The Choice blog ran an entry this week—College Admissions Advice for ‘Neurotic’ Parents—that generated some good comments from readers. One in particular I thought was worth sharing. It's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture during the college admissions process, but Lizzie and her daughter offer a gentle reminder about maintaining perspective.
"My daughter is special needs, which put the college admissions race for my son into perspective. With my daughter, we’re just hoping she’ll be able to hold down a minimum wage job someday and maybe learn to pay her own bills so she won’t have to live in a group home when we’re old. I couldn’t care less whether my son goes to an Ivy or the state university."
— Lizzie
Celebrate the decision
The day you decide where you're going to college is a big deal. No matter which colleges said yes, when you pick the school you'll be spending the next four years attending, that deserves some fanfare. And it's hard to imagine a family doing a better job than our student, Mike, and his parents do here.
The best part? One of the schools he eliminated had waitlisted him. I love it when a student has the collegiate confidence to just say no thanks to a waitlist and pick a school that accepted him outright.
Good job, and good decision, Mike. Go Orange!
Former Collegewise students and parents: We need you for our book!
This summer, we’re publishing our book tentatively titled “The Collegewise Way” to teach people how to do what you did—to successfully navigate the college admissions process, find the right schools, and actually have fun doing it.
We’d love to include sidebars that feature you and your experiences, like…
- How you took charge of your applications with us and relieved your parents of their project management responsibilities
- How you found the right schools even if you hadn’t heard of them before
- How you wrote essays that were “you,” not what you thought might impress colleges
- How you’ve met plenty of smart, impressive people at your not-so-famous college
- How you celebrated every offer of admission, even from your safety schools
- How you received generous, even unsolicited financial aid
- How you ended up blissfully, ridiculously happy where you are in college, even if it’s a school that wasn’t your first choice
…and anything else you’d like to share.
If you’d like to be featured, drop me a line at kevinm@collegewise.com. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Know any new parents?
New parents aren’t typically the ones reading this blog. So if you have a friend, coworker, neighbor or any other acquaintance with a new baby in the house (or one on the way), please pass along this public service announcement about saving for college.
Saving $50 a month (with a 7% return on investment) from the day a child is born will amount to about $20,000 by the time that kid applies to college. Saving $200 a month would add up to almost $80,000. (Source: http://www.finaid.org/savings/) Start now.
Like so much of financial planning, the best college financing asset a family can have is time. If you know someone who could avail themselves of that asset, help a new parent out and share the information.
Notable alums come from all colleges
A good tip courtesy of Arun: Wikipedia’s write-ups about colleges usually list "notable alumni" for each school. It’s a good reminder that graduates of the least famous of colleges can go on to be CEOs, coaches, politicians, professors, scientists, published authors, actors, inventors, professional athletes, astronauts, entrepreneurs, news anchors and presidents of other colleges.
On colleges giving you connections
…I will argue until I die that good connections are NOT the result of going to a brand name college but are the result of energy applied at whatever college you do attend. All colleges have influential alums in many fields. If you devote some time and sweat to finding out who they are and how to reach them, it will yield great rewards. I am familiar with many Harvard grads who couldn't bother, and found that they had fewer choices than they thought they were entitled to given the name of their college."
Jay Mathews (posted as a comment in the post "Why getting in to Harvard is no longer an honor")
For juniors making college lists…
Admissions uncertainty makes a lot of applicants apply to schools they're not that excited about. They just feel better knowing there are at least a lot of applications out there. You’re probably not going to love every college on your list equally, but you should like every school on your list. Don’t apply to any school just to see what happens.
If you’d rather go to juvenile hall than actually attend one of your safeties, why bother applying? Focus your safety schools on those you’d actually be excited to attend (if you can’t find safety schools you like, you’ve got namebranditis, not a lack of good options).
If you apply to all the Ivy League schools just because they’re prestigious, you don’t really like those schools. You like the idea of those schools.
If you load up your college list with lots of options that you haven’t researched because you’re afraid you won’t get in to enough schools, relax and trim the fat off your list. Applying to schools you’re not really interested in just makes more work for you and takes time away from the applications to schools that mean more to you. If you’ve done your college soul searching and had your counselor approve your list, you’re going to be fine.
It’s normal to be unsure about a school, or to like some schools on your list more than you like others. But make sure your list is balanced and that you’re at least "in like," if not "in love," with every college on it.
Where did top CEOs go to college?
Here are the colleges and universities where the CEOs of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies for 2011 earned their bachelor’s degrees (compiled from their respective companies’ websites). The full list of companies is here.
Less selective schools should create the story
I had my little rant last week how I wished the press would write stories this month about colleges that are accepting plenty of their applicants, instead of eagerly recycling the annual news that the nation’s most selective colleges got even more competitive this year.
Then I learned that those less competitive schools don’t make it very easy to find those statistics. I tried to find the class of 2016 admissions stats for over a dozen schools featured as Colleges that Change Lives, great schools that accept plenty of kids who aren’t necessarily at the top of the class, and I couldn’t find any information. I know they’ll all eventually publish profiles of the freshman classes, but you’ll need to dig into their websites to find those. That information is less likely to show up in a major news story.
It’s a public badge of honor when a school claims they rejected even more qualified applicants this year—it makes the school seem more desirable. Maybe the less selective colleges don’t want major press outlets announcing that they take B students with average test scores?
My question is, why not? To schools that are accepting lots of applicants, why not create that story? Tell the press and anybody who wants to listen:
We just offered admission to 52% of our applicants for the class of 2016. We admitted two quarterbacks of state champion football teams, 24 club presidents, 2 flutists, an oboe player and 62 students who worked part time jobs after school. We admitted one published author, a student who makes ceramic pots and sells them at flea markets, 14 students who wrote for their high school papers, four yearbook photographers and one poet who posts her work on her blog. We admitted three debate champions, one trainer of guide dogs for the blind, a pilot, several competitive equestrians, and a student who’s going to make it his life’s mission to beat his mother at tennis. The average high school GPA of our admits was 3.42 (we are test-optional because we don’t think SAT/ACT scores help us find the right students) and we couldn’t be more excited to see who joins us this fall.
Start creating those stories and you’ll change the way people think about college admissions.
For seniors stinging from a college rejection
I always tell students and parents that there's a reason I have never met a college student who was still lamenting a rejection from what was once his or her dream school. College is, after all, a pretty fantastic place to be whether or not you're attending the place you were once sure was your future collegiate soulmate.
I was reminded how true this is as we've started collecting surveys from our former Collegewise students who are now in college and raving about their lives. Here's one response:
I didn't get into my number one choice and now I can't believe I wanted to go somewhere else. College is literally the best thing that's happened to me and I can't see myself anywhere besides the place I ended up. I can't believe I am almost done with my first year here. I wish I could go back and start all over again.”
Taylor
SMU
I know it's hard to get over a college disappointment. But it'll happen. Have collegiate faith.
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