College Admissions Counseling Blog

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.