Episodios

  • Episode 177: Why the College’s Cost Matters

    Episode 177: Why the College’s Cost Matters

    · 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 [email protected]. 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
  • Episode 176: Why the College’s Admissions Practices Matter--Obviously

    Episode 176: Why the College’s Admissions Practices Matter--Obviously

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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

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  • Episode 175: Why the College’s Activities and Sports Matter

    Episode 175: Why the College’s Activities and Sports Matter

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 174: Why the College’s Security Measures Matter

    Episode 174: Why the College’s Security Measures Matter

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 173: Why the College’s Housing Matters

    Episode 173: Why the College’s Housing Matters

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 172: Why the College’s Schedule Matters

    Episode 172: Why the College’s Schedule Matters

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 171: Why the College’s Academics Matter--Obviously

    Episode 171: Why the College’s Academics Matter--Obviously

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 170: Why the College’s Class Size Matters

    Episode 170: Why the College’s Class Size Matters

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 169: Why the College’s Enrollment Matters

    Episode 169: Why the College’s Enrollment Matters

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 168: Why the College’s Community Location Matters

    Episode 168: Why the College’s Community Location Matters

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 167: Why the College’s History and Mission Matter

    Episode 167: Why the College’s History and Mission Matter

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 166: Getting and Organizing College Information

    Episode 166: Getting and Organizing College Information

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 165: Your Kid’s Long List of College Options

    Episode 165: Your Kid’s Long List of College Options

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 164: The Most Important Step in College Admissions

    Episode 164: The Most Important Step in College Admissions

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 163: What High Schools Do Colleges Visit?

    Episode 163: What High Schools Do Colleges Visit?

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 162: The High School Courses That Colleges Require

    Episode 162: The High School Courses That Colleges Require

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 161: College Wait Lists

    Episode 161: College Wait Lists

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 160: The Best Advice About Choosing a College

    Episode 160: The Best Advice About Choosing a College

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 159: Going to College in California?

    Episode 159: Going to College in California?

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
  • Episode 158: Does the College Matter?

    Episode 158: Does the College Matter?

    · USACollegeChat Podcast

    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
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