In - Your Guide to College Admissions from The Princeton Review

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.

When Choosing Among Offers, Keep Gathering Info

There’s lots of advice on the web on how to choose among multiple offers of admission.

While most of it concerns how to use the info you already have to make your decision, there is no reason, at this point, to stop gathering information. You never know which new piece of info will decisively tip the scales in a particular school’s direction.

Recent posts on the College Planning Blog and the College Solution identify the most important info to gather as an admitted applicant. Click here and here to check them out.

Denied by Your Dream College? Why It’s Okay

Even if you didn’t really expect to get in, a rejection letter from a “dream” or “reach” school still stings.

However, such a rejection isn’t the end of the world. Consider the following:

• Highly selective schools aren’t the only ones that produce successful grads. (Read more here.)
• You can end up loving a “safety” school. College counselors often say that most college students are at their “first-choice school” by Halloween of their freshman year. (Read more here.)
• It can be an opportunity to save money. (Read more here.)
• Any school that rejected you probably is not an ideal “fit.” (Read more here.)

So you don’t have to be excited about rejections, but you shouldn't be too down about them, either.

In a recent post on The Choice, a current applicant describes his feelings about being rejected by one of his “reach” schools. Click here to check it out.

The “Heart and Soul” of a Financial Aid Offer

There are only three types of admissions decisions: acceptances, denials, and waitlists.

Financial aid offers, on the other hand, take countless forms. The typical one includes a wide array of numbers, including expenses, grants, and different forms of self-help aid.

Given their complexity, it can be difficult to compare multiple aid offers to each other. Fortunately, a new tool from College Abacus helps you to sort through all of the information in them. Its “Abacus Shopping Sheet” (based on the federal government’s Financial Aid Shopping Sheet) helps you to categorize each number in an aid offer. This makes school-by-school comparisons much easier.

While you have to register to use the “Abacus Shopping Sheet,” what’s particularly helpful about it is it strips away things (e.g., work study, loans) that show up in an “aid offer” but do not actually diminish the cost of a college. Click here to check it out.

(Thanks to the College Solution blog for the tip.)

In College Decisions, “Fit” Should Be More Important than “Name”

Applicants weighing multiple offers of admission have many factors to consider.

The reputation—or “name”—of each college is one such factor. While some counselors shy away from saying so, the truth is that a degree from a highly regarded school can open doors for you later in life.

However, name isn’t everything. As the Huffington Post recently pointed out, “Some colleges, despite their [excellent] names, are not right for many seniors.” Simply choosing the college with the best name ignores the fact that you actually have to go to that college for four or more years.

In the final analysis, your “fit” with a school is more important than its name. After all, if you don’t enjoy attending a college—and aren’t well suited to its academics—your chances of getting a degree there are greatly diminished. (And there are few benefits of attending a big-name school if you don’t graduate.)

The Huffington Post recently shared ten tips on how to make a decision that isn’t unduly influenced by name. Click here to check them out.

How to Remember Your College Visits (and Why You Should)

Many students make time to visit the colleges on their list but don't take any steps to ensure they remember the details of these visits.

This is an unfortunate oversight. While global impressions and gut feelings are important, specific people and places are important, too.

According to Montgomery Educational Consulting, it’s the specific details of a campus that will allow you, months later, to distinguish it from the many others you’ve seen. Additionally, visit details can be very helpful when answering the “why are you applying here?” question on applications.

Given the above, it is often helpful to take notes during your visits. What sorts of details should you record? Montgomery Educational Consulting recently identified several of them. Click here to check them out.

A “Bracket” for Your College Decision

Right now, many college applicants are immersed in a different kind of “March Madness.”

Those with more than one offer of admission are attempting to choose the best school for them while, at the same time, minimizing costs. This can be difficult.

For students who are struggling with their decision, Montgomery Educational Consulting recently posted a great suggestion: create a “bracket” similar to those used for the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments.

In a “college decision” bracket, you can seed schools by the extent to which they meet your “dream college” criteria. (Be sure to note why you give each school the seed that you do.) Once you do, you can eliminate schools in head-to-head match-ups until you identify your winner.

Got basketball on the brain? Check out this list of 10 super-smart NBA players.

Survey Says: Stanford Is Hot, but Debt Is Not

What’s on the minds of college applicants and their parents?

As part of our annual "College Hopes & Worries Survey," we recently asked nearly 10,000 students and 4,000 parents what they thought of the college admissions scene. The results are available today on PrincetonReview.com; click here to check them out!

A couple of highlights . . .

• This year, Stanford was the school most named by students and parents as their “dream college”—i.e., the school they most wish they (or their child) could attend if cost and acceptance were not issues.
• Money is now the biggest driver of college-related worries. Students and parents identified student-loan debt as the most worrying part of the college landscape. (From 2010 to 2012, the most common concern was getting into one’s first-choice college but being unable to pay for it. Before that, the biggest worry—not getting into one’s first choice school—was unrelated to finances.)

What else did we learn? The application process continues to be stressful: 69 percent of respondents gauged their stress levels as "High" or "Very High.” And being able to land a better job is still seen as the main benefit of a college education.

To see additional results from this survey, including the top 10 “dream colleges” for applicants and parents, click here.

The Benefits of Women’s Colleges

Research shows that students at women’s colleges gain more from their undergraduate experiences than do female students at coed colleges.

To learn more, check out the following posts:

• “Why Women Should Consider a Women’s College” (CollegeAdmissionsPartners.com)
• “7 Big Benefits of Attending a Women’s College” (StateUniversity.com)