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A good number of American colleges and universities, including the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT and other top ranking ones, have reported an unprecedented increase in the number of UK applicants. The reason is not too complex to be guessed: increase in fee as a result of reduction in grants and state funding. Moreover, the UK universities (barring the Oxford, Cambridge and few others) are losing their sheen and status of being hallowed portals of knowledge.

The teachers are even dubious about the current standards at the UK universities and colleges and therefore, do not see it necessary to prevent the students from applying abroad, mainly to US universities. According to the Institute of International Education, the number of British students studying at US universities has increased considerably in 2011, as compared to the last couple of years. The official figures, though, will be available only when the colleges start in Fall 2011. Harvard University reported that it received applications from 500 applicants from UK for admissions to the class of 2015. Other Ivy League colleges also reported an increase in the number of UK applicants. Read more…

Your parents’ legacy is your due and nowhere else these filial bequests more than they do in matters of college admissions. Oh no, we are not talking in the financial sense, but in the sense of alumni connections. If your father or mother is an alumnus of your dream university, then your chances of getting in there increases by more than 40 percent. Now, isn’t that grand? This advantage is limited to only the primary legacy students, while the secondary legacy students improve their chances by 13.7 percent at the concerned college. (Secondary legacy connections refer to connections by way aunt or grandparent or any other relative who attended the particular college or university) Read more…

The US State Department of Education is doing its bit about providing important information to the college-bound students and their parents and by the looks of its current endeavor, it is indeed doing a fine job. Why, the Department unveiled a new website just today that enumerates the colleges with the highest and the lowest tuition costs and gives a comprehensive breakdown of all the other costs.

The website was developed under the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 and in addition to listing the colleges with the highest and the lowest tuition cost and the overall cost of education, the site also depicts the increase and the expected increase in the tuition rates of these colleges.  Similarly, colleges in the for-profit and non-profit, four-year course and two-year course categories will also be reported. Interestingly, those colleges with the highest cost of education will report to the Department of Education and explain the reasons for the high and rapidly increasing cost. Read more…

The terms ‘fit’ and ‘reach’ are very closely associated with the college admission process. As the students try to determine their ‘perfect fit’, they yearn to be accepted at their ‘Best Reach’. What do these terms exactly mean?

‘Perfect Fit’:

A college is a perfect fit for you when you know that it will lead to gratification of your academic as well your personal goals for the next four years of your life. It satisfies all the criteria to be your second home, where you are at ease and eager to learn. The curriculum, after-classes life, the student body, the demographic diversity, accommodation, food, affiliation, the weather and all the important things that are necessary for survival are to your liking or shall we say, within tolerance limits? Read more…

I am seriously dismayed with the level of commercialization the education system has been through in the past few decades. What used to be a simple advice from peers regarding the suitability of colleges has now turned into multimillion-dollar worth college admission consultancy business and this is just one instance of the attempts made to mint money out of everything related to the college admission process.

But then, in addition to the capitalists, there are philanthropists, too, in the field of education too who provide free access to authentic and valuable information regarding college admission procedure, SAT preparation, scholarship data etc.  Here is a list detailing every kind of free information resource that you can make use of in your hunt for the best college: Read more…

Salisbury University – A Maryland University of National Distinction, announced in a press release dated June 17, 2011 that the USM Board of Regents has granted it the permission to continue with its Test-Optional Policy. According to this policy, the students need not submit SAT or ACT scores compulsorily.

It was in the year 2006 that the university had first adopted the Test-optional policy, citing reasons such as students from weaker financial background found it tough to take SAT prep courses to prepare and score well on SAT and other standardized tests. To provide a level playing field to the students, the university had then announced the minimum required GPA to be 3.5 for the admission purpose.

According to the SU President Janet Dudley-Eshbach, during the five years that the university followed the test optional policy, the performance of the students who did not submit test scores was as good as the students who did submit test scores. In fact, the graduation rates were higher amongst the test-optional students, who also scored higher percentages during the exams.

Dean of enrollment management at Salisbury University, Jane Dané, said that the test optional approach enhanced the economic diversity at the university and helped attracting academically talented students who previously could not gain admission due to high SAT score requirements. The decision to make the standardized test scores optional has enabled the admission committee to look for various other traits such as academic and scholastic skills at the school, special talents, community service etc.

The announcement has sparked a fresh debate amongst the academicians and educators over the validity of the standardized test scores in properly measuring a student’s college readiness. Many of them are of the view that the high degree of importance attached to these scores leads to denial of education opportunities to otherwise scholastically talented students, who found it difficult to give their optimum performance on a timed test.

“Hard Times” and “Great Expectations” …The titles of famous literature by Charles Dickens quite precisely summarize the condition of the students and the parents when it comes to undergraduate college admissions. All of them have Great Expectations, dreams of making it to their ‘reach’ school, one amongst the top 20 or 30 in the country. However, despite high GPAs and SAT scores, the high school seniors find themselves settling for safety schools, when they very well had more than the average required for their preferred college or university. To top it all, the college tuition is expected to increase further by almost 4.5 percent for the current academic year. Hard Times Indeed!

Not that they are going to get any better, if the 2010-2011 admission trends are anything to go by. Evidently, students who applied to higher ranking college and universities, assuming that they would get in because their GPAs, SAT scores or ACT score satisfied the minimum requirements stated by the college, were in for an unkind surprise. This was expected, as the college counselors say, because just satisfying the minimum is not enough as there are many more out there who have far better marks and grades. Inevitably, a student with 4.0 GPA will be given admission preference over a student with 3.7 GPA, though the minimum requirement was 3.4 GPA. Same applies with SAT scores too! Read more…

A team of three professors and academic researchers claim that the ‘science’ and ‘reading’ section of the ACT standardized test has little to no relevance, when it comes to predicting the college readiness and success of the high school seniors. On the other hand, English and Mathematics sections of the ACT go very near to predicting the college success and as such the admission officers must pay higher attention to the scores in these sections. But, as the practice goes, it is the overall composite score of the student that is considered in matters of admission screening, despite the fact that the individual section score break down is also given along with the composite ACT score.

The findings were published in leading media journals and dailies, much to the dismay of ACT Inc, which said that it was unaware of any such study being underway until the findings were published in the form of a research paper in the third week of June, 2011. The authors of the study, The authors of the paper are Eric P. Bettinger, associate professor of education at Stanford University; Brent J. Evans, a doctoral student in higher education at Stanford; and Devin G. Pope, an assistant professor at the business school of the University of Chicago. Read more…

The decision to choose between a public university and private one is a bit tricky, because on the one hand there is this allure of getting to study at cheaper cost at the public college in your state and on the other hand, graduating from the ultra posh and famous private university is a matter of imminent pride. However, these are not the only considerations that you must take into account while selecting between a private college and a public college. However, no one is denying that cost is indeed an important criterion. Before you take a decision, go through the following:

The cost factor: it is not always what it seems

Tuition fee at public colleges is cheaper than that at private colleges and this is true until following come into view: financial aid and out-of-state student status. There are many private colleges that offer handsome financial aid packages, both need and merit based, to help students finance their undergraduate college education.

On the other hand, out-of-state students are charged higher tuition compared to the in-state students, for the simple reason that their parents did not pay taxes for the state in which the university is located. (public universities are run on taxpayers’ money) Read more…

For high school seniors (and even juniors) summer vacations do not mean only visiting relatives, camping in the mountains, hiking or skiing, watching Wimbledon, organizing sleepovers at friends’ and of course taking baseball or soccer lessons. Each of these fun filled activities is replaced by taking tuitions for SAT or ACT, volunteering for community work, internship projects, searching for colleges and undertaking college campus visit.

The last one on the list, that is the campus visit before the admission application is being undertaken by an increasing number of seniors who are leaving no stone unturned to make sure that the next four years of their life constitute some of the best days of their life. Campus visits are usually made during the summer vacation, before the admission season starts in full swing from August (in fact, many colleges invite applications as early as mid-July)

College campus visit serves many purposes, the primary being to check out the campus infrastructure, the classes, the dorm, library, computer center (if any) and other physical amenities that are conducive to effective education environment. (Some of the parents reportedly, and disconcertingly so, discovered an almost dilapidated building in place of the modern, freshly painted modern structure displayed on the college website) Read more…