Report (Good) AP Scores
College admissions, or at least the earliest stages of the process, comes down to numbers. Any applicant is best served by providing an admissions office the grades and test scores required for more focused scrutiny. In other words, if your numbers don’t meet the predetermined value set by a college, there’s a very good chance those admissions personnel will never take the time to discover what a special snowflake you are! Of course, even this simple step becomes complicated by the variety of sources from which your numbers are drawn. Your school, obviously, reports your grades, classes, and, where applicable, state tests like Regents in an official transcript. SAT and ACT scores must arrive in official score reports from the College Board and ACT, Inc. respectively. But what about AP classes? AP classes can complicate the admissions process. These courses represent the standard for academic rigor, which means that students…
College-Bound Buzz (September 2014)
What’s going down for the college-bound? If you’re in the high school class of 2015, you’ve ideally written most or all of you your college application essay. If not, what are you waiting for?! When the lede of a provocative New Republic article asserts, “The Ivy League is broken and only standardized tests can fix it,” I can’t help but read on… As for Deresiewicz’s pronouncement that “SAT is supposed to measure aptitude, but what it actually measures is parental income, which it tracks quite closely,” this is bad social science. SAT correlates with parental income (more relevantly, socioeconomic status or SES), but that doesn’t mean it measures it; the correlation could simply mean that smarter parents have smarter kids who get higher SAT scores, and that smarter parents have more intellectually demanding and thus higher-paying jobs. Fortunately, SAT doesn’t track SES all that closely (only about 0.25 on a…
Which Colleges Want Really High Test Scores?
The main reason to pursue superior SAT & ACT scores (other than that dream of a six-figure starting job on Wall Street) is to open doors to the nation’s most competitive colleges. While even perfect test scores cannot assure an applicant of enrollment at top tier schools, scores in the top percentiles are typically required just to have a shot. Which schools exactly require 97th percentile and higher scores? Matt Schifrin at Forbes has compiled a comprehensive list in his article, Top 100 SAT Scores Ranking: Which Colleges Have The Brightest Kids? While I strongly dispute the implications of his headline, I still recommend the article for some shrewd insights into the valuable role the SAT and ACT play in college admissions.
College-Bound Buzz (August 2014)
What’s going down for the college-bound? Well, if you are a matriculating college student, you’re probably already on campus. If you’re in the high school class of 2015, you’re probably working on your college application essay, right? Everyone else is preparing for a better academic year than the one that now lingers in our memory through a haze of BBQ smoke and sun block! We see a litany of lists ranking the top colleges by any number of metrics. But how many critics have the courage to identify The 35 WORST Colleges In America PERIOD When You Consider Absolutely Everything That Matters? Here are the top (bottom) 10, but read the article for the full list and fine print: And what can any high student work on right now for greater college readiness? Our wise friends at NextStepU suggest keeping your mind on your money. Here is just one money…
Return on Investment in College
Recently, Money Magazine identified Money’s Best Colleges based on the idea of Return on Investment: To find out which of the nation’s roughly 1,500 four-year colleges offer the most bang for your tuition buck, MONEY screened out those with a below-average graduation rate and then ranked the 665 that remained on 18 factors in three categories: educational quality, affordability, and alumni earnings… Congratulations, Babson! Money used Payscale.com data, which assembled its own rankings. Congratulations, Harvey Mudd! But is ROI even a meaningful question when considering colleges? I ask the question not because I have an answer, but rather because anyone engaged in the college admissions process should have a clear idea of what they are shopping for. Consultant Parke Muth addresses the issue by analyzing various trends that impact higher education. If you’re grappling with the question of how to evaluate different college choices, you might be interested in this sweeping…
Ivory Tower: The Movie
Looking for a horror movie? The documentary Ivory Tower tackles a topic that terrifies most parents… As tuition rates spiral beyond reach and student loan debt passes $1 trillion (more than credit card debt), IVORY TOWER asks: Is college worth the cost? From the halls of Harvard, to public colleges in financial crisis, to Silicon Valley, filmmaker Andrew Rossi (PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES) assembles an urgent portrait of a great American institution at the breaking point. Through profiles at Arizona State, Cooper Union, and San Jose State —among several others—IVORY TOWER reveals how colleges in the United States, long regarded as leaders in higher education, came to embrace a business model that often promotes expansion over quality learning. But along the way we also find unique programs, from Stanford to the free desert school Deep Springs to the historically black all women’s college Spelman, where the…