College Planning Blog

As we head into the college application season, more and more families are wrestling with questions about how to apply, when to apply and which form to use. Some are also getting to the point where Early Decision looms as a real possibility. This is a topic that will get a fair amount of treatment in this space as well as the The College Planning Newsletter in the coming months. The “Getting In” (November 20) track of the Straight Talk About College Admission teleseminar series will feature a discussion of Early Decision as well. Go to www.theadmissiongame.com/college_planning_teleseminars.php for more information about signing up.

Today, however, I would to replay an email exchange I had with a parent earlier in the week regarding the feasibility of Early Decision as the circumstances and the question posed may be similar to those experienced by many others. Here is the question:

“My daughter is applying to “College X”. It is her first choice school. Her SAT scores and GPA far surpass the college’s average for admitted students and we will not be applying for Financial Aid. Both ED [Early Decision] and EA [Early Action] are offered and both have the same deadline - 11/15. My daughter expressed strong interest in ED as a way to ease the anxiety faster as the “let know” date is 12/15. I think this college would be more likely to offer her a Merit Scholarship under EA, to attract her to “choose them”. The “let know” date for EA is “late January”. Do you think my idea re: the EA/scholarship money has any merit? Please let me know what you would do in this situation - ED or EA?”

It should be noted that ED (Early Decision) represents a binding commitment for students seeking an early response from colleges. ED candidates are promising to enroll if admitted. EA (Early Action) is another opportunity for students to apply for and receive and early notification from some colleges, however, they are not committed to enroll if accepted. And now for my response.

“The dilemma you describe is certainly a happy one. Fortunately, I think the solution is fairly straightforward and it rests on your family’s priorities. If “getting in” and putting the process behind her is of paramount importance, then ED is the route to go. On the other hand, if getting a merit award is the priority, then your solution — or even applying Regular Decision — may be advantageous.

The fact that you apparently do not need financial aid is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you presumably have the resources to support your daughter’s educational costs. On the other, it sounds like you would still welcome an easement to the cash flow demands that tuition payments will place on you. If you can manage the finances, though, I would not try to impose the EA strategy. If you do and it doesn’t work (she doesn’t get in, or she doesn’t get a scholarship), guess who will be to blame as the misery of an interminable winter wears on!

As you decide on the ED/EA question don’t be too quick to make assumptions. The fact that her credentials seem to “far surpass” the college’s average is neither a guarantee of admission nor an indication that she will receive a merit award if admitted. Unless someone at the college has mentioned the possibility, you should assume that a scholarship will not be in the picture and then be happily surprised if one falls out of the sky!

Finally, if she does opt for ED, remind her that she doesn’t get a free pass on the balance of the year academically. College X is among the schools that will watch second semester senior year performances very carefully.”

Please feel free to send your questions to me at Peter@TheAdmissionGame.com. I will only post them here with your permission.

Also, please note that when you subscribe to The College Planning Newsletter and/or the Straight Talk teleseminars that you will need to make an adjustment to your spam filter to allow for incoming messages from TheAdmissionGame.com. Thanks!

In its September 25 issue, InsideHigherEd.com ran a story on a report released by the Education Conservancy regarding the perceptions of high school seniors of the college-going process (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/24/admit). The report, citing findings from focus group interviews held in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, cast a cynical spin on the manner in which colleges engage students in the recruitment and selection processes.

According to those surveyed, there is growing frustration regarding the disingenuous overtures of colleges in a courtship that drains the personal joy and educational benefit from young people as they approach the college application process. Quite frankly, it is about time these voices are heard. The process has lost its balance as young people struggle to maintain a competitive edge in search of the places to which they are told they must aspire. Test prep, essay coaching and prescriptive summer programming have taken over the teenage years in place of lives well lived. While few would argue with this assessment, I was amazed by the callous and cynical response the article drew from some of its readers.

Rather than hailing the initiative, a number of readers characterized Thacker as money-grubbing and opportunistic. One also chimed in to suggest that the students surveyed are simply reaping the outcomes of their own misguided ambitions. While “one robin doesn’t make a spring”–and these responses certainly can’t be characterized as overwhelming and conclusive–I find their tone disturbing. One might take exception with Thacker’s gameplan, but he is far from a charlatan. And I have trouble assessing young people with responsibility for the predicament in which they find themselves. They are simply responding to the process and expectations that have been set before them.

Rather, educators–and I count myself in that group–have the opportunity if not the responsibility to help students feel “comfortable in their own skin” as they make their way through the college process. We can begin by reminding them that the pathway to happiness and success does not have to lead through the campuses of a select few institutions.

Regrettably, the whole of higher education is becoming tainted by the lack of sincerity and transparency in the recruitment and selection processes. As Thacker’s study points out, the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is growing perceptibly. Much like other service providers in this space that are considered boorish and insensitive in their relationships with consumers, the institutions of higher education are on the brink of losing their exulted status as educational icons.

With the fall calendar of college entrance testing fast approaching, I am hearing a lot of conversations about the need to do something to prep for �the test.� While I am not a fan of standardized testing, it still looms prominently on the horizon for most students as they assemble college application credentials. Even though 741 colleges and universities have made the submission of test results optional (topic for another day!), testing is still something you will have to deal with at most colleges.

So, what about test prep? Can it make a difference? If so, how/when do you get involved?

There is an emerging consensus among college access professionals that supports the long-held contention of the folks in the test prep world that tests are coach-able. In other words, students can usually improve their scores through exposure to a range of exercises including tutoring, practice tests, instructor-led programs and on-line courses. The key word here is exposure. If the first time a student experiences the SAT or the ACT is on a Saturday morning with the clock ticking and the results counting toward college admission, the outcome may not be a good indicator of that student�s true ability to handle the content of the test.

Good test prep will provide exposure in three critical areas. The first is an orientation to the dynamic of the testing situation. It is important to establish a comfort level with the format and pacing of the test as well as the rules of the test environment and the style of the questions that will be asked. Second, students should be exposed to question content that is similar to that which they will encounter on the actual test. Some test prep programs use �retired� tests for this purpose while others create close replicas intended to serve the same purpose.

Finally, good test prep programs teach students how to take the test. On the surface, this may not seem like a big deal. However, the ability to apply strategies that reduce the degree of uncertainty in some testing situations can make a substantial difference in the outcomes. The SAT, for example, is scored on the basis of correct answers and it can be argued that making �educated guesses� is better than leaving questions unanswered.

The trick is to find a right test prep solution that provides exposure in each of these areas and that provides a style of instruction that is best suited to how the student learns most comfortably as well as her/his degree of self-motivation. On-line courses work very well for some students and tend to be less expensive whereas other students benefit from the presence of a �live� instructor or even a one-on-one approach.

Important Tips for Considering Test Prep:

1.) Engage in instruction during the period that immediately precedes the actual test.

2.) Be discriminating about the claims of test prep companies to improve scores. Make sure the score improvement they reference is from one actual test to another, not from an actual test to the results of a practice test taken at the end of the course.

3.) Maintain perspective as there is a point of diminishing returns for involvement in test prep. Repeating test prep over and over won�t continue to bring incremental improvements.

4.) Prep the old-fashion way�read and write as much as you can and make sure you are well rested the night before the test.

This is the all-too-frequent response of students to the suggestion that they capitalize on their demonstrated strengths in the fine and performing arts when they apply for admission. It�s almost as though they are afraid they will be regarded as academic imposters for failing to be true to their natural calling!

It happened again last week in a presentation I made to a group of students and parents. As I was talking about the need to for candidates to reveal their talents�to make a tape, burn a CD or put together a portfolio, a young flutist expressed curiosity about doing so since she had no interest in pursuing formal study of the flute in college. When I asked if the flute was and would continue to be a defining element of her life, she didn�t hesitate to assure me it would be. I then pointed out that her passion would carry little weight in the admission process if she didn�t give admission committees the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about its potential importance to their respective communities. If she had any inclination at all to continue playing in ensembles, marching bands or orchestras�and if she wanted to be valued for this potential�she needed to make her talent known.

The irony is that student athletes do this without fail. Every year, thousands of college applicants actively parlay their athletic talents/exploits into offers of admission at institutions where not every qualified candidate can be admitted. Only a fraction of these candidates have any reasonable chance of competing professionally in their respective sports. Nonetheless, their talents are valued by schools that wish to field competitive team�even at the non-scholarship, small college level of competition. If athletes can find a competitive edge by submitting tapes and meeting with coaches, why shouldn�t musicians, dancers, artists and actors benefit as well?

As admission committees go about their work, they are much like social engineers whose task is to assemble a new community from the array of talents represented in the applicants it is considering. Success in the admission process, then, rests just as much on a student�s ability to anticipate this as it does on most things academic. When everything else is equal�or close to equal�academically in the competition, it is not uncommon for an admission officer to ask the question of a given candidate, �If we admit her, what do we get?�

It is important, then, that students anticipate this question and take stock of what they have to offer the colleges to which they are applying. What are their gifts? What might an admission committee see in their talents that might give a given student an advantage in the competition? So, even if you have no interest in making a career out of playing the flute or the trumpet or the violin, make sure you do what you can to reveal your talents.

IMPORTANT TIP: Send a copy of your recording/portfolio to the Admission Office with your application AND a copy to the director of the program that interests you. Make sure you label all copies with your name, address and the contents. Do this early in the admission process�certainly no later than the application deadline.

Reminder: The Introductory Straight Talk About College Admission teleseminar entitled, �College Rankings: What They Mean and How to Use Them,� takes place this Wednesday (September 19) at 9:00 PM EST. Please register at http://www.TheAdmissionGame.com by noon EST on Tuesday.

I recently heard from a friend whose son is about to apply to colleges. As his son begins to narrow his focus on a short list of colleges, though, I sensed a bit of worry when his dad asked, “What happens if you apply as one major, say in the arts, get in, and then try to transfer to a new major in the second year?” What he really wanted to know was “will an interest in theatre help him get in and receive funding even though I think it would be a good idea for him to pursue something else in his second year?” Interestingly, my friend acknowledged his son’s demonstrated passion for theatre. He just wasn’t sure that program held much value to his son except at the point of entrance into a university.

My advice to this friend was easy and direct. “Encourage your son to follow his passion as that instinct will serve him now and in the future.” It’s hard to tell whether the theatre interest will help or hurt in the competition for admission because the competition at each school will be different. Frankly, at some places he’ll need to audition and show good grades in order to get in. At others, his talents may be sufficient to gain him admission and scholarship recognition. That is why he needs to put himself in an academic environment in which he feels most comfortable—where he fits well and can compete.

The good news for the young man in question is that theatre is the program he really wants so the question of having to change majors or programs isn’t really on his mind. Rather, it was his dad’s issue. It was his dad who was willing to humor him the interest in theatre in order to get in and receive funding as long as he would be able to switch out of theatre once enrolled.

This part of my friend’s question speaks to the natural tension that often exists between the instincts of the parents and the desires of the student (I talk about this in Chapter One, “Adjusting to Life in the Passenger Seat,” of Winning the College Admission Game.). My advice will always be to encourage the young person follow his passion. He needs to be able to make the decisions and own the outcomes. The last thing a parent should want is to be the one responsible for the success or failure his child experiences. In this instance, following dad’s script could be a recipe for disaster.

If this young man tries theatre arts, it should be because he is most comfortable with that direction and because he is most likely to invest in making good things happen in that arena. He should learn from the experience of discovery in that regard. That said, the odds are he will still change his mind on his own—or at least reshape his interests several times before he graduates. The best academic environment for him, then, will be the one that allows him the flexibility to find his way as he encounters new opportunities.

Last month, Christopher Newport University announced that it was making college entrance testing optional for students with strong grade point averages. More than 740 institutions across the country, including some of the most selective, have now moved away from an emphasis on testing in considering students for admission. It begs the question: “Why don’t the others follow suit?”

Well, in point of fact, the number of “test optional” colleges and universities has grown rapidly over the last ten years as more places are publicly acknowledging what their own validity studies have been demonstrating for years: testing has a limited—at best—impact as a diagnostic in the admission process. Ironically, that is the purpose of the test—to predict who can do the work academically in the first year of college. The reality is that most students (80-90%) applying to most colleges have chosen places where, given the chance, they could do the work, a fact that is borne out in the academic credentials they submit.

So, why do many institutions still require test results? One reason is the need for efficiency. At many schools that deal with overwhelming numbers of applicants, it is certainly more efficient to screen candidates based on an index that includes grade point average and test results (not to be mistaken for a determination of who can do the work!). Test scores provide a convenient solution in that an institution’s ability to report higher scores supports the common misperception that test results are reflective of intelligence. The higher the scores, the better are your chances in such environments. Rather than a meaningful diagnostic—the rationale behind the SAT/ACT—test results have become competitive credentials.

If you would rather not get caught up in the emotional frenzy that often consumes students (and their parents) with regard to testing, be comforted in the knowledge that you have options. The 740+ institutions with a reduced emphasis on testing are all listed on the following website:

www.fairtest.org

The way I see it, the colleges and universities that appear on the FairTest.org list are places that will value you as a candidate for what you have done well in high school as well as the promise you exhibit with regard to future success. I saw this personally when my institution went test optional nearly 20 years ago. That decision was a point of liberation for my colleagues and me. Free from the tyranny of numbers, we could focus on the breadth of credentials in making decisions about young people whom we valued most. Isn’t this the sort of solution that makes sense as you look for a college home that is a good fit for you?

We’ll talk more about testing in this space throughout the year. It will also be the featured conversation in the December 19 installment of the “Straight Talk About College Admission” teleseminar series.