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 Journal On Campus video moderated by Unigo.com CEO Jordan Goldman. The bottom line is that admissions officers are looking for students of high character who will contribute positively to their campus communities. Students who demonstrate character and integrity in all aspects of life, both online and offline, have nothing to fear.

Other videos in this series answer questions about the importance of SAT scores, college application red flags, letters of recommendation, what makes a great essay, appropriate parental involvement, and other areas of concern to those going through the college application process.

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. should be unconcerned about rising selectivity. If anything, they should be concerned about falling selectivity, the phenomenon they will actually experience.”

In fact, at least 50 percent of colleges are substantially less selective now than they were in 1962 with only the top 10 percent, such as members of the Ivy League, Stanford, and Duke, demonstrating rising selectivity. So, perhaps that seemingly unattainable college is actually within reach.

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 a teacher nearly doubles the odds of attending college for disadvantaged students

“Potential is sometimes squashed by the social environment, and the data show that mentors can overcome those forces,” said Lance Erickson, a sociology professor at Brigham Young University and the study’s lead author. The information on more than 14,000 adolescents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health shows less than half of disadvantaged students report having any adult mentor and only seven percent had a mentoring relationship with a teacher.

Mentors proved pivotal in whether students make the jump to college. For example, students whose parents do not have even a high school degree are normally 35 percent likely to enroll in college. The rate jumps to 66 percent when the youth considers one of their teachers to be a personal mentor. “Teacher-mentors close the college gap for disadvantaged kids [and] participants indicate that their mentors weren’t necessarily doing anything extraordinary, just being involved and treating the young person as an important human being,” adds Erickson.

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, features messages from students, professors, coaches, and deans.

These tweets provide a sense of school culture and priorities, which in turn can help students narrow down their choices and identify a strong fit. As GlobalQuad recommends, “listen to what student club leaders, student newspapers editors, department chairs and others are saying on Twitter right now!”

Don’t forget, you can follow us on Twitter too.

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.

1. Get the contact information for the admissions officer responsible for admissions from your high school.  Get the officer’s email, mailing address, and …
2. If possible, speak to the admissions officer responsible for your high school’s applicants. You want to say the following:
   • Identify yourself and your high school
   • Explain that you’re happy to have received the wait-list letter because this college is your first choice and it means you still have a chance to get in.
   • You’ll be sending a deposit to your second choice school, but you don’t mind losing it if you get in to her school.
   • Let the officer know you will follow up with a letter to make your case.
3. Even if you spoke with the admissions officer, include the points above in your letter. Email AND snail-mail it after also including the following:
   • Tell the office 3 talents, interests, or experiences that would add value to the campus.  Include volunteer work, leadership experience, and hobbies.
   • Give three aspects of this college that would add value to you. Choose an academic one, a club or sport, and an opportunity unique to the city or town the college is in.
   • Close on a light, upbeat note.

As with all your communicaitions with a college or business, be professional: be polite, be brief, and use proper spelling and grammar. Show you care!

Milton Gaither’s blog reviewing recent research on home schooling can be found at gaither.wordpress.com.

The College Board, which administers the test, said its surveys and checks of university websites show that 56 percent of the roughly 1,000 four-year colleges do not use the writing section for admissions, although the overwhelming majority of the nation’s 61 most selective colleges use it in some fashion.

Criticism about the essay has been building for more than a year since an MIT professor’s experiment indicated that students could get high scores simply by writing longer and throwing in big words.

A claimed advantage of the writing test is that students who prepare for it see a general improvement in their writing. Not so, says Les Perelman, director of MIT’s writing program.

“They’ve learned to write paragraph essays where they don’t care whether the facts are correct,” Perelman said. “We have to spend a year in freshman composition deprogramming them.”

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, and whether it must be the U.S. version.

If you want to take a more activist approach, you can also check out MakeTextbooksAffordable.org.

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 aid — even though their dependent child is usually named as the beneficiary. Likewise, the law states that prepaid college tuition plans and Coverdell education savings accounts are the parents’ assets.

The distinction is crucial, because student-owned assets can torpedo your child’s eligibility for financial aid. In calculating how much a family can afford to pay for college, the federal formula for the 2007-08 school year counts 20% of assets owned by the student. For parent-owned assets, the maximum assessment is much lower: 5.64%.

Under the new law, custodial 529 plans owned by a dependent child aren’t counted at all. Custodial 529 accounts are usually created when parents transfer a Uniform Gifts to Minors Act account to a 529 plan.

Check the deadlines for the schools your child is interested in attending. A handful of private schools impose January deadlines for FAFSAs, but most schools don’t require you to send in your financial information until February or later.

For more information on FAFSAs, go to fafsa.ed.gov

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 behind others by urging a shift away from the current focus on grades and SAT scores to a broader review of students’ personal achievements, such as initiative and leadership ability.

“GPA is one single measure of a student’s academic achievement. But there are many other things to look at, as well,” he said. “Doing things the way we do now does not necessarily result in admitting the students who do best at UC.”

High school GPAs and SATs have been shown to account for only a minor part of a student’s ultimate success in college, according to the paper. But the emphasis causes teachers and students to “treat UC admissions as a high-stakes game, won by those who can play it best,” it said.

Last year, many students reported being worn out by the length of the newly revised SAT, which is has been expanded to three hours, 45 minutes of official testing time. The ACT lasts just under three hours (plus a half-hour for the optional writing section).

The ACT has gained broader acceptance by colleges, and may allow students to do less testing overall. Some selective colleges require both the SAT and SAT subject tests, but will take the ACT alone. The ACT also gives students more flexibility to submit to colleges only the scores they wish them to see.

There’s an easy way to check out samples of each test; they’re available online: SAT & ACT sample questions.

I grew up in the late 1970s, when a strong vocational alternative to the college prep curriculum was offered. In the last 25 years in California, three-quarters of our schools’ technical training programs were cut. Now, investment is up. This according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor. “High schools, community colleges, universities, parents, and employers are all beginning to realize that … to be competitive, our educational system needs more than academic theory.”

But don’t expect to see wood shop make a resurgence:

Fields of study today are likely to include more forward-looking careers: crime forensics, composite-plastic fuselage design, robotics, nanotechnology, radiological diagnostics, 3-D animation, and the burgeoning field of “industrial maintenance technology” (keeping the high-tech systems in a modern industrial building up and running).

I am reminded every day that there are many roads to success. Perhaps your child’s cuts through a different landscape.

The article includes blurbs from teachers, parents, and the College Board – the folks who give us AP exams and the SAT. The parent who said, ““the one who is going to get hurt is my daughter,” reminded me of a parent who called the other day. Her child is doing great, straight As, but she wants a tutor to stay ahead and because a lot of the other students have tutors.

I guess we all have to find our own balance.