Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
When boiling down the college experience to its essence, students usually best remember getting to know one or two professors who were pivotal in sparking their curiosity and jumpstarting their motivation.
Richard Light of Harvard School of Education in his Making the Most of College, Students Speak Their Minds, describes the factors that define faculty who ‘make a difference.’ Professor Light interviewed over 1400 students to isolate his list of important factors
Any time is an ideal time to ‘test drive’ a college. Even though the bulk of your undergraduate years will be spent inside the classroom and library walls (at least they better be), knowing the campus and the community where you’ll be spending at least the next four years, possibly longer, is important. A good exercise to help you explore a school you’re serious about is to pretend you’re already there.To begin, let’s choose a college. If you’re thinking of engineering, or chemistry, and have a penchant for liberal arts programs as well, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania might be of interest.
To begin, let’s choose a college. If you’re thinking of engineering, or chemistry, and have a penchant for liberal arts programs as well, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania might be of interest.
An article recently published by Karen Kelsky, a former professor of anthropology from the University of Illinois, while ostensibly tailored to graduate students, “Graduate School is a Means to a Job,” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 March 2012) is actually even more applicable to future undergraduate students. Ms. Kelsky is not shy about having students ask universities to prove their utility. Encouraging such skepticism should be lauded. No institution, no matter how august, should be charging $30-60,000 without being constantly questioned. Here is a cross section of some of her ideas, slightly modified for undergraduates.
Even in the sub-zero frigidity of a Minnesota January, brains are exuding energy in Northfield, a town about 40 minutes from Minneapolis and St. Paul. ‘Carls,’ Carleton students, also known as “northern commies” by more conservative elements who find their politics a touch too left leaning, have just begun their second trimester. If you can weather the Minnesota winter, and find enjoyment in talking with some of the most intellectually engaged students in the country, “serious students who don’t take themselves too seriously,” then Carleton College might warrant being added to any application list
There might not be enough corn and oil to satisfy demand, but there sure seems to be more than enough college ranking lists available to satisfy just about any taste. The most famous, of course, is the US News and World Report ranking. US News has turned ranking colleges into a major profit center for its magazine, with 2,000,000 subscribers, 9,000 newsstand buyers, and over 20,000 of its college guide book users. If you don’t like US News and World Report’s perspective on admissions competitiveness, then you can always turn to: Barron’s, The College Prowler, Princeton Review, Kiplinger, Ordo Ludus College Ranking (which is Latin for “school ranking”) –you can find a fairly comprehensive listing of the college ranking services in Wikipedia, not only in the US, but worldwide,--by going to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings.
How much would you be willing to pay to attend a school that had no official general education requirement (or, possibly had one or two areas spottily covered) across the following subject areas: composition; literature; foreign language; US government and history; economics; mathematics and; science? Posed a little differently, assume you were selecting a high school and it didn’t require English (writing), history, math, science, foreign language, or literature. How much would you be willing to pay to go to such a school? A better question is how much money would you pay to avoid going to the school?
