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.
Early admissions applications are becoming ever more prominent. This last December, Ivy College Prep, LLC helped students get accepted into Notre Dame early action (EA), and Brown, early decision (ED). Under early action (EA), the admitted applicant is free to apply to any other school and has until May 1st to make a final decision. Early Decision (ED), on the other hand, binds: if accepted the applicant’s admissions process is over.
Financial aid is confusing. It’s even worse than income taxes. According to the American Council on Education, in 2006, 1.8 million students who would have qualified for federal and financial aid failed to apply. There is no reason to be among that number.
The fundamental precept of financial aid is filing the FAFSA as soon after January 1st of senior year as possible. The whole idea is to be at the front of the line when scholarships and grants are being allocated. At most of the public schools, including the University of California system, only filing the FAFSA is required. This vastly simplifies the process. Filing solely by the federal method (FM) makes applying to state schools almost a pleasure.
While Swarthmore might be small in numbers, with fewer than 1,550 undergraduates, its breadth and depth seem unrivalled. Swarthmore is international in scope: Swarthmore students (Swatties) come from every state, and 49 foreign countries. Its student faculty ratio of 8 to 1 enables students to develop an intimate relationship with professors. The alumni base of 19,000 is active, accessible, and devoted. Swarthmore also has a track record of producing Nobel Prize and MacArthur Grant winners, along with numerous PhDs per capita, exceeding all but a handful of schools. Couple all this with an endowment of over $1.2 billion, and there is a lot to like about Swarthmore.
Even an aspiring Stanford applicant with perfect test scores, a GPA of 4.46, research referenced in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the captain of her varsity golf team, started procrastinating when it came time for her application essays. Procrastination knows no bounds. In fact, recent research indicates three out of four college students label themselves procrastinators (Thriving in College, p326, Cuseo), of whom 25% have chronic tendencies. It’s a serious problem
Two leading theories explaining essay procrastination include:
Six schools, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Amherst, and MIT are all ‘need blind’ and ‘full need’ regardless of a student’s country of origin. This means that if accepted, international students will obtain the necessary financial aid to attend. Be aware, however, that though these schools advertise themselves as being “need-blind,” which technically means that financial circumstances are not considered in the admissions process, how this might actually translate into the reality of admissions warrants consideration.
Learning is more effective when done collaboratively. In generations past there was a taboo about working in groups; school work was supposed to be done individually. Research from Richard Light of Harvard unequivocally indicates that students working collaboratively learn more effectively, and are far more likely to achieve their academic goals (such as graduating from college and attending graduate school). His study, which consisted of in-depth interviews with over 1,600 college students, found virtually all struggling students shared one key trait: they tended to study alone. Collaboration can be the difference between a lackluster performance and a fully engaged student.
In high school the best students often use to the fullest the resources available to them. There are stories of Bill Gates, along with his friend Paul Allen, hacking into the computer system at Lakeside high school. Tales of students who begin on the school newspaper as freshmen and gradually expand their responsibilities to managing editors are legion. These are the type of applicants many of the most selective schools seek.
“The Sizing up Survey” in the Fiske Guide to Colleges asks a number of preference questions to help students figure out good college matches: location, setting, size, cost, athletics, extracurricular, public vs. private, campus culture, academics, and ‘other factors.’ Unfortunately, in certain areas, especially ‘academics’, many students not only don’t have any answers, they don’t even have a clue what they’re looking for, nor do they have much time to contemplate what an ideal learning experience might be. One area to get a grasp of ‘academics,’ beyond whether the school has general education courses, a core curriculum, or distribution requirements, is to know how colleges divvy up their school year, and how these various divisions might jive with learning styles.
For those of you who enjoy strapping on your Rossignol Avengers and skiing down a slope just minutes after leaving your class in physics, or shouting in German, or any of the other 10 languages taught, across the slopes where the Adirondacks and Green Mountains shoulder up on either side of Lake Champlain, or just sitting in meticulous marble and limestone quads viewing alpine vistas on a clear autumn day, Middlebury, whether you’ve heard of it or not, is what you’re pining for.
If you go to the ‘California Colleges’ website dedicated to perfecting the Personal Statement for the UC Application, http://californiacolleges.edu/admissions/university-of-california-uc/personal-statement.asp, you’ll be told that
“The UC personal statement is a preview to the kind of writing you'll be doing in college and on college placement exams.
Unknown Audience: You will be writing for a community of strangers.
Writer-Determined Topic: You will pick the topic for your response.
Dig Deeper: Analysis and reflection are keys.”
