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.