The new SAT will soon arrive on a wave of bold promises. The College Board has said its redesigned admission test would contain “no more mysteries.” Instead of being a riddle to solve, it would correspond with high-school curriculums and better reflect what students have learned. The pitch sounds good. But is it true?
New Item on the College Admission Checklist: LinkedIn Profile (NY Times)
Social media experts are advising high school seniors...to take control of their online personas — by creating elaborate profiles on LinkedIn, the professional network, and bringing them to the attention of college admissions officers.
A New Coalition of Elite Colleges Tries to Reshape Admissions (NY Times)
The Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, a new organization led by admissions deans at top campuses, has announced an ambitious goal: to make applications more reflective and in tune with how students organize and express themselves. In April, it will offer free online planning tools and a new application, for the class of 2021.
How to Write a Good College Application Essay (NY Times)
The essay is your megaphone — your view of the world and your ambitions. It’s not just a resume or a regurgitation of everything you’ve done. It needs to tell a story with passion, using personal, entertaining anecdotes that showcase your character, your interests, your values, your life experiences, your views of the world, your ambitions and even your sense of humor.
How I Know You Wrote Your Kid’s College Essay (NY Times)
The paradox of the overzealous editing of the college essay by many helicopter parents is that they don’t know what a college essay is really about.
A Surprisingly Simple Way to Help Level the Playing Field of College Admissions (NY Times)
“White, Asian-American and affluent students commonly take the SAT more than once, but disadvantaged students are less likely to, and it’s holding them back.”
The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined (NY Times)
“Millions of students will arrive on college campuses soon, and they will share a similar burden: college debt. The typical student borrower will take out $6,600 in a single year, averaging $22,000 in debt by graduation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. There are two ways to measure whether borrowers can repay those loans: There’s what the federal government looks at to judge colleges, and then there’s the real story. The latter is coming to light, and it’s not pretty.”
Those Who Can Do, Can’t Teach (NY Times)
Advice for college students: The best experts sometimes make the worst educators.
How to Get the Most Out of College (NY Times)
“We overwhelm teenagers with advice about choosing a college. Go big. Go small. Put prestige above cost. Do the opposite. We inundate them with tips for getting in. Spend summers this way. Write essays that way. Play a niche sport. Play an obscure instrument. And then? We go mum, mustering less urgency and fewer words for the subject of actually navigating the crucial college years to best effect. It’s strange. And it’s stupid, because how a student goes to school matters much, much more than where.”
Did I Choose the Wrong College? (NY Times)
I sometimes think I went to the wrong college. By many measures — most of them financial — my choice...was not the smartest one.
The Soul-Crushing Student Essay (NY Times)
The Growing College Graduation Gap
First, some good news: In recent decades, students from modest backgrounds have flooded onto college campuses. At many high schools where going to college was once exotic, it’s now normal. Now for the bad news: The college-graduation rate for these poorer students is abysmal. Even as the college-attendance gap between rich and poor has shrunk, the gap in the number of rich and poor college graduates has grown.