I started out to write a posting about how class sizes as published by colleges can be misleading. But, I came across a posting from several years ago by a fellow college admissions consultant, Mark Montgomery, that addressed the issue so well I thought I would just let you read Mark’s article on class size and student faculty ratios.
Thanks Mark for the thoughtful article on college class size.
Now is the time that juniors should start the process of finding which colleges they will apply to. But with over 3,000 colleges in the country, where do you get started?
Here are my 3 favorite college search sites. Each of these website has its advantages so checking more than one is a good idea.
1. College Navigator- I recommend that students start at this site more than any other. This is the official college search site of the US Department of Education. You can search for colleges by a number of different criteria but I particularly like the ability to look at the retention and graduation rates of different colleges.
2. College Board College Search – This site allows students to search for even more criteria than the previous site. The other thing I really like about the the College Board web site is the financial information provided for each college that is identified. This is one of the few sites that tells a student the average amount of need met by each college’s financial aid department.
3. Princeton Review- Princeton Review’s Counselor-O-Matic asks questions in a fun way to make the process of finding the right college more interesting. Unfortunately, in the past, the colleges that were identified were often not appropriate. Think a guy having an all woman’s college as one of their options. They are working to improve the search engine. The nice thing about the Princeton Review site is that once it identifies a possible college you can also find similar colleges.
Using these three sites together can help a student put together a preliminary list of colleges. But do not rely on such a list alone. You need to research each of the identified colleges in more detail starting with the websites of each college. And as I have discussed here before, I always recommend visiting a college before making the final decision of where to apply.
Of course, if you really want to find the best colleges for your needs, you should consider hiring a professional college admission consultant.
Now is the time that many high school juniors start to get serious about the college admissions process. To find the right college, a student needs to realistically evaluate the grades they have received to see which colleges might be academically appropriate. And then the problems begin.
What problems? The problem of evaluating your grades and the GPA you think you have. You would think that evaluating your GPA would be simple. But how high schools calculate grades differs dramatically from one school to another.
This difference in how many points a student receives is called grade weighting. Many high schools weight grades as an incentive to have the top students take difficult classes rather than sluff off and take the easy “A” classes. But high schools weight grades differently depending on the particular school.
Let’s say your high school gives a 1 point grade increase for honors courses and a 2 point increase for AP classes. If you are a strong student, and takes lots of honors and AP courses, it is very easy to end up with a GPA greater than 4.0. Some schools give 3 or 4 additional grade points, or even more, for an AP grade. At your high school a 4.3 GPA might be the highest in the class while at another school that calculates points differently, you would need a 5.7 GPA to be at the top of your class. Is the student with the 5.7 GPA smarter than the student with the 4.3. No, of course not. But you start to see the problem.
And if your high school doesn’t weight grades at all you might have a 3.9 and be at the top of your class.
To deal with these inequities, many colleges use unweighted grades rather than weighted grades in admissions so that they can compare the GPA of students from diffeerent high schools. Unweighted grades are the traditional grading of 4.0 for an “A”, 3.0 for a “B”, on so on. Using unweighted grades, a student can not have greater than 4.0.
As a student, you need to know if the college your are interested in reports average GPA’s of admitted students, are they referring to weighted or unweighted grades. Some colleges like to report weighted grade averages of admitted freshman to make themselves look more competitive than they really are.
The average GPA of admitted freshman at the University of California Berkeley is often reported as a 4.34. If your high school does not weight grades you might think Berkeley is impossible for you to get admitted to with your mere 4.0. On the other hand, if you have a 5.7 GPA you might think Berkeley is a safety if the average student only has a GPA of 4.34. Both of these imaginary students would be mistaken if they didn’t understand weighted grades. (For those of you who are interested in Berkeley, their unweighted average is 3.91.)
Even those colleges that use weighted grades in admissions will understand if your high school does not weight grades as heavily as other schools or if your school does not weight grades at all. You will not be at a disadvantage in those circumstances.
Finding the right college requires a student to understand all of the many factors that go into the college admissions process. Now you know how to figure your “real” or unweighted GPA.
Dartmouth College is in the news for what has been described as verbal assault by some of its students on students from Harvard during a squash match. I think the behavior of the Dartmouth students involved is abominable and fortunately the students have apologized for their actions. What really bothers me is that these bright students couldn’t find a better way to show support for their team. But I want to draw a bigger point here.
College students sometimes do stupid things. Hey, we all do stupid things. But over the years there have been a number of actions that have occurred at Dartmouth that brings into question the students tolerance of people different from themselves. This happens at many colleges besides Dartmouth; they just happen to be in the news right now.
While investigating colleges, high school students should try to determine what the culture of a particular campus is. Is it a party school? What is the effect of athletics on the campus? Do the students truly tolerate people and ideas that are different from the norm? These are the types of questions you should ask about a campus before deciding whether to apply. And the best way to get the answer to these types of questions is to visit a campus.
Finding the right college requires more than looking at the size and location of a particular college. There are many issues that you should consider to find the best college for your needs and the culture of the campus is just one of those issues.
How long does it take to graduate from a 4 year college? You really want to answer 4 years don’t you?
Unfortunately, as I have discussed before, the fact is that most students do not finish a 4 year college in 4 years. When colleges report their graduation rates they almost always use 6 year graduate rates because the government allows them to report students that graduate in 150% of the normal time.And even then, many students haven’t graduated in 6 years from a 4 year college.
I live in Minnesota and at the University of Minnesota only 41% graduate in 4 years and 66% of students graduate in 6 years. 1 in 3 never graduates. And they are by no means alone. The University of Texas at Austin? They graduate 48% in 4 years and 78% in 6 years.
In a recent article, Inside Higher Ed argued that 4 years should be the standard graduation rate. I agree completely. The problem is that the graduate rate depends in large part on the attitude of the college toward graduation. If a 4 year graduation rate is important, they will graduate a student in 4 years.
The New York Times has also joined in this discussion with their article “Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates“.
When choosing a college, find out what the colleges 4 year graduation rate is. This will tell you how likely you are to graduate in 4 years. It also tells you how likely you are to pay for 4 or 5 or 6 years of college. Given the high cost of college I think we can all agree that paying for 4 years is better than paying for more.
The 2010 US News college rankings are now available. As is typical of these college rankings, there are no real surprises in this years rankings. Yes, some colleges have moved up or down a position or two but nothing earth shattering.
The reality is that the quality of a particular college almost never changes from year to year. The factors that US News uses in their college rankings may change or they may change the weight they give to a particular factor but the colleges themselves change very slowly.
Of course, the other issue that I have addressed on many occasions is that the issue of what the best college is depends on what a student is looking for in a college. For instance, getting personalized attention from actual professors who might write a recommendation for graduate or professional school can provide a better education than a fancy college name.
Use the US News college rankings to identify colleges that have criteria in which you might have an interest. Looking for a particular range of SAT scores? Looking for colleges that have high alumni contribution rates that may indicate people happy with the education they received? Looking for high graduation rates? Those are all legitimate things to consider using US News college data.
But don’t worry about whether number 1 is better than number 2. The answer, regardless of what colleges you are discussing, is that there is no way to draw that kind of distinction between otherwise similar colleges. As I said last year,
These rankings always have been designed with the desired result in mind. Generally, the well known, wealthy colleges, will do well.
I know based on comments from readers that many of you anxiously await these rankings every year. Have fun in reviewing the rankings but use them to find the best college for your needs and don’t worry about the artificially created rankings of US News.
The folks over at Online College Reviews sent me a link to their post entitled “10 Reasons an Ivy League Degree is Overrated.” I think the post has some good points to make so head on over there to take a look.
Now, just so we are clear, the eight colleges of the Ivy League are some great schools. This is not meant to bash those colleges. However, not all colleges are appropriate for all students even if you can get in. That is true for all colleges including the big name ones that people often aspire to. Do your research and figure out what colleges are best for you. And if one of them is an Ivy League school, great.
Princeton Review has now published their 2010 edition of the Best 371 Colleges. They again have their tradition lists of colleges with such lists as the happiest students, biggest party schools and best classroom experience. As I have discussed before, statistically ranking the colleges into top 10 lists has no real merit.
The book does have merit as a listing of 371 good colleges with a variety of qualities with various admission standards. As a preliminary resource to find colleges that may be appropriate for a particular student, this is a good resource. Just remember to view the rankings as nothing more than fun.
I regularly get asked by students to help them choose the right college. While this may sound like a basic request it is really not as simple as it sounds. What is the right college for one student is probably a terrible choice for another student. So how do I answer this question?
Students have two basic options to try and find the right college for them. The first is the do it yourself approach. This method has some real attractiveness because the student should know best what they want from a college. While true in an ideal world, in the real world, students rarely understand all of the options available. As a result they often make the mistake of only looking at colleges they have heard about or their friends are considering.
To have a chance of being successful, the student really needs to consider who they are and what they really want from the college experience. Once they have determined what they want from a college they can then go to a general college search engine like College Navigator or the College Board site. These search sites will give some idea of colleges to consider.
In my experience these search engines are fairly good but are not able to address simple issues like what the culture of a particular campus is like. For that type of answer the student must do much more digging.
The application process for the do it yourself student also appears fairly straight forward, particularly if the student is looking at Common Application colleges. But, again, traps await the student. What do you write your essay about? Is one essay question better to answer than the others? What type of essay do admissions counselors like to see? Who is going to edit your essay?
Other issues can also arise related to the application. Do you simply completes the chart of activities provided or submit a supplemental resume? If you do a resume, what should it look like? Do you submit additional references or additional essays to explain who you are? Who should write your recommendations?
Can students handle the college admission process without help? Absolutely.
But the question isn’t really can you do it. The real question is can you do it and really find, and get accepted, to the best college for you.
Some students can, but many don’t really do a good job of handling the process. This is part of the reason that only 53% of students graduate from college in 6 years. Yes, you read that right. 6 not 4 years. The number graduating in 4 years is much less. And many students end up transferring because they failed to make a good choice when first applying to college.
So, while do it yourself is certainly an option, it is not the best option for many students. I will discuss your other option in the next posting.
This past week more evidence has come to light that brings into question the legitimacy of the US News college rankings.
First, Inside Higher Ed reported that US News will be expanding their web ranking web site to include information about distance education and adult continuing education. Since these are growing areas of higher education this move makes sense. However, US News will also be working with a third party to sell to colleges the names of prospective students. So what you ask?
One of the criteria set by US News in their rankings is the selectivity of a college. So the more students a college says no to the higher the US News ranking. And now US News is offering to sell colleges more names which presumably a college can use to generate more applications to reject more students. Conflict, anyone?
And there is also the question of whether a college might get an inside bump in their ranking score if they buy lists of students from US News. Whose to know. US News claims they are doing this to serve the student and “in the process make money.” Now there is nothing wrong with US News making money. But don’t suggest that this is really about helping students.
The second story aired this week, comes from the Gainsville, Florida newspaper. For those of you who are not familiar with how US News ranks colleges, 25% of a colleges rankings is based on what is known as peer assessment. To determine peer assessment US News asks top academics including college presidents, provosts and deans of admission, to rank peer schools.
The newspaper used a public record request to get the peer assessment ranking from the president of the University of Florida. The president rated the University of Florida at the top of the rankings along with Harvard, Princeton and Yale. But when rating other Florida universities the president rated those colleges much lower.
There is nothing wrong with the president of a university thinking he or she has a great college. But it appears that the president was completing the assessment in a way to skew the results most toward his own college. Is he alone is doing this? Of course not. But that is one of the many reasons why the US News rankings are suspect.
Several weeks ago I commented on the efforts of Clemson University to manipulate the rankings. As more and more of the actions of the colleges are disclosed, the rankings lose whatever believability they may have had. Rankings that can be manipulated, will be manipulated, and the US News college rankings are evidence of that point.
Filed under College Admissions Counseling, College Selection by Todd Johnson on February 25, 2010