5 Wrong Ideas About College Admissions

Energetic and well-informed high school counselors are assembling their notes for upcoming parent meetings. These sessions are usually valuable and informative. Yet, despite all the good data and advice, some false assumptions about college admissions stubbornly survive. You encounter them while dining with friends, surfing the Internet or eavesdropping on the sidelines at youth soccer games.

Here are five of the most resilient and harmful of these wrong ideas about finding the best college for you:

1. Colleges are impressed by a lot of extracurricular activities. What a high school student does outside the classroom is important. Extracurriculars can make the difference when seeking admission to colleges that have three times as many straight-A student applicants as they have space. At one Ivy League college, I heard admissions officers describe applicants as, for instance, the violin-playing quarterback or the math-medalist poet. They never mentioned more than two activities. They wanted depth, not breadth. If the student was a baker, they wanted to see him enter his blueberry pies in county fairs. If the student was a writer, they hoped for copies of her op-eds that ran in the local newspaper. To them, five or six activities was a waste of time and space on the application.

2. The more Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes and tests, the better. Selective colleges expect applicants to enroll in three to five AP, IB or similar college-level courses and take the final exams. If you like AP, taking 12 of them won’t hurt you but confers no advantage over a classmate who took just four and did well on the exams.

3. Every high school grade counts. High grade-point averages are vital, but it is possible to get Bs in three or four courses and still have an average above 4.0. The extra weight given AP or IB courses makes the difference. Admissions officers often discount mediocre grades in freshman year, if the student’s record improves after that. A single recommendation letter from a teacher saying an applicant was the best history student he had had in five years can make a C in physics meaningless.

4. A student has little chance to get into a top school without an SAT prep course. I spent a lot of money on the course my daughter took her junior year. These courses teach important things and give students confidence walking into the exam. But we have data showing such courses did little good for students who listened in their high school classes, did their homework and took a few practice SAT exams from the book in their counselor’s office. My daughter raised her score 10 points after the course. That cost me $100 a point.

5. The harder a college is to get into, the more it will ensure a bright future. It is difficult to persuade tribal primates like us that this isn’t true. We are genetically wired to respect pecking orders. If we see a college listed No. 1, we want to go there. When its admissions rate falls below 10 percent, we are even more excited. Research indicates that the most selective schools look good because they attract so many of the students with character traits, such as persistence and humor, that ensure success. Those students acquire those traits long before they get to college and do just as well in life if they attend a school nobody heard of.

By Jay Mathews |

Repaying Your Student Loans

Repaying your student loan is a great way to build good credit. Even though many student loans are deferred until after you graduate, it's a good idea to plan ahead.

Tips for successfully repaying student loans:
Keep your student loan documents together in a safe place so that you'll be able to find them when you need them. This includes promissory notes, cancelled checks, notices of disbursement, letters, and other communications about your loan(s).
Students: Set aside a little money each week to make sure that you will have enough to be able to begin your payments when your grace period is over. Saving as little as $10 every week while you're in college will turn into $2,000 when you graduate! And if you find a great job immediately, you'll have a ready-made emergency fund.
Paying back your student loans on time is important! You can use student loan debt to your advantage by creating a good credit history. When you're ready to borrow in the future, other banks and lenders will see that you are a good risk for a loan.
Whenever possible, use online banking or ACH automatic debits to ensure that payments are made on time.
Make sure that you keep your lender informed about changes - your address, your legal name, school enrollment, transfers to a different school, graduation.
Read your student loan promissory note and Truth-In-Lending disclosure statement. They may not read like bestsellers, but you'll be ahead of the game if you know the terms of your loan. If you need help understanding some of the information on these documents, please contact us for assistance.
Do everything you can to avoid default on your student loans. It can be frightening and upsetting to have financial difficulties that make it difficult to meet your loan payments. If you think you can’t make a loan payment, talk with your lender as soon as possible about your options. Default can lead to any of the following:
Your student loans can be turned over to collection agencies and you can be sued for the entire loan amount.
You'll still owe the full amount borrowed, and you can even be charged with collection and court costs.
Your wages can be garnished. This means that a portion of your paycheck will be automatically diverted toward loan repayment.
You will cause damage to your credit rating and have difficulty borrowing money in the future for things like mortgages, car loans, and graduate education loans.
You may be unable to renew professional licenses.
You'll be ineligible for federal financial aid (for yourself or your kids someday), deferments, and federal interest benefits.

This article was found on our friends over at MEFA's (Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority) website

What you can do while waiting for college acceptance offes

Now that the hard work of filling out applications and writing essays is over, you may think all that's left to do is to wait anxiously for an admission decision about your college future. Even if you've turned everything in, however, there are still some things you can do to improve your chances of admission, and to keep your mind occupied while you wait.

Monitor the college acceptance process

Colleges won't make an admissions decision about you if they don't have everything they need, so you may want to follow up with schools to make sure they have all your paperwork. If you don't receive postal or electronic notification that your application is complete, check your colleges' Web sites or call to ask about the status of your application.

During mid-winter and early spring, colleges are often still awaiting mid-year high school grade reports, a teacher recommendation letter, an official SAT/ACT report, or other various forms. You may need to do some careful prodding of others to make sure your application moves forward.

Keep working hard in your classes
Continue to work hard and keep up your grades as they are the most important on-going factor in the admissions process, and could mean the difference between a college acceptance, a waiting list, or a flat-out rejection. The mid-year report from your high school will include your most recent transcript and grades. Make sure this report goes out from your high school, and consider updating the college yourself about your academic progress, especially if you have strong grades and good comments.

Know what you can do to impact the admission decision

A letter from you in February or early March may help, too. Discuss your academic progress, any particular activities you are enjoying (extracurricular and otherwise), changes in your schedule, or any classes or projects you would like to highlight.

Most importantly, emphasize your continuing interest in the colleges and be as specific as possible about why you are interested in a particular school. This might include highlighting which academic and extracurricular programs are most appealing to you, and why you believe the college is a good match for you. Continued interest, along with strong academic performance, are two key factors colleges are looking for from you at this stage, and it may help with the admissions decision.

Sometimes it makes sense to send an additional letter of recommendation from a senior year teacher. You should, however, only do so if it would really give an added boost to your application. You may also want to consider sending a sample of strong senior year work, such as a graded paper from English, a science report, or an art portfolio or music recording.

Add positive elements to your application that you may increase your chances of receiving a college admission letter, but don't distract the admission committees from good work you did previously by adding unnecessary elements to your file.

Talk to alumni or college representatives if possible
Colleges that maintain alumni interviewing opportunities may contact you for an interview. Once they have your complete application, the college usually forwards the information to an alumni committee that automatically gets in touch with you by phone or e-mail. You might check the colleges' Web sites to see how the process works, and to request an interview if it is not clear how the process works.

Take advantage of these types of opportunities to learn more about the colleges and to demonstrate your interest in them. Yes, this might be a tipping factor to help you receive a college admission letter, but the effort could also help with your decision-making process in April if you are fielding multiple offers of admission.

Don't forget about money
An often-overlooked task during January and February is filing for financial aid. Talk with your parents or guardians. If you think you might need financial aid to help pay for college, then complete the financial aid process as soon as possible. File the FAFSA and PROFILE forms, as well as any additional financial aid forms required by individual colleges. The worst they can say is "no," but if you don't file for aid early in the winter, you might be excluded from potential assistance.

If there are extenuating circumstances that could affect your family's ability to pay for college, you should write a letter directly to each college's financial aid office, supported by any necessary documentation, to add to their decision process about your aid package.

Help your college acceptance chances

For seniors, January through March often seems like it's all about waiting for college admission letters, but these are some of the things you can do to remain engaged in the admissions process and help your chances. Avoid that senior slide as much as possible and stay committed. This strategy will have the greatest chance of helping you to open up choices in the spring.

By Howard and Matthew Greene, hosts of two PBS college planning programs and authors of the Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning series and other books.

This article can be found on the Peterson's website http://www.petersons.com/college-search/waiting-college-acceptance-offers.aspx