In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

AP Exams More Popular than Ever

According to a new report by the College Board, nearly one in three high school students who graduated in 2012 had taken an AP exam. Nearly one in five had passed one. Click here to read more.

Want to learn more about APs? Check out this IN Blog post.

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.

A College with a Money-Back Guarantee

Spring Arbor University in Michigan recently announced that it will help its graduates to replay their student loans if they cannot find a decent-paying job. Click here to read more on the Huffington Post.

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.

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.

Study: A College’s Price Tag Says Little About Its Quality

According to researchers at Wabash College, the quality of education a given college offers is only weakly related to the amount of money it spends; this holds true even when one just looks at its overtly educational expenditures, such as faculty salaries.

These findings are surprising, and they have the potential to shake up the world of higher education. Dollars spent per student has long been regarded as a signal of a college’s academic quality (it accounts for 10 percent of a school’s annual U.S. News ranking; further, it is closely tied to a school’s class sizes and student-faculty ratio, which, together, account for another 9 percent of this ranking).

Click here to read more on Inside Higher Ed.

What should a prospective college student’s main take-away be? Don’t assume that a more-expensive college will provide you with a better educational experience. Speak with a college’s current students about their courses and interactions with professors. Also be sure to check out The Princeton Review’s “Professors Get High Marks” and “Most Interesting Professors” lists.

The Latest on the MOOC Scene: A New Opportunity for Transfer Credit, an Incentive to Enroll, and a “Bill of Rights” for Online Students

Many self-motivated students—in particular, those who embrace new technologies—have been taking advantage of massively open online courses (a.k.a. MOOCs).

MOOCs represent an opportunity to gain college-level knowledge without the high cost associated with most college courses. However, they also have some drawbacks. Specifically, most do not directly award college credits. Also, as a rule, they have extremely poor pass rates (with no real prerequisites for enrollment, and no financial commitment, this makes sense).

But, hey—they’re free (or almost free) and present opportunities to be taught by prestigious professors to whom students might not otherwise have access.

So, what’s new in the world of MOOCs?

First, Georgia State University recently joined Colorado State University in publicly announcing its willingness to grant transfer credit for successful work in certain MOOCs.

Second, a group of public universities has teamed up to offer introductory courses for their online degree programs for free. A student who successfully completes one of these courses will receive an invitation to enroll in the related program.

Finally, a group of leaders in the MOOC field recently proposed a “Bill of Rights” for students in online courses. Specific rights include knowledge of the provider’s business model, knowledge of how one’s personal info would be used, and ownership of any work one might produce.

Survey Says: College Decisions Increasingly Money- and Career-Driven

According to the latest edition of an annual survey of college freshmen, economic issues loom large in the minds of current students.

The survey, by the Higher Education Research Institute, found that “the current economic situation” was a factor in the college choice of 67 percent of freshmen. Additionally, “making more money” and “being able to get a better job” were cited by 75 and 88 percent of freshmen, respectively, as very important factors in their decision to attend college. All are record-high marks.

These results make sense in light of the tepid economy and high college costs; more and more, students are viewing the experience as an investment in their future.

Click here to browse the survey’s other results and here to read more about it on the Chronicle of Higher Education.

At Dartmouth, One Last Chance to Earn Credits for AP Work

Starting next fall, Dartmouth College will no longer award credits to incoming students with high scores on AP exams. However, it will continue to grant advance standing to students who enter with AP work in certain subjects. Click here for more info.

While the Dartmouth website does not provide a rationale, Hakan Tell, the chairperson of the faculty group behind the decision, recently told Inside Higher Ed that the feeling at Dartmouth is that APs are “good courses,” but “not the same as a Dartmouth credit.”

According to Tell, the decision was supported by the results of an unpublished study. Few details of the study are publically available, but, according to Inside Higher Ed, it entailed administering a test based on the final exam for Dartmouth’s Introductory Psychology course to over 100 incoming Dartmouth freshmen, all of whom had previously earned a score of 5 on the AP Psychology exam. Ninety percent of those students failed the Dartmouth exam, though it is unknown whether they knew about it prior to their arrival on campus. (Even if they did, however, a high score would seem unlikely after three months of summer vacation.)

Dartmouth is not the only elite college to stop awarding credits for AP courses—e.g., Penn stopped doing so in 2005. However, the real issue isn’t the effect of eliminating credits for APs at residential colleges such as Dartmouth and Penn. (At such schools students pay a flat tuition per term—regardless of how many credits they take—and almost always attend for four years regardless of the number of credits with which they enter.) Rather, the issue is whether the decisions of such institutions will influence the decisions of less-exclusive schools—places at which many students attend part time, often while working a full-time job, and pay per credit. For students at such schools, earning three or four credits through a $90 AP test represents a considerable savings.

Click here to read more on Inside Higher Ed.

University Offers Remedial and Introductory Courses Online for $150 Each

No one likes remedial courses. They cost as much as regular courses do, they but don’t grant credits (i.e., lead to a degree).

However, in the eyes of colleges, remedial courses are necessary to ensure that certain students are ready for college-level work.

What can be done to ease the pain of remedial coursework?

According to the New York Times, San Jose State University has developed a novel plan. It has teamed up with Udacity, a provider of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), to offer a selection of its remedial and introductory courses online for just $150 each. This low cost should help its students to meet the prerequisites for upper-level coursework without breaking the bank.

If San Jose State’s program is successful—and other colleges adopt it—it could potentially boost graduation rates nationwide.

Click here to read more on the Times.