Even More Ways to Connect with Colleges You Can’t Visit

Georgetown University

Colleges generally expect students living within a “reasonable” distance of their campuses to make an effort to visit.  It not only demonstrates interest but also shows the applicant is doing his or her best to determine if a college represents a good “fit.”

But these trips are expensive and time-consuming, and it may not always be possible to tour all the colleges on your list. If that’s the case, here are a few alternatives to the in-person tour:

1.  Get on the mailing list. Colleges maintain mailing lists for the purpose of communicating directly with students. Take advantage of the opportunity to receive information and learn more about the colleges you are considering by “intentionally” getting on mailing lists. In other words, “request information.” But be aware:  once you agree to receive these communications electronically, be sure to open your email.  Colleges have software that allows them to see if you dump their messages directly into trash.  Yes, colleges can be annoying to the point of spamming prospective applicants.  But in the era of “big data,” you need to know that colleges have the capability of tracking your response to what they are selling.

2.  Subscribe to college blogs. An increasing number of colleges are opening lines of communication through blogs. Bloggers can be admissions staff or students who have agreed to write regular columns on their experiences. Both can be enormously helpful in understanding the college, its community, and the process for submitting a successful application.

3.  Attend college fairs. Colleges and universities typically send admissions staff or alumni representatives to fairs all over the country. There are regional fairs or fairs centered on a theme or an alliance of colleges. Although they can be hectic, college fairs are great opportunities to make connections and pick up some glossy brochures.

4.  Sign-up for school-based presentations. In the fall, colleges send admissions representatives to meet with high school students on their turf. These events are generally organized through student services or the college/career office. Be sure to keep up with the schedule of visits and sign-up for presentations that interest you.

5.  Try the virtual method. Colleges are increasingly participating in websites designed to support “virtual” visits to their campuses. The most popular of these sites include CampusTours.com, ecampustours.com, and YOUniversityTV.com. In fact, you can even attend a virtual college fair at CollegeWeekLive.com or view a college lecture via podcast through iTunes U. YouTube offers some professionally produced marketing pieces as well as a huge sample of student videos, which can also be found on TheU.com. And finally, check out on-campus webcams, which more enterprising colleges use to give viewers a sense of “being there.”

6.  “Friend” a college. Colleges discovered that high school students spend lots of time on Facebook. Surprise! As a result, many have built their own “fan” pages, which they use as tools to display videos, pictures, and news articles about their schools. By coming to students on Facebook, colleges keep in touch with potential applicants as well as provide them with important information and invitations to events.

7.  Tweet. For the most part, colleges don’t expect their Twitter accounts to necessarily result in active exchanges with high school students. They’re content to establish these forums to pass along newsworthy items or basic information. By following a few colleges, you can use Twitter as a tool for gathering data or keeping abreast of deadlines.

8.  Work the local network.  Touch base with friends, relatives, and neighbors—see what they know.  You might be surprised at how many have actually visited the campuses in which you are most interested and have useful information and impressions. Or check with admissions offices for the names of local alums who may be willing to spend some time with you. 

9.  Check out campus media. There’s hardly a college in the country that doesn’t have a student-run newspaper. Most also have campus radio and/or television stations. What better way to keep up with campus goings on—without editorial oversight from the admissions office or college marketing. You can find most newspapers online, and with a little creative searching you can stream a live radio or TV broadcast.

10.  Sign up for an online class.  One of the side benefits of the massive open online course (MOOC) movement is the ability to take college-level classes without leaving the comfort of your living room.  If some of the colleges on your list are offering online classes through Coursera, Udacity, or  edX, you can get a feel for some of what goes on in classrooms on campus by signing up and actually taking or auditing a course—you might even learn something useful!

11.  Attend a reception. A local or regional college reception is less of a social event and more of an off-campus information session. Don’t go for the food, but consider it another opportunity to meet admissions staff, ask questions, and pick up more marketing material. You’ll also get a good peek at the competition—students from other high schools in your area who are likely to apply to the college sponsoring the event.

12.  Schedule a local interview. Many colleges are expanding their capacity to provide off-campus interviews either conducted by admissions staff or alumni in the area. Although the staff interviews are largely extensions of the service offered on-campus, alumni interviews usually kick in after you’ve submitted an application. Either interview may be “informational” or “evaluative.” Regardless, don’t neglect this very important method of connecting with the college of your choice.

Common App promises to do better but offers no apology

Tufts extended its deadline and brought on the UCA

In a widely-distributed Statement of Commitment issued yesterday, the Common Application promised to do better after nearly three months of increasingly urgent complaints coming from those most affected by a series of problems plaguing the online college application.

"The last few days have comprised the most difficult period in The Common Application's nearly 40 years of service to the education community,” wrote Aba Blankson, director of communications.

Without reference to management decisions resulting in the early release of an untested application product, the statement focused instead on a series of “core values”—Reliability, Service, and Integrity—and on improved customer communication.

“Beginning next week, we will be using our School Officials newsletter list to send daily updates to the counseling community, and we encourage you to subscribe,” said Blankson. “As much as we would like to communicate this same information directly to applicants, messaging 800,000 registered users would create too big a strain on the system, exacerbating the very problems we are trying to solve.”

The statement also suggested that an unnamed third party billing entity and Google Chrome shared blame for the most visible and vexing of the many problems experienced by applicants, recommenders, and colleges.

No apologies were offered, and in a separate statement to the New York Times, Rob Killion, chief executive officer of the Common App claimed in reference to ongoing technology issues, “We’re very close to having them all fixed. Most of them are.”

But response was clearly mixed to Common App claims that the most serious problems involving payments and a faulty connection to Chrome were fully resolved.

“Your attempt to convince people of your reliability and integrity would ring a lot more true if you had not been allowing problems to go on for months with empty promises since the day you went online Aug 1,” said one commenter on Facebook.

In addition to issues affecting application submission, a key connection between Naviance document system (recommendations and transcripts) and the Common Application has been remarkably slow to come on line despite a shared association with Hobsons.  

Much to the relief of schools using Naviance, the required Early Decision document finally became accessible on Thursday—almost three months after the system was supposed to be fully operational.  Fee Waiver forms and Optional Reports are still not available. 

Increasingly concerned about being able to provide timely decisions to applicants, colleges started looking for ways to work around their inability to properly connect with the Common App system, obtain required supporting documents, and read applications online.  

Princeton and Tufts took steps to offer applicants an alternative by joining the Universal College Application, while others emphasized the availability of different application products or simply removed links to the Common Application from their websites.

Other colleges, such as DePaul University in Chicago and Catholic University in Washington DC, have been downloading and printing individual applications (a minimum of seven pages each) and scanning them by hand into their electronic application management systems.

And concern about the system’s ability to handle heavy traffic during peak application periods led a large number of schools to push back early application deadlines.

After both Chapel Hill and Georgia Tech moved their deadlines to October 21, Barnard, Columbia, University of Chicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, TCU, Duke, Marist, Tufts, Lewis and Clark, and Dartmouth  pushed back early deadlines to Friday, November 8.   

Boston University, Morehouse College, and Bentley moved their first deadlines to November 15, while George Washington University moved its first early decision deadline to November 11.

As of this writing, the University of Virginia, William and Mary, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard are sticking with November 1 early action deadlines while making clear they are willing to work with students experiencing technical problems with application submission.

In the meantime, counselors have been working overtime to provide technical support and training to applicants, teachers, and other recommenders.

“I don't have time to train my teachers. I already had to work with our tech guy for 2 weeks to solve browser issues. Now our supported browser doesn't print preview and my teachers can't log on. What compensation do we get for our troubles,” asked a school counselor in upstate New York .  “I have been hosting kids in the computer lab 2 days a week to help them.” 

And despite whatever management and technical problems still exist within the Common Application, students are advised not to panic, look for alternatives, rely on college websites for up-to-date and accurate information, and focus on getting elements of their applications completed for submission well in advance of deadlines.

Fall College Fair draws Thousands

University of Pittsburgh

Anyone who has attended a FCPS College Fair knows this tends to be a hectic event. 

With about 400 colleges and thousands of high school students and their families crowding into Fair Oaks Mall, things get a little crazy with lines building early at the exhibits.

But it’s an annual event and a rite of passage for some, as FCPS college fairs are among the largest and best attended in the DC area. 

This year, students are invited to “pre-register” online using software that links them with colleges through the magic of a barcode scanned during visits with admissions representatives attending the fair.

“The online registration process creates a barcode that students bring with them to the fair,” said Marian M. Kendrick, FCPS College Fair/College Night liaison. “It streamlines the process for students and colleges and improves the flow of the whole fair.”

Students who have attended National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) fairs will recognize the scanners. The technology is provided by gotocollegefairs.com and is the same as that used by NACAC since 2007.

Logging on to the 2013 FCPS College Fair & Night registration site, students provide basic contact information, an indication of academic interests, and graduation year and high school.

In return, they receive an “Admittance Pass” (personalized barcode) that is printed out and brought to the fair. College reps scan the barcode as a way to retrieve information thereby eliminating the need for visitors to complete individual registration cards at every table.

After the fair, students return home with the usual stack of glossy brochures and a few business cards, while colleges return with important information on interested students.

 And two to three days after the fair, colleges will have all their leads emailed to them in an Excel spreadsheet, so they can start the follow-up process right away.

But the system isn’t perfect, and colleges complain about the “strength” of the leads they receive through the electronic system.  Students who blow past an exhibit and wave the scanner in the direction of the admissions representative aren’t demonstrating the kind of serious interest they like to see.

To reinforce interest, students should take time to ask a few questions and collect a business card.  Later in the evening, follow-up with a quick note to the person with whom you spoke underscoring your interest and desire to investigate the school further.

This year’s fair will be held at Fair Oaks Shopping Mall on Sunday, October 20, from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm, and a follow-up College Night will take place at Hayfield Secondary School on Monday, October 21, from 7:00 to 9:00.

Students planning to attend either event are encouraged, but not required to pre-register. Those who have not pre-registered, however, will not be given barcodes on the night of the fair. They’re on their own with low-tech methods of providing information to colleges. Pre-printed labels for this purpose are recommended.

For more information or to see the growing list of colleges participating in the 2013 College Fair & Night, visit the FCPS School Counseling Services webpage.

UNC Chapel Hill and Georgia Tech Forced to Extend Early Deadlines

Georgia Tech

Imagine you’re a high school student coming up against the first of a series of early college application deadlines.  And the “exclusive” application provider on which you must depend slowly grinds to a halt and eventually crashes—simply crashes—a little more than 24 hours in advance of deadline.

And you can’t submit your application.

“I don’t even own a computer at the moment so I’m at the office in my complex trying to apply and can’t,” said one young woman on the Common Application Facebook page. “Please fix the problem my life depends on it. I need to go to college so I can better my situation.”

Faced with hundreds of emails and calls from applicants and counselors unable to log-in the day before October 15 early action deadlines, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Georgia Tech almost simultaneously announced extensions to Monday, October, 21, at 11:59 p.m.

“Please know that we’re very sorry for any technical difficulties you may have experienced while trying to submit your application,” apologized UNC Chapel Hill. “We are in regular communication with the Common Application, which is doing their best to resolve these issues.”

Reacting to similar complaints, Duke University also did away with its priority Early Decision application deadline of October 15, by which applicants were guaranteed to have interviews.

“We completely understand what’s going on and want to reduce stress in any way possible,” said a representative of the Duke admissions office. “October 15 is no longer a priority.”

Although plagued with problems since it launched on August 1, the Common Application began to show serious signs of stress the weekend before its first big test on October 15.

“Restarting my computer, switching browsers, and updating Adobe all did nothing,” said one frustrated applicant on College Confidential. “Just in case it has something to do with the amount of traffic on the site right now, I'm going to try again late at night when less people are likely to be up.”

And as it turned out, once traffic decreased after midnight, applicants were able to generate Print Previews and complete the submission process.

But the relief was short-lived.  By early morning, the system was so jammed with applicants and recommenders trying to submit documents, that log-ins became impossible.  This finally forced  a response from the Common Application on a forum sponsored by the National Association of College Admission Counseling:

 “The slowness is due to a spike in activity among recommenders, which is having an impact in system performance for all users. The result is a time-out issue, which presents itself to users as an unsuccessful login error. We first observed the issue around 9:00 AM ET. Troubleshooting allowed us to resolve the problem within about 30 minutes.  Unfortunately, the issue cropped up again about 30 minutes later and continues to persist.”

And students hoping to use the Columbus Day weekend and holiday to submit college applications through the Common App system were forced to temporarily sit it out.

“At this point, I think I might as well just email my colleges a screenshot of the buffering page,” concluded one student.