Colleges where our veterans succeed

Catholic University earned a spot on the Best for Vets list

Despite the very real challenges they face transitioning to civilian life, veterans are putting up some amazing college completion numbers.  In fact, they are earning degrees at rates that aren’t very different from the rates of traditional students who attend college full-time and without any interruptions.

And most are completing in about the same time as their peers, according to a report released by the Student Veterans of America (SVA), the National Student Clearinghouse, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“Americans have invested substantial dollars in giving our veterans an opportunity to further their education and this report shows many positive signs that they are doing just that,” Wayne Robinson, SVA president and CEO said in a statement. “The majority of student veterans accessing their GI Bill benefits are completing degrees and showing unparalleled determination to do so, despite many unique barriers.”

The Million Records Project analyzed data from one million randomly-selected veteran students and compared it with overall enrolment and completion records maintained by the Clearinghouse.  They found that nearly 52 percent of the veterans who began their GI Bill benefits between 2002 and 2010 earned a postsecondary degree or certificate by June 2013—a completion rate similar to traditional college students and greater than other nontraditional students.

Not only were their graduation rates better than anticipated, but many student veterans also went on to pursue higher level degrees:  about 31 percent of those who initially earned a vocational certificate, 35.8 percent of those who earned an associate degree, and 20.8 percent of those who earned a bachelor’s degree went on to earn another degree at a higher level.

More than one million student veterans have used or currently use benefits through the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which has received more than $30 billion from the Department of Veteran Affairs since 2009.   According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the pool of undergraduate student veterans is growing on college campuses and currently numbers around 660,000 or three percent of undergrads nationwide.  About 215,000 of these are military service members on active duty or in the reserves.

To help veterans make decisions about were to spend their education dollars, two very different news organizations using two very different sets of criteria have recently developed lists of the best colleges and universities for vets.

Using only numerically ranked schools from the 2014 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges, U.S. News lists Penn State, Tulane, University of Texas-Austin, Syracuse, and Texas A&M as the top five national best universities for veterans.  The top five liberal arts colleges are Muhlenberg, Lewis & Clark, Hillsdale, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and Albion College.

The only local universities to make the U.S. News best universities for veterans list are Catholic University (24), George Mason University (28), and Virginia Commonwealth University (39).

Coming from a somewhat different direction, the Military Times probes everything from the availability of a veterans office to academic support and graduation rates.  Their top ten ranking is as follows:

• D’Youville College
• University of Nebraska Omaha
• Concord University
• Rutgers University
• University of South Florida
• University of the Incarnate Word
• Western Kentucky University
• Southern Illinois University Carbondale
• South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• Florida State University

Local schools earning a spot on the Best for Vets list include Old Dominion University (30), George Washington University (61), and Towson University (85).

The important take-away for veterans is that there are lots of wonderful opportunities available for them to earn degrees and succeed at rates comparable to the traditional college-going population.

Colleges benefitting the most from Parent PLUS Loans

In 2012-13, NYU received over $127M in funds disbursed through Parent PLUS.

One of the more popular ways families find money to help pay for college is through the use of federal Parent PLUS loans.  In a nutshell, the Parent PLUS loan program provides unsubsidized loans to any parent on behalf of their child up to the cost of attending college (including living expenses) minus all other student aid.  

Hint:  everyone who completes the FAFSA is invited to apply for a PLUS loan.

What makes Parent PLUS loans different from other federal student loans is that interest rates are higher—6.41 percent versus 3.86 percent—and payments begin immediately after funds are disbursed.  Note that PLUS loans are a debt incurred strictly by parents and cannot be transferred to the child.

And like other federal loans, they are nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. 

 

Despite the less-than-ideal terms, PLUS loans have become popular tools for financing the cost of increasingly expensive postsecondary education.  At the program’s peak in 2011 (before stiffer parent credit checks went into effect), there were almost one million borrowers and $11 billion in disbursements.  And in the 2011-12 academic year, about 13.8 percent of undergraduate students had parents who borrowed PLUS loans on their behalf.

But it’s a controversial program insofar questions persist as to ease of use and the level of debt incurred by uninformed or naïve families anxious to support the college dreams of their children.

For this reason, various oversight agencies have begun taking a closer look at who is using Parent PLUS loans and to what end.  Equally concerning is how various colleges and universities benefit from the availability of these loans.

From data collected by the Chronicle of Higher Education, here are the colleges where parents had the highest average loan size in 2010-11:

• French Culinary Institute*:  $37,522
• Berklee College of Music:  $33,092
• Art Center College of Design:  $33,070
• Boston Conservatory:  $30,138
• West Coast University*:  $29,484
• Brooks Institute*:  $29,341
• Rhode Island School of Design:  $29,255
• Full Sail University*:  $28,634
• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University:  $28,137
• New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts*:  $27,432
• New York University:  $27,305
• Neumont University*:  $27,278
• Dartmouth College:  $26,978
• California Institute of the Arts:  $26742
• American Musical and Dramatic Academy:  $26,667

The American Enterprise Institute (AIE) has also been tracking where PLUS loans are popular tools for financing education.  According to the AIE, the top 15 colleges receiving Parent PLUS by disbursement amount in 2012-13 were

• New York University:  $127.32M
• Arizona State University:  $80.14M
• Michigan State University:  $75.01M
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:  $73.09M
• Saint John’s University:  $66.17M
• University of Texas at Austin:  $63.15M
• Savannah College of Art and Design:  $62.38M
• Full Sail University*:  $57.59M
• Purdue University:  $56.14M
• West Virginia University:  $55.92M
• DePaul University:  $55.44M
• University of Oregon:  $51.65M
• Ohio State University:  $48.74M
• University of Cincinnati:   $48.74M
• Columbia College:  $47.77M

Before agreeing to a Parent PLUS loan, do your research.  One good resource College Reality Check, which is an interactive website designed to guide prospective college students and their families using comparisons of key statistics such as net price, debt at graduation, and monthly loan payments.

And be sure to cover your bases by looking at institutional outcomes such as graduation rates, job placement statistics, and average earnings of recent grads.  CollegeMeasures.org provides earnings of recent graduates from Tennessee, Virginia, Colorado, Texas and Florida colleges and universities.

At the end of the day, Parent PLUS can be an expensive form of financing that potentially puts parental assets and retirement at risk.  So educate yourself before blindly signing off on more debt than your graduate can ever hope to cover in a reasonable amount of time.

*For profit institution

When ‘senioritis’ becomes epidemic

Penn sends warning letters to some admitted students every year.

For high school teachers and counselors, the symptoms of “senioritis” are all too familiar—an “I don’t care attitude” characterized by lack of motivation and general bad behavior.

It usually strikes some time shortly after seniors receive college acceptance letters. For those with early results, symptoms may appear as soon as mid-December. 

School administrators report, however, that the onset of senioritis usually coincides with warm weather and only becomes epidemic once the last Advanced Placement test has been completed.  It tends to be very contagious among second semester seniors, who are “so over” high school, they put social before school.

The CDC doesn’t track senioritis.  But judging by the uptick in daytime activity at the mall—before, after, and during school hours—it seems that huge numbers of college-bound seniors are succumbing to advanced stages of what can be a crippling disease.

Although easy to catch, senioritis is hard to cure. Symptoms include skipping class, neglected homework, dropping out of extracurricular activities, failed tests, and way too many lapses in judgment or integrity. You can chart outcomes on a graph: as absenteeism increases, grades decline.

And devoting class time to Instagram and Twitter may be a sign that senioritis is out of control.

For extreme cases, a strong dose of discipline is required as students mindlessly indulge in troublesome behaviors including but not limited to pranks, truancy, substance abuse, or totally inappropriate postings on the internet.

And there are consequences. Colleges accept students on the condition that grades and behavior will remain acceptable.

Decision letters contain carefully worded statements that usually read, “Your admission is contingent on continued successful performance,” meaning the last official part of your application process will involve a review of your final transcript as well as a report from your school counselor.

Failure to live up to expectations can have very painful results such as

• a rescinded offer of admission,
• placement on academic probation before you even begin college,
• delayed or second semester start
• remedial coursework
• a mandatory gap year to grow up, or
• a reduction in financial aid.

No kidding, these things happen.  Seniors who earn D’s during second semester may find they have no college to attend in the fall or a serious loss of scholarship dollars.

A few years ago, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) reported that 1 in 5 or about 22 percent of colleges surveyed revoked offers. And the average number of offers revoked more than doubled from 10 to 23 per school in one year.

In an interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Dean of Admissions Eric Furda said the Office of Admissions usually sends warning letters to admitted students if they detect a “pattern of lower grades” or a failing grades.  Students are asked to provide an explanation, after which a decision is made on an appropriate course of action.

And it can be really costly.

For example, Wilkes University (PA) gives merit-based financial aid based in part on class rank. "[Students] were awarded one merit level based on their class rank at the point of application, but final transcripts showed that their class rank had fallen to such a level that they no longer qualified for the original merit level," the dean of enrollment services reported on the NACAC website. "The damage ranged from $1,000 per year to over $3,000 per year in merit aid."

Sometimes the alert doesn’t come until after graduation.  One local family was put to the test tracking down an errant son who took off for a mission trip to a remote part of South America.  After receiving a final grade report containing two “C’s,” the boy’s prestigious university sent an email demanding an immediate explanation with a clear threat that revocation of his admission was possible.

The young man was eventually located and provided access to internet services which he used to email a detailed explanation and apology to the college. He entered his freshman year on academic probation.

Note that colleges have more incentive than ever to take back offers. With record-breaking applicant pools, unexpectedly high yields, and huge wait lists, schools have many enthusiastic applicants happy to take the places of previously-admitted students who dropped key academic classes, let grades slip, or otherwise got in trouble.

In March, University of Virginia invited several thousand students to be on their wait list, and not all have been released yet. You can bet a bunch of those kids would jump at the opportunity to grab a spot regardless of how it becomes available.

Most seniors will finish the year knowing they’ve completed a job well-done. This warning is not for you.

For those who haven’t quite managed to turn in your last three math assignments, please come home from the beach now…

Harvard makes minor adjustment to admissions policy

Harvard University

Harvard College recently announced a minor adjustment in admissions policies regarding standardized testing requirements for 2014-15.

SAT Subject Tests will be “normally required” rather than “required” as they were in the past.  Along with the new, more expansive wording, applicants will be provided with specific advice about standardized testing and its role in Harvard’s admissions process.

“As access to guidance counseling has deteriorated in the U.S. over the past decade, more outstanding candidates including many top minority students receive little or no advice from counselors and apply to Harvard without Subject Tests,” explained Dean William Fitzsimmons in an email to alumni interviewers.  “Even more worrisome, they may not apply at all.”

Fitzsimmons suggests that some of the “most promising” high school students may view the current two Subject Tests (down from an earlier requirement to submit three) as “a rigid, not particularly challenging and redundant impediment.”

In changing the standardized test requirement, Harvard underscores how much it welcomes “evidence from a wide variety of sources, well beyond the two Subject Tests.”

“The decision whether to take Subject Tests is entirely up to you,” according to new information posted on the Harvard website.  “You should ask yourself whether other academic credentials including, but not limited to, AP results, IB marks, A Levels grades, etc., adequately represent your suitability for studying at Harvard.  If there is any doubt, you should take two Subject Tests.”

Harvard will continue to require all applicants to provide scores from the SAT Reasoning Test OR the ACT Test with Writing.  Applicants may choose which scores to report in accordance with Score Choice policies—Harvard has no problem with Score Choice and wants applicants to choose which scores best represent them.

In addition, Harvard will normally require two Subject Tests.  And if Subject Tests are submitted, it may be “more useful” to choose only one math test rather than two.  Similarly, if a student’s first language is not English, a Subject Test in the first language may be “less helpful.”

Harvard provides no discussion about the possibility of allowing the ACT with Writing to "substitute" for Subject Tests.  The two requirements stand alone.

While not exactly going down the “test-optional” path in admissions, Harvard is signaling some flexibility in its test policies, which is in accordance with ongoing research about the role of standardized tests in predicting academic success in college.  

In 2008, Dean Fitzsimmons chaired a commission convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) that looked at the usefulness of standardized testing in college admissions.  Commission findings along with Harvard’s independent research on what factors best predict academic success led to a reevaluation of policies governing test submission.

“Test scores are just one element of our holistic review,” said Fitzsimmons in an interview with the Harvard Gazette.  “They can be helpful when they are particularly high or low but only in concert with high school grades, teacher recommendations, guidance counselor reports, interviews, essays, and all the achievements a student reports on the application.”

And the new testing policy makes clear that evidence of unusual academic achievement such as
contest results, writing or poetry, science and mathematics research, or academic portfolios of any kind” are welcome.

Note that the policy change will probably have little impact on test scores submitted by most applicants to Harvard.  It will, however, allow the admissions office to consider those applications submitted without Subject Tests from students not aware of the requirement or who feel other scores and accomplishments better represent them.

For more information on the new policy, visit the Harvard College admissions and financial aid webpage.