College Admissions Counseling Blog

I have decided to move the blog to another site to hopefully make it more useful to my readers. The new blog is at www.collegeadmissionspartners.com/blog. All of the articles on this blog have been transferred over so you will still be able to find old postings.

I have also started posting on the new blog so head on over there to see the latest from the world of colleges admissions. If you have this site bookmarked or use the RSS feed, make sure you change over to the new site. We will see you over there.

For most students the question of how a college spends the money you send each term is never considered. But it should be a consideration because the quality of education you receive may depend on the answer. A new report from the Lumina Foundation examines the question of college spending in detail and

the findings of the report, at least in general, is an issue that families should be aware of before choosing a particular type of college. For people who are interested in all of the numbers the report makes fascinating reading. For those of you less inclined to look at charts, InsideHigherEd has a nice summary of some of the key data.

Want the Cliff Notes version? Spending per student at public community colleges and master's level institutions is going down while these very institutions are the one's most likely to educate first generation and minority students. In other words, the amount of money the college spends to educate you depends on whether you are new to the college scene or whether you family has a better understanding of how colleges work. Generally, the higher your economic status the more likely you are to get a better college education.

We all want to believe that if you are motivated and work hard that the dream of a great college education is possible. And for some that is true. But for many students new to the process of finding a college, the easy choices, the community colleges and other public schools, are becoming less attractive as educational institutions because of the problems with financing public education that has been ongoing for some time in this country. Students and their families need to educate themselves about how a college spends its money and ask the tough question of whether the public or for profit college really is the best choice. More money may or may not be the answer for the public colleges, but if this country wants to continue to have a strong public higher education system, legislatures and the colleges themselves, need to take a look at changing the way they finance their operations.

As many of you know, the College Board changed the SAT in 2005 to add a writing section to the required test. There have been many criticisms of the new writing test since that time and many colleges either don't consider it or give it limited consideration. Several new studies, however, indicate that the writing test is actually a better predictor of college grades than the critical reading and math tests from the SAT. The studies come from the College Board and the University of California. The writing test was originally added to the full SAT at the insistence of the University of California which had threatened to stop using the SAT unless changes were made.

Although I think there are still substantial concerns about the validity of the writing section of the SAT, it appears that with these new studies more colleges will reevaluate their usage of the writing section.

Now that most students have decided where they will be in the fall, the thoughts are turning to getting ready for the college experience. One of the ways to ensure a good experience is by staying healthy in college. Here is a link to 101 health and wellness tips for college students. This is a good synopsis of some of the issues related to staying healthy in college.

The University of Vermont has announced that they will be offering grants to cover the cost of tuition and costs to all Vermont undergraduates who are eligible for Pell Grants and who are Vermont residents. This policy will begin with the 2008 entering fall class and will be phased in over the next 4 years to include all undergraduates eligible for the Pell Grant.

The announcement makes it clear that the grants are for tuition and costs only which means that these students will still have some obligation to pay for room, board and books. Still it is good to see a state university taking action to improve the financial aid available to the neediest of their students. As noted in the past few months, more and more of the colleges without tremendous endowments are figuring out ways to improve their financial aid without breaking the bank. Hopefully more college will continue to follow the lead of those colleges that have improved their financial aid in the past year.

I have discussed many issues surrounding the college admissions process on this blog and I hope they have been helpful. But there other resources out on the web discussing college admissions. The problem is separating the good information from the not so good.

A new resource that has been put together is the Carnival of College Admissions. Brian Carver over at Accepted to College began this project and, although still in its infancy, it shows much promise. Basically, the Carnival consists of submissions from various resources throughout the web that deal with the world of college admissions. In the few weeks that the Carnival has been going there have been some wonderful submissions. And for those who are wondering, you will find a few of my submissions as well.

If you are in the search for the right college, take a look over at the Carnival of College Admissions to get some other perspectives on the college search. Enjoy the new resource.

There is a new article discussing the increased wait list numbers being used this year by some of the highly selective colleges. Although I have already reported on the increased wait lists this year, this article is interesting as it provides more detailed information on how unlikely, and unpredictable, getting off a wait list is at many colleges. Amherst placed 1,400 students on their wait list this year in their effort to fill a class of 440. According to the article this was up 40% from last year. However, according to the Common Data Set information from Amherst itself, last year saw 1462 students offered a wait list placement.

According to Amherst's Common Data Set information in 2007 they took no students off the wait list. In 2006 they took 2 students off the wait list and none in 2005. However, in 2004, Amherst took 78 students off the wait list and 72 in 2003. These numbers would indicate that based on the most recent years, it is likely that Amherst will take few, if any, students from the wait list. But students on the wait list will hope that this year is a repeat of 2003 and 2004.

Students on a wait list at Amherst, or most selective colleges, are unlikely to gain admission off the wait list. They need to understand this and prepare alternatives in case they do not get off the wait list. And hope that this is one of the years when their wait list college accepts more than the normal number.

One of the issues that experienced college counselors understand is that there are certain groups of students who have a much better chance for admission at selective colleges. One such group are legacy students, those students who have a parent who attended the college the students is applying to. ABC news has examined this group of students in a new article discussing the lack of information colleges make available about legacy students.

Legacy admissions must be considered even by those students who do not have legacy status. The stated admission rates include the admission rates for legacy students, as well as other groups such as recruited athletes. The result is that the actual admission rate for the typical student who does not belong to one of these groups is much lower than the stated admission rate.

College admissions is not a perfect system but the more the prospective student understands the issues and limitations, the more likely that they will make appropriate choices.

Amherst College has announced that they are extending their need blind admission policy to international students. Need blind admissions means that Amherst will admit international students without regard to their ability to pay for their college education. This makes Amherst one of only 8 colleges in the US that offers need blind admission to international students.

It is difficult for many deserving international students to seek admissions to US colleges because they can't afford the cost. Amherst's move to need blind admissions is good news for all international students seeking to attend college in the US.

Oberlin College has announced that they are eliminating all loans for students who receive Pell grants and replacing the loans with grants. Pell grant recipients typically come from low income families making less than $35,000 a year. About 12% of Oberlin's 2,800 students receive Pell grants.

Although Oberlin's move will effect a limited number of students it is an innovative way to use limited resources to improve the financial aid package of those students least able to afford college. Hopefully more colleges will continue the trend of improving the financial aid available to their students.

The Boston Globe is reporting that the number of students on the wait list at some well known colleges is up this year. The wait list is used by colleges to ensure they have enough students in the fall if the students they have admitted decide not to attend. It can be a very difficult time for the student placed on the wait list particularly if the college in question is one of the student's first choices. The reality that needs to be faced by students placed on the wait list is that most of the highly selective colleges don't actually take many students off the wait list. Some college take almost none. For many students the best option is to look at the colleges that have accepted you and use that as the basis for deciding where to attend.

Receiving any letter other than an acceptance letter is difficult for any student. If you receive a wait list letter from one of your top choice colleges, take several days to review all of your options. If you are seriously considering staying on a wait list, contact the college that wait listed you and ask them how many students have been placed on the wait list this year as well as for each of the past two years and how many students were accepted from those lists. Often the answer to that question will help you make the decision of whether to stay on the wait list or not.

During this time also look more closely at the colleges that have accepted you. You may find that one of these colleges that wants you is preferable to the college that wait listed you. For more discussion of the wait list and how to handle it go to the wait list page on my site.

Inside Higher Ed had an interesting, although depressing, article today on the state of equality in college admissions. Part of that article discussed a paper entitled "Is 1500 the new 1280? The SAT and admissions since Bakke" by Catherine L. Horn of the University of Houston and John T. Yun, of the University of California at Santa Barbara. This paper looked at the average verbal SAT score of students at the 30 top colleges and universities as determined by the US News rankings.

In 1989 only one of these 30 colleges reported that more than 30% of the freshman class had a verbal SAT score above 700. Currently, more than 30% of the freshman class had verbal SAT scores above 700 at all but four of these colleges. At half of these colleges more than 50% of the freshman had verbal SAT scores above 700. The implication discussed by the paper is the shift in admissions by elite colleges to students who score very high on standardized testing.

There is no question that the number of high test scorers has increased in the last 20 years. However, SAT test scores from 1989 can not be directly compared to current test scores without an adjustment. Because of declining average test scores between approximately 1975 and 1995 the SAT was "re-centered" in 1995. In effect this added approximately 100 points the the average test score to bring the average back to around 500. The amount of score increase varied depending on the score but this factor cannot be ignored.

A second issue is that almost all of these colleges take the highest verbal score from multiple exam dates. It is possible that students are taking more exams now than in 1989 and thus have more opportunity to gain a high score.

Finally, the effect of test preparation must be considered. I believe that the number of students who participate in test prep classes at this time exceeds the number that prepared for these tests in 1989. Multiple studies have shown that a certain level of improved performance can be gained by most students who prepare for these exams.

I have not had a chance to read the study mentioned and hopefully these factors were taken into consideration. While it may be nice to argue that these colleges should take more chances on students who score low on these exams, it is unlikely that the colleges will do so unless there is a universal replacement of these tests for college admissions. I am not a fan of standardized testing but I will be surprised if the SAT is replaced anytime soon.

The New York Times had a recent article discussing athletic scholarships and the fact that most athletic scholarships do not cover the full cost of a college education. This article should be read by any student or parent who is under the believe that their athletic prowess can get them a full ride to any college. It is true that top athletes in the money sports of football and basketball can get some attractive offers of aid but these are the unusual case, not the rule.

As I have said on this blog on some many other occasions, students and parents need to understand financial aid as a whole package and not just rely on the hope for an athletic scholarship. Otherwise, the disappointment may be greater than necessary.

Lafayette College in Pennsylvania has announced their new financial aid policy. This new policy will eliminate loans for students with family incomes below $50,000 and will cap loans at $2,500 per year for students from families with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000. This new policy applies to both new students and continuing students. Lafayette has also announced that they will be increasing the size of the faculty by 35 positions in the next 5 years which is an approximate 20% increase in the size of the faculty. This will be done without increasing the size of the student body.

Congratulations Lafayette.

Claremont McKenna College, part of the Claremont consortium of colleges, has announced that they are eliminating all loans from financial aid packages and replacing them with grants. Claremont McKenna has a relatively small endowment of $475 million and it is further encouragement that the move to reduce or eliminate loans is working its way down to colleges with smaller endowments. Of course, $475 million is still a very substantial endowment but it only ranks Claremont McKenna at number 146 on the NACUBO list of 2007 endowments.

Congratulations to Claremont McKenna in making this decision even with the endowment they have.

Lehigh University in Pennsylvania has announced a new financial aid policy to help students afford the cost of and education at Lehigh. The new policy eliminates loans for students with family incomes below $50,000. For those families with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000, loans will be capped at a maximum of $3,000 each year. To help offset the decreased loan obligations those students who have loans eliminated or reduced will have their work study awards increased 25% to $2,200 per year. Finally, Lehigh will be making additional funds available for financial aid to international students with demonstrated need.

This new policy by Lehigh is exactly the sort of policy that I had hoped would start occurring after the most selective colleges starting announcing new financial aid policies. The pressure is mounting on those colleges, like Lehigh, that are just below this level of selectivity. The policy of Lehigh acknowledges that having a certain level of loan obligation on graduation is not terrible as long as the amount of the loan is not too great. I hope more colleges will continue this trend of improving financial aid for their students.

Vassar College has announced that they are eliminating all loans for students from families making less than $60,000 a year and replacing them with grants. This will effect new as well as continuing students effective this fall.

This is particularly encouraging news since Vassar, while having a substantial endowment, has less of an endowment than many of the other colleges that have recently announced new financial aid policies.

Columbia announced today that they are revising their financial aid policy. Students attending Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science whose families have annual income below $60,000 will have no contribution requirement. For families with incomes between $60,000 and $100,000 families will have their expected contribution reduced. The announcement does not make clear how the contribution is to be determined for this range of incomes. Columbia also announced that they will eliminate loans from all financial aid packages.

Columbia is now the final member of the Ivy League to announce revised financial aid policies.

MIT is the latest college to announce a new financial aid policy aimed at helping students from lower income families. MIT's new policy will provide that families earning less than $75,000 will not pay any thing for tuition. Also, students from families earning less than $75,000 a year will have all loans eliminated and replaced with grants. This new policy also provides that families with less than $100,000 annual income will not have home equity considered in awarding financial aid and all students with work study with have the number of required hours lowered.
br>MIT has historically had strong financial aid and it is good to see them further strengthening their support for making an MIT education affordable for all students.

Carleton College has announced a new scholarship program aimed at reducing the loan obligation for its neediest students. The Access Scholarship program is targeted at families with incomes less than $75,000. Under this new program, families with annual income of less than $40,000 will get an additional scholarship of $4,000 annually, families with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000 will get an additional scholarship of $3,000 annually, and families with income between $60,000 and $75,000 will get an additional $2,000 annual scholarship. Carleton meets 100% of the need for all students so this additional scholarship will go directly to reducing loan obligations.

This new program is good news for Carleton students but is less generous than the programs that have recently been announced by many of its peer colleges. Carleton is in the middle of a $300 million fund raising effort and they will hopefully be able to consider the elimination of loans once these additional funds are raised.

The March 2008 issue of University Business has an article about the 2007 Survey of Parents of College Bound Freshman which was released by Sallie Mae. What is interesting is that 35% of parents thought the college financial aid office was their best source of information on paying for college.

College financial aid offices can be a wonderful source of information on how that college handles a particular financial aid issue. For instance, when a student receives an outside scholarship does the college reduce grant aid or self help aid. However, as well meaning as many financial aid officers are, their job is to allocate limited financial resources to the students of their college. It is not to make sure that any particular student pays as little as possible.

Parents and students need to educate themselves on how college financial aid works as part of the process of choosing a college. This is not an issue to be left to the end of the process after you receive your financial aid award. And it is not an issue that they should rely on the colleges to get the critical information they need. One quick example will show the danger of relying on the colleges for your information. In this country there are around 100 colleges that state that they will meet 100% of the stated need on the FAFSA. Most of the web sites of those colleges talk about that because they know that is a strong selling point for their college. However, almost none of the other 2,900 four year colleges list their discount rate because it is not something they wish to discuss. They might tell a parent what their typical discount rate is if asked but in my experience they will try to avoid answering the question.

Most colleges do try to be fair in their allocation of their limited resources but families should not rely on that in their effort to understand college financial aid. There are a number of resources on the web that discuss this including my web page on what families should know about financial aid. For a great presentation on the issues families should know check out Get College Funding's video.

Whenever I talk to a young women and advise her to consider a women's college, I generally get an emphatic "NO" in response. That is unfortunate because there are a number of wonderful women's colleges that provide a great education to their students. A new report from The Women's College Coalition again reinforces the strengths of an education at a women's college. This recent study spoke to graduates of women's colleges as well as similar co-ed liberal arts colleges and public colleges.

In most instances women who attended an all women's college fared better than the students at public colleges and generally better than those students who went to co-ed liberal arts colleges. Women college graduates had a lower rate of transfer and a higher graduation rate than at the comparison colleges. Women's college graduates were more likely to rate their college as highly effective in helping students learn to solve problems and make effective decisions and were more effective at helping their students relate to people of different backgrounds. Women's colleges were also more effective at helping students to think analytically, learn to work as part of a team and learn to write and speak effectively. Finally, women's college graduates were more likely than any other group to complete a graduate degree.

Women's colleges are not for all young women. But if given the chance to prove themselves, these colleges generally prove the quality of the education they provide.

Business Week has published their opinions of the best undergraduate business programs. As regular readers know I am not a big fan of rankings of colleges because such attempts ignore the issue of fit. It is also difficult to quantify "best" when dealing with colleges since the criteria of what makes a college the best will differ from student to student. However, the rankings of Business Week, like the annual rankings from US News, do provide some basic information about the colleges ranked and that information can be helpful to the prospective student. The rankings are broken down further and provides links to the data underlying the rankings.

In looking at some of these numbers, however, it is obvious that some data checking was not done. I took a quick look at the University of Minnesota school of business. The tuition listed for that school is $3,975 when the actual tuition according the the University of Minnesota website is $9,885. Moreover, the Business Week ranking lists the total college enrollment as 840,572. The University of Minnesota is one of the biggest campuses in the country but the actual enrollment numbers for all 4 campuses is 65,753. In other words, if you find a campus that you have an interest in, check with the college directly to verify some of this basic information.

ADDENDUM: There is a recent post on the NACAC listserve from a DePaul University Vice President regarding these ratings. At first I thought it was just someone complaining that their college didn't rate as highly as they expected. However, when DePaul contacted Business Week about not being rated the reply was:

"To be ranked you have to nominate yourself, be deemed eligible, give us student email addresses for our survey, and supply additional information used in the ranking. No one ever nominated your school."

If the sole basis for deciding whether to rank a college was whether they had nominated themselves, what little credibility this rating might have had is lost in my mind. Combined with the inaccuracies pointed out in this original post, I would strongly suggest that people completely ignore this ranking.

It has long been know that many highly selective colleges relax their academic standards to recruit athletes. This has been true at the Ivy League colleges including Harvard but now it appears that Harvard is willing to relax their admissions standards even further to recruit basketball players. The New York Times is reporting on these relaxed standards as well as possible violations of NCAA recruiting rules.

While I understand the desire of Harvard to be competitive in basketball and the other sports in which it participates, this does not seem to be a reason to lower academic standards. With an admission rate below 10% and over 27,000 applications it is difficult to believe that academic standards need to be relaxed to find basketball players. Moreover, Harvard, as well as all other colleges, need to keep in mind that college is primarily about education, not sports. While sports are a wonderful addition to most colleges they are a sideline, not the primary focus.

Brown University has announced that they are putting a new financial aid policy in place which will eliminate loans for families with income below $100,000, reduce loans for all students receiving financial aid and eliminate parental contributions for families with incomes less than $60,000. This new policy will apply to all current students as well as future students. This aid policy is very similar to that recently announced by Stanford University.

I am pleased to see that Brown has joined most of the other Ivy League universities with a revised financial aid policy benefiting students. It appears that Columbia is the only Ivy League university that has not yet announced a new aid policy.

Stanford University has announced their latest enhancement to their financial aid policy. The new policy provides that families with income less than $100,000 will not pay tuition and families with income less than $60,000 will also not be expected to provide any contribution to room, board and other expenses. Further, the new policy eliminates loans for all students which will presumably be replaced by grants. The report on the new policy also mentions "other significant enhancements" that have been made to their financial aid program but provides no details.

It is wonderful to see Stanford joining their competitors by revising their financial aid policy. As a counselor it would also be nice to know what those other "enhancements" are to financial aid to completely advise students who might be interested in Stanford.

Washington University in St. Louis has announced that they are joining other highly selective colleges in limiting loans for certain families. Specifically, the college will be eliminating all loans for families making less than $60,000 a year and replacing them with grants. This is good news from Wash U since their focus in the past has seemed to be on using merit money to buy high quality students rather than seeking an economically diverse student population. The number of students receiving Pell grants, those reserved for the lowest income students, has consistently been very low, even compared to their competitors. This despite having an endowment of over $5.5 billion.

I am a proud alumni of Wash U and I hope that they continue to use their substantial endowment to enhance their financial aid to gain a more diverse student population.

Princeton has announced the creation of a working group to study the idea of having some freshman take an "international bridge year program". Basically they are examining the possibility of about 10% of incoming freshman, about 100 students, take a gap year and engage in public service in a country outside their native country. Costs of such a program would be treated as costs of the college with financial aid available for students with need.

I have written about gap year programs on several occasions and am generally a fan of such programs for the right student. I think Princeton's approach is admirable, particularly their approach that financial aid would apply to needy students. The also make it clear that if a student wishes to take a traditional gap year that option would still be available although without the financial support of Princeton.

Boston.com has a good article about the hazards of getting too much help writing the college essay. The article makes it clear that with the increasing competition for students to gain admissions to their dream colleges, admissions officers are paying more attention to the essay to discern whether the applicant actually wrote it.

Students can, and should, discuss possible topics for the essay with a trusted adviser whether they be parents, teachers or private counselors. They can, and should, have an adviser review and possibly edit the essay for such issues as syntax and spelling. However, the essay must come from the student with the student's voice coming through. Not only is this the honest approach but if the student's voice is not coming through in the essay, the student is not giving the college an accurate view of who they are. To find the right college, the student must communicate to the college who they really are.

There are many private college admissions counselors and private financial aid counselors who do a wonderful job for the students they work with. However, families need to understand that even so called financial aid counselors don't always know what they are talking about.

Ivywise is a college consulting group known for their high cost and the infamy of having "packaged" the student who was admitted to Harvard and later discovered to have plagiarized a novel she was writing. The Ivywise newsletter has an article written by their financial aid counselor entitled "Secrets from a Financial Aid Officer: Top mistakes students and families make now". In the article the author states that parents can get a PLUS loan with a current interest rate of 6.1%. However, the current rate for PLUS loans is actually 8.5% and has been at this rate for all loans taken out after July 1, 2006. Prior to that time the interest rate on PLUS loans was 8.02%.

We all make mistakes but anyone familiar with PLUS loans would not suggest that they are currently at such low rates. If families are spending upwards of $40,000 for the services of this group one would expect that their counselors would be familiar with the area in which they counsel students.

Families do not need to spend $40,000 or more to get competent college admissions advice. Spending more does not always get you better knowledge or service.

I wrote last summer about "Gap Year" programs where high school students take a year off before their freshman year of college. Such programs are fairly common in Europe but not well known in the United States. There is a good article about such programs and a college fair for gap year programs recently held in the Chicago area.

Gap year programs are not for everyone but for the student that feels that they are not quite ready to head to college or for the stressed out student, they can make a good option.

Wellesley College has announced a new aid policy that eliminates loans for students with family incomes below $60,000. In addition, Wellesley will reduce loans for students with family incomes between $60,000 and $100,000 to no more than $8,600 for all four years. For families earning more than $100,000, loans will be capped at $12,825.

Wellesley has had a reputation for strong financial aid for some years and this new policy reinforces that reputation. Personally, I like the approach that Wellesley has taken in recognizing that for students above a certain family income level, having some amount of student loan at graduation is not necessarily a bad thing. It provides a certain level of buy in when the student knows that they will have to pay back part of their education without causing the severe stress that excessive loans can cause new graduates.

The New York Times has a recent article about summer pre-college programs where students travel around the country, or around the world, taking classes or exploring the world. I think some of these programs are fine and if a student has an interest in a particular program and the family can afford the program then it is not a bad way to spend some time in the summer. However, many students feel that they need to participate in this type of program to be viable candidates for selective colleges which is not true.

At one point colleges might have been impressed by the student who spends the summer in Italy taking an art course but those days are gone for most colleges. The highly selective colleges recognize these programs are often simply a venue to "enhance" a students resume and they are rarely impressed that a student attended such a program. Moreover, they can sometimes work a disadvantage in the application process because many of these students come off as just like every other applicant who has lots of advantages in life. The unusual student, and the one that often catches the eye of the admissions committee, is the student from a well to do family who spends the summer working at a job because it is unusual for such a student to have a summer job.

Summer programs are fine and if they enhance the students background in their field of interest they can be helpful for admissions purposes. For instance, if the student's focus throughout high school has been on art and its many aspects, spending time in Italy studying art may be helpful. But don't be misled into thinking that you need such a program to be a successful applicant at a highly selective college.

If you are looking for a summer program to enhance your ongoing interests, there is a good new website called Enrichment Alley that I would recommend checking out. This is a nice website in part because many of the programs listed are for students who do not have the resources to attend one of the fancy programs discussed in the Times article.

Northwestern University has announced an adjustment to their current aid policy but is taking a different approach than many of its peers. They have announced that loans will be replaced with grants for "undergraduates with the greatest financial need" starting Fall 2008. What the phrase "greatest financial need" means is not defined. Northwestern's position is that it is more equitable to keep the term undefined since there are some families with higher income that may have unusual expenses such as high medical bills or the need to care for grandparents. Northwestern will also be capping subsidized Stafford and Perkins loans at no more than $20,000 for 4 years.

I am uncertain how Northwestern's policy will work since there seems to be an internal inconsistency. Most students who qualify for subsidized Stafford and Perkins loans qualify for such loans because of low family income. If these students don't qualify for loan replacement, and they presumably won't since their loans are capped at $20,000, then who exactly will qualify for Northwestern's new loan elimination policy? Student's with family income below $10,000 or $20,000? Frankly, as a counselor advising students on what colleges to consider, where financial aid is one of the considerations, I am not at all confident that this change at Northwestern will have any practical effect on financial aid for most students. Given the substantial size of Northwestern's endowment, that is unfortunate.

Another highly selective college has joined the ranks of those schools that are reducing the loan obligations for undergraduate students. Cornell University has replaced need based loans with grants for families earning less than $75,000 per year. This new policy will be phased in over the next 2 years with loans eliminated next school year for undergraduate students with less than $60,000 in family income. Also during that time, loans for student's with family income between $60,000 and $120,000 will have loans capped at $3,000. In the 2009-2010 school year the full policy of loan elimination will occur for all undergraduate students with family income below $75,000 and will cap loans at $3,000 for students with family income between $75,000 and $120,000.

Congratulations Cornell.

Every year the National Association of College and University Business Officers, NACUBO, releases an endowment study listing the endowment of over 700 colleges throughout the country. The 2007 report on endowments is now out and the biggest news is the amount of growth in the endowments, particularly the largest endowments. The average listed endowment rose 18.4% over last year. Notre Dame went up 34.7% and Duke was up 31.4% for two of the largest percentage increases. Harvard was up 19.8% but given the size of its endowment that meant an increase of almost 6 billion dollars over last year.

There are now 141 colleges with endowments exceeding $500 million and 76 of those have endowments exceeding 1 billion dollars. Given those kinds of numbers, the increasing financial aid packages being announced by some of the wealthiest colleges loses some of its splendor. Hopefully more of the colleges on the high side of this list who have yet to act will also revise their financial aid policies to increase aid to lower and middle income students.

Colby College is the latest college to announce that they will be replacing loans with grants for all students. Colby is a small liberal arts college in Maine that is highly selective. Colby's new policy goes into effect for the 2008-2009 school year and eliminates loans for all student aid packages for both new and continuing students.

Although Colby has a significant endowment of almost $600,000,000 it is still substantially less than many of the other colleges that have announced similar policies in the past few months. The more this type of policy can trickle down the better off student who are looking at selective colleges will be.

Dartmouth College has announced that effective with the 2008-2009 school year they will have a revised financial aid policy that will include, among other items, the replacement of loans with grants for incoming freshman.

Dartmouth's new policy has 4 key elements. The first is the elimination of tuition for families earning less than $75,000 per year. This policy is different than that of most of the other colleges that have recently announced new aid policies in that it applies only to tuition. Students will still have responsibility for room, board, books and other costs although as the college points out, many of these students will receive aid to cover much of these costs as well.

The second element of their new policy is replacing loans with grants. As noted above, this will take place for new students only. Current students will have their loan obligations cut by 50% starting with the next school year and continuing for each of their remaining years at the college.

The third element of Dartmouth's new aid policy is that they are going need blind for international students. This means that when students are evaluated for admission their ability to pay will not be considered for any student, even though from foreign countries. This is unusual as few colleges in the United States provide need blind admissions for foreign students.

The fourth, and final, new policy is that students in their junior year will be allowed a leave term with no earning expectation. In the past, when students were on leave they were expected to earn a certain amount of money that would be contributed toward their education. Wealthy students, who did not need to worry about such contributions, would often engage in non wage earnings pursuits such as research or volunteer activities during this time . The college will now be giving junior students an additional scholarship of $2,950 to allow students receiving financial aid the same research and volunteer opportunities as wealthier students.

It is good to see Dartmouth joining the ranks of wealthy colleges who are making an effort to make college more affordable for those with lower incomes.

Bowdoin college has announced that they are joining the ranks of the colleges that are eliminating all loans for its students. Beginning with the 2008-2009 school year Bowdoin will replace loans with grants for all of its students both new and returning.

Congratulations, Bowdoin.

To qualify for Federal financial aid a student and their family needs to complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, aka the FAFSA. The priority deadline to complete the FAFSA varies from college to college but is often between February 1 and March 15 of the student's senior year so many people are currently working on, or thinking about working on, their FAFSA.

At the end of the FAFSA you are asked to list the colleges to which the FAFSA should be sent. Every year some people ask if the order of the colleges listed makes any difference. In other words, if you put College A before College B does that somehow indicate a greater interest in College A for admissions. For most colleges the answer is no, it does not make any difference in which order the colleges are listed. However, there are some colleges where it might make a difference in admissions or in the financial aid package the college gives the student. If the college looks at your list of colleges and determines that they are a likely choice for you if admitted and if you are the type of student they want, they may put together a financial aid package that is more attractive than they might otherwise do. On the other hand, if they perceive that they are less likely to have you enroll they may save their better financial aid packages for another student.

So what to you do? You have two basic options. One is to put the colleges in your order of preference and don't worry about the effect that may have. The second option is to put your colleges in alphabetical order thus sending the message to the colleges that the order of the list has no importance.

The executive director of the Common Application, Rob Killion, has released the numbers of applications through January 15. According to him the Common Application had 1,281,196 applications this year (a 40% increase) from 367,994 unique applicants. This means the average applicant this year submitted about 3.5 applications through the Common Application. This number is consistent with the number of applications submitted per student in the past several years. This means that the increase in application numbers is due to more students using the Common Application which is consistent with the increasing number of colleges using the Common Application and the fact that the majority of the most selective colleges use this form for their applications.

These facts seem to confirm that the stories of students submitting 15, 20 or more applications is not the norm among students submitting college applications.

The Common Application also announced that 23 new colleges which will begin using the Common Application next year.

Many of the most selective colleges are starting to release their application numbers and as expected the number of applications at many of these colleges again set records. Here is the bad news:

Harvard applications are up 18% to more than 27,000
Princeton applications are up 6% to 20,188
Stanford applications are up 2.5% to 24,564
Brown applications are up 7.5% to 20,505
Duke applications are up 5.4% to 20,250
University of Virginia applications are up 3.8% to 18,776
University of Chicago applications are up 18% to 12,267
Northwestern applications are up 12% to more than 25,000
Amherst applications are up 17%
Dartmouth applications are up 10%

But enough of the bad news because there is some good news also. According to a survey of 386 colleges by the National Association for College Admission Counseling the average college acceptance rate is still 69%. In other words, as long as you are willing to consider a school outside the most selective colleges, there is still a reasonable acceptance rate with most colleges. As always, don't get hung up on the name of the college. Find the best college for your needs and if it one of the most selective, have a good safety.

It is that time of year again. Some applicants to colleges are submitting more than the requested applications. The Boston Globe discusses some of the items sent to admissions offices in the hope that they would improve the applicants chance at admissions.

Let's keep this simple. DON'T do this. The message you are sending along with the gimmick is that your application is not strong enough on its own to allow you to gain admission. Instead, work on your grades, prepare for standardized tests, spend time at your favorite extracurricular activity and if you really have some extra time, spend it on polishing the application and essay. Doing these things will help your chances of admissions. Submitting something to make you the joke of the admissions office will not help your chances.

With all of the news of the wealthy colleges restructuring their financial aid programs, Blackburn College in Illinois is trying another approach. Unlike many of the colleges in the news recently, Blackburn has a very limited endowment on which to draw for financial aid packages. Their approach is to reduce their tuition and adopt a "no haggle" approach to financial aid. In other words, the stated price is what it costs and they will not negotiate based on a student's receipt of an aid offer from another college.

Whether this is a good approach remains to be seen but I congratulate Blackburn on trying something different in their approach to helping students pay for college. It would be wonderful if all colleges had the resources of Harvard and Yale but unfortunately that is not the case. Many colleges are much closer to Blackburn than the wealthy colleges in the news of late and they need to also come up with improved financial aid options for new students.

As expected, Yale has announced that they have a new financial aid policy that is very similar to the one adopted by Harvard several weeks ago. Those families making less than $60,000 a year will not need to contribute to the cost of education at all. For those families earning between $60,000 and $120,000, there will be a sliding scale from 1 to 10% of total family income for a typical contribution. For those families with income between $120,000 and $200,000 they will average a contribution of 10% of total income. Other aspects of the new aid policy can be found on their web site.

The New York Times recently published an article discussing the need for counselors to work with students in finding the best college for their needs. While the article simply restated the fact that most high school students have inadequate college counseling, I was struck when actually considering the numbers.

The article addressed some of the numbers from the State of College Admission 2007 which is published by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The average public high school counselor spends only 23% of their time advising 311 students on colleges. When this is broken down it turns out that the typical public high school counselor spends 64 minutes during the entire year advising students on issues related to colleges. Even more disturbing, only 10% of public high schools provide a college counselor specialist for their students.

Surprisingly, the typical private school counselor doesn't fair that much better. Private school counselors spend 56% of their time advising students on colleges and have 234 students to advise. This breaks down to 3 hours and 26 minutes that the private school counselor has for each student in their college advising.

In preparing for college students need to consider the courses they are taking, what courses to take, what tests to take and when, what extracurricular involvement they should have, what colleges to consider, factors to consider in deciding how to pay for college, the application process and when to apply, factors considering the college visit, who and when to ask for recommendations and the list keeps going. It is unfortunate that this country continues to inadequately fund schools so that there are not enough qualified counselors. But it is a national disgrace to think that students are only provided with one hour of advice on all of the issues surrounding the search for the right college.

High school seniors and their families need to be working on completion of the FAFSA for next year's financial aid. The FAFSA is required by all colleges to qualify for federal financial aid and should be filed as soon as possible. Most colleges have a priority filing deadline which can be as early as January 15. The FAFSA needs to be filed by the priority deadline to make sure that the student will be eligible for all possible federal financial aid. You should check with each of the colleges in which you have an interest to learn what their priority filing deadline is.

The FAFSA requires information similar to that required on the tax returns. However, if students and their parents don't have their tax returns completed by the priority date for filing at the colleges in which you have an interest, file the FAFSA using estimated information. It is understood that some people will not have all of their information available in time to file the FAFSA and estimated information is perfectly acceptable. You can revise the FAFSA once you have acquired all of the necessary information.

With the new year comes the time for high school juniors to begin the college admissions process if they haven't already started. College may still seem a long way away but there is much that needs to be done to make sure that the student finds the right college for their needs. Students should be taking at least one and ideally two standardized tests before the end of the school year so that testing is not required in the senior year. The process of visiting colleges should also be started in the next few months.

For more detailed information about what needs to be done to find the right college check out our articles on the college admissions process. Here we have articles on Finding the Right College as well as What Colleges Want in choosing a freshman class. We also have articles on Financial Aid and Common Mistakes in Choosing a College. Here is also a detailed 4 year college admissions time line.

What ever you do, don't wait to get started. Putting off the investigation of the best college for you only makes for a more difficult senior year and often leads to a poor result in the college chosen.