College Admissions Counseling

The Sustainable Endowments Institute has issued the 2008 College Sustainability Report Card, a review of the sustainability activities at the colleges with the 200 largest endowments in the country. You may be asking why this is important when discussing college admissions. The “green” movement has been increasing in this country particularly in the past 10 years and with good reason. The colleges listed in this report card are educating many of the future leaders of this country and having a background in sustainability is critical. As importantly, many students are interested in becoming personally involved in sustainability issues either on a personal level or related to future employment.

The level at which a college is concerned about sustainability is one of the issues that may be important to a particular student in finding the right college for their needs. While such issues as size and location of a college are more obvious, it is the little issues like this that often make the difference between a student finding the best college for their needs and finding an OK college.

One of the issues that often comes up when I am talking with parents is when their son or daughter should start the college admissions process. Of course the answer varies but students generally should start thinking about the first stages of the process as high school freshman. As freshman, students need to be aware of the courses they are taking in high school and be aware that most colleges consider grades from all four years of high school.

Most colleges look at the academic courses taken in high school as the biggest factor in deciding who will be admitted. Ideally, students should consider taking four years of classes in the five academic areas of English, math, social studies, science and foreign languages. In deciding which classes to take in each of these areas the student should try to challenge themselves while being reasonable in their capabilities. If a student is not as strong in math, for instance, pushing to get through calculus may not be necessary. On the other hand, if the student is an aspiring engineer, not having calculus will be a serious impediment to that goal.

Since colleges prefer to see four years of the study in the academic subjects, planning your course work as an incoming freshman is necessary. For those students who may be considering a selective college, it is even more important to have four years of study in each of the five academic subjects.

Students considering selective colleges should also be considering whether they should be taking SAT Subject Tests and if so when. If your high school offers biology as a freshman then taking one of the Biology Subject Tests may be appropriate at the end of freshman year.

Now if you are a sophomore or junior that haven’t thought about any of the issues surrounding college admissions, don’t panic. But because there are many issues that should be considered to make sure you find the right college for your needs, now would be a good time to start getting involved.

Here is a college admissions time line for helping students plan what needs to be completed to keep on track for a successful application to college.

This time of year I get many phone calls from parents and students who are panicking because the student didn’t get accepted to any colleges or can’t afford any college to which they were accepted. Usually this results from having applied only to colleges that were a reach or without fully understood college financial aid. Either way, the question is, what do we do now?

One resource that I refer families to is the NACAC space availability survey that each year lists the colleges that are still accepting applications at this time of year. The student can search by state to find what colleges in a particular state might still have room for them to attend. While this is a great resource for the student who hasn’t been accepted any where else, financial aid at many of these schools is very limited and paying for college can still be a challenge.

I generally advise families to look at all options if there is no acceptable college choice at this time of year. Students might consider taking a gap year if they have a strong academic record but just aimed too high in this competitive college market. For students with a less stellar academic record, attending a community college may be a good option to establish the student’s ability to engage in college level work. There are also options for a post graduate program which is basically an additional year of high school to give the student a chance to improve their academic record or focus on a more realistic list of colleges to which to apply.

The options for next year for students seeking a college at this time are not always as attractive as they might have been with more planning, but there are almost always options for a student to consider.

The craziness surrounding wait lists is continuing with the New York Times reporting on some of the most selective colleges going to the wait list this year. We reported earlier on some of the issues surrounding wait lists and now that May 1 has passed it turns out that many of the most selective colleges will indeed be taking students off the wait list. Harvard will offer admission to 150-175 people from the wait list, Princeton and Penn will each offer take about 90 more students, Yale offered 45 students admission this week and maybe more next month, Amherst will take 25 students and Swarthmore and Pomona will each take 15-20 more.

With the most selective colleges taking students off the wait list, there may be a ripple effect to less selective colleges where the wait list students have already accepted a spot. But once again, remember that overall, the number of students effected by the wait lists at these most selective colleges is very small compared to the total number of students who applied.

The Project on Student Debt has put together an analysis of what a typical family with different income levels would have to pay at many of the colleges that have revised their financial aid packages in the past year.  This analysis reviews the colleges that have pledged to improve their aid and then examines what a family at different income levels would pay at each college. For example, a family making $60,000 a year with typical assets would pay $13,800 at a University of California school, $11,306 at Amherst, and only $4,000 at Harvard.

This document makes it very easy to compare many of the highly selective colleges that a student might be considering to determine where they might get the best financial aid package, assuming acceptance. Of course, as I have said many times before, cost is not the only factor in choosing a college. But for many families it is an important factor. However, given the current difficulties with acceptance to many of these colleges, one needs to evaluate their reasonable chances of acceptance into a particular college and not focus entirely on the cost. While Harvard might be the cheapest choice for a student from a family earning $60,000 a year, with an acceptance rate below 8%, I would never recommend that a family count on acceptance.

For most students the question of how a college spends the money you send each term is never considered. But it should be a consideration because the quality of education you receive may depend on the answer. A new report from the Lumina Foundation examines the question of college spending in detail and

the findings of the report, at least in general, is an issue that families should be aware of before choosing a particular type of college. For people who are interested in all of the numbers the report makes fascinating reading. For those of you less inclined to look at charts, InsideHigherEd has a nice summary of some of the key data.

Want the Cliff Notes version? Spending per student at public community colleges and master’s level institutions is going down while these very institutions are the one’s most likely to educate first generation and minority students. In other words, the amount of money the college spends to educate you depends on whether you are new to the college scene or whether you family has a better understanding of how colleges work. Generally, the higher your economic status the more likely you are to get a better college education.

We all want to believe that if you are motivated and work hard that the dream of a great college education is possible. And for some that is true. But for many students new to the process of finding a college, the easy choices, the community colleges and other public schools, are becoming less attractive as educational institutions because of the problems with financing public education that has been ongoing for some time in this country. Students and their families need to educate themselves about how a college spends its money and ask the tough question of whether the public or for profit college really is the best choice. More money may or may not be the answer for the public colleges, but if this country wants to continue to have a strong public higher education system, legislatures and the colleges themselves, need to take a look at changing the way they finance their operations.

As many of you know, the College Board changed the SAT in 2005 to add a writing section to the required test. There have been many criticisms of the new writing test since that time and many colleges either don’t consider it or give it limited consideration. Several new studies, however, indicate that the writing test is actually a better predictor of college grades than the critical reading and math tests from the SAT. The studies come from the College Board and the University of California. The writing test was originally added to the full SAT at the insistence of the University of California which had threatened to stop using the SAT unless changes were made.

Although I think there are still substantial concerns about the validity of the writing section of the SAT, it appears that with these new studies more colleges will reevaluate their usage of the writing section.

Now that most students have decided where they will be in the fall, the thoughts are turning to getting ready for the college experience. One of the ways to ensure a good experience is by staying healthy in college. Here is a link to 101 health and wellness tips for college students. This is a good synopsis of some of the issues related to staying healthy in college.

The University of Vermont has announced that they will be offering grants to cover the cost of tuition and costs to all Vermont undergraduates who are eligible for Pell Grants and who are Vermont residents. This policy will begin with the 2008 entering fall class and will be phased in over the next 4 years to include all undergraduates eligible for the Pell Grant.

The announcement makes it clear that the grants are for tuition and costs only which means that these students will still have some obligation to pay for room, board and books. Still it is good to see a state university taking action to improve the financial aid available to the neediest of their students. As noted in the past few months, more and more of the colleges without tremendous endowments are figuring out ways to improve their financial aid without breaking the bank. Hopefully more college will continue to follow the lead of those colleges that have improved their financial aid in the past year.

I have discussed many issues surrounding the college admissions process on this blog and I hope they have been helpful. But there other resources out on the web discussing college admissions. The problem is separating the good information from the not so good.

A new resource that has been put together is the Carnival of College Admissions. Brian Carver over at Accepted to College began this project and, although still in its infancy, it shows much promise. Basically, the Carnival consists of submissions from various resources throughout the web that deal with the world of college admissions. In the few weeks that the Carnival has been going there have been some wonderful submissions. And for those who are wondering, you will find a few of my submissions as well.

If you are in the search for the right college, take a look over at the Carnival of College Admissions to get some other perspectives on the college search. Enjoy the new resource.