In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Dorming on a Boat

For 200 students at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, a “semester at sea” was completely unplanned.

A mold problem recently made their on-campus dorms uninhabitable, so the college has moved them onto a cruise ship docked on St. Mary’s River.

Instead of Frisbee on the quad, these students now play shuffleboard on the deck.

Click here to read more on the Washington Post.

Simplifying Financial Aid Offers

Not long after applicants get their admissions decision from a college, those who will receive financial aid get a second letter. This one, however, is more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no.”

Financial aid offers contain many different numbers. The school’s cost of attendance is often divided into its various components. The offer itself may feature scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study.

Complicating the matter, different colleges organize this information in different ways. For example, some schools’ aid letters include loans in the final balance; others only include out-of-pocket expenses.

To address the discrepancies between schools’ financial aid letters, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education recently suggested a template for all colleges to use. Their goal? To make it easier for students and parents to compare different schools’ offers.

You can view this template and offer your feedback on it here.

Common App Brings Back Essay Word Limit

In recent years, students haven’t had to deal with a word limit on the Common Application essay.

This year, however, the Common App has reinstated a word limit: its essay must be between 250 and 500 words.

While the Common App will allow you exceed the 500-word limit—i.e., it won’t cut you off in mid sentence—college counselors advise against doing so.

How are this year’s applicants dealing with the pressure to craft a standout essay that’s under 500 words? Click here to read student testimonials on the New York Times.

If You’ve Made a Mistake, Colleges Want to Know About It

The Common Application asks students whether they’ve been subject to disciplinary action at their school (e.g., suspended, expelled) or found guilty of a crime.

If you have an infraction on your record, you should definitely own up to it on the Common App.

If the infraction has been removed, however, the situation is a little less clear.

The Common App clearly states that you are not required to reveal to anything that “has been expunged, sealed, annulled, pardoned, destroyed, erased, impounded, or otherwise ordered by a court to be kept confidential.”

However, admissions officers consistently tell students to disclose everything. If you omit an incident that they later discover, you will probably be denied admission.

Click here to read more on the New York Times. (Be sure to check out the comments as well as the post.)

Using Facebook for Coursework

According to a new survey, college students use social media for more than just socializing.

Nearly 60 percent of student respondents said they used Facebook to discuss coursework with classmates. One in four said Facebook was “valuable” or “extremely valuable” to their academic success.

The survey was conducted by the Educause Center for Applied Research. It included 3,000 students from over 1,000 different colleges.

Click here to read more on the Wired Campus blog.

The Perfect College Applicant

Want to know what admissions officers value most? Check out this article on the New York Times.

Obama’s Plan Would Reduce Loan Payments for Future College Students

President Obama recently provided a plan to reduce the burden of student loans for Americans.

You might be wondering: how will this plan affect me?

For future college students, the most important part of the plan is its improvements to Income Based Repayment—an existing program that caps one’s monthly student-loan payments at a reasonable amount.

According to the Associated Press:

Obama will accelerate a law passed by Congress last year that lowers the maximum required payment on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income annually to 10 percent for eligible borrowers. It goes into effect next year, instead of 2014. Also, the remaining debt would be forgiven after 20 years, instead of 25. The White House said about 1.6 million borrowers could be affected.

For more information on President Obama’s plan, check out this article on the Associated Press. It’s in an easy-to-read “question and answer” format.

NCAA Athletes May Get More Money

As part of athletic scholarships, college athletes in the NCAA’s Division I can receive free tuition, books, and room and board. But is it enough?

NCAA president Mark Emmert recently backed a proposal that would allow athletes to receive an additional $2,000 a year. This extra money would enable athletic scholarships to “more closely approach” the full cost of attendance at a particular school.

Some college presidents suggest that scandals in which cash-strapped student-athletes accept money and gifts from boosters would be less likely if these students had more cash on hand. Others say that most schools have tight budgets and cannot afford to give more than they already give to student athletes.

What do you think? Is it a worthy investment to give more money to student-athletes? Email me at INblog@review.com and let me know!

Reader Response: The State of College Costs

Earlier this week, I posted the average tuition and loan debt at public and private colleges in the U.S.

I recently received the following reply from Alexandra K.:

It’s interesting that students at public and private schools end up with sort of equal amounts of debt. It seems people like to spend more money than they have on college, no matter how much that happens to be. Either that or financial aid shortchanges students in a pretty consistent way.

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

How to Change Something on Your Application

It can happen to anyone.

You double-, triple-, and quadruple-check your college applications, but you don’t catch that one mistake until after you click “send.”

Or you receive a prestigious award—completely out of the blue—the day after you submit your apps.

All of a sudden, you feel you absolutely must update your college applications.

Fortunately, application aren’t set in stone once you click “send” or even once the deadlines pass. According to Montgomery Educational Consulting, you can contact a college’s admissions office and update your app. To do this, you should immediately email them the updated information and put a hard copy in the mail.

Click here to read more.