It seems that every time I turn around these days there is another report of a college playing around with test scores to make themselves look better.

NorthJersey.com is reporting on Ramapo College in New Jersey inflating their SAT scores to make themselves look better.  This is just one more example of why it is difficult to rely on the reported average test scores at many colleges.

College rankings such as US News rely on the reported average test scores in determining a college’s rankings. If colleges are artificially inflating their average test scores their college rankings will be inflated and the accuracy of the rankings goes out the window.

If this was a single college doing this, it would be wrong. But with many colleges adjusting their test scores to inflate their rankings, we must question why we even have the college rankings any more. Oh yeah. It’s the biggest money maker for US News. Nuff said.

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According to a study done by the Princeton Review the stress related to college admissions is higher this year than in past years.

I don’t doubt that that this is true. I am getting more phone calls from the parents of students in 9th grade this year than in the last few years.  Almost all of them are worried about how competitive college has become.

And they are right. College admissions is more difficult than ever before. Well, sort of. If you are looking at the most selective colleges, yes, the admission rates are at record lows. But please don’t forget that there are literally thousands of great colleges in this country that are much easier to get admitted to. In fact, the vast majority of colleges admit most of the students that apply.

Despite the record low admit rates, my students had a great year for admissions to BS/MD programs as well as to regular colleges. I will talk about that next week. Until then, don’t freak out if you have a student facing college in the next few years.

With the right preparation, and selection of colleges, your student should have some great options.  The college admission process is stressful by its very nature, but it doesn’t have to be that bad.

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The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard, recently had an interesting article about the real admit rate at Harvard. And it isn’t pretty.

Once you take out the students admitted through the new early action program, the admit rate for students applying through regular decision is about 3%.  Contrast that with the 18% admit rate for early action.

But for the typical applicant that 18% admit rate is somewhat misleading. In that number are most of the recruited athletes, the legacy students and the development students. These students are typically advised to apply early action to show their commitment to a school. We don’t have the actual numbers but I am confident that if all of this information was provided you would see that the admission rate for the student who doesn’t fit into one of those categories is much less than 18%.

Harvard is not alone in admitting athletes and legacy students in higher percentages and I am not going to argue the merits of that position right now. However, what applicants to Harvard, or any highly selective college, need to understand, is that there are many factors that need to be considered when a college says what its admit rate is.

That is why I tell students that are applying to any college with less than a 30% admit rate, they had better have some other colleges on their list where admissions is more of a sure thing. Because unless you are a legacy student or a recruited athlete, those admit numbers are probably less than you think.

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The SAT and ACT have announced that they are starting new security measures to reduce cheating on the exams.The new measures include the requirement that students will need to submit a head shot photo of themselves when they register for the test. This photo will be on the admission ticket students receive to get into the exam and will also be on the test site roster.

Initially, the photo was also going to be included on the test results sent to the colleges the student was applying to. The ACT has now announced that they will not be doing this. The SAT has said that they will create a database where the photos can be accessed by the colleges if they suspect someone other the applicant took the test.

All of these requirements start to take place for exams taken this fall.

I understand the desire to decrease cheating on the SAT and ACT. But, if a student really wants to cheat they will still be able to figure out a way to do so. For example, submit the photo of a test taker that looks somewhat like the student and have that student take the test.

I also have concerns about the availability of the photos from students taking the SAT. There are obvious privacy issues here that raise all sorts of potential problems. In the past, photos were used by the Ivy League colleges to keep down the number of Jewish students that they accepted.  While I certainly hope that is not where we are going with this, it does illustrate the type of problem that can occur.

Finally, there is the obvious concern about disclosing what students look like to the colleges. Will colleges discriminate based on the appearance of the student? I don’t believe most colleges would do this but there are subtle feelings that people develop when seeing the appearance of another person. Will that have a possible adverse affect on admissions decisions? Maybe. And that is something that I don’t believe is appropriate.

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Well, it’s started again. Questions about how to get more financial aid now that college financial aid awards are coming out. And the quick answer is that it is too late.

Are there things you can do to try and get more money if you don’t get enough aid for college? Yes, you can ask to have the college reconsider your financial aid award and it is possible that they might give more money. But, in most cases, the college will not change your aid award or if they do, it will be to increase the loan portion of the award. And at that point you need to try and figure out how you are going to pay for that college.

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article on how to compare aid awards and ask for more money. Is it important to understand how to compare aid awards? Sure. But articles like this miss the real point.

The real time to think about financial aid is when you are first deciding which colleges to apply to. At that time you can consider how each college handles financial aid to make sure you are applying to colleges that are likely to give you aid.

If you might qualify for need based aid, look at colleges that meet the highest percent of need. Looking at merit aid? Then look at colleges that will value what you have whether that is high grades, a top athlete, a musician or whatever.

Then, once aid awards come in, you can decide which of the good awards are best for you. By thinking about financial aid earlier in the process, you have a much higher chance of being able to afford that dream college.

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Dual enrollment classes, where students take college classes while still in high school, are often considered great options.  And for some students they can be a good choice. But, there is a real downside to these classes as well.

So what is the problem?  Students often take college classes instead of available AP classes at their high schools.  The problem with that is that many of these college courses are being taken at local community colleges.  Now community college classes can be just fine. However, most four year colleges outside the area around the community college don’t know what the quality of the education is like.

Is an “A” at the community college a good grade or something that everyone gets?  The four year college in the next state over has no idea how to interpret the community college grade.

AP tests on the other hand are standardized. A student taking the AP Chemistry test in Ohio is taking the same test as the student in Florida. Colleges can look at these AP test scores and compare the Ohio student with the Florida student.

For most students, particularly high achieving students that are considering attending college outside their local area, taking an AP class is preferable to taking a college class at a local community college.

Now, if you don’t have an AP class available to you, taking a college class can be helpful. Or if you have exhausted all of the classes at your high school, then look at taking a college class.  But don’t make the mistake of taking a college level class if you still have AP classes you can take at your local high school.

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I just heard about a great new SAT resource. These are videos from the Khan Academy and each video explains a problem from the College Board’s Official SAT Study Guide.  To find the SAT videos, scroll down the home page to the videos on SAT preparation.

I looked at several videos and the ones I saw were very well done.

There are videos available on many other academic areas so if you are looking for help with other subjects, there may be something here to help.

I have talked before about the option of self preparing for the SAT and this resource makes that option even more attractive.

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Colleges will often talk about the famous professors that they have. But who actually teaches students like you?

The answer depends in large part on how big the college is. Large colleges often have teaching assistants, not professors, teach classes. Particularly freshman classes. What are teaching assistants? Graduate students that have no teaching experience. Now, some graduate students are competent teachers but it is difficult to judge before you have the teaching assistant because there are no real checks on their abilities.

Over the years I have seen many teaching assistants who had trouble communicating in English because they were an international student and others who had no office hours.

Small liberal arts colleges on the other hand generally have classes taught by professors because they don’t have any graduate programs and therefore no graduate students to teach classes.

In the past few years all colleges have also been using more adjuncts, which are basically temporary teachers. These teachers don’t have tenure and can be paid less money. For that reason they are an attractive option for colleges who are trying to save some money.

Some adjuncts are great teachers. I had a practicing trial lawyer who taught a trial techniques class I took in law school that was great.  But the overuse of adjuncts can be a problem.

Because adjuncts aren’t required to meet the high standards required for tenure they may or not be a good teacher. Moreover, they often do not have regular office hours and it can be difficult to connect with them outside of class. That can be a problem if you are struggling in the class or just have a question about an assignment.

Having teaching assistants or adjuncts is not necessarily bad. But, because they are typically less qualified than actual professors, you need to ask some more questions if the college you are looking at uses these alternative teachers.

As I have said many times before, you need to ask the right questions before deciding whether to apply to a college.

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One of the hot new things on some college campuses is the offer to graduate in 3 rather than 4 years. I hate to be cynical but this makes me laugh as utterly ridiculous.

Yes, I understand the theory that students who have AP credits and who take extra credits during their 3 years in college will be able to graduate early.  For some students this may work and it may save them some money. But this option has always been available to most of these students.

But let’s face reality here. I have discussed this before but most students don’t graduate from college in 4 years. In fact, far fewer than 50% do so. According to a new website that tracks college completion rates, less than 24% of incoming freshman completed college in 4 years from the college they started at.

Let’s look at the 4 colleges that were mentioned in the article.

Grace College 4 year graduation rate                             54.8%

Baldwin- Wallace College 4 year graduation rate       53%

Leslie University 4 year graduation rate                        38%

St. John’s University(NY) 4 year graduation rate       36.4%

Please, do me a favor and go to this website and pull up some colleges in the state where you live to see how they do. In  Minnesota, where I live, 30.6% of students at public 4 year colleges graduated in 4 years. At the private colleges in the state the average 4 year graduation rate was 60.8%, twice the rate of the public colleges, but still nothing to write home about.  Only three colleges had 4 year graduation rates greater than 80%.

We need to be making sure that students graduate from a 4 year college in 4 years. Colleges should not be playing this game of telling people they can graduate in 3 years when the reality is that they can’t even get their students to graduate in 4 years.

Is that really too much to ask?

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Just to let everyone that is interested in ebooks know, the 2012 Edition of BS/MD Programs-The Complete Guide is now available for the Kindle and the Nook.

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