Apologies for being off my blog for over a month…the site got hacked and took some creative work by my site host to straighten it out.

Lesson for passwords…do not use words related to your name, street address…do not use numbers from address, birthdate…do not use words that can be found in the dictionary…do use a mix of caps and small letters…do use numbers…AND symbols such as $!@.

I’ve gone back and changed all passwords…tell your kids as well.

Glad to be back.

… Test on 6/22/9

testing, again, on 6/22.

Many admissions offices based on soft economy increased size of wait lists in anticipation of lower acceptance yields this year (the percentage of high school seniors admitted that actually send in their deposit and show up in the fall.)  Nope! Acceptance yields are reported to be roughly the same at both public and private universities. So…if you’re waiting on a waiting list…there may be more on that list with you and same number of limited available slots. Time to move on and get your head and heart around one of the schools that accepted you.

To follow is an article that appeared in today’s US News warning that “Senioritis” may have even more dire consequences this year….Does everything have to be worse this year??

Red flags for colleges: drop in GPA, dropped courses, dropped extracurricular activities, and disciplinary actions particularly involving plagiarism, cheating, drugs and alcohol use.

If you are hit by “Senioritis”, don’t wait for the college to rescind your offer of admissions. Immediately contact your college, reveal the problem…hopefully explain what happened and wait for their decision. If you admission is rescinded ask them when and under what circumstances you can re-apply and get on with doing what they require which in all likelihood will require taking specified classes at a community college.

Best plan…wash your hands a lot ..and wear a mask– no, not really. Do your work as if it were your junior year.

This year, Senioritis may have dire consequences.
“Senioritis” — skipping class, missing tests, attending parties instead of athletic practice, and generally slacking off at the end of the last year of high school — is practically a rite of spring. But this year there may be serious consequences — including having college acceptance withdrawn — for those who don’t finish with a strong academic record.

In the past, when students received the fat envelope, the suspense of the college application process was largely over. That’s not necessarily so this year. Because in the 2009 college admission season — with the largest high school graduating classes in history, record numbers of applications and dwindling economic resources — colleges simply don’t know how many students are going to be able to accept their offers.

To cope with that uncertainty, many colleges are admitting more students than in the past. If they find they have over-enrolled their incoming class, they may be more likely to revoke an offer of admission to those who haven’t maintained top grades or fallen short in some other way. (Final grades were cited by 69% of colleges that revoked admission offers in 2007; disciplinary problems accounted for 25%, says the National Association for College Admission Counseling.) Other colleges are admitting fewer students and counting on pulling heavily from their wait-list. In deciding who should come off that list, a primary consideration will be a strong senior year. Those who slack off will find themselves last in line.

The stakes have compounded exponentially this year because of the uncertainty we’re facing,” says Doug Christiansen, dean of admission at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Though colleges have always reviewed the final academic records of incoming classes, this year they will scrutinize them more thoroughly, officials say. Admission departments will double-check for drops in grades, absenteeism and situations in which, for example, a student’s application said he was taking three advanced placement classes, but he later dropped two. They also will watch for red flags that arise from lapses in judgment or integrity, such as cheating, plagiarism, drinking or drug use.

How many students may have admission withdrawn this year? With their predictive models not working in this admission cycle, colleges just don’t know yet. The University of California projects that about 50 admission offers may be withdrawn at each of nine campuses, says Sue Wilbur, director of undergraduate admissions. But some campuses could issue more. “All campuses are very carefully managing their numbers to come in on their enrollment targets,” she says. When officials say in their admission letter that enrollment is contingent on maintaining senior-year grades, they mean it.

Being proactive can help

When admission is rescinded, the news probably will come at a difficult time. Though students commit to a school on May 1 and release other offers, colleges don’t see final transcripts until after graduation and are at the mercy of high schools on when records arrive. Students may learn as late as August they have no place to go in the fall.

But there is something students can do — if they act before the letter revoking admission arrives. If there is a problem, a student should inform the college where he has been accepted or wait-listed. It is incumbent on the student — not the parent — to take the initiative, call the admission department, explain the problem as candidly as possible and describe what is being done to remedy it. A school often will look more kindly on such news when informed well before viewing the final transcript.

“Universities will find out,” Christiansen says.

Colleges do consider extenuating circumstances such as family emergencies or illness, and, when appropriate, may suggest summer school or deferring enrollment for a year. “Colleges are in the business of education, not punishment,” says Susan Dean, director of college counseling at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, Calif., an elite secondary school for girls. “Anything they can do to assist a student, they are going to try to do.”

If a student doesn’t self-report and has admission rescinded, there is usually little he can do. Schools are loath to remake such decisions. Almost all schools include language in acceptance letters that makes admission contingent on performance through the end of the senior year.

That conditional language constitutes a fair warning — and officials advise high school seniors to take it seriously, particularly this year.

Robin Mamlet is former dean of admissions at Stanford University, Swarthmore College and Sarah Lawrence College. She is now with Witt/Kieffer, an executive search firm for the non-profit/education sector. Christine VanDeVelde is a journalist who writes frequently on the college application process. They are writing a book on admission.

In Shifting Era of Admissions, Colleges Sweat

No Surprise…States are making decisions across this country as to how this recession will impact their post-secondary universities. What is surprising is that their choices are not all the same. California falls in what I will call the shrink wrap mode–shrink number of freshmen spaces, freeze mid-year transfers, raise tuition and reduce faculty and student services.Washington has always strived to better California public universities so they too have followed their lead and adopted the shrink-wrap mode. In sharp contrast, Oregon lawmakers have decided to allow enrollment to grow to meet demand, increased student aid and no tuition hikes all paid for by increased corporate taxes because it believes the corporations will benefit from the educated work force. Only time will tell which model was correct in the long-run. At least for short-term, its better to be a Duck than a Husky or a Bear.

To follow is an article from today’s Inside Higher Education that I found interesting. As I explain to my clients, each student/family has their own version of “College Fear” and my job is to recognize their unique fear and help them work through it with minimal stress. For some its attending an official college tour or for others it might be writing the dreaded essay or asking for teacher recommendations or attending an interview… Interesting things to reflect upon for all parents and high school students.

Early Decision and the Adolescent Brain

In the debate over early decision admissions programs, much of the focus has been on socioeconomic equity. Students are more likely to have enough information to apply early, the criticism goes, if they come from families and attend high schools that encourage an early focus on developing a first choice. Indeed many colleges report that their early decision applicants — who must commit to enroll if accepted — are more likely than the applicant pool as a whole to be white and wealthy. So when colleges fill large portions of their classes early, many fear, the disadvantaged lose out.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling is releasing a report today that suggests a different kind of equity issue: the differing rates at which adolescents mature. The study reviews the latest research on adolescent development and suggests that many high schoolers are unlikely to have the maturity to make early college choices — or to be making the academic choices in high school that set them on a path to finding a good match for college.

The report — by Barbara Schneider, a professor of education and sociology at Michigan State University — is not issued as NACAC policy. But it is consistent with many of the cautions that association leaders have made about trends in admissions, particularly the rush to decide early and to view the admissions process as a game.

Research about adolescent development has many apparent contradictions, Schneider notes. Physically and in terms of sexual relationships, young people mature more quickly than they did in previous generations. But she also notes that in terms of parental involvement, an unwillingness to make long-term commitments, and other factors, today’s young people show less maturity than previous generations.

Numerous studies also have found, Schneider writes, a mismatch between adolescent ambitions and their sense of educational plans. These “unaligned ambitions,” she says, mean that many high school students have some idea of their career or life goals, but very little sense of an educational plan to get there.

Combined with the “college fever” that grips many families — with much tension and competitiveness about getting into college — early decision may be psychologically wrong for many students, she writes. They haven’t figured out what they want to do or how to reach goals, and yet feel pressured to commit, she says. (Schneider notes that high school students do not mature at the same rate, so her argument isn’t that early decision making is wrong for everyone, but that it’s wrong for many.)

Further, she writes, this problem is exacerbated by the socioeconomic inequities. Those students with access to counselors and with strong family knowledge of college admissions may be more likely — if they aren’t psychologically ready to commit to college early — to get help in deciding.

David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for NACAC, said that he hoped the report might “rekindle” discussion of early decision issues. After a few elite universities dropped early decision in 2006, some hoped for a groundswell, but it didn’t take place. Hawkins noted that even if colleges don’t drop early decision, a “de-escalation” might reduce the pressure many students feel.

The new report describes trends in admissions that have been evident well before the current economic turmoil. And this year, many private colleges have been pleased to see an increase in early decision applications. Hawkins said that the downturn “has the potential to make it worse,” with more students feeling more pressure. “For both institutions and students, the early decision game is all about hedging against uncertainty, and these are some of the most uncertain times we’ve had in decades, perhaps ever in college admissions,” he said.

By focusing on adolescent development — an early decision factor not previously studied — Hawkins said that NACAC hopes to better inform colleges. “Many of our counselors have felt that colleges might be making decisions about early decision strategies in a vacuum,” he said. “The primary purpose was to expose our entire profession to the idea that adolescent development” should be part of their thinking about early decision.

— Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education, February 12, 2009

Wait! Those charged with the duty of managing the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems need to take a step back and reflect on the long-term non-economic costs of their recent decisions. Both UC’s and Cal States in response to projected budget costs are lowering the number of freshmen they will admit next year (and probably the following year). At the same time they warn they will need to raise tuition costs.  The next step is obvious. More high school graduates will enroll in community colleges that are already stretched to the limit with only 25% of those students who enter expressing a desire to transfer to a four year university actually making it. As the tail continues to wag the dog, the Board of Regents voted to create a task force to increase community college transfers to UC’s and Cal States (even fewer freshmen?). WAIT! Are we forgetting there is more to earning a college degree than passing classes…are we forgetting the value of the friends we made in our freshman dorm..or the dorm softball games on Friday… or that feeling when you lost your voice as your school’s team beat their rival at whatever sport…the not like home food…changing your major three times…There’s so much more to getting a degree than meeting a-g transfer requirements, finding an apartment in Westwood and finishing up your political science major so you can move on to law school.

Endowment funds are the savings accounts for colleges and universities and it appears they are going the way of individual’s savings accounts. As you consider long term viability of a college or university and perhaps financial aid opportunities, this might be an interesting issue to research. The excerpts below will give you some ideas of where to look for that information.
[Excerpts from an article entitled “Fortunes Falling” in January 27,2009 Inside Higher Ed.]
After a year of riding high, educational endowment investments began a downward spiral in the 2008 fiscal year, and the first half of 2009 was particularly brutal, according to two new reports released Tuesday.

In a joint survey, the Commonfund Institute and the National Association of College and University Business Officers found that college endowment returns dropped by 22.5 percent in the first six months of the 2009 fiscal year, which began July 1 at most institutions. Commonfund’s independent survey of the entire 2008 fiscal year showed losses of 2.7 percent, but the more up-to-date joint survey shows just how quickly things went from bad to worse.

“This is such an extraordinary fiscal year so far, hopefully not to get much worse, but we expect to see some further decline,” said John Griswold, executive director of Commonfund Institute.

Commonfund, which invests money for colleges, and NACUBO, a professional organization for college finance chiefs, have for years conducted annual independent studies of college endowments. The two groups had already planned to merge their surveys next year, but the decision to work together on a shorter-term project reflects a growing desire to examine the impact of the last few volatile months.

The joint survey included responses from 435 institutions, or about 55 percent of those asked to participate. NACUBO officials cautioned that responses constituted financial officers’ “rough estimates” of endowment performance, given the short time frame.

In a more comprehensive survey of the entire 2008 fiscal year, NACUBO and TIAA-CREF found the continuation of a long-term trend: The richest colleges performed best. Colleges with endowment assets of greater than $1 billion were the only colleges with positive investment returns — 0.6 percent – in 2008, the study found. Colleges with the smallest endowments, below $50 million, had the largest losses — 4.3 percent on average.

Even the wealthiest institutions, however, were unable to stave off double-digit investment losses in the first six months of the 2009 fiscal year. Colleges in every category saw average losses of more than 20 percent.

…for complete article go to Inside Higher Ed, January 27, 2008.