The Year in Review

As the Class of 2013 prepares for graduation and the Class of 2014 completes their final exams, we have compiled a list of the some of the most noteworthy national news in the world of college admissions this year. Amaze your friends on the beach this summer with your vast knowledge about college admissions trends!

Next week we will wrap up the year by sharing some bullet points about the Class of 2014 and their college choices.

·         The Common Application has changed its essay prompts for 2013-2014, dropping the option of allowing students to choose their own topic and increasing the essay word limit to 650 words.

·         The College Board is planning to redesign the SAT. In a letter sent to College Board members, David Coleman, the board's new president, said: "We will develop an assessment that mirrors the work that students will do in college so that they will practice the work they need to do to complete college. An improved SAT will strongly focus on the core knowledge and skills that evidence shows are most important to prepare students for the rigors of college and career. “

·         The Dartmouth College faculty has voted to deny college credit for AP courses and tests. The Dartmouth admissions office still strongly recommends students take AP courses and AP scores will be used in course placement decisions.

·         Boston College saw its applications decline by 10,000 after making a strategic effort to raise admissions requirements. The school added a supplemental essay to its application, with the goal of attracting more serious students and deterring less interested candidates from applying. In 2012, 34,061 students applied and this year, the number was closer to 25,000. Many colleges are searching for thoughtful applicants as some students continue to apply to a long list of colleges and it is harder for admissions offices to predict where they will enroll.

·         More and more universities are beginning to experiment with adding the new “massive open online courses,” created to deliver elite college instruction to anyone with an Internet connection, to their offerings. The courses, known as MOOCs, have enrolled millions of students around the world. EdX, an online learning initiative founded in 2012 by Harvard and MIT, has already added Georgetown, The University of California at Berkeley, the University of Texas and Wellesley to the list of universities offering MOOCs through their platform.

·         In January, a group of private college presidents drafted a pledge to publicly oppose the rising use of merit-based financial aid and the decline in need-based aid. The pledge encouraged colleges to move away from merit aid, which can typically benefit some of the wealthiest students and instead focus more on need-based aid for lower income students. 

·         Five colleges drew national attention in the last year for misreporting admissions numbers to various external audiences through the Common Data Set, which organizations that rank institutions, like U.S. News & World Report, use in compiling statistics. Bucknell University, Claremont McKenna College, Emory University, George Washington University and Tulane’s Freeman School of Business all misreported data such as SAT scores of applicants, omitting lower scores from their submitted data. Higher SAT scores would impact a school’s ranking in U.S. News & World Report, and the magazine even moved George Washington to an “unranked” college after they were found to have significantly inflated admissions data for more than a decade.

Published by: TSM

Walla Walla WHAT? A Visit to Whitman College.

Flying in to Walla Walla, Washington, you can see rivers, forests, mountains and farms all around you as you land. Whitman College could not be set in a more picturesque location! 

 It is not surprising that Whitman students, called Whitties, definitely take advantage of their surroundings through all of the opportunities offered through their Outdoor Programs office. Not many colleges can say that they offer courses in beginning rock climbing and beginning kayaking to their students! This year, each freshman received $150 to spend to participate in a trip to either kayak, climb, ski or more, and most of the freshman class also participated in what they call “Scrambles,” which are freshmen orientation trips to different locales. Besides having a beautiful location and lots of ways to explore the great outdoors, Whitman College is home to students who want an education that engages them inside and outside of the classroom.

Here are some photos from my campus tour:

Whitman College is a small liberal arts college, with about 1,500 students, located in Walla Walla, Washington. Walla Walla is a charming college town with some great restaurants and shops and it is located a few hours from both Seattle and Portland. As a liberal arts college, students are encouraged to explore their academic opportunities in many different subjects. At the foundation of a Whitman education is Encounters, a year-long multi-disciplinary course required of all first year students. All students read the same texts and books but professors from many different disciplines teach sections of no more than 17 students. When I was visiting, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben gave a fascinating talk to all of the students in Encounters, who had read one of his books, called Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Another highlight of the Whitman experience is getting to participate in the Undergraduate Conference. One day every year, students participate in a campus-wide celebration of student academic research. Students give talks, make poster presentations, exhibit their art, and perform original work. Some of these projects grow out of relationships with professors, which students are able to establish since there are no teaching assistants. Some of the most popular majors at Whitman are in the sciences because there is such an emphasis on taking advantage of research opportunities. Whitman even funds 100 summer internship or research projects for students every year.

For students who are looking for an explorative liberal arts experience in a beautiful setting in the Pacific Northwest, Whitman College is the perfect fit. Even though Walla Walla is slightly off the beaten path, it is well worth the trip to check it out!

Published by: LP

ACT/SAT Conversion Charts and Superscoring

It's May 1 and that can only mean one thing. Today is the deadline for seniors to make their enrollment deposits at the college of their choice and juniors are puzzling over their ACT results. I've posted about this before but since I received four questions about the ACT this morning, I thought it would be a good time to remind juniors of two handy resources.

Here is an ACT/SAT conversion table to help you understand your ACT score:
http://www.act.org/solutions/college-career-readiness/compare-act-sat/

ACT superscoring
With this policy, a college will select a student’s highest subscores from each of the four categories that make up the ACT and create what could be a more impressive superscore.

This practice, by the way, is standard procedure with the SAT. When a student takes multiple SAT tests, colleges routinely pick the best scores from the three SAT categories – math, reading and writing.

Almost every college "superscores" the SAT when students take the test multiple times, but this has not always been the case with the ACT. In recent years, more and more colleges have adopted a policy of superscoring the ACT. There is not a complete and official list of which colleges superscore the ACT, so we recommend that students review the college websites for the most up to date information. Some of the big-name schools that superscore the ACT include Amherst College, Boston College, Brandeis University, Haverford College, New York University, Tufts University, U.S. Naval Academy, University of Maryland, University of North Carolina, Washington University in St. Louis and Williams College.

Published by: TSM