AP Credit Policy Search
March 21st, 2016Spring is now here and while many college-bound high school seniors may be feeling senioritis setting in it is important to finish out the year strong. Students have worked hard to maintain good grades, study for standardized tests and complete challenging AP courses. While most of your goals have been accomplished, AP exams are yet to begin and could help make a great transition to college. Your scores from AP exams can play an important part in your college career and may exempt you from taking some of the required general education courses in college.
As you prepare for AP exams and contemplate your college enrollment, researching each college’s AP credit policy may be an important factor. The College Board website provides a convenient way to research each college’s AP credit policy in order to help the process.
Read more at College Board >>Tagged: Advanced placement, College
The Waitlist: Colleges’ Safety Valve, Students’ Purgatory
March 7th, 2016Admission decisions from selective colleges will soon be arriving fast and furious, and some students will have a “wait list” decision to consider. Although natural to wonder what one’s chances are, it’s impossible to know. When I sat on admission committees at Tufts University, then Brandeis University and later, Washington University in St. Louis, our wait lists gave us latitude to first see how the enrolling class would materialize from the first round of offers, and then fill in gaps. Too few men, or women? Too few engineers, or Classics majors? Too little diversity, whether geographic, ethnic or racial? Our goal was a well-rounded class with a fairly precise number of students, and the wait list helped us achieve that in some years. In other years, our initial offers produced the enrolling class sought, and we were unable to offer any students admission from the wait list.
Will Dix’s article on the Forbes website shines a bright light on the wait list process; we recommend that students and parents read it if contemplating what to do about a wait list offer. Dix’s article concludes with excellent recommendations about steps to take if you’d like to remain under serious consideration.
Be certain to follow his steps carefully if you’re serious about a college that’s wait-listed you, including that of submitting an enrollment deposit to a college that’s offered admission outright. Why? If you’re not offered admission to your top choice from the wait list, you’ll want to be certain that your place is reserved for fall entry at your next choice.
Good luck to all in weeks to come – we are here for our students and their parents, ready to listen and guide.
Article published February 22, 2016
Written by: Willard Dix
At this moment in the middle of winter, admission officers at four-year colleges and universities everywhere are deep into reading season. They’re combing through hundreds or thousands of applications to find students with the talents and abilities to power their campuses and keep professors happy. Some applicants will be immediate standouts; others won’t have the grades or scores or that “certain something” to be admissible. Many others will fall into a purgatory called The Waitlist , where they hover like the ghosts in “The Others” until June or July.
The waitlist exists because even the most selective colleges worry about “making their numbers.” The incoming class has to be a certain size, filled with the best possible mix of students. If a small college has a target of 500 freshmen, there had better be 500 students showing up in the fall. And it needs to be 500, not 530 or 470. Too few and the budget takes a hit; too many and students end up living in Quonset huts or hallways (or even being paid to wait a year before matriculating). The applicants’ purgatory is the colleges’ safety valve.
Read more at Forbes >>Tagged: Admission decision, Applications, College
Career Skills and the Liberal Arts
February 29th, 2016Liberal arts graduates have highly developed analytical, reasoning and communication skills and are poised to adapt to new developments over the course of their lives. In effect, the liberal arts teach us how to learn in a variety of spheres … which our fast-changing world demands.
Today’s article link sheds light on how colleges are pairing tangible skills with the breadth and depth of the liberal arts, using Bates College in Maine as a primary example. With the liberal arts under attack by so many, more liberal arts colleges are likely to take similar routes, focusing increasingly on employability. That’s a very good thing!
Article published February 23, 2016
Written by: Carl Straumsheim
Computer science might not be the first field that springs to mind when thinking of the liberal arts, but at some colleges, interdisciplinary computing is seen as one way to connect the department to other disciplines on campus.
Bates College, a liberal arts college in Maine, may be the most recent example. The college, which enrolls about 2,000 students, doesn’t offer anything resembling a computer science program — not even a concentration. Given the chance to create one from scratch, the college will in 2017 introduce digital and computational studies, an interdisciplinary program that fits the label of neither computer science nor digital humanities.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed >>Tagged: Career, College, Liberal arts, Opportunity, Personal characteristics
Greek Life: Gauging Campus Impact
February 15th, 2016Sorority and fraternity (Greek) life on college campuses can be powerfully important in social life, minimally important, or not at all.
Is Greek life for you? If you’re asking yourself this question it’s important to consider that universities use Greek membership statistics to reflect the level of involvement on campus. Unfortunately, objective data do not always tell the full story, so in addition to asking your counselor or tour guide for information it’s useful to find other ways to determine the relative impact of sororities and fraternities on campus social life.
More students and parents have been asking us about this lately, so Shrop Ed’s own Ashley Drapp offers tips today that can guide exploration into Greek life on college campuses.
Here are Ashley’s suggestions of questions to ask to help you get a full assessment of Greek life at your college of choice:
- How many students rush at the beginning of freshman year? Some schools have Rush Week the week before first semester begins, some rush the first week of fall semester and others do not rush until 2nd semester. If most of the Greek “Rush” happens the week before standard start, social bonds may be formed during this time and freshmen who arrive after the Rush period may feel left out.
- Out of the number of students who rush, how many students actually join a fraternity or sorority? Many may rush, yet a smaller number may join. Is this because it’s difficult to receive a membership bid, or is this because many prospective members determine during Rush that Greek life is not for them?
- What is the percentage of students involved in Greek life during their freshman year? If high, it may be harder during freshman year to find other students who are not affiliating with fraternities or sororities.
- What is the percentage of students who stay in their fraternity or sorority during all four years of college? Many students at large universities do not remain in their fraternity or sorority during all four years of college, and this attrition affects the percentage of overall students reported to be involved in Greek life. This is why statistics reported about overall campus involvement may not tell the full story.
There are many websites to use as resources for these statistics. US News and World Report published two articles listing colleges and universities with the highest percentages of male and female undergraduate students in fraternities and sororities in 2014.
- Sororities: read more here>>
- Fraternities: read more here>>
Peterson’s, an online college resource, posted a great article that also brings up some important factors to consider when thinking about becoming a member of Greek life. We think it will be helpful as you ponder how you’d like to structure your social life at college. Read more here>>
Tagged: College, Personal characteristics
