December 2007:

California Universities May End Admission Guarantee

A current proposal to eliminate the University of California's long-standing guarantee of admission for students making minimum grades and standardized test scores is generating debate among faculty ranks. The measure is to be discussed in detail this week by UC San Diego's faculty senate. It would replace the guarantee with a promise to review each student's application that qualifies.

The proposal is designed to help students attending rural and inner-city high schools who may lack access to honors courses and advisers who can inform them about the courses and standardized tests that UC requires for admission. It would also eliminate the two SAT subject test requirements, reducing the number of compulsory SAT tests from five to three. In addition, it would modify the calculation of the minimum grade point average to place less weight on honors and college-level courses. A separate policy that guarantees admission to students in the top 4 percent of their graduating high school class would remain.

Although fewer students would be guaranteed admission, as many of 50 percent more could have their entire application reviewed, as opposed to being rejected for not meeting the minimum grades and test scores.

Under the current system, students are guaranteed admission to one of UC's less-selective campuses, UC Merced or UC Riverside, if they:

Receive a 3.0 grade point average (B average) on required courses
Earn an average score of 470 on each of the SAT math, English and writing tests and two SAT subject tests, such as history or science.

Those achieving higher grades can be admitted with lower SAT scores, based on a sliding scale.

If a student applies to a specific campus, such as UCSD, and is not admitted but meets the minimum UC requirements, he or she is then accepted to UC Merced or UC Riverside. About 300 students accept those referral admissions each year.

Concerns over such a change include a fear that it would be expensive to implement while having a limited effect across the system. Each UC campus has its own selection process that considers more than a dozen criteria, including leadership, community service and ability to overcome hardships. The proposal would not change those procedures.

The proposal is expected to go through several rounds of review and comments before being submitted to UC's board of regents.

Top Schools Try New Tactics to Target Lower Income Students

Admission officials from Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia were recently in the Washington, D.C. area conducting introductory sessions where lower- and middle-income students were encouraged to apply and explained new plans to help pay for college.

With college costs rising faster than inflation, many elite and top-tier schools have been seeing a diminishing amount of applicants from lower-income families. A national study conducted several years ago found only 3 percent came from the lowest 25 percent of income; three quarters of the students came from the top 25 percent.

U-VA, Harvard and Princeton have been out in front of a national trend to change that imbalance. Last year they had announced an end to their early admissions policies in part because there were proportionally fewer early applicants who were low-income, possibly in part due to not having the same access to advice on the advantages of applying early. Early Decision programs can force students to choose a school without comparing financial aid offers from different colleges.

Dropping the EA option may have been a risky move, however, as many of these schools' competitors have seen larger gains in applications. At Georgetown University, the number of applicants is up nearly 30 percent, from 4,500 applications last year to 6,000 or more this year.

U-VA, Harvard and Princeton have been attempting to help lower-income students for several years now. U-VA has a program that allows anyone from a family earning less than 200 percent of the poverty level (roughly $40,000 a year for a family of four) to attend the school for free. This year, 180 freshmen qualified. In addition, U-VA created a summer program to ease students in the transition to college, recognizing that many low-income students are the first in their families to attend college and may come from schools with less rigorous academics.

Several other schools such as the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University have added more need-based financial aid programs to attract low-income students. The problem for many of these families, however, is the relatively weak message getting out about such programs.

Which is why admissions officials from the three schools have taken the weeks normally used to scrutinize early-decision applications and have instead gone around the country hitting urban and rural areas to specifically talk to families and get the word out that college is indeed an attainable and affordable goal for those in need.

November 2007:

Early Applications On the Rise

Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia all announced last year they were eliminating the early admission process beginning this fall. Many experts wondered if this decision by these high-ranking schools would alter the admissions strategies of thousands of student applicants seeking spots at other select schools.

With the first round of applications now in, it's still hard to tell.

Speculation was that high-achieving and qualified seniors that would've sought early admission at Harvard and Princeton would turn to other prestigious universities instead, such as Stanford, Georgetown and Yale, which offer a nonbinding form of early admission (often called 'early-action'). Experts believed that these students would first shoot for a place early in the cycle with these schools, and then during the 'regular' rounds over the winter, send in their applications to Harvard, Princeton and U-VA.

The number of applicants looking for early action did soar this year, but only at some elite universities.

Georgetown, one of the few top schools that still had an early-action application round, saw a 31 percent increase of applications. Last year, the university had received 4,562 early applications. This year? 5,980.

Yale also saw a significant increase, receiving 4,820 early-action applications this year. That figure is up 36 percent over last year - but Yale also saw a significant decline during last year's round one from 2005. When factoring in the 4,084 early applications from that year compared to this year, it is actually an 18 percent increase.

Stanford, however, didn't see such large increases for its early-action round. In fact, the school only saw 4,574 applications - nearly the same number as last year. M.I.T. only saw a 10 percent gain over last year, but school officials are hesitant to attribute that to the elimination of early admission at Harvard and Princeton. In recent years, applications to M.I.T. have been on a steady increase; this year seems to follow that trend.

Schools that offer binding early admissions such as Dartmouth, Brown, and Columbia, reported modest increases this fall. Officials at those schools did not attribute their increase to the elimination of early admission at the other universities, however.

Even with the increase of early applications, many deans think fewer students that are admitted early will actually enroll. At Georgetown, for example, the yield on early action is usually around 60 percent. This year, admissions officials expect it to be more around 50 percent.

Yale officials won't predict what their yield will be, since it seems to be more difficult to predict how many of their early admission offers will be accepted.

The admissions landscape has changed this year; it won't be apparent just how much until after all application rounds are over and offers are accepted.

College Board Releases Results of AP Course Audit

A comprehensive, worldwide effort to ensure that high school courses designated as College Board Advanced Placement Program® (AP) courses are, in fact, meeting College Board college-level standards has just been completed.

The review, which was conducted by 839 professors representing hundreds of colleges and universities as diverse as Yale University, Florida State University and Haverford College, provided secondary school instructors who teach AP courses with the opportunity to share their course syllabi with college faculty. During the process, instructors received feedback and obtained higher education’s confirmation of their courses' value.

For the first time ever, a listing of all schools' courses that have earned the authorization to be AP courses because of their high quality is available to the public. In total, 14,383 secondary schools worldwide succeeded in developing one or more courses that have received such authorization from the College Board, the not-for-profit organization responsible for the AP courses and exams.

U. of Kentucky Rethinks General Education

After nearly twenty years of the same general education requirements for students, the University of Kentucky is looking to change things. Rather than the standard semester-long basic courses, a new 'modular learning' program is being considered. Much of the new program would be specially designed mini-courses taught in five-week segments during students’ freshman year. The courses would emphasize how professors approach major issues in their fields.

Under the preliminary proposal, students would take roughly half of their general education credits in the first year, and then finish the remainder over the rest of their semesters at Kentucky.

The first-year requirements are largely intended to help students transition into college. The "Foundations of Inquiry" courses, a series of five-week "modules" to be completed over the first two semesters, address how scholars think about questions of the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences, according to the proposal. Faculty would be asked to create these courses from scratch and address a problem or issue that is of central interest to them.

The proposal says these courses represent "a move toward an appreciation for inquiry itself" and a shift away from the broad survey courses, which the committee criticizes as often being too focused on fact-dumping. And the idea is to expose students to more topics than they would cover in a traditional 16-week course. The proposal adds that the vast majority of disciplinary courses are taught by faculty from a few colleges, and this approach broadens faculty involvement in general education.

The curriculum would likely also include a four-credit-hour writing course (already added by the university) as well an advanced writing seminar to be completed before graduation. On top of that, students would take courses in statistical reasoning and one called first-year orientation that serves as an introduction to college.

A capstone experience, described as a culmination of a student’s education, would amount to a senior project that demonstrates critical analysis. In most cases, students would not be able to use "pre-major" or major credit to satisfy general education requirements. The proposal says by keeping the requirements to 30 credit hours — the minimum required by Kentucky’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools — students would not be kept longer in order to complete their major.

October 2007:

New Study Shows Dual-enrollment Programs Beneficial

Students who take college courses while in high school are more likely than their peers to graduate, to go on to college, and to do well in college, a new study suggests.

The courses appear to be especially beneficial for male students, students from low-income families, and those who struggled academically in high school, according to a recent study done by Columbia.

Dual-enrollment programs have increased in popularity in recent years as policy makers strive to increase the rigor of secondary education. Analyzing statewide data from Florida, the researchers found that students who took college courses in high school were slightly more likely than their peers to earn a high-school diploma and were 16.8 percent more likely to go on to college. They were 7.7 percent more likely to enroll in a four-year institution and were also more likely to enroll full time, which generally correlates with better outcomes in college.

Once in college, former dual-enrollment students were more likely to stay enrolled and to have significantly higher grade-point averages, even after two years in college.

Annual NACAC Conference Alters Stance, Challenges Assumptions

The annual meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) voted on Saturday to modify their association guideline that was passed last year to bar colleges from admitting students to their institutions prior to September 15 of the student's senior year and setting application deadlines prior to October 15. After increased pressure by many community colleges and large public universities, the council adopted their stance, voting instead that admissions offers may not be made until a transcript is available for six semesters of high school work. This effectively requires the junior year be completed but leaves open the possibility of summer offers that were originally barred by the Sept 15 guideline.

The council also voted to urge colleges to provide "comparable" treatment of early and regular decision applicants when it comes to "aid," funds awarded either based on merit or financial need. Also included on Saturday's agenda was the creation of a special panel to study the issue of increasing pressure about the admissions process on high school students.

At the annual conference, some common assumptions regarding trends in college admissions were both confirmed and challenged.

One assumption is that more students are applying to college, based on rising numbers of high-school graduates. However, while it's projected that 3.3 million students will earn high-school diplomas in 2009, the proportion of students enrolling directly into college after graduation has not changed significantly, even over the last 10 years.

The NACAC's annual report also shows that despite the recent decisions by several high-profile institutions to abolish their early-decision admission programs (schools including Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia), more students are applying early action and early-decision overall. Colleges that do offer those options saw an increase for the second year in a row of students applying through those programs.

Applicants who worry over their SAT and ACT scores may be more stressed now; according to the NACAC's report, it suggests that more schools are relying on standardized test scores in making admission decisions. In 1997, only 50 percent of colleges said test scores were of "considerable importance"; the most recent survey now shows 60 percent.

However, class rank is now only considered important by less than 23 percent of those colleges surveyed, compared to 33 percent in 1997.

The college-application essay - once considered important by only 18% of schools in 1997, is now more critical with nearly 30% of schools considering it important.

September 2007:

What Colleges Do Well for the Country?

Washington Monthly recently released its own set of rankings based on the premise of providing "a guide not just to what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country." Using three criteria to measure the impact schools have on the country, the Monthly's rankings may surprise you.

The first criteria is based on social mobility: how good of a job does the school do in recruiting and graduating poorer students? Second comes research: how supportive is the school in providing scientific and humanistic study that is key to our national strength? And finally, service: does the school provide and foster an ethic of giving back to the country, through either military or civilian service?

The results are interesting.

Most of the elite schools that rank high on the USN&WR chart do not perform very well on the Monthly's. Out of the USN&WRs top ten, only Stanford is present, at number nine.

Washington Monthly's top five schools:

1. Texas A&M University

2. University of California, Los Angeles

3. University of California, Berkeley

4. University of California, San Diego

5. Pennsylvania State University

You can see the full rankings here.

Harvard Aims For Undergrads With New Program

Harvard Business School announced a new program called "HBS 2+2", a first-of-its-kind deferred admissions program designed to reach qualified college students who may not typically consider business as a career path or a future education in business.

The program will give undergraduates a guaranteed place in a future HBS MBA class, contingent on two factors: successful graduation from college and completion of two years of an approved work experience. Some of the world's biggest leading organizations have already signed up as recruiting partners, including Google and Teach America.

The 2+2 program will reach out to college juniors who maintain a high achievement in the fields of science, government, engineering, healthcare and public service, just as they begin to explore career and graduate school opportunities.

Undergrads who are eligible will be able to apply after July 1, shortly after the conclusion of their junior year of college. Decisions will be made and students notified during September of their senior year.

"Many undergraduates underestimate the versatility of an MBA and the positive effect it can have on many careers," says Professor Carl Kester, HBS's Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs. "Students who come through the HBS 2+2 Program will benefit from real life experience, an understanding of business, and the critical thinking skills taught at HBS that will help them be influential leaders in whatever field they choose to work."

With this new program, Harvard bucks conventional thought that an applicant must have at least five to six years of work experience before applying to business school. HBS believes that there is no single profile for a successful MBA applicant and that the new program allows them to reach talented students sooner - and consequently, HBS will have a greater impact on their lives and careers.

A unique feature of the program is that admitted students will receive assistance from Harvard in finding a job for the two years between undergraduate and graduate studies. Over 100 organizations are expected to serve as recruiting partners, such as Google, The Clorox Company, and McKinsey & Company, to name a few. During the two year work experience, students in the HBS 2+2 program will participate in on-campus summer programs that will allow them to attend HBS classes taught by Harvard faculty as well as meeting their fellow classmates.

Applications for the first group of HBS 2+2 candidates are due by July 1, 2008. Interested students can find more information at the program's website: http://www.hbs.edu/2+2.

August 2007:

Humboldt State Univ. Readies for Record-Setting Freshman Class

Oregon's Humboldt State University is preparing to welcome the largest freshman class in its history this fall. Over 1,300 students have reportedly confirmed their plans to start classes at Humboldt on August 20. If accurate, that would mean that this year's incoming freshman class is almost one-third larger than last year's – and last year's incoming class was already so large that it led to a campus housing crunch.

Humboldt is one of many colleges and universities that have reported record-breaking freshman enrollment levels in recent years. High school seniors applying to college for Fall 2008 should pay attention to this trend because it can affect the acceptance rate at some schools. Schools that enroll an unusually large number of freshman one year may cut back on the number of applicants they accept for the following year in order to bring their campus population back to a manageable level.

Gender Diversity Still a Concern for Tech Schools

Almost one-third of the students in this year's incoming freshman class at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are women. That might not sound like much, but it marks an an all-time high in female enrollment at RPI, which, like many of the country's top-ranked engineering and technical schools, tends to have many more men than women on campus.

That gender balance is often an issue of concern for prospective applicants. Female applicants may not be comfortable with the prospect of always being in the minority in their classes, and male applicants may not want to spend 4 years in a social environment where there are few women.

One issue to consider in researching technical schools is that a school-specific gender imbalance may be offset by enrollment at the wider university. For example, Harvey Mudd College, one of the best engineering schools in the country, has a male-to-female enrollment ratio of about 2 to 1 – but it is part of the Claremont College system and shares a campus with several other colleges, making for an overall student community that has a more typical gender balance. This is a good example of the kind of question about school selection that can be best resolved by a campus visit. The enrollment statistics you read in college guides can wind up being misleading even though they're accurate.

July 2007:

The Common App for 2008 Goes Online This Month

The Common Application for 2007-2008 is scheduled to go online in early July. Over 300 selective colleges and universities now accept the Common App, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton – and, beginning this year, Stanford and (according to news reports) the University of Chicago.

Don't forget, though, that there are a number of excellent schools that don't use the Common Application – including Brown, Georgetown, and most public universities.

Class of 2010's Size May Impact Selectivity for Class of 2011

A number of colleges and universities are preparing to welcome larger-than-expected freshman classes this fall. Duke, which began the 2007-2008 application season with fears that the assault charges (recently dismissed) against members of its lacrosse team might steer away potential applicants, now expects up to 30 more freshmen than it planned for. Vanderbilt University is scrambling to arrange housing for up to 100 more first-year students than it usually enrolls. Other schools expecting larger-than-usual incoming classes include Indiana University, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Mississippi.

This higher-than-expected enrollment may have an impact on 2007-2008 admissions decisions. Schools often balance an unusually large freshman class with a smaller one in order to keep their campus population to a manageable size. Last year, for example, UC Davis received deposits from nearly 900 more admits than it had expected. The University had to hire more instructors, add new classes, and convert double dormitory rooms to triples in order to accommodate this influx of freshmen. To avoid a repeat of that experience this year, UC Davis reduced the number of applicants it accepted by about 1,600, causing its acceptance rate to drop from around 69 per cent for Fall 2006 to 59.4 per cent for Fall 2007.

Liberal Arts Colleges Stage a 'Rankings Rebellion'

The presidents of over 40 liberal arts colleges have pledged to limit their participation in this year's US News & World Report college rankings. Most are promising to boycott the 'reputational' section of the rankings questionnaire, which asks college and university leaders to rate other institutions. Some are also promising not to use the USN&WR rankings in their marketing material.

What does this mean for college applicants? Probably not all that much. Although the 'rankings rebellion' includes the heads of highly regarded colleges like Kenyon and Barnard, most of the schools involved are small liberal arts colleges whose USN&WR rankings are unlikely to change much as a result of the boycott. The important point for applicants to take away is that no rankings system is perfect, and that rankings should be used only as a starting point for your college search. Your final list of target schools should be based less on the rankings and more on the factors that are important to you, such as location, institutional type, program strengths, and cost.

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