Scholarships

If you apply for scholarships, be certain that you choose those that you qualify for--

http://www.examiner.com/x-2843-Boston-College-Examiner~y2009m4d22-How-to-Apply-for-a-Scholarship-and-Actually-Get-It

Juniors

Need some ideas on what to do to make the most of what is left of your junior year of high school?

http://www.examiner.com/x-5453-LA-College-Bound-Examiner~y2009m4d10-High-school-juniors-start-thinking-beyond-standardized-tests-and-explore-college-options

College Visits

I have posted a number of articles regarding college visits. This link gives some more pointers on what to do in order to get the maximum results from a college visit.

http://www.examiner.com/x-5453-LA-College-Bound-Examiner~y2009m4d11-Campus-visits-dos-and-donts

Personality Contest

Colleges, just like people have personalities. When searching for a college, a good match is very important.

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/apr/14/finding-theright-match/

Highly Selective Colleges

Admission to highly selective colleges is something that needs to be planned and plotted with care and lots of planning.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-achieveside0412,0,571587.story

Financial Aid Tips

This article provides some important information regarding those who are seeking financial aid for college

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Dato=20090412&Kategori=EDIT03&Lopenr=904120338&Ref=AR

Meeting this Tuesday at 4pm!

We will meet from 4-5 in Greenlaw 225 on April 28th to discuss the class. I am sending you all an email through the blackboard site at blackboard.unc.edu shortly. Please make sure you can login, particularly those of you who are not UNC students (Marsha, Eric, Jessi).

Our Modern Choices: Engineered or Free-Range Kids?

A recent post on the NACAC listserv was shocking in its obtuseness and demonstrates how blind many of us have become as we supposedly try to be of service to students. The request to fellow listers was as follows:

I am working on college planning with two intellectually bright high school juniors who are very unmotivated about preparing for an SAT test. They come from very high income families and their parents have hired very expensive individual SAT tutors. I personally know that their tutors relate well to high school students and have remarkable records for helping students to significantly improve their SAT scores. These two students are extremely resistant about seeing the tutors on a regular basis and doing outside practice assignments. I have reviewed the studentҀs PSAT scores with each student and their parents, and the students have ideas about colleges they would like to apply to׀and could easily be realistic--with SAT scores that are somewhat higher than their PSAT scores. Learning and emotional disabilities, and ADD have been ruled out. I see the above situation as more of a parent/discipline issue rather than a college planning issue, but at the same time would be most appreciative of any suggestions for getting these students more motivated.

To summarize: Two "intellectually bright" juniors from "high income" families are "unmotivated" about spending time prepping for the SAT with "very expensive" tutors. This resistance led initially to worries that they had "learning or emotional disabilities" or attention deficit disorder. The family is desperately seeking ways to get these non-conformists to submit to SAT prep.

Has it come to this? Are students who prefer not to waste their time on SAT prep now threatened, like refuseniks, with being branded as mentally unstable? Are they to be diagnosed by "experts" who classify them as unbalanced because of their refusal to submit to the idiocy of test prep? Has the execrable advice of writers like Judith Wissner-Gross, which basically demands that students be engineered by their parents for college (and not just any college, damn it!) from the time they can fill in a test bubble, finally taken over the college process? Will we start sending these nonconformists to testing gulags where they are re-educated to embrace the charms of the College Board?

I cheer these "intellectually bright" students and hope they get some support from the testing underground, which will provide them with safe haven and copies of "The Origin of Species," "Huckleberry Finn," Mozart's piano concertos, and "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," to get them through this trying period in their lives. (To find out more about the testing underground, go to any public library and get lost in the stacks near the Byzantine history section. They'll find you.) If I were a college, I'd admit them right now simply for their audacity.

Contrast this insidious effort to "re-educate" these smart kids with an amazing story that appeared in today's Chicago Tribune. It is the story of two parents who sent six kids to Northern Illinois University, all of whom went on to receive Ph.D.s and all of whom are now leaders in their fields. How did this happen? What music did Mrs. Sereno (for that is her name) play to those babies in her womb? What tapes or tutors or special schools did she drive her kids to so that they would rise into the world of genius? How often did she drill them in their cribs to know their timestables and the capitals of the world? How many summer programs did she enroll them in? Did she write a book telling me how to do it all? Most important, how did she teach them to get past all the stupid kids who stood in their way to success? (One child, Paul, is a world-famous paleontologist at the University of Chicago who has contributed vast amounts of knowledge to the field; his brothers and sisters are all neurological researchers working for universities in England, Scotland, Oregon, Texas, and Kansas.)

Mrs. Sereno's diabolical plan amounts to this: "We encouraged the idea that learning was exciting...I know how butterflies have sex, because we made a mating chamber for them so the kids could see all the stages of moth and butterfly life. We had slime mold growing upstairs. We had art in the house and a kiln for firing pottery. They all played instruments, though only two of them had any talent. I wanted my kids to go out and have their own adventures, to learn to fly on their own." So, her children were what we might call "free-range" kids, with plenty of support from mom and dad. There was lots of give and take, plenty of love, and what sounds like a happy chaos encircling the family.

Paul did not do well in high school and in elementary school teachers wanted to hold him back. Perhaps he was like one of those intelligent kids who know instinctively that SAT prep, endless worksheets and things like them are gigantic wastes of time and antithetical to everything that makes education interesting. As he says in the article, "I didn't do well with the structured way things are taught in school. I liked the more free-form, hands-on way of learning, like we did at home." Imagine that! Kids trying to learn on their own! Running around as their curiosity and interest lead them!

It scares people now when kids are like that--there's no way to measure "outcomes," no number that can be used to sum up progress, no "metrics" to gauge how each step is evaluated. You sort of have to leave things to chance, inspiration, and a love of learning (which test prep decidedly is not) and that's never going to get your kids into the Ivy League! They might end up at Northern Illinois, for God's sake! And then what would happen to them!!!!!

List of Top 10 Universities of China

List of Top 10 Universities of China

1. Zhejiang University China

2. Nanjing University China

3. Tsinghua University China

4. Peking University China

5. Shanghai Jiao Tong University China

6. University Science and Technology China

7. Fudan University China

8. Tianjin University China

9. China Agricultural University China

10. Sichuan University China

for more information of Top Universities of China, large collection of colleges and universities of CHINA, Search china universities, China universities and colleges, MBA colleges in China, list of colleges in China, Top 10 china universities, best universities china, top universities china, top colleges china, list of china universities, china university, list of china universities visit
http://www.allaboutuni.com/site/serv_search_result.php?country=CN.

Thinking Admission

This week I attended a two-day conference at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. It was called "Rethinking Admission" and had an exceptional slate of speakers, from Yale's dean of admission to some leading sociologists, economists, and others who have studied or thought seriously about the phenomenon we call college admission. Bringing the perspective of other fields to the discussion of college admission is exactly the right idea, but as much as I enjoyed the event, it fell well short of "rethinking" admission, settling instead for thinking more intently about what already exists without really rethinking or reimagining it.

Rather than reviewing the whole two days, I'll focus on a few things and recommend you click on the link above if you'd like to see conference details, including podcasts and photos. The two best presentations were by Scott Highhouse, Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Bowling Green State University, and Bruce Walker, Vice Provost and Director of Admission at UT--Austin. The other speakers brought depth of expertise and experience as well as passion and drive, for the most part, to the conference, but, again, presentations focused mostly on where admission IS, not really where it's going or should be going.

An initial session on the SAT (and by extension ACT) focused on whether or not it really predicts college success well enough to be used in admission. Heavy doses of statistics were provided, and surprisingly there was some support for the tests as accurate and necessary tools for college admission. Most valuable here were results of extensive studies that at least provided data for discussions that can rise above anecdote and personal views.

However, as far as I'm concerned, the effective debate is no longer interesting or useful. I oppose use of the tests but believe there's a much more compelling reason to eliminate them. As we have seen over the years, test prep has become a larger and larger phenomenon, eating up time and energy that could be better used elsewhere. When this was mostly the province of the overprivileged, it seemed crass but tolerable, but what we're finding now is that schools serving students who need education most--first-generation and minority students--have succumbed to a felt need to prep their students in order to compete with their better-off peers.

It is well-known that high stakes testing has many negative effects on students and teachers, who are pressured to perform (I include NCLB standards in this group). With scores as the perceived gateway to college, many of these underserved schools are taking vast amounts of time and money to prep kids for the tests, on which they generally don't do so well anyway. Time that could be spent learning something is wasted and everyone learns to hate school because it's an endless round of memorization and robotic performance. What's particularly ironic is that colleges often forgive poor test scores of talented minority students as long as everything else looks promising, so all that test prep is doubly wasted. (As a former admission officer at Amherst College I can tell you that scores are important unless they're not.)

Prof. Highhouse challenged our assumption that "holistic review" of applications is somehow more accurate than simply running the numbers and making a decision. He cited studies showing that hiring decisions made "holistically" or, what seems closer to his intent, by hunch, are nearly always inaccurate. In fact, when added to statistical decisions regarding hiring, the "holistic" factors actually lessened the accuracy of the decision. Although he didn't link these findings specifically to college admission, the implications were clear.

Frustratingly, however, the implications of this view were never discussed. It's highly unlikely colleges would ever give up holistic review, but what are its defects and can they or should they be corrected? Is there a new method of reviewing applications being implied? And what is greater accuracy in college admission, anyway? Most people would define that as admitting only the people who "deserve" to be admitted, but as others mentioned, that term, along with "merit," has enormous elasticity.

The speaker closest to suggesting an actual way of rethinking admission was Bruce Walker of the University of Texas at Austin. He spoke about Texas's Top 10% program and demonstrated that, when given a chance, good students from high schools all over the map, when given the chance, can do well in college. He had studied the GPAs of students from poor & wealthy families and from poor to excellent high schools and showed us how these students, when properly challenged, can truly rise to the occasion. Skeptics of the program should look at the data and rethink how to challenge students even earlier so they can be even better in the future.

Walker's real contribution to the discussion was his observation that colleges need to "deliver social capital to families who have never had it before." He spent some time talking about the efforts of colleges to reach affluent students who are likely to enroll versus their efforts regarding poor students. He said that colleges should start thinking more about these latter students but not simply by showering them with recruitment information. They need to think about how to bring poor and underserved students into the world of college so they can be motivated throughout high school and prepared for college socially as well as academically. In terms of "rethinking" college admission, this was probably the most important presentation, but, again, there was far too little time to actually do the rethinking. Perhaps it can be a touchstone for a future conference.

In my own work I talk a lot about creating the social and cultural capital students need for college success. It has to start early for first-generation students because they have not been surrounded by "college" the way their better-off peers have been. So Walker's observations were particularly exciting. But to carry them out colleges will have to think backwards as well as forwards. They will have to reach back to middle school to help counselors and teachers motivate students, instead of just waiting around for those students to reach senior year in high school and them skimming off whoever has made it to the top. This would indeed be a major rethinking of the college admission process.

Thinking backwards also means considering what effects testing and other admission policies have on schools' curricula, family and student behavior, and a host of other phenomena. As I mentioned above, high stakes tests as entrance requirements have actually come to stifle real education, the opposite of what one would want. Adopting this view of things instead of simply looking out for the institution's self-interest would be more labor intensive and expensive, but in the end institutions would be served by having a stronger pool of students to draw from when the time came.

Ultimately, while I believe the conference failed to live up to the idea of rethinking admission, it did serve to bring together people from different arenas who can have useful and important things to say about the process. I believe that, for better or worse, the college admission process has become a real locus for American culture and it deserves to be studied in greater depth by sociologists, psychologists, economists, and others. With luck, the Wake Forest conference will spark more and deeper discussions to come.

Welcome to the Study Abroad in the Cherokee Nation 09 Blog!

Welcome! Please set up your account and test it out by posting something about yourself!

Admissions

What is it college admissions want most to see in a candidate? Just be yourself!

http://www.examiner.com/x-5453-LA-College-Bound-Examiner~y2009m3d23-The-Most-Basic-and-Most-Important-College-Admissions-Advice-Be-Yourself

Basic Information

If you think that you know everything about college, read this article. Check out just how accurate your ideas are in relation to the information provided.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/2009/03/11/10-things-students-need-to-know-about-college-but-dont.html

The List of Accepting Do's and Don'ts

This article gives you the ten things that need to be done in order to handle your admission to college correctly.

http://www.examiner.com/x-5453-LA-College-Bound-Examiner~y2009m3d26-Youre-in-Now-what-The-etiquette-of-accepting-an-offer-of-admission

Accepting that Offer

So you got the fat envelopes, now what do you do?



http://www.examiner.com/x-5453-LA-College-Bound-Examiner~y2009m3d26-Youre-in-Now-what-The-etiquette-of-accepting-an-offer-of-admission

The Wait List

Read this article to gather some information on another viewpoint of how to deal with the waitlist dilemma.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-30/dirty-secrets-of-college-waitlists/

College Visits

Can you really gain anything from a college visit? Can't you pretty much gather all of your informaton off of the internet? Can you eat and enjoy food without enjoying the smells?

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/225/story/632364.html

Value in a State College

Looking for the best education that your state colleges will provide. Consider applying to the public honors college in your state. For those who have attained their admission standards, serious consideration should be given to applying to this school.

http://www.examiner.com/x-766-College-Admissions-Examiner~y2009m3d30-Money-for-College-Consider-an-Honors-College

Elective Courses

What types of elective courses should you consider? What are colleges looking for?

http://www.examiner.com/x-4265-Charlotte-Teen-Issues-Examiner~y2009m4d8-College-bound-How-to-choose-smart-high-school-electives

College Interviews

This article will give you the whys and hows of interviewing for college. Not all colleges require interviews. If one is recommended or required, you want to do a good job.


http://www.examiner.com/x-5453-LA-College-Bound-Examiner~y2009m4d7-The-importance-of-the-college-admissions-interview-and-how-to-ace-it

Junior Hints

Demonstrated interest is something that will be noticed by college admissions officers. How do you do that?

http://www.examiner.com/x-766-College-Admissions-Examiner~y2009m4d7-Advanced-Admissions-what-to-do-right-now-to-get-in-next-April

Junior Year and the College Search

Juniors--now is the time to begin your college search. This article will give you some guidelines to follow:

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/columnists/x1243558544/COLLEGE-MATTERS-Juniors-get-off-to-the-best-start-in-your-college-search

The Wait List

Are you on that dreaded wait list? What should you do? What should you expect?

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2009/04/06/what-to-expect-if-you-were-wait-listed.html?PageNr=1

Community College

Attending communty college can save money in the overall cost of college. This Wall Street Journal article explains some of the positive aspects of attending community college first.

In order to read the entire article, you will need to register. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090408-705824.html

Radio Advce

Here is another avenue to gather college information:

Countdown to College Radio is a weekly one-hour show dedicated to helping college-bound high school students and their families understand the process of getting ready for--and getting into--college. Show host Beth Pickett interviews experts on the college application process, high school coursework, summer opportunities, extracurricular activities, application essays, standardized testing, financial aid, and college options, with the occasional foray into how to maintain a healthy and positive attitude throughout what can be a very stressful process.

The link is: http://www.countdowntocollegeradio.com/

Metaphors 'R' Us

Whether we articulate it or not, we all organize our understanding of the world around certain concepts and ideas. Doing so enables us to get a handle, however tenuous, on our experiences and feel that life isn't totally random or meaningless. Whether you think of the universe as a clockwork or life as a treadmill or your spouse as a "ball and chain" you're indulging in metaphorical thinking that helps you deal with any of those phenomena. The metaphor you use is an organizing principle and you tend to behave accordingly.

As you can see from my examples, we use metaphor at many levels in our personal lives because they help make us comfortable. But sometimes they can prevent us from acting appropriately or even, at a higher level, prevent us from seeing what's in front of us. Metaphors can be so powerful that they cause us to reject reality--consider the pre-Copernican view of the Earth as the center of the universe, or the inability of pre-modern "doctors" to consider experimentation as a way to get to truth, relying instead on the "wisdom" of Aristotle and others who simply worked what they observed into their own world views. (Take the concept of bloodletting, related to the system of the four "humors" in the body--despite being more harmful than helpful, the concept was so powerful it took many years and many deaths before anyone thought to see if it actually worked.)

One of the most powerful recent metaphors has been of the mind as a computer. The mind has been compared to many things but the brain-computer link seems almost perfect in its conceptual mapping. Both "compute" by taking data, combining and comparing it, then coming up with new "ideas" and "concepts"; both work vary fast (although even the fastest computer can't approach the brain at its fundamental best); both are almost infinitely capacious in their potential for storing and retrieving data; and bother even are susceptible to viruses and damage that can impair their ability to "think."

As a result of our infatuation with the computer, we've actually allowed the metaphor to overtake what we know about the brain, and in doing so we have done enormous damage to education. While it makes some explanatory sense to think of the brain as a computer, it makes no real sense at all to treat children as live computers. Yet this seems to be what we've done in the last twenty or thirty years--roughly parallel to the rise of the computer itself. The language of education has changed, adopting from computers ways to think about thinking and how to teach children. We think of classroom learning as "information" and "data" to be "programmed" for students; we evaluate schools on the basis of "inputs" and "outcomes"; and we rely more and more on numbers from tests and surveys to tell us whether we're doing a good job educating our children.

But this metaphor could not be more wrong, surpassing even the idea of students as factory parts embodied in the massive old high schools built in the early twentieth century. The metaphor of student brains as computers that need to be loaded with "software" shears away all the messiness and individuality of students (ironically even as we get better and better accommodating different ways of learning), and causes us to think of them as "units" or memory boards. We believe that by drilling students for high stakes tests we can make them smarter (or really, make ourselves look smarter), yet we also notice that kids hate to come to school and are bored and restless in class. But our image of them as little laptops, overt or otherwise, gets in the way and we find it hard to change course.

This idea comes to me as college admission letters go out and students make decisions about where to attend. So often students find college either a blessed relief from the straitjacket of high school or a puzzling and unpredictable maze of expectations--isn't it time for a new way of looking at school, a new metaphor? For me, the metaphor is food.

Education has never really been a technical issue. The greatest educators, from Socrates to Dewey to everyone in between, have been passionate individuals with great swaths of messy inconsistencies in their makeups. The greatest students have been equally devoted to the life of the mind, and I don't just mean graduate students, I mean everyone who's ever rejoiced in a wonderful class or great book. We already use food metaphors for education, but they seem most often to turn up in recommendation letters: Johnny's a "voracious" reader; Jackie "devours" ideas in science. It's no accident we talk about "food for thought." But they've taken a back seat to the techno images.

It would be more fruitful (see?) if we thought of ideas, experiments, field trips, and all the other things that make up schooling as rich, high-calorie food for the brain. If we did that, we'd have to re-evaluate the place of standardized testing in school; we'd have to re-think grades, too, because they are "data points," not true evaluations of idiosyncratic individuals. I'm not suggesting we abolish these things wholesale but I am suggesting, with college preparation and eventual admission in mind, that a system that has become practically inert rediscover the pleasures that learning can provide, pleasures that are remarkably similar to what we get from a terrific meal. If the computer metaphor has resulted in the aridity of test-prep classes, couldn't a food metaphor bring us back to the luxury of reading great literature and interacting with brilliant scientists? If we insisted on providing our children healthful intellectual meals instead of empty techno calories, wouldn't we be laying a table second to none and feeding students instead of programming them?