Parents

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How universities are organized

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How universities are organized

Here's a pop quiz for you: what's the difference between Harvard College and Harvard University? I'll answer at the bottom.

But first here's a story. A few weeks ago I was at a conference for educational consultants, in a session about demonstrated interest. One of the presenters gave an interesting example from when he was an admissions officer at a major university in the Mid-West. He said a high school student flew in from the West Coast to do an on-campus interview. That's definitely a sign of demonstrated interest. However, the student ruined it when he said in the interview that he was really excited about studying business. This particular university has a well-known business school for people getting an M.B.A., but doesn't offer business as a major in the undergraduate program. And this, the presenter said, was a negative sign of demonstrated interest. The kid says he's really interested in the school, but doesn't even know they don't offer the major he wants?

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The Glossary: need blind

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The Glossary: need blind

There are currently around 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. that claim to offer need-blind admissions. Need blind sounds really great, but what exactly does it mean?

Need blind means that the school's admissions staff don't take your financial situation into account when they consider whether to accept or deny you. Your ability to pay isn't a factor. It does not mean that they don't know anything about your financial situation.

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The Glossary: early action

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The Glossary: early action

Early Action is just like regular admissions...only you do it earlier. You have an earlier deadline, and you get an answer back early. Whereas most regular application deadlines are somewhere around January 1, most Early Action deadlines are around October 1. And instead of getting a decision back in March, you get it in December. It's not Early Decision--you aren't committed to going to the school if you get accepted. You have until May 1 to make your decision, and you're welcome to turn them down even though they accepted you Early Action.

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The Glossary: early decision

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The Glossary: early decision

Not all universities offer an Early Decision option, and each one might have its own fun little stipulations and rules. But the basic idea of Early Decision is that you turn in your application early, you get a decision from the school early, and if you get accepted you agree to go there and withdraw any other applications you may have also sent. This requirement that you enroll if you're accepted is why Early Decision is usually referred to as "binding." Early Decision is often confused with Early Action, which I'll write about separately next week. But for today, remember that Early Decision is exactly what it sounds like: you decide early that you really want to go this school; they decide early if they're going to accept you; if they do, then it's decided--early--that you will definitely go there.


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Jack is ready to make decisions

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Jack is ready to make decisions

I didn't hear back from Jack's March questions until April 1, when I was about to send April questions. So this will count as a March/April installation, and we'll hear back from him after he makes his final decision by May 1. It looks like he's going to be choosing between Pitzer and Brandeis, although you never know how last-minute decisions work out. Read the full interview below, and check back in May to see how things wrap up!

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What if you get a full ride?

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What if you get a full ride?

Let's be clear: getting a full scholarship is very rare. Fewer than one percent of college applicants end up getting to go for free. It takes more than just being a good student who wrote a good application essay. But still, one percent is still thousands of students a year, so you may want to do some thinking and planning, just in case.

Here's a simple rule to help you know how to think about full scholarships: you should not pass up a full ride. If you apply to a school and they offer you a full scholarship, go to that school.

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The Glossary: holistic admissions

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The Glossary: holistic admissions

Most American universities use some form of holistic admissions to determine who they will invite to enroll at their school. "Holistic" means that they look at the whole applicant and the whole application, and it usually means they look at the whole application together. There are no cut-off test scores; there is no formula for how to score and weight each portion of the application; there is no "magic bullet" that will earn you admission or get you rejected. This means that you can't necessarily make sense of the results by only looking at a part, because they take the whole into consideration. So a person may get accepted while someone with lower test scores does not. A person who writes a really crappy essay may still get accepted if the other parts of the application look great. 

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Making the most of a campus tour

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Making the most of a campus tour

My main piece of advice for college campus visits, whether it's a multi-day event or a one-hour walkthrough, is to remember to be an active investigator while you're there. Unless it's just an early practice tour, you're not there to just be led around. Ok, you're literally there to be led around, but not in the big picture.

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Go on practice college visits

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Go on practice college visits

For many high school students, especially those in the 11th grade, Spring Break is the designated time for college campus visits. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is "normal." Lots of students do this, yes. But lots of students don't do many--or any--visits until they're seniors and visit only schools they've been admitted to. And plenty of students don't visit a college at all until they show up in the fall of their first year as college students. What's "normal" is up to you and what you think is really best for you. While I don't recommend skipping college visits altogether, neither do I recommend going on big multi-campus trips just for the heck of it. 

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Jack has good news!

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Jack has good news!

Jack is beginning to get word back from schools, and most of it so far is good news! But one thing we've learned about Jack over the past six months is that he's always trying to do more. He says that, even though he's been accepted a few places and is still setting up interviews, he kind of wishes he could still apply to more schools. Here's the full interview below.

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Asking for more money

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Asking for more money

Now is the season when acceptance letters begin to arrive for a lot of seniors, and with those come financial aid packages. The bad news is that very few students receive "full ride" scholarship or aid packages that cover everything....When you get your aid offer, you're very likely to want it to be more. You're also pretty likely to need it to be more, though wanting and needing are different. How do you ask for more money?

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The Glossary: demonstrated interest

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The Glossary: demonstrated interest

Demonstrated interest is a term you'll hear often when people talk about college admissions. It means, well, exactly what it says: you've demonstrated that you're interested in a college you've applied to.

It seems like it should be obvious that you're interested if you've applied, but that's not necessarily the case. University admissions staff know that you may have applied because you really want to be there. They know that you may have applied because it's your safety school and not actually someplace you want to be if you can help it. They know that you may have applied because your boyfriend, girlfriend, or best friend applied, and you're actually kind of secretly hoping that you don't get in. They know that your family may have pressured you to apply. They know that you may actually have no idea why you applied--that happens all the time.

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Will a Humanities degree make you poor?

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Will a Humanities degree make you poor?

"I'm an English major. Would you like fries with that?" That was the joke back when I was an English major, and I imagine it's still the joke among English majors today, that four to six years of intense study is only going to put you in a minimum wage job. There's a pretty strong idea in our culture that people earning degrees in the Humanities are going to have difficulty finding good jobs. What exactly do I mean by Humanities? Each school defines its majors and departments a little differently, but as a rule of thumb think of degrees that require almost no math or science but lots of reading, and aren't geared toward a specific career. English, History, Philosophy, Religion, Languages. Things like that. 

But does this stereotype hold up?

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Getting good advice from your family

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Getting good advice from your family

I was a little surprised to read last week that the people who have the most influence on high school students' college decisions is their parents. (You can read the full Department of Education report here.) For an example of why I found that surprising, consider that a friend told me that the number one question his high schooler son asks him about college is "why do you keep talking to me about college?" But it also makes sense, because your parents have been talking to you about college, directly or indirectly, like it or not, a lot longer than anyone else has. Unless you're going to completely ignore your family and go straight to the second-largest influence, "myself," you can get the most wisdom from what your family says to you.