Hey Juniors!
It's that time of year. Spring Break is just around the corner and your parents are pushing you to start putting together the list of schools that you want to visit and/or apply to in the fall.
With over 4,000 two and four year institutions in the United States, this is no small task! It's likely that any attempt you've made to get your list together has left you frustrated, confused, and no closer to your list of schools than when you started.
Want to make some progress? Here's a few quick tips:
1) Get 15-20 schools when you start...There's no need to be picky at the beginning of the college process. You don't have to know where you want to apply when you first start looking. Spend your time selecting 15-20 schools that you think might fit and then do some research on those schools to get an idea of what you want. Visit! Go to their website! Read about them in college guide books like
Fiske's Guide to the Colleges,
Princeton Review's 368 Best Schools, or
College Board's Guide to the College 2009.
2)...finish with 6-8 schools at the end.While you want to have a broad perspective when you begin applying, you need to wrap things up by the fall and get focused. My previous blog article, "
Stop Applying to Schools You Hate," sums up the general breakdown. In short, one or two Safety Schools, two to three Target Schools, and one or two Reach Schools. Applying to too many schools just spreads your attention too thinly!
3) Promise to love every school to which you applyMany students spend most of their time looking for their dream school. That's fine, but you shouldn't ignore the research you should do on your safety schools. In fact, you may need to put in extra time to find a safety school you really love. Too many students decide to apply to schools they hate because they treat their safe options as "schools of last resort."
4) Throw out the lists of best ranked schools. They don't help.Stop obsessing over the list US News or USA Today puts out. Yes, there's some value to the list as a whole, but it doesn't tell you much about the school that you, the student, actually want to go to. I strongly recommend "Rugg's Guide to the Colleges" for anyone who wants to know about good programs at US Schools. It's much more reliable and even-handed than a list of 100 schools.
5) Location, Location, LocationPlease don't forget that whatever school you attend is located in a physical place. If you love Harvard, but hate Boston, it's going to be difficult for you to be happy at that particular school. Think carefully about the parts of the country you would be happy living in and focus on those areas. Unless
you are interested in living in the Arctic, there are almost always schools near the places you love most!
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Got tips we missed? Give us your hints in the comments!
Hey all!
Over the past few months, Omniac has been proud to help the Carnival of College Admissions by supplying blog posts and even hosting! We love how awesome all the links are that Mark Montgomery collects!
This week the 13th edition of the Carnival was released and we were once again proud to be a part of it. Here are a few highlights:
- The current recession has made many students re-think their college
choices and even transfer to a more affordable school. Student blogger,
Ally Demos from myusearch.com, presents a video blog about how the
economic crunch is affecting college students. Elizabeth Kudner
presents College Students Feel the Economic Crunch posted at myUsearch blog.
- Sarah Scrafford presents 100 Awesome Open Courses and Lectures for Digital Artists posted at Online Universities.com
- Eric Perron, the host of our last edition of the Carnival of College
Admission, likes to talk back to the television. He offers his
critique of a recent program on college admission, aptly titled Come On “CBS Early Show”, This Is The Best Advice You Have To Pay For College? posted on his blog, Dream Strategy.
Go check the whole thing out! It's definitely worth it!
I have a good number of students every year who would like to attend the University of Texas at Austin. There are a lot of great reasons to go to Austin (weather, cool city, great sports teams, world-class programs), but my students are always surprised to find out just how competitive UT Austin actually is when compared to similar schools.
For example, last year UT Austin admitted around 50% of its applicants. That's an incredible difference from Brigham Young's 75% admission rate or Arizona State's 90%+ rate, two more typical rates when looking at large state schools that have strong academic programs. UT's low rate is much closer to Occidental College (45%), a small private college than it is to any of these other state schools!
I've always known that UT Austin has a strong preference for in-state students and assumed that they have gotten more selective over the years, a typical position for a school that has raised standards and built a brand that appeals to parents and students. But this week, some information came out of the UT campus that redefined the discussion quite a bit.
The University of Texas at Austin President, William Powers, revealed to the Texas Associated Press that 81% of entering freshman at UT: Austin were admitted under the "10% law" and called for the law to be rewritten to give his admissions staff more discrection in the process.
That's right. More than 80% of the entire entering class has to meet only two requirements to be automatically granted admission:
- Graduate from a Texas High School
- Be in the top 10% of the class
That leaves the admissions office at UT Austin in a bind. They can't deny admission to any of these students, so they have to get more selective with the remainder of their class.
Therefore, unless you are a stand out student, it's going to be difficult to gain admission, not because the student body is getting more selective overall, but because they are simply so few spots left! (You'll find the same sort of situation over in the Ivy Leagues, where admission rates have fallen in half because the number of applicants has doubled without a significant increase in open spots.)
Powers is going to continue to fight this battle, but he's not doing it to ensure that they can get more out of state students. In fact, he's more concerned about Texas students that don't meet the requirements being denied admission and the efficiacy of this program in regards to minority applicants.
So, what can you do about the low admission rate for out of state students? Not much. As you now know, there aren't a lot of spots left every year for out of state kids. You've got to treat UT Austin as if it was an incredibly selective school.
But now that you know how tough the battle will be, you can get ready for it. Improve your ACT or SAT score, get some help with your college essay, and keep your grades high! If you've set a goal like UT Austin, make you are getting all the help you need!
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What are you doing to get ready for applications this year? Let us know in the comments!
The holidays are a great time to eat pie, play with your new video games, and enjoy the fact that school feels a million miles away. Every student going to high school today (even the lazy kid in the back of the class) is so busy during the year that I heartily recommend taking it easy when you have a break.
If you're smart, however, you won't waste all of your time for the next two weeks. Instead, you'll use some of the free time you've got over Winter Break to start thinking about next semester...and about college!
But where to start? Should you visit school websites? Start cracking on your essay? Review Algebra II?
Let's be honest. You're not going to do any of those things. Tasks like visiting school websites are boring, random, and tough to focus on when you feel that you aren't leaving for school soon. You need tasks that are active right now!
With that in mind, here are some sites that will let you get active right now and get ready for school:
So go to it, Omniac Attack readers! Take advantage of all that free time and start using some resources!
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Got any great resources I missed? Leave them for me in the comments and I'll add them to the main post!
Welcome to the Seventh edition of carnival of college admission! Huge thanks obviously to Mark Montgomery for creating this awesome collection of college admission tips.
Let's get on with the show...
Admission
Adam Epstein presents Happy Holidays from the Admissions Staff posted at Adamissions, saying, "No heavy lifting this time, just fun holiday greetings. :)" Thanks, Adam!
College Degrees presents 2009: Janet Napolitano and the H1B Visa Cap posted at The Degree People,
saying, "If confirmed, Janet Napolitano’s nomination as Director of
Homeland Security is likely to have a significant impact on the H1B
visa process and possibly even be a significant factor in increasing
the cap on these employment visas."
College Life
I bet you've seen Credit Card vendors out on college campuses, promising free pizza for your signature. Credit Card Assist helps you cut through fiction and get to the facts with What College Kids Might Not Know About Credit Cards posted at Credit Card Assist.
Raymond reminds us that not all credit cards are evil, however, with his post Why College Students Should Apply For Student Credit Cards over at Money Blue Book. He even points out the best credit cards students SHOULD get!
Elizabeth Kudner from myUsearch (www.myusearch.com) presents a post from student blogger Pauline Diaz on the best holiday gifts for college-bound high school seniors. You can find her Holiday Gifts for College-Bound Seniors posted at myUsearch blog.
Jessica Dye informs us that college students have switched magazine allegiances--a new survey shows
that collegians' favorite periodical is now Time, finally replacing
Cosmopolitan at the top of the list. She documents the whole story in College Students Ditch Trashy Mags posted at theprereq.com.
Financial Aid
Looking at Harvard as a potential dream school? David Bonvie keeps you in the know with College Affordability, the Big Financial Aid Overhaul posted at Student Loan Help. Learn what Harvard's Financial Aid Office is thinking early!
Ted Reimers covers the basics in his post Ways to get Free College Tuition featured at CampusGrotto. Scholarships, grants, and employee waivers are all covered in his Financial Aid 101-style post.
David Bonvie presents I Don’t Want To Pay For College posted at Student Loan Help. It's a great short guide to the "guerilla" style tactics students can employ while searching out money for school!
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That about wraps up this edition of the carnival. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
carnival of college admission
using our
carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our
blog carnival index page.
Thanks!
This week the New York Times published a question and answer session with several deans of admissions from popular American universities. Covering topics from financial aid to standout applications, the Q+A is a worthwhile read for any student who wants to know what admission officers are thinking while reading applications.
Here are a few of the best parts for those of you who won't read the whole thing:
On the most misunderstood part of college admissions:
Jeff Brenzel of Yale University: It is not well
understood that we are not aiming to pick out the best candidate in a
particular school or from a particular area, as measured by some
predetermined criteria. Rather, we are trying to assemble the most
varied and most interesting class we can from an extremely diverse
group of close to 25,000 outstanding applicants.
Steven Syverson of Lawrence University: [T]he common perception tends to be that all colleges are
difficult to get into. The reality is that nearly 90 percent of
America’s four-year colleges admit more than half their applicants, and
with the exception of students who apply only to hyper-selective
institutions, most applicants are admitted to one or more of their top
choices.
On innovative applications that students have used:
Mr. Poch of Pomona: What works best is what best and
most fully and consistently represents the applicant. Tricks that don’t
fit the person end up looking like gimmicks, without real substance.
The student who years ago sent in a life-size doll who was her “best
friend,” equipped with a recorded endorsement of the applicant, left
the admissions staff feeling like it was in a Twilight Zone episode.
Creepy.
Jeff Brenzel of Yale University: We’re much less
interested in innovative applications than we are in innovative
students, who have shown over time the spark of real intellectual
curiosity and a real enthusiasm for engaging with peers, schools and
communities.
On applicants "shooting themselves in the foot" on their application:
Mr. Syverson of Lawrence: It is reasonably common for
students to try to impress us with how much they love our particular
college, by incorporating a mention of our college into their essay.
(For example: “For the past four years, every time I was ready to give
up on math, the thought of gaining admission to Lawrence University
inspired me to redouble my efforts.”) But it is also a not-infrequent
experience for them to forget to replace all the mentions of some other
college in their essay.
Mr. Syverson of Lawrence: But the most frequent form of self-inflicted damage is careless
preparation of the application. In the days of handwritten
applications, it might have been poor handwriting. Currently it is
simply that they waited until the deadline to finish their essay and
complete the remainder of their application, so they are hurried and
don’t proofread carefully. A poorly presented application can, in fact,
have a negative affect on the admission decision.
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Got any questions for the Deans? Leave them here and we will forward them on to the NYT staff!
If you are a student living in the Southwest, there is a good chance that your information has ended up in the hands of the good folks at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. This year you've probably even received an offer to fill out their "Personal Advantage Application" instead of the traditional NAU application that you can find on their website.
The regular NAU application isn't hard. In fact, it's one of the many applications that puts a strong focus on GPA requirements. The personal statement they require is minimal (less than 500 words) and while they do ask you about your extracurricular activities, they don't give you a lot of space to wax philosophically about what your team sport taught you about working with others.
Nevertheless, the Personal Advantage Application has arrived in many of my students inboxes promising:
- No Essay
- No Application Fee
- Two Week Turnaround
All you have to do is go to www.northernarizonau.org and fill out your personalized form in about 15 minutes and you will hear back in two weeks from NAU! In fact, they'll even bug you about it incessantly until it's done!
The problem?
The whole thing looks like a scam!
Go click on the link above. It doesn't take you to NAU's official website. It goes to a third party site that contains NAU's logo and color scheme, but no verification that it's actually set up by NAU! It resembles a classic phishing site, designed by a hacker to capture your private data.
When one of my students showed me the site, I immediately contacted NAU's admissions office and asked them about the site. At first, nobody knew what I was talking about (a bad sign!), but eventually they transfered me over to an admissions counselor. It went something like this:
Me: Hi! I'm Mark Truman, Executive Director of Omniac Education and I wanted to talk with you about your Personal Advantage Application.
Counselor: Oh! Great! We are really excited about that. Are you applying?
Me: No. I'm an independent college consultant and I'm helping one of my students fill out the application. I'm glad to hear that you know what I'm talking about because I was honestly a bit worried that the whole thing was a scam.
Counselor: ...why would it be a scam?
Me: Well, there's nothing on the site that is official from NAU.
Counselor: I think our logo is on there. Isn't it?
Me: Yeah, well I can download your logo off your website and use it for whatever I want. It's not really a signal of trustworthiness on the internet.
Counselor: Oh, that's a good point. Honestly, we have a third party vendor handle that site so I'm not sure what goes into it. But I'll bring it up with the other counselors at our meeting tommorrow.
Me: Great! Thanks for verifying it for me!
So in short, not a scam. Just a badly monitered third party vendor who still hasn't fixed the site. Feel free to fill out your Personal Advantage Application when it hits your inbox. It's perfectly safe.
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Found any other sites that look like scams...but aren't? Post them here and maybe we can verify them too!
As a test prep tutor and college consultant, I personally work with dozens of students every year to improve their college applications. For some of my students, I help them shore up shaky resumes and make a four-year university a reality. For others, I aid their already tremendous applications by refining their essays and interviews and helping them find the best schools for their selected fields.
Yet, one thing remains constant for every student I work with regardless of his or her dream: High School grades matter. A lot.
To start, I've helped dozens of students over the years get into college on the basis of grades alone. Arizona State, University of Kansas, and University of New Mexico are just three examples of schools where all you need is a 3.0 Core GPA and a smile! Most students don't realize that for students who select these colleges, the SAT and ACT are significanlty less important. Instead these universities put the focus on grades, a proven indicator of college aptitude.
In fact, recent studies have confirmed that high school grades are more predictive than the SAT or ACT, meaning that grades almost always matter more than standardized test scores. As I noted in an earlier post, colleges are becoming more and more aware that SAT and ACT scores are not indicative of future succes. That realization has prompted people like Richard C. Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California, to continually call into question the value of the tests to the college admissions process while simultaneously reaffirming the usefulness of high school grades:
The most intriguing aspect
of this research, however, is not what it says about tests but what it
says about that old-fashioned admissions criterion, high-school grades.
The studies concluded that a student's performance over four years of
high school remains the fairest and most meaningful measure of his or
her accomplishments and the most reliable indicator of future success
in college.
- Forbes, "Beyond the SAT"
As more and more schools like Wake Forest turn to testing-optional programs, students are going to see colleges intensify the focus already placed on high school grades.
This shift is happening at all levels, but will have the greatest effect at highly selective universities. ASU, KU, and UNM may admit students solely on the basis of grades, but highly selective schools (like the Ivies) are starting to prioritize grades in a time where the smallest differences between applications matters tremendously.
And there's no sign of slowing in the increase of applications or the decrease in test score relevance. I predict that the (Freshman) Class of 2012 will face a very different college admissions reality than today's Seniors.
So keep that GPA up to at least a 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Take classes that are challenging and earn A's and B's by doing the work and learning the subject. Hire a trained academic tutor if you need one. Colleges do like to see an upward trend in grades throughout high school, but they like to see A's from day one even more!
In short, make your high school grades are an asset instead of a liablity. You'll thank me when it comes time to apply to college.
It isn't often that I'm jaw-droppingly surprised by college admissions news articles. Usually it's just a mix of College Board's inane half-truths, press releases from colleges that won't take effect for 4+ years, and fluff pieces that get students worried that they will never go to college. In fact, I consider reducing student anxiety about those kind of news pieces to be one of the primary focuses of Omniac Attack.
However, my jaw dropped this week when I was looking over an article from Inside Higher Ed titled "New Ethics Rules for Admissions Consultants." In the article, IHE reveals that:
The Independent Educational Consultants Association
has changed its ethics code to bar people who work in college
admissions from also working as private college admissions consultants.
And also that:
Gifts from colleges to admissions consultants may no longer exceed a
$50 value. In addition, it will now be official association policy that
Web sites and other promotional material must be designed to decrease,
rather than encourage, anxiety over the admissions process.
Le sigh.
Let me be clear: I'm all for the change in rules. In fact, I'm shocked that it has taken the IECA this long to implement these kind of ethical restraints. It's obvious to me that we shouldn't allow independent college consultants to advise students about getting into college while serving on the admissions board that is looking at student applications! It's obvious that we shouldn't allow colleges to offer large ($50+) gifts to college consultants! And we certainly shouldn't encourage consultants to create additional fear and apprehension about the college process!
So before you hire a local college consultant to help you find and get into the college of your dreams, here are some questions I would recommend asking:
1) Are you currently serving on the admissions board for a college or university?
The answer should be "No." No exceptions. Anyone who is sitting on admissions board while offering their services directly to students for money is behaving inappropriately.
2) What's the largest gift you've received from a college?
The answer should be "I've never accepted a gift from a college." While it may have been acceptable in the past, remember that you are paying your consultant to help you find a school. If they are taking money from schools as well, they aren't putting your interests first.
3) How do your promotional materials discuss the difficulty of getting into college?
The answer should be "My materials discourage anxiety and help students understand the overall process." If the consultant gives you information that makes you feel like you need them to go to college or you will die in a ditch, eaten by wild dogs...don't trust them.
The saddest part of this whole story is that the new rules on promotional materials only apply to new members. Consultants who have already been accepted by IECA will "eventually" have all of their materials reviewed, but for the moment only new members are coming under scrutiny.
So keep these questions in mind when shopping!
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Anyone had an experience with a college consultant that's worth sharing? Any questions I've missed? Leave us a comment!