• Zero Down For College?- BusinessWeek looks at an innovative new idea developed by Fix UC, a group in California that is part of the UC system. Fix UC thinks college students should be able to pay for college by giving 5% of their annual salary to their alma mater for the first 20 years after graduation. This approach would mean parents don’t have to save up for college for their children’s college educations, and the university would be making an investment in its students that would get paid off overtime. Yet it is unlikely that Fix UC’s plan will get carried out, because it has many hurdles and would lead colleges to invest only in producing high-paid graduates (meaning no more English majors).
• Why Does The Price of College Keep Rising?- The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at why the price of college keeps rising each year at a faster rate than inflation. The answer: people will pay anything to go to college.  Although it has been proven that there is a lifetime payoff for individuals with college degrees, that fact still does not mean that the prices of all colleges are worth it. With people now tightening their belts, colleges will have to prove why they are worth students’ life savings if they want to continue raising prices over the next few years.
• E-Textbooks On The Rise- Inside Higher Ed reports that colleges are increasingly trying to strike deals with textbook companies to create e-textbooks that are more affordable for their students.  For example, Internet2, a consortium of 221 colleges and universities, has struck deals with Box.com, McGraw-Hill, Wiley & Sons, Bedford, Freeman and Worth, W.W. Norton &Company, Flat World Knowledge, and Hewlett-Packard to get affordable discounts for their students. Universities have more power to broker these deals than their students, and many believe that it is a school’s responsibility to negotiate those discounts.  These partnerships also benefit the textbook companies because they cut into the second-hand textbook business that hurt their sales.
• College Students Still Getting Hit By Recession- The Chronicle of Education looks at how the recession has hit college students trying to hold part-time jobs. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that while college students used to work an average of 11 hours per week in 2000, they were only working an average of 8 hours a week in 2009.
• Vassar Takes Back Acceptances- The New York Times reports that 76 early decision applicants to Vassar College were outraged when they found out they had received acceptance letters BY MISTAKE. Although Vassar has apologized and offered to reimburse students their $65 application fee, some parents believe Vassar should be forced to accept these students because early decision applications are binding. While these parents do not look like they are going to get their way, Vassar acknowledges that it was a terrible mistake and has offered to “explain the situation” to other schools that students may have withdrawn their applications from as a result of this mishap.
• Stanford Gets A Makeover- The Chronicle of Education reports that Stanford University has decided to transform its curriculum, encouraging students to focus more on critical thinking and less on taking courses in specific disciplines. While the Faculty Senate still needs to review the changes, the goal of this shift is to allow students to develop skills that will enable them to “adapt to a changing world after their formal education has ended.” The recommendations being made to the Faculty Senate focus on freshmen having exposure to many different learning environments and adding a series of course offerings called “Thinking Matters” to the freshman curriculum.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best[hs_action id="3908"]

A recent Today show segment highlighted Princeton Review’s Top College Values.  In the short segment, they highlighted the top 3 public and private colleges deemed a ‘best value’.  While the segment highlighted colleges that I hold in high esteem and have frequently recommended to students, I cringed.

The cost of college is an important consideration for most families — that cost climbs every year, and recently, at a level exceeding the rate of inflation.  But value – how do we judge that?  Can we take empirical indicators (which, it seems, may or may not be valid), total them up to create “academic worth” and then divide by the price tag?  It’s much bigger, more individual and much more complex than that.

When you are submitting the FAFSA, common financial information is shared with each college designated.  Just as your family has a unique financial situation, colleges have differing financial aid budgets, merit scholarship programs, institutional priorities, endowments and other tools at their disposal. Assessing the average “discount” given to matriculating students provides an indication of available merit aid, but shouldn’t be used to create an expectation of merit aid.

Some colleges, such Princeton (profiled by Princeton Review in the segment) have substantial endowments and have made an amazing commitment to making the school affordable to every student who is admitted.  Earning admission is the hard part. Since Princeton does not offer merit scholarships, the true cost of attendance is based upon your family’s need for assistance.

If you are fortunate, and your family is planning to pay your full tuition and related expenses for college, value may still be a consideration.  Are you planning to attend graduate school? How are you planning to pay for it?  What are your career goals and how should you factor that into debt load? Is a state university with a lower price tag a good option for you? How about a less highly regarded college that offers you a substantial merit scholarship?  Each scenario has positives and negatives, but all merit consideration in your planning.

When I begin comprehensive discussions with families, we always touch at least briefly on cost.  I give them the following statement to complete:

College is expensive and…

• We are prepared to cover all  costs.
• We are planning to apply for need based financial aid.
• We are specifically interested in colleges that offer merit scholarships.
• Cost of attendance will be a factor in where our child goes to college.
• We have discussed the role of finances in college choice with our child.

The answers to the first three statements help me to offer suggestions of colleges that might make financial sense to a family.  The latter two statements are designed to encourage conversation.

As you compile your tax papers before April 15, consider talking with your student about financial ramifications to their college search.  I don’t recommend eliminating colleges from consideration based solely on cost at this early stage.  As a parent, there is nothing worse than dashing your child’s dreams.  An honest discussion now is far better than seeing the joy on a child’s face after receiving an acceptance letter and dulling it with financial concerns about which he or she was previously clueless.

By Whitney Bruce, who has worked in college admissions since 1996. She has served as a Senior Assistant Director of Admissions (Washington U), Application Reader (University of Michigan), Assistant Director of College Counseling (private prep school in St. Louis), and an independent college counselor. She is happy to advise you as you apply to college.[hs_action id="3908"]

There is not much to say about the Claremont McKenna administrator who falsified the school’s average SAT scores to improve Claremont’s U.S. News ranking and its overall appearance of exclusivity and competitiveness. It was fraud. It was wrong. It was stupid. He resigned, and his career in academia is toast. Were more senior administrators complicit? Don’t know. Are other schools doing the same thing? Probably a few.

But what about the consumers of this data? What about the applicants and their parents who applied or failed to apply because they were stoned on rankings? What about ranking addicts?

It’s time for withdrawal.

Let’s first take a look at the nature of rankings. Each one chooses several criteria, weights them, and then ranks. Sometimes the criteria are seemingly objective, like SAT scores, number of articles professors publish in academic journals, percentage of under-represented minorities and women, or salary upon graduation. Other times, rankings reflect surveys – for example surveys of top college administrators for US News’ college ranking, or alumni in Forbes’ and Financial Times’ MBA rankings. And sometimes the rankings reflect a combination of quantitative data and survey responses, and occasionally even a combination of a bunch of rankings (Poets & Quants).

This mishmash of college and graduate school rankings and criteria – even without fraud – are seriously flawed. Assuming accurate reporting, rankings should neither be considered measures of educational quality nor have significant influence on your educational and professional decisions. Here’s why:

1. If these criteria don’t reflect what’s important to you, they are a terrible basis for your decision.
2. To the extent they reflect survey results, surveys can be gamed and have inherent limitations. People responding to survey tend to love or hate what they are investing time in. Students and alumni of a given institution have a vested interest in their school having a good ranking. It behooves them to provide “good grades.”
3. Schools are enormous institutions. The overall rank says nothing about educational quality in your field of study.
4. Even the so-called objective quantitative measures contain distortions.
5. Differing rankings of the same programs can give wildly different results.

How should you act in light of the Claremont McKenna College scandal? Get off the rankings crack. Go cold turkey. Kick the habit.

Determine what’s important to you. Research colleges and graduate programs to discover those providing what you value. Apply based on your criteria.

By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com and author of MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.

Article first published as “Claremont McKenna Cheats. Time for Rankings Withdrawal” on Technorati.[hs_action id="3671"]

Photo credit: Douaireg

As a parent, you might have thought your college application work was done, once you had overseen the last “submit” of the Common Application.  And so it seemed — until you, or one of your friends, receive a letter inviting you to add a parent’s recommendation to your child’s college admission file.

The parent recommendation, much like the peer recommendation, has been around for quite some time at a small number of colleges.  This year, the request by the University of Richmond has sparked conversation.

In my files, I have several old parent recommendations, from corporate parents who graded their children with bullet points of positives and negatives as they would a job candidate to a 3 page, single spaced opus that brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it.  Of course these parents each think their children are wonderful.  As a parent, that’s our job – to be our child’s biggest fan.  But each one makes careful note of the characteristics that make their child human and individual.

I never worked at a college that required a parent (or peer) letter of recommendation, but when I received one unsolicited I read it with joy.  Someone cared about this student and wanted to make him or her known to me.  Well written or not, that additional recommendation makes the applicant a bit more human – more than a GPA or an SAT score, or a list of extracurricular activities.  The additional voice taught me more than an essay about kicking the winning soccer goal ever could.

I’m not suggesting that every parent of a college applicant begin writing an unsolicited recommendation.  Should you be offered the opportunity, take it.  Yes, the reader expects you to be biased, but you know your child in a way that no one else does.  The experiences you find seminal to his childhood or adolescence might not be shared in any other format.  It is insightful, to the admissions office, and probably in the end to the writer as well.

This morning, I pulled out that three-page opus, about a young man, who more than a decade ago was stubborn and serious, and ready to contribute to the fight against global warming.  I wonder what path he’s taken.  I’m still thankful that he and his mother shared his story with me.

By Whitney Bruce, who has worked in college admissions since 1996. She has served as a Senior Assistant Director of Admissions (Washington U), Application Reader (University of Michigan), Assistant Director of College Counseling (private prep school in St. Louis), and an independent college counselor. She is happy to advise you as you apply to college.[hs_action id="3910"]