Well, I spent a good bit of the summer traveling, and in that time I visited more than a handful of colleges and universities – from the highly sought after, such as Georgetown and Duke, to obscure gems, such as Hiram, one of just forty college profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives. Here’s some advice regarding college visits – some trivial, some substantive – for students engaged in the college search as well as for college admissions officers…
Monday, like the rest of America, I listened on the radio and read on the internet in shock and disbelief at reports and images of the shootings at Virginia Tech. But when I arrived home and was confronted by the information that someone I knew was among the missing, the evening took on a truly surreal quality. For me, it was, as they say, like déjà vu all over again.
I had had the same experience several years ago on 9/11. Then, I sat with students and colleagues during the day and watched with horror at the events that were unfolding. But when I arrived home, I learned that a family member had been in the World Trade Center that fateful morning and was still missing. For days we held out hope as a few fortunate survivors were pulled from the rubble. But as days and then weeks passed, we came to accept that the unthinkable had indeed occurred.
Having experienced it twice now, I can attest that when the 24-hour news blitz has immediate and personal meaning, the experience is unnerving. When a loved one is among 2,792 victims or “the 33 confirmed dead”, the evening news is no longer just the evening news.
I wish I could say that this time around, we received better news, but by the end of the night, our worst fears were realized. Reema was dead.
“Waiting is the hardest part…” - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Applying to college – sitting for the SAT, writing essays, etc. – that’s the easy part. It’s waiting for the decision that’s the hard part. From January 1 until about April 1, most students become increasingly anxiety-ridden, waiting to discovers their fates. Maddeningly, for many, many students – an increasing number, in fact – the wait just got or will soon get about a month longer.
“Be Prepared”
- The Boy Scout Motto
According to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, in 2004 the average ratio of applications to admissions officers was 395-to-1. (In New England, where many of the nation’s most selective college are located, the ratio is 480-to-1!)
“This [statistic] may help to explain one key trend in admission: the rise of the importance attributed to standardized admissions tests by colleges and universities. Over the past 15 years, the number of colleges and universities attributing ‘considerable importance’ to standardized test scores rose from 46 percent in 1993 to 59 percent in 2004. (Source: NACAC State of College Admission) As the application caseload rises, particularly at selective and large institutions, the process becomes more methodical, making it harder to conduct ‘holistic’ application reviews.” (Source: NACAC Environmental Scan: The College Admission Counseling Landscape, 2006)
It was actually 59 percent in 2005 not 2004, and the span covers 13 not 15 years. A starker contrast would have been 43 percent in 1994 compared to 61 percent in 2003, just a decade later.
But the point is made nonetheless. The pendulum has swung back. SAT scores are as important as ever.
So what’s a poor test-taker to do?
In a word, prepare, prepare, prepare.
That said, there’s no need to register for a high-priced SAT prep course. The Kaplan course currently costs about $900. At the time of writing, the Princeton Review website was down, but I am sure the price is similar. On the whole, SAT prep courses are not much more than high-priced babysitting services. I know, I taught one (I will not say by which company I was employed). The classes are full of kids who are not engaged, no matter how engaging the instructor; if they were active and interested, they probably would have done better on the SAT in the first place (not always the case, of course, so read on). And as for the money back guarantee, read the fine print. The student must attend all the classes, do all the homework (there’s tons of it!), and sit for the course a second time.
Or a student can purchase an “interactive handheld tutor” for $150. Granted, I have not used it, but I can say for sure that sitting for the SAT is definitely not like playing a video game, and the only electronic device a test-taker can use during the SAT is an approved calculator.
So what do I need, you ask?
Honestly, about $30 and a little self-discipline.
Lots of anecdotal evidence points to the book Up Your Score: The Underground Guide to the SAT (Berger, et al.). It retails for $11.95. And it actually makes studying for the SAT enjoyable! Well, as enjoyable as it can be. How enjoyable can a root canal be, right? Use it in conjunction with the College Board’s Official SAT Study Guide ($19.95). Fifteen minutes – maybe half an hour – a night, five nights a week.
The key is to start early. After a student receives her tenth grade PSAT scores is best. She has an official benchmark to start with, but she’s starting about as early as is reasonable. Any earlier is simply twisted, I say. But if a student doesn’t start until after the spring SAT of his eleventh grade year, he still has all summer.
That’s where the self-discipline comes in handy!
One caveat. It is relatively easy to raise math and writing scores. (The math on the SAT is limited – arithmetic, algebra, geometry; and the essay prefers a very basic five-paragraph theme.) The reading section, well, that’s a whole ’nother ball of wax. The College Board itself tells us that the only proven way to ensure a high reading score is read, read, READ! Lifelong readers score well on the reading section, Johnny- (or Janie-) come-latelies don’t. So, kids, start reading. It will improve your SAT score – and heck, it might even make you smarter!
But what about the rare few students who work assiduously in school, get the highest grades in the toughest curriculum, but still can’t manage anything better than ‘modest’ SAT scores? (That’s what college admissions officers call them, by the way, ‘modest,’ not ‘bad.’)
There are actually many, many SAT-optional colleges, including some of the nation’s best liberal arts colleges – Bard, Bates, Bowdoin, Dickinson, Franklin and Marshall, Gettysburg, Holy Cross, Mount Holyoke, Sarah Lawrence, and Union, to name a few. (A full list can be found at fairtest.org.)
There are also a number of large state universities that will not consider SAT scores if a student’s GPA and/or class rank are high enough. George Mason in Virginia is one such school – not a short order given its rising profile (remember that Cinderella story run at the NCAA championship during last year’s March Madness?) and the fact that it is now Virginia’s largest university. It’s also had two Nobel laureates in the past decade – which is two more than UVA, by the way. Hats off to Andrew Flagel, the Dean of Admission (and a former colleague).
And if, owing to strength in particular subjects, a student can manage strong scores on Subject Tests or AP tests, a handful of colleges allow students to mix and match, including Connecticut College, Hamilton, and Middlebury.
We recently celebrated the birthday of one of the greatest Americans, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Nearly forty years after he was martyred, Dr. King will, at last, be honored with a fitting monument on the Mall in our nation’s capital.) And February is, of course, Black History Month. Coincidentally, the University of Michigan recently lost its appeal before the Supreme Court to be allowed to continue its current admissions policy until the next admission cycle, arguing that changing policy midstream is unfair to applicants. Michigan had, of course, already lost its defense of its policy of awarding ‘points’ to some applicants based merely on their minority status. The policy was seen as being unfair.
Well, let us begin by agreeing that college admissions has never been ‘fair’ and is not likely ever to be so.
A while back, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Virginia caused a considerable stir in the college admissions world when they announced that they would be dropping their early admission policies. Many hailed the announcements as a harbinger of things to come. A desperately needed sense of sanity might be (re-)introduced into the frenzied world of college admissions. Yale would soon join Harvard and Princeton and, once ‘The Big Three’ had led the way, the rest of the Ivy League would fall in line. And, as the Ivy League goes, so goes the rest of higher ed.
The silence, as they say, has been deafening.
So why hasn’t the rest of the higher ed taken the plunge?