schools get a heap of 5 scores?’ Beyond the automatic high scores of some schools and the crappy scores of others, what has always irked me is that universities and colleges are supposed to know what’s going on at their “peer” institutions and that’s impossible. You can’t tell me, for instance, that administrators at the University of Wisconsin can assess the academic quality of hundreds of its peers including Georgia State, University of Missouri, University of Chicago, Rutgers, MIT, San Diego State and the College of William & Mary.

4.  Given 1) that colleges doing well in the rankings have bragging rights; 2) want to publicize their ranking; 3) US News & World Report makes a lot of money from the published rankings; and  4) has a commodity to protect, we shouldn’t be surprised at the income USN&WR gains from the ‘Best Colleges’ badges shown on college websites. See Best Colleges Badge: We Sustain Its Existence, from Inside Higher Ed.

However, a recent discussion on a higher education web developers listserv reinforced the fact that some still find the “badge” to be valuable. In fact, due to the exorbitant fees that U.S. News charges to display the “best badge,” some schools have gotten creative with their web marketing. Instead of paying the $1,000 cost (web use only, 12 months) to display the award badge, some higher education web developers display a graphic of the cover of the U.S. News magazine as a way to indicate their ranking status. By the way, the cost for unlimited electronic use of the best badge for only a year is $5,500. Imagine if a majority of the 1,600 schools in the U.S. News rankings list paid for either the limited web use or even the unlimited option. It is potentially a multi-million dollar operation.

Image via Wikipedia

5.  Finally, last February the New Yorker published Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis of the Best Colleges rankings. Gladwell offers the analogy of ranking automobiles and shows how different choices, by necessity, build different ‘best’ lists. Yes, a Dodge could be better than a Ferrari, depending upon the criteria used. Unfortunately, the online article is behind the New Yorker‘s paywall. Here’s a link to the abstract. If you’re not a subscriber, this entertaining read is well worth looking up at your library.

What have you been reading? What do you think of the rankings? As always, please comment below…

Related articles

• Defining the ‘Best’ in Colleges (usnews.com)
• College Rankings That Aren’t Ridiculous: Washington Monthly (huffingtonpost.com)

How to Apply to College in 5 Steps.

1. Pick your college(s). Use one of the many college search sites available [see CollegeBoard, CollegeData, College Navigator, Unigo, for a start] and develop your own criteria (size, public/private, geographic location, type of setting, selectivity, etc.). Research further on each of your long-list colleges’ admissions pages. Whittle down to a short list that includes a couple of safety schools, a few good fits, and a reach college or two.
2. Visit the colleges on your list, if at all possible. For those you cannot visit, check their websites for virtual tours.
3. Revise your list. Steps #1 and #2 might need to be repeated a number of times.
4. Pick the type of application you will submit to each college and when: Rolling Admissions, Early Decision, Early Action, Early Action/Restricted, or Regular Admission.
5. Write the application(s) and submit with all accompanying materials by the appropriate deadline.

Some students may be able to follow these steps with minimal stress. If so, I would love to hear how they did it.

I would probably (lovingly) share their stories with Mod Squad Pete (who re-revised his Early Action list five days ago).

Related articles

• How do I compare colleges? (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)

Monday is Fun Day…

Today’s view from my window is a drab, grey day. Add to that:  All I could think about much of the past weekend was whether it was a bigger drag to be a high school senior (like Mod Squad Pete) or the parent of a high school senior (like, umm, me).

Pete had a long list of tasks:

1. homework for a full college-prep course load (interim grades will be reported in the next week or two),
2. his standard extracurricular load of [mostly] sports and music, including practices, lessons, concerts, and games,
3. a list of household chores (which includes doing his own laundry and driving siblings to some of their activities),
4. selling ads for journalism class (with friends, so this might have been a fun thing),
5. meeting up with a study group (also counts as socializing, right?),
6. and, the ever-present list of tasks related to getting into college (way too long to list here, but this will give you an idea).

Last week offered up a true highlight:  his jazz vocal group CD was launched — great music, great launch party, everyone is happy with the product (including Pete’s product and brochure design).

But for the most part, there’s no getting away from the list, nor the attention of his parents. And that, upon occasion, wears me out, too.

Image via CrunchBase

So, forget the latest college news for now. I’ll get to that another day.

For your entertainment:

• A highly appropriate Sporcle quiz (and if you have not yet met Sporcle and its “mentally stimulating diversions,” feel free to thank me for the time-sink).
• Followed by a YouTube tribute to Pete’s favorite saying when I succumb to the stress: “Mom. You are freaking out.”

Related articles

• One High School Senior’s To-Do List (ypulse.com)
• Back to school: Tips for high school seniors from recent grads (pennlive.com)
• In praise of Sporcle.com (ken-jennings.com)

Wednesday Weekly Reader: 5 Stories.

News from the college search / admissions / finance front.

1.  Each day this week, Jacques Steinberg‘s NYT education blog, The Choice, is featuring questions from HS students and their parents answered by the authors of College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step. Great Q&A so far, with more to come.

The Choice has lined up the authors of a new book — which bills itself as “the ultimate user’s manual” for college applicants, and loosely follows, as its model, the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” series — to field questions about what high school seniors and juniors (and their parents) should be doing now on the college admissions front.

2.  How financially-literate are college freshman? How do they react when they are target-marketed by their own college and their own peers? See this article from the NYT about the marketing partnerships colleges are embracing (UNC busing new students to shopping parties at Target) and the ones that surprise them (American Eagle Outfitters-paid students helping new students on move-in day).

The lines aren’t always clear. U.N.C. officials, for example, say they don’t currently have a clear handle on how many students work as brand ambassadors — but it could be several hundred or more. “I don’t think we have a good grip on it,” Mr. Crisp says. “We are going to need to get a good grip on it.”

He is blunt about the fact that student-to-student marketing has only recently come to the school’s attention. Asked how U.N.C. is handling it, he acknowledges, “Honestly, not very well.”

The challenge, he says, is to balance potential student employment opportunities against practices that could manipulate undergraduates or dilute the U.N.C. experience.

3.  USA Today’s College blog offers five steps for figuring out your college application list.

In addition to winnowing down the list, wise high schoolers must divide their application choices into three categories: reach (a category that includes schools whose admission standards are a bit higher than the student’s record, but a place where they would be thrilled to attend), match (schools where the standards are nearly perfectly aligned with the student’s academic record and where they would be happy as a student) and safety (less-competitive institutions where, if applications to the other two categories fail to produce an admission, a student is pretty much guaranteed to be accepted and will feel at home).

4.  Here’s a piece from GOOD on why textbooks are so expensive, noting students protested in 1939 when textbook prices rose to $3, and providing a look at the textbook publishing business model.

Ultimately what frustrates Weil about the debate over the cost of textbooks is that government  officials complain in public about the issue, but then they’ll turn around and vote for or authorize cuts to higher education.“At the end of the day,” he says, “how disingenuous are these folks when they say they’re concerned about students and debt?”

5.  Finally, here’s a reward for sticking around. Just when I found myself fed up with whatever college or college-business related stories I was reading last weekend, I chanced upon this long, provocative, thoughtful piece by Mark Edmundson:  Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here? Edmundson, an English Professor at UVa, takes on the purpose of a college education:

So, if you want an education, the odds aren’t with you: The professors are off doing what they call their own work; the other students, who’ve doped out the way the place runs, are busy leaving the professors alone and getting themselves in position for bright and shining futures; the student-services people are trying to keep everyone content, offering plenty of entertainment and building another state-of-the-art workout facility every few months. The development office is already scanning you for future donations. The primary function of Yale University, it’s recently been said, is to create prosperous alumni so as to enrich Yale University.

But then again,

Education is about finding out what form of work for you is close to being play—work you do so easily that it restores you as you go. Randall Jarrell once said that if he were a rich man, he would pay money to teach poetry to students. (I would, too, for what it’s worth.) In saying that, he (like my father) hinted in the direction of a profound and true theory of learning.

Thanks, prof, for reminding me of what we hope our students may find for themselves — not the doping out the way the place runs, but finding a life’s work that is such a passion it’s close to being play.

What have you been reading? Any comments, please add them below.

Related articles

• Seeking Your Back-to-School Questions on Admissions (thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com)