The Envelope, Please....

Over the next few weeks, seniors will be anxiously attending their mailboxes, eagerly awaiting the delivery of the proverbial “thick envelope” as colleges begin sending out their first round of early admissions decisions. However, for many students, applying early isn’t in their best interests for a variety of reasons. The college process, when done well with care and thought, can be quite a time consuming process and many seniors simply haven’t had the time to do research and to visit campuses in order to make a well-informed decision by the early deadlines. For those who are just reaching their academic stride, the opportunity to include an additional term of higher grades will make their application all that much stronger. Not all students who rush to meet the early deadlines are doing so for the right reasons and those students feel compelled to apply early “just to get the process over with” often rue their hasty decision.

Why all this pressure on students to apply early? From the college’s perspective, early application options are useful tools to increase their selectivity as well as to manage their applicant pool. Many students’ inboxes are being flooded with pleas from colleges to apply, often with enticements that make this process as straightforward as possible. The math is simple – the more applications they receive, the lower their percentage of accepted students. If they can target students with high SAT scores, so much the better – that will raise the average standardized test scores of their applicants. In these ways, schools begin to appear more competitive.

The selectivity of a college is based on their yield – that is the number of admitted students who actually matriculate at their school. The higher the yield, the more selective the school’s ranking. While Early Decision applicants are committed to attending, even Early Action candidates are more likely to accept an offer of admission. Thus, a college can improve its yield numbers by offering early application opportunities.

Although some of the most talented students are in the early pools, some colleges use early applications for other strategic reasons. Often recruited athletes are asked to apply early decision to demonstrate their sincere interest in playing. Early decision also meets other institutional needs, such as legacies who might not be as competitive in the regular pool, but are accepted early because they are more likely to yield.

Without question, early applications can work to the college’s advantage and for the student who applies with care and thought, this is a tremendous opportunity. However, it is important to remember that of the 2,000 four year colleges in the country, only about 350 reject more students than they accept. The frenzy around submitting early applications is driven by only the most selective schools and it’s important that students use this opportunity to their advantage, not the college’s.

Behind the Doors of the College Admissions Office

With applications sent off, the college application moves from the student’s desk to the college admissions office where, for the next two months hundreds of thousands of applications will be reviewed while students across the country anxiously await a decision. What goes on behind the closed doors of the admissions office is a mystery to most and decisions can seem to reflect more “artistry” than science. In fact, the process varies from school to school and depends on the size and type of institution, its selectivity, and the school’s own “flavor. However, every college and university assesses the strength of each application relative to the applicant pool as well as the school’s enrollment objectives. While each student is considered on his or her own merits, schools work to “socially engineer” a class that reflects the demographics of society as a whole and each student is valued for how they contribute to that mix.

While larger universities typically use a formula based on standardized test scores, GPA, and other pertinent information to calculate a student’s admissibility, most schools review each and every application personally and thoroughly. Students can be assured that their application will be reviewed by a committee comprised of admissions counselors, faculty members, current students, part-time hired staff, or any combination of the above. By being viewed by several different people representing a variety of perspectives and interests the goal is to make the process as fair as possible.

After reviewing the file, students are assigned a ranking, either numeric or alphabetical, and those given the highest scores are typically admitted and those with the lowest ranking are usually denied. It is the applications that fall in the middle that receive the greatest attention. At this point the colleges are looking to fine-tune the composition of the incoming class and each applicant is evaluated for the ways in which they might uniquely contribute to the school based on their particular strengths and talents.

Admissions offices are always interested in increasing their “yield”, or the number of admitted students who actually matriculate at their school. A student’s “demonstrated interest” can be a good indicator of their likelihood of yielding, so admissions committees note if the applicant visited their campus, met with them at a college fair, interviewed, or joined the group when the college visited the student’s high school. Typically, the more often the student demonstrated their interest in a school, the better.

Admissions officers are also interested in letters of recommendation and look specifically to see if what others have to say about the applicant supports the information the student has provided in his application. Is the student the passionate scholar he claims to be? Is she really a leader in a meaningful way or are her positions merely titular?

Finally, some students may be “on the bubble” because of their academic standing. If their grades are close, but not quite, what the admissions office would like to see, they may wait until the third quarter grades are released to make their decision. As at this point no applicant really knows where they stand in the admission pool, it is important to continue to strive to get the best grades possible. It is not too late to make a good impression!

So, the waiting game continues. Know that admissions counselors are doing their best to weigh every piece of an application to make the best and fairest decision possible. In the meantime, keep working hard, and keep your fingers crossed.

No One Said Applying to College Was Easy: 7 Tips for Parents

Time and time again parents sit in our office and reflect, “I don’t remember it being like this when I applied to college” and, indeed, the process has changed in some important ways. More colleges are making standardized testing optional, schools are becoming increasingly competitive, students are sending out more applications and parents are more involved in the process than ever before. For parents of rising seniors, we offer these words of advice: 1. Help your child remember that college is first and foremost about the academic experience. Colleges are offering some very enticing options including gourmet food service, dorm suites with full kitchens, athletic centers with state-of-the-art equipment, and cyber cafes at every turn. All this is very appealing, but students can lose focus on what should be at the center of their college experience – the academic program. Enjoy all the amenities colleges have to offer, but help your child assess the breadth and depth of courses offered and the level of academic rigor. While these intangibles can be hard to evaluate, it is important to help your child to keep the rightness of the academic fit at the center of the decision making process.

2. If your child has been a procrastinator for 17 years, going through the college process isn’t going to draw out Type A qualities. Know your child’s strengths and weaknesses, and proceed accordingly. If he is disorganized, set up organizational systems. If he needs to read about colleges to really understand them, buy him guide books. Tech savvy kids can gather a lot of information from YouTube videos, podcasts, and school websites. Learning and behavioral styles are hard to change, so play to your child’s strengths.

3. Remember, this is not your turn to apply to college. While you’re college years may have been the best of your life, that doesn’t mean that your alma mater is perfect for your child. Let your child decide what is the best place for him/her to spend his/her undergraduate years.

4. It’s hard to be objective and supportive at the same time. If you start more sentences with “Tell me more about what you think about …” and fewer with “I think that…”, you’re well on your way.

5. Applying to college is probably the longest, most involved, and most difficult decision your child has ever had to make. Give him plenty of time and space to process all the information and don’t undervalue the emotional component. This is important practice for making even the even bigger decisions which the lie ahead.

6. View the process of applying to college as just that – a process. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end and each child will go through the process in his own way, in his own time, hopefully taking on increasing responsibility and ownership. Ultimately, this is not just about “getting in”, but about developing self-awareness, clarifying values and becoming self-sufficient and self-directed. When parents become too involved, the student is denied the chance to go through this very maturing, self-actualizing process.

7. First row seats don’t always provide the best view. Sometimes the best place to watch this process is from the bleacher seats.

One Tour, Two Different Perspectives My daughter is a high school junior and last week we took our first official tour of colleges specifically for her. Although I had, of course, anticipated this moment for years, looking at colleges through the eyes of an invested parent instead of a detached consultant, was an extraordinary experience for me, unexpected in many ways. I worried about how she would find her niche in this new community, I tried to imagine her taking a semester to study abroad, and I wondered how she would be shaped differently by her experience at each college.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/archive/x1076645602/COLLEGE-MATTERS-One-tour-two-different-perspectives#ixzz1KGkDiJSm

How to go to College... Without Going Broke

At this seminar you will learn tips on the financial aid process, which colleges have the most scholarship money to distribute, and how to maximize your free scholarship money. To register please contact Karen Grunow kgrunow@ahpnet.com or 978.261.1417.

How to choose classes for next year Over the next few weeks, students will be filling out their course selection forms for next year. Students should put careful thought into their choices, selecting those that will demonstrate their academic potential and willingness to challenge themselves while not creating a schedule that will leave no time for extra-curriculars - or sleep!

Predicting who is more likely to retake the SAT

Does your SAT score end in "90"? Tomorrow Juniors head off to take the SAT with varying degrees of preparedness and nervousness. While most students will sit for the SAT and/or ACT at least twice, we don't encourage our students to take these tests over and over in pursuit of that ever-elusive "highest score possible". Standardized tests are only one piece of the college application. While an important part, they shouldn't be given undue time or weight.

Good luck, juniors!

Early applications deserve careful consideration

Early Action Could Aid in Admission, Report Finds With November 1 just a few days away, we're very busy helping our clients meet Early Application deadlines. However, despite evidence that it might be easier to be admitted in this round of decisions, the choice to apply early isn't that simple. First, it can be argued that those students who submit early apps are some of the strongests candidates because they dont' need grades from fall and winter terms to demonstate their full academic potential. Second, while the decision to apply ED must be made with thought and care because it is binding, the decision to apply EA, while non-binding should not be made lightly. To "just get the process over with" is not sufficient justification. We find that students lose momentum after they submit their early applications, which can lead to disasterous results if they are not accepted. And, for many reasons, students may be able to present a stronger application if they wait for the Regular Decision deadlins.

So, while in many cases submitting college applications can be the best choice, don't go into the decision without giving it careful thought.

Reaches, Moderates, and Likelies - The College List

Building a Better College List Ideas for our monthly columns come from many different places, but after the umpteenth conversation with my colleague, Tim, about people's misguided notions that we can "just make a college list", I decided to write about the considerations that we put in to each of the college lists we create for our clients. In truth, we never get "the list" right on the first try and, in fact, we don't try do. Figuring out which colleges are the best matches is an iterative process, but the more the client understands their options, the more they learn about what is important to them, and the better the ultimate list will be.

How to stand out from the rest of the admissions pool

Does being "President of the Lady Gaga Fan Club" belong on your college resume? High school students are encouraged to join clubs, take on leadership roles, be involved in community service - not just because these are wonderful opportunities for growth, but because they "look good" on the college resume. But where to draw to draw the line between a real experience and a whimsical hobby? If it is something the student is genuinely committed to, has been involved with over a period of time, has helped them to gain worthwhile skills, and reveals something appealing about the person, it should probably go on the resume. In this way, a resume can be used to help the college applicant stand out from the crowd.

Who's to say who's the best?

30 Ways to Rate a College We've always been a bit suspicious of the usefulness of college rankings, believing that it is up to the individual to decide, based on their own criteria, which schools top their lists of "Best Colleges". This powerful graphic by the Chronical of Higher Ed show that the college rankers themselves (Forbes, U.S. News, etc.) have also "personalized" their college lists by selecting their own criteria on which they rank colleges. Interestingly, there is very little overlap in the data they use to create their lists.

When haste might make waste

Pulling an all-nighter for the college application Our goal for many of our college clients is for them to have most of their common application completed by the end of the summer. In July and August rising seniors have more time and fewer distractions so they can fully focus on completing the common app, and completing it well. The Fall is can be a very busy time and students should be focusing their energies on their classwork as this is the last opportunity for early applicants to show their academic metal. Final visits to colleges, interviews either off or on campus, and filling out the supplemental materials required by some colleges takes a tremendous amount of effort and emotional energy, leaving little for the common application.

That said, pulling all-nighters over the summer just to "be done" or to be the first applicant at a school seems imprudent. With only one chance to make a good impression on admissions officers, it's important to devote time and care to the application so that you will be viewed in your best possible light. So, work to get that application done well, but don't sacrifice quality for speed.

Williams is the best... or is it???

America's Best Colleges According to a new report by Forbes, Williams is the college that best meets students needs. Having just visited Williams last month, I can tell you that the campus is stunning, the facilities are state-of-the-art, the faculty are very impressive, and their Tutorials Program, based loosely on the tutorial style teaching at Oxford and Cambridge, make this a top-notch place to live and learn. It seems like a no-brainer to encouage students to apply here. And therein lies the rub of these one-size-fits-all rankings. While Forbes evaluated colleges based on ten factors including the students' rankings of their academic experiences, the amount of debt they incurred, their opportunities to distinguish themselves academically, and their ultimate career success, no one ranking can decide for an individual what school should be on the top of their list.

For example, for student looking for a lively weekend scene, the opportunities to be involved in Greek life, or the excitement of cheering on a Division 1 Football team, Williams would fall towards the bottom of the list. And there are other, much more subtle, distinctions between schools that prospective students should make. What type of students thrive here? What is the social/political climate? What does the school value? There are all questions that should be asked of any college, but are factors that will never be included on college ranking lists because there is no way to objectify this data.

So, congratulations to Williams College for ranking Number 1 on Forbes' Best Colleges in America List - you certainly are an outstanding liberal arts college in rural Massachusetts with a very strong math and science program. But, if for those looking for something different in their college experience, don't let Forbes create your college list for you.

V.I.P. Applications

Drexel U. Brings On a New Wave of Applicants Over the next few months, select high school seniors will be recieving "V.I.P. Applications" from colleges encouraging them, through a simplified process, to apply to their institutions. Colleges send out V.I.P applications to those students whose SAT scores fall within a certain range as a way of increasing their applicant pool as well as intentionally raising the average SAT scores of their applicants. Both these moves make colleges appear more selective. The other advantage to the college is that it increases their chances of yielding students from this targeted pool.

However, V.I.P. applications have advantages for the student as well. Typically not requiring a long essay and waiving the application fee, the V.I.P. applications don't take as much time to fill out. As an acceptance is not a binding commitment, for some students having an acceptance in their back pocket early in the application cycle can be a real confidence booster that also takes away the concerns of finding those "safety schools."

Of course, students should not be lured into completing V.I.P. applications to schools in which they have absolutely no interest. But, if the invitation comes from a school that piques their interest, students should take advantage of this opportunity.

Medical school for poets

Getting in to med school without hard sciences Mount Sinai medical school accepts a small percentage of applicants who have not taken organic chemistry, physics, or the dreaded MCATS each year, finding that those who majored in the humanities as undergrads actually make more sensitive doctors. It's too soon to know if more medical schools will head in this direction, but given the wide range of skills and expertise demanded of doctors, it's nice to know that they're not all following the same path.

How students choose colleges

Admissions office probes applicants\' scary depths It turns out that it's not just me who thinks that sometimes seniors' final choice of college is - let's just say it - whimsical. After a year of visiting, touring, researching, discussing, and agonizing you'd expect a thoughtful, well-reasoned decision when the final college choice is made, but often when I ask them to explain why they made their choice, the reply is simply, "It just felt right."

It turns out that, when making decisions, emotion usually preceeds thought. Thus, we make choices based on our feelings, and THEN we try, sometimes unsuccessfully, to put words around our decisions. The admissions office at UNC Chapel Hill is tapping in to this research to find new ways to appeal to prospective applicants.

Colleges Invite Parents to Summer Orientations

Empty Nest 101 Maybe its the helicopter parent phenomenon, or maybe its that parents are more savvy consumers. Or perhaps it's because the price tag on a college education is soaring and parents want to know what their child is getting for their tuition dollars. But whatever the reason, college orientation programs designed for the parents of incoming freshman are gaining in popularity.