Yale College has officially announced that they are increasing the enrollment by 15% by creating two new residential colleges.  The new colleges are expected in open in 2013.  I first reported on the possibility of Yale expanding back in September 2007.

For those students for whom Yale would be a good option, this is great news. However, as I have said repeatedly, not every college is appropriate for every student, even if you can gain admission. Yale is a wonderful college but there are many wonderful colleges throughout this country. And yes, even many in other countries.

Community colleges are a great choice for many students who either are interested in a technical type program or who want to save some money the first two years of college. But there are some little known problems that can occur with those students wishing to transfer to a four year college after a community college.

Jay Matthews, and education columnist for the Washington Post, highlighted some of those problems in an article entitled Community College Transfer Mess. One particular problem, that I have also seen among students with whom I work, is the failure of four year institutions to fully recognize all of the work done at the two year college. A related problem is that the four year institutions will often have requirements for a particular major that mandates a student take the course at the four year college and will not fully recognize a similar course taken at the community college.

There are also often concerns about financial aid for students transferring to a four year college since some four year colleges will reserve their best aid for incoming freshman, leaving less aid for transfer students. The result is that the last two years of college can often cost more than they would have if the student had started at the four year college initially. This offsets some, or all, of the savings a student receives from initially attending a community college. The New York Times also an article today discussing the problems with getting loans that some students at community colleges are having.

I have written about many of these issues in my college transfer help article. Transferring from one college to another can work great for some students but like most things related to college admissions, you need to know all of the issues before making a choice.

A new study out of Chicago reinforces what I have suggested in the past and that is that spending too much time preparing to take the ACT is not beneficial. The study found, in part, that studying to much was not beneficial because it took time away from studying the broad content knowledge that students need to know to do well on the ACT.

This is not to say that a student should go in cold to the ACT and just see what happens. At the very least the student should have reviewed the instructions of the exam before taking the test so as to not waste time reading instructions the day of the exam. I also suggest that a student take at least one practice exam just to get some level of comfort with taking this type of test. However, spending a great deal of time in review for the ACT is probably not beneficial.

The SAT is more susceptible to test preparation and I will often recommend that a student do more test preparation for the SAT if they have chosen to take that test. However, this is a point os diminishing return where spending too much time, even on the SAT, is not beneficial.

Wake Forest University has announced that they are going test optional beginning with the freshman class of 2009. While I have reported on a number of liberal arts colleges that have recently gone test optional, this news is important because Wake Forest is the highest ranked national university to adopt a test optional admissions standard. US News currently ranks Wake Forest as number 30 on the list of national universities. Although you know that I don’t put faith in arbitrary rankings, few would dispute that Wake Forest is a top university.

One of the arguments in the past has been that liberal arts colleges can go test optional because they don’t have as many applicants, but that the national universities don’t have the resources to evaluate all of their applicants. Wake Forest has announced that they will be adding 20% to their admissions staff to better evaluate their applicants and to encourage underrepresented students to apply to Wake.

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed has an excellent article about some of the discussions that Wake Forest had on whether to go test optional. Scott also reviews this years admissions results at Worcester Polytechnic University which last year became the first selective science school to go test optional.

I am sometimes asked if students need to take both the SAT and ACT and the quick answer is no. A student only needs to take one standardized test for college admissions. The question then becomes, which test.

All students should take at least one practice test of the SAT and ACT. The College Board and ACT each offer a free practice test for students to take. The practice test should be taken under standard testing procedures to get the best estimate of your score. After taking each test the student should consider on which test they had the best score and focus their studies on that test. To compare the scores on the two tests, look at one of the comparison tables available.

There are other issues and some of those are reviewed at our page on the SAT or ACT.

Smith College has announced that they are going test optional beginning with the class entering in 2009. International students will continue to need to submit standardized tests, SAT I, ACT, TOEFL or IELTS as appropriate.

Smith, the largest women’s college in the United States, is currently ranked number 17 in the US News rankings of top liberal arts colleges in the US. They have a policy of meeting the full financial aid of all of its students and historically have had a large number of Pell grant recipients, an indication that they take seriously their obligation to educate those with more limited financial resources.

I am excited that a college of Smith’s quality has decided to go test optional.

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.

UPDATE: The University of Pennsylvania has announced that they will be admitting about 90 students off their wait list as a result of decreased yield.