FROM: Terry James Mohaupt
====================================
CONTENTS:
1. Not
enough financial aid? Seek counseling, April 26, 2004 edition - The
Christian Science Monitor
2. Top college rejected you? Don't worry. THIS DOESN'T HAVE MUCH TO DO WITH LIFE IN THE REAL WORLD, New York Times.
3. Great websites recommended by members of National Association for College Admissions Counseling,
4. Parents And Counselors Together (PACT) publication
5. Low-Income
Attendance at 50 "Best" Institutions
6. It's
Time To Tell the Kids: If You Don't Do Well in High School, You Won't Do Well
in College (or on the Job), American Educator, Spring 2004
7. What
Does It Mean To Be Prepared for College?
8. How
I Spent Summer Vacation: At Getting-Into-College Camp, April 18, 2004, New
York Times
9. Tuition
and Fees in Public Higher Education in the West, 2003-04 Detailed Tables
10. Department Seeks FAFSA Comments
11. College Rejections Stinging More Stars, Washington Post,, April 12, 2004
12. Some of the
brightest & most successful individuals have started out at a community
college.
13. Why Good
Grades May Not Matter The Wall Street Journal
Online
14. Register to Vote!
====================================
By Stacy A. Teicher |
Staff writer
from the April 26, 2004 edition - The Christian Science Monitor
Kathy Zrinyi figures it's destiny for her son Keith to attend Ohio State. A
Buckeyes fan since he was a baby, he recently won admission to the university
that's just a few hours' drive from their home in Steubenville.
Now there's just one more hurdle - something many families see looming as they
approach the May 1 deadline for accepting college offers: the money.
Keith's dream school costs about $18,000 a year, and the financial aid letter
to Ms. Zrinyi offered to take care of 44 percent. But with an income of only
$13,000, she didn't see how she could swing the rest. It wasn't until she
talked to a financial-aid counselor that she realized she could appeal the
decision. "I would have just settled for the award letter they sent me and
gone out and gotten a loan for the rest of the money," she explains over
the phone.
The counselor from the Financial Aid Supersite (http://www.financialaidsuper site.com) elicited a key
piece of information that hadn't been conveyed to the school: In June, Keith
will turn 18, and Zrinyi's ex-husband will no longer pay child support. After a
quick calculation, the counselor told Zrinyi she should expect about 73 percent
of the bill to be covered by financial aid.
As they face steeper tuitions, more parents are deciding that investing in
college is as worthy of professional help as buying a house or creating a stock
portfolio. Some counselors now specialize in appealing colleges' financial-aid
awards, and they can advise about the many legitimate reasons a school should
consider, such as a change in family structure or employment, high medical
bills, or a student's recent improvement in grades or test scores.
But experts warn against trying to "game the system." Too many
parents jump quickly into negotiation mode, trying to play one school's offer
against another's, says Stephen Pemberton, founder of Road to College (http://www.roadtocollege.com), a national counseling
service in Maynard, Mass. "If they sense you are just trying to get a
better deal and you are treating it like a car, even if there's flexibility on
their end they're not likely to show it."
Being too pushy is not always the problem, says Stuart Siegel, founder of
College Tuition Solutions (http://www.collegetuitionsolutions.com)
in Erie, Pa. Many parents give up too easily on getting a better package.
"They shouldn't be embarrassed to ask for more," he says.
The difficult part is getting the attention of officials who control the
college purse strings. "Most of those letters end up in the trash,"
says Mr. Siegel, who helps families craft more-effective letters by
"speaking the language" of financial aid administrators. "They
have to be very concise and state exactly what the problem is.... It's not that
colleges don't care ... but [with] all the people who want more money from
them, it kind of becomes a white noise.... Sometimes it can take two or three
letters. Persistence has a lot to do with it."
Lily Siegel (no relation) turned to College Tuition Solutions when her
daughter, Carolyn, was halfway through her studies at Northwestern University.
Her ex-husband was no longer able to cover tuition, and she was stunned when
the financial-aid office turned down her request for more funds. With help from
Mr. Siegel, she sent letters for nearly a year, taking out loans in the
meantime. "We finally got the attention of the director [of financial aid]
... and they released a grant for her so she could finish school," she
says from her home in Connecticut. The amount of extra aid: $9,000.
Mr. Siegel chooses his clients carefully because he guarantees to return the
$499 fee unless they win at least $4,000 in additional aid from the college. He
recently rejected a student who had been offered only a loan at his top-choice
school. Four other private schools had offered to cover nearly half the costs.
After some digging, Siegel found out that a college counselor had called in a
favor to help the student get admitted to the top-choice school. Siegel didn't
consider that a compelling case for asking for more aid. "I have to know
that there's a real need," he says.
Comparing aid packages from similar schools often seems crass, but sometimes
it's appropriate, counselors say. The best approach is to question the
decision, not make demands: Is there a reason your offer is so much lower than
X's? Is there anything more you can do? "Schools sometimes do want to pull
students away from their competitors," Mr. Pemberton says.
As with any consumer purchase, parents should check out a service's credentials
before signing up. Some play off families' fears that they can't understand the
process and they might ruin their child's chances of going to college, says
Dallas Martin, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid
Administrators in Washington. "I'm not saying there aren't people out
there who are legitimate private counselors ... but we try to direct families
to where they can get help without spending unnecessary dollars."
For starters, he recommends Department of Education websites such as http://www.FAFSA.ed.gov and http://www.student aid.ed.gov, or its toll-free
financial-aid information line, 800-433-3243.
Zrinyi is waiting to see if the appeal comes through for her son. And the
service is at their disposal until Keith has finished his studies - and seen
four years' worth of Buckeye games up close.
Copyright İ 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
====================================
By David Brooks, columnist for
the New York Times.
Many of you high school seniors are in a panic at this time of year, coping
with your college acceptance or rejection letters. Since the admissions process
has gone totally insane, it's worth reminding yourself that this is not a
particularly important moment in your life.
You are being judged according to criteria that you would never use to judge
another person and which will never again be applied to you once you leave
higher ed.
For example, colleges are taking a hard look at your SAT scores. But if at any
moment in your later life you so much as mention your SAT scores in
conversation, you will be considered a total jerk. If at age 40 you are still
proud of your scores, you may want to contemplate a major life makeover.
More than anything else, those top colleges are taking a hard look at your
grades. To achieve that marvelous GPA, you will have had to demonstrate
excellence across a broad range of subjects: math, science, English, foreign
languages.
This will never be necessary again. Once you reach adulthood, the key to
success will not be demonstrating teacher-pleasing competence across fields; it
will be finding a few things you love, and then committing yourself
passionately to them.
The traits you used getting good grades might hold you back. To get those high
marks, while doing all the extracurricular activities colleges are also looking
for, you were encouraged to develop a prudential attitude toward learning. You
had to calculate which reading was essential and which was not. You could not
be obsessed by one subject because if you did, your marks in the other subjects
would suffer. You could not take outrageous risks because you might fail.
You learned to study subjects that are intrinsically boring to you; slowly, you
may have stopped thinking about which subjects are boring and which exciting.
You just knew that each class was a hoop you must jump through on your way to a
first-class university. You learned to thrive in adult-supervised settings.
If you have done all these things and you are still an interesting person,
congratulations, because the system has been trying to whittle you down into a
bland, complaisant achievement machine.
But in adulthood, you'll find that a talent for regurgitating what superiors
want to hear will take you only halfway up the ladder, and then you'll stop
there. The people who succeed most spectacularly, on the other hand, often had
low grades. They are not prudential. They venture out and thrive where
there is no supervision, where there are no preset requirements.
Even if the admissions criteria are dubious, isn't it still really important to
get into a top school? I wonder. I spend a lot of time meeting with students on
college campuses. If you put me in a room with 15 students from any of the top
100 schools in this country and asked me at the end of an hour whether these
were Harvard kids or Penn State kids, I would not be able to tell you.
So remember, the letters you get over the next few weeks don't determine
anything. Picking a college is like picking a spouse. You don't pick the
"top-ranked" one, because that has no meaning. You pick the one with
the personality and character that complements your own.
====================================
recommended
by members of National Association for College Admissions Counseling,
compiled by Betty Van Wagenen, Director of
College Counseling, Woodside Priory School, Portola Valley, CA:
Excellent hub site for college, career & financial aid info is http://www.njsca.org/col/col&car.htm
Here are two good financial aid resources for US students enrolling in foreign
schools:
http://www.InternationalStudentLoan.com -
Federal and private alternative loans for US students abroad.
http://www.InternationalScholarships.com
- A free searchable database of scholarships and awards for international
study.
Also see:
http://uk.InternationalStudent.com -
Study in the UK - A resource center for international in the UK
http://www.ParentPLUSLoan.com - The PLUS
Loan Resource Center
http://www.shschools.org then click on
SH Prep, then College Counseling, then the links.
http://www.whitaker.org/academic
-- bioengineering
http://www.venturescholar.org/hs/enrichment
(enrichment summer programs)
What Can I Do With a Major in ...? http://www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/Majors/
List of "SAT Optional" Colleges http://www.fairtest.org/optinit.htm
Black College Common Application http://www.eduinconline.com/
HBCU Mentor http://www.hbcumentor.org/
Black Excel http://www.blackexcel.org/
US News "College Personality Quiz http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/tools/cpq/coquiz.htm
Making A Difference College Guide http://www.making-a-difference.com/pages/CGlinks.html
Colleges of Distinction http://www.collegesofdistinction.com
http://www.landmark.edu: summer
programs for LD students (middle school, high school, college)
http://www.educationunlimited.com:
residential and commuter summer programs at Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, UC
San Diego and Tufts--elementary, junior and high school students
http://www.carla.acad.umn.edu : This is
a great resource for the student who wishes to pursue 'less commonly taught
languages" (arabic, chinese, hebrew, farsi, you name it.....anything but
french and spanish!)
====================================
See also NACAC's "Parents And Counselors
Together" (PACT) publication, available online at http://www.nacac.com/pubs_counselors.html#pact
====================================
A growing share of students in
the K-12 pipeline headed for higher education come from low-income families.
However, this is not true at the 50 "best" national universities, as
defined by U.S. News and World Report. The Mortenson Research Seminar on Public
Policy Analysis of Opportunity for Postsecondary Education examines the Pell
grant share of undergraduate enrollment at the 50 Best National Universities,
1992-93 and 2001-02. (Subscription needed to view the report online at:
http://www.postsecondary.org/home/default.asp)
Sherri Frye, Administrative Assistant, Public
Policy, National Assn. for College Admission Counseling
====================================
American Educator,
Spring 2004
By James E. Rosenbaum
Every year I ask my college
class how many students have seen a high school teacher cry, and most students raise
their hands. When I ask what provoked the crying, most stories are about
teachers who threaten to give students bad grades and students who do not care.
When I ask my colleagues the same question about their high school teachers
from one or two generations ago, virtually none can recall such tears. This is
not a systematic survey, but it suggests a big change.
Today, nearly all high school seniors believe that they are going to
college--and that bad grades wonıt stop them. They are right: With the dramatic
increase in open admissions colleges, it is true that they can go.
But as I report in my recent book Beyond College for All, students who
perform poorly in high school probably wonıt graduate from college--many wonıt
even make it beyond remedial courses. High enrollment rates and low graduation
rates are well-known facts of life in most open admissions and less selective
colleges (both two- and four-year). The tight connection between high school
preparation (in terms of both the rigor of courses taken and grades received)
and college completion are well known to statisticians, researchers, and
policymakers who follow such matters.
But research suggests that students still do not understand this connection.
Consider the following: Seventy-one percent of the class of 1982 planned to get
a college degree. Ten years later, 63.9 percent of those with A averages had
attained an A.A. degree or higher, but only 13.9 percent of those with C
averages (or lower) had done so (Rosenbaum, 1998, 2001). (In a more recent
cohort [the class of 1992], students with C averages or lower fared a little
better; 20.9 percent attained an A.A. degree or higher within eight years of
graduating from high school [Rosenbaum and Gordon-McKeon, 2003]). As of 1992,
84 percent of high school seniors planned to get a college degree (NELS, 1992);
but data from the high school classes of 1972, 1982, and 1992 tell us that only
45 to 49 percent of students who enter college and earn more than 10 credits
actually earn a bachelor's degree--many even fail to earn 10 credits
(Adelman, 2004). For students with high school averages of C or lower, the
chances that they will earn even one college credit are less than 50-50
(Rosenbaum, 2001). Do your students know that? Do your colleagues? Did you know
that?
Despite the availability of open admissions institutions and increased student
aspirations for college degrees--factors that increase college enrollment--the
easiest-to-use predictor of a studentıs likelihood of graduating from a
two- or four-year college is still his or her high school grade point average.* Although any single grade is
imperfect, when averaged over a high school career, the grade point average is
an excellent predictor of how a student will do in college. This has always
been true and there is no reason to expect it to change. Unfortunately, our
well-intentioned efforts to encourage all students to go to college regardless
of their grades inadvertently gives them the impression that high school grades
donıt matter.
In this article, we will look at the facts, indeed the tragedy, behind the
façade of widespread college entry--and at what we can do to change the
picture, either by increasing the odds that college enrollment will lead to
college graduation or by helping students find more productive, successful
post-high school paths.
The past 40 years
brought three radical social transformations that together have dramatically
increased the percentage of students who want to attend college. First, the
earnings advantage of college graduates has grown (Grubb, 1996). Second,
college--especially community college (a minor factor in the prior
generation)--has become much more accessible. In the past four decades, while
enrollments at four-year colleges doubled, enrollments increased five-fold at
community colleges (NCES, 1999). Third, and perhaps most remarkably, virtually
all community colleges adopted a revolutionary policy of open admissions.
Unlike many four-year colleges, virtually all two-year colleges opened their
doors to admit all interested high school graduates, regardless of studentsı
prior academic achievement. Even high school graduates with barely passing
grades are routinely welcomed because almost all two-year colleges offer a wide
array of remedial courses. Indeed, in many cases, students do not even have to
be high school graduates because most two-year colleges offer these students
access to some non-credit courses, including GED courses.
These three transformations have dramatically altered the rules of college
attendance and given students remarkable new opportunities. However, as with
all revolutions, there are also unintended consequences. The revolutions
spawned a set of myths--weıll call them misconceptions--that combined to send a
message to students: Donıt worry about high school grades or effort; you can
still go to college and do fine. This message has not been sent to high
achievers aiming for prestigious colleges, where grades and scores matter--and
the students headed there know it. But it is the message that students who know
little about college have received--particularly those whose parents did not go
to college. These students (and their parents) are being misled with disastrous
consequences. Their motivation to work hard in high school is sapped; their
time to prepare for college is wasted; their college savings are eaten up by
remedial courses that they could have taken for free in high school; and their
chances of earning a college degree are greatly diminished. Further, the effect
on many colleges has been to alter their mission and lower their standards.
This article reviews some of the misconceptions spawned by these three
revolutions and rebuts them--and considers how schools can mitigate the
terrible impact these misconceptions are having on individual students and,
inevitably, on the overall school environment.
Misconception 1: College success is not linked to high school
preparation.
A national survey (NELS, 1992) found that 84 percent of high school seniors in
the class of 1992 planned to get a two- or four-year college degree. Even
students with bad grades, low test scores, and poor high-school attendance
planned to complete a college degree. Attaining a college degree can be
difficult even for students who have worked hard and done well in high school;
for those who havenıt, it is nearly impossible. Look at the table below on
grades and college completion for the class of 1982. On average, 37.7 percent
of seniors with college plans earned a two-year or higher degree. But low high
school grades cut studentsı chances markedly--only 13.9 percent of seniors with
averages of C or lower completed college. For this 13.9 percent, open
admissions at community colleges provided an extremely helpful second chance.
However, for the vast majority of students, the other 86 percent, their second
chance was only another experience of failure. Shouldnıt we tell the students:
If you want to graduate from college, exert the effort and get good grades in
high school?
Misconception 2: College plans lead to increased school effort.
It is often assumed that planning to go to college makes students more
motivated, giving them reason to work hard in high school. Unfortunately, this
is often not the case. For many decades, work-bound students believed that high
school achievement would not influence their future careers (Stinchcombe,
1965), but now many college-bound students also hold this belief. In a survey
of over 2,000 seniors in 12 urban and suburban high schools, researchers found
that almost 40 percent of college-bound students believed that school effort
had little relevance for their future careers (Rosenbaum, 1998; cf. Steinberg,
1996).
Average high school grades As Bs Cs
or lower All
Percentage attaining A.A. or higher 63.9 37.1 13.9 37.7
Percentage not attaining any degree 36.1 62.9 86.1 62.3
Seniors with college plans (A.A. or higher) who complete an A.A. degree or higher
within 10 years of high school graduation.
Source: Beyond College for All: High School and Beyond data.
Misconception 3: High school homework doesnıt matter for college
success.
Since open admissions policies allow everyone to enter college, no matter how
poorly they do in high school, some students report that they can wait until
college to exert academic effort. But research shows that effort during high
school is absolutely essential. Take homework, for example: Students doing no
homework end up with 1.2 years less education and 19 percent lower earnings
than average. Students doing 15 hours or more a week of homework attain almost
1.5 more years of education and attain 16 percent higher earnings than average.
This 2.7-year spread in educational attainment and 35 percent spread in
earnings are both extremely large (especially considering that these outcomes
are associated with variation in self-reported homework time in high school).
Misconception 4: Going to college means taking college-level classes.
If you are taking classes in a college, are you taking college classes? Not
necessarily. Many college students" are actually in remedial courses--high
school-level classes (or even lower) that give no college credits (Deil-Amen
and Rosenbaum, 2002). The best estimates of the extent of remedial education
come from careful analyses of college transcripts from national samples of
students in the classes of 1982 and 1992. From 1982 to 1992 there has been
substantial improvement in the need for remediation among students entering
four-year colleges. Forty-four percent of those from the class of 1982, but
only 25 percent from the class of 1992 (still too many), took at least one
remedial course. Unfortunately, there has not been a similar improvement among
students entering two-year colleges. Sixty-three percent of those from the
class of 1982, and 61 percent from the class of 1992, took at least one
remedial course (Adelman, 2004). A more recent survey in two urban community
colleges found that 25 percent of students were taking three or more remedial
courses (Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum, 2002).
Moreover, in an effort to reduce studentsı feelings of inferiority, college
advisors often downplay the fact that courses are remedial. As a result, many
students do not even realize the nature of their coursework. In one
research survey, students were given a list of the collegesı remedial courses,
asked which ones they had taken and whether the courses counted toward a
degree. From interviews with administrators, the researchers knew that none of
these courses counted toward a degree. Unfortunately, most students did not
(see chart below). Among first-year students taking three remedial courses, 36
percent reported that these courses counted, and another 48 percent were not
sure. Even among second-year students taking three remedial courses, 36 percent
believed the courses counted for college credit and 44 percent were unsure
(Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum, 2002).
Misconception 5: Going to college for a two- or four-year degree takes
two or four years.
How long does a two-year associateıs degree take? If you think the answer is
obvious, you are wrong. At one community college, a top administrator confided
that because of remedial needs, a "two-year associates degree" takes
full-time students an average of 3.5 years to complete. Statistics like
this are not widely known--with three serious implications. First, since the
remedial courses often carry no credit, students who plan for two-year or
four-year degrees discover that they cannot complete their degrees in the time
they have scheduled or within the budget they have planned. Second, their
failure to collect credits is exacerbated by the "secret" nature of
the remedial courses; discovering after 1.5 years that you are still two years
away from a two-year degree is not only demoralizing, but may present virtually
insurmountable time and budget problems. Third, high school students heading
toward college do not understand college remedial placements. They know that
their older peers who graduated high school with poor grades went on to
college--and they assume they can, as well. But most high school students
probably do not realize that these "college students" are not
accumulating college credits and are unlikely to graduate. This partial picture
may encourage lax academic effort and college-for-all fantasies on the part of
many high school students--maybe even on the part of school faculty. (These
fantasies are fed by high school administrators who boast about the high percentage
of students they send to college--but neglect to mention how few graduate. More
on this later.)
Misconception 6: School counselors should not offer discouraging words
about the hard work
necessary for college success.
Given the widespread public belief in the misconceptions above, counselors
rarely discourage college plans or suggest alternatives. A recent study in
eight diverse urban and suburban high schools found that even if students had
poor grades, school counselors did not dissuade them from attending college, nor
did they warn students when they had poor chances of college success (Krei
and Rosenbaum, 2001; Rosenbaum, Miller, and Krei, 1997). National data suggest
that these practices are widespread. While only 32 percent of a national survey
of seniors in 1982 indicated that their counselors urged them to go to college,
10 years later, fully 66 percent of seniors made the same statement (Boesel,
2001; Gray, 1996). Indeed, 57 percent of seniors in the bottom half of the
academic rankings reported that counselors urged them to attend college.
In interviews we conducted with counselors, it was clear that counselors who do
wish to warn students that they are unprepared for college believe that they
lack the authority to do so (Rosenbaum et al., 1997). As one counselor said,
"Who am I to burst their bubble?" At the same time, counselors report
that when they warn students that they are unprepared for college, parents
complain, and principals support the parents. Counselors are not sure they have
the authority to be candid and to report that students are not well prepared
for college. The following example, though just an anecdote, offers some sense
of the pressures that counselors feel. A student with an IQ of 70 wanted to be
a doctor, and although the counselor tried to explain the difficulties this
student would face, he ultimately advised the student to attend "a
two-year college first and see how it goes."
Clearly, some counselors do not feel free to give their professional opinions.
If they are too candid, they can be accused of "low expectations,"
even if their concerns arise from studentsı school records. When counselors
fear they may have to pay for honestly explaining studentsı future options,
they back away from doing so. They not only yield to parentsı wishes, but they
sometimes change their initial advice to avoid trouble. Many counselors report
that they advise students with D-averages to attend a community college and
later transfer to a four-year college. One student with a D-average wanted to
apply to Harvard, so his counselor suggested that he could begin at community
college and then look to transfer to Harvard after two years. The
college-for-all mentality is a perfect way to avoid unpleasant issues that are
likely to arise as students make plans for the future.
In the past, counselors often acted as "gatekeepers," advising
low-achieving students on alternatives to college (Cicourel and Kitsuse, 1963;
Rosenbaum, 1976), including providing advice about which non-college training
options could lead to well-paid, respected occupations and even using their
contacts to place non-college-bound students into respectable jobs.
If heavy-handed gatekeeping by counselors has indeed become less common, no one
will grieve its loss; only two generations ago, counselors often had a
decisive, sometimes secretive, impact on which colleges students would apply
and go to. But if counselors are not giving students the information they need
about the requirements for completing college, then many students may be
aimlessly drifting through high school and community colleges without any
notion of what requirements they will have to meet to earn a degree. In that
case, gatekeeping has not ended, it has only been deferred, and many students
will haplessly find themselves failing out of college without any forewarning
of what is happening. Today, many students are making college plans that are
not likely to be realized. Parents, administrators, counselors, and teachers
must work together to understand the connection between high school effort and
college success--and to convey this reality to students. It should go without
saying that counselors canıt take on this countercultural mission on their own.
In the next article, high school staff can see what students need to know to be
prepared for college; for distribution to students, a college fact sheet
Beyond the negative
effect that the college-for-all push has on individual students, there is the
broader negative effect it has on high schoolsı academic climate. Seeing that
college access is guaranteed, some students believe that they can challenge
teachersı authority and suffer no penalty; some teachers may respond to their
diminished authority by leaving the profession or by reducing their demands on
students (Sedlak et al., 1986). While these changes have their greatest impact
on low-achieving students, even high-achieving students will be in classes
where teachersı authority is questioned, and such students may wonder if they
could prepare for college with less effort.
Those looking for justice may see it in the finding that unmotivated students
will end up worse off--stuck with remedial classes, fewer college credits and
degrees, and lower earnings. But this is not a happy ending. Students waste
their high school years, disrupt high school for others, drag down the
standards in high school, and force colleges to provide high school courses as
an increasingly larger segment of their curriculum.
How can we improve the situation? Since the playing field has drastically
changed in the world of higher education, new "rules of the game"
have arisen. New high school practices must be established to match them. These
new rules of college can be summarized succinctly:
* All students can plan to get a college degree; but if they are
unprepared, they must be willing to repeat high school courses in college,
spending the extra time, money, and effort in non-credit, remedial courses.
* All students can attend college, but low-achieving students should be
warned about remedial courses and their own unlikely prospects for graduation.
* College completion, as opposed to enrollment, requires increased high
school effort. If students delay their academic effort until they get to
college, the delay will make degree completion take longer, cost more, and be
less likely.
* Policies to improve studentsı preparation for college do not remove a
schoolıs obligation to provide students with information about their college
prospects.
* Students whose college prospects are dim should be provided good
information about alternatives to college that can lead to a successful
employment life. These students can also be informed about opportunities to
attend college later in life.
School staff could play a critical role in providing information and resources
to help students make choices that will support their own long-term goals
before it is too late. Unfortunately, it seems that students are not getting
this information, nor is there a clear mandate for high school counselors or
teachers (or, for that matter, administrators) to give this advice. How could a
better job be done in this area?
1.
High schools should monitor and publicize the academic preparation and college
completion rates of their college-bound graduates. It is common practice for
high schools to trumpet the percentage of kids they send on to college--as if
this were the major indicator of a high schoolıs success. Instead of focusing
on just the number of seniors who go to college, high school administrators
should monitor their graduatesı preparation for college-credit classes
(through, for example, achievement test scores and success in the first year of
college) and brag about that: College preparation, not college attendance, is
the real achievement. They should also inform students about degree completion
rates for prior graduates (by showing the percentage of students who earn
college degrees broken down by grade point average, for example). In addition,
high schools should provide information about various local colleges, including
degree-completion rates and the average number of years students took to
complete their degrees.
2.
High schools should require students aiming for college to take modified
college placement exams. Society needs to give students clear information about
the achievement prerequisites for college courses. Since colleges already give
tests to assess whether incoming freshmen are assigned to credit or remedial
classes, one solution is relatively straightforward: These tests could be
modified and given to high school students to tell them whether they are ready
for college-level work. If colleges do not want to prepare a new test, they
could recommend an existing one or simply give high schools the previous yearıs
freshman placement exams. These exams could be given to high school seniors,
and a modified exam could be given to high school sophomores, to tell them
whether they are making satisfactory progress toward college. If not, students
must improve their achievement, revise their goals, or accept the fact that
they will have to take remedial courses in college.
Having high school students take college placement exams may appear unnecessary
since more and more states are developing high school exit exams. But in many
states the high school exit exams were developed to assess minimum competence.
So every year many students pass a high school exit exam, but then do poorly on
a college placement exam and end up in remedial courses. According to a recent
study that compared 66 state high school exams (35 in English and 31 in
mathematics) to a set of standards for university success found that just three
of them (all in English) could offer useful information about studentsı
preparation for college (Conley, 2003).
In 2000, Kentucky became the first state in the nation to pass a state law
creating an online mathematics assessment developed specifically to let high
school sophomores and juniors know if they are ready for college-level algebra
and calculus. Called the Kentucky Early Mathematics Testing Program (KEMTP),
the test assesses Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II and was developed by high
school and college mathematics teachers from Kentucky. This purely diagnostic
assessment does not become part of the high school transcript and is not used
for admissions to college; it does give students (and their schools) immediate
feedback on which topics they have--and have not--mastered and urges students
to use the one to two years they have left in high school to address those weaknesses.
(To learn more about KEMTP, go to http://www.mathclass.org/welcome-kemtp.htm.)
3.
High schools should clear up the misconceptions. Counselors are the front line
here, and theyıll need a lot of support. All school personnel should be
well-armed with the facts and encouraged to convey them to students. And the
facts are clear: High school performance matters. Hard work in high school
matters. Doing homework matters. Taking rigorous courses matters. Getting good
grades matters. All of these are closely connected to whether students succeed
in college. (And, interestingly, theyıre also closely connected to whether
non-college bound students succeed in their jobs.) High schools should also
make sure students are well informed about college remedial courses,
specifically: These are the courses they will be enrolled in if their high
school work is not up to snuff; these courses do not bear college credit;
taking them amounts to paying for an education that could have been had for
free in high school; and students who have to take several of them almost never
reach college graduation.
4.
High schools should serve college- and work-bound students equally well.
Teachers, counselors, and administrators dream of students working hard, doing
well in school, and graduating from college. It is a wonderful dream--but that
doesnıt mean it is in every studentıs best interest. Those who havenıt done
well academically and those whose interests are not in the liberal arts are
best served with an honest look at their current chances in college and a
serious examination of the alternatives, such as training opportunities and job
placement assistance. The fact is, despite the economyıs growing preference for
college degrees, there are many good jobs available to high school graduates.
(For more information on the importance of high school for the non-college
bound, see the sidebar All Good Jobs Don't Require
a College Degree....) Postponing college is also a viable option. Many
students enter college when they are older, often after several years of work.
More than half of the students in two-year colleges are older than 24, and
about one-quarter of them are over 35 (NCES 1999). Their age and employment may
give them the experience to make better course choices, the maturity to be more
disciplined students, skills that will help them pass some courses, and perhaps
even employer-paid tuition benefits.
Too often, we think studentsı problems are inside of them, and we blame
studentsı poor motivation. However, most students tend to be motivated if they
see incentives for effort. But in the case of high school performance, we
obscure what is at stake for most students. While top quartile students (those
aiming for highly selective colleges) are told the incentives for better grades
and test scores, the vast majority of students get the impression that high
school achievement, grades, and test scores are irrelevant.
Students must realize that high school grades are important: Grades strongly
predict future careers. There are strong incentives for school effort and
students can improve their adult attainments by improving their high school
grades. Although most colleges are not selective--and most unselective colleges
(and most employers) ignore grades in selecting applicants--even unselective
colleges and employers discover that youths with better high school grades are
more successful in attaining college degrees and higher earnings.
The American educational system has taken a bold step in making college
accessible to so many students. However, the revolution is still incomplete,
and research has identified a number of difficulties in educatorsı, parentsı,
and studentsı understandings of college and what it requires. This revolution
poses new challenges and a set of unintended consequences. We will need
thoughtful solutions to address them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
James E. Rosenbaum is professor of sociology, education, and social policy at
Northwestern University and a faculty fellow with the university's Institute
for Policy Research. He is author of Beyond College for All: Career Paths
for the Forgotten Half and Crossing the Class and Color Lines:
From Public Housing to White Suburbia.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Grade point average is the easiest-to-use predictor of college success.
Research by Clifford Adelman (1999), however, shows that the intensity and
quality of one's high school curriculum is actually an even more powerful
predictor. But since course content and teacher expectations vary widely from
school to school, making use of this indicator can be difficult. Nonetheless,
the gist of both Adelman's and my research is clear: College-bound students
should take the most difficult courses possible and work hard to earn the
highest grades possible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
Adelman, C. (1999). Answers in the Tool Box: Academic intensity, attendance
patterns, and bachelorıs degree attainment. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department
of Education.
Adelman, C. (2004). Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories in
Postsecondary Education, 1972-2000. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Education.
American Diploma Project (2004). Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma
That Counts. Washington, D.C.: Achieve, Inc., The Education Trust and the
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Boesel, D. (2001). The college movement and its critics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82,
537-542.
Carnevale, A. and Desrochers, D. (2002). "The missing middle: aligning
education and the knowledge economy." Office of vocational and adult
education, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., April.
Cicourel, A. V. and Kitsuse, J. I. (1963). The educational decision-makers.
Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs Merrill.
Conley, D. (2003). Mixed messages: What state high school tests communicate
about student readiness for college. Eugene, Ore.: University of Oregon.
Deil-Amen, R. and Rosenbaum, J. E. (2002). The unintended consequences of
stigma-free remediation. Sociology of Education, 75, 249-268.
Gray, K. (1996). The baccalaureate game: Is it right for all teens? Phi Delta
Kappan, 77, 528-534.
Grubb, W. N. (1996). Working in the middle. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Krei, M. S. and Rosenbaum, J. E. (2001). Career and college advice to the
forgotten half: What do counselors and vocational teachers advise? Teachers
College Record, 103, 823-843.
Miller, S. R. (1998). "Shortcut: High school grades as a signal of human
capital." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 20, 299-311.
Murnane, R. J. and Levy, F. (1996). Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles
for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing Economy. New York: The Free
Press.
NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) (1999). Digest of educational
statistics 1999. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
NELS (1992). National Educational Longitudinal Survey. Washington D.C.:
National Center for Educational Statistics.
Rosenbaum, J. E. (1976). Making inequality: The hidden curriculum of high
school tracking. New York: Wiley.
Rosenbaum, J. E. (1998). College-for-all: Do students understand what college
demands? Social Psychology of Education, 2, 55-80.
Rosenbaum, J. E. (2001). Beyond college for all. New York: Russell Sage.
Rosenbaum, J.E. and Gordon-McKeon, B. (2003). "College for all: How has it
changed?" Unpublished paper, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern
University.
Rosenbaum, J. E., Miller, S., and Krei, M. (1997). "What role should
counselors have?" In K. K. Wong (Ed.), Advances in educational policy,
(Volume 3, pp. 79-92). Greenwood, Conn.: JAI Press.
Sedlak, M., Wheeler, C., Pullin, D., and Cusick, D. (1986). Selling students
short. New York: Teachers College Press.
Shapiro, D. and Iannozzi, M. (1999). The benefits to bridging work and school:
Results of the 1997 National Employer Survey. Philadelphia: National Center for
Postsecondary Education, University of Pennsylvania.
Steinberg, L. (1996). Beyond the classroom. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Stinchcombe, A. L. (1965). Rebellion in a high school. Chicago: Quadrangle.
Articles may be reproduced for
noncommercial personal or educational use only; additional permission is
required for any other reprinting of the documents. American Federation of Teachers, AFLCIO - 555 New
Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001
Copyright by the American Federation of Teachers, AFLCIO. All rights reserved.
====================================
For a follow-up report, go to http://www.aft.org/american_educator/spring2004/ADP.html
(or
for Jobs in the High-Growth, High-Performance Workplace)
====================================
April 18, 2004, New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN
How far can the frenzy over college admissions go?
Far enough, apparently, to have high school students flocking to a brand-new
kind of summer program - college admission prep camps.
No campfires. No hiking. Just hours a day of essay writing, SAT preparation,
counseling, mock admission interviews and a potpourri of workshops and college
visits, all intended to give high school students an edge on the admission
process.
This summer, three companies are offering college admission prep programs on
seven campuses from Los Angeles to Boston. Two of them, Academic Study
Associates and Musiker Teen tours, have long experience in teenage summer
programs, and the third, Brighton, is a start-up founded by a former employee
of
Academic Study Associates.
While there is nothing new about high school students spending summers at a
college, taking both academic and test prep courses - and perhaps visiting
other
campuses in the process - this year's offerings go further, building a whole
program around the admission process.
The pitch is none too subtle. "Colleges don't accept people, they accept
applications," said the press release announcing the Brighton program.
"In the
vast majority of cases, the admissions officers that decide whether to `admit,'
`wait list' or `deny' will never meet the candidate. With that in mind, it
doesn't make much sense to struggle for years to compile a wonderful academic
and extracurricular record only to rush together applications at the finish
line."
Better to spend time over the summer, the Brighton materials say, making sure
that every element of the application is "carefully crafted to tell a
compelling
story."
Brighton's director, David Allen, said: "These kids, all the kids are
there with
their great grades and their great SAT scores, so those factors that used to be
secondary, like how well rounded they are, and whether their essays really say
something, are a lot more important.
"The more the pressure's cranked up, the more parents and counselors seem
to be
driving the process. The kids are throwing up their hands and saying, `Yeah,
whatever,' so having them do this on a campus, away from parents, where they
can
get excited about living like a college student, is a good thing."
Brighton's nine-day $2,295 program at the University of California, Los Angeles
and Tufts is the shortest and least expensive of the three. The June session at
U.C.L.A. is nearly full, though there are still plenty of openings in the August
sessions both at the California campus and at Tufts.
All three programs include preparation for the SAT, writing essays and guidance
on college selection, interview tips and college visits. The Musiker program -
$2,899 for 12 days at Northeastern University or Georgetown, offered in
partnership with The Princeton Review - includes more college visits than the
others. Bob Musiker, an executive director, said that about 120 students had
enrolled so far for the 200 available openings.
"Every student will visit at least 20 colleges in the two-week
period," Mr.
Musiker said. "We'll be doing two a day, and sometimes three or four on
weekends."
Are that many campus visits necessary?
"Maybe it sounds like overkill," he said, "but I just talked to
parents who've
come from visiting every selective college in Pennsylvania, and next week
they're doing Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Middlebury and Bowdoin and
almost every competitive college in that corridor. Choosing a college has
become
a $100,000 decision, and people want to make sure they're making the right
choice."
Mr. Musiker, like others in the business, emphasizes that the college admission
process has become tougher and more competitive than it used to be.
"Pretty much anybody who can take an SAT course does take an SAT
course," he
said. "No one wants somebody else to be more prepared than they are."
Some college admissions officials, however, say the new programs cater more to
parents' escalating anxieties than to any real need for expensive professional
help getting through the admissions process.
"This is just sick," said Bruce Poch, the dean of admissions at
Pomona College
in California. "I can't imagine how it's going to help, and it sounds like
such
a ridiculous waste of money that it distresses me that parents would be so
obsessive-compulsive."
Academic Study Associates was the first to try the college-admission prep camp
idea last summer, with pilot programs at Pepperdine and Amherst. This summer,
it
is offering 11-day $2,695 programs at those campuses and Dartmouth, and an
optional one-week $995 Northeast college tour covering 31 campuses.
"School counselors just can't give kids the kind of service we can,"
said Marcia
Evans, the company's executive director, "and the educational counseling
industry has gotten enormous. I think parents have as much angst or more than
the kids. Part of our program is to help kids get a little distance and
demystify the process. It's a very intense program, but the kids gobble it up
and ask for more."
Those who went to the company's pilot programs last summer said it was both
useful and fun.
"The kids were great and there were only 12 of us," said Taylor
Finch, who
attended the program at Amherst last summer and is now a junior in Scarsdale.
"I
got SAT prep and wrote two college essays. And the mock interviews were really
useful. I learned not to be so fidgety, and not to touch my hair."
Jennifer Eisenstein, a fellow camper who is a junior in Wellesley, Mass., was
equally positive.
"As much of a pain as it is to go spend 11 days of your summer doing real
work,
it was definitely useful," she said. "I came back to school a couple
steps ahead
of everybody else. I had a list of colleges I wanted to look at, and nobody
else
had that.
"And I have a college essay done that, with a little bit of tweaking, I
can
really use. I teach Sunday school and it's about a girl who came up to me last
year and asked if I believed in God."
Her mother, Beth Eisenstein, said that, as an alumni interviewer for her alma
mater, Georgetown, she is aware of how increasingly competitive the admission
process has become.
"Almost every kid I talk to has the grades and the risumi and can clearly
do the
work, but most of them don't get in," she said. "We have an excellent
guidance
department, but I still thought it might be helpful for Jenny to have somebody
help her through the process."
So far, all three programs seem to be attracting at least as many students
going
into their junior year as into their senior year - and that is a good thing,
the
directors say.
"It gives them a little more time to rationally plan their admissions
calendar,"
Ms. Evans said.
In most of the families, signing up for summer college admission prep programs
seems to be an idea that comes from the parents, not the students.
Kathryn Keele, whose son, Drew, is going to Brighton's program at Tufts this
summer, said she hoped it would help him focus on the college process.
"Teenage boys have a tendency to be a little goofy," Ms. Keele said.
"This
seemed like a way to put them in the driver's seat, and get the parents out of
the middle.
"We think it will help Drew see the long-range picture, that he really
needs to
keep his G.P.A. up if he wants to go to this kind of school. He didn't give us
even a smidgen of opposition. His reaction was, `Oh great, I want to go there.'
"
Drew, who attends a private school in Pasadena, Calif., said he had not really
begun to focus on the college admission process yet.
"My older brother went through it and it seemed kind of arduous," he
said. "This
program will probably set me thinking about it. I know it's work, but it'll be
fun, because I'll be in a new place meeting new kids."
====================================
Tuition and Fees in Public Higher Education
in the West, 2003-04 Detailed Tables
The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) has released
Tuition and Fees in Public Higher Education in the West, 2003-04 Detailed
Tables, the latest update of WICHE`s annual report on tuition and mandatory
fees at public institutions in WICHE`s 15-state region. The report includes an
institution-by-institution historical review of tuition changes from
year-to-year as well as 5-year and 10-year averages. To view, visit: http://www.wiche.edu/Policy/Tuition_and_Fees/index.asp
Sherri Frye, Administrative
Assistant, Public Policy, National Assn. for College Admission Counseling
====================================
The US Department of Education
is requesting public comment on proposed changes to the FAFSA. The changes
being considered would take effect for the 2005-2006 school year, and were
developed based on previous calls for comment from the public. Read a summary
of the proposed changes at http://www.nasfaa.org/publications/2004/EAFAFSA031504.html.
To send suggestions or comments to the Department of Education, send an email
to fafsa0506@ed.gov. Comments are due by
Tuesday, May 11, 2004.
Sherri Frye, Administrative Assistant, Public
Policy, National Assn. for College Admission Counseling
====================================
By
Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 12, 2004; Page B02
David Weinstein, a senior at Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, is
an academic star by any definition. His grade-point average is 4.68. His SAT
score is 1500. He has served as student body president and co-editor of his
school newspaper, all while struggling with the challenges of Tourette's
syndrome.
Ten years ago, he would almost certainly have been ensured a place at one of
the Ivy League colleges. But within two hours on April 1, as he checked the
admissions messages on his computer, Harvard, Yale, Brown and Pennsylvania all
slapped him with wait-list or rejection notices. Princeton delivered the bad
news two days later.
Throughout the country, many high school seniors and their parents are coping
with another wave of the unpleasant surprises that have become a part of the
college application ritual. Record numbers of students -- about 2 million this
year and expected to go higher -- are applying to colleges, while the number of
available spaces at the most sought-after undergraduate institutions has stayed
pretty much the same.
"The fact is that there are so many more kids in the pipeline," said
David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association for
College Admission Counseling. Students' decision to apply to more colleges now
to make sure they get in somewhere adds to the problem, he said.
Hawkins said he expects no relief from the growing admission crush until about
2011, and perhaps not that soon.
The rejected students are becoming more appreciative of less-exalted schools
with excellent programs. Weinstein, for example, was accepted at Johns Hopkins,
Northwestern and Emory universities.
But being turned down still hurts. Weinstein said he was irritated by the
rejection notice from Harvard, which said that the school's admissions dean
"was very sorry to inform you that it is not possible" to admit him.
"Sure, it was possible," Weinstein, 17, said aloud after he read the
note. "You just decided not to do it."
Diane E. Epstein, a private college counselor in Bethesda, said she tries to
ease the angst of growing numbers of April rejections by reminding applicants
that fewer than 100 of the 2,400 four-year undergraduate colleges "are
creating the frenzy. The rest accept most of their applicants."
This year's high school seniors were aware of the difficulties encountered by
last year's graduates, she said, and searched harder for good schools with
higher acceptance rates. Parents are slower to adjust, many guidance counselors
said.
David J. Hamilton, director of college counseling at Our Lady of Good Counsel
High School in Wheaton, said one mother once complained about her daughter
being accepted by only one of the six schools she applied to. When he pointed
out that he had recommended a dozen other colleges, the mother said,
"Those are second- and third-tier schools."
"I graduated from one of those schools," Hamilton replied. "I
worked at one of those schools." The student enrolled at the school that
took her and was happy with her choice, Hamilton said.
Bob Sweeney, a counselor at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, N.Y.,
summed up his students' ability to handle the pain with a Rolling Stones lyric:
"You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just
might find, you get what you need."
As growing numbers of top-flight applicants play it safe by also applying to
lesser-known schools, it is becoming much harder to predict who will get in
where, college counselors say. Shirley A. Bloomquist, a retired public high
school guidance director in Great Falls who advises private clients, said she
had a top applicant -- a National Merit Scholar with athletic talent -- who was
put on the waiting list by two of the upcoming, lesser-known schools,
Washington University in St. Louis and Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., but
admitted to an Ivy League school.
At Colorado College in Colorado Springs, another well-regarded but less famous
school, applications were up 17.5 percent this year. For the first time in a
long time, the college rejected more students than it accepted, said Matthew
Bonser, senior assistant director of admission. "We didn't make offers to
many qualified applicants that we would have been able to take in previous
years," he said. Jennifer Britz, dean of admissions at another
increasingly selective school, Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, said
applications there have surged 80 percent in the past four years.
Some colleges that usually reject most of their applicants have found less
application growth this year, a sign that some seniors are no longer betting on
such long odds. Charles A. Deacon, dean of undergraduate admissions at
Georgetown University, said that the number of applicants fell 3 percent this
year to 14,850 but that the school will still reject about 80 percent.
David Weinstein has his own theory of the admissions trend: "The Ivies are
rejecting so many qualified applicants that . . . schools that are second-tier
now are going to move into the top ranking."
====================================
By
Marcia Rosbury-Henne, Associate Director of Admissions, Mount Wachusett
Community College; Gardner, Massachusetts
A small classroom environment will allow [a student] to receive more one-on-one
attention from his professors, academic support that is readily available; no
outside distractions (dorm life, etc) to get in the way of his pursuit, and an
opportunity to discover himself as a student as well as an intellect...I would
hate to have a bright student...be discouraged by failing grades his first
semester in a 4-year. Let your student take a variety of English classes
and a sampling of some electives that he enjoys. Hopefully, this will motivate
him to study more, prepare for tests and become a better student, thus gaining
the academic maturity that he needs to succeed at a four-year.
A community college is also less expensive, and you will find that a community
college has many joint admissions programs with many public and perhaps even
some private schools in your area.
Remember, some of the brightest & most successful individuals have started
out at a community college:
Tom Hanks
Oscar-winning actor
H. Ross Perot
Corporate executive and 1992 Presidential Candidate
Calvin Klein
Fashion Designer
Fred Haise
Apollo 13 Astronaut
Jackie Robinson
First African-American to play professional baseball
Melvin Salveson
Creator of MasterCard
Walt Disney
Founder of Disney World and Disneyland
Eileen Collins
First Female Space Shuttle Astronaut
Billy Crystal
Actor and comedian
Natalie Merchant
Recording Artist
Francine Neff
Former US Treasurer
Arthur Goldberg
Supreme Court Justice
Clint Eastwood
Actor and Oscar-winning director
John Walsh
"America's Most Wanted" host
Rita Mae Brown
Author
Brian Williams
NBC Broadcast news anchor
Best of luck to you & your student.
====================================
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
Staff Reporter, From The Wall Street
Journal Online
High-school students place a lot of weight on their grade-point averages. But
they may be interested to know that many colleges increasingly don't.
The problem is that GPAs -- always somewhat erratic because curriculums differ
so much -- have in some cases become almost meaningless as high schools
experiment with a raft of ways to measure students. Some, worried about putting
their students at a disadvantage with college admissions offices, give extra
weight to grades in more difficult or advanced-placement courses. Other
schools, in a nod to political correctness, are either loath to measure
students at all with traditional grades or have developed their own creative
way of assessing them.
To try to cut through this hodgepodge, colleges around the country are coming
up with their own formulas to recalculate each applicant's GPA. One strategy --
used by Emory University and the University of California system, among others
-- is to drop the pluses and minuses alongside letter grades. (So a B-plus in
trigonometry becomes a B.) Another approach is to disregard the applicant's
entire freshman year of high school. Some schools, like Haverford College in Pennsylvania,
now go a step further -- throwing out the GPA altogether and relying instead on
the student's class rank.
WHAT COUNTS
Georgetown University
What they don't count:
GPA
What they do:
Class rank
Carnegie Mellon University
What they don't count:
9th grade
Pluses and minuses attached to grades
Extra weighting for harder courses
What they do:
Recalculated GPA
In short, many colleges are changing how they approach GPAs, and in a
surprising variety of ways. The upshot is that it is now often impossible for
students to assess the admissions power of their grades unless they know the
system used by each college they are applying to. Colleges say that in most
cases, GPAs wind up dropping after the recalculation. So for some high-school
students, a 4.0 might be worth far less than they thought.
The high-school transcript of a student with lots of pluses next to his grades,
for example, could mean more to Johns Hopkins, which takes those shades into
account in its recalculation. At Carnegie Mellon, by contrast, "an A is an
A is an A," says Michael Steidel, director of admissions, regardless
whether there was a plus or a minus alongside it.
In addition, since colleges like Emory don't give credit in their formula for
difficult courses, it may not make sense for a student already taking a decent
dose of APs to overload on them and risk a low grade.
Of course, none of this in any way means that high-school grades don't matter.
Even where colleges don't take course difficulty into account in the calculation
itself, that doesn't mean they aren't checking how many honors classes a
student is taking. Many colleges continue to look more favorably on applicants
who take challenging classes, even if they don't factor that into their GPA
formula.
In the past couple of years, Johns Hopkins began recalculating GPA by throwing
out "non-academic" courses like art or music, unless such a course
shows academic rigor, as in advanced-placement art history or AP studio art.
(One recent applicant's transcript included an A in lacrosse -- needless to
say, that didn't make the cut.) Johns Hopkins, as well as the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, also throws out all
freshman-year marks.
Some colleges, including Georgetown University and Haverford, don't bother
recalculating GPAs. Instead, they ignore it altogether, instead focusing on
class rank. One hitch to this approach is that many high schools are abandoning
the practice of ranking students; in a recent study, over half of high schools
said they no longer do so.
But that doesn't stop college admissions officers from considering that
measure. Rob Killion, director of admission at Haverford, says that in the
absence of a ranking, he may have to "guesstimate" how those students
placed in the class. "Sometimes that hurts the applicants," he says,
since his guess is usually conservative.
When Shahzad Khan was sending applications to colleges last fall, he thought he
was a shoo-in at the University of Michigan. He had taken over a dozen
college-level classes at his Memphis, Tenn., prep school, and his GPA put him
in the top 20% of his class. But in the end, he didn't get in. He now says he
wishes he knew that the college was recalculating GPAs.
While colleges often don't publicize the details of these formulas, students
should simply ask colleges point-blank whether and how they do the
recalculations. In the case of courses such as art or religion, which may not
be counted in the GPA formulas, students can ask their high-school counselors
to write a letter vouching for its credibility as a rigorous course. It carries
sway with some schools.
"When in doubt, we typically include [a course]," says Mr. Steidel at
Carnegie Mellon.
The GPA, for all its foibles, remains a fixture at high schools. In a recent
survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 91% of
secondary schools reported that they calculated grade point averages for their
students. Of those, 75% reported that they gave extra weight to harder classes,
or "weighted" GPAs.
In large part, the GPA policies are simply a response by colleges to the
growing variance among high schools in how they grade. For example, Taft
School, a boarding school in Watertown, Conn., favors a six-point scale for its
GPA -- rather than the traditional four-point scale. Other high schools, like
St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., use descriptive phrasing to distinguish
merit, such as "high honors" or "honors," instead of A's
and B's.
Governor Livingston High School, in Berkeley Heights, N.J., even uses an
"E" grade to "soften the blow" of failing a course, says
Jane Webber Runte, the guidance director there.
But as more colleges come up with new GPA formulas, some high schools are now
following their lead. Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Mass., for
instance, is now moving away from giving extra weight for harder courses. The
school hopes that doing so will lead colleges to look more closely at the total
transcripts of its students, says Peter Gow, the school's academic dean.
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voice is heard.
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