In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

The Anatomy of a Successful Financial Aid Appeal

When it comes to financial aid, you should know that a college’s initial offer isn’t set in stone. You can appeal this offer if it doesn’t enable you to afford the school.

However, simply appealing an offer is no guarantee it will improve.

When a college evaluates an appeal, several different factors might come into play. These include your family’s financial situation, the aid offers you have received from other colleges, and your academic record.

The way you approach the appeal is also very important.

What differentiates a successful approach from an unsuccessful one? In a recent segment on "ABC World News with Diane Sawyer," financial aid expert Kal Chany, walked a family through a successful appeal. To see his approach, check out the segment below.

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Want more advice from Kal? Check out this article on the ABC News site.

And, for the most detailed advice on how to navigate the financial aid process to your best advantage, check out Kal’s book, Paying for College Without Going Broke.

Own Your College Decision

As The Choice recently pointed out, choosing a college is the first big “life decision” many high schoolers face.

In recent weeks, many have discovered just how difficult this decision can be.

There are as many ways to remain undecided as there are college applicants. However, some of the basic types are . . .

• A-or-B indecisiveness. The inability to choose between two schools with different strengths.
• List-o-mania. Writing out so many pros and cons that a decision actually gets farther away.
• Staying hung-up on a rejection. Not really considering the available options because you’re still mourning an option you no longer have.
• A combination of all of the above.

A recent New York Times article provides some solid advice to help you through this process. (Click here to check it out.)

One of the most important pieces of advice in it: really own your final decision. Even if the school you ultimately choose wasn’t your first-choice when you applied, chances are it will be soon. Counselors like to say that most students are at their first-choice college by Halloween of their freshman year.

For more advice on making the decision, click here.

Free Brown Course is a High School Student’s Intro to Engineering

According to The Choice, Brown University is now offering an open online course (a MOOC) for prospective college students considering a major in engineering.

The course is a mix of hands-on projects and information about the pros and cons of the field. It’s designed to help students make informed decisions about whether engineering is right for them. It also provides information on how to identify a strong engineering program.

Enrollment was capped at 500 students for the first section, which began on April 1.

Note that, if you’re interested in going to Brown, completing this course won’t necessarily give you a leg-up in the admissions process at that Ivy League school. However, it can demonstrate that you are serious about engineering and give you a general advantage at all schools, particularly if you indicate in your application that engineering is a serious interest of yours.

Click here to read more on The Choice.

Kickstart Your Summertime Essay Brainstorming

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s helpful to think about your application essays the summer before you apply to college.

Fall of senior year is a busy time. It’s often tough to carve out the time and space needed for inspiration to strike while dealing with classwork, applications, and senior-year events. And you don’t want to write an essay about which you feel blah just because you didn’t have the time to come up with a better approach.

Fortunately, it’s easy to get an early start on your essay. The prompts colleges use, on their applications and supplemental forms, change little each year. Additionally, the Common Application typically releases its essay prompts early, ahead of that year’s application. (Click here to check out the prompts for the 2013–2014 Common App.)

However, all of the time in world won’t seem like enough if you’re feeling uninspired. To help with that, the New York Times recently paired several of its own stories with each of the Common App’s ’13 –’14 essay prompts. (Click here to check them out.) These pieces can help you to think about the different ways in which you might tell your story. They can also help you to get focused on storytelling rather than the fact that you’re writing an application essay.

The Original SAT: Less Math, More Gibberish

Smithsonian.com recently posted pages from the first SAT, which was administered in 1926.

What was it like to take the SAT back then?

You took the test at the end of your senior year and sent your results to just a single college. You found out over the summer whether you were admitted.

As for the test itself, it did not include a penalty for incorrect answers. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it crammed 315 questions into 97 minutes. Students were not expected to finish the test.

There was less emphasis on math—of the original SAT’s nine subtests, only two were mathematically based. Most of the math was simple arithmetic.

However, by today’s standards, some of the subtests were downright odd. According to Smithsonian.com, one of them “provided a set of vocabulary and grammar rules for an artificial language and then tested a student's ability to apply that language.”

What else was on the first SAT? Click here to learn more at Smithsonian.com.

What Makes a Major “Practical”?

When researching colleges, the topic of potential majors is a big one. This is because a given college’s “academic fit” largely depends on whether it offers the major—or majors—you have in mind.

When considering your academic path, you might feel considerable pressure to focus on “practical” majors. However, there is some disagreement as to what exactly makes a given major practical.

As I’ve previously noted, your specific major is not what’s most crucial to the vast majority of employers. Rather, it’s the skills your major has given you.

With this in mind, a recent post on The Choice argues that a “practical” major will do two things:

1. Match your interests

A given major’s practicality for you will very much depend on, well, you. Subjects that interest and energize you will make for more practical majors than will those that do not. Accounting, for example, wouldn’t be very practical for you if you dislike working with numbers.

2. Sharpen your mind

It might seem like you should opt for a major that is easy or comes naturally to you; after all, a stellar college GPA can open doors immediately after graduation. However, as The Choice points out, “the impact of grades generally diminishes over time.” It advocates for a challenging major that imparts “the ability to identify, define, research and offer well-composed analyses for complex problems.” What will these skills do for you? “The sharpened mind that has mastered such skills will very often shine through in job interviews and letters of application well before anyone—if anyone—sees your grades.”

With these characteristics in mind, The Choice recommends that you “explore multiple pathways” to the potential careers you’ve identified. What does this mean? On the surface, it might seem like there’s only one way to become, say, a doctor, but the truth is that there are often multiple paths to a given destination (e.g., when it comes to medical school admissions, humanities majors currently enjoy a better admit rate than do biological sciences majors).

Click here to learn more on The Choice.

Financial Aid Resources for First-Generation College Students

With its complex forms and hard-to-decipher award letters, the financial aid application process is challenging for many students.

It can be particularly tough for prospective first-generation college students. As these students’ parents have not been through the aid process before, many aspects of it can be especially confusing to them.

To help first-generation students avoid making potentially expensive mistakes as they apply for aid, a recent U.S. News article identifies several nonprofit orgs and online resources designed to help them with the process. Click here to check them out.

Want more information on how to navigate the aid application process to your best advantage? Check out our book, Paying for College Without Going Broke—the only annual financial aid guide with line-by-line instructions for completing the FAFSA and CSS PROFILE.

Myth: You Must Go to a Well-Known College to Get a Good Job

If you’re a college applicant and you haven’t yet decided among your acceptance offers, you might feel as if your upcoming decision will substantially and permanently determine your path in life.

This feeling might be particularly strong if you’re deliberating between two dissimilar options, for example . . .

• a school with a recognizable “brand name” but a hefty price tag (one that would require you to take sizable student loans) and
• a school with less prestige but a more manageable price tag (one that would entail substantially less debt).

Prestigious schools can be wonderful places; however, you cannot assume that going to one will land you a better-paying job and, in the end, make you “better off” financially. As the New York Times recently noted, “few high school seniors really know what they want to do and, by extension, what they will earn” later in life. A school that would place a heavy financial burden on you and your parents is tough to justify.

However, as the Times pointed out, many students feel they have little choice in the matter. They believe that, in a weak economy, a degree from a prestigious school is the only path to a “good” job.

A recent post from the College Solution addresses this concern. It features the perspective of a recruiter from a “very selective federal agency” that draws from a wide variety of institutions—“small exclusive liberal arts schools, less selective small schools, large state universities, historically black colleges, work colleges, women’s colleges, some Ivy Leagues, some public Ivies, etc.” Click here to check out her perspective.

If working for the government doesn’t sound like your thing, know that, even in business, lesser-known colleges are common pathways to success—many Fortune 500 CEOs graduated from less-selective institutions.

In sum, you shouldn’t feel as if you must attend a well-known college if you’ve received an offer from one. (Such an offer isn’t a winning lottery ticket.) Regardless of where you decide go to college, you will continue to prove yourself once you get there. As you work hard in college, you will become the type of person employers want to hire.

The Key to College Fairs, Campus Tours, and the Rest of Your School Search

This might sound obvious, but figuring out what you want in a college, and gathering info on what specific colleges are like, are the two most important things you can do at any stage of your school search.

Doing these things will allow you to “get specific” in the conversations you’ll have with school representatives, faculty members, and current students. (When speaking with these folks, it’s best to avoid asking “general” questions that are probably answered on the web; doing so is not a good use of your time or theirs.)

To this end, you should spend time seriously thinking about the kind of college experience you want and do plenty of school research via college websites and guidebooks (e.g., our Best 377 Colleges guide). Your search process will be smoother—and yield better results—if you take the time to do these things.

To get specific tips for college fairs and campus visits, click here and here.

What to Do If Your Admit Offer Comes with a Catch

Most discussions of admit decisions focus on the three basic types: admits, denials, and waitlists.

However, there’s a special type of acceptance—one that, according to the New York Times, is increasingly common but still infrequently discussed.

It’s an admit with a catch: you’re admitted, but not for the fall. Instead, you’re admitted for the following semester—or, in some cases, the following year.

Called “guaranteed transfers,” such offers can require you to take courses elsewhere—and maintain a certain GPA—between your high school graduation and your anticipated start date at the school. Understandably, they produce mixed emotions. On the one hand, you’re happy to be admitted; on the other, you’re disappointed you weren’t admitted for the fall.

Why would colleges do this? According to the Times, they want to have the ability to replace the students who will leave during their first semester (or two); “guaranteed transfer” provides them with that ability.

If you’re an applicant who accepts such an offer, this arrangement is less beneficial for you.

Its most obvious drawback is that it won’t allow you to get the full four-year experience at the school and graduate on time. Its other drawbacks will depend on your specific circumstances. If you take courses elsewhere before starting (either because you want to or the offer requires you to do so), you’ll have to acclimate to two different colleges in a short period of time. And, depending on your living situation and your personality, you might feel like you’re playing catch-up, socially, after you arrive at your new school.

Still, if a school offering you “guaranteed transfer” is far and away your favorite, it can be difficult to pass up its offer, no matter the stipulations attached. Click here to read more on the Times.