“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…

Of course they are!

Let me be more explicit with the response, you would like that, right? The Colleges offering admission to students under Early Action or Early Decision process specify it at the time of admission only that the accepted students will have to perform well in their high school senior year, clearing the assessments with high GPAs. The highly selective schools or the elite undergraduate colleges have a strict no-tolerance policy regarding low GPAs in the final semester evaluation in the senior year and therefore, we suggest that you read the policy document well before applying for Early Action or Early Decision. Please do take special care in case of Early Decision, because as pointed out earlier, the admission acceptance under Early Decision is binding in nature, meaning that you cannot refuse to take admission in the college if you have been accepted under Early Decision. Read more…

The Admission for the class of 2015 is done with. Some students are delirious over having been admitted to their dream college, while some students have accepted their fate reluctantly, or else would have had to wait till next year. Though, many students are considering taking a gap year to find their true vocation, still majority of students and parents do not want to waste time for getting college admissions.

Here is a simple analysis of the lessons learnt from the admission season of 2011.

I. The Best become Exclusive

The best undergrad colleges have become more exclusive than what they already were. Harvard led the race from the front and accepted only 6.2 percent applicants to its Class of 2015. It’s the same story at the other Ivy League Colleges, MIT and Stanford.  The most dramatic reduction in the acceptance rate was witnessed in case of Columbia (9.4 percent to 6.9 percent). Read more…

Harvard College has restored non-binding early action as part of its admission process, to enhance its recruiting program and make it easier and more accessible for students from modest economic backgrounds through the admission process.   It also announced that next year on its investment in undergraduate financial aid will increase to over $160 million.  At present, over 60% of the students from Harvard College receive scholarship aid; the average grant is about $ 38000.

In 2007, Harvard dispensed with its non-binding Early Action Program, on a trial basis and moved to a single admissions deadline, and announced at the time that it would evaluate its impact after many years.

The decision to restore the Early Action program was announced earlier this year, when the President Faust said that the best brains in the country were opting for early action and early decision programs at various other colleges and it seemed that Harvard was missing out on a really talented pool of applicants.

Some excerpts from the press release:

“We looked carefully at trends in Harvard admissions these past years and saw that many highly talented students, including some of the best-prepared low-income and under-represented minority students, were choosing programs with an early-action option, and therefore were missing out on the opportunity to consider Harvard. We have decided that the College and our students will be best served by restoring an early option,” said Dean, Michael D. Smith of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Read more…

The admissions to the class of 2015 in almost all the US colleges are done, with only waitlist students awaiting for some miracle that will get them admitted to the Harvard, Stanford, MIT or Princeton. We can easily shift the discussion to the admission decisions that the current year senior students have to make so as to secure their future for the next four years in the best way possible.

The May 7 SAT test, which is less than 10 days away is taken mostly by the high school juniors to test their aptitude or the high school seniors who intend to apply for the early action admission program of various colleges. The rationale behind taking the SAT 2 test in May or June is simple: if they do not get the perfect scores or the high SAT scores, then they can attempt it again in October, having prepared rigorously during the summer vacations. Read more…