Why You Should Ignore the College Rankings Hoopla This Year and Every Year

At this point, it feels like an annual tradition in higher education. The US News and World Report releases its rankings for the “best” colleges and universities, sells a huge number of copies of their magazine, and triggers an avalanche of responses from academics and thought leaders who assault the value of one-size-fits-all rankings. I weighed in two years ago on this blog, breaking down the methodology for the US News and World Report college rankings (which remains largely the same), and encouraging students to think more generally about the value of their education.

Get Outside The Top 10

Students all around the country are returning to their high schools this fall, and seniors are heading back with the special thrill and anxiety that comes with college applications. Those who have made the most of their time this summer will be pretty close to finishing their college list and will have a serviceable draft (maybe even a finished draft!) of their college essays. But even if you’ve taken care of a huge part of your college apps on your end, you’ll need to enlist the help of your high school guidance counselor to ensure everything is finished by the appropriate deadlines. A little extra thoughtfulness will go a long way towards making your application even stronger, and improving your chances of getting into your top choices. Here are some steps you should take to make the most of your high school counselor.

1. Establish a timeline that works for your high school guidance office

How to Ace Tough College Interview Questions

In my time spent as a senior admissions officer at Reed College, I must have interviewed hundreds of students. And I asked weird questions, too. What would be your useless superpower? Is math discovered or invented? If you had one question for God, what would it be? Sub-question: Would you rather he give you the answer to your question or tell you the question you should have asked? My goal was to keep students on their toes, then to catch them off guard, and then, when their expectations had been flipped upside-down, I would find out who they really were.

Most interviewers won’t ask questions quite as odd as the ones I used to ask, but their objective is largely the same: get a sense of the student’s personality and style of engagement.

Part Two of a Three Part Series

Last week I shared six of the most common questions I receive about developing credentials for the University of California application process. Today, I continue this series with six more FAQs.

Understanding the Application

1. My grades and test scores are [higher/lower] than the published average for my favorite UC. Does this mean I [will/won’t] get in?

The UCs proudly practice holistic review, which means numbers – your GPA and test scores – are only a part of the process. Your academic record will allow you to be considered competitively for admission, but the final decision will be based on your perceived impact on the campus community, both in and out of the classroom.

Part One of a Three Part Series

I never hear from juniors in May – they’re way too busy with finals and tests. But after they settle into summer, many of these rising seniors start thinking about their college applications. And since most of my students here in California will be applying to at least a handful of UC campuses, I get a lot of the same questions from all of them. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about the University of California application process, from seniors and underclassmen alike.

Developing Credentials

1. Do 9^th and 12^th grades matter?

Yes and no. When evaluating your academic performance, the UCs recalculate your GPA using only your grades from sophomore and junior year.

Your Guide for High School Tips and Preparing for College

When I was in high school, we used to argue about when you become a senior. Does it happen the second you walk off campus on the last day of your junior year? Or do you have to wait in summer limbo, becoming a senior only when you return for classes the fall? Now that I’m an admissions counselor, I can say definitively that your senior year starts in the summer. And why? Because you have so much you need to do to prepare yourself for the coming fall: coaxing nascent essay drafts into riveting final copies; shaving your college list down from twenty to the final seven to twelve to which you’ll apply;  organizing yourself for your final year of high school and the transition to college.

Do Asians face discrimination when applying to Ivy League schools?  Do they need to appear less “Asian” when submitting their college applications in order to be admitted?  These are questions I often receive when counseling students on competitive admissions — usually when students learn I worked as an admissions officer at MIT and Caltech.  They’re questions I’ve come across in articles such as “’The Asian Penalty,’” most recently featured in The Boston Globe.  And while the questions posed might sometimes lessen the sting one might feel at the possibility of not getting admitted to one’s dream school, the reality is much more complex.

As a college admissions consultant with College Coach, I’m frequently asked to compare academics at two different institutions. “Which school offers the better academic experience?”  This is an impossible question to answer because of the incredible variability between institutions and their offerings, not to mention the incredible variability between students (goals, talents, abilities, learning styles, comfort zones, etc.). Nevertheless, it is a question that is asked and so I thought I’d provide an answer… at least to a part of it.

Below is my nearly verbatim response to a student who asked me to compare academics at a large public research institution (call it Big U), a medium-sized public liberal arts and science hybrid (call it Hybrid State College), and a small, niche liberal arts college (call it Lakeview College). Names have been changed to reflect the generality of the discussion:

Most students picture opening the envelope or their email, and finding the announcement of their admission to the college of their choice: the ultimate fulfillment of their dreams as a high school student.  In general, I find students don’t think much beyond this moment, aside from imagining how great college will be.  (For the record, college is pretty great!)  Most parents, however, realize that this celebratory moment is just the beginning.  The transition to college is really exciting on paper, but it is also one of the most challenging moments in the life of a student and her family.

The College Transition for Parents

Parents, as you try to help your student with the transition to college, you must first and foremost be aware of how different college is from when you attended.  Technology, specifically the internet, has dramatically changed how students and parents conduct business with the school.

Some years ago on a soccer sideline somewhere, or maybe in the chatty pre-show moments of a high school theatre performance, a mom or dad started the dreadful rumor that one must complete hundreds of hours of community service in order to even be considered for admission to the top colleges and universities in the country. Since that day, this misinformation has been taken as gospel by college-bound high school students and their parents. But they’re wrong.

Let’s all pause for a moment and say this together: there is nothing extra special about community service.

Now that I’ve said that, let’s throttle back from the edge so you can understand what I mean. When colleges and universities consider a student’s extracurricular profile, they are looking for the ways students have made an impact on their communities. One student might run track. Another might join the wind ensemble. A third might tutor elementary school kids. A fourth might volunteer at the local soup kitchen. As a college admission officer, I had no preference for one of these students over any of the others.