If you’re looking for data for your own Moneyball college admission search, check out the sample spreadsheet in the DIY College Search Spreadsheet class for free.
In Moneyball, Michael Lewis lists five rules that Billy Beane uses when shopping for baseball players just before the trading deadline. It’s important to remember that these aren’t just any players.
Last week I talked about taking a Moneyball approach to the college admissions process. The idea being that as in Major League Baseball, the college admissions market is not operating efficiently resulting in some players/schools being significantly undervalued where others are way over-priced.
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Have you seen the movie “Moneyball” or read the book by Michael Lewis? The story is about how the Oakland A’s baseball club managed to come up with winning seasons despite being one of the poorest teams in professional baseball. “Moneyball” refers to the strategy of identifying players used by the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane.
What does Moneyball have to do with college admissions?
(This is part 4 of Comparison of Top 11 College Search Engines)
Most college students attend a school within a four-hour drive of their home. Fifty percent are actually within 100 miles of their home. Location is usually one of the primary factors in the college search. It is the first option for five of the eleven college search websites and a near the top in three more. Seven of the websites offer the option to search by distance from a zip code.
(This is part 3 of Comparison of Top 11 College Search Engines)
In my original review of college search websites I had a list of seven requirements for a fictional high school student in her college search. The second factor I listed was that she didn’t care whether the school was public or private. Since she doesn’t care, you would think I would be skipping on to the next requirement.
(This is part 2 of Comparison of Top 11 College Search Engines)
In the original review of comparing college search? websites, I used a set of college preferences for a fictional high school student. At the time, I based them on the factors that seemed most frequently mentioned in the college search process-I know, not very scientific.
I don’t intend to become any more scientific this time around. I do want to discuss how the different search criteria can affect how much you pay for college.
Sometime ago I did a series of posts comparing college search websites. I tried to complete a search for colleges with specific characteristics and evaluated how easy it was to do in eight different websites. I think it’s time to once again compare college search websites but use a different approach. This time I’m going to organize the posts by search feature rather than website
Apparently, completing the FAFSA can be detrimental to your college application and chances for financial aid. According to Inside Higher Ed, some unnamed colleges are using the order students enter schools to receive the FAFSA reports as a way of predicting interest in the school. Essentially, this means that some schools are using the FAFSA against students.
The following is a guest post by Tom Bottorf of GetCollegeFunding.org.
I’m not sure exactly when the shift occurred, but sometime in the last 20 years, attending college has become synonymous with student loan debt. It’s pretty much assumed that the student should have some “skin in the game” by borrowing money to achieve their noble dream of getting a college degree.