Fall Is A Great Time To Visit Area College Fairs

Fall is in the air, and college reps all over the country are hitting the road. It’s college fair season, and you are cordially invited to attend one or several fairs depending on where your favorite colleges or universities happen to visit this year.

With the downturn in the economy, these large free gatherings of college admissions reps are bound to be very popular as families look for ways to save money by reducing travel or skipping a few campus visits. If you’re well into the college application process or just beginning to think about what lies ahead, a college fair can be a great way to gather information and meet admissions staff some of whom could eventually read your application.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACC) offers the following reasons for high school students and their parents to seek out college fairs:

1. Personal Contact: Fairs promote direct contact with representatives from hundreds of colleges in one place—usually a convention hall. It’s an opportunity to speak with a human being instead of relying solely on websites or the internet.
2. Aid Information: Some fairs have separate presentations on financial aid options and how to go about obtaining financial assistance. Colleges also provide school-specific information, with many handing out separate pamphlets on their own financial aid programs.
3. Free Advice: Some fairs offer counseling centers where students can get more general guidance on colleges and the college application process. They may also have resource centers for those seeking specific information on testing, financial aid, student loans, or state scholarship information.
4. Budget Savings: Driving to a nearby fair is a good deal cheaper than visiting a bunch of colleges in which you may or may not have real interest. While there’s nothing like setting foot on a campus to get a feel for it, fairs can help parental travel budgets by whittling the list of schools students feel they must visit.
5. Demonstrated Interest: If a student attends a college fair and signs up to be on a mailing list or takes time to meet with a rep, it may go down as “demonstrated interest,” which could help improve chances of acceptance down the road.

Some fairs offer pre-registration options, but most are walk-in events. Prepare for the fair by looking at which colleges plan to be in attendance and highlight those you want to visit, including a few less familiar schools. It’s a good idea to print out a handful of labels with your name, mailing address, phone number, month and year of high school graduation, and an email address. These can be quickly applied to mailing list cards, leaving more time to meet with reps. Be sure to bring a backpack for all the materials you will be receiving, but remember to only take what you need. And finally, ditch your friends. You’ll get much more out of the event if you do it on your own.

Some of the most popular DC area fairs are the NACAC National College Fairs (Baltimore and Washington DC), the NACAC Performing and Visual Arts College Fairs (Washington DC), the Fairfax College Fair (Fair Oaks Mall), Colleges That Change Lives, and College Expos (Baltimore County and Dulles Expo Center). Other popular fairs include the Black College Expo and the Hispanic College Fair. You can also check individual college websites for travel schedules and lists of smaller fairs scheduled throughout the fall and into spring.

Colleges Fumble Score Choice™

As the 2009-2010 application season kicks into gear, it’s evident that a number of colleges and universities still have not gotten the message about SAT Score Choice™ . An informal review of college websites shows that few institutions have adjusted their standardized test instructions or otherwise provided specific guidance on school policies in response to the change in reporting options. In fact, some schools have not updated their web pages from as far back as 2005. The problem is so bad that in many cases it is nearly impossible to discern where a school stands on score reporting.

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because colleges aren’t considering how difficult the question has become for students trying to complete applications and request scores from the College Board. For confirmation, just look at the heated discussions generated on student message boards. Confusion and bad advice are tangled with ethical and moral dilemmas that could be easily solved with a little more information. Of course the easiest solution is just to send all scores to all schools, but not everyone wants to do that.

In a recent communication from the College Board, I was advised that in addition to the PDF contained on their website, information on school Score Choice policies can be found by searching each school’s College Board profile. While this is true in most cases, searches for Cal Tech, Brigham Young University, Tulane, NYU, the University of Denver, and other schools produced messages indicating the information was not available. Some of these colleges weren’t even listed on the College Board PDF--as if they didn't exist. To make matters worse, several school websites were so difficult to navigate or impossible to interpret that the question remained unanswered even after taking College Board advice and going directly to the school for guidance.

Compounding the problem, test prep organizations and news sources released charts or lists purporting to show participation in Score Choice. One frequently-circulated chart shows Johns Hopkins, American University, Beloit, George Mason, York College, and others as requiring submission of all test scores and NOT participating in Score Choice. Not so. While maybe late to the game, all these schools have agreed to allow students the flexibility of reporting whatever scores they want.

And the fun doesn’t end there. A number of the colleges and universities listed by the College Board as requiring all scores don’t appear from their websites to have this policy in mind. For example, Duquesne, Barry, Stetson, and Susquehanna all suggest a level of flexibility in score submission on their web pages that may be inconsistent with the information provided by the College Board on their school profiles.

So what’s the solution? Colleges and universities simply need to amend their websites to include a statement laying out their Score Choice policy. Clarification, discussion, and/or mention of the ACT in relation to the program would also be helpful. A student should be able to use the search function contained right smack in the middle of a school’s homepage to discover in one click what scores a school requires vs. what scores they would prefer to receive. And polite terms such as “request” or “recommend” or “ask that” are not helpful. Just spit it out: may a student use Score Choice or not? And if this policy extends to the ACT’s, such as in the case of Georgetown, simply say so.

There’s no reason for colleges and universities to make this situation more difficult than it already is. If it’s a matter of expense to revise websites, I recommend going to the source of the problem and asking for reimbursement.

College Admissions Advice from Those Who Know: Last Year’s Seniors

For the most part, the college-going members of the high school Class of 2009 have already reported to their respective colleges and universities. But as luck would have it, at least one particularly articulate group of former high school students left behind some serious advice for classmates and others knee-deep in the college admissions process.

Over the next couple of Fridays, I will share their unedited thoughts and responses to the prompt, “What suggestions would you offer rising seniors that you wish someone had given you before your senior year?” This information is pure gold!

• Go visit every college that you are interested in. Sometimes you may think one particular college is good just because of the name or prestige, but several times you may not enjoy the academic and/or social environment.
• Work during your junior year to really get a good feel for the type of school you want to attend. In the beginning of my senior year, I had anticipated working at the same pace I had in previous years. While junior year was definitely focused on doing well to get into school, senior year was the time I worked hard to make that happen. With that said, you’ll spend a lot more time in the fall applying to schools and will have to adapt your studying habits accordingly (your weekends will be spent writing essays and you’ll have less time to do homework for classes).
• Of all the parts of your college application, put the most effort into your grades.
• I highly suggest you start working on your essays little by little during the summer before senior year. Get done with your essays early and you will have time to get a lot of input on how to improve them.
• Start the college application process as soon as possible. It seems like a huge burden, but it will go so much better if you finish things sooner rather than later. There are a lot of factors going into your application, and if you wait until the last minute you may not have time to re-do things that need to be re-done. Deadlines are deadlines.
• Complete an application for another school before completing one for the school you really want to go to. Completing applications gets easier with practice as you get more comfortable with the format and process.
• First semester is considerably worse than junior year, but it pays off 4th quarter. Also, talk to your counselor, but make sure you’re doing what you want to do.
• Do your homework—don’t apply to colleges that you don’t actually want to go to.
• Maintain good grades throughout your entire senior year. Start preparing your college applications during the summer or during any downtime that you have. Even if you don’t have the writing prompts for the real application, write a couple general essays about something that had a profound impact on your life, or who you admire and why, or anything else along those lines. During your first semester, do not put anything above your academics (like extracurriculars or athletics). Enjoy your senior year.
• Plan ahead and stay on top of the details.

Next week, the seniors give advice on early action, scholarships, and financial aid.

You're More Than Just a Dot

In case you haven’t heard, scattergrams, such as those produced by Naviance (or Family Connections to you guys in Fairfax County) have become the latest obsession of college admissions junkies. Parents are more likely to fit in this category than students, but the growing fixation on the power of a dot to determine where a student may apply to college is truly troubling.

If you think about it, heavy reliance on Naviance—whether by parents, students, or guidance counselors—represents yet another step toward the total automation of counseling services. Since school systems have overburdened their counselors with myriad responsibilities from test administration to lunchroom duty, time for any kind of counseling within the school day is severely limited. So, we go to computers to provide data in place of personalized college guidance. And, this is a real problem insofar as folks are taking the information as gospel and using it to limit opportunities or lower the bar for their applicants.

In a nutshell, Naviance (Family Connections) scattergrams are graphs of SAT scores on the horizontal axis and GPA on the vertical axis. Thanks to the magic of computer gimmickry and proprietary algorithms, a separate graph is generated for each college to which students from a specific high school have applied within the last (typically 5) few years. A mark is made on the graph for each applicant that shows (supposedly without identifying the individual) their GPA, SAT score, and the outcome of the application (accepted, rejected, waitlisted, accepted from the waitlist etc.). Because they seem so full of useful information, scattergrams are like a drug to the truly addicted, as clusters of little green dots appear to foretell a student’s acceptability at any given college or university. And everyone in the college admissions race craves insider information. Only these dots are no more predictive than your average crystal ball, as past performance is no guarantee of future results!

Here are a few reasons you should kick the scattergram habit:

• Scattergrams can’t predict anything; they only provide a historical reference.


• Graphs tell you nothing about the stories behind the applicants—quality of essays, recommendations, or the level of extracurricular involvement.


• The scattergram can’t tell if an application was poorly prepared, sloppy or late.


• The data doesn’t report if an applicant is a recruited athlete, first-generation, a legacy or has parents who built a new library.


• The GPA data comes from final transcripts not what colleges saw at the time of application, and there is no accounting for individual trends in GPA (upward or downward)—the number is absolute.


• The scattergram doesn’t say a word about suspensions or other disciplinary actions that may be very confidential and have a huge impact on acceptances.


• No information is provided on whether an application was submitted early decision (ED) or early action (EA) which can sometimes have an impact on admission.


• The scattergram doesn't indicate if a student arrived late, texted, or chewed gum during his or her interview.


• There is nothing on the scattergram that speaks to majors or if a student indicates an interest in a major that doesn’t even exist at a particular school.


• Scattergrams are based on SAT scores, but an increasing number of students are submitting ACT's only and their applications are judged on the basis of those scores.


• The GPA data doesn’t tell how many honors or AP classes a student took nor whether a student fulfilled the academic prerequisites a college requires or suggests.


• Nothing in the system takes into account a student’s need for financial aid which can have bearing on acceptances to “needs sensitive” colleges.

and

• Output is only as good as input so if students elect to "opt out" of the system or if the data is carelessly entered, results are compromised.


• The system is of no value if no one from the high school has ever applied to a particular college.


• Individual data can sometimes be easily identified and result in a public airing of acceptances and rejections.

A scattergram is only a guide, not a promise. While the dots may suggest a general trend, students should not be overly intimidated or put off by threatening clusters. College advising is an art not a science. Talk to your counselor. In the end, we’re all potential outliers!

Campus Crime

A well-publicized tragedy on any college campus is bound to bring out the worst parent nightmares. The horrific murder of Annie Le, in a research lab on the campus of Yale University is no exception, especially as it seems to run counter to all the commonsense safety advice we offer students. She was working during the daylight hours in a secure area of the university. There was nothing to suggest that she took chances or was otherwise in danger. It should not have happened.

When touring campuses, parents often ask questions about security. They are routine, and tour guides are always prepared with answers detailing the locations of blue light call boxes or the availability of 24-hour security patrols. While this information is helpful, tour guides are almost never equipped to deal with more specific questions concerning the frequency of major campus crime such as assault or burglary. And parents sometimes want this information.

One important resource for parents or others interested in researching crime on specific college campuses was developed by the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), within the US Department of Education. The Campus Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool provides customized reports on instances of campus crime including murder, manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Data are drawn from the OPE Campus Security Statistics Website database to which information is annually submitted by all postsecondary institutions receiving federal aid.

For those interested in obtaining campus crime information, a number of different searches are available on the OPE site. Reports may be generated for a single campus or for a group of campuses. On campus criminal offenses are reliably reported with residence hall offenses a subset of those. Off campus data, although very relevant, is not provided. It’s important to note that the data reported represent “alleged” criminal offenses reported to campus authorities and/or local police agencies. Because some statistics are provided by non-police authorities, the information on the OPE site is not directly comparable to data from the FBI’s uniform crime reporting system.

While these statistics may be interesting to review, they cannot predict the future and don’t truly reflect the massive effort made by colleges and universities to keep students safe. They may, however, suggest the kinds of trends or improvements in campus security which parents find reassuring.

DC Is A Great Place for College Students

According to a report recently released by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), Washington DC is the fourth-best metropolitan area in the country in which to attend college. Topped only by New York, San Francisco, and Boston, Washington beat out Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Atlanta for large metropolitan areas with populations exceeding 2.5 million.

Distancing itself from other more familiar rankings, the AIER College Destinations Index assesses a location’s “broader learning environment” based on three separate indicators: Academic Environment, Quality of Life, and Professional Opportunities. Academic Environment subdivides into 5 factors including research and development expenditure and the number of college students living in the area. The Quality of Life section computes the number of arts, entertainment and recreation locations available to students as well as the percent of workers 16+ who commute to work via public transportation, bike, or foot. Professional Opportunities are assessed by measuring such factors as earning potential and unemployment rates.

Among the top mid-sized metropolitan areas (1 to 2.5 million), San Jose and Austin are ranked numbers one and two respectively. San Jose tops the list in student diversity and earning potential, while Austin gets points for having a high student concentration and a relatively low cost of living. Boulder, home of the largest of the University of Colorado campuses, ranks first for small metropolitan areas (250,000 to 1 million). As for College Towns, honors go to Ithaca NY—home to Cornell University and Ithaca College.

Recent studies by the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area show that no less than 140,000 students study locally in 13 universities and 2 colleges and contribute approximately $12 billion to the region’s economy. Washington ranks particularly high on the AIER index for its concentration of college-age students with 81 students for every 1000 residents. Only Boston with 83 students per 1000 is higher. The region also receives high marks for entrepreneurial activity, low unemployment, and high earning potential.

More Headaches from Score Choice™

Students who have progressed to the point of actually completing college applications may face yet another SAT Score Choice™ hurdle. As if it weren’t bad enough coping with which application to use (school-based, Common Application, Universal College Application) and the complications of completing those pesky supplements some schools require, students will now have to coordinate carefully which scores they self-report on the application form with which scores they request from the College Board.

When students request score reports to be sent to colleges on their list, they need to make certain that their self-reporting on applications corresponds to which scores are being sent:

• ACT or NO ACT
• SAT Reasoning Score Choice—single highest “sitting(s)”
• SAT Reasoning NO Score Choice—all scores
• SAT Subject Score Choice—selected scores only
• SAT Subject NO Score Choice—all scores from all subjects.

Students using either the Common Application or the Universal College Application have the option of “tailoring” self-reported scores by creating alternate versions of their applications and entering test scores for one set of schools and other test scores for a second set of schools. Instructions are provided with both applications on how to create alternate versions, but it’s a headache and one more administrative problem arising from Score Choice. So much for the efficiency of completing one, single application!

It’s up to students to make certain that they are complying with the various Score Choice policies imposed by different colleges. And, these are not always entirely clear. If applying to Stanford, students must report all SAT Reasoning and all ACT scores. They may, however, use Score Choice for SAT Subject Tests as these tests are considered optional. Penn and Georgetown applicants must submit ALL scores including all SAT Reasoning Tests, all SAT Subject Tests, and all ACT's. If applying to Harvard, students may use Score Choice for both the SAT Reasoning and the SAT Subject tests—or not. In the latter case, Harvard will choose the highest scores from all sittings to use in their evaluations. Students may also elect to send ACT scores. Harvard doesn’t care. But again, once a decision is made about which scores are going where, it would seem important to coordinate both application completion and test report requests. Otherwise, the student takes a chance of not complying with a school’s stated score report policies. And that would not look too good.

In a website note prepared to help students understand its policy concerning Score Choice, Pomona College warns:

"When the College Board offered a score choice option several years ago, literally thousands of students across the country lost track of which scores were sent to which colleges. Many students failed to meet deadlines and many colleges based decisions (including the decision to deny admission) based upon incomplete information."

While referring only to previous College Board policies concerning SAT Subject Tests, the advice should be well taken by applicants and counselors.