Next Stop: College

Racial preference in admissions is a delicate subject and it has been in the news recently.

On Feb. 17 The NY Times “The Choice” blog ran this headline, “Discrimination Investigations End at Princeton and Harvard”. “The Education Department said that the original complaints were received last August, and that both had recently been withdrawn. The Office for Civil Rights closed its case against Harvard on Feb. 15, and removed the complaint accusations from an existing compliance review at Princeton.” The article goes on to explain that in each case, an Asian-American student complained that he or she had been rejected because of race.

Harvard denied discrimination and cited the fact that they only admitted 6.3% of the applicants for the incoming class as the most likely reason the student was not admitted.

Today I read in The Chronicle of Higher Education that the United States Supreme Court was going to take up the case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, regarding race-conscious admissions.

Admission to the Ivy League and many other highly sought after colleges and universities, like the flagship University of Texas at Austin, is extremely selective — we all understand that. However, the devil does seem to be in the details.  Any group that is perceived to have an advantage causes others to feel like they have been unfairly kept out. This sentiment holds true for any seemingly advantaged group– recruited athletes, underrepresented minorities, legacy students, etc.

Colleges in the US don’t use a straight up meritocracy formula– where it would be a certain criteria such as GPA or test scores that determined eligibility. In addition to those factors they also take into account a lot of intangible qualities and together they are evaluated and a decision is made.  I always tell my students that if the college doesn’t accept you it doesn’t automatically mean you weren’t qualified or couldn’t have done the work and been successful. Sometimes there is no good reason a student was denied.  Colleges also very rarely will tell a student why he was not admitted. The usual answer is “this was a very completive year and we had X number of applications”. Not being forthcoming about the process also tends to fan the flames and make people feel that something unfair must be happening behind the closed door of admissions.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if major changes in the law are coming.

Last Friday I was in Washington, DC to see some of my students in that area and tour American University. I have toured both Georgetown and George Washington University twice but I had not had the chance to see American. I always tell my students that nothing substitutes for a college visit and that held true for me as well.

I attended a very interesting information session as well as had a meeting with an admissions counselor to learn what is new. Quite a few things, it turns out. She filled me in on two new programs that students will complete in three years. She stressed that these were 8 semester programs and there was no cost savings, but for students who were anxious to get out and start working, it was a hit. The programs are The Three Year Cohort in Public Health and the Global Scholars Program.  You can find out more about these on their website, www.american.edu.

I also learned some interesting things, like American in ranked #1 on the Green Honor Roll and they are #6 for Most Diverse. 87% of their students participate in at least one internship and some do more.

I also learned the etymology of the word WONK. I have heard people referred to as Wonks and read about political wonks many times but now I know. Wonk is DC slang and it is KNOW spelled backwards. It stands for smart +passionate +focused +engaged.

I saw happy and engaged students and had a lovely day on their campus.

I don’t know what was more surprising. To read in Inside Higher Ed that a well respected liberal arts college had reported incorrect SAT data to several rankings entities or to read that Claremont McKenna inflated its scores by 10 or 20 points on the Math and Critical Reading sections.  10 Points? Claremont McKenna is part of the five Claremont Colleges; the others are Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Scripps and Pitzer. According to my data source, Claremont McKenna accepted 17% of applications it received in 2010. Apparently, this score exaggeration was going on for the past six years. That an elite college–and if you are only accepting 17% of all applicants you are ‘elite’–would throw away their reputation for a few points is really shocking.

Is Claremont McKenna the only college to do this? No. According to the NY Times, “several colleges in recent years have been caught gaming the system — in particular, the avidly watched U.S. News & World Report rankings — by twisting the meanings of rules, cherry-picking data or just lying.” The Times goes on to say, “In one recent example, Iona College in New Rochelle, north of New York City, acknowledged last fall that its employees had lied for years not only about test scores, but also about graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving.” And this, from a Christian college– “In 2008, Baylor University offered financial rewards to admitted students to retake the SAT in hopes of increasing its average score.”

A few days later, The NY Times had this news: that Kiplinger, the finance magazine removed Claremont McKenna from its rankings.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, then you know I am not a fan of college rankings.  As I have said many times, check the methodology and see if the criteria they use are the same criteria you would use to rank something. Well, now we should all maybe take the statistics colleges report with a grain of salt.

I just read an article titled “College essays are getting ridiculous”.  The author goes on to give two college essay prompts that I instantly recognized, having helped some of my students this year decide how to approach them. She chose one question from the University of Maryland and one from the University of Chicago. Chicago has always been known for their quirky essay topics. Before their recent joining of the Common App, they referred to their application as the “Uncommon Application”. One of the hallmarks of that application was their essay topics. Now these quirky topics have found their way into their supplement to the Common App.

The author goes on to express her surprise at the number of supplemental essays her child had to write when she applied to college this year.  I noticed this several years ago and refer to it as “essay creep”.  The number of colleges that required essays and short answers on their supplements has been creeping upward, creating a lot more work for seniors.

The author of the article reminisces about how much easier it used to be to apply to college, “Once upon a time, the college admissions process involved filling out a form or two, taking a standardized test and sending in a high school transcript.”

No question about that!  People in my generation had the luxury of waiting until senior year to make up our minds and apply to college. I actually do not recall writing an essay, although I know some colleges required them. If I wrote one, it was a non-event. Not today.  With the number of essays and short answers students are expected to write and the proliferation of early programs, students need to hit the ground running come senior year. As you can see from the types of questions colleges ask, the author notes this one “From the University of Richmond, “Tell us about an experience in which you left your comfort zone. How did this experience change you?” these essays and short answers are going to require thoughtful attention and writing and shouldn’t be rushed.

Students who begin senior year with a realistic list of colleges to apply to, can begin the writing process early and give themselves enough time to tackle all of the essays and short answers that will be required of them.

I have recently read two interesting new stories that discuss for-profit colleges.  For-profit colleges, also called proprietary colleges, operate like a business.

The first article took me by surprise because it discusses Mittt Romney’s praise of a for-profit institution, Full Sail, in Florida.  The New York Times article said, “At a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire last month, listeners pressed Mitt Romney on the soaring cost of higher education. His solution: students should consider for-profit colleges like the little-known Full Sail University in Florida.” I was surprised at this endorsement and then less so when the article went on to say that the chief executive of Full Sail is a campaign donor.

I am not interested in getting into politics at all, but for-profit colleges are controversial and one reason is their cost and what students receive for that cost.

In this article from Inside Higher Ed, they try and break down and compare the costs at Full Sail and the costs at other colleges, “Only 10 percent of full-time, first-time undergraduates at Full Sail receive any institutional grants or scholarships, and those who do receive $2,620 on average, according to federal data. As a result, students are on the hook for almost all tuition charges, which run as high as $48,300 per year.”
They go on to compare the cost of some of Full Sail’s programs and their job placement with one of that area’s nearby colleges.

On May 4, 2010, PBS’ Frontline had a fascinating and sobering look at the for-profit college industry and their practices, “College Inc”. You can use this link to see the program. I watched it when it aired and was struck by a particular part about students who went for a nursing degree. I work with many students who want to study nursing so I was especially interested. “Graduates of another for-profit school — a college nursing program in California — tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital.” This made them unemployable and yet they still had to re-pay their student loans for a 12-month program that cost almost $30,000.

For-profit colleges have become big business and the federal government is cracking down on practices that take advantage of students and leave them with mountains of debt and little chance of repaying it. For some individuals, under some circumstances, for-profits might make sense. However, I suggest serious caution. Proceed slowly and do not get pressured to sign up immediately, get all of the facts, know all of the costs up front, check graduation rates and check to see if the programs are accredited.  And then compare everything to your local community college or state university.

Early Decision is a system in which high school seniors apply before traditional deadlines, typically in early November, to one and only one college. The answer arrives from the college in mid December.  The decision is binding, and if accepted, the student is required to attend that college and must rescind all applications to other colleges.

According to “The Early Admissions Game” by Christopher Avery, Andrew Fairbanks and Richard Zeckhauser*, in the period after WWII, colleges found themselves in the position of having too many students apply for admission. Some colleges tried various methods of gaining control over the admissions process, such as to “manipulate the timing of the application process to their own advantage”. This and other practices eventually evolved into the binding Early Decision and non-binding Early Action processes we have today.

It has been said that Early Decision was a somewhat unfair practice that advantaged the already advantaged–that it was used by students “in the know”, especially those in elite private schools. According to the New York Times, that may no longer be the case.

On Jan. 13, The NY Times published this article that dispels that notion. They say, “Early admission to top colleges, once the almost exclusive preserve of the East Coast elite, is now being pursued by a much broader and more diverse group of students, including foreigners and minorities. The democratization of the process — and the overall explosion in applicants — made the early-admissions game much tougher this year for the group that has long dominated it: students in prep schools in New York and beyond where the vast majority of seniors apply to their top choices in November in hopes of avoiding the springtime scrum”.

Critics will now have to use other reasons to disparage Early Decision and there are other reasons to find fault with this practice. One is that it puts a lot of pressure on students to choose and apply to only one college very early in senior year. Another reason is that with biding Early Decision students and their parents lose the ability to compare financial aid packages. To be sure, students will be released from their Early Decision agreement if the college does not meet their demonstrated financial need, but that is not the same things as being able to compare offers.

Early programs are gaining in popularity because students feel that they are getting a leg up in the admissions process. And, according to “The Early Admissions Game”, they are. “Our central finding is that it is tremendously valuable to apply early.  In some extreme cases, applying early appears to double or triple the chances of admission.”

I am sure this is not the end of Early Decision and the controversy that surrounds it.

*Christopher Avery; Andrew Fairbanks, Richard Zeckhauser (2004). The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01620-3.

As an Independent Educational Consultant, I help students through the maze that college admissions has become. I assist families with pretty much every part of the process with just a few exceptions. One is need-based Financial Aid. I can give families an overview but I am not an expert in this area and therefore do not include this as part of my services. I leave this to the families to do–it is time consuming but not difficult. If you need help, I suggest you ask your financial planner or accountant. I strongly suggest that you do not pay someone to do this for you, especially anyone who claims they can find you aid that could not be found without their help.

To apply for need based financial aid, families begin with the FAFSA–the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The website for this is http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/.  This is a government site and this is free. I emphasize this point because there are other websites with FAFSA in the name but they are not the correct site and may charge a fee.  Be sure you are on the U.S. government website.

The NY Times’ “The Choice” blog has just run a series about Financial Aid where parents and students have submitted their questions to Mark Kantrowitz, whom they describe as “an expert on paying for college and the founder of FinAid.org,”.  If you are knee deep in financial aid forms right now, this may be of help.

In addition to the FAFSA, many private colleges also require families to fill out the CSS PROFILE and/or their own institutional form. These forms will address income and assets and information not included in FAFSA.

Be sure you know the forms required for each college your student is applying to and their deadlines. If you have special circumstances–such as a recent change in your financial situation– call the colleges directly and speak to their Financial Aid office and see if you can provide them with additional information and possibly documentation.

Good luck!

I heard on both local television and radio news that Kiplinger has rated the University of Connecticut #30 of their “100 Best Values in Public Colleges 2012” rankings. I searched their site and found this article.

Those of you who have read my past blogs are probably familiar with my views on rankings–I am skeptical, at best, of using a ranking to choose a college. A college should be chosen based on fit–academically, socially and emotionally and, yes, financially, if that is a concern.  And, I have said that before you decide if a rank is valid, check the methodology.  I read the information here and Kiplinger clearly spelled out how they define and quantify ‘value’.

The article says, “For public colleges and universities, the march out of the recession has become a long, slow slog. State appropriations for higher education have been gutted. The federal stimulus money that sustained colleges for several years is just about gone. Enrollment keeps climbing, the demand for financial aid remains high, and the average annual tuition increase is heading toward double digits.”

Indeed, U Conn’s costs are expected to rise 17% over the next three years.  On Dec. 19, WTNH reported this:  “University of Connecticut trustees voted without dissent Monday to approve an increase in tuition and other student costs totaling 17 percent, which will be phased in over four years starting next fall under a plan to hire more faculty.”

Even with these increases, state universities can still be a bargain. Over the past year or so there has been much talk in the media about how states are financially strapped and cutting funding to their colleges and universities. California was the topic of many, many stories like that. Even so, the University of California has six campuses listed in the top 25 of this ranking: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Davis and Irvine.

I am proud to say my alma mater, The University of Florida is ranked number two and happy that the University of Connecticut is also rated so well. Go Huskies!!