With rescinded college acceptances resulting from inappropriate online content rumored at nearly 7%, exactly how risky is it for a college-bound student to post personal content on the web? A panel of admissions deans from Princeton, Grinnell, Penn, Bryn Mawr, Marquette, UVM, Williams, and Wesleyan explain what matters and what doesn’t in this Wall Street [...]

[Read more →]

A recent claim to friends, that my 18-year old self wouldn’t stand a chance of getting admitted to my alma mater today, turns out to be utter nonsense. This according to Stanford University economist, Caroline M. Hoxby. In The Changing Selectivity of American Colleges [pdf], Hoxby reassures applicants that, “Typical college-going students in the U.S. [...]

[Read more →]

“Youth who are most likely to need mentors are least likely to have them.” Disadvantaged teens who get mentored are twice as likely to attend college. A new national study reveals the power of mentors, particularly those in the teaching profession: Adult mentors give teens a 50 percent greater likelihood of attending college Mentorship by [...]

[Read more →]

While we’re not ready to write-off the ritual parent-child campus tour quite yet, students can now plan their route by connecting to schools of interest on Twitter. GlobalQuad, a social networking site, centralizes campus chatter to help parents, students, and guidance counselors review up-to-date tweets from multiple colleges. The site, which was launched last week, [...]

[Read more →]

Adapted from Jay Matthews’ Washington Post education blog, here are 3 steps to take to get OFF the wait list and INTO your favorite college. Before you undertake any of the following, know that these steps MUST be followed by the STUDENT. Get the contact information for the admissions officer responsible for admissions from your [...]

[Read more →]

The winter 2009 issue of Education Next, a scholarly journal published by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, features the article “Home Schooling Goes Mainstream” by Milton Gaitheron (or here for pdf). Find out how the growth in home schooling, supported by trends in online education and cyber schools, is changing the way students learn and leading [...]

[Read more →]

The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, outscored Earnest Hemingway (& others) on the writing portion of the SAT, as reported by the Atlantic Monthly in 2004. Now, hundreds of universities, including several top schools, ignore students’ scores on the writing section of the SAT in admissions decisions, according to a story in the Boston Globe. The College [...]

[Read more →]

Does the cost of college texts have you bewildered? There are some options, as this New York Times essay humorously explains. One suggestion: check out BookFinder.com. They can help you save a significant portion of the cost, though not without some caveats. It helps to know before classes start what text you’ll need, what edition, [...]

[Read more →]

USA Today provides some advice when applying for financial aid for your college student. New laws can have a big impact. The biggest change concerns the way state-sponsored 529 college savings plans are treated. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [...] clarifies that 529 plans are considered the parents’ asset for purposes of calculating financial [...]

[Read more →]

An article in Friday’s San Jose Mercury News reports on a recommendation made to overhaul the eligibility process for the University of California. The move would expand economic, racial and geographic diversity in one of America’s premier public educational institutions — and boost the number of educated people in a state that is falling far [...]

[Read more →]