WEST Conference at Harvey Mudd College 02/16/2012
Calling all prospective women engineers and scientists! Harvey Mudd's Society of Women Engineers is hosting a one-day conference on Saturday, March 3rd, 2012. The Women Engineers and Scientists of Tomorrow (WEST) Conference will include the following:
Careers and Personality 02/04/2012
Of the many factors that contribute to a successful college experience, and subsequent career, an understanding of Personality Type is among the most useful. While interests and skills change during the course of a person's life, the one thing that does remain constant is an individual's Personality Type - the innate way each person naturally prefers to see the world and make decisions. And although all individuals are unique, people of the same type share enormous similarities in the kinds of academic subjects and careers they find interesting, and the kind of work they find satisfying. By understanding the role Personality Type plays, people can gain important insights into their educational, career, and relationship needs. And because people of different types often communicate in very different ways, counselors and advisers can learn which strategies work most effectively with each individual student. (From "Do What You Are.") Are you shy? Check out this article for five careers for shy people! http://education.yahoo.net/articles/careers_for_shy_people_2.htm?kid=1KWO3 Common Application 11/05/2010
 (Click to enlarge this image) Too Much Room to List Extracurricular Activities? FOR college applicants who haven’t engaged in many extracurricular activities, turning to the section of the Common Application where they are encouraged to list such pursuits can cause a bit of a flutter in the stomach. This year’s application includes 12 blank fields set aside for “Extracurricular Activities & Work Experience.” What of the applicant who has done only a few things, however intensively? ...The space for activities on this year’s Common Application, which is accepted by more than 400 colleges and universities, is greater than in past editions. For the first time, the application combines extracurricular activities (previously seven lines) and work experience (previously four) into one 12-line section.... The change is intended to benefit applicants like the one to Kenyon a few years ago “who had no activities, save 25 hours working at the family gas station each week,” Ms. Delahunty said. “We know that’s all that the student could do.” He was admitted. Moreover, the combined work-and-play section permits students to rank all their activities “in their order of importance to you”; in such a way, a job might take precedence over work on the school yearbook. Ultimately, what are admissions deans hoping to see in this section of the application? “We’d rather see a marathon than a bunch of sprints,” Ms. Delahunty said — and no, for those of you who run track and cross-country, she wasn’t speaking literally. “We’d rather see a student who has been engaged over a couple of years in an activity rather than someone who goes to 12 different meetings in a month and doesn’t really dig deep into one activity.” While colleges know that students are going to try things that don’t work out, they ultimately hope to find evidence that “something seized you and you stayed with it,” said Ms. Delahunty, the editor of a recently published series of essays for parents, “I’m Going to College — Not You.” While leadership is prized, rank-and-file participation counts, too. “Not everybody is going to be president of a club or captain of a team,” Ms. Inzer said. “We’re looking for signs of commitment, a purpose to what you do.” Just as significant may be how students respond to the request that they “briefly elaborate on one” activity or work experience in four lines or less. Eric J. Furda, the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said he hoped to glean from the answer what a student learned from that experience......... [click to read more] Early Decision 10/28/2010
Early Decision Bounces Back "65% of colleges with early decision reported admitting more students through the process in 2009." The recession appears to have been very good for the practice of "early decision," in which applicants must commit to enroll if admitted. Not only are many colleges reporting increased interest from applicants in applying early, but 2009 saw a jump in the proportion of colleges reporting that they were increasing the number of students admitted this way. These are key findings of the 2010 "State of College Admission," an annual report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling. The report is based on surveys of college admissions offices and high school guidance counselors...[more] College Application 10/28/2010
Proofread That Application, Unless You Want to be ‘Excepted’ You’ve filled out the application and added the personal statement, supplemental essay and activity sheet. Finally, it’s time to click “submit.” Freeze! Take a few minutes to proofread. Applications that are sent electronically don’t permit students to unseal the envelope and take one last look on the way to the post office. Admissions offices see files littered with misspellings, grammatical mistakes and poor word choice. Students rely too much on programs that purport to check spelling and sentence structure. A computer failed to catch this slip: “I love to turn on soft music and light scented candles because I love the smell of incest.” ... [More] College Waitlist 10/28/2010
In a report released Oct. 20, the National Association of College Admissions Counselors found that 39 percent of colleges put some students on a waitlist in 2009, which is higher than the 35 percent average over the last five years. And many colleges, including campuses of the University of California and the City University of New York, started waitlists for the first time in 2010. Nearly half of the colleges with waitlists reported increasing the number of students whose admissions decisions were deferred past the standard April 15 deadline in 2009. And many colleges, including elites such as Duke University, Yale University, and Dartmouth College, reported further increases in 2010. About half of the colleges also reported accepting more students from waitlists in 2009: 34 percent, up from about 30 percent in the three years prior to that. The odds were much worse for applicants to selective colleges, which accepted only 12 percent of those on their waitlists, NACAC reported. NACAC is just now collecting data on the percentage of students admitted from waitlists in 2010. But anecdotal reports give mixed signals. Cornell University admitted no waitlisted applicants for the class of 2014. The University of Washington accepted 426, which was down from the 1,079 of 2009, but a big jump from the 25 lucky waitlistees who were tapped off of the 2008 waitlist. [SOURCE: U.S. NEWS By Kim Clark] The Case Against College Athletic Recruiting 09/25/2010
 Phyllis Graber Jensen / Courtesy of Bates College U.S. universities are misappropriating resources on sports—including some obscure ones. Imagine you were an academic in a developing country, with high hopes of creating a topnotch American-style university. Reviewing the way that such institutions allocate resources—and precious admissions slots—you see much to admire. They judge applicants holistically, not just by their score on one standardized test. Rather than pushing teenagers into highly specialized silos as many of their European counterparts do, American colleges emphasize a broad knowledge base, collecting programs across academic disciplines in one location, and encouraging active participation in extracurricular activities. But here’s one thing you cannot fathom: rather than apportioning financial aid solely on the basis of need, many of these schools give scholarships to recruit certain students. And these are not usually the students most likely to win a Nobel Prize, but the ones most likely to win a Heisman Trophy. And it is not only top football players who receive this largess: so do athletes in sports that most other students have no rooting interest in, such as lacrosse, wrestling, field hockey, tennis, track, soccer, and swimming. [more] Admission 04/15/2010
UC a tougher bet this year for Californians, with 10,700 wait-listed The university system is cutting freshman enrollment and boosting out-of-state admissions in the wake of budget cuts. That leaves fewer spots for residents, many of whom are left to wait and hope. California's high school seniors faced slightly tougher odds for freshman admission to the University of California this year, and more than 10,700 were offered a spot on one or more of the university's controversial new waiting lists, according to statistics released Wednesday. .....[more] Admission 02/24/2010
CSU, UC may only be raising anxiety for students who have a slim chance of being accepted, advisors say.  Natalie Hamilton, a counselor at Northwood High in Irvine, talks to senior Bianca Schteiden. Many counselors tell students to take a firm offer rather than cling to the slim chance of being accepted from a waiting list. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times / February 11, 2010) As California's public universities prepare to break with tradition and make broad use of waiting lists in their admissions decisions this spring, high school counselors and even some university officials worry about the emotional toll on students. For an applicant, getting onto a favorite school's waiting list offers a glimmer of hope that a spot on campus might eventually open up. But because relatively few students ever make the jump from waiting list to enrollment, some experts say the lists merely increase anxiety and extend an already stressful time for college-bound high school seniors. Concern about the lists has been rippling through California high schools since the University of California announced in January that for the first time, it will employ waiting lists extensively this spring for fall freshman applicants. Last week, officials specified that at least six of UC's nine undergraduate campuses will use the lists. UCLA and UC Merced will not and UC Berkeley has yet to decide....[more] larry.gordon@latimes.com Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times College Admissions 02/17/2010
 The "Asian Ceiling" in College Admissions (Article from the Boston Globe) For many Asian students, going to college is a given as much as it is obvious that you would go to high school after middle school. But no matter how hard Asian students study, complete their homework, or get into the highest percentiles of the SAT's, sometimes being Asian does not help in efforts to get into a premier college. While this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon ("overachieving" Asians have been blamed for ruining the curve and the college admission "reverse discrimination" charge has been around for a very long time), this article by Kara Miller at The Boston Globe does raise an interesting question: is the "Asian ceiling" a necessary evil in order to maintain a racially diverse college environment? Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’ that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white students. In fact, according to Princeton lecturer Russell Nieli, there may be an “Asian ceiling’’ at Princeton, a number above which the admissions office refuses to venture. [...] ...when I worked as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me that Asians – who constitute 5 percent of the US population – faced an uphill slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances, parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which no English was spoken. But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman class Asian? Probably not. Indeed, as Princeton’s Nieli suggests, most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian-American totals in a narrow range. Yale’s class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian-American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard, and 17.6 percent at Princeton. [...] In a country built on individual liberty and promise, that feels deeply unfair. If a teenager spends much time studying, excels at an instrument or sport, and garners wonderful teacher recommendations, should he be punished for being part of a high-achieving group? Are his accomplishments diminished by the fact that people he has never met – but who look somewhat like him – also work hard? Link to the Full Article |
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