Asians and Pacific Islanders represent 5.7% of the general population but make-up 6.6% of all undergraduates. There are two to four times more Asians at the most competitive schools than in the general population. Asian students make up 21% of undergraduates at Stanford and 19% at Harvard. Because of this “over-representation” and general “model minority” myth, Asian students are often perceived as doing well no matter where they attend school.
What’s the worst possible thing families could hear after getting their Estimate Family Contribution (EFC) for financial aid? How about that even if they could manage to pay their EFC, more than likely they’ll have to pay even more because most colleges won’t meet their full need. The data on who gets financial aid shows that most families aren’t going to have their need met.
Why look at a college’s endowment when trying to decide where to go to school? This falls into the category of all other things being equal, why not attend an institution that is in a better financial situation? Or more importantly, why risk going to a university that is facing financial difficulties?
Should you play more than one sport in high school if you want to play at the college level? Focusing on a single sport would seem to provide players with the ability to develop advanced skills to stand-out from the competition. However, there are plenty of people out there arguing that playing multiple sports provides athletes with significant benefits, including in the recruiting arena.
The following is a guest post by Randy Levin. Randy has one focus–helping students with their college application essays. Based on his experiences, Randy has created a list of commonly made mistakes by students which he shares here. You can see a sample of his presentation here.
It is important to first understand the purpose of the college application essay. A student’s transcripts as well as his academic and extra-curricular achievements do not give any “unique” insight into the student as a person. Yes….they will illustrate hard work, intelligence, drive, aptitude, etc. However, these are the same attributes reflected in the other 30,000 applications for the same institution.
With all of the college scholarship search websites available, it would seem that getting a scholarship to pay for school has never been easier. Unigo’s scholarship match offers to match students to 3.6 million college scholarships worth over $14 billion. And Scholarships.com tells you that there are over 3.7 million scholarships worth $19 billion just waiting for you. How hard can it be to get a scholarship?
Actually, the truth is that the internet has made it easy to find out about numerous college scholarships students might qualify for. The student still has to apply for the scholarship and is competing with all of the other students who used the same search websites to find the scholarship.
Long time readers of my blog know that I think that the start of any college search should begin with estimating your Expected Family Contribution (EFC). This simply sets the baseline for how much you should expect to pay. The next step should be looking up your state flagship university. Why? Because while your EFC sets your financial expectations, your state flagship serves as the ideal reference point for adding and comparing the schools you add to your final college list.
It’s the new year and I’m in a sort of philosophical mood. I just finished reviewing the most popular posts on my Facebook page and it got me thinking–what if it didn’t matter what college you went to? Because it seems to me that the posts that get the most traction have to do with making sure your kid is successful but it doesn’t necessarily mean going to the most prestigious college. So try it as a thought experiment, how would your student’s (and your family’s) life be different if it didn’t matter which college your student went to?
Just a casual browsing of my blog would reveal that I’m not anti-athlete. When my son wanted to play baseball in college, I spent a lot of time educating myself about the college baseball recruiting process and shared the information here. However, there’s a big difference between playing college sports and receiving an athletic scholarship.
