In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Protecting Veterans from Deceptive Colleges

For military veterans who wish to go to college, the GI Bill provides grant aid to alleviate the cost of attendance.

Unfortunately, access to grant money has made these veterans the targets of unscrupulous colleges—largely for-profit institutions—that will say anything to get vets to enroll.

To address this issue, President Obama signed an executive order today to prohibit colleges from using misleading marketing practices or obscuring their graduation rates when recruiting at military installations.

Click here to read more on Inside Higher Ed.

College Admissions through the Eyes of First-Generation Students

A new movie chronicles the lives of four teenagers who aspire to be the first in their family to go to college. Click here to check out a preview on The Choice.

The Secret of Community College Success

Community colleges are often great options for students as they provide educations that are inexpensive and close to home.

However, students should know that these institutions often lack the warm-and-fuzzy elements of the college experience, such as residential campuses and easily accessible instructors.

Isa Adney, a community college grad, believes that students must be “active and engaged” if they want to have success at a community college. She delivers this message in her book, Community College Success: How to Finish with Friends, Scholarships, Internships, and the Career of Your Dreams.

Click here to learn more on U.S. News.

Do Some Students Experience Too Much Freedom at College?

According to a recent post on The Choice, students who are the first in their family to attend college can be overwhelmed by the independence typically bestowed on students at some colleges. Click here to learn more.

Nonprofit May Boost Odds of Finishing Community College

Do financial worries prevent low-income students from devoting enough attention to their coursework?

If so, connecting these students with assistance should improve their chances of graduating.

Single Stop—a nonprofit org associated with community colleges across the U.S.—is designed to test this theory. It helps low-income students to access financial aid and other benefits (e.g., food stamps, free medication) for which they are eligible. According to Single Stop, about $65 billion worth of benefits goes unclaimed each year.

While Single Stop has only been around since 2007, its early results are good: students helped by the org are significantly more likely to stay in school. Click here to learn more about it.

Aid for First-Generation Students

Many colleges offer merit scholarships specifically for first-generation students.

To check out a list of these awards—some of which cover full tuition—visit the Center of Student Opportunity.

Tackling First-Generation Issues

Kids who are the first person in their family to attend college—a.k.a. first-generation students—face many common challenges on their way to a degree.

U.S. News recently interviewed a former first-gen student who is now a college professor to get her insight on some of these obstacles. The issues she tackles include . . .

• finding on-campus resources,
• asking for help,
• dealing with the “hidden” expenses of college life,
• developing study skills, and
• networking with alumni and professors.

Click here to read more on U.S. News.

New Program Helps Young Parents to Finish College

The Washington Post recently published a great article on Generation Hope: a program that offers scholarship money and mentorship to young parents in college. Click here to check it out.

To learn more about the program, to donate support, or to apply to become a scholar, visit the Generation Hope website.

How Parents Can Help First-Generation Students to Succeed

NPR recently aired a discussion of the helpful messages that parents of first-generation college students can give to their kids. These messages include: “don’t go it alone,” “use resources,” and “don’t suffer in silence.”

Click here to check out the full discussion on NPR.

Closing the Achievement Gap

It’s called the “achievement gap”: white and Asian students, as a whole, outperform their black and Latino counterparts. The gap is particularly notable in science and engineering disciplines.

When Freeman Hrabowski became president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1992, one of his goals was to narrow this gap at his institution.

To do this, he changed its culture. As he recently told NPR, expectations are now high for students of all races in all disciplines. And every student is treated as a capable individual.

Hrabowski’s results are indisputable: UMBC currently sends more black students to science and engineering graduate programs than any other predominantly white school in the U.S. Click here to learn more about his efforts at UMBC.