I just wanted to let everyone know that the 2012 Edition of my book “BS/MD Programs-The Complete Guide” will be out any day.
I thought the new edition would be a lot simpler than the last but I was wrong. There are a number of new programs listed in the appendix and the new addition of the book has an index to make it easier to find information. I had not originally planned on bringing out another book just a year after the first but there are enough new programs that I wanted to get that information out.
The 2012 edition will be available at Amazon with ebooks available through Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.
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I have often expressed my dislike of college rankings. And then we get the story that Claremont McKenna college, a great liberal arts college, was manufacturing SAT scores that they sent to US News, presumably in an attempt to get better rankings.
Very disappointing. But then I read a response to this and the “the cycle of absurdity.” This response was one of the best responses I have seen to the games that get played to make colleges look better to the rankings world. Thanks to Jon Boeckenstedt at DePaul University for permission to repeat his comments. Here are Jon’s comments:
“By now, of course, everyone has read the most recent story of a college reporting inflated SAT scores. I blogged about it a little last night ( http://bit.ly/wuWy3n ) but have since had a few more thoughts.
A few people have already leapt to the conclusion that this is about ratings, and I don’t think that tells the full tale: Test scores account for about 7.5% of your overall score in USNWR, if I recall, so a small change in a small variable doesn’t really mean that much. I’ll grant, however, if you’re #10 and you feel some pressing need to hang on to that ranking (because who would ever want to go to #11?) it may make sense.
But really, this is just another verse in that song titled “The Cycle of Absurdity.” It goes like this:
* It’s really hard to measure educational effects, since humans are, well, human.
* With costs increasing, everyone wants to get the most bang for the buck.
* Absent any meaningful way to compare colleges, parents and students look for precision
* Precision is obtained in test scores, selectivity, and rankings (read Sternberg’s essay on Inside Higher Ed, here http://bit.ly/zIT7uc)
* Colleges like to enroll better students; they think better students like better colleges
* Presidents, trustees, faculty, students, and alumni like to be associated with “better”
* You pursue the trappings of “better” perhaps even at the expense of real “better”. You create fake “Fast Apps” and SuperScores
and other things designed to fool the public
* The public buys it
* Your bad behavior is thus reinforced, and it starts all over again next year, when the president and the trustee put in the strategic
plan that selectivity and test scores must continue to rise. Because, of course, donors like to give money to “winners.”
* Even Charlie Sheen is confused by all this winning stuff. But he sends his kids to the schools for winners.
The silliest outcome of this will happen when someone suggests that CMC grads are no longer as attractive in the market place because “their SAT’s aren’t as high as we thought.” But I guarantee you it will happen.
Can we all stop?”
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Net price calculators are supposed to be the best new thing to help you figure out what a college costs. And they can be helpful. But can you trust them?
In short, no. At least not unless you know the four year graduate rate for the college in question. You see, no matter how accurate the net price calculator is at letting you know what the college might cost you, until you have some idea of how many years of college you will have to pay for, you won’t know the real cost of the college.
Say the calculator says you have to pay $10,000 a year for college. If most students graduate from the college you have an interest in within four years, you would pay $40,000. But what if most students need six years to graduate? You would end up paying $60,000 for the college.
The net price calculator, even if accurate for your yearly cost, doesn’t tell you whether the college costs $40,000 or $60,000. Does that make a difference to you? Of course.
Use the net price calculators. But also make sure you understand the time it takes to graduate from the college. Only then can you begin to have an idea of what you might have to pay.
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Last week I talked about how some college admissions counselors manipulate data to look better. Many colleges do the same thing with the information they provide regarding medical school admissions.
Colleges want to look good to perspective students and many of those students want to be doctors. So what better way to look good than to talk about your high medical school acceptance rate. And this is where it gets tricky.
Many colleges only provide their best students recommendations to medical school. Since the recommendation from a college professor is critical for admissions to medical school, not having one, or not have a good one, will often prevent you from getting into medical school.
But if the college only gives their best students recommendation letters, those students have a much higher percentage of getting into medical school. If only students with 3.8 GPA and a 34 MCAT get recommendations, it is going to look like your college does a great job of placing students into medical school.
There are colleges out there that regularly have over 90% of all of the students that wish to apply get accepted into medical school. Yet few of those colleges advertise that fact. If a college is bragging about a very high percentage of acceptances into medical school, be very skeptical until you ask many questions.
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You will see many independent educational consultants talk about their past history working in a college admissions office. Is that helpful for someone helping students with the admissions process? Yes. Seeing the college admissions process from the standpoint of the college gives you a good perspective on the whole process.
My new associate, Brian, has 10 years of this type of experience at a highly selective college.
However, that is just one perspective and there are many other ways to gain the background needed to work with students. My background is as a lawyer with a love for helping students find the right college. I have spent thousands of hours visiting colleges, talking with admissions representatives, reading books, papers, and anything else I could find about college admissions. I have participated in professional organizations to keep current in what is happening in the world of college admissions and I teach other consultants about college admissions issues through University of California Irvine Extension classes.
One of the things I find interesting in teaching is learning about the different types of backgrounds that people bring to the field of independent college admissions. I have students in my class that are teachers, business men and women, other lawyers, people with experience in test prep and some who just want to do something new to help young people.
And everyone of them can be successful as long as they have two things going for them. A love of what they are doing and and devotion to learn everything they possibly can about the college admissions process.
If you are looking to hire an independent college consultant, your first question should not be, do they have college experience. It should be, do they have the passion to help me meet my dreams. If the answer is yes, then you can start asking more questions about their background and experience.
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The Choice, a blog related to college admissions from the New York Times, has started providing posts to help students in India.
India Ink provides college admissions information specifically directed at some of the issues facing international students in general, and Indian students in particular. The first few articles are from admissions officers at highly selective colleges in the US.
For my readers in India, this can be a good resource to provide general information about college admissions in the US. Of course, you can also contact me with your questions to get more specific answers.
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100% of my students get into one of their top three colleges.
Impressed? You should be. But wait, there is more to this story. If you are working with students applying to non-selective colleges this is obviously no big deal. Everybody gets accepted everywhere. However, with college admissions companies that work with students applying to highly selective colleges, the story is a little different.
When working with students that are applying to highly selective colleges, students have to have not only a reach school but a match and safety college as well. Top choice college? The reach. Second choice college? The match. Third choice college? The safety.
So, as long as you get into your safety school, you have gotten into one of your top three choices. Clever, isn’t it.
If your student’s top three choices are always a highly selective college, then there is no way that 100% or even 90% of the students are getting admitted to these colleges unless you are only working with development students. Development students, if you are not familiar with the term, are students whose parents have given significant dollars to a college. And by significant I mean in the million’s. These students, not surprisingly, generally get admitted at a much higher rate than most students.
Do experienced independent education consultants have a higher rate of acceptance of their students into highly selective colleges? Yes we often do. But the reason is because we help students identify which colleges are most appropriate for their needs. If the student is not going to be competitive for a highly selective college then we guide that student to a less selective college. And yes, we have a better idea of what these colleges are looking for in the students that they admit and can help the students with that application process.
But beware if the claim sounds too good to be true. It usually is. And that is why you won’t see me giving percentage of students admitted to selective colleges and BS/MD programs. It’s too easy to manipulate the data and I just don’t do that.
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Notice how many college admissions counseling companies have the name “Ivy” in them. You know why? Because some people think that if they have “Ivy ” in the name of their business it implies that they have some kind of inside track to admissions to the Ivy League or other selective colleges.
You know the truth, don’t you. There is no “inside” track to admissions to the Ivy League colleges or any other college. Yes, there are things that you can do to make yourself a more competitive candidate for a highly selective college. But having a counselor that works for an “Ivy” admissions company does not give you an added advantage.
Don’t misunderstand me. There are some good independent educational consultants who work for firms with the “Ivy” name in it. There are also good independent consultants with the name “college” in the business name.
To find the best consultant for you, look at the qualifications of the counselors. Do they have experience working with students in the college admissions process? Do they have recommendations they can give you? Do they belong to one of the recognized groups that qualified counselors belong to like the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) or the Higher Education Consultants Association (HECA).
And finally, are you comfortable working with the counselor?
There are many ways to find good, qualified independent educational consultants. But having a word in the name of the business, regardless of the word, is no guarantee of quality.
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For the next few posts I am going to have a series disclosing what I call the dirty little secrets of the college admissions world. I am doing this because while there are many great independent counselors out there, a few give a bad name to all of us who act honestly and in the best interests of the students.
The first secret? The implication that a counselor should be hired because they “know people” who will help get you into the highly selective college of your choice.
The days of “knowing” people are long gone in the world of selective admissions. At least knowing in the sense that I can pick up a phone and talk to my buddy so we can guarantee your admission to a particular college. This actually used to happen, particularly with some private high schools that had relationships with certain colleges.
But today the landscape of college admissions is so much more competitive that students from all sorts of previously unknown high schools now compete successfully with private high school students for admissions to selective colleges.
Now days what is important is not knowing people, but rather knowing different types of colleges. The best independent educational consultants spend a great deal of time visiting visiting different colleges around the country in an effort to understand what colleges may be a good fit for the students we work with. And yes, we get to know many of the admissions officers at those colleges. That can help us if there is a question about a particular college that we need to help answer for our students. But it does not help to get you in.
If a college consultant says that they can get you in because they “know people”, run away as fast as you can.
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I am very excited to announce that I have a new person working with me at College Admissions Partners. Rather than tell you about him, I will let him introduce himself.
Hello! My name is Brian Burgemeister and I’m the newest addition to College Admissions Partners. I grew up in Redwood Falls, Minnesota and upon graduation from high school attended Bethany Lutheran College. As a first generation college student, I didn’t know what to expect during my undergraduate experience, but a small college environment, professors who cared and friends who believed in me led to successfully completing my undergraduate degree. Without knowing it at the time, those moments and experiences inspired me to find a career in higher education.
For the last nine years I have been working in admissions at a highly competitive liberal arts college. In those nine years I’ve gained immeasurable experience in the landscape of higher education. I have worked with students from over 15 different states including Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Hawaii and Minnesota. I have read over 4500 applications … that’s a lot of essays! And I have interviewed over 1300 students … that’s a lot of questions!
Outside of reading applications and interviewing students I’ve worked with students interested in college athletics. In college, I was lucky enough to play two different varsity sports (golf and tennis) and was a student assistant coach during my senior year. One of my most important roles in the admissions office is being the athletic liaison for an athletic department that has more than 25 varsity level sports. I work closely with the coaching staff as they recruit student athletes, help maintain and understand NCAA guidelines and provide them with admissions and financial aid information. I look forward to guiding student athletes through the competitive nature of college athletics and admissions.
I’ve also been privileged to work at a college that has a thriving fine arts program. Art and art history, dance, theater and music all provide a wonderful opportunity for prospective students but a potentially demanding and different application or audition process. I can provide knowledge and advice for any student looking at being involved in the fine arts.
Through my admissions experience, being an active member of NACAC and continued effort to develop as a professional I have become passionate about helping students through the college search process. I’m a true believer in finding the right fit and that better information equals a better decision. I look forward to helping you know yourself, knowing your fit and being thrilled about your college choice.
I’m also a true believer in maintaining balance so I stay active outside of admissions and higher education. I play several sports including golf, softball and tennis. I also enjoy fishing, graphic design, photography and watching the Colbert Report.
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BS/MD Programs: The complete guide.