USACollegeChat Podcast

Well, we are just about done. We are on Step 14, the final step in researching colleges on your son or daughter’s LLCO (that is, one last time, the Long List of College Options). And, one last reminder: Feel free to rush online and get our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available at Amazon). It’s a steal at $9.95!  Step 14 is, to many people, the most important step and even the only step. I find it ironic that we would end our podcast--for now--on this note and that we would give our last piece of advice about college cost. Why? Because cost is the thing I care about least in helping your kid find a great college. Perhaps it is because I do believe that where there is a will, there is a way. Perhaps it is because borrowing money for college is not something that I find offensive--since I can’t think of a better reason to borrow some. Perhaps it is because I know that college can be a once-in-a-lifetime chance--one chance to do it exactly right. Of course, you can come back to college as an adult and be very successful; but why wait, if you could have made it work right at 18? Perhaps it is because I want every kid to get the best possible start in life and because I believe that a great college choice is that best possible start. Well, enough about me. We hope that college cost is not the most important step for YOU when deciding where your son or daughter should apply, especially because it is very hard to predict what financial aid you might be able to get from a college, from your state government, from the federal government, and from outside organizations. It is also true that financial aid at a good private college on your kid’s LLCO could make that college as affordable as any good public university on the LLCO. But that is something you won’t know before you apply. We understand that paying attention to cost might be a sensible thing to do; it’s just not the only thing. 1. Tuition and Fees Finding and understanding tuition and fees on a college website isn’t always as easy as you might expect. College Navigator offers a straightforward table of college costs, but it will be for the preceding year--and not for next year, which is what will matter to you. And by the way, some college websites display tuition and fees separately, while some provide one combined figure. Try to use a combined tuition-plus-fees figure for each college so that the figures will be comparable from college to college. Furthermore, some websites display information by term (e.g., by semester, by quarter), while others display information for the full academic year. Make sure you know which you are reading! For example, remember to multiply by 2, if the information you see is for just one semester. (I have actually made that mistake and wondered why the numbers seemed too good to be true!)  Question 50 asks students to jot down the tuition and fees for the current academic year or, if possible, for the next academic year, and to record the year, too (so you know exactly what you are dealing with). 2. Tuition Incentives Remember that some colleges have attractive and even compelling tuition incentives, which they will proudly announce on their websites. For example, some colleges freeze tuition for four years at the price a student starts with as a freshman. Some colleges allow students to take an extra semester for free if the college is at fault for not offering, on an accessible enough schedule, all of the courses needed to graduate on time in four years. Some colleges provide generous discounts to students from contiguous states or to students in the region (like the West or the Midwest or New England). It makes sense to see whether each college on your kid’s LLCO has any tuition discount that could help you at any point in your kid’s undergraduate years. Question 51 quite simply asks students to jot down any tuition incentives. 3. Residential Housing Costs And finally, there is residential housing cost, which College Navigator provides, but again only for the preceding academic year. So again, it is best to go directly to a college’s website to get this information. Obviously, housing cost is important if your kid is planning to live on campus and especially important if a college requires freshmen to live on campus. Even if you think your kid might commute to a college on the LLCO, it won’t hurt to jot down this information, just in case you all change your minds. Question 52, the final question on the College Profile Worksheet, asks students to jot down the residential housing costs for room and board for freshman year. Keep in mind that there might be a range of housing costs, depending on which facility the student wants to live in, on whether a student wants a single room, on what kind of meal plan is taken, etc. Have your son or daughter write down the cost for the same type of living situation at each college so that you all can compare college costs later. 4. The End Well, that’s it. 52 questions! A completed College Profile Worksheet for every college on your kid’s LLCO! Now, you are ready to think about where to apply. It’s a great place to leave you. Marie and I are always ready to answer your individual questions while the podcast is on hiatus for the next couple of semesters. Please email us. Really. I chat with parents in your situation all the time. To make things quicker, let me give you my personal email at Policy Studies in Education, our longtime sponsor. It is paul@policystudies.org. Now, you have no excuses. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode177 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Well, this is where it gets serious. Researching Step 13 will give you and your son or daughter an idea about how likely it is that he or she will be accepted by a college. Of course, no one can say for sure whether your kid’s grades or admission test scores or extracurricular and community service activities or letters of recommendation will be appealing enough to get him or her admitted to a particular college. But several academic hurdles might turn out to be what stands between your kid and one or more colleges on his or her LLCO (that famous Long List of College Options). Your kid will need to use both each college’s website and College Navigator to research this crucial topic and to answer Questions 40 through 49 on admission practices.   Just to remind you, these steps are based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (for further information, get one at Amazon). While we could talk for days about admissions practices and while many consultants and their websites do only that, we will keep it brief for now. Let’s start with one complication in researching this topic, as we explained to students in the workbook: You need to figure out whether the data you are examining are for “admitted” students or for “enrolled freshmen.” These two groups are obviously not the same because many students who are admitted to a college do not actually enroll. Since you are trying to figure out whether you will be admitted, using “admitted” student data, when available, is probably the better choice; however, either set of data will give you an idea of the caliber of the applicants a college accepts. Start by looking up the colleges on your LLCO on College Navigator and going to the Admissions section of the college profile. These data will be for “enrolled first-time students.” Helpful data are presented clearly in this section. Then check each college’s website. Some colleges do a great job of presenting data on admitted students or enrolled freshmen, and others simply do not. Some colleges make it easy by providing a page of facts and figures about the new freshman class--sometimes called a Class Profile (of students who enrolled) or an Admitted Student Profile (of students who were admitted, but did not necessarily enroll). However, it is not always easy to locate this page (though it is often in the Admission section of the website). If you can find the common data set on the website, you will want to look under the third part: C. First-Time, First-Year (Freshman) Admission. Question 40 asks students to check off whether the data they will be using are for admitted students or for enrolled freshmen. In a few cases, it might be both. Remember to try to use comparable data when comparing colleges. For a more detailed discussion about where to find each piece of data we are going to discuss now, check out the workbook. 1. Acceptance Rate Let’s start with a college’s acceptance rate. Here is what we said in the workbook: One way to judge the selectivity of a college is by looking at the number of students it accepts compared to the number of students who applied. Let’s call this “acceptance rate.” You should understand that, generally speaking, colleges like to boast that they have a low acceptance rate; that makes them feel more exclusive. There are many ways for a college to manipulate its acceptance rate, such as by encouraging applicants who are really not qualified and who will be rejected when they apply--a practice that is just as mean-spirited as it sounds. There have even been some news stories, opinion columns, and general criticism lately of colleges that seem overly impressed with their own super-low acceptance rates--say, below 10 percent. Without looking too closely at small differences in acceptance rates (like the difference in selectivity of a college with a 15 percent acceptance rate and a college with an 18 percent acceptance rate), you should know that the higher that acceptance rate is, the better chance you probably have of being admitted. While some well-known top-ranked private colleges have acceptance rates below 20 percent, some well-respected high-ranked private colleges and great public flagship universities have acceptance rates closer to 30 percent. And other excellent public flagship universities have acceptance rates closer to 50 percent. . . . Keep in mind that you will want to have some colleges on your LLCO with acceptance rates around 40 percent or better--just to be safe. Question 41 asks students simply to jot down the percent of applicants admitted to the college. 2. High School Grade Point Average (GPA) And this next topic, high school GPA, comes as no surprise. We wrote: For many, but not all, colleges, you will be able to find the full distribution of high school GPAs and the average high school GPA of the students enrolled in the freshman class by looking [at] the common data set on the college’s website. You also might find it on a Class Profile sheet on the website. . . .  This average high school GPA will be on a 4-point scale. For example, a great college might show an average high school GPA of 3.8, meaning that its enrolled freshmen did extremely well in their high school courses. As Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses have become increasingly popular and as more high schools have started to “weight” students’ grades in those courses (and sometimes in their own honors courses as well), there has been a rise in high school GPAs. . . . One effect of all of this weighting of high school course grades appears to be that average high school GPAs of incoming freshmen are on the rise. We can tell this anecdotally by the fact that many colleges we profiled in our virtual college tour, including some not super-selective ones, post surprisingly high average GPAs well over a 3.5 for the incoming freshman class. Question 42 asks students to jot down the average high school GPA of enrolled freshmen. 3. High School Class Rank Question 43 asks students to jot down whatever information they can find on the distribution of students by class rank. As you may know, class rank is an issue in today’s high schools. Here is an explanation, written for students: For many, but not all, colleges, you will be able to find the full distribution of high school class ranks of the students enrolled in the freshman class by looking [at] the common data set on a college’s website; there you will also find the percent of students who actually submitted a class rank. . . . You also might find class rank information on a Class Profile sheet on the website, where one college we profiled actually publicized the number of enrolled students who were named valedictorian (a #1 class rank) of their graduating class. . . . There have been a number of stories in the education media lately about school districts that do not want to name valedictorians any longer. Why? Because they have found that the competition for that spot sometimes comes down to a thousandth of a point in that GPA we just discussed. Furthermore, they have found that students are so focused on getting that extra-high GPA that they will actually NOT take high school courses they would otherwise have taken in order to broaden their studies--or should take in order to prepare for college--for fear of hurting their GPAs. That is a crying shame. Of course, for many years, some high schools have simply not provided class ranks for a variety of reasons, and it is not a requirement from any government office or governing body that high schools must provide class ranks. Similarly, some colleges will simply say that class ranks are not available for admitted or enrolled freshmen. So, if your kid’s high school provides class ranks, we hope your kid has a high one. But if it does not, maybe that’s just as well these days. 4. Test-Optional or Test-Flexible Colleges Every so often, it seems that we end up talking about test-optional and test-flexible colleges in an episode. There is always something to say because the list of such colleges keeps growing and because increasingly prestigious colleges are being added to it each year. As you probably know by now, a test-optional college means that students do not have to submit SAT or ACT test scores; a test-flexible college means that students are given a choice among various types of test scores to submit. However, we have noticed that many colleges that do not require the submission of SAT or ACT scores receive them, nonetheless, from many applicants. Because those scores are usually quite good, according to the data provided by the college, it is evident that students with good scores do, in fact, supply them even to test-optional colleges. How those scores figure into admissions decisions is anybody’s guess. Here is our advice: If your kid has good SAT or ACT scores, he or she should probably submit them to test-optional colleges, even though they are not required. There are perhaps only a handful of colleges that say that they absolutely do NOT want any test scores sent to them and that they will NOT use them at all for any reason, including well-regarded Hampshire College, which makes a crystal clear statement on its website about this subject. So, Question 44 asks students to check off whether the college is a test-optional or test-flexible college. This information can turn out to be very important for students who do not have good SAT or ACT scores, but it likely won’t matter at all for students who have good ones. 5. SAT and ACT Scores And speaking of those SAT and ACT scores, Question 45 asks students to jot down SAT and ACT scores, by subtest, as provided by a college in a variety of ways. For example, the common data set on college websites provides the following test data: The percent of students who submitted SAT and ACT scores The SAT and ACT scores, by subtest, at the 25th percentile of students and at the 75th percentile of students (in other words, 25 percent of students scored at or below the score at the 25th percentile, and 25 percent of students scored at or above the score at the 75th percentile)   The full distribution of SAT and ACT scores, by subtest If your kid’s scores fall above the 75th percentile of scores for a college’s students, that is good. If your kid’s scores fall right in the middle between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile, that would be just about average for that college’s students. But if your kid’s scores fall close to or below the 25th percentile, that would not be nearly so promising in terms of his or her chances of being admitted. Until further notice, let us assert that SAT and ACT scores do matter. Sometimes all of us wish they didn’t. And while it’s true that, for some colleges, the scores don’t matter nearly so much, it’s also true that having good test scores is always a plus when applying to most colleges. That’s just the way it is. And for some, mostly elite colleges, SAT Subject Tests are still required or are, at least, recommended for admission--sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes certain ones. I imagine that a tough policy on requiring SAT Subject Test scores could mean that a student would not apply to a particular college. On the other hand, if your kid is applying to top-tier colleges, double checking on SAT Subject Test requirements EARLY is critical. Question 47 asks students whether any SAT Subject Tests are either required or recommended for admission and, if so, the specifics about those tests. 6. High School Courses Finally, let’s look at one last admission standard--one that is less often considered and more often taken for granted--and that is the courses that applicants are expected to have taken in high school, usually listed in terms of credits (or Carnegie units) in each subject area, but also sometimes including specific courses, especially in math and science. On a college’s website, this information can virtually always be found by starting with the Admission home page. Students will find that the high school course or credit expectations of colleges do, in fact, differ, usually according to how selective the college is. This is a favorite topic of ours here at USACollegeChat, so I am going to refer you to Episode 162 on this topic, which we did quite recently. It says it all! But just to remind you: The courses that your kid takes in high school matter, including the courses that he or she takes as a senior. Questions 48 and 49 ask students to jot down the number of high school credits/courses that are required by a college and, separately, that are recommended by a college in each subject and, then, to jot down any specific courses that are required or recommended. Well, that’s 10 questions on college admission practices. I think that’s enough. Stay tuned for next week’s finale. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode176 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Well, listeners, the end is in sight. Today is Step 12 out of the 14 steps we want your son or daughter to take this summer to make his or her search for colleges more effective. Just to repeat, these steps are based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (there is one with your name on it waiting at Amazon). Step 12 asks your son or daughter to investigate what the colleges on his or her LLCO (that’s his or her Long List of College Options) have to offer outside of the classroom--extracurricular activities, community service activities, fraternities and sororities, and intercollegiate and intramural sports. These activities that help enrich students’ lives outside of the classroom can make the difference between a great college experience and a just-okay college experience for lots of kids. Tell your son or daughter to go to each college’s website to answer Questions 35 through 39 on activities and sports. 1. Extracurricular Activities Let’s start with extracurricular activities--something that a lot of you will soon know a lot about since you will be facing questions about high school extracurricular activities on college applications. This is what we said to students in the workbook: Many of you participated in extracurricular activities in high school. Some of you did that because you really enjoyed the activities, and some of you did that because you thought it would help you get into a good college. Whatever your reasons were in high school, extracurricular activities in college will increase your network of friends, give you something worthwhile to do in your free time, give your mind a break from academics, and possibly lead to a career or to a hobby that could last a lifetime. College is truly more than academics. When we did our virtual college tour [feel free to review Episode 27 through Episode 53 of USACollegeChat], it was astounding to us just how many activities are available on most college campuses, and it seemed clear that a student could start a club for almost any purpose that interested him or her if such a club did not already exist. It was not uncommon to find that large universities had literally hundreds and hundreds of student activities and clubs--truly, something for everyone. There is everything you had in high school, plus so much more--theater groups, music groups, newspapers, yearbooks, literary magazines, student government organizations, agricultural organizations, engineering associations, honor societies, and so on... Don’t underestimate the importance of activities--either now in high school or later in college. Keep in mind that some college applications ask you to write an essay about your most important high school activity and that many college applications ask you whether you plan to continue with your various activities once you get to college. It’s a good idea to say “yes.” Question 35 on our College Profile Worksheet asks students to jot down how many extracurricular activities each college on their LLCO offers and to list some that they are interested in. 2. Community Service Activities Question 36 on our College Profile Worksheet asks students the same question about community service activities. In the workbook, we wrote this to students (and see the workbook for some great examples): Many of you participated in community service activities in high school. Some of you did that because you really enjoyed the activities, some of you did that because your high school required it, and some of you did that because you thought it would help you get into a good college. Whatever your reasons were in high school, community service activities in college will increase your network of friends, give you something worthwhile to do in your free time, give your mind a break from academics, and possibly lead to a career or to a way of life that could last a lifetime. Again, college is truly more than academics, and what is more important than doing something to help someone else. When we did our virtual college tour, we found quite a few colleges that place a strong emphasis on community service, including some colleges that require it. On most college websites, you will find a section about community outreach or community service. See what the colleges on your LLCO believe and have to offer. Then, think hard about the value of these activities to others and what you can learn yourself. 3. Fraternities and Sororities Let’s move on to fraternities and sororities (and, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a Tridelt in college, as was my mother before me). We wrote this in the workbook: For some students, fraternities and sororities are a big part of their college lives. They act as a social hub, but also typically offer personal support, academic support, community service opportunities, and often great housing options. Many colleges offer a large number of fraternities and sororities (often referred to as “Greek life”), and many offer a smaller number of them. There are also black sororities and fraternities, which have their own substantial history, traditions, and purposes. Depending on the college, fraternities and sororities play a larger or smaller role in the college environment. Some colleges, by the way, do not offer any fraternities and sororities at all. Wanting to join a fraternity or sorority might be one thing that has been passed down to you from your parents. . . . If your parents did not go to college or were not fraternity/sorority members, this is a part of college life that you should investigate before deciding one way or the other. So, Question 37 asks students simply to check off whether the college has fraternities and sororities. 4. Intercollegiate and Intramural Sports And, finally, we come to sports--both intercollegiate and intramural. This is what we said to students: For some students, intercollegiate athletics is the reason to go to college, and an athletic scholarship is paying the full cost of the college experience. If you are in line for such a scholarship, good for you. However, that is certainly not the case for most students. So, what about the rest of you? Well, you can still play on an intercollegiate sports team. Many colleges have 25 or more such teams--some men’s, some women’s, and some coeducational. If you try to research the available teams, you are likely to find yourself redirected to a different website--that is, one specifically for intercollegiate athletics. You will easily find all of the teams, news about them, ticket information, merchandise to purchase, and more. Remember that playing on an intercollegiate sports team is a serious commitment--physically, mentally, and emotionally--and you have to be both talented and hardworking to make most intercollegiate teams. Of course, intercollegiate sports are not just for the players, but also for the fans. Some students want to go to a college that offers the fun of football weekends, basketball fever, ice hockey fanaticism, lacrosse dynasties, and more. Attending soccer and baseball games or swimming and track meets or gymnastics competitions can become an extracurricular activity in itself. And there is nothing wrong with that! If you enjoy sports as a hobby (including as a passionate hobby), then look for the intramural teams and club sports that most colleges offer. The variety of sports available can be amazing, and the number of such teams can surpass the number of intercollegiate teams. Many colleges strongly encourage students to participate in these sports activities for a variety of physical, mental, and emotional health reasons. Intramural teams and clubs are one more way to make new friends on a campus--and stay healthy. So, take a look at Questions 38 and 39, which ask students to jot down the number of intercollegiate sports that the college has, along with any that they are interested in and, then, to do the same for intramural and club sports. Between the activities and the sports, we are determined that your son or daughter is going to be busy and that he or she is going to enjoy the college experience fully. Now, we are just two episodes away from winding up this summer homework. So, as they say on TV, tune in to the series finale in two weeks! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode175 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today is Step 11 out of the 14 steps we want your son or daughter to take this summer to make his or her search for colleges more effective. As you know by now, these steps are based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (get one at Amazon ASAP). Step 11 brings us to the safety of students on campus and the security measures that a college takes to keep its students safe. Parents: Getting information about security measures on campus is one way to help alleviate your concerns about letting your son or daughter go away to college and live on campus. Information can be found on each college’s website and from College Navigator for answering Questions 32, 33, and 34 on our College Profile Worksheet. You will also notice and definitely hear about security measures if you visit a college and take a campus tour. Before we go on, let’s say a word to those of you who plan to have your son or daughter commute to campus from home. Safety is an issue for your family, too. You will still need to pay attention to all of the security measures on campus, but you will also have to worry about the convenience and safety of the commute. As we said last week in our episode on campus housing, what about commuters’ late-night trips home after a meeting on campus or a late class or studying in the library? What about the safety of getting to a remote parking lot to get in the car or the safety of waiting for 20 minutes or more on a subway platform or on an empty street for a public bus? What about commuting in bad weather, especially in snowstorms, when a college campus might close down unexpectedly and public transportation is snarled? Safety issues might be even more important for commuters than for residential students, and the college cannot be responsible for the safety of your kid’s commute once he or she leaves the campus. 1. Security Measures Question 32 asks students to check off the types of security measures offered on campus by each college on their LLCO (that, is, their Long List of College Options). Here’s what we said about security measures in the workbook for students: If you are going to live on campus and you have a chance to visit a campus housing facility, notice whether there is an adult uniformed security guard with a sign-in and sign-out book at the entrance of that residential facility. Ask whether the security guard is there 24 hours a day. We know that many college students find these security guards to be a bit annoying, and we know that this amount of supervision is one reason some students prefer to move into off-campus housing after the freshman year. But, we can also tell you that parents love seeing those security guards at the entrances to residential facilities, and we don’t blame them. Obviously, uniformed guards provide a higher level of security than a reception desk staffed by students who are working part-time jobs or work-study jobs. Some colleges, in fact, do not have anyone at all on duty to monitor the flow of people in and out of residential facilities; students just go in and out with their own keys or cards. Whether you are on a campus tour or reading about a college on a website, look for daytime and nighttime security measures like these: Shuttle buses or vans to take students from one part of campus to another, especially when the campus is big Blue-light call boxes on recognizable stand-alone towers with a blue light on top, which are placed along walkways, in parking lots, or in distant parts of the campus and which let a student in trouble call for help instantly (some are also outfitted with cameras, sirens, and broadcast systems to alert students nearby or to provide more information for the police or security guards) Students who serve as walking escorts from building to building or from buildings to the parking lots after dark. Here are some more questions to research or to observe on a campus visit: Are there security guards at the entrances to all of the classroom buildings, libraries, auditoriums, and sports facilities? Are student IDs needed to get in and out of campus buildings? How do guests and visitors get in and out of campus buildings? Is the campus gated or fenced in or walled in or otherwise closed off? Are there guards at the campus entrances? 2. Crime Statistics Now, instruct your son or daughter to go to College Navigator and look under Campus Security for each college on his or her LLCO. There he or she will find crime statistics for three years, including the number of criminal offenses and reasons for arrests on the campus and, specifically, in the residence halls. Question 33 asks students to jot down any crime statistics that seem noteworthy. 3. News Stories About Safety Issues And, finally, Question 34 asks students to jot down details from any reliable news stories about student safety incidents at the college. As you probably know, there have been plenty of stories in the news recently about safety issues on college campuses. Some of these stories have brought to light incidents of female students being sexually assaulted or harassed by other students. Sometimes it is not clear what degree of responsibility the colleges in these stories have taken or should have taken for the incidents that have been reported. While it is not fair to blame a college for the actions of an individual student, it is fair to look at whether a college has a culture or habit of being unresponsive to students’ claims and complaints, particularly about sexual misconduct. Well, this is not such a pleasant episode, but it is an issue that many parents are already thinking about. Better safe than sorry, as they say. Take the time to look at safety and security seriously and then move forward in the college search. And remember, parents, commuting does not make kids safer. Really. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode174 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Well, we are up to Step 10 out of the 14 steps of your kid’s summer homework. So far, so good. Keep checking our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students for further detail and more examples (it’s still available at Amazon). Step 10 calls for your son or daughter to investigate on-campus housing options, which could make some difference in where to apply and where to enroll if you are planning for him or her to live in college housing. Some students, of course, will be commuting to campus, so these questions might seem less important; however, plans change, so housing is still worth a look--both freshman housing and upperclassman housing. By the way, there are some colleges where the majority of students live in campus housing well past the freshman year, including colleges that actually have a multiple-year housing requirement. What are all those colleges--and their students--thinking? So, send your son or daughter to each college’s website to answer Questions 28 through 31 on this topic. 1. Freshman Housing Requirement Question 28 asks students to check off whether each college on their LLCO (that, is, their Long List of College Options) requires freshmen to live in on-campus housing. Why would there be a freshman housing requirement, you might ask? Here’s what we wrote to students just like your son or daughter: Let us start by saying that we think you should live on campus as a freshman if at all possible, given whatever financial constraints your family has. As a matter of fact, many colleges actually require it--for both good and not-so-good reasons. A really good reason is that living together in campus housing (whether that means traditional dorms or residential “houses” or something else) does promote a kind of camaraderie among students that is hard to develop any other way. Living in close proximity to others in your same situation often provides a system of support and friendship that many kids at college want and need--whether that comes from studying late into the evening/morning together or eating together or walking back and forth to classes together or meeting each other’s friends and just hanging out together. Perhaps a not-so-good reason, though an understandable one from a college’s point of view, is that colleges need to fill those dorm rooms and bring in the revenue that comes from filling them. The importance of living on campus is similar to the importance of going away to college, in our opinion. Both provide you with a way to spread your wings in a relatively safe and protected environment before you are ready to be completely on your own. Living in campus housing requires you to figure out how to eat, study, do laundry, clean up, sleep enough, and manage money--without having to deal with the safety and transportation and utilities issues that come with off-campus housing and without the comparative ease of living at home. So, even if you are going to a college in your hometown or within commuting distance of home, try to live on campus--especially if you can afford it, but even if you need to use scholarship funds or loans to cover it. Why? Because it is an integral part of the college experience--especially if you are attending a college close to home. 2. Types of College Housing If you have visited any colleges so far in your search, you probably already know that not all residential facilities are created equal when it comes to attractiveness, comfort, convenience, supervision, and security. But prospective students should also remember to think about what residential life will be like not only as freshmen, but also as upperclassmen with more and/or different housing options, including apartments nearby, but off campus, and perhaps fraternity and sorority houses. The residential facilities that a college provides are usually well described--even bragged about--on a college’s website, can be seen on virtual campus tours on the website, and can certainly be seen firsthand on a college visit. College tours love to take visiting kids and parents to look at dorms, even when they are of the most ordinary kind. While we don’t think any student should choose a college because of its housing facilities, we do think it is reasonable to put housing in the scale when weighing choices, which might mean taking a college off his or her LLCO if the housing options seem terrible. Your son or daughter might expect to find at least these housing options in his or her research: Traditional college dorms, with long halls of double and single rooms and a huge bathroom shared by everyone on the hall, usually with upperclassmen serving as residential advisors to provide some level of supervision and support for students Apartment-style suites, with several bedrooms and a bathroom--and sometimes with a living area and a kitchen--for four to six or so students, usually with a residential advisor nearby Residential houses, which sponsor both social and academic activities for residents, often have one or two faculty families living with the students, often have their own eating facilities where everyone dines together, and have their own sense of community pride Many colleges have a mix of housing facilities, including off-campus apartment buildings owned and operated by the college. And then there are some colleges that do not offer housing at all--including many two-year community colleges--and that expect students to commute to campus. Questions 29 and 30 ask students to check off the types of housing that a college offers and, then, to jot down any interesting housing information, including any statistics about how many students live in campus housing and how long they stay. 3. Commuting to Campus When Marie and I worked at the high school we co-founded in Brooklyn, most of our students who went on to college ended up commuting to a college in one of the five boroughs of New York City. We understand what commuting is like, and we urge families to think about a few things that are sometimes overlooked. For example, if your son or daughter will be commuting, think about whether he or she would be using public transportation and, if so, how frequently those buses, trains, or subways run during the day and at night--and how late at night, if he or she is staying on campus to do a group project or to study at the library. Think about what traffic and parking would be like if he or she were driving a family car to the campus, including late at night. Think about what the commute would be like in bad weather. And don’t forget the cost of commuting as well--unless the college is within walking distance, of course. Questions 31 asks students to jot down what the commute would be like if that is in your family’s plans. Well, that’s it for housing. We are almost there. Join us next week for Step 11. It’s one that parents won’t want to miss. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode173 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today’s episode is about Step 9 of your kid’s summer homework. All 14 steps are being explained in our series of episodes this summer and have been explained, with more examples and details, in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Workbooks are still available from Amazon if you want one for your son or daughter. Step 9 looks at the components that make up the college schedule. For many colleges, these questions will produce a rather traditional response, something like this: a fall semester and a spring semester, each running about 15 weeks. There will also be a summer term or two, and there might even be a super-short winter term between the regular terms. But there are also innovative scheduling options that your son or daughter has probably never heard of and might find attractive. Tell your kid to go to each college’s website to answer the three questions on this topic.  1. Term Length and Course Length First, let’s talk about the length of academic terms and, therefore, of college courses. They might be more varied than you think. This is what we wrote, in part, to students in the workbook: Some students like to study something over many weeks because that allows them time for calm reflection and for breaks every once in a while. Other students like to study something over a shorter time period because that keeps them better engaged and focused and allows less time for forgetting. Some students can do very well when asked to concentrate on subjects or projects intensively in short bursts, but have trouble sustaining interest and attention over longer time frames. Other students are just the opposite. Whatever your preference is, there is a college for you. You might not want to make college schedule the main reason for choosing a college, but you might find that it contributes to your thinking about how successful and comfortable you might be at a particular college. On the other hand, you might find a college schedule so intriguing that the schedule alone could push a college to the top of your list of options. Many colleges operate on a traditional fall and spring semester system, with each semester’s lasting from 15 to 18 weeks, depending how you count exam and holiday weeks. There are two semesters each year, and you attend both and take the summer off. . . . Some colleges operate on a trimester system (three terms a year) or a quarter system (four terms a year), and each college determines how long the terms run and how many you attend in a year. And then there are colleges that run shorter terms in which students take just three courses at a time instead of the traditional four or five and colleges that run courses of various lengths at the same time in the same semester. Parents: Chances are that college schedules are a lot more varied than you and your son or daughter thought. Questions 25 and 26 ask your kid to jot down how many weeks courses last (keeping in mind that courses might run different lengths of time at a college) and to check off whether each college on the LLCO (that is, your son or daughter’s Long List of College Options) uses semesters, trimesters, quarters, or something else. 2. Innovative Options What might that something else be? Well, for example, Colorado College has a unique Block Plan, where students take all of their courses on a one-at-a-time schedule, with each course about three and a half weeks long and taught typically from 9:00 a.m. to noon each weekday. That schedule is so intriguing to me that I would like to go back to college myself. Innovative scheduling options also come from universities that want to make room for significant cooperative (co-op) work experiences--meaning that students study full time in most terms, but then work full time in one or more terms in order to gain important job experience. (See the workbook for more details.) This is a great option for kids who are career oriented from the get-go and want to make some real money and some real connections in the working world while still in school. Question 27 asks students to jot down any truly innovative scheduling options among the colleges on their LLCO. Well, this was an easy week: three short, but sweet, questions. And I think that these questions could actually make a big difference in a student’s final decision about where to apply and where to enroll, with other aspects of colleges being equal. There is truly something for everyone now in the world of college schedules. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode172 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today’s episode is about Step 8 of your kid’s summer homework. That’s 8 out of 14 steps, all of which are explained in our series of episodes this summer and also, with more examples and details, in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Workbooks are still available from Amazon if you want one for your son or daughter. Step 8 is about the topic that most people think is most critical to choosing a college--that is, academics. Most people would say that it is what college is all about--or, at least, mainly about; or, at least, hopefully mainly about. Our College Profile Worksheet from the workbook has six questions in this section, which can be answered by reviewing each college’s website. 1. Schools and Colleges First, let’s talk about the divisions that make up universities, in case your son or daughter has any on his or her Long List of College Options (that’s LLCO, for short). And, by the way, we hope that there are at least two or three. Here is what we explained to students in the workbook: As you know by now, universities and large institutes (like Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are made up of schools and/or colleges that focus on different disciplines. Some of these institutions are composed of a small number of schools/colleges (say, four or five), but some are composed of quite a large number (as many as 15 or more). Some schools/colleges are only for graduate or professional students, who already have a bachelor’s degree; examples of these are law, medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. Some schools/colleges within a university or institute are only for undergraduate students. And some schools/colleges within a university or institute serve both undergraduate and graduate students. You have to do some careful reading when researching which are which, but you will find all of them listed in the Academics section of a college’s website. By the time you answer this question for five or six institutions, you will see that lots of their colleges/schools have the same name, like Business, Management, Education, Health Care, Social Work, Journalism, Engineering, and Architecture. Some have quite similar names, like various versions of Arts and Sciences for the liberal arts and sciences school that virtually all large institutions have. But some have really novel and interesting names, too. You will need to figure out which school/college you are most interested in applying to because many institutions will not let you apply to more than one school/college within the institution. Think hard about that right now, while you are taking the time to read about all of them. Question 19 asks your kid to jot down the schools/colleges within each institution on his or her LLCO and, then, to check off the ones that serve undergraduate students and double check the one that he or she is most interested in. 2. Academic Departments and Majors Next, your son or daughter will need to go two steps further: first, to look at the academic departments at each institution and, then, to look at possible majors. This is what we said in the workbook: Universities obviously have more departments across all of its schools/colleges than smaller liberal arts colleges have. There is often an alphabetical listing of all of the departments in the Academics section of a college’s website. You can’t possibly write them all down and don’t need to. Just start focusing on the ones that interest you most. Even if you are not sure what you want to study in college, you will need to narrow the field in order to complete most college applications. We know that this will begin to seem like a lot of detail if you are not at all sure what you want to study. Unfortunately, many college applications will ask you to specify a major. Some applications will also ask you to specify a second choice and even a third choice for a major. We say “unfortunately” because we know that many high school students are not ready to make this decision yet. We also know that many college students change their minds after they choose a major--even after a couple of college semesters. All that is to be expected from college freshmen and sophomores. Nonetheless, you are likely to have to make a tentative decision about a major in order to complete at least some of your college applications. So, now is the time to start that research. Getting a head start on thinking about majors will also give you a chance to talk to your high school teachers about your choices. For example, those of you who imagine majoring in biology and going to medical school eventually will notice that large universities have many majors within the Biology Department. If you can’t figure out which exact major(s) would be right for you, you won’t make a convincing case for yourself in your application. Question 20 asks your kid to jot down at least several academic departments that he or she is interested in, and Question 21 asks him or her to jot down at least several majors that he or she is interested in. 3. Core Curriculum Now, let’s dig a little deeper into what, if any, core curriculum each institution offers. This is what we wrote: For the purpose of this discussion, we will refer to this centuries-old curriculum concept as a “core curriculum,” though you might hear it referred to as a “general education curriculum” or as “distribution requirements.” What it means is that all students in a college or in a specific college/school within a larger university or institute are usually required to take one or two courses in each of a broad range of academic disciplines, such as mathematics, or in each of a broad range of groups of disciplines, such as natural sciences, languages and literature, social sciences, and so on. Each college seems to have its own unique way of defining core requirements, and some definitions are more understandable than others. Some colleges have quite strict requirements, meaning that there are many different requirements that have to be met, which might add up to 10 or more courses before it’s all over. Some colleges have far fewer requirements for either the number of courses or the exact courses that have to be taken. And some colleges have no core curriculum at all. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the purpose of a core curriculum. The concept comes from the liberal arts tradition, where students are supposed to be well rounded in their studies and in their understanding of the intellectual content and issues raised in many fields. People in favor of this tradition would say that students do not know exactly where their careers and lives will take them and that the ability to solve problems and think critically across a range of academic subjects could make a difference in how well they succeed in their careers (likely in their multiple careers) and indeed in their lives. It is no surprise that many liberal arts colleges as well as the arts and sciences college/school within many large institutions would require and proudly support a core curriculum for its students. . . . Another advantage of a core curriculum is that it causes students to look into academic fields that are rarely taught in high schools--like anthropology or sociology or art history or linguistics. Without require­ments in a variety of academic fields or groups of fields, many students would never take a look at some of these fields and would never know what they had missed. Now, let’s talk about those colleges that go one step further and require certain courses of all students--the actual courses, not just a number of courses in certain academic fields. . . . When a college decides to require specific courses, it is because its professors feel that those courses are most critical to developing the foundation for more advanced college study and/or to developing a broad understanding of and ability to engage in the modern world. . . . In our virtual college tour, we often talked about the core curriculum requirements of a college. We did that for two reasons. First, we were truly impressed with some of them, even though we could tell that they would be quite challenging for students. Second, we knew that some students would love the idea of a core curriculum, while other students would hate it. Question 22 asks students to check off whether each college on their LLCO has a core curriculum and, if so, to jot down the exact requirements listed on the website. 4. Study Abroad Options  And now, one of my favorite topics and one that I feel quite strongly about! We wrote this to students: When you were making your LLCO, we suggested that you put one college outside the U.S. on your list. We were serious about that. By the way, you are likely to find that the college you picked is actually cheaper to attend than a private college here in the U.S., and you will see that many colleges offer degree programs taught in English. But, for those of you who don’t want to go to a college for four years in another country, take a close look at the study abroad options available at each college on your LLCO. These days, many colleges have fantastic study abroad programs, which make it logistically easy for you to study outside the U.S. These programs are already carefully set up, and they offer housing and other support while you are there. Some colleges have their own campuses in foreign countries, while others partner with a foreign university. Some colleges strongly encourage their students to take a semester abroad. And a few colleges even require their students to study abroad. [See the workbook for examples.] For future reference, if a college you love doesn’t have its own study abroad program, don’t forget about what the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS) has to offer. Based in Stamford, Connecticut, AIFS operates a wide range of outstanding summer, semester-long, and year-long programs in over 20 countries on five continents. . . . All of our firsthand experiences with AIFS have been fantastic. Question 23 on the College Profile Worksheet asks students to jot down the study abroad options that the college offers--both locations and programs, including any important details. 5. Grading Practices And, finally, here is something we didn’t start thinking about ourselves till more recently, and I regret that. Here is what the workbook says: We bet that grading practices are not something most students consider before choosing a college--perhaps because they assume that colleges are quite traditional when it comes to awarding final course grades. Most colleges do, in fact, use some kind of numerical scale (typically, with a 4.0 as an A) or letter scale (typically, from A though F). These traditional grading practices might seem just fine to you. However, there are some colleges that are anything but traditional when it comes to evaluating student progress. For example, take Hampshire College (an excellent and innovative private college in Amherst, Massachusetts), where students receive written narrative evaluations from professors on their assignments and as their final course grades. No numbers and no letters. . . . Colleges that use narrative evaluations instead of traditional grades praise their value in teaching their students more about their own strengths and weaknesses, in getting their students to focus on their learning instead of on their grades, and in building better and more stimulating relationships between their students and their professors. Who knew this was an option? Question 24 asks students to check off whether the college has a traditional grading system and, if not, to jot down the way that student work is evaluated instead. Well, that brings us to the end of six critical questions about what your kid’s academic life might be at college. And what could be more important than that? Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode171 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Well, we are up to Step 7 of your kid’s summer homework, and we are officially halfway there. All 14 steps (7 down, 7 more to go) are explained in our episodes this summer and also at greater length with more examples and details in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Remember to order a workbook from Amazon for your son or daughter if you want more explanation and the actual worksheets. Step 7 asks your son or daughter to consider class size as one indication of what his or her academic experience would be like at each college on the LLCO. In other words, we want students to think about how undergraduate enrollment is distributed into the actual classrooms and seminar rooms and labs that they will be sitting in on campus and how that might affect their relationships with their professors. The College Profile Worksheet has just two questions in this section. You will need to use both College Navigator and each college’s website to find the answers to Questions 17 and 18 on class size.  1. Student-to-Faculty Ratio First, let’s talk about student-to-faculty ratio, as we explained to students in the workbook: You should look to College Navigator to find the student-to-faculty ratio for each college--in other words, how many students are there for each faculty member. This is a statistic that we mentioned frequently during our virtual college tour [in Episodes 27 through 53, way back in the early days of USACollegeChat], and we know that it is one that many colleges themselves are very proud of. That’s why it is often included in advertising claims about a college. While you can usually find this statistic on a college’s own website--typically on the Quick Facts or At a Glance or similar page--you can also spend lots of time looking for this statistic and NOT finding it on the website. Trust us on that! So, it’s quicker to use College Navigator, which presents a college’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio on the last line of the opening section of each college’s profile. Question 17 asks your son or daughter to jot down the student-to-faculty ratio of each college on his or her LLCO. But why? Because . . . Most people believe that a student’s education is improved if he or she has more access to faculty members--in smaller classes, during less crowded office hours, and through a variety of activities, such as mentorships, special lectures, and so on. Most people believe that faculty members can and will give each student enough time and attention if they are not spread too thin over too many students. Hence, a student-to-faculty ratio should be as low as possible, ideally in single digits or low double digits--like 10-to-1, or 10 students to each faculty member. We actually don’t have any evidence that this is true, though it certainly seems to be logical. We also don’t know how valuable a low student-to-faculty ratio is for students who are not particularly looking for this kind of personal relationship with faculty members. Many students attend large universities, have relatively little one-to-one contact with their professors, and still get an excellent education. As a matter of fact, some students actually prefer that. Nonetheless, if you think that you would benefit from a closer, perhaps more nurturing connection to your professors, then checking out the student-to-faculty ratio makes sense. Or, if your parents would feel better knowing that there is a greater chance that a faculty member knows you and is looking out for you, then searching out that low student-to-faculty ratio is important. Generally speaking, student-to-faculty ratios are lower at small private colleges than at large public universities, which is not surprising. Small private colleges advertise the college culture that comes with a low ratio as one of the reasons to choose a small private college instead of a large public university. . . . When you see a very selective private university with a student-to-faculty ratio that makes it look more like a small private college, you have to be impressed. . . . The bottom line is this: Don’t think much about the difference between a student-to-faculty ratio of, say, 9-to-1 and 10-to-1 or even 11-to-1. Instead, consider that there might be a difference in faculty accessibility between a college with a student-to-faculty ratio of 9-to-1 and one with a ratio of 18-to-1. 2. Class Size Next, Question 18 asks your son or daughter to jot down any information and advertising claims made about class size for each college on his or her LLCO. Here is what we said to students in the workbook: Class size is exactly what you think it is--how many students are in the classroom with you when you are trying to learn calculus or French literature or whatever you are taking. Some colleges are very proud of their small class sizes. Other colleges that think they don’t have very much to be proud of regarding class size do the best they can to make a good case for their own class sizes. You can find this information on many, many college websites, though you might have to look around a bit. Happy hunting! Or you can search for the common data set on college websites and check out a display of class section sizes under I. Instructional Faculty and Class Size (by the way, you will also find student-to-faculty ratios here). . . . But, class size is a matter of personal choice--at least it is once you get into college and take a variety of courses so you know what you are talking about. Some students prefer large classes, like a huge lecture by a brilliant professor. Other students prefer small seminars where students get to express their own opinions and talk back and forth with each other and with the professor. Our honest opinion is that you can’t possibly know right now which of these you would prefer. Why? Because you, like most high school students, have never experienced huge lectures by brilliant professors. Are we right? Well, that’s Questions 17 and 18 taken care of. It was an easy week. But there are 34 questions left and next week’s topic is one of the biggest. So, rest up! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode170 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today we are going to talk about Step 6 of your kid’s summer homework, as explained in our episodes throughout the summer and also more elaborately in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  So, order a workbook from Amazon for your son or daughter if you want the longer version and the actual worksheets. We are up to Questions 8 through 16 on the College Profile Worksheet this week as your kid answers nine questions about student enrollment at each college on his or her Long List of College Options (or LLCO, for short).  The questions are about how many students are enrolled and what their personal characteristics are. By the way, it occurs to me that your kid could be following along with us and doing the “questions of the week” for each college on the LLCO, but that means that he or she is going back to each college website or College Navigator profile every week as new questions are posed.  That seems a bit inefficient.  On the other hand, when your son or daughter gets accustomed to finding information on a college website or on College Navigator about a certain topic, it might turn out to be efficient to find that information in a similar place on each website or in each College Navigator profile--thus, making the whole process not really so inefficient as it seems.  Of course, you could advise your kid to do some of each:  Go along with us each week for a handful of colleges to make sure it is clear what to do and then, at the end of the summer, go back and finish up the other colleges by doing all of the questions for one college at a time with only one trip to the website and College Navigator profile.  That’s your family’s call. With that said, although today’s Questions 8 through 16 on the College Profile Worksheet can be answered from a college’s website (especially by looking at the common data set), we think that it is actually easier to get most of the answers by using a college’s profile at College Navigator.  You might think that enrollment is just a matter of a number or two, but you are going to see that there’s a lot more to think about here. 1. Number of Undergraduate Students Let’s start with the obvious:  number of undergraduate students.  This is what we explained to kids (though the workbook provides additional detail about exactly where to find the right numbers): Here is one very important thing to remember when you are jotting down undergraduate enrollment for each of the colleges on your LLCO:  Be consistent about what statistic you use.  For example, some colleges include part-time and full-time students in their enrollment count; others separate them.  Sometimes, it is hard to know what students are included.  Ideally, you should use numbers that mean the same thing from college to college so that you can compare the sizes of the undergraduate student body as accurately as possible. Our vote for where to find that undergraduate enrollment number is College Navigator.  After you search for your college, you will see many categories of data that are available.  Click on Enrollment.  You will refer to this category a lot as you fill out this section of the College Profile Worksheet. Under Enrollment, you will notice that the figures are probably for the fall of the preceding school year.  Those figures are fine to use, because most colleges do not have huge enrollment changes from year to year.  Question 8 asks students to jot down the undergraduate enrollment of the college.  That’s the easy part.  Here is what we said about my personal pet peeve in judging the size of that undergraduate enrollment: Eventually, you will have to consider whether the size of the undergraduate student body matters to you.  We think that this issue is given too much weight by many high school students and their parents.  We often hear kids say things like this:  “I think I would like to go to a small school.  The University of (fill in the blank) seems too big to me.”  Of course, a big university might seem overwhelming to a high school senior.  But perhaps that is because most high school seniors have spent no time at all in a large university setting.  We believe that most high school seniors have no rational basis for making a valid judgment about student body size.  And, although it is tempting, we don’t think you can judge the size of a college based on the size of your high school.  If you are coming from a small public high school or a small private school, we understand that you might feel that you would get lost in the shuffle of a large university.  We understand that, for you right now, a large academic setting might be outside your 17-year-old comfort zone.  But that is no reason to assume that you would not do well in that larger academic setting, given half a chance a year from now. Not a year goes by that I don’t hear remarks like that from students I am counseling individually; and, most of the time, they admit their short-sightedness after I talk them through the argument in the workbook.  So, parents, do the same for your kid.  By the way, parents, sometimes you are the biggest offenders here by imposing your own prejudices about size on your kids.  2. Breakdown by Enrollment Status and Demographics Often, however, you will find that the types of students at a college are more important the number of them.  Let’s look at a few categories of student enrollment.  These figures are provided in various ways in the College Navigator college profiles in the Enrollment category, including in very-easy-to-understand color-coded pie graphs/pie charts/circle graphs (the workbook tells your kid exactly how to identify which figures to use and offers examples of colleges with various patterns of enrollment). Here are the breakdowns we suggest that your son or daughter and you consider: Question 9:  The breakdown of undergraduate students by full-time vs. part-time attendance Some colleges--especially prestigious private four-year colleges--have relatively few part-time students compared to, say, large public universities with many schools and many diverse programs. . . . Part-time students are not worse students; however, part-time students do likely lead fuller, more complicated, more off-campus lives than traditional freshmen enrolling right out of high school, especially if those freshmen are living on campus.  As a result, colleges with high part-time enrollment might have a bit of a different feel on campus compared to colleges where almost all of the students are there full time (and, especially, where many of them are living on campus in residential housing).  It’s something to consider. Question 10:  The breakdown of undergraduate students by gender and any other gender identity information or policies found on the college website or in discussion with the Admission Office Unless you have been talking about going to a single-sex college, this statistic might not even be on your radar screen.  Nonetheless, it might be something worth thinking about. If you look at the enrollment statistics for many colleges, you will notice that some are split pretty evenly between male and female students (say, 46 percent vs. 54 percent), while others are way out of balance (say, 30 percent vs. 70 percent).  Sometimes colleges that are out of balance can be explained by their history (for example, they were once women’s colleges) or by the types of majors they are best known for (given that some majors, unfortunately, continue to attract more students of one gender). . .  We should note here that we have not yet seen data reported and presented across colleges on enrollment of students with gender identities other than male and female.  However, if you are looking for a college that is particularly accepting of more diverse gender identities, that is a topic that can and should be pursued by looking further on the college’s website and by calling the Admission Office and asking about relevant data and policies.   Question 11:  The breakdown of undergraduate students by race/ethnicity Unless you have been talking about going to an HBCU or about seeking out an HSI, you might not have been thinking hard about the racial or ethnic background of students at the colleges on your LLCO.  But it might be something worth considering, depending on your comfort level with members of other racial and ethnic groups in an education setting.  For example, if you attend a racially and ethnically mixed high school, you would likely feel comfortable in a similar sort of college population.  However, if you attend a high school that is not racially and ethnically diverse, it might be even more important to find a college that is--in order to prepare yourself better for the world of work and for life. We have talked about the racial and ethnic diversity of colleges in our podcast episodes, and we noted that some colleges are not nearly as diverse as we would have guessed they were.  For example, we looked at a geographically diverse sample of nine large and small public flagships, some highly selective and others less selective.  The percentage of black students ranged from just 2 percent to 15 percent.  The Hispanic/Latino numbers ranged from just 3 percent to 10 percent.  On the other hand, we know quite a few very selective private colleges and universities where the percentages of black and Hispanic/Latino students exceed these public university numbers.  That is worth thinking about--whether you are black or Hispanic/Latino yourself or whether you simply want to attend a college with a diverse student population. Question 12:  The breakdown of undergraduate students by student residence and any other interesting facts on the college website about where its students come from It is useful, we think, to see just how many undergraduate students at a college are from the state where that college is located.  Generally, we believe it is better to go to a college where you will meet students from all over--all over the U.S., but also from all over the world.  Living and working with students of many national backgrounds in a relatively safe and protected environment, like a college, is one way for you to gain the interpersonal skills you will need for a lifetime.  As we have said before, almost all colleges like the idea of having students from all over the country and, indeed, from all over the world.  Many, many colleges proudly say on their websites how many states and how many foreign countries their students come from.  While public universities have a duty to serve the students of their own state, even they like to draw students from other states and other countries.  And remember that you might get into a college far away from home that your grades and test scores and activities could not get you into close to home--because, for that faraway college, you bring desirable geographic diversity.  Think about that.  In case you are wondering, a college’s own website will often break down enrollment even further than College Navigator to give you additional facts, like the five states sending the most undergraduate students or the most new freshmen or the percent of students who come from neighboring states or who come from the region the college is located in.  All of that might be food for thought as you review colleges on your LLCO.  Question 13:  Any interesting information about support services targeted for particular groups of students, especially if you are a member of that group While support services--like academic advising, personal counseling, and employment assistance--can be useful to any undergraduate student, these support services are often particularly important to groups of students who might find it more difficult to adjust to college life, either socially or academically, especially when they find themselves in the minority of students on a college campus.  If you identify with students of color, first-generation-to-college students, LGBTQ students, students with learning disabilities, or another group, you should take a look at whether each college on your LLCO has support services targeted for you. . . . Why?  Because successful support services can make all the difference between dropping out and graduating. Question 14:  The retention rate for full-time students who returned to the college for a second year Retention rate tells you what percent of freshmen come back to the college the next year as sophomores.  In other words, it tells you how well the college keeps its students coming back for more.  There are many reasons that kids leave college between their first and second years, and some of those reasons are certainly beyond a college’s control.  Nonetheless, you probably want to be looking for colleges with a high retention rate--at least 80 percent or better.  Many top-ranked colleges will post a retention rate above 90 percent. Question 15:  The 4-year and 6-year graduation rates for students pursuing bachelor’s degrees Graduation rate is exactly what you think--the percent of students who actually graduated from the college.  But there is a lot more detail available in College Navigator than you will ever need to know.  Obviously, we all hope that you will get out of college four years after you start, even though many students don’t do that anymore.  We hope that, and you probably hope that.  But your parents really hope that.  Not getting out in four years will run up your college costs even higher than they are already going to be.  You need to stay focused and get out of college in four years.  The higher the 4-year graduation rates are, the better.  Rates over 80 percent are good, though they might be lower in big universities, especially public ones.  So, judge accordingly. Question 16:  The graduate enrollment of the college  Whether a college (or, more often, a university) has graduate students at all is an important aspect of choosing a college for some students.  Some students and parents like the idea of advanced scholarship being available on campus and of professional schools (like law and medicine and journalism) being right there--either to add prestige generally or to serve as motivation or even the next stop for a successful undergrad.  On the other hand, some parents and even some college professors think that graduate students distract a college from paying adequate attention to the needs and education of the undergraduates; they also feel that too many graduate students (rather than college professors) end up teaching the freshman-level courses in too many disciplines.  Well, Questions 8 through 16 are a lot to think about.  It was a big week.  If you haven’t done that much thinking for each college on your LLCO, you aren’t ready to decide where to apply.  But don’t worry.  There are 36 questions still to go!  Plenty of time to think… Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode169 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today we are going to talk about Step 5 of your kid’s summer homework.  If you have forgotten, this summer homework is based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  Get one from Amazon for your son or daughter before they are all gone! In the last episode, we asked your kid to do some research about the history and mission of each college on his or her Long List of College Options (or LLCO, for short) and to answer the first four questions on our College Profile Worksheet.  Well, there are only 48 questions to go, so let’s knock a few off in this week’s episode.  1. College Location and Type of Community  All three of today’s questions on the College Profile Worksheet can be answered easily by looking at a college’s website.  The first one, Question 5, is really simple:  It’s the location (that is, the city/town and state) where the college is located.  I am just going to say that your son or daughter should have already known this, but maybe didn’t.  We have actually worked with kids who were convinced they wanted to go to a certain college and yet had no idea where it was located.  I mean, they knew might have known the state, but had no idea what the town was.  That’s really not okay. And, that brings us directly to the next question, which we wrote about this way: The type of community a college is located in might be very important to you and your parents, but for very different reasons.  Some students can’t wait to get away from the type of community they grew up in, while others can’t imagine being comfortable in a new physical and cultural environment.  You need to know the community setting for each college on your LLCO so that you can decide whether the setting makes a difference to you.  How will you think about that decision? . . . Are cities great?  They are.  Urban centers offer a general sense of excitement, along with many cultural opportunities (museums and theaters and concert halls and so on).  They have ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity, which is a plus for many families.  Many cities also have good public transportation, which is a plus for college students who don’t have their own cars.  Finally, many cities have more than one college (and some have a lot more than one college), which gives students an opportunity to meet all kinds of students and make all kinds of friends.  But are the suburbs great?  They are, in a different way.  Suburbs are relatively safe, for one thing, making them a good choice in the minds of lots of students (and lots of parents).  They are also likely to be cheaper in terms of everyday living expenses, including movies, drug store items, groceries, and off-campus meals.  They also might offer convenient commuter transportation options for getting into a nearby city, so that you can have the best of both worlds. But are rural communities great?  They are, again in a different way.  Similar to suburbs, they are likely to be safe and low cost, when it comes to everyday spending.  But, maybe more important for the students who are attracted to rural colleges, many rural communities offer a scenic and unspoiled environment, which lends itself to loads of outdoor sports and recreation, like hiking and biking.  But are small towns great?  They are, too, in a still different way.  Small towns are not really rural themselves, though they might be set in a rural area.  They are not really suburban themselves, because they are not right outside a bigger city.  And they are certainly not urban in terms of size, though they might have a substantial downtown, with cultural and social activities readily available.  But, whatever they are, small towns are the locations of many of our nation’s colleges.  Many of these small towns are “great college towns,” according to the students who go there and, interestingly enough, according to the people who live there. Question 6 asks students to check off the type of community the college is located in.  2. What About the Community? The final question in this step looks at what we call “cool stuff about the community.”  Here is what we mean:  We can’t tell you exactly what to look for here, but you will know it when you see it.  In fact, as you do your research, you will see that some college websites have whole sections devoted to talking about the community that surrounds the college.  For example, colleges in beautiful rural settings often talk about the nature walks, biking paths, hiking trails, waterfalls, lakes, forests, and so on that the college’s students have easy access to.  Some colleges boast about their ranking on one list or another, like “the best college towns in America” or “the most affordable college towns,” published by various magazines and college-oriented publications.  Are there great college towns?  There are, but do you care?  While none of this matters to some students and their families, others find the attributes of the community to be decisive.  And what appeals to one family does not appeal to another family at all.  Just talk to kids who are dying to be in the excitement of New York City and others who can’t wait to be in the splendor of Boulder, Colorado.  While we don’t recommend choosing a college based on its surrounding community, some communities will likely be more attractive to your son or daughter and to you than others.  So, it doesn’t hurt to have the information available when deciding where to apply.  Question 7 asks your kid to jot down information and advertising claims about the college’s community and surrounding area, including natural beauty, historic sites, entertainment venues, restaurants, recreation opportunities, and so on.  Really, whatever interests your kid--just in case it turns out to make a difference. Well, that’s seven questions down on the College Profile Worksheet--and just 45 to go.  This was an easy week.  Call it an early Fourth of July celebration!  Next week might be a bit more difficult.  Stay tuned! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode168 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today we are going to talk about the Step 4 of your kid’s summer homework. Regular listeners know that this summer homework is based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. It’s not too late to get one from Amazon for your son or daughter. In the last two episodes, you and your kid have been getting ready to start the real work. You have hopefully completed Step 1 by creating the all-important Long List of College Options (or LLCO, as we like to call it). And you have hopefully completed Step 2 by reviewing our College Profile Worksheet and Step 3 by browsing both a variety of college websites and College Navigator, the excellent online tool provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. So, here we go with Step 4: Research the College’s History and Mission. From now on, your son or daughter (and/or you) will need to answer every one of our questions about every college on the LLCO. So, get a copy of the College Profile Worksheet out of the workbook, or make your own. Just remember there are 52 questions in all! Yes, we know that sounds like a lot of questions. But is that too much to know about a place where your kid will be spending four years? 1. College History This is what we wrote to high school students about our very first category of questions about a college’s history and mission:  We believe that lots of students are proud of the beginnings and traditions of the college they choose to attend. In fact, some students choose a college because of its history and its traditions. By the way, don’t forget that the reasons why a college is public or private are part of a college’s history and mission. This category might mean more to you than you expect. As you complete Step 4 by researching each college on your LLCO on its website, you will see that some colleges started out as private colleges and became public for lots of interesting reasons. Some colleges started out as single-sex colleges, serving only men or only women, and became coeducational colleges for lots of interesting reasons. Some colleges started out as faith-based colleges and became less so for lots of interesting reasons. And some colleges just have truly remarkable stories--including, for example, the many HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) that have taken a longtime stand on behalf of the rights of African-American students to a college education.   There is lots for you to learn in this category. Our loyal listeners all know that college histories are one of my favorite topics. I find them fascinating. When we were writing the workbook, Marie kept making me cut down the number of histories I wanted to present as examples of how rich and varied college histories are. I was allowed to include only 9. I could have written 99. At this moment, I would like to read you all 9, but I know Marie will think that is excessive. So I am settling for reading you just 4 (please, go read the others): When the University of Iowa started holding classes in 1855, 41 of its 124 students were women—one-third of the student body. UI was the first public university to award a law degree to an African American (in 1870) and to a woman (in 1873). And it was the first public university to allow an African-American athlete to play on a varsity team (in 1895). UI was also the first university to create a department of education, which became the birthplace of a number of famous standardized tests, including the ACT. The public University of Delaware was founded in 1743 (in Pennsylvania!) as a private academy to educate ministers and was moved to Delaware in 1765. Its first class boasted three students who went on to sign the Declaration of Independence, one of whom also signed the U.S. Constitution. UD’s colors of blue and gold were taken from the Delaware State flag, which got them from the colors of George Washington’s uniform. They also represent the colors of the flag of Delaware’s first Swedish colonists. In 1749, Benjamin Franklin formed the Academy and Charitable School that became the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin served as its president and then as a trustee until 1790. His goal, considered radical for the times, was to offer something like a modern liberal arts curriculum to train students for business, government, and public service rather than for the ministry. The first medical school in the colonies was established at Penn in 1765. The now-renowned Jubilee Singers of Fisk University left their almost-bankrupt campus in 1871 to try to raise enough money to keep their HBCU open by embarking on a tour that introduced the world to traditional spirituals. They succeeded. Decades later, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, the intellectual architect of the Harlem Renaissance, became a professor at Fisk and later its first African-American president in 1946. He eventually brought to Fisk a number of Harlem Renaissance stars, like Aaron Douglas, James Weldon Johnson, and Arna Bontemps. I know that one reason I chose the college I did for my undergraduate studies was because of its history as the only Ivy League school that was coeducational from its founding. That was important to me and to my father, who had graduated from an Ivy School that did not have a similar history. Sometimes history--even if it happened a couple of hundred years ago--can make a difference. Will it make a difference to your kid? Question 1 on the College Profile Worksheet asks your kid to jot down a brief history of the college, as told on the college’s website.  2. Claims About the College And here’s what Question 2 is about, as we wrote to high school students in the workbook: You might have noticed some “firsts” in the website’s explanation of the college’s history (e.g., the first public university in the South, the first college to award a bachelor’s degree to a woman, etc.), but there might be another section of the website devoted to “firsts” and to other claims about how great the college is. It is always useful to read these and to consider how persuaded you are that these claims make a college great. Personally, we are swept away sometimes by how impressive a college is, and sometimes we are not very impressed at all. It is worthwhile, though, to see how good a story a college can tell about itself when it tries really hard to do so. One feature of many of these brag lists is how highly ranked, nationally and even internationally, various academic departments are (e.g., the ninth-best electrical engineering department in the U.S., in the top 20 departments of political science nationwide, etc.). You might not find these claims too interesting--unless you want to major in a department that is highly ranked. . . . And what about the rankings of colleges that are done by various well-known organizations and popular publications? If a college gets a high ranking on one list or another, it will usually publicize that ranking on its website. When looking at such rankings, remember that different ranking systems base their rankings on different factors--some of which might be of no interest at all to you. So look at rankings if you wish (because it is actually rather hard to ignore them), but keep in mind that college rankings won’t tell you how you will fit into that campus—academically or socially. And it’s that “fit” that will determine just how happy you will be. Will any of these claims make a difference to your kid? Or to you? Question 2 on the College Profile Worksheet asks your kid to jot down any “firsts,” any top-ranked departments, etc., as publicized on the college’s website. 3. Type of College For many parents, the type of college--that is, public, private nonprofit, a public/private mix in a large university, or private for-profit--will make all the difference. (Often, that is because of the perceived difference in the price tag of a degree from a public and a private college.) The workbook fully explains these different types of colleges in case your kid does not know the difference--as, we find, is often the case for many high schoolers. One of the most important types of colleges for kids to understand is the public flagship university (a subset of public colleges) and one of the most interesting is the public/private mix. Here is what we wrote about those two types: Public colleges are paid for, in part, by state and local governments—that means, by taxes. For this reason, they are understandably operated primarily for the benefit of their own residents. As a result, public colleges have reasonably low tuition for state and local residents, but nonresidents have to pay more. . . . Each state has a public flagship university. . . . Public flagship universities are not equally good or equally respected; some are much more attractive than others--both to students in their own states and to out-of-state students. Just to make it more complicated, the public flagship university in some states is actually a university “system,” with a main campus (referred to as the flagship campus) plus regional campuses throughout the state. . . . In those cases, the flagship campus is typically the most prestigious.  Some states have more than one public system. . . .When a state has more than one public system, make sure you understand which public system the college on your LLCO is part of. Pay attention to how selective and how widely respected that particular system is. Public-private partnerships are rare, but here is a great example. On its Ithaca campus in upstate New York, Cornell University offers a variety of schools/colleges to choose from at the undergraduate level--some private, some public. The private ones are the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; the College of Arts and Sciences; the College of Engineering; and the School of Hotel Administration (which is now part of a newly formed College of Business). The public ones were established by an Act of the New York State Legislature and are funded, in part, by State money: the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Human Ecology, and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. A New York State resident attending any of the public ones would get an Ivy League education at a far more reasonable public price.  Is one or another type of college “best” for your kid--in his or her eyes or in yours? By the way, don’t forget something we find we have to remind people a lot: The fact is that some private colleges are indeed better than some public colleges; but, another fact is that some public colleges are indeed better than many private colleges. Question 3 on the College Profile Worksheet asks your kid to check off the type of college for each option on the LLCO--in case that is going to make a difference to either one of you. 4. Special Mission of College By the time your son or daughter has finished reading and jotting down the history of each college on the LLCO, you all will know whether each college was founded with any special mission and whether that mission continues today. In the workbook, we discussed four missions that have been and still are relatively common among U.S. colleges (feel free to read more about all of them in the workbook): Faith-based colleges and universities, including Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish institutions, with varying degrees of emphasis on religious life and study HBCUs, originally established with the mission of educating African-American students, but today serving many more students in just over 100 institutions--public and private, large and small, faith-based and not, two-year and four-year and graduate HSIs--that is, over 250 Hispanic-Serving Institutions--which have been designated as such in just the past 50 years as a result of having a student enrollment that is at least 25 percent Hispanic Single-sex colleges and universities, which are private institutions enrolling only women or only men (now, just over 40 women’s colleges in the U.S., but only a handful of men’s colleges)--including Marie’s alma mater, Barnard College, of course There are lots of great colleges with special missions, as your kid will learn when answering Question 4 on the College Profile Worksheet.  Well, these were just the first four questions--the first four things you and your kid should know about a college before deciding whether to apply. There are 48 more things! So, get your son or daughter How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students or make sure you don’t miss any episodes over the next two months. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode167 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina  

Today we are going to talk about Steps 2 and 3 of your kid’s summer homework. If you haven’t gotten our workbook for your son or daughter, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, then you haven’t done your summer homework. So, get one from Amazon, or listen very carefully to this episode and the next 11 like it. In the last episode, you and your kid hopefully completed Step 1 of your summer homework by creating the all-important Long List of College Options (or LLCO, as we like to call it). And it should be long--perhaps 20 to 25 colleges, all of which your kid will start researching seriously very soon. You might think you already know a lot about some of the colleges on the list. In fact, you might have visited some of the colleges on the list. But I bet neither you nor your soon-to-be senior can answer all of the questions we have in mind. 1. Step 2: Reviewing the College Profile Worksheet So, here’s the work in Step 2. It is really quite easy. We simply want your kid to preview the research he or she will start conducting soon in order to be mentally set for the task ahead. We created what we are calling the College Profile Worksheet in order to help your kid gather the information you both need in order to move forward in the college search process. This is what we said in the workbook about our 11-page--yes, 11-page--College Profile Worksheet:  The worksheet is going to look long to you. But this is an important decision you are about to make. In fact, we would argue that deciding where to APPLY is just as important as deciding where to ENROLL--maybe more important. After all, if you don’t apply to a college, you can’t possibly enroll there. This is the decision that sets all of the others in motion.  The College Profile Worksheet calls for you to make a lot of notes about colleges you are interested in. Why write all of this information down, you might be asking? Because you can’t remember it. Believe us, after you research about four colleges, you will not be able to remember which college had the great bike paths and which college had the required math courses. You need a convenient way to recall each college--without having to go back to the website and look up the information again.  We learned this the hard way. When we were profiling colleges for our virtual college tour, we went back and forth to the same college website far too many times before realizing that we should have just jotted everything down the first time. We actually made a crude version of the worksheet for ourselves, and we have now improved it and put it into this workbook for you. The College Profile Worksheet will save you lots of time in the long run.  Here are the categories of information you will be researching about each college on your LLCO: History and Mission Location Enrollment Class Size Academics Schedule Housing Security Measures Activities and Sports Admission Practices Cost You will see that the College Profile Worksheet asks you several questions in each category. Answering those questions will give you a good understanding of many important features of each college on your LLCO. As a result, you should be able to decide more efficiently and more accurately whether each college is a good match for you. This might sound like a lot of work to you, and we know that it is going to sound like a lot of work to your son or daughter. But we insist that he or she should not be making a decision about attending a college--or even applying to a college--if you all know any less about it. We guarantee that the 52 questions on our College Profile Worksheet and the 52 answers your kid will discover while doing the research will give both of you a better picture of colleges in the U.S. than most educated adults have. How can that be a bad thing? 2. Step 3: Reviewing College Websites and Other Sources And now, here’s the work in Step 3: figuring out where your son or daughter is going to get the information to answer our 52 questions. It is not as hard as you might think, but sometimes it is a lot harder than it should be (are you listening, colleges, because that it your fault). Let’s talk first about college websites. This is what we wrote to students in the workbook: There is really no substitute for studying the website of each college on your LLCO. There is probably not a better way--and certainly not a cheaper way--to get more information than you could ever need about a college. Even visiting a college will not give you the range of detailed information that studying its website will. With that said, let us point out that college websites are not created equal. Some are easy to use; some are difficult to figure out. All college websites are not set up the same way, and they do not use the same vocabulary. That is really too bad for the millions of high school students trying to use them. However, the more you study college websites, the better you will get at finding the information you need. The best thing to do is just get started. Virtually every college website has a section called something like About (the name of the college). You might want to start there. That section usually contains something like Fast Facts or At a Glance or Facts and Figures. This section gives you a quick overview of the college, and we always find it helpful and informative. This page will absolutely help you fill in the College Profile Worksheet for each college on your LLCO. Most college websites include these useful sections, among others: Admission—You will spend a lot of time studying this section, obviously. Academics—If the point of college is an education, then this section is critically important, with its explanations of divisions (like undergraduate and graduate or, if it is a university, like colleges and schools), departments, majors, and minors, plus a course catalog. Campus Life, or Student Life—This section includes all of the things that will make up much of the rest of your life at college, including housing, dining, extracurricular activities and clubs, fraternities and sororities, and support services. Athletics—If you are looking for information on intercollegiate athletics, don’t be surprised if you are automatically taken to an entirely separate website dedicated to sports (thanks to the big business that athletics is on many campuses and the boosters/fans who support the teams financially). Research—Colleges are justifiably proud of their research projects and opportunities, partly because a research university has prestige among higher education institutions. However, we find that this section is likely to be of less interest to many high school students applying for undergraduate study. Some information you will need can be found in something called the “common data set,” which you can usually find by searching a college website for it (literally, type “common data set” into the college website’s search box). On many college websites, you will actually find the common data set for the most recent year as well as for previous years. On a few college websites, on the other hand, we have yet to find the common data set! (For information about the origins of the common data set, see its own website, www.commondataset.org.) One more thing to mention about many college websites: Take the virtual campus tour. . . . In our opinion, a good virtual tour gives you a lot of what a real-life campus tour does, and it is a lot cheaper and easier to take before deciding whether to apply to that college. We have noticed that high school students often notice the wrong things on live tours anyway, like whether they liked the tour guide and how comfortable they felt with the other students on the tour (who are not, please remember, students at the college). . . . So, what’s the assignment? Have your son or daughter look through at least five college websites. Help your kid choose different types of colleges--large and small, public and private--to see the similarities and differences among websites. Encourage him or her to get familiar with the vocabulary and organization of college websites now so that completing the College Profile Worksheets later will be a lot easier. Here’s what we said in the workbook: Figure out how to get more efficient and effective at finding the information you want. By the way, that’s what any good student would do. Now, let’s bring College Navigator into focus. If you don’t know what that is, it’s time to learn. Here’s our explanation from the workbook: The National Center for Education Statistics collects data from almost 7,000 colleges in the U.S. and makes those data available to you free of charge through its online tool, College Navigator. College Navigator is super easy to use. Just go to its website, type in the name of the college you are researching, and click “Show Results.” College Navigator will give you a wealth of information quickly--more than you can actually use now or, really, ever. The thumbnail description at the top of the entry for each college includes the following: Address, telephone number, and college website address Type of institution and awards (degrees) offered Campus setting Campus housing availability Student population (enrollment) Student-to-faculty ratio Then, there are 13 categories of information listed. The ones we think you will find most useful are these (we will talk more about each of these later): Tuition, Fees, and Estimated Student Expenses Enrollment Admissions Retention and Graduation Rates Campus Security So, what’s the next assignment? Have your son or daughter go to College Navigator and enter the name of one of the colleges that he or she is interested in. Have your kid look through all of the information provided in order to get an idea of the information that College Navigator provides. Take a look yourself. You don’t know right now how useful this website can be, but you will before the year is over. By the way, you can also use College Navigator as a means of searching for additional colleges in case you are still looking. Check out the filters it provides for such a search. You might be surprised at what you will find! For more information, read up on this topic in How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Get ready to work next week! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode166 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today we are going to talk about the first step of your kid’s summer homework. As we said last week, we know that summer vacation is still a couple of weeks away for some of you, but I have to believe that no real work is still being done in most high schools, especially not for seniors. So, let’s get busy! If you haven’t gotten our workbook for your son or daughter, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, there is still time.  1. What You Are About To Do Wrong Your kid’s first summer homework assignment is what we call Step 1 (from our workbook): Expand Your College List. We opened the chapter by speaking very unpleasantly to your about-to-be senior: This chapter focuses on something that you are just about to do totally wrong. Really, totally wrong. In fact, our advice in this chapter is probably the opposite of what many school counselors and college consultants are telling you as you start a serious consideration of where to apply . . . . We bet they are telling you to start by narrowing your list of colleges, but we would like you to start by expanding your list of colleges. There is plenty of time later to narrow down your options . . . . While expanding your list might seem unnecessary, time consuming, or even wasteful, we believe that expanding your options now could mean the difference between an okay college choice and a great college choice for you later. Parents: We know that some of you probably feel right now that you have done enough searching and that it is time to narrow down the list. That’s possible, but not likely. So keep listening. If you can truly say that you and your son or daughter have done all the things we are about to suggest, then our hats are off to you. But, if not, then you still have some summer homework to do.  2. So, What Is Step 1? So, what is your most likely mistake? It’s this, as we explain to your kid in the workbook:  The great majority of high school graduates who go to college choose a college in their home state--perhaps as many as 70 percent of them. Undoubtedly, you have one or more colleges in your home state on your list of college options right now. That’s okay with us. However, what’s NOT okay is to have nothing BUT colleges in your home state on your list. Here’s why: It’s a big world out there. There are so many intriguing colleges in it that we hate for you to limit yourself to those nearby. We hate for you to limit yourself to those that are likely to have a majority of students a lot like you from the same part of the country as you. Your first step in making a list of college options should NOT be to narrow down the choices and to close off opportunities. You should NOT be settling either for colleges that are nearby or for colleges that you and your parents and your school counselor already know a lot about.  We know that there are some good reasons for kids to stay close to home for college. We understand that some families want to keep their kids close to home for cultural reasons, perhaps in order to participate in family events or religious activities. We understand that some families need to have their kids stay at home in order to help with family responsibilities. Those reasons are hard to argue against. We know that staying close to home might make going to college more affordable for some families, especially if living at home saves on housing expenses. But we also know that it is hard to know in advance how generous a financial aid package might be from an out-of-state college. Did you know that some states offer an attractive discount at their public colleges to students who come from nearby states? We bet you didn’t. Check out, for example, the Midwest Student Exchange Program or the Western Undergraduate Exchange or the New England Regional Student Program, if you live in those regions of the country. We also know that you can sometimes get into a better college when it is far from home. Why? Because almost every college likes the idea of geographic diversity in its student body. Colleges like to claim that they draw students “from all 50 states and from 100 foreign countries.” You will see this kind of statement on many college websites. Pay attention, because you might be far more attractive to a college halfway across the country than to one in your own back yard. That’s because you will give that faraway college bragging rights. This is especially true for private colleges that do not have the same mission to serve students in their own state as public colleges do. We also know that some parents just can’t imagine sending their kids away from home for the first time. In fact, you might not be able to imagine leaving home for the first time. But, we encourage you and your parents to think hard about that. Isn’t college the perfect time to make that break--a time when you can live somewhere else under the supervision of college staff in relatively secure surroundings, a time when you can learn to function as an adult in a safe environment (that is, learn to manage your money, do your work, plan your time, and make new friends)? We urge you (and your parents) to get outside your family’s geographic comfort zone. You have nothing to lose at this stage in the process. Researching colleges outside your hometown, outside your state, and outside your region doesn’t mean you have to attend one of them--or even apply to one of them. But it does mean that you will have the information that you need to make a better decision when the time comes. Parents: We say this so often that we feel like broken records (of course, that’s an analogy that most of your kids won’t even understand these days). But here’s how to do it, as we explain to your kid in the workbook: Conveniently, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has divided the U.S. into eight regions:  Far West—California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Hawaiʻi, Alaska Rocky Mountains—Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah Southwest—Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas Plains—Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Southeast—Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia Great Lakes—Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio Mideast—Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia New England—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine However, we thought that the Bureau stuffed too many states into the Southeast; so, we divided the Southeast into two regions (southern and northern), and you should, too. That will give you nine regions to investigate.  We used these nine regions when we did our virtual college tour on our podcast. You should listen to the tour in Episodes 27 through 53 of our podcast or simply read the show notes. . . . Parents: When we wrote the workbook, we had to think hard about how your son or daughter and you should create your kid’s Long List of College Options--that’s LLCO, for short. Here’s our advice (this is the shortened version of our advice; get the workbook if you want the well-reasoned background on why we are suggesting each piece of advice, or just trust us): Make sure that you have at least two four-year colleges in each of the nine geographic regions of the U.S. on your LLCO.  By the way, don’t start looking at two-year colleges, or community colleges, yet. Two-year colleges can easily be added to your LLCO closer to application time, partly because their applications are typically less demanding to complete. We are also assuming that you are most likely to attend a two-year college in or near your hometown and, therefore, you will not need to do much investigating before applying. Make sure that you have at least one college that is not in the U.S. on your LLCO. Make sure that you have at least two public flagship universities on your LLCO--probably one from your home state plus one more. 3. Isn’t Step 1 Lots of Work? Well, that could be about 20 to 25 colleges on your kid’s LLCO, by our count. Sure, that will be a lot of work when your kid actually starts exploring the colleges and getting the information we will be telling you about in the next episodes. But, parents, many of you are about to spend a great deal of money on college tuition and expenses. Many of you and your kids are going to end up borrowing a great deal of money in the process. So, isn’t it worth it to do some research up front? What could be more important than that this summer? Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode164 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Before we start today’s episode about the most important step in the college application and admissions process, we want to let you know that we are headed into our final season of USACollegeChat.  Well, I wouldn’t rule out coming back on Netflix or something by popular demand from our listening audience, but we are at least going to need to go on hiatus for a while.  Maybe we will be like Game of Thrones (which I have never seen) where there can be a year between seasons.  I am headed out to Phoenix and leaving my beloved New York City for a work-related commitment for a year or so, and Marie and I will have to figure out when it makes sense to bring back USACollegeChat, given our other commitments.  But don’t be sad.  We have a blockbuster set of summer episodes coming up for you, starting with today’s episode. This episode is going to describe your upcoming summer homework.  We know it is summer vacation for only some of you, with others of you (like our fellow New Yorkers) still having to wait almost a month.  But those of you who live where school is already closed, you can get a head start.  Now, this homework is really for your upcoming high school senior, but our guess is that you parents will get dragged into it quite a bit.  And our further guess is that most of you will want to be dragged into it.  As we were planning out what to talk with you about this summer, we thought first of all the thought-provoking articles we have been reading about this and that and the other in higher education.  Then, we realized that those are intellectually interesting to those of us who spend our lives thinking about higher education, but that they are likely far less urgent to those of you who have a kid headed to college, you hope, in a year.  And so, we switched our plans and decided to do a series of summer assignments to help you take what we believe is the most important step in the college application and admissions process.  I am sure that people might argue about what that step is.  There are many other podcasts and Facebook groups and private consultants that focus on many different parts of the process--like how to write a great essay or how to finance a college education or how to get into an Ivy League school.  Some of them even charge a lot of money to do what they do, and we are sure that some of them do a good job.  But our focus for you this summer is more important than any of theirs.  Let us explain why. 1. The Most Important Step in College Admissions You might think this is obvious; but, if it is, there are a lot of families out there not doing the obvious.  The most important step in the college application and admissions process is getting enough colleges on your list of options in the first place.  That’s it.  Just get enough colleges on your list so that you have enough options to consider.  Most students do not do this--even students who have college-educated parents and even students who attend great high schools that send most of their students to college.  A corollary to that, by the way, is to get enough of the right colleges on your list.  But that can’t happen if the first step doesn’t happen.  So, for now, we are back to just get enough colleges on your list so that you have enough options to consider.  Let’s tell you how to do that. Several years ago, we wrote a book for parents:  How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students.  It was a discussion guide for you to use to talk with your kids about whatever deal breakers each of you had when thinking about colleges to put on the list.  The book was a map of the college world, which is like a foreign land for many parents.  We thought that it would be especially helpful for those parents who did not attend college themselves or who attended college in their home countries outside the U.S.  But, it turned out to be helpful to all kinds of parents.  The book is still useful and still available at Amazon, so take a look, if you think it would be useful for you. Then, we wrote a book last year for high school students themselves.  It is titled How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  It is a workbook--as in homeWORK all summer for high school students getting ready to fill out college applications next fall.  The workbook is designed to help students (and you parents) figure out the best colleges for your kid to apply to--because figuring out where to apply is the most important step of this whole process, as we have said before.  I can’t emphasize enough how strongly we believe that.  If your kid chooses colleges to apply to wisely and with enthusiasm and if those colleges meet with your approval as well, then the choice of where to attend later on is a lot easier and more satisfying.  But you have to get enough colleges on the list to begin with—and we have discovered that most of you and your kids don’t know how to do that.   2. What’s in the Workbook? Although the workbook could be used by younger high school students trying to get a jump on the college search process, here is what we said to your soon-to-be-senior in our workbook’s introduction: Since 2014, we have been talking to your parents in our weekly podcast, USACollegeChat.  The truth is that we have given them more information about colleges than anyone could probably use.  We took them on a virtual tour of colleges nationwide and profiled many public and private colleges in every region of the country to try to get them—and, of course, you—to look outside your family’s geographic comfort zone when considering where you should apply.  When we put together that virtual college tour, we realized something very important:  There are a lot of colleges out there, and it is impossible to keep up with what is going on at most of them. We also realized what your biggest problem is (well, yours and theirs, actually):  You don’t know anything about most colleges.  We have been doing this for a couple of decades, and there was a lot of stuff we didn’t know either, as it turned out.  So, how do you solve that problem? The simple answer is just to ask a guidance counselor at your high school.  You would think that guidance counselors would know quite a bit about lots of colleges and that they could pass that information on to you.  Here’s why that usually doesn’t work.          Let’s start with public high schools.  As you probably already know, most public high schools don’t have guidance counselors who are dedicated to working only on college counseling.  That means that your guidance counselors, with caseloads in the hundreds, have to help students with college applications while dealing simultaneously with students who might be in serious personal or academic trouble.  That’s an overwhelming job, and that is exactly why most high school guidance counselors cannot help you enough when it comes to exploring many college options, narrowing them down, and finally choosing the perfect colleges to put on your list.  Some public high schools—and even more private schools—have designated one of the school’s guidance counselors as a college counselor, specializing in college placement and perhaps financial aid and devoting all of his or her time to helping students undertake and complete their college searches.  If your school has a college counselor like that, you are lucky indeed.  Of course, searching through hundreds of colleges to find the right ones for you and then working through those college applications (including all of the essays) is the work of a lot of hours—at least 20 hours and really closer to 40 hours, we would say.  Does your counselor have that much time to spend with you?  Unfortunately, probably not, even if you attend a private school. What if you are homeschooled?  Without the help of a school guidance counselor or college counselor—even for a very limited amount of time—you might feel more at a loss than your friends who attend public or private schools.  Should you expect your parents to know everything you need to know about a wide array of college choices?  No, you shouldn’t.  Respecting your parents’ opinions about colleges is certainly important, even crucial.  But it is not likely that they are experts on the many, many colleges here in the U.S. (and abroad).  All high school students need to get help from somewhere or someone.  We believe that this workbook is a good way to get some.  That’s why we are talking to you now.  We want you to have a way to find out the information you need about many colleges so that you will be in the best possible position to compare those colleges and then to make the right decision about where to apply and, eventually, about where to attend.  While you will undoubtedly want and need some adult advice in thinking through the many options, what you need first is information—and a lot of it.  If you already have a list of colleges you are interested in, you will need information about each one of those.  But, just as important, you will need information about colleges that are not yet on your list—including colleges that you have never considered because you didn’t know they existed.  That’s not your fault now, but it will be if you don’t take steps to correct it.  So, let’s get started.  We are not kidding.  Most kids and most parents just don’t know enough to choose colleges.  The only solution to that is to get information.  And the only way I know to get information is to do some work--that is, the homework we designed for your kids in our workbook. 3. Before You Start Gathering Information… But, before your kid actually starts gathering detailed information about colleges, it is important to expand that list of options, as we have just said.  We call this the LLCO in the book--that is, your kid’s “long list of college options.” In our workbook, you might say that homework assignment #1 is to expand the LLCO.  Until your kid’s LLCO is created, the real homework cannot begin!  So, go to Amazon and grab a copy of How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  It’s the best $9.95 you will ever spend.  Tell your kid to get ready to work.  We start next week by telling him or her how to put together that LLCO.  So, can you do the work with us each week without buying the workbook?  You can indeed.  But it will be easier to hold your kid accountable with the workbook.   And accountable he or she will need to be in order for both of you to get through the next six months!  Remember, the work starts next week. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode164 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Welcome back to our new series entitled Looking to Next Year.  Today, we want to look at a well-known college recruitment practice and its ramifications.  That practice is the visiting of high schools by college admissions staff.  Maybe our discussion today won’t come as a surprise to you; but, whether it does or doesn’t, it’s a sad commentary on the U.S. in 2018.    1. A New Study Just a few episodes ago, we quoted from an article in Inside Higher Ed by Scott Jaschik, and today we find ourselves doing that again.  This article is forebodingly titled “Where Colleges Recruit . . . and Where They Don’t."  Here is the story: [F]or many colleges, reaching out to students in person at high school events is a key part of the recruitment process. And even for the [elite colleges], this is an important part of outreach and regularly results in applications from those who might not have otherwise applied. But where do the [colleges] go to recruit? A new study being presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association suggests that these visits favor those who attend high schools where family income is high. And these high schools are likely to be whiter than the population as a whole. Two of the researchers--Ozan Jaquette, an assistant professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Karina Salazar, a doctoral candidate at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona--published a summary of their findings in The New York Times. (quoted from the article) So, let’s look at that opinion piece in The Times by Mr. Jaquette and Ms. Salazar.  They wrote about their findings, based on data from college visits--not any other kinds of student recruitment--made in 2017 by 150 colleges.  Here are some of those findings in their own words: The clearest finding from our study is that public high schools in more affluent neighborhoods receive more visits than those in less affluent areas. Only about a third of households across the country earn more than $100,000 annually, but nearly half of high schools receiving visits by private colleges and universities were in neighborhoods where average incomes were higher. Connecticut College visited neighborhoods with an average median household income of $121,578. Private colleges also disproportionately visited private high schools over public high schools. Andy Strickler, dean of admissions at Connecticut College, said the school targets high schools that have historically provided students, or other schools that have a similar profile. He said there was a good reason Connecticut College doesn’t always visit other areas: “There’s a trend for these students to stay closer to home for college.” (quoted from the opinion piece) I get that colleges understandably visit high schools that have sent students in the past or schools with demographic characteristics like those high schools.  I get that colleges need to recruit as cost-effectively as possible.  I get that kids in high schools in less affluent neighborhoods probably do “stay closer to home for college,” for better or worse.  But I still am a bit disappointed by all of it.  Nonetheless, let’s not single out Connecticut College.  There is a chart in the opinion piece that shows that plenty of other colleges do exactly the same thing--that is, visit high schools in neighborhoods with higher median incomes than high schools they don’t visit.  And, what’s worse, lots of those colleges are public universities.  Let’s look back at what Mr. Jaquette and Ms. Salazar write about that: While public research universities visited rich and poor neighborhoods nearly equally when recruiting in their home states, they visited the same affluent high schools targeted by private colleges when recruiting elsewhere. Most public colleges also visited far more high schools out of state than in-state. The median income of areas where the University of Pittsburgh recruited out of state, for example, was $114,000, compared with $63,000 for areas that were not visited. . . . The attention public universities lavish on wealthy out-of-state schools is a response to state policy. Over the past decade, many states have cut funding for higher education, forcing public universities to become more dependent on tuition revenue. Research shows that public universities responded by enrolling more out-of-state students, who often pay two to three times more than state residents. And of course, only well-off students can afford that. . . . In their out-of-state visits, our data also suggest, public universities were more likely to visit predominantly white public high schools than nonwhite schools with similar levels of academic achievement. For example, [in the Boston metropolitan area], the University of Colorado Boulder visited Dover-Sherborn Regional High School, which is 88 percent white and has about 154 students with proficient math scores, according to the federal Department of Education. But it did not visit Brockton High School, where just 21 percent of students are white but about 622 students have proficient math scores. “In order to be good stewards of our funding, we consistently recruit at schools that have historically given us applications,” said Colleen Newman, admissions director at Boulder. “Given our limited funding, we are unable to expand our traditional recruitment efforts to all regions and all high schools that have academically talented students.” (quoted from the opinion piece) Well, as loyal listeners know, I love recommending Boulder.  I think it is friendly to students from the East Coast and a great all-around university.  But I have to admit that I am not crazy about this recruitment strategy, though I understand the reasoning, of course.  Here are some more things I did not know, however.  I guess that I might have figured this out if I had thought about it, but I just never did.  I am wondering how much you have thought about this, parents.  Listen up: Colleges don’t treat recruitment lightly. It’s big business for colleges and the firms they hire. Most colleges identify prospects by purchasing lists of students and their backgrounds from the testing agencies College Board and ACT. They can also hire enrollment management consulting firms, which integrate data from the university with data on schools and communities. This helps them decide which schools should be visited and which should be targeted with emails and brochures. One consulting firm we spoke with even knows information about individual students such as their family income and net worth, and the value of their home. If colleges have all this data, why aren’t they better at targeting talented poor students and students of color? The most common explanation is that there aren’t enough of them applying (the so-called achievement gap). Another explanation we hear is that talented students don’t apply because they don’t have the right guidance (called “under-matching”). . . .   Our data [suggest] universities are determined to court wealthier students over others, and they expend substantial resources identifying and reaching them.  There are many students from poor communities who get excellent grades but end up going to a community college because no one bothers looking for them. If colleges are serious about increasing socioeconomic and racial diversity, they should look for merit everywhere, not just in wealthy, white communities. (quoted from the opinion piece)  It’s hard to disagree with that conclusion.  It’s especially hard to disagree with that conclusion for public universities, which have a mission to serve the taxpayers in their own states.  It’s concerning that public universities might be pricing themselves out of the market for the students who need them most in their home states--or even for the students who need them most from other states.  In putting together his article, Mr. Jaschik corresponded with Mr. Jaquette about his study.  Here is part of that correspondence:  Jaquette, via email, said there is a contradiction between colleges’ statements that they are doing everything possible to recruit low-income, disadvantaged students and the findings of the new study. “Scholarship on organizational behavior--on all types of organizations--finds that organizations publicly adopt goals demanded by the external environment,” he said. “But these public statements are poor indicators of actual organizational priorities. How they spend real resources is a better indicator.” (quoted in the article) In other words, colleges might say that they are looking hard to bring in more low-income students because it is the politically correct, or even morally correct, thing to say.  However, their actions (in this case, their spending habits) speak louder than words.                                                                          2. What Does This Mean for You So, what does this mean for you?  Possibly nothing, if you live in a relatively affluent neighborhood and your kid attends a high school with relatively affluent classmates.  The chances are good that college recruiters are going to come calling both now and in the fall. But if you don’t live in a relatively affluent neighborhood and your kid does not attend a high school with relatively affluent classmates, the chances are good that you are going to have to look harder to investigate colleges and make your kid known to them.  It might mean that you will need to visit colleges in order to get colleges to notice your kid (although I wish you didn’t have to until after your kid is accepted and you all are trying to make a final decision).  Oh, unless you live in one of the places identified in a 2012 study by Caroline M. Hoxby and Christopher Avery and cited by Mr. Jaschik in his article: [The study] found a tendency by colleges to recruit only at high schools where they will find a critical mass of talented low-income students and not the many others where academic achievement may be more rare. The high schools having success at placing students in competitive colleges are in large metropolitan areas (generally from 15 cities) and their students are “far from representative” of the academic talent among low-income students, the authors write.  So it’s not that colleges don’t recruit at low-income high schools, but they favor the magnet over the typical high school--even though there are many students with ability who do not attend magnet high schools. (quoted from the article) Indeed there are, and your kid might be one of them.  3. Happy Memorial Day Well, it’s hard to believe that Memorial Day is just around the corner.  We are going to celebrate next week, but we will be back with you on May 31with the best episode we have ever done.  Stay tuned! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode163 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

We are starting a new series today because we think that the college ship has sailed for almost all of our listening families with seniors.  Of course, some of you are still looking at a few options; some of you have even put down deposits at more than one college, or so we hear; and, some of you might be frantically searching for a new choice that offers rolling admissions or very late deadlines in the next couple of months.  As always, if any of you are in the still-undecided group, give me a call if you want some personalized advice.  I am happy to help, and the advice is free, of course.  We are going to assume that the rest of you out there have juniors (or even sophomores) and that you are relatively early in the college admissions process.  It is amazing to me, as I look at posts in a number of online groups for parents of prospective college applicants, how many of you with younger kids are already well into the college search.  So, this series, entitled Looking to Next Year, is going to offer a few reminders for parents of high school juniors as you start down a long--but hopefully exciting and not too painful--road.   1. Oh, No!  Not the Right High School Courses!  Part I Let me start by saying that I love to complain about how far too many--I would say, even most--high school students do not take enough foreign language courses.  They don’t take enough courses either for their own good in life or for their optimal chances of getting into a great college.  We discussed this as recently as Episode 155, which was scarcely the first time we have brought it up. But today’s episode expands way beyond my foreign language criticism about high school students’ own course decisions to a criticism that is almost unthinkable:  Many states’ high school graduation requirements will not meet all of the admissions requirements of their own public state universities.  Let me repeat this fantastical and sobering claim in the words of Catherine Gewertz in Education Week where she reported on a study released on April 2 by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and authored by Laura Jimenez and Scott Sargrad, both employed by CAP: The think tank found that in most states, in at least one subject area, students must exceed their state’s high school graduation requirements in order to cross the threshold of the public four-year institutions in their state. The CAP study describes two big problems. Most state diploma requirements: Don’t meet admissions criteria for the state’s public universities. Noted by other researchers as well, this “preparation gap” can form a barrier to college when students find that the diploma requirements they completed fall short of the ones their state colleges and universities expect for admission. Leave too much up to the student. In many states, students can decide which core courses to take in order to fulfill graduation requirements. That means they could finish high school with a relatively weak lineup of classes, or courses that don’t match well with their postsecondary goals. (quoted from the article) Frankly, it’s hard to believe.  But the data don’t lie.  Listen to the number of states whose high school graduation requirements do not meet their own public four-year university’s entrance requirements: 23 states miss the mark in foreign languages. (I now feel totally vindicated about the number of times I bring up this problem.) 8 states miss the mark in mathematics. (That does not surprise me, unfortunately.) 4 states miss the mark in science. 4 states miss the mark in social studies. 2 states miss the mark in fine arts. 2 states miss the mark in the number of elective courses. 1 state misses the mark in English. If I were a taxpayer in any of those states, I would be marching on the state capital.  If I were the governor in any of those states, some state education department employees would be losing their jobs, and some state board members would be having serious discussions with me. Interestingly and for whatever reason, physical education (including health) is the only subject field in which all states’ high school graduation requirements meet college entrance requirements and, in fact, 39 states’ high school graduation requirements exceed college entrance requirements.  Comparatively speaking, only two states’ high school graduation requirements exceed college entrance requirements in foreign languages. Perhaps not surprisingly, English is the subject field where high school graduation requirements are most in line with college entrance requirements:  44 states have high school graduation requirements that meet English college entrance requirements and three states exceed them.  In other words, almost all states require four years of high school English in order to graduate, and almost all state universities require four years of English to get in. So, let’s take a glance at a few states of particular interest, using the data in the CAP study:  These are the 19 states that do meet or exceed college expectations in every subject field, regardless of how rigorous those expectations are (obviously, it is easier to meet college expectations if the state university’s expectations are not all that high to begin with):  Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia. What about our two most populous states?  California, with its massive public higher education system, misses the mark in four subject fields.  Texas, with its very large public higher education system, misses the mark in two subject fields.  I can only speculate that students in those states who are anxious to get into their super-popular public universities exceed the state high school graduation requirements on their own.  Our home state, the very populous State of New York, misses only on foreign languages (you would think that people in my own state would have been listening to me by now).  Interestingly, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are the only two entities that technically exceed expectations in all subject fields; but, that’s because their public university systems set no specific coursework requirements. These states were not included in the analysis, so I can’t tell you whether to panic if you live in one of these:  Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. 2. Oh, No!  Not the Right High School Courses!  Part II So, where does the CAP study come down on this issue?  Let’s look at a few paragraphs from the Conclusion:  [T]his analysis finds significant misalignment between the high school and college systems. What is required to receive a high school diploma is often not aligned with what students must study to be eligible for college admissions. This can be a matter of equity when more rigorous coursework such as advanced math, laboratory science, and foreign language courses are not offered on the high school campus, thus requiring college-bound students to seek this coursework elsewhere. . . . Certainly, state high school graduation requirements are only a start to ensuring students are ready for college, career, and life. Many states allow or even require school districts to set additional requirements. However, not setting a minimum floor that at the very least meets state college admissions requirements puts students in districts with less rigorous requirements at a disadvantage, setting up inequities within states in access to college preparatory and career-readiness experiences. (quoted from the study) It is a matter of equity. Why?  Because poor kids in less affluent school districts with minimum graduation requirements will not go the extra yard that is required to get into their state public university. Why?  Because they won’t get sufficient help from their high school counselors and because they likely can’t get sufficient help from their parents.  And so, they are at the mercy of inadequate state high school graduation requirements that won’t prepare them for admission to their state’s public higher education system, which might well be all they can afford. But the CAP study says a lot more than this--much of which is very interesting.  For example, the CAP study takes this further step: Depending on course availability and the boundaries drawn by graduation requirements, students have discretion in the types of courses they take to fulfill high school graduation requirements. States may require all of the specific courses and sequences to be taken, for example, Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II--or their equivalents--where three years of math are required. Where four years are required, states may require only some of the specific courses, for example, Algebra I and Geometry, and allow students to choose among the options to fulfill two additional math course requirements. Or, states may simply require a number of years of study and make no course type specifications. Each of these scenarios [is] also true for college admissions. (quoted from the report) And the CAP study continues: In almost every state for at least one subject, there is a preparation gap that necessitates students seeking admission to the state public four-year university system to take additional coursework that is not required for a standard high school diploma. What’s more, this additional coursework may or may not be offered on the high school campus. . . .  Students in high-income schools and districts with sufficient college counseling and resources to seek this additional coursework may have an easier time addressing these disparities than students in low-income areas, reflecting inequity in the availability of educational resources. (quoted from the study) Indeed.  Let’s just say it again, because it is still incredible to me:  When states do not require high enough high school graduation standards to ensure that all of its high school graduates are eligible for their own public higher education--regardless of whether all graduates want to go on to college--those states are ensuring that their poorer kids in their poorer school districts are disproportionately negatively affected.  Why again?  Because in addition to the injustices of subpar graduation standards, subpar school facilities, subpar counseling, and subpar everything else, fewer of these poorer kids have college-educated parents who can make up the difference.  3. What To Do I believe that there is no substitute for examining the entrance requirements of any college your kid is thinking about applying to in terms of credits and perhaps specific courses that the college expects or requires to be taken in high school.  We talk about this topic extensively in our second book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  Let me read some excerpts from a section of that book for students: Let’s look at one last admission standard--one that is less often considered and more often taken for granted--and that is the courses that applicants are expected to have taken in high school, usually listed in terms of credits (or Carnegie units) in each subject area, but also sometimes including specific courses, especially in math and science. . . .  On a college’s website, this information can virtually always be found by starting with the Admission home page.  You will find that the high school course or credit expectations of colleges do, in fact, differ, usually according to how selective the college is.  But there are always a few surprises (like colleges that require students to have earned career and technical education credits in high school, for example). After you write down the required and the recommended courses or credits, you can compare them from college to college, and you can see how well they match up with what you have taken so far and with what you will be taking as you finish up high school.  Particularly if you are just a freshman or sophomore, this information can be invaluable as you plan your remaining semesters in high school. . . . The courses that you take in high school matter, including the courses that you take in your senior year.  Colleges will tell you that slacking off in the senior year is never a good move.  So, for example, a fourth year of math and a fourth year of science would be the best scenario for most applicants--and might be a mandatory scenario for entrance to top colleges and to some college programs, like engineering.  If you don’t have a rigorous senior year planned, think again.  And that’s exactly why we are telling you, parents, this information right now--when many high schools across the country are scheduling juniors for the classes they will be taking next fall as seniors.  It is not too late to look carefully at college requirements and to make an adjustment or two in next fall’s schedule.  You might have to insist with high school counselors or administrators, but it will be worth it.  Adding a course in science or math or foreign languages or something else that is missing is possible now, but it will be a lot harder to do next fall.  Good luck! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode162 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

As we said last week, most of you have made a decision about what college your kid is going to by now.  You all have compared and contrasted the colleges that accepted your son or daughter and made the best decision you thought you could.  However, there might be one or two of you still holding out some hope for coming off the wait list of your kid’s favorite college choice.  I know that some of you have even put a deposit down on a sure thing while not entirely giving up hope on the long shot that is the wait list.  This episode is not so much about giving you advice, but rather about making you feel not so bad.  While we are not experts in the practice of wait listing, I can tell you anecdotally that I have seen kids this year and last year not get into colleges from the wait list when those kids were absolutely qualified to attend those colleges.  I imagine we all have stories like that. 1. Are Wait Lists a Waste of Time? Let me read you some excerpts from a short piece that was heard recently on National Public Radio (NPR) on All Things Considered, as presented by Clare Lombardo and Elissa Nadworny.  Here we go: [High school seniors have] opened their mail--or, more likely, an online portal--to finally hear decisions from colleges. But many didn’t get one. The number of students placed on college waiting lists has climbed in recent years, leaving students hoping for the best--even when they might not have any reason to hope at all. “Many students ... think they’re very close to getting in, and that there’s considerable hope for them to be admitted to the college,” says Cristiana Quinn, a private college admissions counselor in Rhode Island. That’s not the case. In the spring of 2017, Dartmouth College, a small Ivy League school in New Hampshire, offered 2,021 waitlist spots to applicants. Of the 1,345 who chose to stay on the waitlist, not a single person got in. The University of Michigan offered 11,127 potential freshmen a place on their waitlist that spring--4,124 students accepted spots on the list, and 470 eventually got in. The odds aren’t as slim elsewhere: At the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, 100 of the 450 students on the waitlist were accepted in 2017. And some schools, like North Carolina A&T State University and the University of Alabama, don’t use a waitlist at all. According to 2017 numbers from the National Association of College Admission Counseling, about 40 percent of colleges use waitlists. (quoted from the NPR piece)  Well, those numbers are arresting.  According to these statistics, top-tier colleges with long wait lists admit very few of those candidates--maybe 10 percent, at best.  Less-selective colleges might offer better odds, but my guess is that kids are not holding out hope for those spots the same way they are holding out hope for spots at great colleges or near-great colleges.  You don’t want to advise kids not to stay on the wait list if they really have their hearts set on someplace, but I think you also have to help kids understand just how uphill that climb is going to be. And lest we forget, there’s this:  Colleges are not really ever doing anything to help the applicants; whatever they are doing with wait lists, they are doing for themselves.  It’s like Early Decision and Early Action and various phases of both.  While some of those plans help applicants, there is no doubt that colleges are getting a lot out of them, too.  Otherwise, colleges wouldn’t be offering them.  The NPR piece notes this: The schools that do make applicants wait for a final decision do so to keep their options open, says Quinn, who works with students and families during the college application process. “They want to have a very large pool to choose from--so that, for instance, if they don’t have a student from South Dakota, they can pull one from South Dakota. If they don’t have a student who plays the oboe, they can pick an oboe player, and on and on,” she says. When schools keep their admission rates low, it impacts school rankings and reputation--plus, intentional or not, the more students who almost get in are now thinking, talking and tweeting about them. (quoted from the NPR piece) Well, that’s particularly annoying, I think.  Putting kids on the wait list as a way to get free PR?  Really?  I so hope that is not true, but I fear it might be.  Back to the NPR piece:  Quinn recently penned an open letter to college admissions officers on a private email list of admissions professionals. “I beg you to stop the insanity,” she wrote. “Stop what you are doing to kids and parents and move to a modicum of reality next year when you create your waiting lists.” She says all of her students awaiting spring decisions were wait-listed at at least one school--and many of them were wait-listed at many. That hasn’t happened in the past. “[Students] are not fully exploring the colleges where they have been accepted,” she says. Instead, they hold out hope for the colleges where they’ve been wait-listed. For low-income students, who depend on aid for tuition assistance, holding out for an offer becomes unrealistic because colleges often have little if any financial aid left over by the time they turn to the waiting list. (quoted from the NPR piece) It’s hard to disagree with that advice to colleges.  Maybe colleges could just adopt some rule of thumb, like we will put three times as many kids on the wait list as we took in from the wait list in the previous year.  Then, kids on the wait list would have an idea of how good their chances were, and many kids would not be put on the wait list to begin with and could go on and make the best choice from their actual acceptances.  I won’t hold my breath that colleges are going to do this, but I honestly don’t see how it would hurt them--at least the top tier colleges, which are going to fill their freshman classes with qualified kids, no matter what. 2. What To Do If You Are on One  First of all, I think it should be clear that an applicant should not stay on the wait list of a college that the applicant is not truly interested in.  Why?  Obviously, it makes it harder for the kids who really do want to be on that list, and it distracts the student from paying attention to the options that he or she is more interested in pursuing.  Not surprisingly, many counselors advise students on wait lists to write letters to the admissions officer at the college to declare their ongoing interest in the college.  I don’t see how that can hurt, but clearly it doesn’t often help too much either, especially at top-tier colleges.  Such a letter would probably sound a lot like one we described back in Episode 148, when we discussed an appeal letter following a deferred decision in an Early Decision or Early Action situation.  Let’s recap what might go into such a letter (while this advice is likely too late for anyone still on a wait list right now, it might help all of you parents of juniors as you get ready for this time next year).  Here are some reasonable points to make in a one-page typed letter, which can be sent by email, but should also be sent in print by regular mail. First, the applicant has to say that the college is his or her first choice and that he or she will attend, if admitted.  Ideally, of course, that would be true.  I am sure that many students say this, even when it is not true.  You will have to make your own moral judgment here. Second, the applicant should show a solid understanding of the academics of the college and of how he or she will fit into the academic world there.  Naming a specific department, specific major, specific courses, and/or specific research opportunities are a good idea.  Make sure your kid knows exactly what the name of the department and major are inasmuch as they are different at every college, for some reason. Emphasize the notion of “fit” between the student and the college. Third, the applicant should restate (since this information is likely in the original application or application essay) how he or she might fit in with specific extracurricular activities, including volunteer or service opportunities, performing music and drama groups, and sports at the college.  This part of the letter should be focused--just in case the college needs an oboe player.  Fourth, the applicant should mention any major accomplishments since the original application was submitted, especially new SAT or AP test scores or academic honors. Fifth, the applicant should mention any close family connection to the college--including parents or grandparents who went there and/or siblings who went there or are there right now.  This mention should ideally explain what the student has learned from those personal connections and why that makes the college so much more attractive to him or her.  I believe that including this information in an understated way helps the college believe that this student is really more likely to enroll, if admitted. 3. What Else To Do If You Are on One But the main thing to do if your kid ends up on one or more wait lists is to think hard about any acceptances he or she did get.  Visit those colleges, if you haven’t done so yet, perhaps at an accepted students day.  A great college visit at one of those colleges could make up for a lot of wait listed options.  If your kid falls in love with a college he or she has already been admitted to, game over--in a good way. If you and your kid can’t visit, investigate your options as best you can.  For example, ask your high school counselor if any alums have gone to those colleges so that your kid can talk to someone who has experience there.  Do what you need to do to make those colleges come alive for your kid.  Because waiting around for wait listed options isn’t likely to work. And, finally, here is my very best suggestion if your kid is not happy with his or her acceptances and is not likely to get in from a wait list, consider Richmond, The American International University in London.  Loyal listeners will know that one of my sons did his undergraduate work there and that my daughter did her master’s degree work there.  It is a fantastic university.  Really.  The good news for you now is that Richmond accepts applications until July 1 for a fall start.  Both my kids loved Richmond, and all of my experiences there--from sitting in on classes to meeting with professors to talking with administrators to chatting with students--have been excellent.  And, believe me, I am not easy to impress.  So, if your child is unhappy and you think London might be the answer, consider Richmond.  Costwise, it is far more affordable than many private universities in the U.S.  And, did I say it was in London?  Seriously, if you take a look at Richmond, you will not regret it. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode161 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Well, most of you have made a decision about what college your kid is going to by now.  You all have sifted through the acceptances (hopefully, there was more than one), weighing all manner of things while making the decision.  However, I know there are still a few of you out there who have not quite decided yet.  I know because I talked to a mother just a few days ago who was in the throes of helping her daughter make her decision.  Our meeting was quite accidental; she was the physician’s assistant in the surgeon’s office where my daughter and I were contemplating my daughter’s emergency knee surgery.  As soon as the physician’s assistant found out what I did, after I had volunteered some unsolicited advice, she engaged me in a longer discussion of her daughter’s options.  I was happy for the distraction.     1. Here We Go Again  Her daughter had an array of options:  several okay acceptances, but not from truly selective colleges; an acceptance from Fordham University; and wait list spots at Wake Forest University and Colgate University.  The mother, I’ll call her Leeann, had planned to keep one of the okay colleges on the list, as her daughter pursued the wait list possibilities.  Leeann said that she and her daughter had not visited Fordham (although they live right here) because her daughter had hoped to go away to college and try something different from New York City.  Guess what I said?  It’s the advice we always give (and this is the third episode this month that we have given it in, so maybe we think it is really important):  Send your kid to the best college he or she got admitted to.  Period.  Wherever that college is and whatever it costs (to the degree that it is humanly possible).  That’s the college to choose.  The okay college that Leeann was keeping on her daughter’s list is not nearly as good as Fordham.  Yes, it is a college that, for some reason I cannot quite explain, has become popular here in the East, though it is in the South.  It is out of town, which was her daughter’s preference, and Leeann was worried that her daughter would come home every weekend if she stayed in New York City for college.  My daughter, who, as you loyal listeners know, went to Fordham for the joint dance program with The Ailey School of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, assured Leeann that her daughter would not be coming home every weekend because there was plenty of fun and engaging stuff to do on campus.  My daughter assured Leeann that she had had plenty of friends in Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business (where Leeann’s daughter would be heading) and that they had not gone home on the weekends. We continued to chat about the two wait list options--both very good options and both very unlike Fordham in location and size.  And both head and shoulders above that other only-okay option that Leeann had been keeping on the table.  When we left the surgeon’s office, Leeann had taken the only-okay college off the list and was headed home to talk to her daughter about taking a look at Fordham’s campus (which is quite lovely and self-contained, by the way, even if it is in the middle of the Bronx).  I can’t wait to hear the results.  It continues to puzzle me that so many parents do not seem to put the academic caliber of the college as the number one criterion for choosing among several colleges in the final analysis.  Perhaps it is because parents do not know how to judge the academic caliber of a college or how to compare colleges on that all-important criterion.   So, parents, do whatever it takes to figure out which of the colleges your kid got into is the “best” college.  And, by “best,” I mean best academically, according to its national reputation or, as a second choice, its regional reputation.  2. Some Support for Our Position While I don’t feel any real need for support for our position (other than the decades of life experience in the world of higher education we already have), I am always glad to get some.  The support I want to share with you now is from a study by Noli Brazil and Matthew Andersson, published in March in the Youth & Society journal.  The study was then reported on by Sarah Sparks in the Education Week blog Inside School Research.  This is absolutely not what I expected and, therefore, it is particularly interesting.  Here are Ms. Sparks’s opening paragraphs in her article: Even a high school valedictorian can feel anxious becoming just one out of hundreds of top performers at an academically competitive university. But a new study suggests that students who have lower-achieving classmates in college than they had in high school show more symptoms of depression. The study, published in the journal Youth and Society, finds [that,] . . . contrary to common wisdom, students with lower-achieving classmates in college had a rough freshman year. “When you think of it, a college transition is made of three parts: where you’re coming from, where you end up, and the difference between those things,” said study co-author Matthew Andersson, an assistant sociology professor at Baylor University, in a statement. He suggested increased depression may come because “the downward transition might trigger a sense of being a misfit. That might trigger having fewer friends or less of a sense of attachment to the college or university that one is attending.” Researchers from Baylor University and the University of California, Davis, tracked data from more than 1,400 high school students who later attended four-year colleges in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which provides information about students’ mental health as well as their school-level achievement data. They controlled for students’ demographic, academic, and mental health backgrounds, but also school factors, such as whether students attended public or private schools, the concentration of students in poverty, and parent education levels in the schools. (quoted from the article) So, here are the statistics, in the words of the researchers themselves: We find that depressive symptoms increase by 27% for students experiencing lowered peer ability across their college transition, relative to no substantial change in peer ability. Meanwhile, heightened peer ability in college links to neither diminished nor enhanced student well-being across the transition. (quoted from the researchers’ Abstract) In other words, sending a bright kid who is accustomed to bright classmates in high school to a college that is filled with kids who are not as bright increases the odds that the bright kid will end up showing some signs of depression, for whatever reason.  Now, will it make that bright kid seriously and chronically depressed?  Not necessarily, but it can increase the chances that the bright kid will show some symptoms of depression.  Is that a chance you want to take, parents? This question is directed to the parents we talk to who are considering sending their son or daughter to an easier college in order to get good undergraduate grades in preparation for medical school or law school or some other graduate degree.  According to these researchers, that strategy--which we don’t agree with in the first place--could be especially harmful if that son or daughter is coming from an excellent high school with lots of smart kids or if that son or daughter is literally part of a group of smart kids in whatever high school he or she attends.  And it always seems that the parents who suggest this strategy are the ones who have been pushing their kids the hardest in high school to excel--which puts their kids in the worst spot for experiencing the kind of depression that the researchers are talking about. And here’s one more wrinkle, as Ms. Sparks reports: “[U]ndermatching,” in which high-achieving high school graduates choose a college less rigorous than their academic qualifications would predict, is often a particular problem for students from low-income or traditionally underrepresented groups or first-generation college-goers. Prior studies have found that students who are undermatched in college are significantly less likely to complete a degree. (quoted from the article) So, here’s one more reason that low-income, traditionally underrepresented, first-generation-to-college kids are having a tough time making the leap into the collegiate education that they deserve.  It’s bad enough that they might exhibit signs of depression more often than they otherwise would have; but, you have to wonder whether that alone could make it less likely for them to complete a degree. This study, like all studies, had some limitations.  For example, all of the students included in the study attended four-year colleges, so these findings do not necessarily apply to students attending two-year colleges.  That could be an interesting future inquiry since I believe that lots of good students attending two-year colleges are undermatched in an effort by families to save money during those first two years of college.  This new study should make you think about that. Ms. Sparks ends on a note to high schools, commenting that “. . . the study suggests schools could help their students think more optimistically about how well they would fit at academically competitive schools” (quoted from the article).  That advice could be to counselors and teachers as students make up the list of colleges they plan to apply to or that advice could be to counselors and teachers who might be in a position to influence a student’s choice of a college after the acceptances come in.  Certainly, in the second case, we would hope that counselors and teachers do exactly what we do here at USACollegeChat--which is to encourage kids to see themselves at the best college they got into, to surround themselves with students who are as smart as possible, and to adopt the study habits and work ethic of successful college students. By the way, parents, this does not mean that only the best 40 or 50 colleges in the U.S. are suitable for providing high-achieving peers for your son or daughter.  There are plenty of great public flagship universities, small liberal arts colleges, and private universities in addition to the highest-ranked institutions.  There are plenty of great colleges where the other students will have a positive effect on your son and daughter.  That is what academically rigorous colleges are like.  That is what the “best” colleges are like. So, I promise that this is our last episode on this topic for this year--as long as you agree to send your kid to the best college he or she got into.  That’s why you all have worked so hard for so long.  If you are trying to make a decision right now and need some advice, give me a call.  As we always say, it’s free, so you don’t have to take it.  Let’s chat. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode160 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is the third episode in our series, Decision Time Again, because, of course, it is actually decision time for lots of parents and kids out there.  Although USACollegeChat is headquartered on the East Coast, we have some loyal listeners in California, and California colleges, including its public universities, are increasingly popular among students back here in the East.  So, with that in mind, we have today’s episode.  It is designed to make some of you feel better if your senior applied to a California college or two and did not get in.  It is also designed to help those of you just starting on the application process with your juniors in case you want to consider California public universities--or not. 1. The California System Although we have described California’s elaborate system of public higher education in many previous episodes and in our books, let me do it quickly one more time now.  California’s public higher education system has three tiers:  the University of California (abbreviated as UC), the California State University (abbreviated as CSU), and the California Community Colleges.  The most prestigious tier is the UC system, which has nine campuses (plus UC San Francisco, which offers only graduate and professional programs):  UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Santa Cruz.  We have spoken many times about UC Berkeley, clearly one of our nation’s finest colleges, public or private, with its long history of excellence.  We have also spoken many times about UCLA, which has risen in prestige in the past 50 years, is increasingly popular nationwide, and, some say, is now as difficult to get into as UC Berkeley.  The other seven campuses are less famous outside of California, but that does not mean that they aren’t excellent schools in their own right.  The middle tier is the CSU system, which has 23 campuses, spread from Humboldt in the north to San Diego in the south.  Many of these colleges are not well known to those of us who are not from California, but that does not mean that they aren’t good schools.  The third tier is the California Community Colleges system, which comprises 114 colleges, with over 2 million students.  Understandably, these two-year institutions are attended mostly by California residents who live near the campus they are attending. Now, a note to California:  It is especially confusing to those of us who do not live in your state to wrap our heads around the fact that, for example, there is a UC San Diego; a CSU at San Diego, known as San Diego State University; and a University of San Diego, which is a private Catholic university.  So, those of you non-Californians interested in a California university, pay attention to what you are looking at. 2. College Acceptances in California That was a long introduction to the point of this episode, which is the runaway application numbers and crazy difficulty of getting into schools in the UC system, the top-tier system and the one that most out-of-staters are most interested in.  I came across an article recently in Inside Higher Ed, written by Scott Jaschik, with this sad headline:  “Wait-Listed, Rejected and Frustrated in California.”  Here is the opening to Mr. Jaschik’s article, which, though anecdotal, is quite revealing, even for those of us who are not Californians: [A] counselor said that he is seeing students either wait-listed or rejected from UC Davis or UC Santa Barbara--students with “straight A’s and maybe one or two B’s” and SAT scores above 1400 or near-perfect ACT scores. He has seen even stronger students--among the top of his school’s graduating class--getting rejected from UC San Diego. “Our San Diego decisions look like Berkeley and UCLA decisions from years past,” he said. “Students we told that ‘this was a likely school’ aren’t getting in.” Parents--many of whom rely on out-of-date senses of colleges’ competitiveness--are particularly shocked. “We are constantly working with parents who assume a B-plus student can go to Davis or Santa Barbara, and they can’t,” said the counselor. UCLA and Berkeley have for years been long shots for all applicants. They reject many students with perfect SAT scores and grade point averages. So while many applicants are crushed by rejections at those two campuses, their counselors aren’t surprised. The difference this year, counselors say, is that other UC campuses and some California State campuses have gone up significantly in competitiveness. . . .   A school counselor in Northern California said it is the “middle group” within the University of California where he is seeing change. He has a senior with straight A’s who was wait-listed at Santa Barbara. At Davis and San Diego, “students we assumed would be strong candidates are being wait-listed.” He said that, next year, he will be discouraging students from using any UC as a safety.  (quoted from the article) Well, there is a lot to unpack there.  First, there is the notion that kids in California are increasingly unable to use their own public higher education system as their fallback position, or safety schools.  We have often said, here at USACollegeChat, that the state public university campuses are great safety school choices for bright kids with good grades and good admission test scores.  And while we were always sure that no one could use UC Berkeley or UCLA as a safety, we would have thought that some of the UC campuses in that “middle group” would have been fine to use.  I guess we are going to need to rethink this strategy--at least for kids in California, which gives those kids just one more source of anxiety in the college search process. Second, there is the very real concern of high school counselors, who have somehow led a lot of kids astray while following norms they had trusted.  They will all have to recalibrate before next season’s application process so that there will be fewer unpleasant surprises. Third, there is the very real misconception of parents, “many of whom rely on out-of-date senses of colleges’ competitiveness.”  I just want to say to parents that I totally get this, because it happens to me all the time.  And, as we are fond of saying here at USACollegeChat, we do this for a living.  I am constantly amazed at admissions stories from colleges that I know were really nothing to write home about 40 years ago, colleges that were politely referred to as “party schools,” colleges that now no one can seem to get into.  I don’t want to name a bunch of those colleges here, but I can tell you that there are quite a few on my list.  This all just speaks to the growing competitiveness of college admissions.  Sometimes my college friends from Cornell and I sit around and wonder whether any of us could have gotten in to Cornell today.  So, parents and grandparents, this is not your college world any longer; it is a new college world, with higher expectations across the board. And fourth, I would like to say to all my young friends here in New York, who have just told me recently that they wanted to go to UC Berkeley, think again--because your chances are not good, no matter how smart you are.  Berkeley just turned down hundreds--really thousands--like you.  Does that mean you shouldn’t apply?  No, because you might get lucky.  But it does mean you shouldn’t expect to get in, you should have plenty of other college choices that you like a lot, and you should be happily surprised if it all works out in your favor. And how might California’s situation affect those of you who have kids recently wait listed at top colleges elsewhere?  Here is what Mr. Jaschik explains: . . . [Y]ields could be hard to predict for out-of-state colleges that recruit top students in California. Many Californians have in the past turned down top out-of-state institutions for UC campuses that charge a fraction of the cost of private institutions. Such students may not have the option going ahead.  (quoted from the article) In other words, California kids who might have turned down Cornell for Berkeley might need to pick up that acceptance to Cornell now, with Berkeley out of the running.  That means it is less likely that other kids on the wait list at top colleges will actually get in.  It might also mean that some of those colleges will find themselves overenrolled because most of the California kids they accepted might actually end up coming. 3. College Applications in California But, let’s back up the clock a minute to look at applications to these California universities, not just acceptances.  This is a story we have mentioned before, but never with quite this much data to support it.  Here are the facts, according to Mr. Jaschik’s article: . . . [The] numbers are available for total applications for the coming fall. And while UC campuses are edging up in total size, the application increases are much larger. Total (unduplicated) applications for undergraduate admission to the University of California were up 5.7 percent, but the largest increases were not at Berkeley, which was up only 4.6 percent. UC Riverside saw the largest percentage increase--12.2 percent.  Five UC campuses--Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Barbara--received more than 100,000 applications each. San Diego’s total is up 9.7 percent. Davis is not far behind at 95,000 applications, up 8.6 percent. (By way of comparison, Harvard University received just under 40,000 applications last year.) Application totals like those guarantee shrinking admit rates of the sort many applicants are experiencing this year.  (quoted from the article) Wow.  That’s a lot of applications, and I doubt they are going to start dropping off any time soon.  What does it all mean?  Well, for families in California, it means that you need to get out of your geographic comfort zone (and perhaps your financial comfort zone as well).  This is the advice we give most often to everyone looking at colleges, and it might be one reason that counselors in California are finding that kids are getting into prestigious schools in the East--more prestigious than some of the public universities they did not get into in California--precisely because they broadened their geographic scope and found some colleges that were anxious to diversify their own freshman classes with exotic creatures from California.  Can it get any worse?  Stay tuned for what will happen next year at this time. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode159 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is the second episode in our new series, Decision Time Again.  It’s “again” for us because, as we said last week, we always do some episodes about college decision making in April, for obvious reasons.     1. Isn’t This Counterintuitive? Every year at this time, pundits and educators write articles and op-ed pieces about how it doesn’t matter if your kid didn’t get into an Ivy League school, how admissions at top schools is an insane process that turns down thousands of perfectly qualified students, and how, in the end, he or she will still turn out fine.  Of course, that is basically true, and everyone knows it.  For a great take on this issue, go back and listen to Episode 121 from last year, which quotes extensively from an article by writer Michael Winerip, entitled “Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard,” published in The New York Times on April 29, 2007!  It could have been written yesterday and is probably more true today than it was when it was written 11 years ago. But does the choice of which college to send your kid to really matter as little as some people say?  Because although your kid might not have a choice of one of the top 20 colleges in the U.S., that leaves a lot of other ones--thousands, to be exact.  Are they virtually interchangeable?  Is one just as good as another so why spend more? The advice we always give--and the advice we gave again to one parent last week in Episode 157—is simply this:  Send your kid to the best college he or she got admitted to, even if it costs a little more or is farther away than you had wanted or is not what you had imagined for your kid.  But that advice is clearly not everyone’s view, so let’s look at the other side. 2. It Doesn’t Matter Where They Go to College? “TIME Ideas hosts the world’s leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture,” according to its own website.  Well, one of those leading voices is evidently William Stixrud, co-author of The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives, with Ned Johnson.  The title of his piece in TIME Ideas is “It’s Time To Tell Your Kids It Doesn’t Matter Where They Go To College.”  Well, that is a bold statement--bolder than most.  Let’s take a look at what he wrote early in that article: . . . [W]hy don’t we tell our kids the truth about success? We could start with the fact that only a third of adults hold degrees from four-year colleges. Or that you’ll do equally well in terms of income, job satisfaction and life satisfaction whether you go to an elite private college or a less-selective state university. Or that there are many occupations through which Americans make a living, many of which do not require a college degree. I am not against being a good student, and there are clear advantages to doing well in school. But you don’t need to be a top student or go to a highly selective college to have a successful and fulfilling life. The path to success is not nearly so narrow as we think. We’ve all heard the stories of the college dropout who went on to found a wildly successful company. (quoted from the article) Well, all of this is true.  Yes, there are many roads to success.  Yes, many different colleges can get you there, if you need college at all.  And yet, does that really mean most parents can or will take the position that it doesn’t matter where their kids go to college?  I don’t think so, and I don’t think they should.  Because while there are many roads to success and while many colleges or no college at all can get you there, most people also believe that a great college--or a great college match--for a kid can only be a plus as that kid heads into his or her future.  I don’t know many parents--if any at all—who would try to convince their own kids to turn down college and suggest that their kids try to make it on their own instead, even if Mr. Gates and Mr. Zuckerberg managed to do it. So, let’s see what else Mr. Stixrud has to say: I’ve asked various school administrators why they don’t just tell kids the truth about college--that where you go makes very little difference later in life. They’ll shrug and say, “Even if we did, no one would believe it.” One confided to me, “We would get angry calls and letters from parents who believe that, if their children understood the truth, they would not work hard in school and would have second-class lives.” Many adults worry that if their kids knew that grades in school aren’t highly predictive of success in life, they’d lose their motivation to apply themselves and aim high. In fact, the opposite is true. In my 32 years of working with kids as a psychologist, I’ve seen that simply telling kids the truth--giving them an accurate model of reality, including the advantages of being a good student--increases their flexibility and drive. It motivates kids with high aspirations to shift their emphasis from achieving for its own sake to educating themselves so that they can make an important contribution. An accurate model of reality also encourages less-motivated students to think more broadly about their options and energizes them to pursue education and self-development even if they aren’t top achievers.  (quoted from the article) Well, I am all for telling kids the truth.  I do want kids to understand their options, to broaden those options, and to encourage kids to pursue those options, regardless of their levels of motivation or their GPAs.  I do want kids to have a realistic view of the world and of their place in it.   Nonetheless, I am struck by data on the other side of this argument.  Almost two years ago, way back in Episode 67, we interviewed our colleague (and my fellow Cornell alum) Harold Levy, the smart and savvy executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.  At that time, the Foundation had co-authored, with The Century Foundation, an insightful report entitled True Merit:  Ensuring Our Brightest Students Have Access to Our Best Colleges and Universities.  We had talked about the report even earlier, back in Episode 59, and I still remember some of the statistics that the report presented.  For example: Only 23 percent of high-achieving, low-income students apply to a selective school, but 48 percent of high-achieving, high-income students do so. High-achieving students from the wealthiest families were three times as likely to enroll in a highly selective college as high-achieving students from the poorest families (24 percent compared to 8 percent).   49 percent of corporate industry leaders and 50 percent of government leaders graduated from the same 12 selective colleges and universities.  So, it does seem to matter to wealthy families that their high-achieving kids go to selective colleges, and I wish that high-achieving kids from low-income families had the same support to help them get to those same selective colleges.  And I wish that those selective colleges would try harder to provide that support and outreach.  Because as most of us realize in this real world, it does matter where you go to college.  Just ask the 49 percent of corporate industry leaders and 50 percent of government leaders who went to the same 12 selective colleges.  Of course, we are not advocating that parents or high school staff  put an unreasonable or dangerous amount of pressure on kids.  No one wants to make kids overanxious, fearful, and downright sad in their last years of high school.  Maybe our message today is really more for parents than for kids, and it is the exact same message we gave in our last episode:  Send your kid to the best college he or she got into—whether that’s an Ivy League university, a public flagship university, a small liberal arts college, or a private university.  It’s a good short-term decision and, very likely, the best long-term decision.  If you don’t agree, give me a call and let’s chat.  Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode158 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is the first episode in our new series, fondly entitled Decision Time Again.  It’s “again” for us because we always do some episodes about college decision making at this time of year, and it seems that the decisions just keep get harder and harder each year for all of you parents and your kids.  Of course, we know that it might be your first decision time, and we are wishing you the best of luck!  1. A Case from the Real World  So, here is something that happened last week:  It is a case from the real world.  I had a great conversation on the phone with a loyal listener to our podcast and reader of our books, who wanted some advice about her son’s big decision.  Let’s call her Betty (the names have been changed to protect the innocent, though I would really love to give her credit for how well she is thinking through this decision).  First of all, I want to thank her for being so complimentary of our work.  She explained that she did not go to university in the U.S., so she found our explanation of higher education here to be especially helpful.  I also want to note that Betty lives in California, which justifies the name of our podcast, USACollegeChat.  We have tried hard to reach parents from coast to coast, and we are truly happy that it seems to be working. Let me start by saying that Betty has done everything right.  As she wrote about her son in an email to me, “He had a lower GPA, but a good SAT score, and has been very fortunate to get into almost all of the schools he applied to, partly thanks to your advice about putting together a realistic list of schools, including a few stretches and some safety schools.”  And as a result, her son now has a choice of a variety of colleges that he has been admitted to:  public and private, large and small, North and South and East and Midwest, selective and less selective, liberal arts colleges and true universities.  Here are his choices:  the University of New Hampshire, the University of Pittsburgh, Miami University (of Ohio), Indiana University, St. Olaf College, Elon University, George Mason University, and American University.  Betty’s question was, quite simply, where should he go.  Betty told me that her son is interested in international relations, with a focus on Europe (where Betty is from originally) and would like to spend some time studying abroad and some time in Washington, D.C.  This week, they are going on a second round of college visits to see the colleges he has been accepted by that he hasn’t seen yet (as we recommend, whenever possible, visit after the acceptances so you can save a bit of money by not visiting colleges your child does not get admitted to).  I proceeded to talk through the list of acceptances with her and came down in favor of American University, which was the last college her son had heard from.  I told Betty that, if he had not been admitted to American, I would have advised him to choose Indiana University--because, as she knew from listening to our episodes, we love public flagship universities; because it has a fine reputation; because it has many study abroad opportunities; and because it has a School of Global and International Studies, where her son was accepted into its version of an honors program.  However, given her son’s interest in studying in D.C., American seemed like the better choice.  Its reputation is excellent, it has nationwide visibility, and its location in D.C.--with all of the opportunities there might be for international-related activities, internships, and part-time jobs--seemed to me to outweigh the pluses of a flagship university campus in exurban Bloomington, Indiana.  Betty then asked me a string of questions, which were important and relevant to her son’s decision.  It was a little bit like a “greatest hits” of issues we have dealt with in past episodes, and she did a good job of recounting them and questioning me about them.  For example, she noted that American does not guarantee housing after freshman year, and she worried about what housing might be like in D.C. if her son had to get his own.  I agreed that the lack of a housing guarantee in D.C. especially might not be ideal, but that it would not keep me from sending a child to American, given its other advantages.  I assured her that kids move off campus all the time and that he might be able to stay on campus anyway.   Next, Betty noted that American’s graduation rate was not as high as other colleges on his list.  A good point, I said, but I would be okay with that if I were relatively sure my son would stay on track and graduate on time.  Besides, I said, American is a great school, regardless of its graduation rate.  Betty commented that her son had always done better when challenged, and I agreed that is often the case and that her son would definitely be challenged at American both by the university and by his classmates to do his best.  I did add that I would give him a firm lecture about that before he left! Next, Betty asked my opinion about a gap year, which her son had brought up, but not recently.  She remembered our episode about it and, coming from Europe where gap years are more common, was not totally against it.  I repeated that all the research said gap years were great choices, and yet I would still tell Betty to send her son directly to college.  He already seems to know what he wants to do, and he does not seem to need to spend a year figuring that out.  I suggested that he might take his “gap year” after his undergraduate education and before his intended graduate work, when he might really be able to do something significant abroad.  Finally, Betty wondered if her son would be better off in a slightly less challenging college, where he could potentially get better grades in preparation for getting into a top-tier graduate school, where he hoped to pursue international affairs or business.  This was my favorite question of those she asked.  And I gave the answer we have always given here at USACollegeChat:  Send him to the best school he got into.  In my opinion, that is American.  I commented that plans change, things happen, and graduate school might not be his choice four years from now.  Why suboptimize his undergraduate education because you are hoping for the best possible graduate education?  What if that graduate education never comes, and you just wasted a great undergraduate opportunity--for nothing?  I feel so strongly about his advice, and I seem to give it a lot.  (I am not talking about Betty now, by the way.  Betty and her son are going to be fine.)  But I do see parents thinking that a mediocre public education is fine at the undergraduate level because it is a way to save money for a top-quality private graduate school or medical school or law school.  Well, as many people have said and claimed credit for, tomorrow is promised to no one.  Please, parents, let your kid to take the opportunity to get an outstanding undergraduate education if it’s offered, even if it costs a little more.  No one can predict where your kid will be in four years, what he or she will want to do then, and whether he or she will have the grades and test scores to get into a phenomenal graduate school.  As the Romans said, carpe diem--seize the day. 2. What You Should Do Right Now So, in this episode, I wanted to give you a firsthand look at how we think through things once those acceptances come in.  If you have a question like Betty’s about your kid, please drop me an email.  All the advice is free, and you don’t have to take it.  But let’s chat.  Why do you think we call it USACollegeChat? By the way, if you want more general advice, feel free to go back and listen to the advice we gave last year and the year before.  It’s still quite relevant.  Try Episode 114 from last year and Episode 69, Episode 70, and Episode 71 from the year before.  They never get old! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode157 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is the fourth episode in our new series of things we didn’t know about certain colleges--or about higher education generally. Today, we are taking a look inside the ivy-covered walls of Yale University, but I think you will be very surprised about why we are taking that look. I know that many of you parents listening today have kids who have their hearts set on attending Yale or one of the other Ivy League universities or one of the other highly selective universities next fall. And I know that many of them won’t get to do that--not because they weren’t qualified to do it, but because too many other equally qualified kids also wanted to do it. But the perceived greatness of Yale’s academic program is not what we are going to look at today. Instead, we are going to look at just one Yale course, which happens to be Yale’s single most popular course ever offered—that is, the most popular course in Yale’s 316 years, and it’s being offered right now. 1. Happiness Is a Course? In a provocative New York Times article in late January, David Schimer tells the story of PSYC 157 Psychology and the Good Life, a course that currently enrolls about 1,200 students, or almost one-quarter of Yale undergraduates. And this is not a required freshman seminar, as so many colleges have. Here is what Mr. Schimer says: The course, taught by Prof. Laurie Santos, 42, a psychology professor and the head of one of Yale’s residential colleges, tries to teach students how to lead a happier, more satisfying life in twice-weekly lectures.  “Students want to change, to be happier themselves, and to change the culture here on campus,” Dr. Santos said in an interview. “With one in four students at Yale taking it, if we see good habits, things like students showing more gratitude, procrastinating less, increasing social connections, we’re actually seeding change in the school’s culture.” (quoted from the article) What? A kinder, gentler Yale? A course about how to be happy? It sounds crazy, at first, but maybe she is onto something. The article continues: Dr. Santos speculated that Yale students are interested in the class because, in high school, they had to deprioritize their happiness to gain admission to the school, adopting harmful life habits that have led to what she called “the mental health crises we’re seeing at places like Yale.” A 2013 report by the Yale College Council found that more than half of undergraduates sought mental health care from the university during their time at the school. (quoted from the article) Wow. That is concerning to all of us, but especially to parents of Yale hopefuls or parents of kids who want to go to another 25 universities that are just as selective and just as challenging. And with the news we hear every day on our televisions, the mental health of students of all ages is increasingly a worry for all of us. So, what is in this course (for which parents are paying a hefty Yale tuition price tag)? What is in this course that some students see as “a relaxed lecture with few requirements” (quoted from the article)? Here is what Mr. Schimer reports: The course focuses both on positive psychology--the characteristics that allow humans to flourish, according to Dr. Santos--and behavioral change, or how to live by those lessons in real life. Students must take quizzes, complete a midterm exam, and, as their final assessment, conduct what Dr. Santos calls a “Hack Yo’Self Project,” a personal self-improvement project…. But while others might see easy credits, Dr. Santos refers to her course as the “hardest class at Yale”: To see real change in their life habits, students have to hold themselves accountable each day, she said. She hopes that the social pressures associated with taking a lecture with friends will push students to work hard without provoking anxiety about grades. Dr. Santos has encouraged all students to enroll in the course on a pass-fail basis, tying into her argument that the things Yale undergraduates often connect with life satisfaction--a high grade, a prestigious internship, a good-paying job--don’t increase happiness at all. “Scientists didn’t realize this in the same way 10 or so years ago, that our intuitions about what will make us happy, like winning the lottery and getting a good grade--are totally wrong,” Dr. Santos said…. “We have this moment where we can make a difference in Yale’s culture, where students feel like they are part of a movement and fighting the good fight,” she said. (quoted from the article) Well, that is an interesting take on happiness, and I have to wonder what the parents of those students are thinking. While no one wants to see kids overstressed to the point of mental health crises and while I know for a fact that many of those kids had way-too-intense high school years as they tried to get themselves prepared for Ivy League college applications, I am wondering why high grades and great internships and well-paying jobs can’t actually increase happiness. Certainly, not by themselves; but not at all? Of course, taking off some of the pressure for high grades at Yale (or any other college) is fine by me. You will recall that we have talked about alternative grading practices at colleges as recently as five episodes ago in Episode 151. All of those alternative grading practices--some of which are used by very selective colleges--seem like a reasonable accommodation to kids who have worked too hard for too long and perhaps have lost sight of the value of learning apart from the value of getting a high grade. For some kids, the constant anxiety about getting high grades can thankfully end in college; but, for those who plan on graduate school or medical school or law school, I am afraid that they will be under the gun for another four years. Can Dr. Santos’s course help them with that? I would hope so. 2. Yale’s Response While admitting how incredibly popular PSYC 157 has turned out to be, the Yale administration has had an interesting reaction. Here is what will happen next year at Yale, as Mr. Schimer writes: Offering such a large class has come with challenges, from assembling lecture halls to hiring the 24 teaching fellows required. Because the psychology department lacked the resources to staff it fully, the fellows had to be drawn from places like Yale’s School of Public Health and law school. And with so many undergraduates enrolled in a single lecture, Yale’s hundreds of other classes--particularly those that conflict with Dr. Santos’s--may have seen decreased enrollment…. Dr. Santos said she does not plan to offer the course again. Dr. [Woo-Kyoung] Ahn [director of undergraduate studies in psychology]…said, “Large courses can be amazing every once in a while, but it wouldn’t be fair to other courses and departments to take all of their students away.” She added, “It causes conflict, and we can’t afford to offer this every year in terms of teaching fellows and resources.” (quoted from the article) So, it was great while it lasted--or at least while other professors didn’t get too annoyed about the decrease in enrollment in their less-popular courses or administrators didn’t have to figure out the logistics of offering it. So, just how important is the mental health of the students or didn’t the professors and administrators think that the course was meeting that goal? I am sure that we will never know the answer to that question. 3. Your Response In case you want to take a closer look at Dr. Santos’s idea or in case you want your kid to do so, “a multipart seminar-style series on the course material--filmed last year in her home and titled “The Science of Well-Being”--will soon be available for free on Coursera, an online education platform” (quoted from the article). But, more to the point, please do keep in mind the mental health of your kid--both now in that last critical year or two of high school and then when he or she heads off for college, as so many of your kids will do this fall. Take a glance back at Episode 137, which focused on the importance of college support services for kids (like more than half of undergraduates at Yale) who need and seek mental health counseling while in college. As we said in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, information about support services on a college campus is one thing prospective applicants and their parents might want to consider--especially if your kid identifies with students of color, first-generation-to-college students, LGBTQ students, or students with learning disabilities. And now, I would add, especially if your kid is going to a highly selective university, filled with bright, hardworking, overstressed, and likely anxious students. As Randy Newman’s theme song for the great television show Monk says, “It’s a jungle out there.”  Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode156 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is the third episode in our new series of things we didn’t know about certain colleges--or about higher education generally. But today, we are actually going to talk about some new data out about high schools because those data have implications for college-going, I believe. To be fair, I already knew a lot about today’s topic, but I did not know the data we are going to share with you now--and I think the situation is really very troubling. 1. A Look Back at Foreign Languages Last August, we took a look at this topic, but I would like to reprise it today. The topic is the study of foreign languages in U.S. high schools. Those of you who are regular listeners know how important I think this topic is, probably stemming from my work a couple of decades ago with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages on a nationwide study of foreign language teaching in elementary and secondary schools and on the writing of a book of exemplary foreign language programs.   Let me repeat here a few alarming statistics from an Education Week article last June by Corey Mitchell: The American Councils for International Education estimates that 10.6 million K-12 U.S. students study a world language or American Sign Language. That sounds like a lot of students, but it is actually just 20 percent of American students. Fewer than 10 percent of students in at least two states study a language other than English. Arabic is the fastest-growing second language among U.S. residents, but only 0.25 percent of American students who study a foreign language study Arabic in school. Less than 1 percent of American students who study a foreign language are studying either Russian or Japanese, two languages that seem relatively important these days politically and/or economically. Only 11 states require credits in foreign languages in order to graduate from high school. Some of those numbers actually make me want to weep. 2. The Story in Oklahoma So, imagine my dismay when I read a recent article in the Education Week Curriculum Matters blog by Stephen Sawchuk, who opened with this sad news: In just a decade, a fourth of Oklahoma’s high schools eliminated their world language courses, the investigative reporting site Oklahoma Watch reports in a fascinating new story. Overall, a third of [Oklahoma] high schools lack a course in even one foreign language. It’s a compelling piece of education data made bleaker by the fact that the decline in foreign language in Oklahoma probably has parallels in other states…. What’s more, reporter Jennifer Palmer found, the declines are both in the “level II” instruction (usually given in sophomore year), and even more catastrophically in year III or advanced classes, such as AP courses. Having such a class can be a deciding factor in application decisions at elite colleges. Not all schools are equally affected, she notes: Rural schools bore the brunt of the cuts, likely because they weren’t able to get teachers to fill the spots. (quoted from the article) Well, there is a lot to talk about there, thanks to Mr. Sawchuk. First, let’s consider the fact that, in the past 10 years, one-quarter of all Oklahoma high schools stopped offering foreign languages, and now one-third of all Oklahoma high schools do not offer any. Frankly, I cannot imagine a high school that offers no foreign language courses--not just because foreign languages can be important for college admissions, but because they are even more important for living in a global society, for understanding cultures other than our own, and perhaps eventually for working in another country or for working with people in another country doing business with American businesses. Kids who are going to college will have another chance to study a language; kids who don’t go to college won’t. High school is their last chance. Second, the decline worsens as the courses get more advanced. No surprise there, and that’s undoubtedly always been true. Clearly, fewer and fewer kids take foreign languages as the courses get more advanced, and that goes for all languages and all states and all school districts. Many schools no longer offer a fourth year of a language, and too many also don’t offer the third year of a language. And yes, elite colleges do still look at the depth of a student’s foreign language study, hoping for at least three years of study in one language. But again, three or four years of language study is not important just for college admissions. They are important because two years of language study is not nearly enough to make students even marginally proficient in a language, as I learned when working with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The truth is that kids struggle mightily after even three and four years of high school study, but two years just is not enough. Even knowing that, colleges will sometimes look kindly enough on two years of each of two different languages instead of three years of one (especially if your high school does not offer three years of one). But offering two languages must seem like an idea from outer space to high schools in Oklahoma and elsewhere that can’t offer even one year of one language. And third, of course, rural schools in Oklahoma were most often affected--not only because of the difficulty of recruiting foreign language teachers, but also because of the difficulty of filling courses often considered as elective courses in high schools with small enrollments. I don’t have some snappy solution for that. Online instruction is the solution that is probably used most often. I have seen it, and I am not overly impressed. Is it better than no foreign language instruction? Yes, it is--at least for meeting state high school graduation requirements and college admission requirements.  3. What You Must Do I am working with a rural school district right now, and we are getting ready to look at the high school curriculum offerings. I am anxious to see how we will solve the problem of offering good foreign language instruction, but I believe that it is a problem worth solving. And I believe that, if parents allow their voices to be heard in that school district, we will have to try harder to solve it. Fortunately, I will be there to speak on behalf of those parents, but I can’t be everywhere. So, parents, you are going to have to speak up for yourselves and your own kids. That is especially true if your kid attends a rural school--though, by the way, not all urban and suburban schools do a good job of offering foreign languages, either. And I am not just picking on Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma and have actually done a lot of work in Oklahoma. In fact, it is home to one of my favorite museums and museum gift shops in the U.S. Here is a plug for that truly beautiful facility, quoted from its own website:  The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, commonly known as Gilcrease Museum, located in Tulsa, Okla., is one of the country’s best facilities for the preservation and study of American art and history. The museum houses the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West, including an unparalleled collection of Native American art and material. As the early statistics we quoted said, 39 states do not require foreign language study for high school graduation and (probably as a sad consequence) only 20 percent of U.S. students study a foreign language or American Sign Language. This is not an Oklahoma problem.  But this is not just a state problem, either. In many schools that do offer foreign languages, kids are not taking them. And they certainly aren’t taking three or four years of one language. So, parents, that is where you come in, and I am hoping it will be easier for you to influence your own kid than to try to influence an entire school district. Convince your kid to take four years of a foreign language in high school (assuming that your high school makes four years available and, if not, encourage your kid to take three years or, as a last resort, to take two years of one language and two years of another language). We have said in many other episodes how important it is to show a college that a student has taken a rigorous set of high school courses--indeed, the most rigorous set of courses that the high school makes available. Usually, that is translated into taking four years of math and four years of science, especially when those four years can include calculus and physics. But, for some students--and your kid might be one of them--four years of a foreign language might be a lot more attainable than calculus. I understand that the recent push for STEM instruction nationwide is one more thing that might drive out foreign language instruction in high schools. As a matter of fact, the STEM high school that we co-founded almost 10 years ago faced that problem of how to offer foreign language courses and how to get them into the students’ already jam-packed Early College schedule that focused on engineering and architecture. But at least we had a New York State requirement for foreign language study for high school graduation, so we had to solve the problem. In the final analysis, parents, not convincing your kid to take three or four years of a foreign language is what causes schools to stop offering them and teachers to stop training to teach them. It is a vicious cycle. So, keep your kid in foreign language courses not just to get your kid into college; do it for a lot of other great reasons, too. As I said in our episode last August, I—with my four years of high school Latin and my three years of high school French--will now get off my soapbox. (And, yes, I took both languages in college, too.) Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode155 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is the second in our new series of things we didn’t know about certain colleges--or about higher education generally.  I think this is a case of the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.  Even though we have worked with colleges for a living for decades, we have learned a lot doing our 150-plus episodes, and we hope you have, too. Today’s episode focuses on something that I did not know existed:  instant college admission decisions, which sound like a great stress-reliever to me.  Because who wants to apply to a college on January 1 and wait three months to get an answer!  So, while many students solve that waiting problem by applying under Early Action or Early Decision plans, thus shortening their wait time to perhaps six weeks or so in November and December, other students are taking advantage of instant decisions.  Here’s the story, thanks to Kelly Mae Ross and her article last December for U.S. News & World Report.  1.  What Are These Things? So, what are instant decision days?  They are exactly what they sound like.  They are events held at high schools or colleges for prospective freshmen, staffed by a college’s admission officer, who interviews prospective students for a short period of time (as little as 15 minutes) and provides an admission decision on the spot.  The interview allows a prospective student to explain little glitches in his or her academic record as well as to elaborate on personal and academic accomplishments.  It also gives a prospective student a chance to ask questions about the college.  Because the interview is so short, students need not be too nervous.  And because the interview is quick and somewhat informal, students need not go overboard dressing up.  According to Ms. Ross’s article, Kasey Urquidez, vice president of enrollment management and student affairs advancement and dean of undergraduate admissions at the University of Arizona, commented, “I can say for our team, [student dress is] not something we’re looking at whatsoever.  So dress as a student--it’s what we expect.” (quoted from the article) (Of course, I am going to add here that students should not dress like slobs, either.  I can live with “business casual” attire--just short of a tie and jacket for young men, for example.  Furthermore, students should remember that a speedy, seemingly informal event still requires that standard formal slang-free English be spoken.)  While financial aid packages might not be provided on the spot at the time of the instant decision, a newly accepted student can at least get advice on what to do next to secure financial assistance.  And here’s a plus:  Some colleges will waive the application fee for instant decision applicants.  So, that could save you a few bucks, which never hurts. And here’s another plus:  When these instant decision events are held on the college campus rather than at your kid’s high school, some colleges offer students a campus tour and the chance to meet current students--all accomplished in one jam-packed day. And here’s perhaps the biggest plus:  Instant admission decisions are not binding.  That means, of course, that a student can continue to apply to other colleges or continue to wait to hear from other colleges before making an enrollment decision.  Not surprisingly, some colleges require that a prospective student complete the application in advance (which seems reasonable).  Some colleges have minimum academic standards that prospective students must meet in order to participate in an instant decision event (which seems reasonable, too).  And some colleges permit instant decisions for just some, but not all, of their degree programs (which also seems okay to me).  But the bottom line is this:  There is just no downside to taking part in one of these instant decision days if a college your kid is interested in makes one available.  2.  What Colleges Have Them? So, what colleges have them?  It’s not surprising that highly selective colleges do not offer instant decision events.  But Ms. Ross’s article spotlights one that does:  Millersville University of Pennsylvania.  With 7,000 undergraduate students, Millersville is a public university located in rural Lancaster County, in the heart of Amish country, though not too far a drive from Philadelphia.  Founded as a teacher’s college in 1855, Millersville now offers more than 100 undergraduate programs of study.  Out-of-state tuition is about $22,000 per year—rather reasonable, when compared to private colleges. Admissions standards are also quite reasonable, given its public mission as part of the 14-campus system of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (which is a separate state system from the more selective Pennsylvania State University (of football fame) system).  The Millersville freshman class profile shows an average SAT of 1050, an average ACT composite of 22, and a high school GPA average of 3.4. And, according to its own Fast Facts on its website, 95 percent of graduates are employed within six months. While the freshman class profile statistics indicate that Millersville is not a highly selective institution, having a positive instant admission decision in a student’s pocket from a solid public university is not a bad way to relieve the stress of the college application process. And, in her article, Ms. Ross quotes Brian Hazlett, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Millersville, as saying that students who do not get an acceptance on instant decision day can get advice on how to make their application better.  It’s like personal counseling for free!  Ms. Ross’s article continues: “It’s a very, very personal way of going through the admissions process,” says John Iacovelli, dean of enrollment management at Stockton University in New Jersey, which holds about three dozen instant decision events at high schools each year.  (quoted from the article) Stockton University, by the way, is a public university in southern New Jersey, opened in 1971, which enrolls over 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students, about 1,500 of whom are first-time freshmen.  After six months, 88 percent of its graduates are employed or enrolled in graduate school.  Both this 88 percent and Millersville’s 95 percent strike me as very good statistics for any university, but perhaps especially so for a public university. 3.  What About Transfer Students? In case you have a kid already in college and looking to transfer, it might be worth noting that some colleges have these instant decision days for transfer students, too.  Ms. Ross offers this information in her article: Some university admissions officers travel to community colleges to offer this opportunity to prospective transfer students. The University of Arizona offers about a dozen such events each year, says Kasey Urquidez, vice president enrollment management and student affairs advancement, and dean of undergraduate admissions at the university. Virginia Tech…hosts instant decision days at four nearby community colleges, says Jane Todd, the school’s associate director for transfer initiatives…. Prospective transfer students should register in advance, submit their application and obtain a copy of their transcript before meeting with the admissions officer, both Todd and Urquidez say. Students who have attended multiple colleges will need a transcript from each, says Urquidez, and collecting all of these documents can take time.  (quoted from the article) Well, the University of Arizona and Virginia Tech!  These are gigantic public universities that are well respected in their states (and nationally, too) and very likely by the nearby community college students who could take advantage of these instant decision days.  Given our nation’s scandalously low rates of community college students transferring to four-year institutions to continue their educations, these instant decision days have to be a step--or a giant leap--in the right direction. 4.  So What? So, what should you do with this information?  Well, if I were you, I would start looking for colleges that offer the instant decision events, either on their campus or at your kid’s high school.  Ask the guidance counselor about any such events at the high school.  If there aren’t any scheduled, suggest that the guidance counselor look into this option, perhaps especially from nearby public two-year and four-year colleges.  In my search for information, I ran across a posting on the website for Saratoga Springs High School, located in the beautiful upstate town of Saratoga Springs, New York.  The notice explained that eight colleges would be conducting “instant decision” and “instant admit” sessions at the high school between October 30 and December 15.  The colleges were both public and private, both two-year and four-year, and both large and small, including one major campus of the State University of New York system.  That’s not a bad deal for those seniors, especially those who did not have their hearts set on highly selective colleges or those who needed or wanted to attend a nearby public institution. What’s the bottom line?  It is that it never hurts to have a little stress relieved by these instant decision days.  There are few things in education that have no downside, as we have said in the past.  One of those things we have talked about often is student internships during high school.  Another of those things is Early College high schools and other college-credit-in-high-school programs.  Another of those things is Early Action admission plans.  There is just no downside to any one of these things. And now we will add instant decision days.  Just no downside.  So, do a little research in your own community and happy hunting! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode154 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

It is officially March, and I feel that we have done all we can for the Class of 2022.  Before we head into advice for the Class of 2023, we are going to do a few episodes on things we didn’t know about certain colleges--or about higher education generally.  As we have always said, we learn something every time we do an episode, even though this is our business and we have been doing it a very long time. Today’s episode focuses on a favorite topic of ours here at USACollegeChat--that is, our nation’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).  We have spotlighted HBCUs in several of our episodes over the years (Episodes 32, 90, 100, and 117), and we mentioned them on many of our episodes that took you on our virtual nationwide tour of colleges quite some time ago.  And while we will give you some background and some statistics in this episode, for those of you who are not familiar with HBCUs, the real purpose of the episode today is to praise the new documentary on HBCUs that recently aired on PBS’s Independent Lens series.  The documentary, entitled Tell Them We Are Rising, is the work of filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Marco Williams.  And it is fantastic! As our regular listeners know, there are just over 100 HBCUs in the U.S.  About half are public, and half are private.  HBCUs are large and small (many are very small), faith-based and not, two-year and four-year colleges and universities; some also have graduate and professional schools, including the well-known Howard University School of Law, which is the focus of one segment of the new documentary.  HBCUs were originally founded to serve black students who had been excluded from other higher education institutions because of their race.  The three earliest HBCUs were founded in Pennsylvania and Ohio before the Civil War, but many were founded in the South shortly after the Civil War.  Those Southern HBCUs share a proud tradition of becoming the first colleges to provide higher education to the family members of freed slaves.  Over the years, HBCUs have produced extraordinary leaders in every field of endeavor and thousands and thousands of well-educated American citizens.  A list of their famous graduates would be too long to read to you. 1.  Why Watch?  So, why should your kids (and you) watch this documentary?  (If you can’t still find it on the air on PBS or streaming on the PBS website, buy it or tell your high school to buy it and show it to all of the students.)  There are a lot of reasons to watch.  First, it is a great piece of documentary filmmaking.  It includes take-your-breath-away and heartbreaking archival photographs and film of black American life during segregation and during the end of segregation.  It includes archival photographs and film of HBCU students on campus going back a hundred years, including the horrifying 1972 shooting of two students in an otherwise peaceful protest on the campus of Southern University (in Baton Rouge, Louisiana); more about that later.  It includes insightful interviews with former HBCU students now in their 70s and 80s, with HBCU presidents, with historians, and more.  It includes evocative and relevant music.  Second, the film gives an impressively organized overview of 150 years of African-American history, focusing on higher education in the form of HBCUs, but including everything from the beginning of elementary education for black children to the debate about the education philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois to the role of the remarkable Thurgood Marshall (who graduated from both Lincoln University and Howard University School of Law, two HBCUs) in ending school segregation to the lunch counter sit-in protests staged by HBCU college students during the struggle for civil rights.  If your kid does not know this history (and many don’t), here is a powerful way to help him or her learn it. Third, if your kid does not know what an HBCU is, it is time your kid learned.  That is especially true if your family is African American--or Hispanic, because Hispanic enrollment at HBCUs has been increasing (as we have said in earlier episodes).  And while white students can and do also enroll at HBCUs, white students should also have an understanding of these historic institutions and their continuing important role in our nation’s social and cultural fabric.  We have heard too many anecdotes (including in this documentary) of black high school students who want to go to an HBCU only to have their friends ask them why in the world they would want to do that.  Early in the film, HBCUs are described as an “unapologetic black space.”  Late in the film, they are described as the place where “you’ll find something you won’t find anywhere else.”  That’s why.  No one could have said it better. 2.  Some Background If you all thought that you were going to get away without hearing one more time about my favorite HBCU, Fisk University, you were wrong.  Oddly enough, in a PBS interview by Craig Phillips with the filmmakers, Mr. Williams said that they had written a segment, which they did not end up using, about the Fisk University Jubilee Singers.  The Jubilee Singers, organized in 1871, saved the University from closing in its early days by raising money on their concert tours, and they continue to tour today.  I love their story.  And, of course, there is Charles Spurgeon Johnson, the intellectual architect of the Harlem Renaissance, who served as Fisk’s first black president, and the Harlem Renaissance writers and artists, like Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and Aaron Douglas, whom he brought to Fisk to work with him.  Well, Mr. Williams, I would love to have seen your segment on the Jubilee Singers, though I was interested in the segment you do have on Fisk.  And you all should be, too. As we just said, today HBCUs enroll students who are not black--just as historically white colleges and universities (referred to as predominantly white institutions, or PWIs) now enroll students who are not white.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2015, students who were not black made up 22 percent of the enrollment at HBCUs.  That was up from 15 percent back in 1976.  And while the number of students enrolled at HBCUs rose by 32 percent in those years—which was good for them—total college enrollment rose by 81 percent in those same years.  Some observers say that it has become harder for HBCUs to recruit African-American students now that they have been welcome at both selective and nonselective colleges across the U.S.  That is undoubedly true to some degree. Nonetheless, there is still a strong sense of community among the alumni/alumnae of HBCUs and a strong sense of tradition on HBCU campuses.  You can see that in the new documentary, for sure.  And there have been very recent and impressive spikes in HBCU applications, as we said back in Episode 100.  For some African-American students, the sense of community at HBCUs could be a good fit for what they are looking for in a college, and a shared culture could go a long way toward helping them feel comfortable on a college campus, especially if it is far from home.  Some observers say that Hispanic students often feel more comfortable in the family-like environment of many HBCUs, which could account, in part, for the increase in Hispanic enrollment. And, parents, in case you are interested, lower-than-average tuition rates at both public and private HBCUs (sometimes literally half of the going rate at PWIs) are one more attractive feature.  Just go check out a few.  I think you will be surprised. So, if you and your kid are tempted to investigate further after watching Tell Them We Are Rising, here are some HBCUs to consider (some you will probably know, and some you might not know): Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee) Howard University (Washington, D.C.) Spelman College (Atlanta, Georgia) Morehouse College (Atlanta, Georgia) Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, Alabama) Hampton University (Hampton, Virginia) Lincoln University (Lincoln University, Pennsylvania) Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, Florida) Xavier University of Louisiana (New Orleans, Louisiana) North Carolina A&T State University (Greensboro, North Carolina) Claflin University (Orangeburg, South Carolina) Delaware State University (Dover, Delaware) Morgan State University (Baltimore, Maryland) And there are plenty more. 3.  What We Didn’t Know So, let me return for a moment to the shooting at Southern University, which I am embarrassed to say I knew nothing about.  I would like to think that is because I myself was just a college student in those days, but that is really no excuse.  Here is an excellent synopsis of what happened, as told last month by reporter Mike Scott, of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, on the occasion of the documentary’s airing on PBS: Forty-five years after two Southern University students were shot dead by police who had been sent in [to] quash weeks of demonstrations on the school’s Baton Rouge campus--which included occupation of the university president’s office--the 1972 incident is once more getting attention. The documentary Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities will make its broadcast premiere Monday night (Feb. 19) on PBS--and online a day later….  In addition to starting with a drum cadence by the Southern University drum corps, the 85-minute film features a 10-minute segment on the Southern [University] shootings, which are brought to life through interviews, photos and video--and which vividly, and poignantly, illustrate the on-campus tumult at HBCUs in the late 1960s and early ’70s. “They were exercising their constitutional rights. And they get killed for it. They die,” former student Michael Cato says in the film of the slain students. “Nobody sent their child to school to die. It shouldn’t have happened.” The Southern shootings took place Nov. 16, 1972, after weeks of demonstrations by students protesting inadequate services. When the students marched on University President Leon Netterville’s office, Gov. Edwin Edwards sent 300 police officers in to break up the demonstrations. It was during the subsequent confrontation that a still-unidentified officer fired a shotgun at students in violation of orders. When the smoke cleared, two 20-year-old students--Leonard Brown and Denver Smith--were dead. No one was ever charged in their deaths. Edwards, who is interviewed in Tell Them We Are Rising, blamed the students, saying their actions were a “trigger” for the police response. In 2017, the Southern University System board’s academic affairs committee voted to award Brown and Smith posthumous degrees.  (quoted from the article) The documentary shows the actual shots being fired and the bodies of the two students being taken away.  It includes a touching interview with the sister of one of those students.  It tells a story that all of us should know.  4.  Final Thoughts In an interview for PBS with the filmmakers, writer Craig Phillips asked why they had wanted to make a film about HBCUs.  Here are their answers: Stanley Nelson: In fundamental ways, historically Black colleges and universities form the core of the African American community. They are the engine that has driven the ascent from enslavement to the highest positions in business, government, education, science, technology and entertainment. The sacrifices made to create these institutions are significant, and are what compelled me to capture this essential chapter of American History.  Marco Williams: HBCUs are the engines of American democracy. These institutions, in the education of African Americans activate what it means to be American. I was invested in telling this story because I am committed to highlighting the fact that African American history is American history. People often ask about is there a need for HBCUs? I always answer: why don’t we ask is there a need for PWIs (predominantly white institutions)? This answer, coupled with the viewing of the film, provides the most salient understanding of the significance and the value of these essential institutions to the creation of America.  (quoted from the article) Mr. Nelson goes on to say this: My goal is to highlight the indisputable importance of these institutions within Black communities and invite Americans to consider how different our country might look without the existence of these institutions. I also hope this film prompts viewers to not only celebrate the legacy of HBCUs, but also reinvest in them.  (quoted from the article) I think that the film will absolutely do that.  I think it is hard to watch it and not want to go to an HBCU.  Remember, parents, that HBCUs come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are well known, and others are not.  But their history as a group and as individual institutions is remarkable, as Tell Them We Are Rising teaches all of us. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode153 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

I come to our topic today with mixed feelings.  We have talked about it on numerous occasions and written about it in our books.  It’s a topic that lends itself to some data-based analysis, but I have to say that it also causes me to think about my own philosophy about academics and what is important and what isn’t.  So, this is a big topic, and it is college majors. As I have been working with students during this round of college applications, I listen to them talk about choosing colleges to apply to because those colleges have good departments in this or that--whatever they think they want to major in, at this point in their young lives.  Often these kids want to become doctors--doesn’t everyone?--and I listen to them talk about the biology departments and the research opportunities that the colleges on their lists have.  And I wonder how many of them will still be pre-med by the time they are sophomores.  At the other extreme are the kids who believe they have a wide variety of academic interests and want to find colleges where they can pursue all of them.  One recent experience I had was with a student who talked with equal enthusiasm about chemistry, music, business, and one or two others I can’t even remember.  One of my most interesting students this year talked about majoring in Czech as a tribute to her grandfather’s heritage (by the way, she was already taking Czech courses outside of school at the local consulate); that is one of my favorite stories ever.  Rarely do I think their college major choices will stick (though I am secretly pulling for the Czech major).   Two articles I have read recently caused me to think about this topic from a couple of other perspectives, so let’s explore them.  1. Where Students Get Their Advice  Let me open with a premise from an article I read way back last September, an article which I have been saving for the perfect episode.  Writing in U.S. News & World Report, education reporter Lauren Camera opened with this: When it comes to choosing college majors – a crucial decision that lays the groundwork for future employment and earnings – students often rely on the least reliable sources for advice: family and friends. Work colleagues and employers are among the best sources of information for students seeking advice about choosing a major. But according to a new survey by Gallup and Strada Education Network, . . . they are the least utilized. “This causes us to rethink the entire college advice mechanism,” Brandon Busteed, executive director of education and workforce development at Gallup, says. “There is a lot of pretty bad advice out there.” When choosing a major field of study, the survey shows, students most commonly sought advice from “informal social networks.” In fact, more than half of adults, or 55 percent, with an associate degree, some college or a bachelor’s degree depended on their social network for advice about choosing a major, most frequently from friends and family. The next most commonly consulted source of advice, which 44 percent of people reported considering, was college and high school counselors, as well as media-based information. The least consulted group, which 20 percent reported consulting, were work-based networks, including former employers and work colleagues. (quoted from the article) None of this is surprising.  I think the data would be about the same if you asked people how they chose the colleges they applied to; most would say they relied on family and friends for advice--who, by the way, are equally unreliable as a source of appropriate colleges.  And, of course, how can high school seniors really consult with employers and work colleagues about the choice of a major when lots of them are not working at all and the rest are working part time, mostly in places they hope to get out of by going to college.  So, what does the report recommend?  Ms. Camera’s article says this: The report recommends relying less on high school and college counselors, who are overworked and often responsible for an unrealistic number of students, and more on potential employers and faculty members. “Taken together, the challenges facing the formal channels of student guidance suggest that retooling the traditional model of advising to fit the changing needs of students could bolster its effectiveness,” the report reads. (quoted from the article) All of that is interesting, but I think it is more likely to work for students already in college than for high schoolers thinking about a future college major choice.  And, of course, the liberal arts enthusiast in me, which our regular listeners know from previous episodes, still wonders whether college does have to be all about getting a future career--though I have to admit that even I said to my student, “What would you ever do with that Czech major?”  Carol D’Amico, executive vice president of mission advancement and philanthropy at Strada Education Network, was quoted in the article as saying this:  “We know your choice of major is not necessarily the choice of career, but it puts you on a pathway and commits you to a pathway. . . .  Most everyone who goes to higher education these days say they are going to launch a career. That’s a fact. So how do we become much more intentional about getting them to their desired career?” (quoted from the article) I wish it weren’t so, but perhaps it.  I am certainly willing to put students on a pathway, but I am far less willing to commit students to a pathway.  I believe that most liberal arts majors give students a choice of many different pathways and that the student’s choice can change over time precisely because of that liberal arts background.  But that’s a different episode.  2. Changing College Majors So, let’s move on to something that everyone always says to kids, but that I never saw any actual data about until recently—that is, how many kids change their majors once they are in college.  Last December, Doug Lederman wrote an article for Inside Higher Ed, which asked and answered the question posed in his headline:  “Who Changes Majors? (Not Who You Think).”  Here is the whole answer: [A] brief report from the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, drawn from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, finds that 33 percent of bachelor’s degree pursuers who entered college in 2011-12 and 28 percent of students in associate degree programs had changed their major at least once by 2014.  About one in 10 had changed majors twice. (quoted from the article) Well, there you have it:  About one-third of college students change their majors, and that’s enough so that your kid shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about doing the same thing in the next year or two.  I am all for that, speaking as someone who changed her major in the first month of college (that shows you how well prepared I was, and I am quite sure that I never got any advice from anyone when choosing either my original major or my final major, perhaps more’s the pity).  For all the kids who think they want to be science majors, here are a few more statistics from Mr. Lederman’s article: Students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs were likelier than those in non-STEM fields (35 versus 29 percent) to change majors. And students who started out studying math were likeliest of all: 52 percent of those who initially declared as math majors ended up majoring in something else, followed by 40 percent of those in the natural sciences, 37 percent in education, 36 percent in humanities disciplines and 32 percent in engineering and general studies. . . .  (quoted from the article) Truly, I am not sure that there is much practical significant difference  between 35 percent in STEM fields and 29 percent in non-STEM fields changing majors--or among 40 percent in natural sciences, 37 percent in education, 36 percent in humanities disciplines, and even 32 percent in engineering and general studies.  However, apart from relative comparisons of one major to another, it does seem like changes in majors by 52 percent of mathematics majors and 40 percent of natural science majors might be worth noting.  Mr. Lederman’s article gives a number of plausible explanations for the abandonment of mathematics, which you are welcome to go read.  3. Choosing a College Because of a Major So, what’s the point?  It is simply that I want your kid to be very careful this spring when choosing a college to attend.  Where did your kid get his or her idea about what to major in?  Was it a well-informed choice?  Does the major have a future, either in a specific career field or in something that can serve as the underpinning for many career fields? Given the statistics, basing the choice of a college on a potential major (assuming your kid is lucky enough to have some good options available once the acceptances come in) might not be the best thinking.  In other words, choosing to attend one college over another largely because of a great biology department, when you think you are going to be pre-med, might not be the best decision. I know we all have struggled with the college application questions that ask for a kid’s major--and sometimes even for a back-up major!  I know we have struggled with the college application essays about why that major is particularly interesting to the kid.  I have certainly helped lots of kids write lots of those essays.  Here is what I always said to them:  This essay is an exercise in presenting yourself in an appealing and persuasive way to this college.  You should not think of it as an irrevocable promise that you are going to pursue this major that you are writing about.  And so, help your kid understand that he or she might want to change that major, perhaps more than once, and that making such a change is okay with you and even okay with the college. What are the exceptions, and there are always some?  Obviously, there are kids who have applied to a specialized school, like a music school in a larger university, or kids who have auditioned for and applied to a specific arts-related school or program, like dance or studio art.  These are kids who have devoted a lot of their young lives to their talent and, if they are accepted, are very likely going to choose a college because of that particular program.  That is perfectly reasonable.  But, as it turns out, even those kids can change their minds; and, if they do, being in a specialized school within a larger university might be useful if it comes time to reconsider their choices. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode152 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today we are going to talk about a topic that I bet you and your high school senior have not given any thought to.  And yet, it’s a topic that you and your high school senior have done nothing but think about for the past year or so, just from a different perspective.  That topic is grades.  Or more precisely, today’s topic is grading practices, which is not exactly the same as your kid’s grades.  Probably the most you have thought about your kid’s high school’s grading practices is whether the school uses a weighted system for figuring a grade point average (GPA)--that all-important GPA that might get your kid into a great college or keep him or her out of one.  There has been a lot of debate about that in the past few years, with no real resolution pro or con.  And, certainly, there has been talk among your kid’s friends (and perhaps your friends, too) about which teachers are easy graders and which teachers are hard graders and whether your kid should select high school electives accordingly.  Well, high school is essentially over, and your kid is going off to college.  How much thought have you both given to the grading practices at the colleges on his or her list?  Yes, those colleges your kid just applied to.  It’s not too late to start thinking now—before your kid makes a final choice in the spring. 1. Some Background When Marie and I wrote our fantastic book How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available at Amazon and a perfect gift for any younger kids you still have at home), we said that kids and their parents need a lot of information about colleges before deciding whether to put a specific college on the kid’s list of college options.  We also said that most of you never get most of the information you need--which is a shame, because it’s hard to make a life-changing decision without having all of the information that is available to you.  The book explains the 52 questions that your kid really should get answers to before deciding whether to apply to a college--much less actually enroll there.  Those questions cover a wide range of categories of information about the college: History and Mission Location Enrollment Class Size Academics Schedule Housing Security Measures Activities and Sports Admission Practices Cost In the section on Academics, we ask this, among other questions:  Does the college have a traditional numerical or letter grading system for assignments, exams, and final course grades?  If no, jot down the way that students are graded (e.g., with written narrative evaluations where professors comment on strengths and weaknesses). Here is what we said in the book to explain this question: We bet that grading practices are not something most students consider before choosing a college—perhaps because they assume that colleges are quite traditional when it comes to awarding final course grades.  Most colleges do, in fact, use some kind of numerical scale (typically, with a 4.0 as an A) or letter scale (typically, from A through F).  These traditional grading practices might seem just fine to you.  However, there are some colleges that are anything but traditional when it comes to evaluating student progress.  For example, take Hampshire College (an excellent and innovative private college in Amherst, Massachusetts), where students receive written narrative evaluations from professors on their assignments and as their final course grades.  No numbers and no letters!  Or, take Bennington College (a great private college in Bennington, Vermont), where students receive narrative evaluations at the end of each course, but may request letter grades; students interested in graduate school are encouraged to request letter grades for at least two years so that a GPA can be calculated for their graduate school applications.  Colleges that use narrative evaluations instead of traditional grades praise their value in teaching their students more about their own strengths and weaknesses, in getting their students to focus on their learning instead of on their grades, and in building better and more stimulating relationships between their students and their professors.  That’s probably something you never thought about before. Well, Marie, if we had written the book today, we could have added some additional innovative grading practices that a relatively small number of colleges are using, ones that might seem quite attractive to 2017-2018 current crop of applicants.  The question here is not necessarily whether your kid would have applied or would not have applied to a college because of its innovative grading practices, but rather whether he or she (and you) should weigh those grading practices in the scale when you all are ready to make a final choice of a college this spring.  Grades will continue to be a big part of college life for your kid--just as they were in high school.  This is especially true, as Bennington College knows, if your kid intends to go on to graduate school, medical school, or law school.  And, by the way, that’s true whether graduate school comes right after the undergraduate years or, in fact, many years later.  Those undergraduate grades will matter.  So, let’s look at a couple of new grading practices, and you think about what they might mean for your kid. 2. No More F’s Let’s start at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI).  Given that UMPI is in northern Maine near the Canadian border and that it enrolls only about 1,200 students, my guess is that your kid has not applied there and that many of you have never heard of it, though it was founded over 100 years ago and is one of the seven campuses in the public University of Maine System.  UMPI was in a situation not unlike a number of other public universities:  a remarkably low 11 percent graduation rate in the traditional four years and only a 30 percent graduation rate in six years and a location in a county that was losing population just when its region needed more college graduates to fill jobs that required a college degree. An article in The Hechinger Report, written in January by Robbie Feinberg, education reporter for Maine Public Radio, has a catchy headline:  “In rural Maine, a university eliminates most Fs in an effort to increase graduation rates.”  Mr. Feinberg writes: One of the biggest changes has been the near-elimination of the failing grade. In most classes, if students fail a test or project, they can redo it until they’ve proven they know the material. If students are still failing at the end of the semester, many won’t receive an F, but instead a grade of “not proficient” or NP. Under the system, students then sign a contract with their professor outlining the work they need to do over the next 45 days to boost that grade to a passing mark. University officials said the system doesn’t work for everyone; some students still end up with F’s. But they hope the added flexibility will help students pass classes the first time so they don’t have to spend extra time and money to retake them. . . .  [UMPI] President Raymond Rice said he’s most encouraged that about 60 percent of students who received a “not proficient” grade eventually converted it to a passing mark. (quoted from the article) Not having to spend time and money to retake courses has to be a game-changer for a lot of students--certainly for that 60 percent.  And, clearly, keeping F’s out of figuring into a cumulative GPA for one’s undergraduate years has got to be a game-changer for any student who cares about his or her GPA (especially anyone interested in graduate school).  We actually did something similar at the high school that Marie and I co-founded in Brooklyn, where we gave a grade of NC (no credit) to kids who would otherwise have failed; so, they didn’t get credit for the course, but they didn’t have the deadly weight of an F pulling down their GPA forever, either.  I think it “saved a lot of lives,” and I imagine it could be having a similar effect at UMPI.  While the implementation of the new system is not going perfectly at UMPI (you can read Mr. Feinberg’s full article for the details), the policy about giving F’s only as a last resort is one that I find very persuasive.  And, if I had a child getting ready to go to college (not that I would expect that child to get an F--ever), this is a policy that would still make me happy, as a parent.  3. How To Earn an A Appearing in The Hechinger Report in January (as well as in U.S. News & World Report) was a column by Jill Barshay about a new grading practice at the University of Michigan, that state’s truly excellent public flagship university.  Ms. Barshay writes: At the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, about 8,000 students have earned their ordinary course grades in an unusual way. They start out the semester with a zero, but each has the opportunity to earn an A by racking up points. The professor determines how many points each assignment or test is worth, and there are various ways to get to an A. If students botch an assignment, they can try something else. Each student can track his or her point tally online and see options for earning more points. Since developing this system, named “GradeCraft,” five years ago with two colleagues, education professor Barry Fishman gleefully admits he’s awarding many more A’s. He estimates that he’s doling out A’s to 80 percent of his students now, compared with 50 percent or 60 percent beforehand. But, he claims, his students are working a lot harder. “Colleagues say I’m not rigorous enough,” said Fishman. “I think rigor should be about how challenging the material is, not how hard it is to achieve a certain outcome.” In surveys conducted by GradeCraft’s inventors, students reported that they worked harder and felt more in control of their class performance. . . . Fishman argues that conventional grading systems can undermine learning. That’s because if you fail the midterm, and it’s worth 30 percent of the final grade, you might realize that you’ll never be able to claw your way back up to an A, and stop trying. “You moderate your behavior and try less hard to maintain a B average. You see it all the time,” said Fishman. The opportunity to earn an A, even late in the semester, keeps students engaged, Fishman argues. And it encourages students to take risks, knowing that they can repair the damage later if they fail at first. In one undergraduate class, Fishman offers a menu of 1.4 million points. Students need to reach 900,000 to get an A. “You could never earn a good grade just by doing dumb stuff,” he said. In another graduate seminar, Fishman assigns only one paper. But students can revise and resubmit it over and over again to earn an A. (quoted from the article) For the gaming-like history of GradeCraft’s development and for some perspectives by professors who don’t like it, read Ms. Barshay’s full column.  Nonetheless, I have to say that this grading practice seems pretty appealing to me:  the harder you work, the better grade you are going to get.  Perseverance is rewarded.  Clearly, learning takes place.  Is this system appealing to your kid?  If your kid applied to the University of Michigan, he or she should know that about 100 professors in 28 programs and departments there have tried GradeCraft and have used it more than once.  Would that make the University of Michigan a more attractive option than another great public flagship university?  It might. 4. The Moral of the Story The moral of the story today is that grading practices can be very different--way more different than you and your high school senior probably thought.  And it’s not too late to find out whether the colleges your kid applied to have done anything innovative on this topic--before you all make a final decision later this spring about where to enroll.  What have you got to lose? Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode151 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today’s topic is something I have never thought much about at all.  And that’s true even though my oldest child was in this situation, and no one seemed to think much about it when he was accepted to Berklee College of Music a dozen years ago.  When Jimmy applied to Berklee (the college we like to say that offers the best contemporary music education in the world), he was admitted for the following spring semester rather than for the fall.  I looked at that as a great opportunity for him to study abroad for a semester.  I found a great fall semester program sponsored by the American Institute for Foreign Study (everybody should check out AIFS’s huge variety of excellent programs).  I knew he would still graduate on time since he had college credits from courses he had taken while in high school, and I figured that he would have even more from studying abroad.  It sounded great to me!  Of course, I now realize that is not how many students--who just applied to college under Early Action or Early Decision plans and were admitted for next spring instead of next fall--likely feel.  Some of them--perhaps many of them--and their parents are clearly disappointed with their recent news.  So, let’s take a look at spring admissions and how families should feel about that decision, regardless of how you feel about it now. 1. Tulane University’s Spring Scholars A couple of weeks ago, we quoted from a blog written by Jeff Schiffman, the Director of Admission at Tulane University, a great school in the even greater city of New Orleans.  At the time, he was giving some advice to students who had applied early and been deferred till the regular decision round.  When I was reading Mr. Schiffman’s blog, I noticed another post from December 18, and I’d like to read some excerpts from it now.  This is about spring admissions at Tulane to a program Tulane calls Spring Scholars (feel free to go to his blog and read the whole piece): The most common question I get from Spring Scholars is, “Why was I admitted for the spring?” The answer has to do with how we review applications and the increase in popularity Tulane has seen over the past few years. Our admission office is very big on the holistic review process. That means we spend a great deal of time creating a class of students based on everything you present to us in your application. Spring Scholars have excellent applications in nearly all regards. There are amazing alumni interviews, great “Why Tulane?” statements, and outstanding letters of recommendation in every application. When reading your application, we knew immediately that you want to come to Tulane and that you would be a great fit here. That said, Tulane has become an increasingly popular university and that has made it more and more competitive to gain admission here.  I suspect that our overall admit rate this year will be lower than last year's which was around 21%. Unfortunately, that means that over 80% of the students who apply to Tulane this year will not be admitted for either the fall or spring. By the numbers, we also saw our strongest Early Action pool in history, with a middle 50% range on the ACT between 31-34 and SAT between 1440-1540. These are by no means cutoffs, but it does give you a sense of just how competitive Tulane is this year. We can’t take every academically qualified student who applies, but for a small group who we believe will be fantastic fits, we admit them as a part of our Spring Scholars program.  With those facts in mind, I have some suggestions for next steps to take if you have been admitted as a Spring Scholar. First, take some time to think about it. I know your preference would be to start class in the fall, but the Spring Scholars option is a final decision—it’s non-binding and you have until May 1st to decide. There will be no Spring Scholars switched to the fall semester at any point. Before you reach out with questions, take some time to read the FAQx for the program; there’s some great info in there about housing (we guarantee it!) and Greek life (you can still go through the recruitment process!) (quoted from the blog) Okay, so let’s look at the numbers.  These are some pretty impressive numbers for Tulane (and they help explain why some students I know did not get in under Early Action, even though they were great students with all the necessary qualifications).  And, these numbers underline again what we said two weeks ago:  Expect a bumpy road for the next couple of months if you are waiting for admission decisions from very good and great colleges.  The numbers are not very student friendly.  And then, Mr. Schiffman makes some good points to the Spring Scholars:  You have absolutely been admitted, you will absolutely have campus housing even though you will be arriving in the middle of the year, and you will absolutely be able to go through fraternity and sorority rush (which you actually cannot at some colleges with this spring admissions plan, and it is very important to some students and is more important at some colleges than others).  What Mr. Schiffman does next in his blog is downright fascinating:  He prints a full-color photo of The American University of Paris, with a caption that reads, “Your other fall campus option!”  What?  Here’s my view:  One of the only cities in the world that is lovelier than New Orleans is Paris!  How clever is that!  Here is what Mr. Schiffman wrote: Next, consider your options for the fall. We’re so excited about the fall abroad programming we offer Spring Scholars in both Rome and Paris. You’ll have the option to spend your fall term with a cohort of Tulane students at one of two incredible universities abroad: The John Cabot University in Rome or The American University of Paris (AUP). Schools like Northeastern, Cornell, Miami, Delaware, and the University of Southern California also have freshmen at these campuses during the fall. . . .  If you’d prefer to stay stateside, you can take classes as a non-degree-seeking student at a school of your choice, participate in a gap semester program, take a semester to work, or maybe participate in service. It’s really up to you! (quoted from the blog) Here is what Mr. Schiffman wrote next: Next, plan a visit to campus during one of our two dedicated Spring Scholar Destination Tulane dates. The dates you should plan on coming are either February 17th or April 21st. This event is tailor-made for Spring Scholars. You’ll be able to meet other students admitted into the Spring Scholars program this year, hear from current Spring Scholars, and attend presentations from both John Cabot and AUP. . . . If Tulane truly is where you see yourself, we’d love to have you join us in January 2019. Currently, we have 75 Spring Scholars excited to start at Tulane in just a few weeks! Oh, and expect a visit from me in Paris or Rome in the fall. I’m not joking! (quoted from the blog) It sounds to me like Mr. Schiffman has made the best possible overture to the new Spring Scholars and has offered them a super-attractive plan for what to do next fall, which might sound even better to some students than starting at Tulane in the fall.  Smart move! 2. Where Else? Well, of course, it’s not just Tulane.  As it happens, my own alma mater, Cornell University, posted this on its website about its First-Year Spring Admission program for its College of Arts and Sciences and its College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: Over the past decade, Cornell University has experienced a more than 100% increase in first-year admissions applications. For this year’s class, Cornell reviewed close to 47,000 applications for a class of 3,275 new first-year students. In order to allow more students to benefit from a Cornell education, the university has developed an exciting option. In January 2018, Cornell University will welcome approximately 60 freshmen to begin their Cornell experience starting in the spring semester. . . .  Students selected for spring semester enrollment are exceptional candidates whom we are unable to admit for fall because of on-campus space constraints. Students with a record of academic achievement and who exhibit the important qualities of leadership and initiative have been selected for this special program. . . . Students offered the opportunity to enroll in January will be asked to submit an enrollment deposit to confirm their place. During the summer, we will contact you to confirm your plans for the fall semester (e.g. taking classes, traveling abroad, participating in public service, working, etc.). Cornell will then contact you in September to confirm that you are indeed planning to enroll in January. Once confirmed, we will work with you to pre-register for courses for the spring semester and have you start other processes (such as applying for housing and dining options). You will participate in an orientation program when you arrive in January (a few days before classes begin) to ensure that you are ready for success. (quoted from the website) Okay, Big Red, I have to say that doesn’t sound quite as exciting as Tulane’s Spring Scholars, and it certainly doesn’t have Mr. Schiffman’s hype (which I don’t say pejoratively).  Plus--and this is also true of the Tulane program--just how big a deal is this program when it is admitting 60 kids when the freshman class was over 3,000.  I have to say that I have not quite figured that out yet.  It should, on the other hand, make the spring students feel genuinely good about themselves and their qualifications because they are really part of a relatively tiny select group.  Would I advise a student to wait to attend Cornell until the spring if that’s the best admissions deal the student could get?  Frankly, I would . . . in a heartbeat. And then there’s Middlebury College, an excellent liberal arts college in Vermont, perhaps best known for its outstanding language programs.  For about 30 years, Middlebury has been enrolling about 100 students for its spring semester, which begins in February.  Clearly, 100 students is a bigger proportion of the total of about 700 freshmen admitted at Middlebury at about 15 percent (compared to not quite 2 percent at Cornell and perhaps about double that percentage at Tulane).  Here is some background on Middlebury’s idea: February admission is a program developed by former Dean of Admissions Fred Neuberger in a creative effort to fill dorm space that was empty during spring semester because so many Middlebury students study abroad. Rather than admit a large class of transfer students, the College decided to admit another class of first-year students, or “Febs.” (quoted from the website) Okay, so that’s interesting.  February admission solved a problem for the college rather than a problem for the students.  Of course, that really isn’t suprising, but it doesn’t make it a bad idea.  The website continues: February students are chosen from the same applicant pool as September students and all students are notified of their admission at the same time in late March or early April. Students may indicate on the application their preference for a starting date (September only, February only, or either), but this is ultimately an Admissions Office decision. Some students who indicate an interest in September may be offered a place in our February class. Many applicants now tell us they’d prefer to be “Febs,” and some even outline their plans for the fall in their applications. (quoted from the website) Well, that’s not surprising, either, given the increasing interest by high school students in taking a gap year (feel free to go back and listen to our Episode 115 from last spring).  I guess if a program is well established at a college, the way Middlebury’s appears to be, that gives students one more reasonable option to consider during the whole application process.  The website continues: Being admitted as a Feb is a full admission to the College community. We choose our Febs because we see in them students who will use wisely the time between high school graduation and their studies at Middlebury. “Febs” tend to be highly energetic leaders in their school communities, or students who have already sought unconventional and creative opportunities in their high school careers. Febs typically come to Middlebury ready to “hit the ground running.” Before arriving on campus, Febs have several months that are entirely their own. The College does not seek to direct or recommend certain pursuits. . . . Some Febs work to save money and then travel. Other Febs pursue service opportunities or internships. As February first-years, students enter in February and leave four years later in February--in their caps and gowns, but also on skis, snowshoes, or sleds at Middlebury’s own ski area, the Snow Bowl! The February celebration has become a hallmark of a Middlebury winter. February seniors and their families enjoy a full weekend of festivities on campus and at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl. February admission does not imply that students will graduate in three and a half years. Any student (September or Feb) may choose to use AP credits, or other transferable credit, to accelerate his course of study, but that’s not the intention of the Feb admission program.  (quoted from the website) Middlebury has clearly made “Febs” an integral part of the College.  3. The Trends So, what are the trends in spring admissions programs?  Here are a few.  Colleges are not trying to push spring starters out in three and a half years; spring starters are expected to be there for four full years, but are certainly welcome to get out in three and a half by taking some courses elsewhere or using college credits earned during high school.  Spring starters are going to live on campus, often with students of their own age.  Spring starters will participate fully in all of the extracurricular activities that colleges offer (including fraternity and sorority life, but perhaps on a slightly delayed schedule for that).  Spring starters who play on varsity sports teams will have four full seasons of athletic eligibility available to them.  And spring starters will probably get some kind of special orientation designed for them so that they can immediately feel at home in the college community. So, what’s the downside of spring admissions?  Maybe not much at all—especially if it gets a student into a great school that he or she has at the top of the list. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode150 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Last year about this time, we did an episode on colleges with late application deadlines.  We would like to do that again today, realizing that some colleges have changed their deadlines, of course, since our episode last January.  It is amazing to me--still--that so many colleges have deadlines well past early January, even as we seem to focus our high school seniors every year on meeting a January 1 deadline for their college applications.  Apart from those colleges that have mid-January or late January deadlines, there are many colleges still accepting applications for next fall’s freshman class.  So, let’s take a look.  1. Watch Out! As I recently watched kids getting rejections or deferments from Early Decision and Early Action applications gone awry, I wondered whether they might want to take a second look at their college list and see how happy they were with it now, given their new information.  For kids who had pinned their hopes to an Early Decision choice or to a couple of Early Action choices, even if those Early Action choices were just safety schools, a chance to take one last look at the college landscape might be just what they need.  It doesn’t mean that they will choose to apply to another college or two or three, but it might be that this last look serves as a pressure-release valve while they begin the long wait till March or April.   Let us say that there are still a lot of good colleges accepting applications.  Many of those deadlines are this month in February, but some are in March, April, May, and even beyond that.  I used The College Board’s website, Big Future, to look at a full list.  However, I found mistakes or, at least, miscommunications.  So, please double check the deadlines of any colleges that appear on any such list--The College Board’s list or any other compiled list--by going to the college’s own website, as The College Board itself advises. Here are a few things worth noting, though I’m afraid that these points are going to be much more useful for parents with younger high school students still at home.  Let me start with the opposite of today’s topic of colleges with late application deadlines, and that is colleges with super-early application deadlines.  As I was doing the research for today’s episode, I stumbled across a number of good colleges with regular decision application deadlines well before January 1, such as December 1 for the Colorado School of Mines (see our virtual nationwide tour some episodes back for information about this excellent school known for its engineering and sciences).  So, pay attention, parents of younger high school students, before the fall of your kid’s senior year. And, speaking of super-early application deadlines, sometimes the date given for the application deadline is actually a whole year before the year you want to enroll.  The Big Future website, under “Colleges with Later Application Deadlines,” lists the application deadline for Iowa State University, an excellent public university, as July 1.  But here is what Iowa State actually says this on its website (emphasis added): Iowa State University operates on a rolling admissions basis. Admission of applicants for fall semester begins in July of the preceding year. Admission for other terms begins approximately 12 months prior to the beginning of the term. Admission offers are issued for a specific term and are valid only for the term specified. (quoted from the website) Here is something else to pay attention to when looking at compiled lists of colleges with later application dates:  Sometimes the date given for the application deadline is actually for transfer students.  Or for graduate students.  For example, The Big Future website, under “Colleges with Later Application Deadlines,” lists the application deadline for Alfred University (a good private university in upstate New York, with publicly sponsored engineering and art and design programs) as August 1.  Actually, Alfred’s regular decision deadline is February 1 for new freshmen, July 1 for transfer students, and August 1 for graduate students. And here is something even more distressing.  What comes up first on a Google search for Rollins College application deadlines is this: Deadlines. Fall Semester Admission The application deadline for fall semester applicants is March 1 for Priority Consideration and April 15 for Regular Decision. Application Instructions | Full-Time Undergraduate ... - Rollins College www.rollins.edu/admission/requirements-deadlines/index.html But, that information is taken from the transfer student portion of the admissions information—not that a reader can tell that.  The deadline for first-year applicants was February 1, so you would have missed it!  And sometimes that information that comes up first is from U.S. News &World Report, and it is sometimes wrong as well. Here is another thing to remember:  Sometimes different programs or schools within a university can have different application deadlines.  Or one school or program can have two application deadlines, such as a performing arts school within a university that has one deadline for the regular application and a second deadline for the audition. And one last note of caution:  Sometimes the deadline for scholarship consideration is earlier than the actual application deadline. For example, at Kent State University, January 15 is the deadline to be considered for freshman scholarships, though March 1 is the deadline to submit applications for the following fall.  So, if financing is an issue for you--as it very often is--then apply as early as you can (this is especially important information for those of you with younger high school students at home).  Just to underline that, here is some important information from the website for the University of Arkansas (emphasis added):  Students interested in applying to the University of Arkansas for the fall semester are urged to apply before the early admission deadline of November 1.  By applying early, students can take advantage of priority scholarship, housing, and orientation privileges. However, applications for the fall semester will be accepted until August 1. (quoted from the website) So, the moral of the story is, pay attention and trust no list or outside organization.  Go to the college’s own website only, and read the information on that website carefully.  Let me add, that--oddly enough and for whatever reason--it is not always a snap to find the application deadline information on a college website, though I can’t imagine why. Finally, we are going to say again, apply as early as you can--regardless of where you are applying--especially because of the number of colleges that say they have rolling admissions. 2. Colleges with Late Deadlines We want to say again this year that there is no perfect way to generalize about the colleges with later deadlines, though I have noticed--again--that quite a few of them are the branch campuses of large public universities (e.g., University of Massachusetts Lowell, University of North Carolina at Asheville, University of Texas at El Paso, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, University of Tennessee: Chattanooga, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Massachusetts Boston). Other than those, you can find great public flagship universities, small liberal arts colleges, larger liberal arts universities, faith-based colleges, HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities), single-sex colleges, specialized colleges (e.g., fine arts, maritime) --really, just about anything.  They are large and small.  They are urban, suburban, small town, and rural.  They include some selective colleges and, perhaps not surprisingly, many not-so-selective colleges.  They include colleges in the North, South, East, and West (including in our 49th and 50th states).  The truth is that your kid could find a reasonable college choice from this list of late-deadline colleges if you all started the college search today. As we did last year, let me read you a tiny sample of colleges with late application deadlines to peak your interest.  Here are just some of the colleges your kid could apply to by February 15 (and really that should be plenty of time to pull off some of these applications, if you all are interested): College of Charleston College of Wooster Earlham College Howard University Pace University University of Kentucky And what about March 1?  You really have no excuse not to apply to one of these, if you are interested:  Hampden-Sydney College Hampton University Maine Maritime Academy Manhattanville College Randolph-Macon College University of Dallas University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa And I really can’t resist telling you a few of the colleges with an April 1 deadline (which seems truly far away):  School of the Art Institute of Chicago SUNY College at New Paltz University of Houston University of Iowa University of Kansas University of Oklahoma University of Utah And even May 1 deadlines (yes, really): Clemson University (technically, but if all the class spaces have been filled by kids who applied before December 1, then you won’t be going to Clemson) Tuskegee University University of Arizona University of Central Florida University of New Mexico (though it was February 1 to be considered for out-of-state scholarships) Okay, you get the point.  And some colleges have even later application deadlines than that.  In fact, one of our favorite colleges here at USACollegeChat has a July 1 deadline:  Richmond, The American International University in London.  If your kid is not captivated with what’s ended up on his or her list or where he or she finally gets in, think again and consider how much happier he or she might be in London at a truly one-of-a-kind university! So, parents of high school seniors, if either you or your high school senior is truly questioning the choices you all have now, it’s not too late.  Again, the options that we have just read are a small sample of colleges still accepting applications (though I think I have probably read you a lot of the academically better options). If you and your high school senior are intrigued, take an hour or two now and have a last look at your kid’s list.  It might not make any difference in the final analysis, but you will both know that you left no stone unturned.  As always, call us, if you could use some free advice! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode149 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Hello, again!  When we signed off in mid-December to take an end-of-year break, we thought that we would be back with you the first week of January.  But, you know what they say about the best-laid plans….  So what happened?  The flu, the snow, and the unexpected week-long extension of a business trip I was on in Alaska on the shores of the Arctic Ocean!  I am taking full responsibility for our absence, and let me say that these few weeks are the longest we have been off the air since we started our podcast over three years ago.  So, now that we’re back, what’s going on with current high school seniors, who have submitted their college applications, for the most part, and are biting their nails?  Well, here’s one thing that’s going on, including with the kids I have been working with myself:  the deferment and the consequent letter of appeal.  Now, I am not referring to an appeal for better financial aid from colleges that students have been accepted to, though that letter of appeal certainly exists--and may be down the road a bit for some of you.  Rather, in this episode, we are going to talk about a letter of appeal for students who had applied under an Early Decision or Early Action plan last fall and who were deferred into the regular decision applicant pool, with a decision still ahead this spring.  1. What Happened with Early Decision and Early Action in 2018? You will recall that we have spoken with you about Early Decision and Early Action admission cycles a lot of times, including in 2017.  We looked at statistics of how many students applied under these early admission plans and how many got accepted.  We said that early admission applications were on the rise and that a surprising number of colleges filled up a surprising number of their freshman seats with these early applicants, including as many as 50 percent of them!  We urged you to have your kids apply under the Early Action banner wherever possible, because it was nonbinding on the student and there was simply no downside.  We urged you to have your kids find a safety school or two to apply to Early Action so that everyone in your household could relax.  We urged you to have your kids apply under the far-more-restrictive Early Decision banner if your kids had really made up their minds and you agreed with them and could afford to worry only a little bit rather than a lot about financing the college years. Well, here’s where we are now.  Here is a glimpse of the situation, as written up by Josh Girsky on December 20 in the best college newspaper in the U.S.--that is, of course, The Cornell Daily Sun, which used to be Ithaca’s only morning newspaper and which I covered sports for, back in the day.  The headline reads, “Cornell Early Decision Admission Rate Drops for 3rd Year in a Row.”  Josh writes (with my emphasis added): For the third year in a row, Cornell received a record number of early decision applicants for the Class of 2022.  Out of 6,319 applicants, 1,533 were admitted, for an early admissions rate of 24.3 percent, down from an early admissions rate of 25.8 percent for the Class of 2021 and [down from] 27.4 percent for the Class of 2020, according to a press release from the University released on Wednesday. Cornell’s early decision applicant pool has increased by 83 percent in the last decade, the release noted.  Other Ivy League schools also saw lower early decision admissions rates. The University of Pennsylvania’s early admissions rate dropped to 18.5 percent, while Harvard and Yale had early admissions rates of 14.5 percent and 14.7 percent, respectively. Brown’s early admissions rate was 21 percent while Dartmouth’s was 24.9 percent.  (quoted from the article) Suffice it to say that, as long as great colleges offer early admissions options, average, good, and great students are going to apply early.  And, evidently, more students are going to do it every year, as more and more families see the trends in these early applications and acceptances and the percentage of seats already filled before ever getting to the regular decision date.  And, therefore, early admission rates are going to keep falling, for obvious reasons, as colleges have more and more and better and better students to choose from in November and don’t have to wait till January.  Why should they? There are plenty of anecdotes about all this, and more statistics will undoubtedly be published in the next month or two.  Princeton University had the largest single-choice Early Action applicant group in the last seven years (an 8 percent increase over last year).  Georgetown University’s Early Action applicant group was the largest ever for the University, resulting in an early acceptance rate of just 12 percent.  Yes, these are all great universities, but there has also been spillover to colleges with somewhat less prestige.  Where will it all end? Well, it will end with outstanding students who do not get into the top choices on their lists when they apply Early Action or Early Decision.  2. What About Being Deferred? For students who applied Early Action or Early Decision and got deferred (that is, had their application moved into the regular decision round rather than being outright rejected), let us pass along some advice from Jeff Schiffman, the Director of Admission at Tulane University.  You might recall from our virtual nationwide college tour many, many, many months ago, that Tulane is a very good, highly competitive university in the great city of New Orleans.  Frankly, I am not sure whether Mr. Schiffman’s advice will make you feel better or worse.  My guess is, some of both.  Here is Mr. Schiffman’s explanation of deferment and what it all means from his insightful official admission blog: . . . [W]hat does being deferred mean? In essence, being deferred means that we need a bit more time before making a final decision on whether or not to admit you. There are two major factors that will come into play from here on out; one is in your control and the other is not. Your application will come back to the admission committee in the spring and will go through the same review it went through in Early Action, this time however you will be up against the Regular Decision pool of applicants. The first factor, the one outside of your control, is the way the rest of the applicant pool shapes up. We will do a full re-review of your application with the regular decision pool. Depending on the competitiveness of that regular decision pool, we will make a new decision on your application before April 1st. If the regular pool is much larger and stronger than we expect, then it will be more of a challenge for deferred students to be admitted. However, if it is closer to what we saw with Early Action, we will be able to offer admission to a number of deferred students. We won’t know more about this until after the January 15th Regular Decision deadline. I think it is also worth mentioning that Tulane saw a pretty substantial increase in applications this year. Bottom line, we could fill up multiple freshman classes with students who are academically qualified to attend Tulane. We could fill up multiple freshman classes just with students who would be great fits here and genuinely want to be at Tulane. The problem is we can’t admit all of them, even if we wanted to. That brings me to the second factor that comes into play now that you have been deferred, and this is the one that is within your power. This has to do with what you can do from here on out now. There are a number of things that you can do to strengthen your application to Tulane, and a few things you shouldn’t do. (quoted from the blog) I actually think that is a pretty straight explanation of the situation, and I am sure it is similar at many other good colleges across the U.S. this month.  So, what now?  Here are some of Mr. Schiffman’s dos and don’ts, also quoted from his blog (I have added some emphasis, indicated in bold, to point out things that I found especially noteworthy): DO: Consider switching your application to ED II. This is for deferred EA applicants only (and for first-time applicants.) . . .  The deadline is January 5th. DO: Be in touch. Contact your admission counselor and let him or her know you are interested in Tulane. . . .  You’ll want to shoot them an email in the coming weeks (not necessarily today . . . let the dust settle and your emotions subside) letting them know that you have been deferred and that you remain strongly interested in Tulane. . . .  It will be nearly impossible to be admitted to Tulane if you do not, in some form, reach out to us. We’d like to only take those students we know want to enroll here. DON’T: Over-contact your admission counselor. One email to your counselor over the course of the spring semester will help, especially if you have some bigger news for us (you retook the SATs, a major (major) advancement in your extracurricular activity, etc.), but do not send us a weekly email update. It will not help your cause. Major profile in your local paper’s community section? Send it in. Promoted to secretary of the National Honor Society? No need to send; we already have a nice list of your extracurricular activities you sent us when you applied. Also, be honest. If you’ll enroll at Tulane if you are admitted, tell us, but only if that is the truth. DO: Send us an essay about why you are interested in enrolling at Tulane, if you have not already done so. See the Why Tulane? prompt on the application for admission. Tell us why you would be a great fit here, and why Tulane is a great fit for you. Do some research. Many times, we defer students who are academically qualified to be admitted, but we are unsure of their interest level. So reach out and let us know. DON’T: Feel pressured to come down and visit. We know money is tight these days, and New Orleans is a big trip for many of our applicants. If you feel the need to come down to express your interest in Tulane in person, you are definitely welcome to do so, however if this is not possible (for financial or any other reasons) do not fret. . . . . DON’T: Compare yourself to others. Calling the admission office or emailing your counselor to inquire why “Diane and Jack who have lower scores and lower grades and fewer extracurricular activities were admitted but I was not” will never, ever help your cause to be admitted at Tulane. . . .  You may not be aware of what is in other students’ recommendations, essays, etc., or what we are specifically looking for. . . .  DO: Send us some additional materials. You are welcome to send us a new résumé, essay, your first semester grades, an art or music portfolio, a new SAT or ACT score, etc. While some of the smaller things may not make a big difference, an increase on your SATs, or a well-written essay about your Tulane visit can go a long way. Mid-year reports are recommended for deferred students. Again, keep in mind, unless it’s a major change in extracurricular activities, it won’t change too much (same goes for additional teacher recommendations). The biggest changemaker will be new test scores. . . . (quoted from the blog) 3. What About a Letter of Appeal? So, here is what we want to say about the notion of letting the college admissions counselor at the deferring college know that you are still really, really, really interested.  We will call this a letter of appeal.  It should be one typed page.  It can be sent by email, but should be followed up in print by mail.  What goes into the letter?  First, just as Mr. Schiffman alluded to, I think a student has to say that the college is his or her first choice and that he or she will attend, if admitted.  Mr. Schiffman would like that to be the truth; we would, too.  However, my guess is that a lot of kids are saying something like that in letters being written all across the country right now, even if it is not exactly the truth.  Your family will have to make your own moral judgment here.  I did just recently encourage a student not to send a letter to a college that she was deferred from when I thought she was not likely to go to that college anyway.  At the same time, I did encourage her to tell another college she was deferred from to say that the college was her first choice when it was, more likely, simply one of her top two or three choices.  That’s as close as I am going to get to a moral judgment.  Second, a student should show a solid understanding of the academics of the college and of how he or she will fit into the academic world there.  Naming a specific department, specific major, specific courses, and specific research opportunities are a good idea.  Make sure your kid knows exactly what the name of the department and major are inasmuch as they are different at every college, for some reason.  Talking about his or her readiness (that is, high school background, including AP courses and Early College or dual-credit courses) for study in that specific field is an intelligent move.  Emphasize the notion of “fit” between the student and the college. Third, a student should restate (since this information is likely in the original application or application essay) how he or she might fit in with specific extracurricular activities, including volunteer or service opportunities, performing music and drama groups, and sports at the college--again, drawing on experiences in high school that make these interests seem genuine.  This part of the letter should be sharp and focused, not a general recounting of a whole bunch of random high school activities.  Again, emphasize the notion of “fit” between the student and the college. Fourth, as Mr. Schiffman advised, a student should mention any major accomplishments since the original application was submitted, especially new SAT or AP test scores or academic honors (for example, a student of mine was selected to exhibit her artwork in a highly competitive senior art show).  (Don’t forget that SAT scores have to be submitted officially from The College Board and that mid-year senior grades should be submitted by the high school.) Fifth, a student should mention any close family connection to the college--including parents or grandparents who went there and/or siblings who went there or are there right now.  This mention should ideally explain what the student has learned from those personal connections and why that makes the college so much more attractive to him or her.  I believe that including this information in an understated way helps the college believe that this student is really more likely to enroll, if admitted.  Finally, I think that the tone of this letter might be hard to get right.  It can’t be sad or disappointed; it can’t be cocky or overconfident; it can’t be annoyed or frustrated.  I rather liked the final paragraph of a letter I just worked on with one of my students.  It went like this:  “I hope this letter reinforces why I believe that I belong at The University of ___________. Thank you for reviewing my application not once, but twice. Your time and consideration mean the world to me.” Here’s hoping that she gets in. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode148 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

It’s the middle of December, and those of you with teenagers who are facing application deadlines in the first week of January either see that the end is in sight or are pulling out your hair.  Whichever it is, I am not sure how much more we can do for you.  I will make our standard offer, nonetheless:  If you are wrestling with a question about a college application or trying to figure out another college or two to add to your list--yes, it’s not too late--then, give us a call.  Quick, free advice is available for the next two weeks.  I am guessing that those of you who are our regular listeners might have had enough advice from us already about making your teenager’s long and short lists of colleges and researching those college options.  But, we are here if you need us. But, before we take an end-of-year break, I thought you might like to look into the future of U.S. higher education.  Admittedly, this future might come too late for your current senior, but you might have another kid or two at home.  If so, this episode could be for you.  1. Who Is Clayton Christensen? The prolific author and thinker who is giving us this picture of the future of higher education is none other than Clayton M. Christensen, a well-known Harvard Business School professor.  He is famous in the business community for his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, in which he espoused his theory of disruptive innovation.  The back cover of the book explains it this way:  In this revolutionary bestseller, innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership—or worse, disappear altogether. And not only does he prove what he says, but he tells others how to avoid a similar fate.  Focusing on “disruptive technology,” Christensen shows why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. (quoted from the book cover) Then, a decade later in 2008, Christensen became the guy that educators loved to quote when he wrote Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, with co-authors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson.  Well-respected psychologist, Harvard professor, and author Howard Gardner wrote this in praise of Disrupting Class on its back cover:  “After a barrage of business books that purport to ‘fix’ American education, at last a book that speaks thoughtfully and imaginatively about what genuinely individualized education can be like and how to bring it about.”  How to bring it about was, of course, through innovative uses of technology, including really good online instruction.  2. Christensen’s Latest Vision That brings us to November 15 of this year and an article on CNBC’s website entitled “Harvard Business School professor: Half of American colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years.”  But, here’s some background.  In her article, Abigail Hess writes this about Christensen’s 2011 book, The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out: . . . Christensen and co-author Henry Eyring analyze the future of traditional universities, and conclude that online education will become a more cost-effective way for students to receive an education, effectively undermining the business models of traditional institutions and running them out of business. (quoted from the article) In the Q and A with the authors on the Amazon website, they say this about their book: We wanted to show how new strategies, many of them driven by online technology, make it possible to serve more students at lower cost while also increasing quality and improving the learning experience--something we saw in practice within our own university homes. Since then, the world has moved into a major economic downturn. Slow economic growth, high government and household debt, rising college tuition, declining graduation rates, and growing competition from the rapidly growing for-profit higher education sector combined to create a renewed sense of urgency for our message. We could see how the same online learning technologies that can benefit traditional institutions can also disrupt them. So, our message became cautiously optimistic. Online learning, we believe, will either disrupt traditional universities and colleges or create opportunities for them to serve more students and lead the country to greater prosperity. It depends on whether they cling to a model that has changed little in the past 150 years or embrace learning innovations made possible by new technology. (quoted from the website) The authors continue: We assert that colleges and universities must break with tradition and find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions, allowing them to once again become responsive to the needs of learners. . . . Online technology makes a college or university vastly more attractive to a wide subset of students. It gives many people a second chance at learning--i.e. those who cannot afford a traditional college education, those who do not have the flexibility to take part in a full plate of coursework, and late bloomers or dropouts who have fallen behind and now have the chance to catch up. But online learning doesn’t just offer cheaper education for the masses. It improves the student learning experience across the spectrum by allowing remedial to elite students to learn at their own pace and on their own timetable. Students can receive a fully customized education adapted to their own individual learning style, something that even the world’s best one-on-one tutor would have trouble systematically emulating. Students also benefit from a full array of choices about where, when, what and how they learn. And they can access the best teachers and information faster, connect with more global networks, and all in all consume a much more attractive [product]. In addition, online learning is a cost-saver to the university, which saves on the expense of building and managing a brick-and-mortar facility.  Combine the lower cost of delivery with the lower cost of attendance, and it’s clear that online learning is a major cost advantage. Therefore, we urge traditional colleges and universities to adopt these technologies. (quoted from the website)  I think it is critical to note here that Christensen believes that online higher education is not just a way to make college cheaper or more accessible for more students, but also a way to “[improve] the student learning experience across the spectrum.”  That might be the key here--because I think most of us would agree that online education can make college cheaper and more accessible to students who would otherwise be unable to attend.  But how many of us agree that online education can actually “improve the learning experience”?  I have to say that I don’t agree with that yet, but perhaps the time will come.  Ms. Hess continues in her article: Christensen is not alone in thinking that online educational resources will cause traditional colleges and universities to close. The U.S. Department of Education and Moody’s Investors Service project that in the coming years, closure rates of small colleges and universities will triple, and mergers will double. (quoted from the article)  So, will online higher education cause small struggling colleges that can’t make ends meet to close; or, rather, will it allow some to stay open by helping them offer cheaper courses and fewer expensive facilities and, therefore, attract more students; or, more generally, will it simply improve the landscape of higher education options available to college students?  Maybe it will do some of all of these. In recent years, as Marie and I have advised graduating high school seniors going off to college (or staying home for college nearby), we have shied away from advising them to take online courses.  We have worried that it might be hard for kids new to the college scene to stay disciplined enough to keep up with online coursework when there is no required attendance at classes or, at least, expectation of attendance at classes.  And yet, maybe this is the way of the future--a disrupted future--even for first-time, more traditional college students. No one might know this better than Marie, who has developed online college courses and taught online college courses and taken online graduate-level college courses.  So, is it time to change our advice?  I actually have a longtime colleague who is establishing an online college, complete with full degree programs, as we speak.  Maybe Ben is exactly right.  Stay tuned. 3. Happy Holidays! We hope that you enjoy your December holidays and that you have a fantastic New Year’s--free from too much college application hysteria.  We are going to take two weeks off, as I fly out to Alaska on business and then Phoenix for a family holiday gathering, two places about as different as you can get.  We will return on January 4 with a new episode.  It is going to be our best one yet.  Happy holidays and welcome to 2018! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode147 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

As you head into December and draw near to the looming college application deadlines that follow in the first two weeks of January, we are sure you have a lot on your minds, parents.  Almost all of you are worried about how you are going to pay for whatever college your teenager eventually enrolls in. Most of you are worried about whether your teenager is going to get into his or her first choice.  Many of you are worried about whether your teenager will get into any of his or her top several choices.  Some of you are worried about whether your teenager will get into any of the colleges that are your top choices for him or her.  And a few of you, undoubtedly, are worried about whether your teenager will get into any college at all. But, here is something you already know:  Parents, you have no control over what colleges choose to admit your teenager, so you might as well stop worrying about that.  On the other hand, here is something else you already know, but rarely think as hard about as that first thing:  Parents, you have plenty of control over the number of applications your teenager submits.  And that is the subject of this episode on the biggest college application mistake you are about to make. 1. What Is the Mistake? This mistake that you and your teenager are about to make could be the biggest mistake of the whole college application process that has been going on in your family perhaps for the past six months--or longer.  And the mistake couldn’t be simpler to recognize or easier to correct.  Quite simply, make sure that your teenager applies to enough colleges.  If there are a few colleges that you aren’t quite sure about even at this point in December, our advice would be to go ahead and have your teenager apply to them.  One might be a reach school that your teenager hasn’t quite gotten out of his or her system.  Another might be a target school that you thought your teenager didn’t need because he or she had enough of those on the list.  Another might be a safety school that was an interesting idea, but a bit outside your comfort zone.  Frankly, it doesn’t matter what those additional colleges might be.  Just go ahead and have your teenager apply.  Why?  Because having colleges to choose from next April is priceless, as they say.  2. Looking at the Numbers When we took up this topic about 18 months ago (way back in Episode 77), we quoted from an article by Mike McPhate in The New York Times on April 11, 2016, which explained that students were applying to more colleges than they used to: In 1990, just 9 percent of students applied to seven or more schools, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.  By 2013, that group had grown to 32 percent. (quoted from the article) And, if I had to guess, based on all the articles we read and chatter we hear, I would say that the 32 percent is likely still higher now in the 2017-2018 round of applications. You already know all of the reasons for that rise in the number of applications--from the fact that The Common Application now makes it so easy to apply to additional colleges with just the click of a button--at least when those additional colleges don’t have supplementary application questions and essays to complete--to lots of talk about how certain colleges are receiving record numbers of applications and, therefore, lowering their acceptance rates.  According to a U.S. News & World Report article by Delece Smith-Barrow last September, California placed eight public institutions on the list of the 10 U.S. colleges that received the most applications for fall, 2016.  Great for public California higher education institutions, maybe not so great for California kids!  As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, UCLA had over 102,000 freshman applicants for this past fall, up another approximately 5,000 applications from the 2016 number in this news article.  Joining UCLA on the list are five other University of California campuses (including the flagship UC Berkeley campus, with about 82,000 applications), two California State University campuses, and two private universities whose names make them sound public:  New York University and Boston University.  Each of these institutions received more than 57,000 applications almost two years ago now. Of course, as more students apply to more colleges for fear they won’t get into any, more applications are received by each college, and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle.  You might recall that we have talked recently about the fact that high school graduates are shrinking in number and, consequently, that college enrollment is also shrinking.  Experts say that the worst of the admissions crunch might be over for high school seniors and their parents.  Nonetheless, we have also noted that the great colleges and the most selective colleges (which might or might not always be the same thing) are not really hurting for applicants.  And, I don’t think ever will be in my lifetime.  So, getting into top colleges and getting into popular colleges (again, which might or might not be the same thing) will still be a concern for lots of you out there, for sure. By the way, according to The Common Application website, the “total number of applications submitted through November 1[of this year] was 1,518,131 (+20% over 2016) from 510,912 unique applicants (+13.3% over 2016).”  By November 15, that number was up to almost 2 million applications and another 100,000 unique applicants.  So, it’s not just that more applications are being made; it’s that more are being made under Early Decision and Early Action plans.  And we have said that before, too. According to a Common Application spokeswoman about 18 months ago, about 4 or 5 applications is what the typical student submitted for admission in fall, 2017.  Of course, in addition, this typical student could have submitted applications to colleges that do not use The Common App, but my guess is that would perhaps just add one or two colleges to the list. 3. What Is the Magic Number?  So, what is the magic number of applications to submit?  The first thing to say is that, according to The College Board’s website, there is no magic number.  I am sorry to hear that because I was hoping there was a magic number that we could just tell all of you and you could quit worrying about it!  But The College Board’s website goes on to say that 5 to 8 applications are usually sufficient to get a good match for a student. In a more recent July article also by Delece Smith-Barrow at U.S. News & World Report, Ms. Smith-Barrow quotes Matthew Proto, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid at Colby College, a lovely liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine, as saying, “I don’t know if there is an actual best number.” But she goes on to note: While there may not be a specific number applicants should aim for, experts say, there is a specific range. Prospective students should have between four and eight schools on their list, experts say. (quoted from the article) Interesting, because I don’t think that we actually agree with this advice, generally speaking.  The article also says this:  Applicants should carefully weigh the number of schools where they’ll submit applications to maximize their chances of being a strong candidate, and to avoid the drawbacks that can come with applying to too many or too few schools, admissions experts say. Applying takes work, experts say, and submitting applications to a large number of schools may ruin the quality of the prospective student’s applications. (quoted from the article) Really?  A drawback to applying to too many colleges is that you will have to work hard on each application so that each one is of high quality?  I would say this to students: “Get over it.  If you can’t work hard enough to do a bunch of applications over perhaps four months (when most of them are maybe 80 percent the same), then I am worried about your chances of succeeding in any college.  Really.” While we have talked in plenty of other episodes about the variety of colleges we think your teenager should have on the list of colleges he or she will actually apply to (different sizes, different locations, both public and private institutions), we are not going to go into that here.  Today is just a numbers game. So, what is the right number?  Every expert (you just heard from a couple of them) and every college counselor has a number.  Some of these numbers--like the 4 to 8 or the 5 to 8 we just heard--seem low to me, but maybe that’s because I like teenagers to have plenty of good options available to them next April.  In our first book (How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students, still available through Amazon), Marie and I offered a recommendation of applying to 8 to 12 colleges.  We do know that most--though not all--applications cost money.  We also know that, if you are eligible, you can get fee waivers for many of them.  And, since those of you who listen often already know that I am not very cost sensitive about a decision this important to your teenager’s future, I am going to suggest that several hundred dollars (to even $1,000) spent now on application fees might save your family a lot of heartache next spring.  Now, I am going to say, like the late great Jerry Orbach said in Dirty Dancing, “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.”  When Marie and I did our most recent book How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (also available at Amazon), we said that 15 college applications is probably a sensible average, plus or minus 5.  So, that’s a bit more than our earlier advice.  We are pretty sure that we are right this time, and we trust that you can keep your teenager working through this month to produce high-quality applications until the very last one is submitted.  Good luck! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode146 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

First, Happy Thanksgiving to all our listeners!  We hope you will have a lovely day, filled with family and food, and that you will have a relaxing long weekend.  Oh, except for the fact that some of your teenagers will be finishing up college application supplemental essays--or worse still, just starting them--so your weekend is not likely to be all that relaxing.  Those of you who listened last week heard our discussion of the number of supplemental essays that various colleges require, the range of topics those essays can cover, the applicant’s choice of prompts for those essays, and the word limits that are typical for those essays. This week we have some more advice, and we hope it will be helpful in the coming days. 1.  Supplemental Essays:  The Tone So, let’s talk about tone.  I am going to use “tone” to mean the attitude the writer has toward the audience (and by “audience,” we mean, of course, the college admissions staff).  Let me say that this is one of the worst problems I find with supplemental essays, perhaps because they are too often tributes to an individual college, written by carried-away teenagers.  The problem with the tone of many supplemental essays is that teenagers gush over how wonderful the college is or what smart students go there or how much praise the college receives in national publications or what great extracurricular activities are available or how brilliant its professors are.  Really, parents and teenagers.  Colleges know how great they are (or like to think they are); they don’t need a high school teenager to tell them.  It is fine to be admiring, of course; but, gushing just sounds naïve and unsophisticated.  Have your teenager try, instead, to point out specific factual things they admire about the college (that is, things that are worth admiring)--like its biology department is ranked in the top 10 in the country, because that is factual, not gushing. In talking with students, I have realized that it is very hard for them to see this problem in their own writing.  You might try reading aloud what your teenager has written to see if it is easier to recognize that way.  Here is one example, which was written by one of my advisees as the conclusion to a prompt about why she was interested in attending the university in question:   The programs offered, opportunities provided, and the praise the school has received for being one of the top colleges in the nation are some of the many reasons why I believe University X would be a good fit for me. As I explained to her when I read this, “the praise the school has received for being one of the top colleges in the nation” is neither specific nor concrete.  Who gave the university that praise?  Where was it published?  Isn’t this just heaping it on?  And, by the way, I explained that this University is not actually one of the top colleges in the nation.  I said that, if you named the top 50 colleges in the nation, this University would not be on the list, and it might not even be on the list of the top 100 colleges in the nation--although it is a nice private university in the South and one that is very popular with teenagers in our part of the country.  So, her statement in the essay was just too extreme, too flattering, too effusive, too gushing.  As a matter of fact, I doubt that even the University itself believes that it is one of the top colleges in the nation. Here are two more examples from essays written for that same prompt:  I know that the city University X is located in is a prime destination for those who want to immerse themselves in the glorious visual and performing arts available at the school and within the city.    As an undergraduate at University X, knowing the variety of career opportunities available for me would not only make me feel more confident and self-assured when it comes time for me to look for work, it would also make me feel more excited knowing that I would have nearly endless possibilities provided for me. I, too, believe the arts are “glorious” and wish that career possibilities would be “nearly endless,” but both words are too exaggerated and too over-the-top to be taken seriously by an admissions officer.  This is the kind of writing you need to watch out for, parents.  By the way, the teenagers who wrote these are smart, and they go to great high schools.  They have had a lot of extracurricular experiences in the U.S. and travel abroad.  They are not naïve.  And yet, their writing hasn’t quite caught up to them, yet. 2.  Supplemental Essays:  The Likely Topics There are several often-used and often not-optional topics that your teenager should have a longer (about 350 words) answer and shorter (about 150 words) answer for: “Why our college” or “Why is our college a good fit for you” or “How will our college contribute to your goals and interests” or some version of that--The unsuccessful examples we just shared with you were for this topic.  This topic requires your teenager to read up on the college; to refer, in the essay, to what he or she has learned from that research; and to match what he or she has learned about the college with his or her own interests and pursuits.  For example, an applicant could reference the college’s diversity or award-winning academic departments or core curriculum or research opportunities for students or community outreach efforts or faith-based mission or something else--along with what the applicant thinks about them or admires about them.  If this is one of the longer-length essays, then the applicant will need to reference at least four or five things about the college.  Whatever the applicant references should be as specific as possible.  Here is a good example: University X’s community service requirement also makes the University stand out in comparison to other universities. I find it intriguing that the requirement is actually built into the curriculum and that there is such a wide variety of community service activities offered, including internships, public research projects, and faculty-supported projects. One program that stood out to me was volunteering with an organization that trains dogs to help people with disabilities. I used to volunteer at a local animal shelter to walk and feed the new dogs. So, this opportunity would be something that I would welcome. Do you see how specific that is--and memorable?  But remember:  This is an essay that is not easily used from college to college because of the specifics about the college, so tell your teenager to be careful about trying to get double duty out of it. By the way, if this is the only supplemental essay required by a college, then your teenager can write about his or her interest in a major or a field of study that the college offers as one important thing to mention. “How can you contribute to our college” or “What can you bring to our college” or “Our students live in suites, so what would you bring to your suitemates” or some version of that--This is the reverse of the previous topic, like “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  This essay has to be about what traits and skills and talents your teenager has--like commitment to community service or love of research or musical talent or athletic prowess--and how those will be a plus for the college if he or she is admitted.  Again, if this is one of the longer-length essays, then your teenager will likely need to write about several of his or her traits or skills or talents in order to make his or her best case.  It’s hard to write this essay without sounding boastful, so watch the tone.  Again, if this is the only supplemental essay, then your teenager can write about his or her interest in a field of study that the college offers and how he or she might contribute to classes or activities or research in that field.  “Why are you interested in the field of study you are proposing to major in” or some version of that--We frequently see applicants write a version of this essay for the main Common App essay.  That is a serious mistake.  Tell your teenager to save any talk about his or her field of academic interest for this supplemental essay if this is one that a college requires.  For example, whatever led to his or her interest in art or French or electrical engineering or something else--all of that goes into this essay.  This is also the place to look carefully on the college’s website at the academic degrees and majors listed (and concentrations, if available, within those majors) and to cite the exact name of the degree, major, and concentration, if available, that the college uses.  For example, there are many variations of “biology” within some colleges and indeed from college to college; it is important to write each college’s essay on this topic as specifically as possible, using the words that each college uses to describe its own majors, concentrations, and so on.  Know, for example, that some colleges offer both a B.A. and a B.S. in Biology.  So, what is the difference and which one is your teenager headed for?  If your teenager has no idea what he or she wants to major in, we totally understand that, but it will probably make for a less appealing essay.  Tell him or her to keep in mind that the major written about here is not cast in stone, so it is likely better to write about something specific with as much enthusiasm as possible.  “Describe an activity that is important to you” or “Elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities” or, more specifically, “Talk about the role of sports in your life” or some version of that--We often see applicants write a version of this topic for the main Common App essay or personal statement.  Again, that is a serious mistake.  Tell your teenager to save any talk about an activity or sport that is especially meaningful or significant to him or her for this supplemental essay topic.  Remember:  “Activity” can mean something a teenager does for the family. Here is a recent example of an out-of-school activity essay that I think worked particularly well, with a limit of 250 words: Last year, I began taking Czech lessons at the Czech Consulate in New York City. I had been studying French in school, but could not fit both AP French and AP Biology into my schedule. I chose AP Biology, but I was not ready to give up studying a language altogether. To understand why I chose Czech, I should tell you about my grandfather. My grandfather grew up in a rural town in North Dakota. The child of Czech immigrants, he spoke primarily Czech as a young boy, hardly using English until he started school. Because his English was limited, his classmates called him “stupid.” He grew to hate his Czech roots. Although he learned English quickly in school, he carried with him a resentment of his Czech heritage, including his native tongue. As soon as he was old enough, my grandfather joined the U.S. Army and left home. Eventually, he proved his childhood classmates wrong. He became a scientist and traveled the world while working for the United Nations. In time, he had a change of heart about his roots. My grandfather taught me to honor my Czech heritage as he had to teach himself to do. Our trip together to the Czech Republic to visit distant relatives was evidence of that. When I could no longer study French at school, I knew immediately that I wanted to find a Czech class to take. It is my way of paying tribute to where he and I have come from. So, not everyone has a Czech grandfather.  Here’s another essay that could be a bit more common, but it is also effective--again with a limit of 250 words: The time I’ve spent working and creating art at the Art Workshop Experience (AWE) will always be memorable. The first time I attended AWE’s summer session, I was just 10. I have been going back ever since, the last several summers as an intern. The staff and the kids who come back year after year are like family. The summer session, staffed by five counselors and three interns, enrolls about 50 kids—all painting and drawing and sculpting and working in close quarters in a large one-room studio. It is an amazing way to spend the summer.  At AWE, there are no set lessons or prescribed techniques. Kids are allowed to work on any art project of their choosing; the counselors and interns are there simply for guidance. As kids work on their pieces, they develop their skills and their understanding of techniques, with few limits that would restrict their creative choices. Opportunities are nearly endless for those who are willing to indulge their imaginations. Five years ago, I painted my cat at the summer session. Someone saw it at AWE’s annual gallery show that August and actually wanted to buy it. I couldn’t have been more surprised—or delighted. Without the encouragement of the staff, I never could have sold a painting at the age of 12. Although I may never sell another painting, I am proud to have spent the past seven summers with an organization that can make something like that happen for a kid. One thing that the Czech grandfather and AWE essays share is a great sentimental ending.  A couple of episodes back, we talked about the need for a great last sentence--the one that leaves the lasting impression about the applicant in the mind of the college admissions official.  Well, here are two good examples. “Describe a community that you are part of” or some version of that--This essay allows for a bit of creativity in defining the “community” that the applicant chooses to discuss.  It also, happily, allows for the applicant to take one of the basic essays he or she has written and to bend it cleverly to fit this topic.  For example, it could be a school community or church community or community of athletes or community of volunteers or theatrical community or musical community or you name it.  “Write about a time when you had to work with someone whose background (e.g., race, ethnicity, religion, politics, income, gender identity, or sexual orientation) was different from yours” or some version of that--Many colleges are committed to promoting student diversity on their campuses and are, understandably, interested in how new students will react to that diversity.  Specific examples drawn from an applicant’s school or community would probably work best to show whether and how that applicant values diversity.  For students who go to school or live in a community that is not racially, ethnically, socioeconomically, or otherwise diverse, this topic might be harder to write about, but could turn out to be very insightful—if, in fact, diversity is one of the main reasons the applicant chose to apply to that college. You and your teenager must look at the totality of the supplemental essays each college asks for and mix and match the ones you have with the ones that are needed. One college’s “activity that is significant to you” is another college’s “community that you are part of.”  You see how that works?  Be creative in using what you have, especially if you have a great essay that just needs a little tweaking to match a different prompt. 3.  Our Thanksgiving Break Since we were anxious to get you this advice to use on your Thanksgiving break, we did not take this week off.  But, fair is fair.  We are going to take our break next week.  So, just keep writing those essays until we are back together on Thursday, December 7.  The college application deadline clock will really be ticking by then!  Happy Thanksgiving! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode145 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

I really was not going to do this episode.  I resisted doing our last two--one episode about The Common Application main essay (that 650-word statement that all seniors’ parents and teachers have come to loathe at this time of year) and one episode about the sad fact that our high school seniors in the U.S. cannot write.  I was glad when last week was over, and I thought that I could move on to other topics of importance in the college applications season.  And yet, I am drawn back into the quagmire of college application essays.   It gets worse.  When I started putting this episode together--this episode that I did not want to do--I figured that I could keep it short and sweet.  When I hit nine pages of text, I realized that it was not short (nor was it sweet, actually).  And so, I have done something else that I didn’t want to do.  I have planned for two episodes on this topic of supplemental essays.                                         Of course, I thought you might go back and re-listen to Episode 106, where we talk about supplemental essays.  But I fear you won’t, and so I am going to reprise it here and add some new, updated thoughts.  Why?  Because I have just spent a fair number of days working on college application supplemental essays for a few teenagers I work with individually--and they have confirmed my worst nightmare.  Our high school seniors cannot write these supplemental essays any better than they can write anything else.  I base this bold statement not just on the teenagers I am working with now (who are, by the way, bright students with excellent grades and admission test scores), but also on the teenagers I have worked with over the past several years.  I have read--and edited--hundreds of these supplemental essays.  And I still have more to read and edit ahead of me this season.  If I keep working with more and more teenagers every year, soon I will have 10 episodes on this topic. Anyway, the last time we chatted about this topic was last January.  Let’s see what, if anything, you remember--in case you were listening then.  1. How Many and the Choice, If You Have One  As you probably know, supplemental essays are required by lots of colleges, especially by the highly selective ones.  Some colleges require one, some require two, and some require as many as four. If you include short-answer open-ended questions that require just a sentence or two or a list of things--for example, cultural events you have attended recently--that number of supplemental “essays” for some colleges could go up to seven.  Yikes!  Let’s look at the University of California system--a public university system with a zillion applicants (okay, zillion might be a slight exaggeration).  But not much of one.  UCLA, one of nine University of California campuses, had over 102,000 freshman applicants for this past fall.  So, how UCLA, for example, can process four essays from each applicant is, frankly, beyond me.  But the University of California has some great universities--including the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA--and some very smart people.  Here are the directions for University of California applicants for what are called the “personal insight questions” (quoted from the University of California website): Directions You will have 8 questions to choose from. You must respond to only 4 of the 8 questions. Each response is limited to a maximum of 350 words. Which questions you choose to answer is entirely up to you: But you should select questions that are most relevant to your experience and that best reflect your individual circumstances. Keep in mind All questions are equal: All are given equal consideration in the application review process, which means there is no advantage or disadvantage to choosing certain questions over others. There is no right or wrong way to answer these questions: It’s about getting to know your personality, background, interests and achievements in your own unique voice.   Questions & guidance Remember, the personal questions are just that--personal. Which means you should use our guidance for each question just as a suggestion in case you need help. The important thing is expressing who you are, what matters to you and what you want to share with UC.   Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time.   Things to consider: A leadership role can mean more than just a title. It can mean being a mentor to others, acting as the person in charge of a specific task, or taking the lead role in organizing an event or project. Think about what you accomplished and what you learned from the experience. What were your responsibilities?  Did you lead a team? How did your experience change your perspective on leading others? Did you help to resolve an important dispute at your school, church, in your community or an organization? And your leadership role doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to school activities. For example, do you help out or take care of your family? Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side. Things to consider: What does creativity mean to you? Do you have a creative skill that is important to you? What have you been able to do with that skill? If you used creativity to solve a problem, what was your solution? What are the steps you took to solve the problem? How does your creativity influence your decisions inside or outside the classroom? Does your creativity relate to your major or a future career?  What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?   Things to consider: If there’s a talent or skill that you’re proud of, this is the time to share it. You don’t necessarily have to be recognized or have received awards for your talent (although if you did and you want to talk about it, feel free to do so). Why is this talent or skill meaningful to you? Does the talent come naturally or have you worked hard to develop this skill or talent? Does your talent or skill allow you opportunities in or outside the classroom? If so, what are they and how do they fit into your schedule? Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.  Things to consider: An educational opportunity can be anything that has added value to your educational experience and better prepared you for college. For example, participation in an honors or academic enrichment program, or enrollment in an academy that’s geared toward an occupation or a major, or taking advanced courses that interest you--just to name a few.  If you choose to write about educational barriers you’ve faced, how did you overcome or strive to overcome them? What personal characteristics or skills did you call on to overcome this challenge? How did overcoming this barrier help shape who are you today? Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?  Things to consider: A challenge could be personal, or something you have faced in your community or school. Why was the challenge significant to you? This is a good opportunity to talk about any obstacles you’ve faced and what you’ve learned from the experience. Did you have support from someone else or did you handle it alone? If you’re currently working your way through a challenge, what are you doing now, and does that affect different aspects of your life? For example, ask yourself, “How has my life changed at home, at my school, with my friends or with my family?”  Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.  Things to consider: Many students have a passion for one specific academic subject area, something that they just can’t get enough of. If that applies to you, what have you done to further that interest? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had inside and outside the classroom--such as volunteer work, internships, employment, summer programs, participation in student organizations and/or clubs--and what you have gained from your involvement. Has your interest in the subject influenced you in choosing a major and/or future career? Have you been able to pursue coursework at a higher level in this subject (honors, AP, IB, college or university work)? Are you inspired to pursue this subject further at UC, and how might you do that?  What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?   Things to consider: Think of community as a term that can encompass a group, team or a place--like your high school, hometown or home. You can define community as you see fit, just make sure you talk about your role in that community. Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community? Why were you inspired to act? What did you learn from your effort? How did your actions benefit others, the wider community or both? Did you work alone or with others to initiate change in your community? Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California? Things to consider: If there’s anything you want us to know about you, but didn’t find a question or place in the application to tell us, now’s your chance. What have you not shared with us that will highlight a skill, talent, challenge or opportunity that you think will help us know you better? From your point of view, what do you feel makes you an excellent choice for UC? Don’t be afraid to brag a little. I think that these eight topics are sensible and fair, if not especially creative.  On balance, I think that is a good thing.  I believe that teenagers can actually write answers to these, and sometimes that is the biggest hurdle.  (To tell you the truth, I have read some quirky or overly philosophical prompts that I could not respond to at all.)  And yet, four essay questions of 350 words each is a lot of writing--especially if an applicant might have used up the answer to one of the prompts in the main Common App essay, which seems quite possible to me. Sometimes, the topics for the supplemental essays, especially short ones, can be a bit odd, chosen perhaps to allow an applicant to show a creative or funny or witty side.  If given a choice among essay topics, I rarely recommend that a teenager choose one of the odder ones--unless that teenager is particularly creative or perhaps naturally funny or witty.  For some examples of essay topics that can be a bit odd, let’s look at the University of Chicago.  If you don’t know the University of Chicago (one of those private universities whose name makes it sound like a public university), it is an outstanding, highly selective private university in, obviously, Chicago.  Here are the directions for University of Chicago applicants (quoted from the University of Chicago website): The University of Chicago has long been renowned for its provocative essay questions. We think of them as an opportunity for students to tell us about themselves, their tastes, and their ambitions. They can be approached with utter seriousness, complete fancy, or something in between. Each year we email newly admitted and current College students and ask them for essay topics. We receive several hundred responses, many of which are eloquent, intriguing, or downright wacky.  As you can see from the attributions, the questions below were inspired by submissions from UChicago students and alumni. . . . Required Question: How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago. Extended Essay Questions: (Required; Choose one) Essay Option 1. “The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.” – Joseph Joubert Sometimes, people talk a lot about popular subjects to assure ‘victory’ in conversation or understanding, and leave behind topics of less popularity, but great personal or intellectual importance. What do you think is important but under-discussed? -Anonymous Suggestion Essay Option 2. Due to a series of clerical errors, there is exactly one typo (an extra letter, a removed letter, or an altered letter) in the name of every department at the University of Chicago. Oops! Describe your new intended major. Why are you interested in it and what courses or areas of focus within it might you want to explore? Potential options include Commuter Science, Bromance Languages and Literatures, Pundamentals: Issues and Texts, Ant History... a full list of unmodified majors ready for your editor’s eye is available here. -Inspired by Josh Kaufman, Class of 2018 Essay Option 3. Earth. Fire. Wind. Water. Heart! Captain Planet supposes that the world is made up of these five elements. We’re familiar with the previously-noted set and with actual elements like hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, but select and explain another small group of things (say, under five) that you believe compose our world. -Inspired by Dani Plung, Class of 2017 Essay Option 4. The late New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham once said "Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life. I don’t think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization." Tell us about your “armor.” -Inspired by Adam Berger, Class of 2020 Essay Option 5. Fans of the movie Sharknado say that they enjoy it because “it’s so bad, it’s good.” Certain automobile owners prefer classic cars because they “have more character.” And recently, vinyl record sales have skyrocketed because it is perceived that they have a warmer, fuller sound. Discuss something that you love not in spite of but rather due to its quirks or imperfections. -Inspired by Alex Serbanescu, Class of 2021 Essay Option 6. In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, pose your own question or choose one of our past prompts. Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun. And, by the way, some of the past prompts are truly wacky.  Choosing the right prompt in this kind of situation can make all the difference.  When I work with teenagers on this, we always talk through several options before settling on the one that seems the most appropriate and the most likely to yield a convincing, insightful essay.  And, yes, sometimes we get one written and realize that it just doesn’t work, and we have to switch prompts and start again!  So, the University of California and the University of Chicago are at the extremes, in terms of number of essays required and provocativeness of essay topics, respectively.  Parents, you might be thankful now if the colleges on your teenager’s list have just one or two slightly boring supplemental essays to complete! 2. The Word Count Typically, supplemental essays are not as long as the main personal statement, fortunately (though I just saw one from Tulane University, where the upper limit was 800 words!).  We all know that higher word counts allow us to be a bit sloppy and that it is sometimes easier to write more rambling words than to write fewer better-chosen words.  Many supplemental essays seem to call for about 350 to 400 words, or about four meaty paragraphs, which is not really too long when you think about it.  Many of them seem to run quite a bit shorter, at about 150 to 250 words, which can be downright restricting if you actually have something to say.  Some of them--which are not really essays at all, but more like short-answer questions--ask for just 200 characters (or about 35 words), as one Ivy League school put it.  Here is the point:  Lower word limits imply a different style of writing.  While an applicant might relax into a narrative personal story in The Common App main 650-word essay, using lots of descriptive detail and many examples to elaborate the main idea, the shorter essays do not really permit that.  They need a much more focused, straightforward, get-to-the-point style if the question is to be answered effectively in far fewer words.  Now, I am sure that there are some creative writers among our current crop of college applicants who could write a brilliant poetic response to one of these shorter essay prompts.  But, I am going to state, for the record, that I have not found too many of them. So, if you are a parent who is reading supplemental essays in the next few weeks, look for essays that make sense and that are clearly written.  They need to make a point (or two or maybe three), both effectively and efficiently.  Help your teenager edit out the extra sentences and superfluous words--including all of those that don’t contribute to the point.  One final note on word limits:  As you might already have guessed, one college’s 350-word essay topic is another college’s 150-word essay topic.  As we will talk about in our next episode, there are some topics that come up over and over again across many, many colleges.  You will quickly learn that it is truly helpful for your teenager to have a drafted long response to these topics and--just as important--a drafted short response for the same topics.  That takes some thoughtful and careful editing. Having a long version and a short version of popular essay topics--like an extracurricular activity that is particularly meaningful to you--can save a lot of time.  3.  No Thanksgiving Break:  New Episode Next Week Next week is Thanksgiving, and we were going to take a holiday break.  However, we realized that the long Thanksgiving weekend might be just the time that some of you will use to work on supplemental essays for applications that will be due just weeks later.  So, we will have a new episode next week, which will cover the rest of the advice we have on supplemental essays.   We will bring it out on Tuesday, instead of our usual Thursday--just in time for the Thanksgiving celebration! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode144 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Last week when we talked about college application essays for what seems to be the millionth time in our three years together, we suggested that you go back and listen to Episodes 98, 99, 106, and 110 if you have a senior at home with college application essays due now and over the next few weeks.  As I said last week, I have been spending some time in one of New York City’s most exclusive high schools to help two classes of seniors with their essays.  As a result, I have been thinking hard about the sorry state of the writing skills displayed by some of our best public school students--and, of course, what to do about it.  1.  One of My Favorite Stories As we mentioned back in Episode 99, no one--not me, not you, not the best English teacher you ever knew, not the most expensive college consultant you can find--can truly fix a kid’s writing in the middle of trying to get his or her college application essays created, edited, and submitted on time.  The situation is too pressured, everyone is too anxious, and there is too little time.  So, let me tell you my favorite story about how to solve the problem.  As we said back in Episode 99, in the more than 100 Common Application main essays I read and edited last year (and that number does not include all of the supplemental essays that I also read and edited), I found one essay that was surprisingly well written, including from a grammar and mechanics point of view.  (By the way, this year, I have also read one, maybe two, really good essays from students in that highly respected school.)  Last year, I called the best writer aside and said to him, “How did you learn to write like this when none of your classmates appears to be able to do it?”  His answer was immediate and seemed exactly right to me. He said that he had worked regularly with a writing tutor since he had been in ninth grade.  His tutor went over his written work and showed him how to improve it.  He said that she had worked shoulder to shoulder with him in many, many sessions.  I got the feeling that she was relentless and demanding.  He said that he did not enjoy the tutoring and did not enjoy writing now.  But he sure could do it, and he knew that he could do it. In my experience with high school students and with younger professionals who have worked for me and with my own three children, this is what it takes to improve someone’s writing.  It is not lessons taught from the front of a classroom--although some grammar and mechanics lessons undoubtedly should be taught from the front of the classroom for openers.  Rather, it is painstaking discussion and editing of the student’s own work, while the student watches and learns and absorbs and understands the reason for every change that is being made.  This shoulder-to-shoulder editing process has to be repeated and repeated and repeated--until the student becomes almost as good at it as the teacher is.  It sounds slow and laborious, and it is.  But it works, and I am not sure that anything else does.  This is writing tutoring, not writing group instruction. Here is the rest of the problem, which is already clear to every teacher in the U.S. and, I hope, will now be equally clear to all of you parents who are listening (if it is not already).  Today’s middle school and high school English teachers cannot serve as writing tutors for each of your kids--and that is precisely why so many of our high school students will not learn to write well enough for college.  Imagine trying to correct the written work of 150 students on a line-by-line basis--or even of 100 students or even of 50 students--day after day and week after week, while talking through those corrections with each student one by one.  And, of course, that’s not all English teachers have to do.  I am not defending overworked English teachers here; I am merely stating the obvious--something so obvious that I can’t believe more schools haven’t tried to solve it rather than just looking away and pretending the problem doesn’t exist. I recently said something pretty objectionable to two classes of quite smart high school seniors--at least, they thought it was objectionable.  I was talking about their draft essays that I had just read and tried to edit.  Some were so poorly conceived and written that I really couldn’t even edit them.  Here is what I said:  “This writing will not get you through college.  You might think that it will, but it won’t.  You might think that it will because you are going to major in mathematics or chemistry or engineering.  But it still won’t.  That’s because each of you will likely have to take at least a couple of humanities courses that will involve writing essays or papers or research papers in order to graduate.  And when you do, this writing won’t get you through them.”   2.  Talking to a National Audience Last February, I had the occasion to speak at a national conference of teachers and administrators from Early College high schools.  I called my presentation, “Your Seniors Can’t Write.”  Parents, listen to what I said to see what you might do in your own kid’s high school to help us solve the problem.  It’s going to take all of us, and I believe that nobody’s voices should be heard any louder than yours.  I started by asking the audience, “What’s in your junior year and senior year English curriculum?”  I am guessing, I told them, that it is literature heavy:  American, British, or world literature, especially if you have standard grade-level courses that all students take (even if you have some honors and AP levels of those courses).  If you have a variety of semester electives as your curriculum, I continued, you might offer a writing-focused course or two, most likely journalism.  Then I asked this, “Is a curriculum focused on teaching literary works--novels and short stories and plays and poems and speeches and literary essays--as well as great nonfiction works the best way to improve students’ writing?”  I told them that, usually when I make a presentation at a national conference, I believe that I have “the answer” to a problem that people in the audience are trying to solve.  But this time, I said, “Today, I do not have the answer, and I am hoping that you do.  Today, I have just the problem.”  I warned the audience members that I intended to put them into small groups toward the end of the presentation so that they could work out some ways to solve the problem.  Nonetheless, I said, I was willing to go first and offer an idea to get the conversation started.  I opened with an anecdote.  Last fall, I said, I asked two classes of juniors in an elite New York City high school what they would like to study in the upcoming spring semester.  The students were all in a standard year-long American literature course at the time.  In the interest of full disclosure, I had just had a long discussion with them about the quality of the writing of the seniors I had been working with and I had also analyzed the writing of a few of their own junior classmates impromptu--kids who thought they wrote quite well (but who soon realized and then stated bravely in front of their classmates that they didn’t).  I said, “Would you prefer to keep doing American literature or would you prefer to focus on writing?”  Virtually every one of these college-bound students voted to switch the curriculum to writing.  Unfortunately, no school administrators were listening.  3.  An Idea for Solving the Problem So, here was my idea for improving high school English curricula. (By the way, for more than three decades, I have written high school English curricula that are used in states all over the U.S., and I never did what I am about to suggest.  Why?  Because, sadly, I had not seen the problem up close the way I have in recent years.)  I suggested that all high school students take an intensive writing course in the spring semester of their junior year.  It would be best, of course, if all high schools in the U.S. would do this so that no student’s college admissions chances would be hurt by a course that colleges thought was odd, or not rigorous enough, or out of the mainstream.  If I could, I would wave my magic wand right now and make that happen in all U.S. high schools.  My course would focus on expository writing, on academic writing.  It would not include any creative writing, like poetry or short stories or plays, which many high schools like to do and perhaps do very well.  It would not include any literary analysis, because most of us do not write like that once we get out of college.  One thing it would include is the college application essay.  Students would write more than one main essay for more than one of The Common Application prompts (whatever the prompts are at the time).  I had a high school English teacher many years ago who explained to us that the word “essay” comes from the Old French “essai”--meaning a trial, attempt, or effort.  So, it is perfectly reasonable to write several essays--that is, to make several attempts--before finding the one that actually works best.  I know that’s going to sound like more work to kids--and, in a way, it is--but all writers know that, all too often, many attempts have to be started and abandoned before a piece of good writing takes shape.  In my course, students would also write several essays targeted to the most commonly used topics for supplemental essays in college applications--in fact, both a long and a short version, so the word count would always be appropriate, depending on the word limit of a particular college.  That is not a hard thing to do, and students will find that three or four essays well done can be used over and over again, with minor editing, in various college applications.  But wait just a minute.  In my course, there won’t be writing of only 650 words or fewer.  (Parents, you should know by now that 650 words is the limit for The Common App main essay.)  No.  There will also be a research paper of many pages--maybe more than one.  Here’s why.   Marc Tucker is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, and, more importantly, he’s a really smart guy.  Marc wrote an article last January in the Top Performers Education Week blog entitled “Our Students Can’t Write Very Well--It’s No Mystery Why.” Let me read you the sobering opening paragraphs of Marc’s article:  My organization decided a few weeks back that we needed to hire a new professional staff person.  We had close to 500 applicants.  Inasmuch as the task was to help us communicate information related to the work we do, we gave each of the candidates one of the reports we published last year and asked [each of them] to produce a one-page summary.  All were college graduates.  Only one could produce a satisfactory summary.  That person got the job. We were lucky this time.  We are more often than not disappointed at the subpar writing ability of the applicants for openings at our organization.  Many applicants are from very good colleges.  Many have graduate degrees.  Many are very poor writers. Their lack of writing ability does not auger well.  When we look at what they have written, the logic of the narrative is often very hard to find. It would appear that their lack of writing ability stands as mute testimony to their lack of thinking ability. How, we ask, could this have happened? . . . [H]igh school students are hardly ever asked to write anything of significant length.  Why not?  Because in this age of accountability, they are not tested on their writing ability.  By which I mean that they are not asked to submit to the testing authorities 10- or 15- or 20-page papers . . . .  This point is critically important.  There is only one way that we can find out whether [students] can write a substantial research paper--by asking them to write a substantial research paper and looking carefully at the result.  If we do not ask them to produce this product--over and over again, as they get better and better at it--then they will not be able to do it well.  If they have not done the work, then neither their teacher nor the engines of the accountability system can assess it.  If this sort of serious writing is not done and--in our accountability-oriented environment--is not assessed, then it will not be learned.  End of argument. Well, in my new high school English course, I don’t need to have my course’s research papers submitted to and assessed by outside evaluators--although that is actually both an intriguing and a feasible idea--but I would like them to be assessed by the teacher.  Not really assessed, so much, as edited line by line, with the student sitting there and hanging on every word.  By the way, I care almost nothing about grades in my course.  I don’t want the teacher to spend time “grading” things.  I have friends who are English teachers who constantly worry about having to grade things--a lot of things and quickly--so that they can substantiate a report card grade eventually.  In my course, I want the teacher to spend time working with each student individually on every sentence that student writes.  I could easily support every teacher’s giving every student an A in the course--as long as every student kept writing and working hard at it and improving. I might just have one of those research papers that Marc is calling for be about individual colleges or, perhaps more generally, about issues in higher education.  I told the audience at the conference that Marie and I had just written a new workbook for high school students entitled How To Explore Your College Options.  I explained that the workbook was literally an explanation of an 11-page questionnaire that, we thought, every high school student should fill out about any college he or she might be interested in attending.  In my course, after each student does the research to get the answers to 52 key questions about a college, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the student write up the findings so that other students might benefit from them.  Students in a class could create their own guidebook of college profiles for a variety of colleges--and learn to research and write at the same time.  But, let me not get ahead of myself.  I told the audience that my course would be called College Research and Expository Writing.  Of course, there would be an honors version, and I plan to put every student in it.   4.  It’s Up to You, Parents Parents, if you have a younger high school student at home, consider talking to your high school principal about the English curriculum now.  See whether you can get a writing course offered--or even required--so that your kid has a better chance at writing not only great college application essays, but also great term papers and research reports and whatever else they are going to have to write once they go to college.  I had a great high school history teacher who made us write five-page papers every week because he knew we were going to have to do that all the time in college.  I never thanked him enough for that great preparation.  Parents, fixing our national crisis in high school students’ writing is way more important than my telling you how to help your kid write a winning college application essay.  And I can’t fix it without you.  By the way, not one Early College high school educator in the audience challenged the title of my presentation, “Your Seniors Can’t Write.”  So, what does that tell you? Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode143 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Well, it’s officially November.  Some Early Decision and Early Action deadlines have just passed, and many others are fast approaching on November 15.  There is very little time left for those of you interested in submitting early applications.  As we said at length in Episode 138 and as we have repeated in the past few episodes, we think that all of you should be applying Early Action to all of the schools on your list that have an Early Action option and that some of you should be applying to your first choice under the Early Decision option.  So, think about that one more time while there is still time! I thought a long time about whether to do today’s episode on college application essays.  It seems like such a tired topic--one that everyone gives advice about--and we have done a number of episodes on this topic already, though not since last February (go back and listen to Episodes 98, 99, 106, and 110).  And yet, I continue to be surprised at how little many parents and teachers know about the common and supplementary essay requirements in college applications.  I am in the throes of reading and editing The Common Application main essay for about 60 high school seniors right now--that is, the main essay that is written to one of seven prompts supplied by The Common App people and that will be transmitted to any of its more than 700 colleges and universities if your kid applies to any of them (which he or she almost undoubtedly will).  Please re-listen right now to Episode 110 if you aren’t familiar with The Common App essay requirement.     As I have done for the past couple of years, I have spent almost a week in the classrooms of one of New York City’s best high schools (indeed, one of the nation’s top 75 high schools, according to U.S. News & World Report).  As a result, I have a few things I would like to say--again--though I am not sure we can say it any better now than we did in those previous four episodes.  1.  The Sad Truth I am going to talk to you today--as I have done before and hope I never have to do again--about the sad truth that many, many, too many high school seniors cannot write.  I will not talk to you about the many, many, too many grammatical and punctuation and word choice mistakes that I see in 9 out of 10 essays I read.  For an elaborate discussion of those mistakes, go back to Episode 99.  But, trust me, the mistakes are there, and they are inexcusable for high school seniors as well as extremely distracting to any college admissions officer trying to get through hundreds or even thousands of similar essays.  I can’t imagine that some essays, written as they are, even get read all the way through. Just to recap, I am not going to remind you again to tell your teenager . . . To pay attention to grammar--To watch out for split infinitives, the correct placement of “only” in a sentence, the difference between “everyday” as an adjective and “every day” as an adverb, poorly placed participial phrases modifying the wrong word, incorrect and inconsistent verb tenses, and the lack of agreement between nouns and pronouns To check punctuation--To watch out for random commas inserted for no reason, commas that are left out before the “and” or “but” in a compound sentence, periods and commas inside quotation marks always, and the random use of semicolons To be careful about word choice--To watch out for sophisticated or “big” words that he or she would never use in everyday “formal” speech (as when talking in class or to a teacher) and that, therefore, he or she is highly likely to use slightly incorrectly To avoid wordiness and repetition--To watch out for sentences that have too many irrelevant and/or unnecessary words and to watch out for sentences that say the same thing as previous sentences (often in just as vague or unconvincing a way) I will also not talk to you about the finer points of writing most essays--this college application essay or any other.  For an elaborate discussion of those finer points, go back to Episode 98.  Just to recap, I am not going to remind you again to tell your teenager . . . To make a memorable first impression--To write a great first sentence, which makes the college admissions officer want to continue reading the essay, when he or she has way too many more to read (Back in Episode 80, we told you the most common and boring ways that students in the U.K. started their college application essays.  U.S. kids do that, too!)  To make a memorable last impression--To write an extraordinary final sentence, which is his or her last chance to make an impression on the college admissions officer (I learned again in this year’s batch of essays I am reading that almost no kid can write a great last sentence or really a great ending at all.  Many kids ended their essays on a ridiculously grand scale in an overly dramatic way that does not fit almost any teenager’s life story.) To remember what the point is--To include what he or she has learned from the story or experience or reflection that the essay is about or how that story or experience or reflection impacted his or her life (I learned again in this year’s batch of essays I am reading that many kids get bogged down in the details of a story they are trying to tell in the essay and forget what the point of that story is.)   2.  Another Sad Truth  And let me talk to you about another sad truth--the fact that some kids don’t seem to have anything to write about.  Parents, let me make this very clear:  No amount of editing--including by your teenager’s English teacher or by the most expensive college admissions consultant you can find to work with your teenager--can save an essay that is not really about anything. To be fair, some kids have a great idea for an essay right away; in fact, some kids, have more than one great idea, though not as many kids as you might think.  I have also found that some kids can come up with a decent topic after a long talk with me about their young lives--about their families, their hobbies, their school activities, their jobs, their career hopes, their volunteer work, their academic failures, and their personal successes.  However, some kids actually can’t come up with anything to write about.  They can’t think of anything that makes them special or interesting or appealing as a candidate for college admission.  But that’s what this essay is:  a way to look desirable to a college, whether your appeal is your brains, your kindness, your insights, your perseverance, your thoughtfulness, your compassion, your generosity, your inventiveness, your quirky outlook on life, your triumph over adversity, or something else.  The college wants a glimpse of you, to be sure, but it had better be an appealing one.  I was chatting recently about this last group of kids--the ones with no ideas for the essay--with one of their teachers.  I was asking why she thought these kids didn’t have anything to write about.  She said simply, “They don’t do anything.”  Of course, they come to school and do their schoolwork--most of them quite well.  Many also take part in the standard bunch of school activities, play on a sports team, and take music lessons.  But how many essays can a college admissions officer read about a kid who loves the piano and did really well in a statewide music competition?  Or learned about perseverance and hard work by playing on the football team?  And here’s my favorite:  learned how to be a more effective person from playing video games (I have read more of those than you might think).  So, what do these kids do outside the box?  What do they do or think or care about that makes them just a bit different and more memorable than a thousand other kids?  What makes them the kind of student a college would want? Parents of younger high school kids, it is time to start thinking about what it will be like at your house when essay time comes--while there is still time to encourage your kid to engage in activities and causes and scholarly pursuits and cultural events and family life and community life worth writing about in a college application essay.  Here’s why this is so important:  I bet that many colleges would rather accept a kid whose essay is inspiring or enthusiastic or compelling or intriguing--even with a small grammar or punctuation mistake or two--than a kid whose essay is superficially picture perfect, but has no substance.   Parents of younger high school kids, I can make your kid’s essay superficially picture perfect, but I cannot really give your kid an experience that he or she can write an essay about.  Only you can do that for your kid and with your kid, based on the experiences of your lives.  So, start thinking. And let me remind you again, parents of younger high school students and parents of seniors, don’t forget to check out the seven prompts for The Common Application main essay (see Episode 110).  You will see that they are reasonable options for kids to write about and, hopefully, you might get an idea of how to help your kid--now or next year or the year after that.  By the way, this year’s prompts are very similar to last year’s (with a couple of additions), so there is no reason to believe that they will change totally for next year, either. 3.  Coming Soon in Our Next Episode So, I feel as though this episode was more of a rant than anything else.  I apologize for that, but this is the third year I have had this college application essay experience.  I don’t want to have to talk to you about this again next year, parents of younger high school students!  Last year, I told the kids I met with at the well-known New York City high school that I mentioned earlier, “You write like third graders.”  This year, I said something even scarier and more objectionable to them.  Join us next week to find out what I said to them and to consider with me how to fix the problem that our high school students can’t write--and that’s a problem much bigger and much more important than whether a kid gets into one college or another.  Unfortunately. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode142 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina  

We are in the last days of October, and Early Decision and Early Action deadlines are just a handful of days or a couple of weeks away. There is still time, but not much for those of you interested in early applications (and we think that should be almost all of you, for Early Action at least). So, what is the role of parents at this critical time? Today’s episode is short and sweet, and it will hopefully affirm what you are already doing, parents, if you have been listening to USACollegeChat.  1. A New Survey In this episode, we want to talk about a new survey by Kaplan Test Prep. According to its LinkedIn profile, “Kaplan Test Prep (www.kaptest.com) is a premier provider of educational and career services for individuals, schools and businesses. Our job is not just teaching test material, but also giving students confidence in themselves. Established in 1938, Kaplan is the world leader in the test prep industry, offering preparation for more than 100 standardized tests. . .” (quoted from LinkedIn). By the way, this episode is not an endorsement of Kaplan Test Prep, or any other test prep company, because we have not done a careful study of their services or products and their results. Anyway, earlier this year, Kaplan Test Prep conducted a telephone survey of 354 admissions officers in high-ranked colleges. It seems to have focused on the admissions officers’ answer to a question something like this (I have not seen the actual survey questions, just the answers): “How involved should parents be in the college applications process?” These were the answers of the college admissions officers: Not involved at all--less than 1 percent of college admissions officers Not very involved--6 percent of college admissions officers Somewhat involved--75 percent of college admissions officers Very involved--18 percent of college admissions officers Extremely involved--1 percent of college admissions officers My personal view here is that parents need to be more than “somewhat involved”--the overwhelmingly favorite answer of those surveyed. Now, it is probably true that there were not definitions of these terms in the survey (at least, they weren’t reported if there were). So, perhaps my understanding of “somewhat involved” is not the same as the understanding of college admissions officers about that same term. Nonetheless, I would say that being in the middle point of any scale on how involved you should be about anything related to the next two or four or six years of your child’s life--and of something that could, in fact, affect your child’s entire future--is not my view. I get it: My view is quite different from the opinions of about 80 percent of college admissions officers, and I am not apologizing for it. It’s probably why we started USACollegeChat to begin with—that is, to help parents know what they need to know to be involved appropriately and effectively and to encourage parents to get involved in this life-changing decision for their kids. To be fair, the Kaplan Test Prep website quotes some crazy things that college admissions officers say that parents have done--perhaps, what a few of the “extremely involved” parents have done. All of these things are obviously terrible, and I want to make sure that you never do them, USACollegeChat listeners. So, here they are quoted, from the Kaplan Test Prep website: “I once had a parent call pretending to be the student, but I had met the student before so I knew how [her] voice sounds. I called the student’s cell phone after to suggest that her mom not pretend to be her and call other schools, because that’s fraud.” “We have plenty of ‘helicopter parents’ who are overly involved. We’ve had parents who wouldn’t let the student speak in meetings even when we tried to engage the student specifically.” “There have been parents who’ve called requesting to change their child’s major because they don’t want their child in that major.” “In some cases we’d get duplicate records due to parents and students both trying to complete parts of the application without talking to each other.” (quoted from the website) Clearly, I am not defending any of those parents or those actions. But I do believe that those parents are a long way from what reasonable and effective--but more than “somewhat”--involvement looks like.  To be fair, again, the Kaplan Test Prep website also listed some things that college admissions officers believe parents should do during the college admissions process. Here they are: “Parents should be very involved in coaching and advising in the actual decision-making, but it’s also important for students to be the ones most engaged in the process and in contact with the admissions officers.” “Parents should be there for support, but the child should be driving. Like learning to drive, you can be a back seat driver, but let kids steer.” “Parents should guide the student in thinking about certain aspects of the application and provide a sounding board for the students as they are considering their choices.” (quoted from the website) “Parents need to be most involved . . . when it comes to the financial aid process. Students are not knowledgeable in this area and need the most guidance with this.” Of course, I am good with all of those. But they are a bit vague, except for the absolutely necessary advice that kids cannot navigate financial aid by themselves. Parents can barely navigate financial aid, I believe. So, parents, don’t be afraid to get outside help, if at all possible. According to the website, Kaplan Test Prep believes that parents could reasonably be “accompanying [their children] on campus visits, making sure they meet application deadlines, or helping them fill out financial aid paperwork” (quoted from the website). I think we all would agree with that. But what else? Let’s talk about deciding where to apply. While Kaplan Test Prep would like kids to take the lead on that, we want to make sure that you do your part, parents. We would like kids to do the all-important research on the colleges on their LLCO (long list of college options) before narrowing that list down to their final “short list” of colleges. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago in Episode 139. And, of course, we hope that they will use our new workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students to do that. But--however they do it--parents have to make sure that kids get the answers to lots of crucial questions about the colleges they are considering. It’s a lot of work to find out what you need to know about a college before deciding whether to apply. We can’t stress this enough. In fact, as we have said many times, lots of kids and parents don’t know nearly enough when those application decisions are being made. My guess is that kids will need some strong encouragement from parents in order to do the work required to get all of the information you both are going to need. Remember, we believe that you are going to need answers to 52 questions covering these important aspects of a college (see the questionnaire in our new workbook for details): History and Mission Location Enrollment Class Size Academics Schedule Housing Security Measures Activities and Sports Admission Practices Cost Talking through the answers to questions on all of these topics and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of as many as 15 or so colleges on your list is something that your kid is going to need your help with. Teachers and counselors at school just do not have the time it takes to do that for every student, for obvious reasons. Even if they did, this is your own kid we are talking about, and you both need to be happy with the decision about where to apply and, eventually, about where to enroll. That is going to take more than being “somewhat” involved.  And let’s talk about college application essays. We have talked so often about these in past episodes (Episode 98, Episode 99, Episode 106, and Episode 110) that I hate to do it again (though I probably will before the season is over). But I will say this now: You must read your kid’s college essays--all of them. Not just the main Common Application essay, but also all the supplemental ones. If you don’t feel confident in your own ability to read and suggest and edit and advise, then find an adult who can. Again, teachers and counselors at school just do not have the time it takes to do that for every student. Period. So, maybe it’s an older sibling or another relative or an internship mentor or someone at your house of worship or someone in a community program. But, whoever it is, kids need an adult to help with these essays. They just do. I am going to vote for “extremely” involved on this one.  I guess I could go on, but I hope that I have made my point. Those of you who know me know that I am speaking as a parent who has sent three kids to college (first as undergraduates and then as graduate students). But I am also speaking as someone who believes that parents want the best for each and every one of their kids and that they want to do their best to help see that their kids get it. So, don’t be afraid to be more than “somewhat” involved, whatever college admissions officers think. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode141 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

In our last episode, we talked about narrowing down your teenager’s long list of college options (or LLCO, as we call it in our new book How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students), and we discussed several questions to ask yourselves about those colleges as you narrowed down the list. We recommended ending up with perhaps 15 colleges (give or take 5) on your teenager’s “short list.”  One thing we did not talk about was whether you should put a public two-year community college on the list. We have talked about community colleges--the good and the bad about them--back in Episode 113 and more recently in Episode 135. Although we remain concerned about the seriously low graduation rate and the seriously low transfer rate at most community colleges, it is still possible that a community college is your teenager’s best or only choice or best safety school choice. If you can be sure that your teenager will be admitted to a public four-year college in your state or in another state, personally I would go with that option instead of a public two-year community college option. However, if you cannot be sure that your teenager will be admitted to a public four-year college or if your family circumstances would be too strained (either financially or otherwise) by sending your teenager to a public four-year college, then put the local community college on the short list. If you are fortunate enough to live in an area that has more than one conveniently located community college option, then choosing among those options can be as important as choosing among four-year college options. All community colleges are not created equal--anymore than all four-year public or private colleges are. So do your homework or give us a call. But today, we want to talk about another topic that relates to community colleges, but not only to community colleges. It is a very important topic if you believe that it might be a good idea to save some money on the first two years of college by sending your teenager to a community college or to a public four-year college before allowing him or her to transfer to a more prestigious or more academically selective public or private college. We have heard this sentiment from parents many times: “Let Susie start out at the local community college and save our money for a big finish at the great private university she always wanted to go to.” Well, there is a new study out that might make you think twice about that strategy. 1. Losing Credits When Transferring The study was brought to our attention by reporter Danielle Douglas-Gabriel in a wide-ranging article in The Washington Post in mid-September. Ms. Douglas-Gabriel referenced a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (the GAO), entitled Students Need More Information to Help Reduce Challenges in Transferring College Credits. Here is the opening of the highlights from that government report: Based on GAO’s analysis of the Department of Education’s (Education) most recently available data, an estimated 35 percent of college students transferred to a new school at least once from 2004 to 2009, and GAO found that students may face challenges getting information or advice about transferring course credits. An estimated 62 percent of these transfers were between public schools. According to stakeholders GAO spoke with, students can face challenges transferring credits between schools that do not have statewide polices or articulation agreements, which are transfer agreements or partnerships between schools designating how credits earned at one school will transfer to another. Stakeholders also said that advising and information may not be adequate to help students navigate the transfer process. (quoted from the report) Let’s start there. First of all, about one-third of college students transfer (personally, I think that is a lot and I am a bit surprised the number is that high), and over half of those are between public colleges. I am going to guess that a significant number of those are from two-year public community colleges to four-year public universities. The report then decries the lack of clear articulation agreements--that is, spelled-out plans between pairs of colleges that show how the credits a student earns at one college will be counted or will be deemed acceptable by the other college. Never having studied the subject, I am guessing that articulation agreements are probably most plentiful between community colleges and four-year public or private colleges relatively nearby or between various colleges within a citywide or statewide public system of colleges.  So, a little background: Articulation agreements protect students. Obviously, students do not want to lose credits they have earned at a college when they transfer to a new college. This is especially true of students who start out at a community college to save money and then transfer to a four-year college to get a bachelor’s degree. If credits are lost in that transfer and have to be made up at the new college, the whole idea of having started at the cheaper community college just goes out the window! On the other hand, articulation agreements can also be good for colleges. This is especially true when four-year colleges can market themselves easily and cheaply to graduates from a particular community college as the next step in their college careers. Imagine how cost-effective it is for a four-year college to advertise and recruit students who are sitting in classes on one community college campus. Of course, community colleges also benefit because they can advertise a clear path for their graduates right into a four-year college; that fact might indeed help recruit students to the community college in the first place. So, here’s the problem, according to the GAO report: The possible financial implications of transferring depend in part on the extent of credits lost in the transfer. Using [the Department of] Education’s transfer data, GAO estimated that students who transferred from 2004 to 2009 lost, on average, an estimated 43 percent of their credits, and credit loss varied depending on the transfer path. For example, students who transferred between public schools--the majority of transfer students--lost an estimated 37 percent of their credits. . . . Transferring can have different effects on college affordability. Students seeking to obtain a bachelor’s degree at a more expensive school may save on tuition costs by transferring from a less expensive school. On the other hand, transfer students may incur additional costs to repeat credits that do not transfer or count toward their degree. Transfer students can receive federal financial aid. GAO’s analysis showed that almost half of the students who transferred from 2004 to 2009 received Pell Grants and close to two-thirds received Federal Direct Loans. Students who lose credits may use more financial aid to pay for repeated courses at additional cost to the federal government, or they may exhaust their financial aid eligibility, which can result in additional out-of-pocket costs. (quoted from the report) Well, losing perhaps one-third of the credits you earned when you try to transfer them is frightening. Having to pay again to take courses for credits you thought you already earned or having your financial aid run out before you can retake those credits (either because you have been enrolled for too many years or too many semesters) is equally frightening. All this should make you, parents, want some kind of ironclad agreement signed in blood before your teenager starts down the transfer route. But, alas, I believe you aren’t going to get one.  2. The GAO on Information Availability Here is what the GAO report said about getting a hold of important information:  While GAO estimated that the websites for almost all schools nationwide provided credit transfer policies, as required by [the Department of] Education, about 29 percent did not include a list of other schools with which the school had articulation agreements. Among those schools, GAO found that some did not have any articulation agreements, while others did but did not list partner schools on their websites. Schools must provide such listings, but they are not required to do so specifically on their website. As a result, students may not have ready access to this information to fully understand their transfer options. (quoted from the report)  Interestingly, the GAO report recommended that the Department of Education require that colleges provide information about specific articulation agreements with other colleges on their websites. The Department of Education did not agree with that and agreed only that general transfer information should be provided to students (well, obviously). What all that means is that you as parents and your teenagers as prospective freshmen and as enrolled students must do your homework relentlessly to figure out exactly what will happen in a transfer scenario. And, we have to caution, don’t expect that homework to be easy! 3. Bright Spots Ms. Douglas-Gabriel did point to a few bright spots in her article: Several state higher education systems, including those in Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas, are using innovative strategies to streamline the transfer process. The University of California system, for instance, has “guided pathways” that chart the sequence of courses needed to transfer. Some schools, such as George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College, offer dual enrollment for some majors. (quoted from the article) And, of course, these are not the only collaborative arrangements out there. So, if your teenager is moving toward a community college with the idea of transferring to a four-year college later or if your teenager is moving toward a public four-year university with the idea of transferring to a different four-year university later, then hope for one of these streamlined processes. Better yet, look for one of these streamlined processes--because some careful planning now can save a lot of heartbreak later. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode140 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Last year, we spent the month of September suggesting some steps to take in order to narrow down your teenager’s long list of college options (or LLCO, as we call it in our new book How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students). We talked about a number of filters you might use to narrow down that list, which we hope was really quite long at the beginning. Why do we hope that? Because a long list shows that you and your teenager thought about a wide variety of colleges that might be appealing, perhaps for various reasons. As we have said too many times, there are thousands of colleges out there (most of which you never heard of and don’t know nearly enough about), so don’t be too quick to come up with what we will call “the short list.” You can go back and listen to Episodes 92 through 96 for a recap of reasonable filters you might apply now to narrow down your teenager’s LLCO. Or you and your teenager can force yourselves to think a bit harder and look at the 52-item questionnaire in our new book. That questionnaire is carefully designed to help you and your teenager judge all of the relevant pieces of information about a college before your teenager, with your help, decides whether to apply. To review, the 52 questions cover these important aspects of a college: History and Mission Location Enrollment Class Size Academics Schedule Housing Security Measures Activities and Sports Admission Practices Cost Our opinion is that you really shouldn’t have put colleges on the LLCO anymore than you should take them off now without knowing these basic facts and figures about them. Fortunately, it’s not too late to find out, but it will be soon! Even for those of you who are facing Early Decision and Early Action deadlines of November 1 or November 15 (or thereabouts), you still have enough time to find out what you need to know and to decide wisely. As we have said in many USACollegeChat episodes, deciding where to apply is the first domino in this long process and, for obvious reasons, it is at least as important as deciding where to enroll. These application decisions will limit your teenager’s future universe, so be careful. And, let us remind you of something we hope you already know: Don’t forget to fill out and file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, as soon as possible. There is absolutely no reason not to! 1. The Short List So, let us be the first to say that we are okay if your teenager’s short list of colleges is still relatively long. Interestingly, the Common Application online system will allow a student to keep up to 20 colleges on the student’s list. Of course, you have a bit of leeway because some colleges do not take the Common Application, so those colleges wouldn’t need to be counted as part of the 20. We know that many “experts” will complain about a long list, including high school guidance counselors or college counselors, who understandably see long lists from seniors as a lot of extra work. But we don’t want your teenager to lose out on a good option next spring because of some extra work for the professionals--or for you and your teenager--this fall. When push comes to shove, doing 20 applications will be a lot of work, mostly because of the supplementary essays that many colleges, especially selective colleges, require. But it’s doable. I just spent some time with a smart senior going through her LLCO, which had about 25 colleges on it when we started. I think we are down to a more reasonable 15, and I don’t see a reason to try to make her list any shorter. So, what’s the right number for the short list? There’s no right answer, but 15 is probably a sensible average, plus or minus 5. I believe that number is slightly up from the 8 to 12 we recommended in our first book, How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students. Well, live and learn! It probably makes sense to look at your teenager’s short list now as a group of college options, rather than just as individual colleges. In other words, we believe that your teenager should have a number of bases covered. We looked at several bases to cover last year, but we would like to narrow that down to just three, in order of least important to most important. First, we would like to see some variety in the size of the colleges on the short list--that is, size in terms of undergraduate student enrollment. As we said last year, we did not believe then and do not believe now that high school seniors are well equipped to know whether they would prefer a small or large college--or even whether size makes any difference at all to them. We can show you lots of seniors’ short lists that have huge public universities and small private colleges on them, and we are not sure that some of them even realize it. We would like kids to have some size options to consider next spring--after acceptances come in--when they can think more calmly about whether size really makes a difference to them.  Second, it is no surprise to our regular USACollegeChat listeners that I think there should be variety of college locations on the list. Obviously, that means some out-of-state options and some in-state options. But it also means some options in your region of the U.S. and some options outside your region. And, it even means at least one option outside the U.S. We have talked about studying full time outside the U.S. many times here at USACollegeChat, so go back and listen to a few of our episodes on that very intriguing topic (see, for example, Episode 123 about colleges in Canada or Episode 122 about Richmond, the American International University in London). Because colleges outside the U.S. offer an exciting alternative to studying in our own country, you might not be surprised to learn that these colleges are often popular choices among students at private schools and students from wealthy homes. You should know, however, that studying outside the U.S. does not have to be any more expensive than studying in the U.S., so don’t rule it out without doing your homework. Third and most obviously (this is the one we won’t have to convince you about), there should be some variety in the selectivity of the colleges on your teenager’s short list. Every so-called expert has some formula for how to make up the list: how many “reach” schools, how many “target” schools, and how many “safety” schools--or whatever your favorite vocabulary is for these three types of college options. We think that this is a matter of common sense and that you don’t have to be an expert to figure it out. Your teenager’s short list should have perhaps two or three selective colleges that might be a reach (they might be highly selective or somewhat-less-selective, depending on how good a candidate your kid is); perhaps two or three not-so-selective colleges that could serve as safety schools (including, ideally, a reasonable and as good as possible public four-year school in your home state or maybe in another state), and maybe 10 or so colleges that seem just about right academically. 2. A Closer Look at Safety Schools Let’s take a moment to look more closely at the notion of safety schools because we think that they are often chosen poorly. When I work with a kid to put together his or her short list, I get these two types of colleges on the list as safeties: (1) a public university where I am sure the kid will be accepted; and (2) a private college where I am sure the kid will be accepted. Now, true, some of this is a matter of experience. But, looking at the data on admitted or enrolled students that you can find on a college’s website or on the College Navigator website will give you one indication of the likelihood of a kid’s acceptance. (By the way, see Step 13 in our new workbook for further detail on this.) And, of course, some of this is a matter of how good a candidate your kid is. A college that serves as a safety school for some kids is a reach school for other kids, obviously. But, the biggest mistake I see in kids’ short lists is the inclusion of a bunch of expensive less-selective private schools as safety schools when the kid really doesn’t want to go to them. Once you have one decent public university option and one decent less-selective private option on the short list, every other college on the list should be weighed against them. For example, a young woman I was working with recently here in New York City is blessed with great high school grades and very good SAT and ACT scores. Her safety schools are a good public university in the West and a good private university abroad. I am confident that, given her high school record, she will be admitted to both. Other adults have suggested a variety of additional private colleges that might serve as safety schools for her. For each one, I simply asked her, “Would you rather go to this one than the two you already have, which you are going to be admitted to?” In every case, she said, “No.” Then why have them on the list and why spend time and money applying to them? You don’t need a lot of safety schools. You need only one or two or maybe three that your kid is happy about and would look forward to going to. A young woman I worked with last year ended up at one of her two safety schools this fall. We chose them carefully to make sure she liked them, and she was, in fact, accepted to both. She ended up at the private one, and she loves it. I knew she would, and that’s why we chose it.  3. Other Colleges on the Short List By the way, a similar question should be asked of all of the colleges on the short list. Once you can establish that a college (whether it is selective or not selective) is not a place your kid would rather go than the safety school you are sure he or she will be admitted to, take that college off the list. To be clear, as your teenager and you look over the short list, ask him or her one final question about each college: “Would you really want to go to this college if you got in?” If you and your teenager were diligent in putting together a LLCO this summer and then in narrowing it down, we know that you two know quite a bit about each college still on the short list. We would say that it is likely that you know more about each college still on the list than the majority of students applying to it. But knowing all about a college doesn’t make your teenager want to go there.  I can usually hear it in the kid’s voice when I ask, “Why College X?” The kid is silent for a minute or says something vague. Can your teenager tell you several pros for each college on the short list--that is, several reasons why he or she personally would be happy going there? If not, it might be time to take it off the short list. “My mother suggested it” or “I’ve heard some good things about it” is not a reason to keep a college on the short list. Now, of course, there are some colleges on the list that your teenager prefers. Maybe there is a first choice; maybe there are several top choices. But no college left on the list should make your teenager feel apathetic or disappointed. Take those colleges off and, if you need more colleges on the short list, then look at some new ones to add. There are plenty out there.  Next week, we are going to talk about a serious problem with transferring colleges in case you are thinking about that as a long-term strategy for your kid as you two are making up the short list. Let me just say, “Buyer beware!” Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode139 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Let’s open today with an acknowledgment of a reasonably impressive milestone. We have just passed the third anniversary of our podcast. That’s three whole years of trying to put the college applications and college admissions process into perspective and within the grasp of the all-too-many parents and teenagers who have been left out of the conversation. When we started the podcast, we thought that it would be most helpful to parents who had not been to college themselves and to their first-generation-to-college kids. But we have found that parents of all educational backgrounds have learned from the episodes, and we are, of course, happy about that. As Marie and I say almost every week, “Here’s something we didn’t know ourselves, and we do this for a living.” As with all things, there is always more to learn. Speaking of learning, as we come to this episode in our series Researching College Options, I must admit that I would like to re-edit our new book How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Marie hates it when I say this; but, like all authors or maybe just all English majors, I know that I could make that book better (even though I have to admit that it is already pretty useful). Today’s episode is about something we left out of the book, but should have put in. So, if you have the book (and, if you don’t have it, go get it right now at amazon.com!), you all should add one more question at the end of our 52-item questionnaire about things your teenager needs to find out about a college before applying. Here is the question we missed and the topic of today’s episode: “Does the college offer an Early Decision and/or Early Action application round--or, perhaps, even more than one such round?” And we should have added: “Jot down all of the particulars of these early admissions plans, including how restrictive they are when it comes to whether you are allowed to apply to other colleges at the same time.” I am constantly surprised about how little parents know about Early Decision and Early Action plans, and they could make all the difference for a kid. 1. Why We Are Infuriated So, for those of you who were listening to USACollegeChat about seven months ago, you will recall that we tackled this Early Decision/Early Action issue then. However, it is even more timely now here at the beginning of October, and we think that it is worth recapping for all of you who have kids just starting their senior year. As many of you know, November 1 or November 15 (or thereabouts) is the Early Decision and/or Early Action deadline for most colleges, if a college has either of those early admissions plans in place. So, that is just a few short weeks away, and decisions about whether to make those early applications need to be made ASAP. As we said back in Episode 108 and Episode 109, I find this Early Decision/Early Action game infuriating. I continue to be infuriated on behalf of teenagers and their families who are in the midst of figuring out how to research and apply to a whole bunch of colleges, which is hard enough without having to calculate the advantages and disadvantages of Early Decision and Early Action options at some of those or all of those colleges and how those options interact, often poorly, with each other. I believe that lots of parents find this to be a daunting task. So, let us help. 2. Early Decision Cons Let’s look first at Early Decision, the older of the two options and the one that started us all down this now-confusing and controversial path. Many years ago, it used to be that a student could apply to one college under an Early Decision plan (the only type of early application available)--meaning that the student would apply early, get an answer early, and agree to attend that college if accepted. For students, Early Decision was—and, in fact, still is--a binding decision. In other words, if you get in, you go. Perhaps the most important reason that some educators and many parents grew to dislike the Early Decision option was--and likely still is--that a student accepted under this plan had to agree to attend the college before he or she had any other acceptances and before he or she had any idea what scholarships and other financial aid might be offered by any other colleges. For students who depended on financial aid to pay for college--and that’s more and more students these days--having to choose a college without being able to compare financial aid packages put those students and their families under unnecessary and, some would say, unfair financial pressure. When we talked about this issue months ago, we quoted from Frank Bruni’s excellent New York Times column entitled “The Plague of ‘Early Decision.’” You should go back and read his piece again. Mr. Bruni wrote this about his view of the biggest problem with Early Decision at selective colleges: [Early decision] significantly disadvantages students from low-income and middle-income families, who are already underrepresented at such schools. There’s plenty of evidence that applying early improves odds of admission and that the students who do so--largely to gain a competitive edge--come disproportionately from privileged backgrounds with parents and counselors who know how to game the system and can assemble the necessary test scores and references by the November deadline. These students also aren’t concerned about weighing disparate financial-aid offers from different schools and can commit themselves to one through early decision. Less privileged students need to shop around, so early decision doesn’t really work for them. (quoted from the article) Did we really need one more thing about college admissions that disadvantages low-income kids or kids from racial and ethnic minorities who are underrepresented in colleges? Clearly, as a nation, we did not. Regular listeners will recall that, recently in Episode 132, we spoke about a study of grade inflation in high schools that shows that the grade inflation trend disproportionately favors students from whiter, wealthier high schools. Is Early Decision just one more strike against kids who need a fairer shake? Mr. Bruni also gave us one memorable statistic from a well-to-do Boston suburban high school, noting that “while 60 percent of the seniors there submitted early applications seven years ago, it’s above 86 percent now.” (quoted from the article) And that was last year, so who knows how much higher that number can go this year? The point is that lots of kids are applying to college early, and that is going to make it just that much harder for your kid this year. Although we have talked recently about a steady decline in college enrollment in the U.S. in Episode 128 and a steady decline especially in male college enrollment in the U.S. in Episode 136, the nation’s very good and great colleges are still doing fine. They continue to have many, many more applicants than they need--both the private ones and the public ones. So, if any of our very selective private or public colleges are on your kid’s long list of college options (or shorter, refined list of college options), your kid is in for some stiff competition from a lot of kids who are ready to commit in November. Any kids who have to overcome any kind of barrier when making their college applications--whether that is financial constraints or English as a second language or lack of college counseling or parents who cannot help—are, sadly, going to be just that much further behind. 3. Early Decision Pros On the other hand, if your kid is one of the lucky ones or if you can get whatever help you need to get your kid past whatever barriers exist for your family, it seems to us that Early Decision is a great option for you. The larger problem is, of course, that Early Decision could be a great option for your own kid, even if there are too many kids who cannot take advantage of it for one reason or another. With my nonprofit president’s hat on, I have to say that Early Decision worries me increasingly; but with my advocate-for-your-one-kid’s hat on, I am very likely to recommend it to you. If your own teenager is absolutely clear about what his or her first-choice college is, then Early Decision is the way to go if that college has an Early Decision option. (We are going to talk about Early Action in a minute. Making one Early Decision application does not necessarily preclude also making one or more Early Action applications.) Why might Early Decision be a good move for your kid? First, your family could get the entire college admissions process over with as efficiently as possible by December. As we have already mentioned, the application is usually due November 1 or November 15, with a decision usually coming in December. If your kid is accepted, you are done. No more worries about not getting into a college your kid loves and no more stress of completing numerous applications! Even though the Common Application cuts down on some of that stress, it means that no more supplemental essays would have to be written and no more application fees would have to be paid. Second--and this is why we feel almost obligated to recommend Early Decision for kids who are ready to make a serious choice--your kid might actually have a much better chance of being accepted if he or she applies Early Decision. There continues to be a lot of press about this fact. Back in Episode 108, we quoted shocking statistics from an excellent article by Nick Anderson in The Washington Post, which offered acceptance statistics from 2015 from 64 “prominent colleges and universities.” His article was aptly entitled “A college-admissions edge for the wealthy: Early decision.” Go back and take a look at those many, many numbers. And here are a few more: same story, different verse. These are some facts and figures from an article by Kaitlin Mulhere in Money magazine. Her article makes this important point: Most selective colleges--specifically, the 100 or so four-year schools that admit a third or less of their applicants--publicize one overall acceptance rate. On its face, that makes sense, and it’s simple for families to grasp. The problem is that many students pin their hopes on that rate, even though it may conceal dramatic differences in the odds for different applicant pools. Take, for example, Vanderbilt University, where the overall rate was 12% for the fall 2015 freshman class. Yet students either apply in an early pool or the regular pool, which have 24% and 8% acceptance rates, respectively. Nobody has a 12% chance, says Steve Frappier, director of college counseling at the Westminster Schools, a prep school in Atlanta. (quoted from the article) There are two critical things to notice here. First, there is the simple fact that one averaged acceptance rate--the one that is published widely--actually might mean nothing. Second, there is the simple fact that your chances of getting into a college could be three times as good--or more--if you apply under an early application plan. While this is not true for every college in the U.S., it is true for many selective colleges in the U.S. Here are two more examples of great small private liberal arts colleges from the Money magazine article: Swarthmore College: 35% early decision acceptance rate vs. 10.7% regular decision acceptance rate Colorado College: 31% and 17% in two early rounds vs. 6% in the regular round The article makes the point that savvy consumers pay attention to the differences among the figures that colleges post on their websites: early acceptance rates, regular decision acceptance rates, and overall acceptance rates. The relationships among these figures change from college to college, so buyer beware! Those figures have got to make you think twice before you as a family dismiss the notion of applying early. Here is another perhaps surprising statistic from The Washington Post article for a sample of great colleges--the estimated percentage of the freshman class that is made up of Early Decision acceptances: University of Pennsylvania: 54% Middlebury College: 53% Emory University: 53% Kenyon College: 51% Barnard College: 51% Northwestern University: 50% Hamilton College: 50% Bowdoin College: 49% To sum it up, about half of the seats in the freshman classes of these selective, academically first-rate colleges are filled before the applications of high school seniors applying on the regular schedule are even looked at. You really have to stop and think about these statistics. No kidding. What are your kid’s odds of getting into a place when one-half of the seats are already taken? Some colleges are publicizing now that students who are accepted on an Early Decision schedule are getting nearly as much financial aid as those accepted on a regular decision schedule, so that’s a good thing for low-income kids who want to better their acceptance chances at a favorite college. And there is usually a disclaimer in college website information that a student may be released from a binding Early Decision acceptance if the financial aid package offered does not make it possible for that student to attend the college--though I have never personally tried to test that. By the way, is it obvious why a college would want so many Early Decision students? It should be. A college wants good students who really want to be at that college. It doesn’t want to play the admissions game any more than the applicants do. To sum it up, here is a brief quotation from the website of Boston University, a very good private university, about the reasons that students should consider Early Decision: Competition is keen. Think about this--would you rather be considered for admission as 1 of more than 60,000 applicants or 1 of just over 4,000 applicants? Applying Early Decision is the ultimate way to demonstrate your interest in BU, which is an opportunity for you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd. Early Decision applicants receive the same consideration for financial aid as regular decision applicants.Last year, BU awarded $55 million in aid to incoming freshmen. If you’re offered admission, your search process will be completed early. You could be one of the first among your classmates to wear your BU sweatshirt and show your Terrier Pride! 4. Early Action Now, let’s look at the Early Action option, under which high school seniors still apply early--around November 1 or November 15--but they are not ethically committed to enroll at the college if accepted. That is, the decision to apply Early Action is not a binding decision by a high school senior to attend that college. Early Action enables kids to apply to more than one college that offers an Early Action option and to hold onto any acceptances until April--before having to make a final decision among all of the acceptances that come in on both the early and the regular schedules. This plan, understandably, came into being as a result of concerns that the Early Decision option put too much pressure on kids to make final decisions too soon. In counseling kids myself, I encourage them to apply under the Early Action option to as many of the colleges on their final short list as they can. I just don’t see a downside. Furthermore, I believe kids should apply Early Action to every one of their safety schools if those schools have an Early Action option. It can certainly take the pressure off a student to know in December that he or she has a guaranteed acceptance from a college or two or three well before April comes. Here is one thing you have to keep in mind, however, for both Early Action and Early Decision. Students have to take the SAT and/or ACT no later than an October testing date to have the scores by early November, and a student has to believe that the scores he or she has by then are about as good as they are ever going to be. Or here is an option: Apply Early Action to one or more of your safety schools, using your available test scores--that is, schools you can probably get into without improving your scores. If there are more selective colleges that you are holding out hope for, but for which you need better scores, re-take the SAT or ACT in November or December and don’t apply to those colleges until the regular deadline of January 1 or later. 5. Single-Choice Early Action or Restrictive Early Action Let’s look at a mixed approach that has now been taken by some colleges, including some prestigious ones, and that is an option called Single-Choice Early Action, or Restrictive Early Action. This option means that applicants cannot apply to any other college under an Early Action or Early Decision option, but may apply later on a regular decision timeline. If an applicant is admitted under this single-choice or restrictive option, that student may have until about May 1 to make a decision. So, Single-Choice Early Action, or Restrictive Early Action, is like Early Decision in that the student is permitted to apply to only one college early, but it’s like Early Action in that the student is permitted to wait until regular decision acceptances come in before making a final decision about enrolling. You can see how that is pretty good for the student and pretty good for the college, though not ideal for either one. This option, we believe, is not nearly as widespread among colleges as either Early Decision or regular Early Action. 6. Other College Admissions Options Parents: Don’t feel bad when you have to read a college’s website information more than once to figure out what all the application options mean. I have to do that, too. I cannot imagine how a high school kid by himself or herself ever completes and submits a college application anymore, especially if that kid has parents who do not speak English or cannot help for whatever reason. And here’s another option you might run into: two rounds of Early Decision, or Early Decision I and Early Decision II; and two rounds of Early Action, or Early Action I and II. So, why Early Decision I and II, with Early Decision II having a later deadline? One reason is that some kids want the college to have access to later college admission test scores or to first semester senior grades, in case either of those is better than earlier scores or grades. Another reason is that a student who gets rejected from his or her first-choice Early Decision college in December can then apply to his or her second-choice college in a second round of Early Decision. Both of these options are possibly great for the student, though complicated, to be sure. Another reason for having two rounds of Early Decision is that it’s a way for a college to improve its own statistics--in this case, the “yield rate,” or the percentage of students who are admitted and then attend. This statistic might affect a college’s ranking on some list or other. So, that might be reason enough for how we got to this place. Go back and listen to Episode 109 if you want to hear even more complicated plans, which mix every conceivable Early Action and Early Decision variation. But those are only examples. The only plans that matter are the ones your kid faces at the colleges on his or her list. And they might be crazy enough! 7. The Bottom Line One last word, parents: Remember that your kid can be deferred when applying early, in which case the application will go into the pile to be considered with the applications submitted on the regular decision timeline. Or, your kid can be rejected, in which case he or she cannot re-apply, in some cases, on the regular decision timeline. So that’s one more piece of the puzzle that you will need to consider. I know that’s a lot to take in. What’s the bottom line? Apply Early Decision if your kid has a clear first-choice college that you can live with. Simultaneously, apply Early Action to all of the colleges on his or her list (including all of the safety schools) that have Early Action plans. There’s just no downside. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode138 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

This is an unusual episode in our series Researching College Options and for USACollegeChat as well. It looks at a critical issue today--one that can have terribly serious consequences for students and their families. The issue was raised in an insightful late August article by Alina Tugend in The Hechinger Report (the article also appeared in U.S. News & World Report). The issue is mental health support services on college campuses and the students--especially nonwhite students--who evidently all too often do not use them when they need to. This is going to be a relatively short episode for us, but I think you will see that it packs a big punch. 1. The Problem Here are some facts you might not know, as reported in the article: Nonwhite [college] students are often more stressed than their white classmates, but less likely to seek psychological help. This further complicates efforts to increase the proportion of black and Hispanic students who succeed in earning college and university degrees, and who graduate at rates lower than whites. As much as nonwhite students resist taking advantage of mental health services, there’s evidence they’re more in need of them. More than half of black students report feeling overwhelmed most or all of the time, compared with 40 percent of whites, a survey conducted by the Harris Poll, [The Jed] Foundation and other groups found. About half of black and Hispanic students, compared with 41 percent of whites, say it seems everyone has college figured out but them. (quoted from the article) That’s a lot of college students who could use some support when feeling overwhelmed--not only the half or more of black and Hispanic students, according to these studies, but also the 40 percent of white students. I have to say that I had no idea about the size of this problem. Let’s look a bit further into the particular stresses faced by black and Hispanic students, according to experts quoted in the article: . . . “[I]n addition to the stressors most students face at college--being away from home, time management--there are race-related stressors or minority-status stressors,” said Kevin Cokley, a professor of educational psychology and African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas, Austin. These stressors include assumptions by some white students and faculty that a minority student wouldn’t be in the classroom but for affirmative action, said David Rivera, an associate professor of counselor education at Queens College of the City University of New York. That perception can make itself felt in seemingly innocuous comments such as, “ ‘I’m surprised you did well on that paper,’ ” Rivera said. “If you confront it, you’re dismissed but if you ignore it, you’re left holding on to that experience,” he added. (quoted from the article) And this is not an issue only for black and Hispanic students. Asian college students face their own stresses, according to the article: Asian students often feel burdened by a stereotype that casts them as the “model minority,” always quietly diligent and academically successful, said Doris Chang, director of clinical training and associate professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research. But she said Asian students often fear that speaking to outsiders about the burden of this stereotype will bring shame on them and their families. “By the time they come in [for counseling], they are so impaired, they are already asking for a medical leave of absence.” (quoted from the article) Wow. Stress on college students clearly knows no racial or ethnic boundaries, and students of all backgrounds should know what to do when that stress becomes just too much for them to handle. But here is what happens too often, according to the article: Seeking psychological help is “culturally unacceptable in the African-American and Latino communities,” said Terri Wright, executive director of [The] Steve Fund, a nonprofit established by the family of a black graduate student named [Steve] Rose who committed suicide. The organization advocates for mental and emotional well-being for black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian college students. Within these groups, “the words ‘therapist’ or ‘counselor’ are loaded,” Wright said. “If you have problems, you don’t go outside your family, or maybe you talk to your faith leader.” (quoted from the article) I think there is no better way to demonstrate the enormous price that students and their families pay when support isn’t found in time than to read to you most of a remarkable letter from Steve’s family (that is, his parents and two brothers), which appears on the website of The Steve Fund: In 2014, we began a journey, one which no family should ever have to take. It began with the loss of Steve, our beloved son, family member and friend. After graduating from Harvard College and completing a Masters degree at City University, mental illness took Steve from us. We have established the Steve Fund with the aim of preventing other families having to take a journey like ours. Our nation is not meeting the mental health needs of young people of color. While research shows that the differences in ethnic backgrounds of students necessitate culturally sensitive approaches to supporting their mental health, their needs are still significantly understudied, and insufficiently understood. With minorities forming the majority of Americans by 2044, and the majority of children by 2020, the future success of our nation will depend on the mental health and emotional well-being of these young people. It is our firm belief that colleges and universities should play a vital role in meeting these needs by providing the best support possible for an increasingly diverse student population. Since we established the Fund, we have focused on developing knowledge and thought leadership, launched effective programs, such as the buildout of a text-based crisis hotline with our partner Crisis Text Line, and have built partnerships with renowned organizations in the field to leverage resources and to direct more effort towards our cause. The Steve Fund is mobilized to learn about, implement with excellence, and measure the kind of best practices that will protect the mental health and emotional well-being of our nation’s college age students of color. (quoted from the website) Kudos, of course, to Steve’s family and the work that the Fund is doing. The article goes on to do a good job of explaining the difficulties that students of color have when faced with college support personnel who are white. According to a survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, only 10 percent of college psychologists and therapists are black, only 8 percent are Asian, and only 7 percent are Hispanic. While some colleges are working to change staff make-up, most probably have a long way to go in order to serve the mental health needs of students of color on their campuses. And perhaps that is something to keep in mind, parents of students of color, when you are looking at colleges for your kids. 2. Get the Information As we said in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, information about support services on a college campus is one thing prospective applicants and their parents might want to consider. And now that we understand the scope of the mental health problem, I am glad that we included a question about support services on the College Profile Worksheet. We give the Worksheet to students to complete for colleges they are interested in applying to (it is found at the end of our book). Here is some of what we wrote in the new book: While support services--like academic advising, personal counseling, and employment assistance--can be useful to any undergraduate student, these support services are often particularly important to groups of students who might find it more difficult to adjust to college life, either socially or academically, especially when they find themselves in the minority of students on a college campus. If you identify with students of color, first-generation-to-college students, LGBTQ students, students with learning disabilities, or another group, you should take a look at whether each college on your long list of college options has support services targeted for you. For example, Georgia State University has an impressive Office of Black Student Achievement, which provides a wide variety of academic, support, leadership, and outreach activities, programs, and services. That says something about its commitment to serving its black student population. When you are looking for support services like that on a college’s website, see whether you can find any evidence that the services provided are actually successful. Why? Because successful support services can make all the difference between dropping out and graduating. And now that I have read The Hechinger Report article, I would add, “Because successful support services can make all the difference between life and death--literally.” And remember, you might want to look at the racial and ethnic make-up of the counseling staff that will be available to your kid, if it turns out he or she needs that help. Because, really, what could be more important than that. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode137 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today’s episode in our series Researching College Options focuses on a trend in college enrollment that you might have missed entirely. But if you have a son at home, it might be of particular interest to you--especially if your son is in the early days of high school (or even younger!).  1. A Quick Historical Look at Men in College Let’s look back for a moment at the history of male students in U.S. colleges. We wrote about this back in our first book, How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students, when we discussed the very real college option for your teenager of attending a single-sex institution vs. a coeducational institution. Here is what we said then:  Colleges and universities that were started in America’s earliest days were all institutions for men. They were all single-sex institutions then. Seven of the eight well-known Ivy League institutions served only male students when they were founded in the 1600s and 1700s: the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Among the Ivies, only Cornell, the youngest of the Ivies, was founded as a co-educational university, which took as its mission from its first day to enroll both men and women.  As time went on, many Ivies created a “sister” school for women: the University of Pennsylvania had its College for Women, Columbia had Barnard, Brown had Pembroke, and Harvard had Radcliffe. Of these, only Barnard remains. The tradition of single-sex colleges is particularly strong in the Northeast, perhaps because that is where so many of our country’s oldest higher education institutions are located. In addition to Barnard, women’s colleges in the Northeast include Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Simmons College, Smith College, and Wellesley College. But there are well-known women’s colleges located in other regions of the U.S. as well—like Mills College and Scripps College in California, Stephens College in Missouri, Hollins University and Mary Baldwin College in Virginia, Saint Mary’s College (the sister school of the University of Notre Dame) in Indiana, and Agnes Scott College and Spelman College in Georgia. Spelman has the distinction of also being an excellent HBCU. Interestingly and for whatever reason (probably rooted in financial issues), some of these women’s colleges now allow men to enroll in their graduate programs only, thus maintaining the traditional women’s college atmosphere for their undergraduate residential students. Today, there are just over 40 women’s colleges in the U.S. Oddly, only a handful of men’s colleges remain, perhaps partly because now there are actually more women than men going to college. The men’s college you have most likely heard of is Morehouse College, which is an academically rigorous HBCU located in Georgia and which is the men’s counterpart to Spelman. Morehouse has a roster of famous alumni, ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee. Here are two more appealing men’s colleges: Hampden-Sydney College, which was founded in 1775 in Virginia and has a long and fascinating history (Patrick Henry and James Madison were among its first Trustees); and Wabash College, which is located in Indiana and was cited in the book Colleges That Change Lives as an institution that is successful in creating engaged students, who become leaders in their chosen fields. While most single-sex institutions have opened their doors to the opposite sex over the years and especially in the past 50 years, those that remain carry on a tradition that their graduates wholeheartedly support. Some of their graduates--and indeed their families--believe that students can focus better on their studies when they are not being distracted by social interactions with the opposite sex in the classroom. Some of their graduates believe that students will develop a stronger sense of community and camaraderie with their classmates in single-sex institutions. Some of their graduates appreciate the histories and philosophies of these institutions--especially perhaps graduates of women’s colleges who feel that they are better supported as young women and are encouraged to set and pursue whatever education and career goals they can imagine for themselves. Clearly, there are great reasons for your teenager to choose to apply to and attend a single-sex institution, as we have said before, but there are also great reasons for your teenager to choose a coeducational institution. What is happening now, however, is that some coeducational institutions--institutions that some students chose to attend precisely because they were coeducational--are losing their balance between male and female students in a way that no one would have predicted 40 years ago. Let’s look at why. 2. Male College Enrollment Today  In a very interesting August article, which you should read in its entirety in The Hechinger Report (which also appeared in The Atlantic), reporter Jon Marcus gave us these facts and figures: Where men once went to college in proportions far higher than women--58 percent to 42 percent as recently as the 1970s--the ratio has now almost exactly reversed. This fall, women will comprise more than 56 percent of students on campuses nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Some 2.2 million fewer men than women will be enrolled in college this year. And the trend shows no sign of abating. By 2026, the department estimates, 57 percent of college students will be women. . . . Reeling from a years-long decline in overall enrollment, colleges and universities nationwide are vying for all the students they can get, and suddenly paying new attention to bolstering the number of men who apply. (quoted from the article) At this point, I think we might say either “You’ve come a long way, baby” to any young women in the audience or “Where will it end?” Of course, for many years, we lived in a world where more males than females went to college, so is it a problem if those figures are now reversed? Maybe not, unless you have a son at home, and you are wondering if this trend will affect him--either positively or negatively--as he looks toward college and his future. 3. Is College Too Late To Fix This? The Hechinger Report article goes on to explain some likely causes for the state of male college enrollment. Marcus reports: Though advocates complain that few in higher education are doing enough to keep those men who do get there from leaving, there’s consensus that men’s reluctance to enroll in the first place isn’t necessarily the colleges’ fault. The problem has its origins as early as primary school, only to be fueled later on by economic forces that discourage men from believing a degree is worth the time and money. “It’s funny that it’s the colleges that are finally seeing this issue and trying to resolve it,” said Patrick Maloney, president of the Nativity School, a Jesuit Catholic middle school in the central Massachusetts city of Worcester that tries to aim low-income boys toward college. That’s because, by the time students reach college age, Maloney said, “It’s way too late. You’ve already lost them. Maybe [admissions officers] should be going into middle schools and [should] start talking to fifth-graders about the benefits of college education.” Or even earlier than that. The “anti-school, anti-education sentiment” in boys has roots in kindergarten, when they’re slower to learn to read than girls, said Jim Shelley, manager of the Men’s Resource Center at Lakeland Community College in Ohio. Girls at the primary and secondary level worldwide far outperform boys in reading, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. That disparity continues until, “by eighth or ninth grade, boys have lost interest,” Shelley said. (quoted from the article) All this is likely true, but none of it accounts for the decline in male college enrollment. Why? Because I believe all of this was true 40 years ago when there were more male than female students in colleges. With that said, we will, nonetheless, underline the importance of not waiting till high school to engage actively about college-going with any younger children you have at home. For many students in high schools my nonprofit organization has evaluated, it is clear that they gave up on the goal of pursuing a college education much earlier, just as the article says. I believe that this is especially--and unfortunately--true for low-income students in urban school districts. And here are some additional issues that are concerning if you have a son at home, according to this article: Men who do enroll in college, at whatever age, are more likely than women to drop out, and they graduate at lower rates, the Education Department reports. That’s one thing universities and colleges can address directly, but generally don’t, Shelley, [manager of the Men’s Resource Center at Lakeland Community College], said. Through 21 years running one of the few campus support centers exclusively for men, he said, “I’ve thought it can only get better. But it just has gone nowhere. Not only are there not programs like ours that are supportive of male students, but at most college campuses the attitude is that men are the problem versus men have problems, too. . . .” Meanwhile, boys in many American communities don’t see male role models who have been to college and succeeded, said Keith Bullock at Kentucky’s Berea College (56 percent female). Bullock is coordinator of programs to support male students, many of them from Appalachia. “They don’t have those examples of doctors and lawyers and professionals.” . . . The male students under his care are black, white and Hispanic, Bullock said, and they all face similar pressures. He escorts them to the counseling and advising offices and texts them every day to make sure they get to class on time and know when tests are scheduled. “My guys,” he calls them. He also works with them on study habits and time management. “It’s very challenging. It’s very emotional. Sometimes I’m hugging them up and there’s times when I feel I have to curse them out.” (quoted from the article) 4. What Does This Mean for You?  So, if you have a son at home, perhaps The Hechinger Report article has given you some new perspectives and some new facts to think with. But there is also some information here for those of you with a daughter at home. As we said in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, the gender breakdown on a college campus is one thing prospective applicants might want to consider. And now that we know that male students are sometimes in shorter supply than you might have expected, I am glad that we included a question about gender breakdown on the College Profile Worksheet. We give the Worksheet to students to complete for colleges they are interested in applying to (it is found at the end of our book). Here is some of what we wrote in the new book: If you look at the enrollment statistics for many colleges, you will notice that some are split pretty evenly between male and female students (say, 46 percent vs. 54 percent), while others are way out of balance (say, 30 percent vs. 70 percent). Sometimes colleges that are out of balance can be explained by their history (for example, they were once women’s colleges) or by the types of majors they are best known for (given that some majors, unfortunately, continue to attract more students of one gender). If you want a college to reflect the general undergraduate college student population, it is interesting to note that enrollment figures overall in the fall of 2014 showed that 56 percent of undergraduate students were female. So, if a college is better balanced than that (in other words, closer to 50–50), it might well be working hard to achieve that balance.   Let’s look at a few examples. Carleton College (a great private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota) is 53 percent female and 47 percent male. Carleton is working at it, we would say. Oddly enough, the gigantic University of Minnesota (the excellent public flagship university in the Twin Cities) gets even closer--at 51 percent female and 49 percent male. Not too far away, the Milwaukee School of Engineering (a Wisconsin college that specializes in engineering and technical subjects, though not exclusively) posts a 24 percent female and 76 percent male enrollment--for perhaps obvious reasons. So, if gender balance at a college is important to your teenager, you all should check it out for each college on your teenager’s list. If you have never thought about it, you should think about it now. By the way, as we said in our new book, “we have not yet seen data reported and presented across colleges on enrollment of students with gender identities other than male and female. However, if you are looking for a college that is particularly accepting of more diverse gender identities, that is a topic that can and should be pursued by looking further on the college’s website and by calling the Admission Office and asking about relevant data and policies.” Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode136 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today’s episode in our series Researching College Options looks at a big option--an option that we have talked about in quite a few USACollegeChat episodes and in our first book, How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students. Most recently, we took a careful look at this option about five months ago in Episode 113. However, I have to admit that I am considering it again, based on a new opinion piece by LaGuardia Community College President Gail O. Mellow in late August in The New York Times. The option is community college. As we said in Episode 113, the community college is a marvelous institution in theory, but a somewhat more disappointing institution in reality--or, at least, that has usually been our position. If you are the parent of a high school senior, we know that some of you--perhaps many of you--are thinking about sending your kid to a community college next fall. Maybe that’s for financial reasons, maybe for academic reasons, maybe for maturity reasons, maybe for location reasons, maybe for some other reasons. Whatever your reasons, President Mellow has made us think again; so, let’s take another look. 1. The Pros of Community Colleges: A Review Let’s quickly review some of the pros and cons about community colleges, also referred to as two-year colleges. Here’s an abbreviated list of pros we offered back in Episode 113 (these reasons are conveniently taken from our first book,How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students): Two-year colleges offer associate’s degrees, which can be enough for some careers, including high-paying technical careers. Later, if the student wants to do so, the credits earned for an associate’s degree can be transferred to four-year colleges and applied toward credits needed for a four-year bachelor’s degree.   (In fact, some two-year colleges in some states are now authorized to offer bachelor’s degrees over four years, especially in technical fields where workers in the labor force are in short supply.) Two-year colleges offer students who have struggled in high school a chance to improve their academic record and gain the fundamental skills and study habits they will need to succeed in more advanced college study. After doing well at a two-year college, these students can likely get into a better four-year college than they could have gotten into right out of high school. Two-year colleges offer their students core liberal arts courses (which can often be transferred to four-year colleges later) and/or technical training in many different fields at a very low price. That’s critically important if paying for college is a major concern for your family. That last point about very low cost is perhaps the main reason that kids head to a community college right out of high school. The fact that community college is so much cheaper than any four-year option--and the fact that kids can live at home and save even more money--is sometimes irresistible. We know that students can get financial aid of all kinds from four-year colleges, which could make their time there essentially free, but none of those deals is a sure thing. Paying the very low tuition at a community college, especially with whatever financial aid is available, is a sure thing. 2. The Cons of Community Colleges: A Review  So, what’s the downside of going to a community college? As we have said before at USACollegeChat, the choice of a community college for students coming right out of high school is quite different from that same choice when it is being made by adults returning to college or starting college for the first time. My own nonprofit organization has done market studies for quite a few community colleges interested in increasing their adult enrollment (that is, students over the age of 25) and in serving those adult students better. And, to be fair, community colleges are a great institution for getting adults into college study or back into college study. But, we are focused today on your kid, who is going to college right out of high school, and some of the statistics about community college completion rates and transfer-to-four-year-college rates are just plain scary. You have to deal with this statistic: Not even half of community college students complete any college degree in six years--not even a two-year associate’s degree. Admittedly, that statistic includes all kinds of students who attend community colleges--from bright kids right out of high school who just needed to save money to returning adults who have been out of school for a decade to kids who struggled in high school and couldn’t get into a more selective college. Nonetheless, we have quoted evidence in previous USACollegeChat episodes that shows that students are more likely to graduate if they go to a more selective college, for many reasons. That is clearly a reason against having your kid choose a community college for next year. In addition to a seriously low completion rate, the transfer rate of students from community colleges to four-year colleges to earn bachelor’s degrees is also shockingly low, as we reported way back in Episode 64, based on an article in The Hechinger Report. Here is a statistic, which was taken from a report from Teachers College, Columbia University: . . . 80 percent of entering community college students say they intend to earn a bachelor’s degree, but only about a quarter actually make the transfer and 17 percent eventually get the degree. (quoted from the article) Parents, we said in Episode 113 that we thought you should think hard about whether your kid is different from the typical community college student--smarter, harder working, more motivated, more goal oriented. Just being younger might not help enough. The statistics are telling you that he or she is likely not to graduate with even an associate’s degree and is likely not to transfer to that great four-year college you say you are saving up your money for. 3. President Mellow’s Point of View And now we come to President Mellow’s point of view. I have to admit that some of my attitude toward community colleges comes from my belief that kids who can get into a satisfactory four-year college and who can figure out how to pay for it (including through loans and other unpleasant devices) should go directly to that four-year college. I worry that kids who could go to a four-year college, but don’t, will get sidetracked into community college and never get out. But perhaps I have not given sufficient thought to kids who cannot go to a four-year college, especially for financial reasons. Let’s look at some excerpts from President Mellow’s recent opinion piece: You might think the typical college student lives in a state of bliss, spending each day moving among classes, parties and extracurricular activities. But the reality is that an increasingly small population of undergraduates enjoys that kind of life. Of the country’s nearly 18 million undergraduates, more than 40 percent go to community college, and of those, only 62 percent can afford to go to college full time. By contrast, a mere 0.4 percent of students in the United States attend one of the Ivies. The typical student is not the one burnishing a fancy résumé with numerous unpaid internships. It’s just the opposite: Over half of all undergraduates live at home to make their degrees more affordable, and a shocking 40 percent of students work at least 30 hours a week. About 25 percent work full time and go to school full time. (quoted from the article) Of course, some of these students who work full time and go to school full time are adult students over the age of 25--but, not all of them. For example, a lot of students who graduate from urban high schools, like the one we co-founded in Brooklyn, head off to college with both the intention and the necessity of working while they are enrolled. Marie and I worried that our students wouldn’t be able to do both successfully. We worried that they were going to have a hard enough time in college without spending 10 or 15 or 20 hours a week--or more--at a job. But, given their family circumstances, many of them had no choice, just as President Mellow writes. She continues:  As open-access institutions, community colleges educate the majority of our country’s low-income, first-generation students. But public funding for community colleges is significantly less than for four-year colleges, sometimes because of explicit state policies. This means the amount that community colleges can spend on each student--to pay for faculty, support services, tutoring and facilities--is far less as well. Tuition for low-income students can be covered by federal financial aid programs, but these students often have significant other costs--including housing, transportation, food and child care--that regularly pose obstacles to their education. A recent Urban Institute study found that from 2011 to 2015, one in five students attending a two-year college lived in a food-insecure household. A study from the Wisconsin Hope Lab found that in 2016, 14 percent of community college students had been homeless at some point. At LaGuardia Community College in New York, where I am president, 77 percent of students live in households making less than $25,000 per year. With financial pressures like these, studying full time is not an option. It is not uncommon for a student to take between three and six years to graduate from a two-year associate degree program. (quoted from the article) And we can see why. Those statistics are sobering, and they do put community colleges’ lousy completion rates into perspective. Of course, you would still want your kid to come out of a community college on time so that he or she could move forward and transfer to a four-year college or enter the workforce and get a decent job. This is especially true if you, as a parent, can manage to pay the cost of attending a community college and keep distractions for your kid--like working a significant number of hours a week--down to a minimum. Not surprisingly, President Mellow argues for a better financial deal for community colleges and their students, both in government funding and, interestingly, in philanthropy. She writes: Community colleges need increased funding, and students need access to more flexible federal and state financial aid, enhanced paid internships and college work-study programs. Improved access to public supports, like food stamps and reduced public transportation fares, would also make a world of difference. It’s not just that policy must change. Last year, more than $41 billion was given in charity to higher education, but about a quarter of that went to just 20 institutions. Community colleges, with almost half of all undergraduate students, received just a small fraction of this philanthropy. It is imperative that individuals, corporations and foundations spread their wealth and diversify where they donate their dollars. (quoted from the article) I have to tell you that I was so embarrassed that my two alma maters might be on that list of 20 institutions that I didn’t even look at it--because obviously that is just the very definition of unfair advantage and privilege. 4. What’s Herb Alpert Got To Do with It? Some months ago, I wrote a piece for my own blog, ParentChat with Regina, about the importance of music in a child’s education. But the really arresting part of the piece was about Herb Alpert, trumpeter extraordinaire and co-founder of A&M Records. (If you are too young to remember Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, go listen to Alpert’s signature style on YouTube. Start with “Tijuana Taxi” and “This Guy’s In Love With You”--and stay for all the rest.)  As it turns out, Alpert has done what President Mellow wishes more people would do. His foundation--co-founded with his wife, singer Lani Hall--has made a $10.1 million gift to Los Angeles City College (LACC), a two-year public community college. The money will create an endowment, which will be used to raise the number of music majors enrolled from 175 to 250 and to provide ALL of them with FREE tuition. As reported by Carolina A. Miranda in the Los Angeles Times, Alpert said this about his gift:  LACC is a gem of an institution. . . . [My] biggest motivation was helping kids who don’t have the financial energy to go to a major college. At LACC, they’ve nurtured thousands of dedicated students every year. My brother went there. My ex-partner [record producer] Lou Adler went there. I’ve visited the school. It’s alive. It’s kickin’. (quoted from the article) Alpert noted that he was especially interested in supporting a public institution where students of all socioeconomic backgrounds could get a college education. It’s as if he were simply channeling President Mellow. 5. So, What About Community Colleges? So, where does all that leave us--or rather, you? Well, we are probably going to continue to worry when seniors choose a community college as their first step into higher education. We are going to continue to worry that some of them are going to have difficulty graduating from a community college in anything close to two years and/or transferring to a four-year college ever.  But we are also going to admit that financial constraints can cause families to choose a path that might not be as perfect as we would like for their own kids. If that is your situation, talk with your kid and think hard about the community college option. Think about how to keep working hours to a minimum so that study hours can be at a maximum. Talk about how important it is to stay on track and make progress toward graduation every semester. Help make the statistics better. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode135 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina  

Welcome back from the Labor Day holiday and welcome back to school for those of you living in the Northeast, where the very last kids to start back reside. And welcome back to our series, Researching College Options, where we have spent the last three episodes talking about the academic hurdles that kids will meet in trying to get into a college. Those hurdles are, first, SAT and ACT scores of competing applicants; second, average high school grade point average (GPA) of competing applicants; and third, courses that all applicants are expected to have taken in high school, usually listed in terms of credits (or Carnegie units) in each subject area, but also sometimes including specific courses, especially in math and science. To repeat from our previous episodes, all three of these academic standards matter at most of the nation’s most selective four-year colleges, and high school GPAs and high school courses taken actually matter at virtually all of our nation’s four-year colleges. When we talked about high school courses taken (in Episode 133), we said that this is something you could probably still fix if your kid is just starting back to school now for his or her senior year. Yes, your kid’s fall semester courses were likely chosen some time ago, but changes can be made in most high schools as classes start if there is an important enough reason--and, clearly, meeting college entrance requirements is an important enough reason. Parents of younger students, we told you that you still have time to have a major effect on the high school courses your kid will take in the next couple of years, and you should absolutely start looking at entrance requirements now--before it is too late. Go back and listen to Episode 133 to find out why and how. In today’s episode, we want to talk to all of you parents about something else that you can still influence--something else that will improve your kid’s college application, to be sure, but that will also just simply improve your kid. It’s not a new topic for us, and we hope it will sound familiar to you, too. As we turn to today’s topic, let us remind you, one more time, to give your kid our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, designed to help students get the information that they need to make good choices about where to apply. We will talk more about the book in a few weeks--when you all are getting really nervous about those unfinished college applications. 1. What About Internships? But now, we want to take you all the way back to Episodes 16 and 17, when we first talked to our audience about the topic of internships. I imagine that many of you listeners were not with us then since we had only just begun our podcast. Or, perhaps you had kids who were younger then and not yet in the throes of college applications. So, I think this bears repeating. Let us start with some internship basics and then talk about a new research study that offers some very interesting new evidence about the value of internships--especially for certain students. So, stay tuned. Let us say first and foremost that students who have had internships in high school almost universally say that their internship was one of the most valuable learning experiences they ever had. And, from another perspective, their adult supervisors at the workplace almost universally say that having the student intern was a great experience for the organization as well. Undoubtedly, some students might be unprepared academically or socially for an internship, and some organizations might be unprepared to use an intern effectively. But, when a student is prepared and the organization is welcoming, an internship is a well-documented way of helping a student acquire some of the skills that he or she will need in real life, both in college and in a career. Unlike many innovative programs brought into schools in the past century, there is simply no downside to student internships. About 40 years ago, my nonprofit organization started evaluating internship programs that were funded by government grants and operated by individual school districts, colleges, and nonprofit organizations. Every single program we studied offered great results for students and received high marks from the adults involved--both in the workplace and in the schools. We never evaluated any kind of innovative program that was more effective or more universally liked. One of the best ones I ever saw was then called the Executive High School Internship Program, and it was used in many school districts. It placed students in executive internships--that is, students worked with executives in various professional fields. Back in the late 1970s, we did an evaluation of the Executive High School Internship Program in the Montgomery County Public Schools in suburban Maryland. At that time, the program placed students in, specifically, public administration internships--for example, working with County government officials. It was a really interesting idea, I always thought. I searched for Executive High School Internships while I was preparing this episode and found a version of the program still offered in Montgomery County at the Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. Since almost nothing innovative lasts in education for 40 years, I am thinking that those administrators and parents and students in Montgomery County agreed with our highly favorable evaluation all those years ago. Here is an excerpt from the Walter Johnson High School website today: The Executive Internship Program is a rigorous, high-quality profession-focused academic program. This program allows students to explore and clarify career options in a chosen area of academic interest. Students are required to use verbal, analytical, questioning, and writing skills while participating in their internship. The general expectations of the workplace will be followed throughout the experience. All students enrolled in this program should gain personal and professional experience that will assist them in meeting their lifetime goals. An internship enables students to identify a field of interest, observe and participate in related professional activities, and understand a chosen profession’s requirements and culture. This will help a student determine if a profession is compatible with his interests, values, skills, and aptitudes. Students will integrate academic knowledge [into] a professional setting and apply that acquired knowledge to a variety of experiences. Students will develop interpersonal communication skills, advance their social skills, and mature in their personal habits as a function of working in a professional environment. The internship is a semester-long elective course completed during the school day or after school. The student receives honors elective credit . . . . (quoted from the website) So, kudos to the Executive High School Internship Program and its legacy. Marie and I can tell you countless stories of high school students’ internship experiences and how effective they are--from working in a prestigious architecture firm in Manhattan to working in a small, full-service advertising agency to working in technology support at a City University of New York college campus to working in a neighborhood children’s clothing store to working in a large engineering company, where one of our students actually solved a problem that the engineers were having trouble with. These are all stories from the internships our students had at the high school we co-founded in Brooklyn. Our Early College engineering- and architecture-focused high school was started in conjunction with NAF (formerly known as the National Academy Foundation and now going just by its acronym), a nonprofit organization that supports the programming of 675 career academies in high schools in 36 states, serving over 96,000 students. A formal internship is a key part of the NAF academy model. So, if your high school has a formal internship program, get your kid into it. It looks great on those college applications because it is evidence that your kid has shown commitment over time, dependability, responsibility, initiative, and appropriate social skills in a real workplace environment. While these skills are all great for some future career, they are also equally important for success in college. Just think about it. And don’t forget, an internship might be an excellent source of college application essay material and an excellent source of additional college recommendation letters, if needed. If your high school does not have a formal internship program, you can help your kid seek out an internship on his or her own--after school or on weekends (by the way, parents of younger kids, you still have summer options available to you). Ideally, you would have your kid look for an internship in a career field of interest and/or in a prospective college major field of interest in an organization where a responsible adult would agree to supervise and mentor your kid. (By the way, college applications often have an essay about why the student is interested in the major he or she has declared. An internship in the field is a great thing to write about in those essays.) We are not saying that getting an internship on your own is particularly easy to do or that your kid won’t have to compete with college students, who are also looking for internships and who might be more qualified and/or at least more mature. However, we are saying that an internship experience with personal adult mentoring is priceless and worth the headache of trying to find one. Using whatever personal connections you might have at work, through friends, at your place of worship, or elsewhere might be your best chance of helping your kid find an internship. Just a note: Some internships are paid, and some are unpaid. For example, NAF strongly believes that internships should be paid. To be sure, paid internships are a better simulation of the actual world of work and increase the likelihood that the student will be taken seriously by the adults on the job. Nonetheless, internships are such a good experience for students that we would argue that an unpaid internship experience is still worth it, and being able to accept an unpaid internship will definitely make it easier to find one. 2. The New Case for Internships Now, I didn’t need any more evidence to tell me how valuable internships are. But, I was happy to find some while reading an August 29 article by Sarah Sparks at the Inside School Research blog at Education Week. She refers to a research report by the Urban Institute, which evaluated a high school program that provided mentorships, six-week professional career skills training, and a senior-year internship. The report looked, about two years after high school, at just over 1,000 students who had applied to the program in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Some of the applicants were put into the program (through random assignment), and some made up the control group. They were about average students (with an average high school junior year cumulative GPA of 2.7), and about 89 percent were African American and typically lived in “economically distressed” neighborhoods.  The report is entitled Pathways After High School: Evaluation of the Urban Alliance High School Internship Program, and it is authored by Brett Theodos, Mike Pergamit, Devlin Hanson, Sara Edelstein, Rebecca Daniels, and Tanaya Srini. Here are some findings: Students in the program self-reported that they were more comfortable filling out the FAFSA and applying for other scholarships than students in the control group. Male students in the program were more likely to graduate from high school than male students in the control group. Male students in the program were more likely to apply to college than male students in the control group. Male students who completed the program were 23 percentage points more likely to attend college than male students in the control group. Male students who completed the program were 21 percentage points more likely to earn a two-year degree or be in college in their third year after high school graduation than male students in the control group. Male students in the program were significantly more comfortable with their own “soft skills” (e.g., “speaking with adult coworkers, writing professional e-mails, making presentations, dressing professionally, completing work assignments on time and getting to work on time”) after one year out of high school and even more comfortable after two years out of high school. The program shifted students with middling high school GPAs from attending two-year colleges to attending four-year colleges. So, if you are the parent of an African-American male high school student, the data say that you should get him into an internship program, especially if he is just an average student. Of course, we believe that the rest of you should also get your kids into internship programs, because, as we said earlier, there is just no downside. You will be glad you did when it comes time for your kid to fill out those college applications, but you will also be glad you did when it comes time for your kid to function at college during the academic year and in the workplace during the summers. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode134 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina  

We are in the fifth week of our new series, Researching College Options, and we have spent the last two episodes talking about the two most likely academic hurdles that kids will meet in trying to get into a college: that is, first, the SAT and ACT scores of newly admitted and/or enrolled freshmen at the college and, second, the average high school grade point average (GPA) of those students. I think we made it clear that both of these matter at most of the nation’s most selective four-year colleges and that high school GPAs matter, in fact, at virtually all of our nation’s four-year colleges. So, let’s look one more time this week at what we call Step 13 in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students--that is, Step 13 of getting the information that your kid needs to make good choices about where to apply. Step 13 is about researching the college’s admission practices; we’ve talked about some of this information, and more is in the book. Finding out all of the information we call for in Step 13 will give you an idea about how likely it is that your kid will be accepted by a college if he or she decides to apply. As we said in the last episode, no one can say for sure whether your kid’s grades or admission test scores or extracurricular and community service activities or letters of recommendation will be appealing enough to get him or her admitted to a particular college. But today’s episode is about one more academic hurdle that might stand between your kid and one or more colleges on his or her Long List of College Options (LLCO): that is, high school courses that your kid did or did not take. 1. What High School Courses Should Your Kid Have Taken? We want to talk to you about this topic because it is something you still might be able to fix as your kid starts into his or her senior year in the next few weeks. Yes, your kid’s fall semester courses were probably chosen some time ago, but changes can be made in most high schools as classes start if it is important enough. So, let’s find out if it is important enough. Parents of younger students, you still have time to have a major effect on high school courses taken in the next couple of years, and you should absolutely weigh in. Here is what we wrote in our new book for kids like yours: Let’s look at [another] admission standard--one that is less often considered and more often taken for granted--and that is the courses that applicants are expected to have taken in high school, usually listed in terms of credits (or Carnegie units) in each subject area, but also sometimes including specific courses, especially in math and science. Part C5 of the common data set [by the way, you can search for the “common data set” on each college’s website, and you will often find it] displays both REQUIRED and RECOMMENDED high school units, by subject area, but you should check out each college’s website for more detailed information. College Navigator [the online resource provided by the National Center for Education Statistics] does not have any specific information on this topic. On a college’s website, this information [on required and recommended high school courses] can virtually always be found by starting with the Admission home page. You will find that the high school course or credit expectations of colleges do, in fact, differ, usually according to how selective the college is. But there are always a few surprises (like colleges that require students to have earned career and technical education credits in high school, for example). After you write down the required and the recommended courses or credits, you can compare them from college to college, and you can see how well they match up with what you have taken so far and with what you will be taking as you finish up high school. Particularly if you are just a freshman or sophomore, this information can be invaluable as you plan your remaining semesters in high school. For example, what if a college on your LLCO requires--or, more likely, recommends--four credits of foreign language? Foreign language is something that lots of high school students drop out of before taking a fourth year. Perhaps that’s because they don’t know how many selective colleges recommend it. The courses that you take in high school matter, including the courses that you take in your senior year. Colleges will tell you that slacking off in the senior year is never a good move. So, for example, a fourth year of math and a fourth year of science would be the best scenario for most applicants--and might be a mandatory scenario for entrance to top colleges and to some college programs, like engineering. If you don’t have a rigorous senior year planned, think again. In the long, but crucial, College Profile Worksheet that we ask your kid to fill out for every college on his or her LLCO, we ask for the number of credits or courses required for admission to the college or to the college/school that he or she is interested in within the university as well as any specific courses required (like Biology or Algebra II). We ask for the information by subject field--meaning in English, math, science, social studies, foreign languages, arts, and other fields (which could include career and technical education or physical education or health or something else). And then we ask for the same information for recommended courses, including recommended courses like Calculus, for example. Interestingly, many public state flagship universities have quite detailed lists of required and recommended courses that applicants should have taken, and my guess is that these lists are well known to high schools in those states so that high school counselors can make sure that students take them. At least, I hope they are. For those students applying to flagship universities in states other than their own state--as we have recommended that many students do--those students should be particularly careful about finding out what those requirements are and then meeting them. Why? Because the kids in those states are more than likely meeting all of them because their high schools know about those requirements and are well positioned to provide the courses that are needed. Let’s look at one example. I took the University of Georgia, a very good flagship university--not the most selective in the nation, but a very competitive one. Here is what the website says about the College Preparatory Curriculum the university expects its applicants to have taken (remember that one unit is equal to one year of study): At a minimum, by policy of the University System of Georgia, all first-year applicants must complete the College Preparatory Curriculum (CPC), which consists of 17 academic units in English (4), Mathematics (4), Science (4), Social Studies (3), and Foreign Language (2). The Georgia Board of Regents has a detailed high school curriculum guide to assist students in understanding what courses need to be completed for college. (quoted from the website) Here are a few more details for University of Georgia applicants: 4 units of math must include Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and one math course beyond Algebra II 4 units of science must include 1 unit of biological sciences; 1 unit of physical sciences or Physics; 1 unit of Chemistry, Environmental Science, or Earth Science; and a 4th unit of science, which could include AP Computer Science (with two of the four units being lab sciences) 2 units of foreign languages, with the two units being sequential units in one language Those are serious requirements. I bet there are a lot of Georgia high school students and a lot of high school students in most states that cannot meet those standards even if the necessary courses were offered in their high schools. Parents, is your kid one of them? The Georgia example is the reason we are telling you about this now. There is still time to add a fourth year of math or science to your kid’s senior year schedule--even if it is not the hardest math or science that you can imagine. I would a lot rather have four units of math and four units of science on my kid’s transcript and let the college figure out how hard those fourth-year courses actually were than not have the fourth-year courses there at all. In other words, the fourth-year courses do not have to be Calculus and Physics in order to count. But every college is different. Really. That is exactly why we put these questions on the College Profile Worksheet. You have to know what each college expects or your kid cannot possibly jump that hurdle. 2. A Quick Look at Foreign Languages Let’s look at my favorite part of this topic, and that is the importance of studying a foreign language in high school (and in college, by the way). It is one of those things that anyone who knows me might guess I am going to bring up--along with the importance of studying outside the U.S., the importance of the liberal arts, and the importance of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), to name a few of my favorite soapboxes. Here are a few startling statistics from an Education Week article in June by Corey Mitchell: The American Councils for International Education estimates that 10.6 million K-12 U.S. students study a world language or American Sign Language. That sounds like a lot of students, but it is actually just 20 percent of American students. Fewer than 10 percent of students in at least two states study a language other than English. Arabic is the fastest-growing second language among U.S. residents, but only 0.25 percent of American students who study a foreign language study Arabic in school. Eight times as many study Latin. I am all for more Arabic, but all my friends know that I would hate to give up Latin. Less than 1 percent of American students who study a foreign language are studying either Russian or Japanese, though both of these languages were popular some decades ago for obvious political or economic reasons. The study of Mandarin, the most commonly spoken language in the world, is increasing among American students. That’s probably an important trend. Eleven states require credits in foreign languages in order to graduate from high school. Does 11 sound like a lot or a little to you? Because it sounds like way too little to me. The District of Columbia and 44 states are in the market for certified foreign language teachers. We are certainly going to need more teachers if we are going to convince more kids to study more foreign languages or foreign languages for more years. And here is a quotation from Marty Abbott, the executive director of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, also from the Education Week article: “We’re such a long way in this country from having it be normal to grow up learning other languages. . . . Our future depends on our ability to engage with the rest of the world, and right now Americans have a very tough time doing that.” We do indeed. So, parents, help your kid stand out when it comes to the college admissions game. Convince your kid to take four years of a foreign language in high school (assuming that your high school makes four years available and, if not, encourage your kid to take two years of one language and two years of another language). Do this not just to get your kid into college; do it for a lot of other great reasons, too. And now I—with my four years of high school Latin and my three years of high school French--will get off my soapbox. 3. It’s Labor Day! So, we hear that it’s almost Labor Day. We will be taking next week off to catch our breaths and celebrate. You should do the same, because September will require you to hit the ground running. Parents of seniors, the time is here. We will be back with a new episode on September 7. We can’t wait! Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode133 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

We are in the fourth week of our new series, Researching College Options, and we spent time in our last episode talking about the SAT and ACT and their almost-unavoidable continuing role in college applications and admissions. Yes, we said that there are plenty of test-optional and test-flexible colleges, but the SAT and ACT are not dead and buried yet and won’t be any time soon, if ever. That topic was just about as inevitable as college applications season gets into full swing as this week’s topic, which is the super-important high school grade point average (GPA). Unfortunately, if your kid is about to be a senior, that high school GPA is pretty well locked in place at this point. A great fall semester might help a bit, but it won’t do much to change a GPA that is already based on six semesters of high school work and it won’t help at all if your kid is applying to a college under an Early Decision option and/or if your kid is applying to one or more colleges under an Early Action option by around November 1. Your kid’s current cumulative GPA is what it is, and now we have to help you and your kid think about how to deal with it. So, here are a few paragraphs of background from our first book, How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students: Unfortunately, there are no “high school grades optional” colleges that we know about. Certainly, most colleges will claim to look at the whole picture--a complete profile--of a student during the admissions process; nonetheless, that whole picture always includes high school grades. While there can be reasons that high school grades are lower than the student is capable of earning--such as difficult family situations or personal problems or trauma--those reasons would have to be explained compellingly in an essay or an additional letter of some sort to the college. In short, it is really very difficult to explain away mediocre or low high school grades. When a student has mediocre or low high school grades, it is ideal if that student happens to have high SAT or ACT scores. Then, the college can imagine that the student is bright, but perhaps had some reason for not performing as expected in high school classes. None of those reasons would be a great excuse, but some colleges will make an exception for such a student. However, most students who have mediocre or low high school grades do not have high SAT or ACT scores. For those students who have both mediocre or low high school grades and mediocre or low college admission test scores, the college choice with the highest cost-benefit ratio is probably a public two-year college--or maybe a public four-year college. By the way, great public four-year colleges can be just as difficult to get into as good private four-year colleges, so many of them are probably out of the running, too. If you look at the average high school GPAs of entering freshmen at many public state flagship universities, they are extraordinarily high--a 3.7 or 3.8 is not unheard of. Why again? Because many, many of the brightest students in a state want to attend--and do attend--the public state flagship university, for all the reasons we [have discussed before at USACollegeChat]. Understanding how important high school grades are in the college admission game is the first step, but it is one you should have taken with your senior several years ago. Parents of younger high school students, heed this early warning: Help your kid understand that there is really no way to make up for crummy--or even lackluster--high school grades when it comes time to apply to colleges. There just isn’t. So, let’s look again this week at what we call Step 13 in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students--that is, Step 13 of getting the information that your kid needs to make good choices about where to apply. Finding out all of the information we call for in Step 13 will give you an idea about how likely it is that your kid will be accepted by a college if he or she decides to apply. Of course, no one can say for sure whether your kid’s grades or admission test scores or extracurricular and community service activities or letters of recommendation will be appealing enough to get him or her admitted to a particular college. But several academic hurdles stand between your kid and one or more colleges on his or her Long List of College Options (LLCO), and high school GPA is one of those hurdles. 1. High School GPAs of College Candidates So, we believe that your kid should find out the average high school GPA of admitted or enrolled freshmen in order to get a somewhat better grasp on whether he or she is likely to be admitted to that college. Here is what we wrote in our new book for kids like yours: For many, but not all, colleges, you will be able to find the full distribution of high school GPAs and the average high school GPA of the students enrolled in the freshman class by looking under C11 and C12 of the common data set on the college’s website. [You will probably need to search for “common data set” on the college’s website, and you might find that the data sets are available for several years.] You also might find [high school grades] on a Class Profile sheet on the website, but you will not find this information on College Navigator [the online resource provided by the National Center for Education Statistics]. [The] average high school GPA will be on a 4-point scale. For example, a great college might show an average high school GPA of 3.8, meaning that its enrolled freshmen did extremely well in their high school courses. As Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses have become increasingly popular and as more high schools have started to “weight” students’ grades in those courses (and sometimes in their own honors courses as well), there has been a rise in high school GPAs. In other words, when a student in a high school with weighted grades gets an A in a regular course, that A is worth a 4.0, or 4 points. But if a student in a high school with weighted grades gets an A in an Advanced Placement course, that A is worth a 5.0, or 5 points—that is, the grade has more “weight.” Whether your high school does or does not weight course grades is something that should be part of the high school narrative profile that your school’s counselor will send off to colleges with your high school transcript. That profile is helpful to colleges in judging your GPA. Nonetheless, one effect of all of this weighting of high school course grades appears to be that average high school GPAs of incoming freshmen are on the rise. We can tell this anecdotally by the fact that many colleges we profiled in our virtual college tour [back in Episodes 27 through 53 of USACollegeChat], including some not super-selective ones, post surprisingly high average GPAs well over a 3.5 for the incoming freshman class. So, look carefully at the average high school GPAs that colleges are putting out there and see how yours compares. And, remember, some colleges will not provide one. Well, that is a rather straightforward explanation of the high school GPA as one determinant in college admissions. As parents, it shouldn’t surprise you at all. But now let’s look at a newer explanation of that high school grade inflation, which we referred to, and its consequences. 2. The New Research on High School Grade Inflation This explanation comes to you from a July article in Inside Higher Ed, which is, in its own words, “the leading digital media company serving the higher education space. Born digital in the 21st Century at the height of the Internet revolution, our publication has become the trusted, go-to source of online news, thought leadership, and opinion over the last decade.” This article, by Scott Jaschik, is appropriately titled “High School Grades: Higher and Higher." Here is what Jaschik said about a new study, which was just released: The study . . . will be a chapter in Measuring Success: Testing, Grades and the Future of College Admissions, to be published next year by Johns Hopkins University Press. The two authors of the study are Michael Hurwitz, senior director at the College Board, and Jason Lee, a doctoral student at the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia. . . . The research is on students who take the SAT, and the study argues that these are representative of high school students who enroll in four-year colleges. The data come both from the Education Department and from surveys the College Board conducts of students who take the SAT. A key finding is that, looking at cohorts of high school graduates who finished from 1998 to 2016, the average high school GPA went up from 3.27 to 3.38. Notably, the gains were unequal among high schools, and the differences appear to favor students from wealthier (and whiter) high schools than average. The study groups high schools by the magnitude of grade inflation. In the top decile of growth in average GPAs [meaning that the GPAs rose the most], black and Latino students made up only 22 percent of students on average, and only 32 percent of students were eligible for free lunch. But in the bottom decile of GPA growth [meaning that the GPAs rose the least], black and Latino enrollments were an average of 61 percent, and more than half of students were eligible for free lunch. The study finds that the average GPA at the high schools with the most grade inflation (top decile) has hit 3.56, while the average at places that haven’t seen much grade inflation (bottom decile, largely minority) is 3.14. . . . [T]he study finds similar grade inflation in . . . weighted and unweighted grades. . . . (quoted from the article, emphasis added) Well, that is quite a lot to process. It’s bad enough that grade inflation is taking place and skewing the way that everyone has to think about high school achievement. But it’s much worse to know that whiter and richer kids are disproportionately benefiting from what is already a lousy trend. You can draw your own conclusions about why that is happening. And here is one further surprising finding from the study: . . . [T]he authors find that the proportion of students with A averages (including A-minus and A-plus) increased from 38.9 percent of the graduating class of 1998 to 47 percent of the graduating class of 2016. . . . (quoted from the article) What? I was surprised--more like flabbergasted--to learn that almost 40 percent of students in the graduating class of 1998 had A averages (even considering that this was perhaps a somewhat select sample of that graduating class, like kids who took the SAT). Nonetheless, almost 40 percent seems high to me--or, more precisely, inflated already. The fact that the figure is now 47 percent is more arresting still. Do we really believe that almost half of the 2016 high school graduates--even half of the graduates who took the SAT--deserved A averages? That seems like a lot of kids to me. But hold on a minute. Here is something that you might be thinking, something that would make these fantastic grades happy news, according to the article: . . . [T]he authors acknowledge in their study [that] there could be a reason for the grade inflation that would make educators celebrate. What if students are smarter or are being better educated, and so are earning their better grades? The authors reject these possibilities, and cite SAT scores to do so. If students were learning more, their SATs should be going up, or at the very least remaining stable. But during the period studied, SAT averages (math and verbal, 1,600-point scale) fell from 1,026 to 1,002. . . . (quoted from the article) Oh, so it’s just grade inflation after all. Here is the wrap-up and bottom line from the article: While the authors said they didn’t think many educators would be surprised that grade inflation is present in high schools, they said it was important to look at the variation among high schools, a circumstance that has received less attention. High schools “most prone to grade inflation are the resourced schools,” Lee said, “the ones with the highest level of affluence.” For those at high schools without resources, generally with lower GPAs, grade inflation elsewhere “puts them at a disadvantage in the college admissions process.” (quoted from the article) So, this is one more instance of students from poorer communities--who are, as a matter of fact, disproportionately students of color--facing a tougher path to college. And this is one more instance of students from wealthier communities--who are, as a matter of fact, disproportionately white students--getting an undeserved break. 3. What Does It Mean for You What does all this mean for your kid, regardless of how well-to-do or not-well-to-do your high school community is? It means that the race for good grades has gotten harder to win. Average high school GPAs of admitted freshmen are impressive--sometimes literally unbelievably impressive--even at colleges that are not in the top tier. If you have a senior at home and it is too late to improve his or her GPA, then you need to be sensible in looking at how your kid stacks up against the students who are being admitted to colleges on your kid’s Long List of College Options. If you have a younger kid at home, remind him or her every day just how important high school grades are--no matter what four-year college he or she is aiming for. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode132 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

We are in the third week of our new series, Researching College Options, and we are going to talk today about a topic that is unavoidable. It is a topic that we have talked about on several episodes of USACollegeChat and one that we have written about in both of our books for high school students and their parents. The topic is college admission testing--that is, the SAT and the ACT. Parents, if you have a smart kid who is applying to top-tier colleges, then this episode is especially important for you. But, as it turns out, this episode is also important if you have a great kid with just average high school grades or even not-quite-average high school grades, who might end up in a college that requires some sort of remedial English or math courses for students with borderline or sub-par academic records. Why? Because satisfactory college admission test scores can be the way around those remedial courses, which have a generally bad reputation in higher education. And the statistics show that skipping past those remedial courses could ultimately mean the difference between a student’s graduating and not graduating ever. In this episode, we are going to read you some excerpts from what we call Step 13 in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Step 13 of what again? Well, it’s Step 13 of getting the information that your kid needs in order to make good choices about where to apply to college. If your kid needs more help, go get the book at amazon.com. 1. Is It Time To Register? So, why are we skipping all the way to Step 13 when we are just beginning this new series? That’s quite simple. It’s because Step 13 is about a college’s admission practices. And it’s because registration deadlines for the SAT and ACT are looming on the horizon, and we didn’t want you all to run out of time. According to our information, the registration deadline for the October 7 SAT test administration is September 8 (with late registration until September 27), and the deadline for the September 9 ACT test administration is already past, but late registration goes until August 18 (so you might need to hurry). The chances are good that many of you have brand new high school seniors who have already taken the SAT or ACT at least once, probably last spring. Should your kid take one or both tests again? We would say “yes,” if your kid has done anything at all since the last test that might improve his or her scores--like take practice tests, take a test preparation course, pay more attention in classes in school, or something else. It is unlikely that your kid will do significantly better on the tests if he or she has not done anything to get better prepared since the last testing time. If your kid has not taken either test yet, it is a good idea to take the SAT on October 7 and/or the ACT on September 9. Why? Because that still gives your kid a chance to take either or both tests a second time this fall, before regular decision applications are due around the first week of January of 2018. The SAT will be administered again on November 4 and the ACT on October 28. To repeat, however, if your kid does nothing to prepare in the intervening weeks between the two SAT or ACT testings this fall, then it is not likely that his or her scores will be much better the second time around. Another reason that it is a good idea to have your kid take the SAT on October 7 or the ACT on September 9 is to get those scores back in time to submit Early Decision and/or Early Action applications around November 1. Early Decision and Early Action were the focus of Episode 108 and 109, and we would strongly encourage you to go back and listen or re-listen to them now. Understanding these two college admission programs--as annoying and as complicated as they are--could truly make the difference between acceptance and rejection for your kid and between enormous anxiety and mild anxiety from January through March. We can’t stress that enough. While there is some serious calculation that goes into an Early Decision application, as we discuss, there is no downside at all to submitting as many Early Action applications as possible. Really, none. So, it is time for you to have a serious discussion with your kid about whether he or she should be taking or retaking the SAT and/or ACT on that first fall testing date: again, October 7 for the SAT and September 9 for the ACT. Every kid’s situation is different—how good any earlier scores are, how selective the colleges being considered are, how diligently test preparations are being undertaken, how confident and/or willing your kid is to sit through the test. For kids who are not confident and/or not willing and who have not yet taken either test, there is still November 4 for the SAT and October 28 for the ACT. 2. But Who Needs Test Scores These Days? You might be thinking about now, “Who needs test scores these days? I thought they were becoming less and less necessary as more and more colleges stopped asking for them.” Well, we address this topic in both of our books and in other episodes of USACollegeChat, but the bottom line is this: Having good test scores to submit is always preferable to not having them. That’s just common sense, and you didn’t need us to tell you that. Now with that said, are there very-selective and not-very-selective colleges that do not require the submission of SAT or ACT scores? Yes, absolutely, but we hesitate to publish a list because those colleges change every year. Here is what we wrote about that in our new workbook for high school seniors: The college website is usually quite clear about whether a college is a test-optional college (meaning that students do not have to submit college admission test scores) or a test-flexible college (meaning that students are given a choice of various types of test scores to submit). However, we have noticed that many colleges that do not require the submission of SAT or ACT scores receive them, nonetheless, from many applicants. Because those scores are usually quite good, it is evident that students with good scores do, in fact, supply them to test-optional colleges. How those scores figure into admissions decisions is anybody’s guess. Here is our advice: If you have good SAT or ACT scores, you should probably submit them to test-optional colleges, even though they are not required. There are perhaps only a handful of colleges that say that they absolutely do NOT want any test scores sent to them and that they will NOT use them at all for any reason, including well-regarded Hampshire College, which makes a crystal clear statement on its website about this subject. And, yes, it is true that many colleges, according to their websites, downplay the role of test scores in the admission process, even when those scores are required. You can believe those disclaimers if you wish. However, I will tell you that we continue to see very good candidates with great grades and great activities and great service to others and only-okay test scores get rejected from colleges that made those claims. So, be sure to have your kid prepare for the tests and get the best SAT and/or ACT scores he or she can. 3. How Good Do the Scores Need To Be? Once you and your kid have chosen colleges to apply to, you need to get information about the test scores of students who have been admitted to those colleges or who actually have enrolled there. Here is how to get that information for each college on your list, as we explained to students in our new workbook: To get started, you need to figure out whether the data you are examining are for “admitted” students or for “enrolled freshmen.” These two groups are obviously not the same because many students who are admitted to a college do not actually enroll. Since you are trying to figure out whether you will be admitted, using “admitted” student data, when available, is probably the better choice; however, either set of data will give you an idea of the caliber of the applicants a college accepts. Start by looking up the colleges on your LLCO [Long List of College Options] on College Navigator [the online service provided by the National Center for Education Statistics] and going to the Admissions section of the college profile. These data will be for “enrolled first-time students.” Helpful data are presented clearly in this section. Then check each college’s website. Some colleges do a great job of presenting data on admitted students or enrolled freshmen, and others simply do not. Some colleges make it easy by providing a page of facts and figures about the new freshman class--sometimes called a Class Profile (of students who enrolled) or an Admitted Student Profile (of students who were admitted, but did not necessarily enroll). However, it is not always easy to locate this page (though it is often in the Admission section of the website). If you can find the common data set on the website, you will want to look under the third part: C. First-Time, First-Year (Freshman) Admission. We have talked about and written about the common data set before. And, to repeat, it is not always easy to find on a college website; in fact, there are some colleges that I could never find it for. Nonetheless, it is an excellent source of all kinds of useful (and not-so-useful) data about any college you can name. Here are some specifics on this topic of test scores: In part C9, the common data set does a good job of providing the following testing data: The percent of students who submitted SAT and ACT scores The SAT and ACT scores, by subtest, at the 25th percentile of students and at the 75th percentile of students (in other words, 25 percent of students scored at or below the score at the 25th percentile, and 25 percent of students scored at or above the score at the 75th percentile)   The full distribution of SAT and ACT scores, by subtest College Navigator also provides most of this information, if that is easier for you to get to than the common data set.   Some college websites also provide the actual average, or “mean,” admission test score, and that can be handy, too. If your scores fall above the 75th percentile of scores for a college’s students, that is good. If your scores fall right in the middle between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile, that would be just about average for a college’s students. But if your scores fall close to or below the 25th percentile, that would not be nearly so promising in terms of your chances of being admitted. Remember, even if the college you are researching has declared itself to be a test-optional college, it might provide SAT and ACT information for those students who chose to submit test scores, and that information will be helpful to you. 4. And What About Those SAT Subject Tests? Just when you thought the testing discussion was done, we have one more topic: the SAT Subject Tests (these are the tests that are in specific high school subjects and are generally thought to be harder than the SAT or ACT). To be clear, many colleges do not require any Subject Tests, but many highly selective colleges still do. So, don’t be surprised! You will need to go to a college’s website to find out how many Subject Tests are required and/or what specific Subject Tests (if any) are required for each college your kid is applying to. If you are the parent of a high school senior right now, the Subject Test issue is particularly troublesome. Why? Because your kid might need to submit scores from--let’s say--two Subject Tests, your kid was great at biology when she took it two years ago, and now it seems like a long shot for her to go back and take a Subject Test in biology without a lot of studying and review of information learned quite a while ago. The opposite situation is not great, either--that is, your kid took biology as a freshman and took the Subject Test then, when she was in competition with older, more mature, more experienced kids taking the test. Of course, your kid might have taken an AP Biology or Advanced Biology course more recently and, if so, that would be helpful indeed. But let’s remember that every high school kid doesn’t have access to these upper-level courses taken in their later high school years and, for those kids, Subject Tests might prove to be a more difficult problem to solve. Our point is this: Parents of all high school students, you need to do some advance thinking about Subject Tests during the high school years in order to give your kid the best chance at having a couple of good scores on his or her record. Taking Subject Tests in the spring of the junior year or in the fall of the senior year might be optimal in terms of a student’s maturity and school experience, but that might be too late for some subjects that were right up your kid’s alley. Whatever the case, thinking about Subject Tests for the first time in September of your kid’s senior year is too late. 5. Testing Nationwide Now, let’s get a bit of a national perspective, because SAT and ACT testing is a much bigger issue than your kid’s personal testing choices. It might be useful, as a concerned resident of the U.S., to understand that issue these days. In The New York Times in July, University of Michigan professor Susan Dynarski wrote this in a thought-provoking and comprehensive article: In Connecticut, Illinois and more than 20 other states, the ACT or SAT is given, without charge, during school hours. As of 2017, 25 states require that students take the ACT or SAT. In some districts, including New York City, the test is given free during school hours but is not required. Michigan began requiring public school juniors to take the ACT in 2007, and the share of high school graduates taking a college entrance exam rose immediately to nearly 99 percent from 54 percent. That growth was even sharper among low-income students; only 35 percent had been taking the test. Joshua M. Hyman, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, studied the effects of this initiative while he was my student at the University of Michigan. Professor Hyman analyzed the test scores and college attendance of all public high school students in Michigan, before and after the ACT requirement. The results were surprising. It was not just low-achieving students who had been skipping the ACT (or the SAT, which Professor Hyman also tracked). For every 1,000 students who took a college exam when it was optional, and scored high enough to attend a selective college, another 230 high scorers appeared once the test was mandatory. For low-income students, the effect was larger: For every 1,000 students who scored well on the optional test, an additional 480 did so on the mandatory test. . . . Universal exams cannot, by themselves, close gaps between poor and rich students in college attendance. But in Michigan, it has produced small increases, especially at four-year colleges and particularly among disadvantaged students. The story is similar in Maine, Illinois and Connecticut. Professor Hyman calculates that at a cost of less than $50 per student, a universal testing program is one of the least expensive ways to increase college attendance. Further, if the SAT or ACT replaces the standardized test that states require in public schools, it need not take up any additional instructional time, a key concern of testing opponents. Many people worry that college admissions tests are biased against low-income and nonwhite students. But disadvantaged students who do not take the tests are out of the running for selective colleges. While we may wish for a better approach, these tests are a gateway to selective schools. (quoted from the article) So, whether your kid is socioeconomically advantaged in every possible way or the first generation in your family to go to college, the SAT or ACT should be in your kid’s future--just as it should be for so many kids in the U.S. Let’s all admit it and figure out the best ways to help all kids get access to the tests and to that pathway into college. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode131 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

We are in the second week of our new series, Researching College Options. Now that it’s August and high school students in some parts of the country will actually be returning to school this month for their senior year, it’s time to get to work. So, for this new series, we are going to be talking directly to you, parents of high school seniors. Hang on because it can be a bumpy ride. In this episode, we are going to read you some excerpts from what we call Step 1 in our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Step 1 of what you might ask? Well, it’s Step 1 of making a good decision about where to apply to college. Like all first steps, it is important--maybe the most important--and a little scary. But like all first steps, if your senior skips it, things are not likely to go as smoothly as you and he or she might have hoped. If you need more help, more examples, or more fun stories, go get the book at amazon.com. 1. Just Expand the College List So, the second chapter of our book opens in a very unpleasant way. Here is what we wrote to your senior: This chapter focuses on something that you are just about to do totally wrong. Really, totally wrong. In fact, our advice in this chapter is probably the opposite of what many school counselors and college consultants are telling you as you start a serious consideration of where to apply . . . . We bet they are telling you to start by narrowing your list of colleges, but we would like you to start by expanding your list of colleges. There is plenty of time later to narrow down your options--once you get to . . . October or November . . . . While expanding your list might seem unnecessary, time consuming, or even wasteful, we believe that expanding your options now could mean the difference between an okay college choice and a great college choice for you later. In other words, taking off from what we talked about last week, having your senior expand his or her options now could mean the difference eventually between just an okay college “fit” and a great college “fit.” And that could be the difference between graduating on time and not graduating on time--or even graduating at all. (Regular listeners: You know what we think about graduating from college on time--that is, in the traditional four years. It’s one of the best ways around to save money, and it might just let your kid go to his or her first choice, even if the annual sticker price on that choice is a bit higher than you all had hoped.) 2. That Dreaded Geographic Comfort Zone So, what stands between your senior and that great college fit? It might well be the dreaded geographic comfort zone. As we said to your senior in our book, there is nothing we dislike more than your “geographic comfort zone.” Here is what we wrote: The great majority of high school graduates who go to college choose a college in their home state—perhaps as many as 70 percent of them. Undoubtedly, you have one or more colleges in your home state on your list of college options right now. That’s okay with us. However, what’s NOT okay is to have nothing BUT colleges in your home state on your list. Here’s why: It’s a big world out there. There are so many intriguing colleges in it that we hate for you to limit yourself to those nearby. We hate for you to limit yourself to those that are likely to have a majority of students a lot like you from the same part of the country as you. Your first step in making a list of college options should NOT be to narrow down the choices and to close off opportunities. You should NOT be settling either for colleges that are nearby or for colleges that you and your parents and your school counselor already know a lot about. We know that there are some good reasons for kids to stay close to home for college. We understand that some families want to keep their kids close to home for cultural reasons, perhaps in order to participate in family events or religious activities. We understand that some families need to have their kids stay at home in order to help with family responsibilities. Those reasons are hard to argue against. We know that staying close to home might make going to college more affordable for some families, especially if living at home saves on housing expenses. But we also know that it is hard to know in advance how generous a financial aid package might be from an out-of-state college. [Just look back at Episode 127 if you don’t believe us on that one!] Did you know that some states offer an attractive discount at their public colleges to students who come from nearby states? We bet you didn’t. Check out, for example, the Midwest Student Exchange Program or the Western Undergraduate Exchange or the New England Regional Student Program, if you live in those regions of the country, [or the University of Maine’s new tuition program for nonresidents]. We also know that you can sometimes get into a better college when it is far from home. Why? Because almost every college likes the idea of geographic diversity in its student body. Colleges like to claim that they draw students “from all 50 states and from 100 foreign countries.” You will see this kind of statement on many college websites. Pay attention, because you might be far more attractive to a college halfway across the country than to one in your own back yard. That’s because you will give that faraway college bragging rights. This is especially true for private colleges that do not have the same mission to serve students in their own state as public colleges do. We also know that some parents just can’t imagine sending their kids away from home for the first time. In fact, you might not be able to imagine leaving home for the first time. But, we encourage you and your parents to think hard about that. Isn’t college the perfect time to make that break--a time when you can live somewhere else under the supervision of college staff in relatively secure surroundings, a time when you can learn to function as an adult in a safe environment (that is, learn to manage your money, do your work, plan your time, and make new friends)? We urge you (and your parents) to get outside your family’s geographic comfort zone. You have nothing to lose at this stage in the process. Researching colleges outside your hometown, outside your state, and outside your region doesn’t mean you have to attend one of them--or even apply to one of them. But it does mean that you will have the information that you need to make a better decision when the time comes. I really can’t make any better case for getting outside your geographic comfort zone than that. Here is what we wrote to your senior about how to do it: Conveniently, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has divided the U.S. into eight regions: Far West--California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Hawaiʻi, Alaska Rocky Mountains--Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Utah Southwest--Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas Plains--Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Southeast--Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia Great Lakes--Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio Mideast--Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia New England--Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine However, we thought that the Bureau stuffed too many states into the Southeast; so, we divided the Southeast into two regions (southern and northern), and you should, too. That will give you nine regions to investigate. We used these nine regions when we did our virtual college tour [at USACollegeChat]. You should listen to the tour in Episodes 27 through 53 of our podcast or simply read the show notes at usacollegechat.org. . . . We thought hard about how you should create what we will call your Long List of College Options—your LLCO, for short. We decided to start with this advice: Make sure that you have at least two four-year colleges in each of the nine geographic regions of the U.S. on your LLCO. So, that would give you at least 18 four-year colleges. But, our guess is that your list already had some regions covered with more than two colleges--especially the region you live in. That’s fine. Have as many colleges on your LLCO as you like from each region. But don’t ignore any region! That’s what it means to get outside your geographic comfort zone. 3. How To Find College Options We hope that we have convinced you. If we have, we don’t ever have to bring it up again. Here is what we wrote to your senior about what to do next: How should you choose the colleges for your LLCO? Well, you probably know about some colleges already--from family, friends, school counselors, and teachers. You should discover some more from our virtual college tour, in which we talk about several hundred four-year colleges. You might find some more through a variety of online searches and quick looks at those college websites. Remember, you don’t need too much information about each one just to put it on your LLCO. You will soon see that you can learn a lot from reading a college website. Furthermore, you can learn not only about that one college, but also about colleges in general and about what to look for on the next website you go to. It’s an education in itself. You really need an education ABOUT higher education. By the way, don’t start looking at two-year colleges, or community colleges, yet. Two-year colleges can easily be added to your LLCO closer to application time, partly because their applications are typically less demanding to complete. We are also assuming that you are most likely to attend a two-year college in or near your hometown and, therefore, you will not need to do much investigating before applying. We do have some reservations about two-year colleges, especially for students who have just graduated from high school and are moving directly into college full time. We know that two-year colleges are a great choice for saving money and for helping kids who need a bit more maturity or a bit more academic preparation before heading into college. . . . However, we worry because student graduation rates and student transfer rates from two-year colleges to four-year colleges are scandalously low, and we worry about what opportunities end up being closed off for too many kids. But back to your LLCO. Those of you who have listened to our podcast or read the show notes know that this suggestion is coming: Make sure that you have at least one college that is not in the U.S. on your LLCO. This is a favorite topic of ours, and we can’t say enough about it. There are truly great options outside the U.S. We hope that every one of you will take advantage of studying abroad for at least a semester, no matter where you end up in college. Studying abroad is for everyone these days--not just for rich kids, not just for kids studying foreign languages, not just for kids at private liberal arts colleges. But you can actually study outside the U.S. for more than a semester or even for more than one year; you can simply go to a college outside the U.S. full time for four years. So, you must be up to at least 19 colleges on your LLCO--likely more. But we can’t resist one last piece of advice: Make sure that you have at least two public flagship universities on your LLCO--probably one from your home state plus one more. We say this to ensure that you have some great public options to consider. Maybe you already had them when your chose two colleges from every region, but add them if you didn’t. To be clear, we mean public “flagships,” not just any public universities--though you are also free to put other public universities on your LLCO. If you are an excellent student, the public flagship in your home state is likely to be your very best choice for a “safety school” (with some exceptions, like California, which can’t accommodate all of the excellent students in their own state). If you can’t identify the public flagship in your own state or in most other states, you aren’t ready to be choosing colleges yet. Go learn about all 50 of them on our virtual college tour. As we have said numerous times in our podcast episodes, public flagship universities might be the hidden jewels in the college landscape. They are often the very best place high school kids in those states can imagine going. Why? Because they are relatively inexpensive for state residents (because they are public), academically respectable (even outstanding), well regarded across the state and across the country, competitive in sports arenas, chocked full of student clubs and activities, within driving distance of home, and a social hub for lots of their high school classmates. They are often truly the place to be, if you live in that state. As with everything, some states have better public flagship universities than others, and some public flagship universities are better funded by their states than others. Nonetheless, we are convinced that you can find at least two that you think might be great for you. Well, that is a lot of colleges: colleges from nine geographic regions, one or more colleges from outside the U.S., and a couple of public flagships from your state and/or someone else’s. Of course, don’t forget to ask your parents and other important family members and teachers and school counselors for input about colleges to put on your LLCO. For right now, the more, the better--at least within reason. But our “within reason” is probably a lot bigger than your “within reason.” Remember that your senior is not necessarily applying to all of the colleges on his or her LLCO. Your senior is just going to start gathering the information he or she and you would need in order to decide whether it is worth applying. We will start talking about that information gathering next week--that is, what information to gather and how to gather it. So, stay tuned. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode130 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

It’s getting serious now. It’s almost August, and kids who are headed off to their senior year in high school are realizing that it is time to get moving on investigating college options more thoroughly. There are a hundred things we would like to tell you and your senior about that and just as many pieces of advice we would like to give you two. In fact, we will do a lot of that in this new series that we are starting today and that we like to call Researching College Options. But in this episode we are going to focus on one really simple fact that is true for almost all high school seniors and their parents--just one fact. (Wait for it.) We have been reminding you this summer to go to amazon.com and get a copy of our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. We think that it is an easy-to-use workbook for a high school senior to fill out as he or she starts--and finishes--the great college search. However, I have given up on telling you to go get the workbook and will, instead, try to hit at least some of its high points over the next weeks. If you find you need more help, then get the workbook. It’s the best under-$10 purchase you will make this month. We promise. 1. College Fit Revisited A couple of weeks ago, we talked about an Education Week article by Liana Loewus entitled “Pitching Rural, Low-Income Students on Private Colleges.” If you missed Episode 127, go back and listen because it might offer a new perspective on private colleges that would be useful to your family. One thing that the article did (though this was not the article’s main point) was to highlight the notion of “fit”--that is, how good a fit is a college for your senior. We quoted the following passage from the Education Week article about the importance of the academic and social and cultural fit of a college for a student: In the 2016 book Matching Students to Opportunity: Expanding College Choice, Access, and Quality, Jessica Howell and her co-authors explain that college fit, and in particular going to a school that matches a student’s academic credentials, is positively associated with earning a degree. “By and large, we know that when students enroll in a college that isn’t a good fit for them, that’s usually because they didn’t consider colleges that would have been a better fit,” Howell said in an interview. “We need to open up students’ eyes early in the process so they know their options.” (quoted from the article) We might argue for a long time about all of the aspects of a college that help determine its fit for a particular student, and we might never agree on which are the most important ones. We would undoubtedly start with the degree of academic rigor (and some people might stop right there), and we might continue with things like the size of the institution, the demographic make-up of the student body, cost, and maybe even the type of setting and the geographic location. We will talk about all of that some time--perhaps even in the next few weeks (and, by the way, all of those aspects of college fit are discussed at length in both of our books). But today, we want to focus on the last part of that Education Week quotation from Howell, not the first part: the fact that students can end up in the wrong college for them simply because they did not consider the right colleges. In other words, they are in a college that is a bad fit as a result of not investigating and applying to colleges that would have been a better fit. As Howell said, “We need to open up students’ eyes early in the process so they know their options.” We could not agree more. In the upcoming summer weeks, we would like to help you help your senior open his or her eyes--early enough so that there is still plenty of time to act on what he or she finds out. And just as important, parents, we would like to help you open your eyes as well, and that might mean opening your eyes to consider colleges you have never even heard of. As we are fond of saying, there are thousands of colleges in the U.S. (and even more when you add in all of the colleges in other countries, which we love to talk about here at USACollegeChat), and the chances that you know all of the right ones for your senior are slim to none. Now, I am not trying to be mean about this. Marie and I are the first to say that, even though this is our business and has been our area of expertise for quite some time, we learn something new from almost every episode we do. We learn about new academic programs, new recruiting strategies, new admissions requirements, new funding sources, new grading policies, new housing configurations, and on and on and on. And, by the way, we also learn about new colleges--well, not new colleges, but rather good colleges that we just didn’t know anything about. That’s what happens when there are thousands of colleges out there. No one can know about all of the good ones. Not you and not us. So, don’t take it personally. Just agree to come along for the ride and make every effort to get your senior to come along for the ride, too. Try to give up your preconceived notions of the right college fit for him or her and make every effort to get your senior to give up his or her preconceived notions, too. As Howell said, it’s all about opening your eyes and seeing your options. 2. How To Open Your Senior’s Eyes--and Yours In the opening chapter of our book, which was written as a user-friendly workbook for teenagers, we talked about how to open your senior’s eyes. In the book, we write this for any teenagers who will listen about how to solve their lack-of-information-about-almost-all-colleges problem: The simple answer is just to ask a guidance counselor at your high school. You would think that guidance counselors would know quite a bit about lots of colleges and that they could pass that information on to you. Here’s why that usually doesn’t work. Let’s start with public high schools. As you probably already know, most public high schools don’t have guidance counselors who are dedicated to working only on college counseling. That means that your guidance counselors, with caseloads in the hundreds, have to help students with college applications while dealing simultaneously with students who might be in serious personal or academic trouble. That’s an overwhelming job, and that is exactly why most high school guidance counselors cannot help you enough when it comes to exploring many college options, narrowing them down, and finally choosing the perfect colleges to put on your list. Some public high schools--and even more private schools--have designated one of the school’s guidance counselors as a college counselor, specializing in college placement and perhaps financial aid and devoting all of his or her time to helping students undertake and complete their college searches. If your school has a college counselor like that, you are lucky indeed. Of course, searching through hundreds of colleges to find the right ones for you and then working through those college applications (including all of the essays) is the work of a lot of hours--at least 20 hours and really closer to 40 hours, we would say. Does your counselor have that much time to spend with you? Unfortunately, probably not, even if you attend a private school. What if you are homeschooled? Without the help of a school guidance counselor or college counselor--even for a very limited amount of time--you might feel more at a loss than your friends who attend public or private schools. Should you expect your parents to know everything you need to know about a wide array of college choices? No, you shouldn’t. Respecting your parents’ opinions about colleges is certainly important, even crucial. But it is not likely that they are experts on the many, many colleges here in the U.S. (and abroad). All high school students need to get help from somewhere or someone. We believe that this workbook is a good way to get some. That’s why we are talking to you now. We want you to have a way to find out the information you need about many colleges so that you will be in the best possible position to compare those colleges and then to make the right decision about where to apply and, eventually, about where to attend. While you will undoubtedly want and need some adult advice in thinking through the many options, what you need first is information--and a lot of it. If you already have a list of colleges you are interested in, you will need information about each one of those. But, just as important, you will need information about colleges that are not yet on your list--including colleges that you have never considered because you didn’t know they existed. That’s not your fault now, but it will be if you don’t take steps to correct it. So, let’s get started. (quoted from the book) Whether you use our workbook as a way to learn how to get the information you need about a broad enough selection of colleges is not the issue here. Believing that you need way more information than you have right now is the issue. We talk to so many parents and kids who come to us with their minds made up and hearts set on a college or a type of college or a location of a college. We think that they are rarely right. By the way, that goes for parents who have never been to college themselves either in the U.S. or in their home countries; parents who started, but didn’t finish college; parents who have an associate’s degree; parents who have a bachelor’s degree; parents who have a master’s degree; and parents who have even more graduate and professional education than that. In other words, thinking you know the right college for your kids--and not really knowing it--knows no education, socioeconomic, or demographic boundaries. And that goes for high school students, too. Marie and I have told story after story here at USACollegeChat about the students in the Early College high school we co-founded in New York City. We would like to think that these were kids who should have known more--after all, they were already taking real college courses on a real college campus with real college professors across the street from our high school. And yet, they didn’t. We would like to think that some of the workshops we ran for them and for their parents would have done the trick. And yet, they didn’t. What it took was individual counseling sessions with each student and often with the parents. Some of these stretched out over days and weeks and months. One of our favorite stories, which gave rise to a rule that we like to follow, is of a young man we’ll call Ryan. Ryan sat down with Marie and me in our office at our high school and told us that he would like to apply to one of the State University of New York campuses in upstate New York. And let me say that it was in the middle-of-nowhere part of New York. Now, that was okay with us, but we suspected Ryan had no idea where that college was or what that rural setting was like. So we asked him to tell us where he thought the college was located. He admitted that he had no idea, and that didn’t seem to be a problem to him. Those of you who listen regularly to USACollegeChat know that Marie and I love kids and parents who can get outside their geographic comfort zone. We will talk more about that next week. But we do believe that a kid should know where a college is if he or she intends to apply. And so the Ryan Rule was born: You can’t apply to a college if you can’t find it on a map. Parents: That turns out to be harder for a lot of your kids than you might think. 3. What’s the Point? So what’s the point of today’s episode? It’s this simple fact that I told you this episode would focus on: Parents and seniors, you don’t know anything about most colleges. Simply put, both of you need more information about a lot of colleges. As Howell said, “We need to open up students’ eyes early in the process so they know their options.” She should have said, “We need to open up students’ and parents’ eyes early in the process so they know their options.” If I have made you a believer, we will start the eye-opening next week. If you think you already have enough information about colleges, give me a call and let me prove to you how wrong you are. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode129 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Today’s episode is going to be the final one of our Colleges in the Spotlight series because next week we are really getting down to the serious work of getting our rising high school seniors ready to apply to colleges. So, as we leave Colleges in the Spotlight, we want to take a look at a news story that might just be bringing good news to some of you. The story, which ran in The Hechinger Report and in The Washington Post at the end of June, was entitled “Universities and colleges struggle to stem big drops in enrollment.” Really, I said to myself. That could be great news for kids applying to colleges this fall. Today’s episode will look at the national facts and figures of this new trend. Plus we will look at Ohio Wesleyan University--in today’s spotlight--a good small liberal arts college in Delaware, Ohio. Ohio Wesleyan enrolls about 1,700 undergraduate students and boasts an attractive 10-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio. In the interest of full disclosure, my sister-in-law graduated from Ohio Wesleyan “some years ago” (that means more than 40 years ago) and, by all accounts, thoroughly enjoyed her time there. And one final reminder: Don’t forget to get a copy of our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students--available at amazon.com. Quick and cheap! Your teenager is going to need it this summer when he or she might have some time to kill. We will tell you more when we get serious next week, so stay tuned. 1. The Facts and Figures on Enrollment Decline Here are some of the facts and figures presented by Jon Marcus in The Hechinger Report article: According to the National Student Clearinghouse, college enrollment has declined for five years in a row. This year, there are 81,000 fewer U.S. high school graduates going off to college, which is a direct result of a decline in birth rate (particularly in the Northeast and Midwest). Just over 18 million students were enrolled in colleges nationwide last spring--2.4 million fewer students than were enrolled in the fall of 2011, which was the most recent high point for college enrollment. I am going to say that over 2 million students is a lot of students to lose. According to a survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, 58 percent of chief business officers said their institutions had seen a drop in undergraduate enrollment since 2013. (Although 58 percent is certainly the majority of colleges, it doesn’t mean that the statement is true for the most selective colleges--where it is likely not true, just to keep things in perspective.) According to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, over 400 colleges still had fall semester spots for freshmen and transfer students as of May 1. (Again, that doesn’t mean those 400 included the most selective colleges, but 400 is still a lot of colleges and every U.S. high school graduate does not, of course, attend a most selective college.) What does the future hold? When will it all change? Not until 2023, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). Here is what The Hechinger Report article says about what will then be a “slow recovery”: When it comes, [the recovery] will be [composed] largely of low-income, first-generation-in-college racial and ethnic minorities. These are the kinds of students institutions have generally proven poor at enrolling, and who will arrive with a far greater need for financial aid and expensive support. (quoted from the website) So, colleges might not have an easy time of it as they work to stem the decline and turn enrollment around--not that many high school seniors and their families are going to be overly sympathetic about that. Can this information work in favor of kids applying to colleges in the next few years? Before we consider what it all means, let’s look at the Ohio Wesleyan case study, presented in The Hechinger Report article. 2. The Story of Ohio Wesleyan Hit with a decline in Ohio high school graduates, a prime recruiting ground for Ohio Wesleyan, the University took and is taking a number of steps to boost its enrollment, based on data that it looked at both from admitted students who decided to enroll and admitted students who decided not to enroll. Here are some of those steps: Because the drop in male students was greater than the drop in female students, Ohio Wesleyan is adding two sports (and a marching band) to try to attract more male students. Because students said they wanted more internship and more study abroad opportunities, both internships and short-term study abroad programs are being expanded. Because new sources of students needed to be found, Ohio Wesleyan admissions staff members have been recruiting locally (in Cleveland), regionally (in Chicago), and much farther afield (in China, India, and Pakistan). In addition, the transfer process has been simplified so that students wanting to transfer into Ohio Wesleyan can do so more easily. Because some undergraduates are concerned about where they will be going next for graduate study (Ohio Wesleyan enrolls undergrads only), articulation agreements with Carnegie-Mellon University and with a medical school have just been drawn up to make the transition from undergraduate to graduate study more straightforward--in at least those cases. Because money is always an issue for students and their families, Ohio Wesleyan has budgeted more money for financial aid. In addition, “the University is considering freezing, lowering or slowing the rate of increase of its tuition and fees, which are now $44,690” (quoted from the article). Because students are concerned about their futures, Ohio Wesleyan has been studying labor data and creating new majors in fields of high demand, including majors in data analytics and computational neuroscience. Ohio Wesleyan president Rock Jones was quoted in The Hechinger Report article as saying this: “We live in a really consumer-driven society, and to be honest a college is an investment. Families are much more discerning, and they approach it as consumers. That’s a cultural shift to which the campus has to respond.” One of my favorite anecdotes from The Hechinger Report article is this one (and I think this will be particularly enjoyable for anyone who has friends who teach in colleges and who hear about the politics of higher education from those friends): One of the greatest challenges, as at other places, has been to get buy-in from the faculty, who have to approve new academic offerings. Ohio Wesleyan invited faculty on the curriculum committee to meet with the financial-aid committee, giving them a sense of how serious the problems were and asking them for help in coming up with majors that might attract more students. This doesn’t always work. One faculty member suggested a new major in sacred music, for example. “Some faculty have a very clear understanding of the issues,” [President] Jones said wryly. “Others, less so.” (quoted from the article) 3. More About Money For those of you particularly concerned about financing a college education for your teenager (and who isn’t), consider this new statistic: Small private, nonprofit colleges and universities this year gave back, in the form of financial aid, an average of 51 cents of every dollar they collected from tuition. That’s up from an average of 38 cents a decade ago. . . . (quoted from the article) I guess that is good news for students and their families, but perhaps bad news for colleges that continue to try to make ends meet. Of course, there also has to be a point here when most colleges cannot give back almost everything they take in and still remain viable. And while we could tell you stories of small private colleges cutting their tuition and, as a result, gaining additional students, here is one public flagship university story that could also prove valuable to some of you: The University of Maine, in a state whose number of high school grads has fallen 9 percent since 2011, offered admission to students from elsewhere at the same in-state price they would have paid to attend their home flagships; that has attracted more than 1,000 new students for the semester that begins this fall, from all of the other New England states plus California, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. (quoted from the article) We have talked about these kinds of arrangements with public universities in previous USACollegeChat episodes and in our most recent book, where we mention that some public universities provide generous discounts to students from contiguous states or to students in the region. The University of Maine seems to have found a way to expand that idea nationwide and win more students as a result. 4. What’s It All Mean for You? So, what does all this mean for you and your own teenager? Well, let’s start with what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that your kid’s chances of getting into an Ivy League school or any other top-tier college are any better now than they were before you listened to this episode. Whatever happens to the number of high school students in the U.S. and no matter what the decline is in the number of high school graduates statewide in your state or nationwide, our nation’s most selective colleges are not going to feel the pinch. That is just our opinion, but it is probably right. It is also likely true that the top public flagship universities are not going to feel the pinch, either--like the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of California, Berkeley, and another five or 10 more. Why? Because those top flagships attract students from across the nation, and there will always be enough students with good enough grades to fill the best public universities. But here is the good news. Your teenager might have a better chance now of getting into a good small private college--and there are plenty of those. If you have a super-smart kid, such a college could serve as a great safety school. If you have a kid with good, but not outstanding, grades and test scores, such a college could become a likely match rather than a reach school. We have said for some time at USACollegeChat that our public flagship universities are the hidden jewels of our higher education system. And we are not taking that back. But now maybe we should add that good small private colleges might be the hidden jewels of our higher education system precisely because they will give you a better bang for your buck than you originally thought. Let’s keep that in mind next week as we move to the serious search for colleges for your teenager. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode128 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina

Welcome back from the Fourth of July break! This episode is going to be the next-to-last one in our Colleges in the Spotlight series because very soon we have to get down to the serious work of where our new crop of high school seniors should be applying to college. So, today we want to take a look at a population that we don’t focus on as much as we might--that is, low-income students who live in rural areas. Although we are based in New York City, we do try hard to look at colleges and students across the U.S. But I am guessing that students in rural areas do not get as much attention from us as they perhaps should. And, in today’s case study of a great program, we are going to talk about low-income rural students in the state of Oregon. While you are waiting for the real work to begin in a couple of weeks, don’t forget to head on over to amazon.com and get a copy of our new book, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Your teenager should be poring over it summer. You should go back and listen to Episodes 119 and 120 to find out why. By the way, I got an email this week from a smart and talented colleague to ask whether I might have time to help his rising senior with her personal statement for her college applications. So, friends, a new application season is indeed beginning. 1. What Is GEAR UP? Before we get to today’s Oregon case study, let us say a word about a federally funded Department of Education initiative known as GEAR UP (that is, Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs). Here is what the U.S. Department of Education website says about GEAR UP: This discretionary grant program is designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. GEAR UP provides six-year grants to states and partnerships to provide services at high-poverty middle and high schools. GEAR UP grantees serve an entire cohort of students beginning no later than the seventh grade and follow the cohort through high school. GEAR UP funds are also used to provide college scholarships to low-income students. . . . State grants are competitive six-year matching grants that must include both an early intervention component designed to increase college attendance and success and raise the expectations of low-income students and a scholarship component. (quoted from the website) So, here is some federal money being earmarked to improve higher education opportunities for low-income students by working with these students early in their secondary school years (that is, starting no later than seventh grade) and sticking with them through high school. That long-term assistance sounds excellent to me, and I hope that the services being provided with GEAR UP funds are indeed substantial enough to make a difference. By the way, if you are worried about your federal tax dollars, perhaps you will be relieved to learn that the agencies receiving the federal grants are required to match them dollar-for-dollar. So, in the case of state grants, that’s half federal monies and half state monies. You can check on whether your state has any GEAR UP funds, and you can check on how those funds are being used, if you think they might be helpful to your own kids. 2. What Is GEAR UP in Oregon? Education Week turned the spotlight on Oregon in its May article by Liana Loewus entitled “Pitching Rural, Low-Income Students on Private Colleges.” The article focuses on the way that Oregon uses its GEAR UP grant funds--which is, interestingly, to expose low-income, first-generation-to-college students from the rural areas of Oregon to Oregon’s private liberal arts colleges so that these students can consider private colleges as real and affordable options. This strategy is particularly intriguing in a state that has two well-known and admired public universities--the University of Oregon in Eugene and Oregon State University in Corvallis, which together serve about 50,000 students. According to the Education Week article, Adrienne Enriquez, a program manager for Oregon GEAR UP, noted that both students and staff in Oregon’s rural schools “didn’t necessarily have as much knowledge and information about the private colleges in the state as they might have [had] about the four-year public universities” (quoted from the article). I think that is not surprising in a state where there are high-visibility public universities, including a much-loved flagship university, along with the fact that many of the teachers and school counselors in those rural Oregon secondary schools are very likely graduates of the two public state universities. Oregon GEAR UP has joined forces with The Alliance, a group of 18 small private colleges in Oregon--colleges that are anxious to attract some of these low-income rural students, who probably never heard of them. The Education Week article quoted Brent Wilder, the vice president of The Alliance, as saying this: “There are a lot of myths out there about private education that just aren’t true. . . That it’s only for affluent individuals, that our campuses aren’t diverse. . .  We have the highest graduation rate in Oregon [for] students of color.” (quoted from the article) Wow. That statistic was so impressive that I looked up The Alliance and found out these additional facts about it and its members: There are 12 college members and six college affiliates, currently enrolling about 35,000 students. Many of the colleges, I am embarrassed to say, I knew nothing about. But the members list did include Lewis & Clark College, Willamette University, the University of Portland, and Reed College, which we have talked about at USACollegeChat on our virtual nationwide tour and which is one of the best private liberal arts colleges anywhere. Collectively, these colleges award one in five bachelor’s degrees in Oregon and one in two master’s degrees and doctoral degrees in Oregon. 61 percent of their students graduate in four years (compared to about 50 percent at the flagship University of Oregon and about 32 percent at Oregon State University). 93 percent of students starting as full-time students receive grants, averaging over $20,000 per year. 28 percent of students graduate with no college debt. One in three of their U.S. degree-seeking students is a student of color. So, with these favorable statistics, it’s understandable that colleges in The Alliance feel that they have something to offer low-income, first-generation-to-college rural students in Oregon. 3. What Activities Does GEAR UP Offer Oregon? According to the Education Week article, GEAR UP offers activities both for Oregon educators and for Oregon high school students. Here are some of them: Through the GEAR UP program, small groups of teachers, administrators, and counselors come together from different parts of the state to visit private college campuses over a few days. GEAR UP--which was slated for a slight funding increase under a budget agreement expected to be approved by Congress last week, but is among the education programs President Donald Trump would like to cut in a 2018 budget--pays for their travel and lodging and reimburses districts for substitute teachers. (quoted from the article) And the information goes both ways, according to the article. Oregon GEAR UP also tries to inform the professors and college admissions officers at these private colleges about the small, rural high schools that GEAR UP students attend. Having more information about these high schools and about the challenges that some of these students face can, in fact, help admissions officers make better, fairer, more aware decisions about admitting GEAR UP students. Turning to students, here is a valuable service provided for high school kids: For the third straight summer, Oregon GEAR UP is also running [an all-expenses-paid] Private College Week camp, during which high school students visit several colleges, staying on campus at one of them, and learn about admissions processes and financial aid. (quoted from the article) That sounds great, but why are these visits particularly important for these rural students? Let’s look at what Ms. Enriquez said in the article: In describing the need for this kind of program, which is unique to the Oregon version of GEAR UP, Enriquez said that visits to the larger universities were scaring off some students from rural communities. “They’re visiting classrooms that hold more people than live in their town. They go through the lunch line and they have to go through turnstiles, and they’ve never seen those,” she said. A few years ago, a group of students from the tiny logging community of Powers came off a tour of the 20,000-student University of Oregon not wanting to go to college at all. In a post-visit survey, they indicated, “College is not for me. It’s too big and too scary,” Enriquez said. The colleges that students see during the weeklong summer camp generally have between 1,000 and 4,000 students. (quoted from the article) We talked about the size of the college as a deal breaker for some kids and for some parents in our first book, How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students. (It’s still available, by the way, at Amazon.com.) But I don’t believe that I have ever heard a more persuasive anecdote about how much size can matter to a kid and about how overwhelming a large university might actually be to a kid from a tiny rural town. 4. Show Me the Money It would be hard to have a discussion of sending a bunch of low-income kids to private colleges without tackling the very real issue of how much that is going to cost those families. The private colleges in The Alliance do actually cost about twice as much for tuition and housing as Oregon’s public universities. But here are some useful facts and figures that take into consideration the generous financial aid offered by many of the private college Alliance members: “The average net price for low-income students at the Oregon state universities is about $13,000. At private schools . . . , it’s closer to $20,000. However, at Reed College, among the nation’s most academically prestigious private colleges, low-income students [tend to pay only] about $9,000” (quoted from the article). So, the bottom line is that private colleges should not be ruled out in favor of only public universities because of cost. Some might be somewhat more expensive than public universities, though perhaps not out-of-sight more expensive; others might actually be less expensive than public universities. You don’t know what kind of financial aid package you can get until you try. 5. What About College “Fit”? We hear so much these days about “fit”--that is, how good a fit is a college for your kid. Here is what the Education Week article had to say about the importance of the academic and social and cultural fit of a college for a student: In the 2016 book Matching Students to Opportunity: Expanding College Choice, Access, and Quality, Jessica Howell and her co-authors explain that college fit, and in particular going to a school that matches a student’s academic credentials, is positively associated with earning a degree. “By and large, we know that when students enroll in a college that isn’t a good fit for them, that’s usually because they didn’t consider colleges that would have been a better fit,” Howell said in an interview. “We need to open up students’ eyes early in the process so they know their options.” (quoted from the article) Well, that is a perfect segue to our upcoming series, which will focus exactly on that: opening up students’ eyes so that they know their options. That could have been the title of our new book (instead we called it How To Explore Your College Options). In the coming summer weeks, we would like to help you help your teenager open his or her eyes--early enough so that there is still plenty of time to act on what he or she finds out. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode127 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... 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