Feature Content Archive - January to May 2005

May 2005:

Ivy League schools received record-setting numbers of applications this past year - and sent out unusually high numbers of waitlist offers. Does that mean that getting in to Harvard, Yale, etc. is getting even harder than it has always been? Not necessarily. One reason Ivy League colleges and universities got more applications than ever this year is that several of them introduced new financial aid policies to help middle-income families. Consequently, a larger - but not necessarily stronger - pool of students can consider an Ivy League education seriously enough to make it worth the trouble of submitting an application. In addition, technology has made submitting multiple college applications easier than ever, meaning that more students sent out multiple college applications, and more are receiving multiple offers (which explains the longer wait lists - schools expect lower yields from their accepted pools this year, meaning more room for waitlisted applicants). The bottom line is, don't worry over much about numbers. Worry about what you want out of college and what you need to do to position yourself to get it. In the end you'll be accepted or rejected on the basis of who you are, not on the basis of statistics or admissions trends.

April 2005:

This is the month when most applicants learn whether they've been accepted to their chosen schools. To those of you who hear the news you were hoping for - congratulations! We hope you can relax a bit now and enjoy your summer. For those of you who received disappointing news, don't feel too bad. It's a brutal fact of life that competitive colleges receive many more applications from qualified candidates than they have class spaces. They have to say 'no' to someone. Take a short break to clear your mind, and then go back and take a cold hard look at your college selection and application strategy in order to figure out where you might have gone wrong and what you could do to fix it. This is the way you will be able to prepare yourself to succeed next time around, as a re-applicant or transfer student.

March 2005:

Feedback from students who took the new version of the SAT last month was, predictably, mixed. Three of the most common complaints were 1) some students were surprised by how long the test was; 2) some test takers weren't sure what to do with the essay 'prompt'; and 3) some students were unable to complete the essay in the allotted time. Our advice: Practice - using authentic test questions from retired tests (which are available in the College Board Official SAT Study Guide), under realistic test conditions (no extra breaks, no snacks, no music), and observing the actual test time limits.

February 2005:

The competition for admission to Ivy League and other elite colleges and universities has always been hard -- and now it's getting even harder, due to social and demographic trends. Click here to read more.

January 2005:

Three of Virginia's state universities are proposing that the state legislature cut their funding in exchange for giving them greater autonomy. The Chartered Universities Initiative is the latest example of how public universities, beset by declining state budgets, are acting more and more like private institutions.

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