In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Common App Plans to Revamp Website

Users of the Common Application know that its website can be confusing at times. (If you haven’t yet used the Common App, take a look at its process for submitting recommendations online.)

Fortunately, this may change soon. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Common App is planning a new website that will be more “user friendly” and include “cool, new features.”

The bad news? The new site isn’t scheduled to launch until August 2013.

Click here to read more.

The Future Face of Higher Education

According to projections recently made by the National Center for Education Statistics, college enrollments will increase 17 percent by 2019.

However, only a handful of groups—Latino students, female students, and older students—will be responsible for most of this growth.

Click here to read more on Inside Higher Ed.

Essay Advice from an Application Reader

If you’re a prospective college student, you’re probably wondering how admissions officers interpret application essays.

What do they like to see? What excites them?

An application reader and faculty member at Stanford University recently shared her perspective. In a Huffington Post article, she gives her thoughts on the Common Application’s Writing section.

Her advice to students includes the following tips:

• Show who you are.
• Write about something with emotional appeal.
• Stay positive.

Click here to read more on the Huffington Post.

Do For-Profit Colleges Take Advantage of Veterans?

A couple of news items over the last couple of days say “yes.”

You can check out the story on either NPR or the New York Times: both describe the way for-profit schools have been manipulating military veterans to stay in business.

University Texts Prospective Students: “R u still interested?”

If you’re considering St. Mary’s University in Texas, you can sign up to receive text messages from the school’s admissions office. Students who reply to the university’s mass texts get individualized responses.

St. Mary’s says the texts have helped them to identify future students. Students who sign up for texts are more likely to apply and, if admitted, more likely to enroll.

Click here to read more on the Wired Campus blog.

Mistakes Applicants Make (But Shouldn’t)

You’re only human. You’re bound to make some mistakes in your life, and your college applications aren’t exempt from possible slip-ups. Right?

While this may be true, Schools.com recently posted a slideshow of application mistakes that no serious student should ever make. These damaging slip-ups include the following:

• Farming out your essay.
• Waiting until the last minute to ask for recommendations.
• Exaggerating extracurricular activities.
• Posting scandalous material on Facebook.
• Neglecting to send all required forms.

Not only are these mistakes 100 percent avoidable, I am telling you that each one can sink your admission chances. So there are no excuses here.

Click here to read more about these and other avoidable mistakes on Schools.com.

A Big College or a Small College? It Depends on the Vibe You Want

Many prospective college students wrestle with the big vs. small question.

Big colleges boast of countless opportunities, but the truth is that most students can only take advantage of a very small percentage of those opportunities.

Unless you’re interested in a major that smaller colleges just don’t offer, the question is more about the vibe you want (big-anonymous or small-intimate).

Montgomery Educational Consulting recently posted a great video on the opportunities at big and small colleges. Check it out below.

Fearless College Journalism

Whether the story was an assassination attempt, a drug bust, or destructive tornadoes, student journalists were “on the scene” this last year.

Mother Jones recently posted its list of “The Gutsiest Campus Newspapers of 2011.” Click here to check it out.

Reader Response: Is Cheating “No Big Deal” for Teens?

Earlier this week, I posted an infographic about the current state of cheating among high school students.

I recently received the following reply from reader Haley R.:

Honestly, I think a lot of people in high school, particularly guys, exaggerate about how much they cheat. They just want to look tough. More than cheating, I think the problem is that a lot of people don’t want to others to think they care about school. If that weren’t an issue, it wouldn’t be a big deal to do your own homework or study hard for a test.

Would you like to add to the conversation? If so, email me at INblog@review.com.

University Begins Social Media Blackout

For the second year in a row, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is conducting its Facebook experiment.

Or, rather, no-Facebook experiment.

This morning it began blocking access to all social media sites from the computers on its campus network. The blackout will continue for one week.

According to Inside Higher Ed, the experiment is designed to provoke “genuine thought about how (and how much) such sites should be used.”

Click here to read more.