In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Making Friends in Class Linked with Higher Grades

According to a new study, college students with friends in a course are likely to receive a better grade in it than their less-social classmates are.

The reason for their advantage? In-class friends regularly share course-related information, the study’s authors say.

If you don’t have any friends in a particular course, don’t worry—it is very possible make some. However, to do so, you’ve got to move fast. The study’s authors say that the friend-making period in a given course begins on the first day and ends early.

Click here to read more on PsychCentral.

White House Scorecard Aims to Simplify “Value” for College Shoppers

How do you get "the most bang for your educational buck”?

In his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama announced that the White House has developed an online College Scorecard to help students and parents assess a given college’s affordability as well as its value.

The scorecard allows users to see the net price, graduation rate, median student loan, and loan default rate at a given college. It provides some context for each number, rating it as low, medium, or high or comparing it to the national average. In the future, it will also include employment data for recent grads. Click here to read more about it on Inside Higher Ed.

For years, we at The Princeton Review have been reporting on value in higher education through our “Best Value Colleges” lists and guidebook. We also partner with USA TODAY to produce an interactive database of our “Best Values.” Click here for more info.

Coming Soon: Credits for “Free” Online Courses

Should students who take free online courses—commonly known as MOOCs—be able to get college credits for their work? Last fall, the American Council on Education sought to approach an answer to this question by comparing MOOCs from the provider Coursera to traditional college courses.

Its verdict? Five of Coursera’s MOOCs are similar enough to traditional courses that colleges should provide transfer credits to those who complete them.

(Note: while MOOCs are normally free, a student interested in receiving transfer credits for one is required to pay a fee for a special proctored final exam.)

Click here to read more on the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Evaluating a College’s Career Services

More so than in previous years, students want a college degree that will lead to better job prospects.

This is a common benefit of a degree, but doesn’t always happen automatically. For many students, the process of translating an education into career opportunities starts at their college's Career Services Office (CSO).

However, not all CSOs are created equal: some do more—and get better results—than others do. As such, the College Solution blog recently posted several questions you should ask a college’s representatives to get a better sense of its career services. These include the following:

• When does the CSO first begin working with students?
• Can it help with choosing a major?
• How many jobs did it post last year? The year before?
• Does it host job fairs on campus?
• How many employers annually visit campus to find new hires and interns?
• Which majors are most popular among these employers?

To learn what you can gain from these and other questions, check out the full post on the College Solution.

Also be sure to check out The Princeton Review’s “Best Career Services” ranking list—available online and in our Best 377 Colleges guidebook.

The Best Values in Higher Education

As college costs have risen dramatically in recent decades, it’s understandable that current students—and their parents—want to get their money’s worth. Today’s college shoppers search for schools that can provide an excellent education and, at the same time, minimize costs.

To augment this search, The Princeton Review’s annual “Best Value Colleges” list, published in partnership with USA TODAY, identifies schools with a commitment to both academic quality and affordability.

For the 2013 list—released today—we analyzed more than 30 factors related to academics, cost, and financial aid. We found 150 “Best Values” in higher education and identified the top 10 public and top 10 private colleges among them. (Click here for more info on how we did it.) Our number one public college is the University of Virginia; our number one private college is Swarthmore College.

Note: schools on the list with a high “sticker price” offset costs with generous aid to students with financial need. How much aid? Freshmen at the 75 the public schools in the book received, on average, a grant of $8,900. Freshmen at the 75 private schools in the book received, on average, a grant of $32,500.

Visit PrincetonReview.com for info on each of the “Best Value Colleges” and USATODAY.com for an interactive database of the schools. Also be sure to check out the companion book, The Best Value Colleges: The 150 Best-Buy Schools and What It Takes to Get In. This 450-page guide has detailed profiles of the colleges and advice for applicants on how to get admitted to—financial aid from—the schools.

The Toughest College Majors

Have you been considering what you’d like to major in as a college student?

Beyond your potential enjoyment of a given major, and the typical earnings associated with it, you should consider its overall difficulty. The truth is that some majors will require you to have fewer nonacademic commitments.

A new report by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) groups the most popular college majors in seven categories and ranks them based on the hours of out-of-class preparation they typically entail. From most to least, these are . . .

1. Engineering
2. Physical sciences
3. Biological sciences
4. Arts & humanities
5. Education
6. Social sciences
7. Business

Read more about the workload associated with each one at Yahoo! Education.

You can learn more about these different fields on the IN Blog.

College Textbooks: Changing and Staying the Same

The way that undergraduates acquire knowledge is changing, writes the Chronicle of Higher Education, in a new package of articles on the college textbook.

According to the Chronicle, today’s students can access textbooks in a wide variety of formats; however, as a group, they are reluctant to buy them outright. This is directly related to the many new alternatives to buying texts that have proliferated, including renting from online libraries and downloading from peer-to peer file-sharing sites. In this freewheeling climate, several publishers have attempted to produce totally free texts.

Yet, some of the ways in which students relate to books have remained the same. For example, students still largely prefer print texts to digital ones. Click here to read more.

Strange-but-True College Courses

Not all college courses take themselves as seriously as “Molecular Biology” or “Physical Chemistry.” A recent post on Cappex.com takes a look at some rather interesting courses in which you can do the following:

• Parse California-based TV shows.
• Learn how to survive a zombie apocalypse.
• Climb trees.

To read more about these and other interesting courses, check out the full post. (In case you were wondering—yes, it includes an “Underwater Basket Weaving” course.)

How a Degree in the Humanities Prepares You for a Job

Nowadays, it might seem impractical to major in anything but a STEM field.

In this climate, it’s good to remember that employers will always attribute some very positive—and valuable—qualities to those with a bachelor’s degree in the humanities.

If you obtain such a degree, employers will assume that you can . . .

• comprehend complex material,
• think critically, and
• write.

A recent article on CNN.com explores the merits of humanities degrees in general and English degrees in particular. Click here to check it out.

Should Financial Aid Be Tied to Student Outcomes?

A college degree can give one’s earning power a phenomenal boost. This is a fact many current students are counting on.

However, one’s college years do not always proceed as planned. Some students rack up debt but fail to graduate and get the accompanying benefits. According to a new report, this is a rather common occurrence: 46 percent of college students fail to graduate within six years.

But the report, titled “The American Dream 2.0,” isn’t just a litany of problems in higher education. It also includes several suggestions to boost college completion rates. Among them: tie the amount of federal financial aid a school can offer to its graduation rate. Click here to read more on the Huffington Post.

What do you think? Should colleges have to earn the right to dispense federal aid? And is a school’s graduation rate a fair way to measure the job it does? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!