Admissions Academy Blog

Admissions Decision Time

•  Posted by Sarah Ziegler on March 24th, 2010 in Admissions, Articles of Interest
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April 1 quickly approaches, the traditional deadline by which colleges will have notified applicants whether or not they have been admitted. Many students are already celebrating acceptances and scholarship offers from their top choices, and many students are already beginning to cope with the emotions of not being admitted to theirs. For both parents and students, spring can present a challenge to understand how or why admissions decisions were made and how to make the best choice for the next four years.

This is also the time of year that spawns articles about making the most of bad news or about how elite college admissions has become even more competitive than it was the year before. The Wall Street Journal, in anticipation of April 1, published an article highlighting “famous ‘rejects’” — from Warren Buffet to Tom Brokaw. All of the successful personas featured in the article were rejected from Ivy League schools — and most were rejected from Harvard — but found opportunities and mentors in their other college choices. While the sentiment that you can be rejected from Harvard and still be successful in life may help comfort students who find themselves in similar positions, what about students who weren’t aiming for the Ivy League? Why focus on admission to (or rejection from) elite universities that aren’t the targets of the vast majority of collegebound students?

Of the profiles in the article, the perspective of Lee Bolinger, Columbia University’s president, struck an important note: that students shouldn’t let other people’s (namely college’s) judgments about them determine their own self-worth. Our counselors keep another article around the office for this time of year: “Dealing with Disappointment.” True, it also comes from the alumni magazine of an elite university (Stanford), but the message of the article is not so much that you can be successful despite Stanford, but that it’s the individual who determines his or her own success.

For students who are dealing with bad news, remember that as much as hearing “no” may feel like a personal rejection, it isn’t. Selective colleges, whether Stanford or San Jose State, have more qualified applicants than they have space available, and the fact that you weren’t offered admission doesn’t mean you made a mistake or that the college didn’t want you. For parents, celebrate your child’s offers of acceptance rather than focus on schools that didn’t offer your son or daughter admission. Moving on from, rather than fixating on, the “no’s” can help students find a great fit in a college they may not have originally considered. Lastly, keep Stanford President John Hennessey’s words in mind: “the experiences [students] encounter and the depth of character they build along the way will mean far more than the name of the institution on their diploma.”

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The Value of a College Degree

•  Posted by Sarah Ziegler on August 5th, 2009 in Academics, Articles of Interest
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CNN this week featured an article about a recent college graduate who is suing her alma mater, Monroe College, claiming that their career services office hasn’t done enough to place her in a full-time job. She claims that the career center showed favoritism to students with a 4.0, rather than her 2.7 GPA, and she’s suing to reclaim both her four-year tuition and extra damages for the stress that her failed job search has caused her.

Whether or not the suit has merit, it does open up a conversation about what college is, or should be, for. In their statement, Monroe College replied that, “it is clear that no college, especially in this economy, can guarantee employment.” Four-year colleges are institutions of higher learning, and while Census data shows that the earning power of college graduates is higher than that of only high school graduates, colleges at best can provide career assistance, not guaranteed career placement.

Some have argued that this article reinforces the idea that a bachelor’s degree is becoming increasingly less meaningful, that in order to secure a professional job with a living wage, students have to attend graduate school. But one of the New York Times blogs took up this issue not too long ago:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/what-is-a-masters-degree-worth/. The argument that an M.A. now is like B.A. years ago, or that a B.A. now is like a high school diploma years ago, misses a more important point. Why do students graduate from colleges with educational experiences that do not adequately prepare them for the “real world”? To take it a step further, why are students allowed to graduate from high school with meaningless educational experiences? Standardized testing pass rates are on the rise in New York City, for example, but the feel-good news misses the fact that the number of students who are advanced or highly proficient is shrinking.

If anything, the suit may be indicative of a larger problem in the U.S. educational system; students shouldn’t have to go to graduate school to get an education that prepares them for jobs. Advanced degrees hold value when they provide students a skill set that can’t be taught in college, or when they’re used as a means for students to change career paths. But if a generic master’s degree is a band-aid for what should have been taught in high school and undergraduate college, then perhaps it’s time to demand better of our school systems.

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Essay Writing: Start Early and Be Yourself

•  Posted by Sarah Ziegler on June 23rd, 2009 in Admissions, Articles of Interest
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Summer is here, and for many students, now is the perfect time to begin brainstorming and writing college essays. Although most colleges have not yet released their applications for the upcoming admissions cycle, the topics for a student’s core personal essays are already available. Instructions for UC’s two personal statement essays for freshman and transfer applicants are available here. For the nearly 400 colleges that accept the Common Application, students can preview the essay prompts here.

Application essays serve a unique and important role in admissions as the only piece of a student’s application that conveys his or her own voice and experience. Academic records, standardized test scores, teacher recommendations, and even interviews tell part of the story, but only in essays can students speak directly to admissions officers in their own words.

For students struggling to begin or unsure what direction to take with their writing, The Choice, a blog from New York Times education writer and author Jacques Steinberg, offers an insider’s view of what makes an essay successful by Martha Merrill, dean of admissions at Connecticut College.

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