Summer Seminar: College Admissions Process & Writing
JUNE 12, 2013, 2:55 PM
Tip Sheet: Determining College Fit and Value
By GLORIA CORDES LARSON
Gloria Cordes Larson is the president of Bentley University, a private institution in Waltham, Mass.
The college search is about finding a place that is right for you, one that is going to best prepare you for a rewarding life and successful career when your college years are over.
“Prepare” is the operative word here. In a recent survey of employers by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, executives said they were looking for graduates with both field-specific skills and broad knowledge in the liberal arts for long-term career advancement. Today’s college graduates should be armed with a well-rounded, purpose-driven education that integrates concepts and numbers, people and profits, and left brain with right.
Here are some questions for college representatives that may help prospective students prepare for these long-term goals:
Is the Curriculum Relevant to My Goals?
Ensuring that your classes will be relevant to who you want to become, both personally and professionally, is so important. If you find that the programs offered do not address your diverse set of interests, find out if your prospective college or university offers opportunities to blend disciplines.
Consider asking these questions about the curriculum:
Can I have more than one major, and in different disciplines?
Will I have the opportunity to thoughtfully integrate my majors?
In what ways will I learn to hone soft skills, like the ability to make decisions, and how will I be challenged to execute those skills?
How do you help students improve their writing and oral communication skills?
What Types of Technology Will I Be Exposed To?
Our world is built on technology, and having exposure to and an understanding of evolving technology is important for students who will be entering the work force in just a few years.
To gauge how technology is incorporated in the learning experience of your prospective college, consider these questions:
What types of innovative technology will I have access to? What will I be expected to learn?
How is technology used in the classroom?
Do you offer courses that blend online and in-class instruction?
What Is the Learning Environment Like?
To get a feel for the culture of the school, especially among the students who will be your classmates and peers, consider asking these questions:
What are the more popular student groups on campus?
How do current students show leadership, on campus and off?
In what ways are students active in politics, community service and areas of social responsibility?
Don’t forget to focus on the right “social” fit for you:
How small (or large) is the student body?
Is there an athletic or other program that contributes to school spirit?
What do most students do for fun? How do they spend their weekends?
How Will I Be Prepared for the Work Force?
Nothing teaches students faster or better than practical, hands-on experience gained through internships, corporate immersion and service-learning, both locally and internationally. No matter which college you decide to attend, look for opportunities to engage deeply in problem-solving and innovation. This type of knowledge and experience can’t always be conveyed in a traditional classroom setting, but it can lead you to meaningful relationships with lifelong mentors and propel you to future jobs.
To gauge the career readiness resources at a college or university, consider asking these questions:
At what point will your school offer me career planning programs and services?
What percentage of students complete an internship (or two), and when can I expect to participate in my first one? Are they financed?
What are some examples of the places recent alumni have gone to work or graduate school?
Will I have the opportunity to study abroad? Where does your school have strong global partnerships?
How does this school partner with professionals working in the marketplace?
Does your school offer service-learning programs? Can I put these credits toward my degree?
Finally, what is most important is that you feel prepared after your college years to build a fulfilling career and meaningful life. Your college search should lead you to a place for growth and learning, where your long-held assumptions will be reconsidered, your opinions altered and your life goals established.
Your generation is grounded in reality and uplifted by hope. So be hopeful and realistic. If the answers you receive to the questions above ring true to you, then you have found a college or university worth the investment.
Excerpt from “The Naked Truth” By the Chicago Tribune
WHAT IT TAKES
Expert advice on finding-and getting into-the best school for you
Eva Ostrum, author of The Thinking Parent's Guide to College Admissions: The Step-by-Step Program to Get Kids into the Schools of Their Dreams and founder of College Broadband
! Before looking at schools, take a good look at your child. "Don't box your son or daughter in when something else would really help him thrive," she recommends to parents who are obsessing about their child attending their alma mater or another dream school.
"Start with who your child is, then look at schools, rather than the other way around."
! Understand that you very well might not get into your top college picks. "You have to be just as excited about your safety school as your No. 1 choice."
William Marra, president of the Harvard Crimson and author of 50 Harvard Application Essays: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice
! Advertise your talent. "It's important to be very good at one thing," Marra says. "Having one really strong point, like music, athletics, community service or debate helps to pitch yourself to
the college you want to attend. Don't be shy about letting the college know what your strengths are."
! Have a strong standout essay, not just one that is grammatically correct. "Make sure the essay shines a light on your personality and character."
Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, author of What Colleges Don't Tell You (and Other Parents Don't Want You To Know)
! If waitlisted, be a squeaky wheel, because there is no order to the list. "Some colleges just look at who called them the most. The kid who keeps calling really wants that place."
! Cramming is good. "I strongly believe and have seen evidence of kids' improving their SAT scores by 300 points by cramming the day before," Wissner-Gross says. "I recommend kids take the Friday off before the SATs."
JUNE 12, 2013, 6:10 AM
7 Things Graduating Seniors Should Know About College
By LYNN F. JACOBS and JEREMY S. HYMAN
As this year’s high school seniors prepare to graduate, we’ve asked Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman, authors of “The Secrets of College Success,” to update their tips for incoming college freshmen. — Tanya Abrams
Here are some things incoming students should know about college:
You Have Control Over Your Courses
You do not have to confine yourself to the standard program — a set of preselected courses that are designed to help incoming students fulfill general education requirements. As you select your courses, be sure that each one is on the right level for you (in some cases, one can substitute higher-level courses for more basic ones). Once you have picked your program, you should attend each of the classes and decide whether the professor is someone from whom you can really learn. Often, there are many instructors teaching the same course. By using the drop/add process, you may be able to get a much better teacher.
Every Class Counts
There is a lot of redundancy built into high school courses. Many classes go over what was done before, some classes are devoted to preparing for tests, and, once in a while, you don’t really do much at all.
In college, it’s different. Professors have only 30 or 40 lectures in which to cover the subject, so they try to make each class count. If you miss more than two or three lectures, you are likely to miss out on some content that will be difficult to fill in on your own.
You Are Expected to Do a Lot of the Work on Your Own
You need to be your own boss. Figure out when things need to be done and do them, week by week. The professor or teaching assistant might remind the class when the exam is or when the paper is due, but no one will contact you when you have missed the test or have not handed in the paper.
You will also need to propel yourself to study — even when there is no graded work that week. While a recent study shows that the average college student spends about 15 hours outside of class preparing, if you poll professors, you will find that they expect two hours of preparation for each class meeting. So, if you’re taking 15 class hours, the professors assume you will be spending 30 hours a week studying. That equates to four hours a day, if you are doing your homework seven days a week.
The Testing Is Often Done by ‘Sampling’
Exams in college are not 100 percent comprehensive — that is, the tests will not cover every topic or problem discussed in class. Instead, professors often select a representative sample of problems or topics and test the students on only those. This is because professors are looking for depth of thought on some issue, rather than the “once over lightly” on everything covered.
When preparing for exams, then, it is often a better strategy to prepare the central points in greater detail rather than going over everything superficially.
College Papers Are More Than Just Reports
College papers usually require analysis and/or research. In college, you may be asked to break down some issue into its parts and offer some evaluation of your own. Or you may be asked to consult original documents and scholarly sources and offer your own assessment of them. This is in sharp contrast with what is expected of written assignments in high school, some of which require no more than a simple summary of what others have said on Wikipedia, and articles found on Google and in newspapers and magazines.
You Don’t Have to Pick a Major in Your First Year
Many colleges now encourage students to declare a major at orientation; this forces students to get started on some directed course of study, and it helps colleges manage course offerings. In some cases it may be a good idea to declare your major right away, especially if yours is a four-year program like pre-med, music or a world language. In more cases than not, however, it is better to wait until you’ve taken a few courses — especially upper-division or advanced courses in a given field — before you commit to a major.
And keep in mind that even if you do declare a major at the outset, it is very easy to change your major if you find you don’t like the courses or you aren’t doing well in them. It is much better to get out of something you don’t like than to languish in 10 or 12 required courses.
The Professor Would Like to Help You Succeed
Professors need not be distant figures whose only job is to give lectures in large auditoriums and spend the rest of their time doing research. In addition to those tasks, professors are also teachers, whose self-conception is often invested in whether students are doing well. They are often delighted to help students construct a paper or prepare for an exam. They also have office hours throughout the week so they may devote time to helping students.
You should plan to visit each professor at least once during the semester. The office hour can be one of the few times at college for one-to-one engagement with a genuine expert in the field.
DECEMBER 20, 2012, 4:54 PM
Applicants Continue to Flock to Early Admission Programs
By JACQUES STEINBERG and TANYA ABRAMS
Each December just before the holiday break, The Choice seeks to take the measure of the popularity of early admission programs at dozens of colleges and universities.
We do so first and foremost to give some context to applicants who have sought admission through such routes — and, in particular, to provide a bit of solace to those who may have shed a few tears over a deferral or rejection. In other words, to let you (and your parents) know that you are not alone.
One obvious theme that emerges from our annual early admission chart — which includes data reported to us by nearly four dozen colleges and universities — is that many binding early decision and nonbinding early action programs continue to record double-digit increases in applicants when compared with the previous year. That is certainly the case for the binding early decision programs at Boston University (a 41 percent increase in applicants), Bates College (30 percent), Cornell (16.5 percent) and Vanderbilt (21 percent), as well as the nonbinding programs at Case Western Reserve (34 percent), the University of Chicago (19.5 percent) and the California Institute of Technology (17 percent).
The reasons one institution’s early applications are up while another’s are down (see Dartmouth this year) are never entirely clear — even to the institutions themselves. Moreover, as at a publicly traded company, a record increase one year, or over a series of years, is bound to yield to a loss at some point, especially as colleges’ marketing and travel budgets ebb and flow. So we caution readers not to read too much into whatever trends they may divine, especially at individual institutions.
We also note that the information we present above is limited — not least by the fact that more than half the colleges and universities to whom we reached out did not respond to our queries.
That said, for those who applied to these institutions this fall — and to others who may yet do so by the Jan. 1 deadline at many colleges and universities — we hope that these statistics, including the percentage of seats now filled in the freshman class at schools with binding programs, are, at the least, another piece of this very complex puzzle.
We will continue to update this chart, within this post, as we receive more data, so please be sure to check back. Colleges and universities are welcome to submit figures for consideration to us via the e-mail address .
US News & Report
Early Applicants More Likely to Gain College Admission
Higher admission rate of early college applicants fuels controversy.
By KIM CLARK December 15, 2010
High school seniors who apply to college early—through "Early Decision" or "Early Action" programs with fall deadlines—are more likely to receive admission letters than those who apply using the regular deadlines and processes at more than 80 percent of the colleges that report such statistics.
[Explore 50 colleges with high early application acceptance rates.]
And the admissions advantage is big, according to U.S.News& World Report's analysis of the 233 colleges that report separate rates for their early admission programs. In 2009, the last year for which complete data is available, the typical college's early acceptance rate was 15 percentage points higher than its rate for those who sent their applications in by the standard deadlines, which are usually in December or January. In some cases, however, such as the University of Arkansas and SUNY's College of Environmental Science and Forestry, more than 80 percent of early applicants gained admission, compared to less than a third of the regular applicants.
Of course, many colleges insist that the early admission rates only appear higher because better students apply early, and that those students would win admissions if they applied in the regular pool. But some colleges say they do give preferences to early applicants. And the disparities in admissions rates may be key reasons that Dartmouth College, Duke University, MIT, and many other colleges reported record numbers of early applications this year.
[Read about three main reasons why colleges accept more early applicants.] The differences in the admission rates will also likely continue to fuel a debate over whether early admissions programs are good for students.
In 2006, Harvard University stopped its early admissions program after a 2003 book by some of its faculty showed that wealthy and privileged students benefited the most from early admissions programs. A research team led by Christopher Avery, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, found that, for example, students who applied early got less financial aid.
A growing number of colleges, including Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, and Harvard, match financial aid offers from competing schools. But a high school senior who applies through an "Early Decision" program has to promise to attend that school, and so doesn't have any competing financial aid offers. (In contrast, "Early Action" admission programs give students early answers but allow them to try to get competing offers.) That's why students who need financial aid are usually counseled to apply to several schools using the regular process, and compare several aid offers before making a commitment.
A few colleges, including the University of Virginia, followed Harvard's lead and eliminated their "Early Decision" programs. But in November 2010, UVA announced it would start an "Early Action" application program for the fall of 2011, saying it was responding to students' demands for earlier decisions while still providing opportunities to compare colleges and price tags. Greg Roberts, UVA's dean of admissions, insists early applicants to UVA won't have an edge. "We strongly believe that there should be no strategic advantage to applying early action," he says.