In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

Selective College Admissions: This Year’s Numbers

How difficult was it to get into your dream college this year?

The New York Times recently posted a report on the 2012–2013 application season; it features the following info for many of the most selective colleges in the U.S.:

• The number of applications received.
• The number of applications accepted, denied, and waitlisted.
• The early admission admit rate.
• The regular admit rate.
• The overall admit rate.

These numbers can be useful in a couple of different ways.

1. If you applied this year, they can help you to gain some perspective on your decisions. Let’s say you applied to Duke. If you look at its numbers, you’ll see that your application was one of 31,785 that the college received this year. Many of these applications were quite strong, but Duke was able to admit just 3,682 (less than 12 percent) of them. This being the case, your self-esteem shouldn’t suffer if Duke—or another one of these super-selective colleges—didn’t end up offering you a spot in its incoming class. The numbers show that, no matter how qualified you are, gaining admission to one of these schools is always somewhat of a long shot.

2. If you plan to apply in the coming years, these numbers can give you a sense of the odds you might face a given college. These odds can serve as a reminder to build a well-balanced college list, particularly if your “match” schools are highly selective institutions.

Want another reason to check out the Times’s report? It also includes the stats for the 2011–2012 and 2010–2011 application seasons. This allows you see trends in the admit rates at individual schools.

Click here to check out the report and here to read more about it on the Times.

Find “Green Colleges”—FREE!

Today, most prospective college students want to attend to a school that’s environmentally responsible as well as academically strong. In other words, they want a "green college"—a school with course offerings and campus policies (for energy use, recycling, etc.) that promote sustainability.

The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition helps students to find such schools. Published today, it profiles 320 institutions in the U.S.—and two in Canada—that demonstrate notable commitments to the environment in their academic offerings, career services, campus activities, and infrastructure. It’s a free 215-page guidebook chock full of information on each school, including the following:

• School profiles with information on admissions, financial aid and the sustainability initiatives at each one.
• "Green Facts" for each school on everything from its use of renewable energy sources and conservation programs to the availability of environmental studies and career guidance for green jobs.
• A glossary of green terms and acronyms from AASHE to "zero waste."
• Advice for living green on campus.

The schools in the Guide to Green Colleges were selected based on a recent survey of sustainability-related policies, practices, and programs at hundreds of colleges across the U.S. and in Canada. (Click here to learn more about the methodology.)

Produced in collaboration with the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, the Guide to Green Colleges is the only free, comprehensive, annual guide devoted to environmentally responsible colleges. Click here to read more and download it for free!

Are Colleges Admitting More Students from Their Waitlists?

It’s no secret that college waitlists have grown in recent years. As it traditionally has been quite difficult to gain admission off of a waitlist, this is widely viewed as a bad thing.

However, a recent post on the College Planning Blog identifies a possible silver lining with regard to the expansion of college waitlists: more students might be getting admitted off of them.

The post argues that waitlists are growing because admissions officers are using them to admit greater proportions of their incoming classes. Why would these folks be doing this? They are typicially under a lot of pressure to keep their yield—or the percentage of admitted students who enroll—at or above a certain rate. (In recent years, this has been a struggle for them as students have been applying to greater numbers of schools and their enrollment decisions have been less predictable.) As students admitted off of the waitlist are more likely than regular admits to enroll, admissions officers can increase their institution’s yield by admitting a greater percentage of its incoming class off of the waitlist.

So a waitlist offer isn’t necessarily a “polite denial”—it might, at some schools, represent a realistic chance of admission. Click here to read more on the College Planning Blog.

Want a better sense of the odds of getting off of a particular school’s waitlist? Click here.

How Much Will Your Major Matter to Employers?

Students want a college education to lead to a better job, and it generally does just that.

How exactly does it do that? A recent survey of over 300 employers sheds some light on why exactly employers like to hire college grads.

According to the survey, employers seek individuals who can “think critically,” “communicate clearly,” and “solve complex problems”—all of which are skills developed in college.

Of importance to prospective college students, these skills aren’t tied to any one major. Ninety-three percent of employers in the survey said that a potential new hire’s college major is less important than whether he or she possesses the skills above. (In other words, it’s not enough for a job candidate to be a whiz at network administration or some other job-specific skill—he or she must also be able to think creatively and explain his or her thought processes to others.)

This isn’t to say that majors are unimportant; major-specific skills are needed for many jobs, particularly those in STEM fields. However, the results of this survey suggest that the acquisition of critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills should be a top priority for college students, particularly those who are undecided with regard to their future career. Students in this position should choose the major that most interests them, not the one they think employers most want to see.

Click here to read more on Inside Higher Ed.

How to Choose the Best Academic Fit

There are many factors you should consider when choosing among multiple offers of admission.

A recent post from Montgomery Educational Consulting focuses on one of the most important: academics.

If you did your research prior to applying, all of your potential schools will have the major(s) in which you are interested. However, even if this is the case, it’s likely that some are better “academic fits” than others are.

Here are some academic factors to look at as you consider each school:

• The typical classroom environment. (Are lecture- or discussion-based courses more common?)
• Out-of-class learning options (independent studies, research opportunities, etc.).
• Advising services.
• Tutoring services.

Click here to read more on the Montgomery Educational Consulting blog.

This Year’s Big-Name Commencement Speakers

One of the cool things about college is that you will receive an inspiring speech—usually from a successful person in politics, business, or the arts—at your graduation ceremony. This person will speak directly to you and your fellow grads about your post-college lives and will encourage you to do good things.

Each year, many grads have the privilege of being addressed by some particularly well-known folks. StateUniversity.com recently identified some of the biggest names scheduled to speak on campuses this spring. Headlining its list is President Barack Obama, who will be speaking at three different schools: Ohio State, Morehouse, and the U.S. Naval Academy. This spring’s other big-name speakers include the following:

• Former President Bill Clinton (at Howard)
• Oprah Winfrey (at Harvard)
• The Dalai Lama (at Tulane)
• Steven Colbert (at Virginia)

Who else will be speaking at colleges this spring? Click here to find out.

You Shouldn’t Pay Extra for Prestige

In a recent post on The Choice, Mark Kantrowitz, founder of FinAid.org, states that, overall, public colleges provide students with a better rate of return on their tuition dollars than do highly selective colleges (a group that is predominantly private).

Does this mean you should stop dreaming of attending an elite college? Absolutely not. For the most part, these are wonderful schools with well-deserved reputations. And some offer generous financial aid packages that can make them less expensive than a public college would be.

That being said, the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that when two students with the same grades, test scores, etc. attend different schools—one more prestigious than the other—there is no real difference in the amount of money that these students earn after graduation.

Stated in another way, it is a student’s qualities—not his college’s—that are mainly responsible for his financial outcome.

What's your take-away here? If a prestigious school with a high cost of attendance offers enough aid so that it is affordable to you and your family, you shouldn’t refrain from enrolling (provided it is a good fit, of course). However, you should not choose a school that will require you to borrow significantly more than another under the assumption that its good reputation will set you on a much more lucrative path in life.

Click here to read more on The Choice.

When It Comes to Highly Selective Colleges, Even a “Match” Can Be a “Reach”

No student wants to wind up without any desirable options at the end of the college application process. For this reason, counselors usually advise their students to apply to a good selection of “safety,” “match,” and “reach” colleges. (Click here for advice on how to put schools into each category.)

However, excellent students—those whose “matches” (based on their academic credentials) are highly selective colleges—would be wise to modify this approach.

The reason? Even if you have impressive academic credentials, a highly selective—i.e., elite—school will still be somewhat of a long shot. (These schools receive applications from many more academically qualified students than they have space to admit, so their final decisions are often driven by other, less tangible factors.)

It would be best to treat these schools as reaches and have two levels of safeties: “sure bet” safeties and “probable” safeties.

I say this knowing that it’s tempting to skimp on safety-school applications. Applications take a lot of work (even with the Common Application, they entail many supplemental forms). It can be more appealing to spend your time on elite-school applications due to the high potential payoff of these apps.

Don’t make this mistake. You should find less-selective schools that you would actually be happy to attend. Doing so will, at the very least, make your life less stressful as you wait to receive admissions offers from elite colleges.

A recent post from CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com discusses the many benefits of a balanced college list. Click here to check it out.

Need More Aid? Honesty Is the Best Policy

You can sometimes get a college to improve its financial aid award if you inform it (politely) that its cost is too high for you to attend.

While the school might not provide you with additional aid, it certainly will not if you don’t ask.

To read more about financial aid awards, check out this post on The Choice.

The Link Between Personality and GPA

Is academic success ingrained in your personality?

A recent study found that students with “conscientious” personalities were likely to have higher GPAs.

What are conscientious people like? They tend to be thorough, careful, and disciplined. (All positive qualities for students to have.)

Click here to read more on Psych Central.