See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap1. For family of high-achieving kids, only one holds the keys to college -
"This month, Javier faced a new barrier in his quest to attend college -- something Emily will never have to worry about. He had just celebrated completing his application to Georgia State University when he learned the University System of Georgia passed a policy that prohibits five public universities from taking undocumented students. Georgia State University is one of them. Georgia law also bars undocumented students from receiving in-state tuition.Georgia is one of three states that prohibit undocumented students from accessing in-state tuition rates, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. One state, South Carolina, completely bans undocumented students from all public universities. In contrast, 11 states make access to college easier for illegal immigrants by allowing them to receive in-state tuition. New Mexico and Texas also help undocumented students by providing state financial aid, the state legislatures group reported."
2. Hearing the Voice of a 51-Year-Old Man in the Essay of a 17-Year-Old Girl by Rachel Toor -
"Parents who have raised good kids should trust them. Because the essay is not an essential part of the process, and frankly, because most admissions officers know that they don’t know whose fingerprints are all over it, parental interference — except by people who really do know how to write — can be more demoralizing and divisive than useful.It’s hard to come up with good topics. Parents who haven’t had the benefit of reading thousands of essays don’t know the clichés of the genre and steer children away from anything that might be “risky,” though essays that deal with hard stuff — sex, drugs, religion, family strife — are often the most affecting. I can understand how difficult it is for parents not to be able to advise their children. But in this case, my advice is to step back and let them express themselves. If you’ve done a good job, so will they."
3. Keeping Quiet About a Daughter’s College Choices by Caren Osten Gerszberg -
"Last December, I wrote a post about secrecy during the college application process. I had come across several parents in my community who felt it was important to keep secret the names of the colleges where their child — who in some cases was not the same year in school as mine — was applying. While I accepted this practice as a sign of our competitive, helicopter-parenting times, it still seemed like a foreign notion to me. When it’s my daughter’s turn, I thought, I’m going to shout it from the rooftops. It hasn’t exactly turned out that way. Fast forward nearly a year, and I’m the one keeping the secret. I’m not really comfortable with the idea, but it makes more sense to me now. And out of respect for my daughter and her desired privacy, I must oblige."
4. Minorities in Higher Education:'09 Supplement
"Closing the educational gaps among racial/ethnic groups and by gender is essential for raising the education level of the overall U.S. population. However, the 2009 supplement finds that gaps among these groups remain substantial, and for some races/ethnicities the younger generation is less likely to attain college degrees than its predecessors. Other highlights include: the high school completion rate for young people has been at a standstill, while college enrollment gaps have widened among racial/ethnic groups during the past two decades."
5. Golden State's Transfer Guarantee - Inside Higher Ed:
"The new legislation charges California community college districts to develop and grant associate degrees explicitly meant for transfer. It stipulates that these degrees should consist of 60 credit hours, all of which must be eligible for transfer to CSU. The degrees must consist of courses to meet the CSU general edu...cation breadth requirement. Also, at least 18 credit hours should be within a single major or area of interest. The legislation explicitly states that no additional local graduation requirements may be added. Under the California law, if a student completes one of these associate degrees with at least a 2.0 grade point average, then CSU must guarantee him admission with junior status. The legislation states that students with these degrees should be given priority admission, ahead of those who transfer without such a credential. There is, however, a catch. Admission to specific majors or campuses is not guaranteed. . . ."
6. Proctor or Gamble - Inside Higher Ed:
"So the results of a new meta-study on cheating, published in this fall’s edition of the Journal of Distance Learning Administration, might come as no surprise: Online courses that rely heavily on unproctored, multiple-choice exams are at greater risk of being cheated on than similar face-to-face courses, the study concluded. And while there are mechanisms available to forfend dishonesty in online exams, they can be costly and inconvenient, and may not be widely used. The meta-study, conducted by researchers at University of Connecticut and Union Graduate College, looked at three prior studies examining cheating as it applies to online courses versus face-to-face, and three studies that looked at cheating as it applies to proctored exams compared to unproctored ones. “The six studies, considered as a group, imply cheating risk is less correlated with instructional format (online v. face-to-face), and more correlated with unproctored online assessments,” the authors write."
7. Clean the Slate: Michael Mazer wanted forgiveness - Inside Higher Ed:
"Though Mazer said he had changed, and had a newfound appreciation for learning and for the value of a college degree since dropping out of Camden all those years ago, his transcript remained exactly the same. The two Ds and an F he’d earned in politics and history classes back then meant that even if he earned all As for the remainder of his time at Camden, he could do no better than a 3.5 grade point average.But, for Mazer, forgiveness came in the form of a pamphlet he read as he sat waiting to meet with his adviser for the first time. It detailed the college’s Academic Forgiveness Program, which allows students who haven’t been enrolled at the college for at least five years to exclude previously earned grades below a C from their cumulative G.P.A. The past classes don’t disappear from the record entirely; they remain on college transcripts but come with a notation that they’ve not been factored in the official G.P.A."
8. 'The Lost Soul of Higher Education' - Inside Higher Ed:
"Let me begin with three (or at least two and a half) cheers for American higher education. For all its flaws – and they are many – it is still a remarkably diverse, exciting, and innovative enterprise that not only stretches the boundaries of our knowledge and broadens the American mind, but also serves as the main source of social mobility within the United States. That said, it is also a system that reflects and to some extent increases the inequalities within our society. Its flaws, it must be noted, do not stem from some uniquely academic shortcomings, but are the product of larger social and political forces. In other words, our universities are mirrors of our society. So, if we are seeing an increasingly inegalitarian, competitive, and stressed-out academic community, welcome to the world of 21st century America.The issue, of course, is money. Since the financial crunch of the late 1960s and 1970s, American colleges and universities have worried about their bottom lines."
9. 10 steps to take if you can't pay your student loan bills -
"Boston-based nonprofit American Student Assistance offers these 10 things you should know about your student loan payments if you're unemployed - or barely getting by."
10. Higher One: The Next College Campus Rip-Off?
"About 1.2 million students now possess Higher One cards with a MasterCard logo that bears the name of their college. Despite the MasterCard logo, these cards are not credits cards. The Higher One cards allow students to tap into their financial aid money to make purchases for anything they want from textbooks to six-packs. Many students take out students loans in excess of tuition and room and board to pay for such things as textbooks and living expenses. Colleges have routinely issued checks to the students for the excess amounts. Now students at many campuses are being told to access their money through these Higher One cards."
11. In Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks by Lisa W. Foderaro -
"Textbooks are expensive — a year’s worth can cost $700 to $900 — and students’ frustrations with the expense, as well as the emergence of new technology, have produced a confounding array of options for obtaining them. Internet retailers like Amazon and Textbooks.com are selling new and used books. They have been joined by several Web services that rent textbooks to students by the semester. Some 1,500 college bookstores are also offering rentals this fall, up from 300 last year. . . . According to the National Association of College Stores, digital books make up just under 3 percent of textbook sales, although the association expects that share to grow to 10 percent to 15 percent by 2012 as more titles are made available as e-books. In two recent studies — one by the association and another by the Student Public Interest Research Groups, a national advocacy network — three-quarters of the students surveyed said they still preferred a bound book to a digital version."
12. Educational Difficulties of Men & Immigrants Hinder Efforts to Improve College Attainmt
"The overarching finding of this report is that the United States is no longer gaining ground in the educational attainment of its population from one generation to the next," Molly Corbett Broad, the council's president, said at a recent news conference to discuss the report's findings. "In general, each generation of younger women in the United States is continuing to reach higher levels of attainment, while that of younger men is falling," Ms. Broad said.Nearly all of the gains among women are being driven by those who are white or Asian-American, says the report, the 24th edition of "Minorities in Higher Education" issued by the council. The gains being made by black and Hispanic women are not nearly as large, and, on the whole, members of those two minority groups in the 25-to-34 age bracket have lower college attainment rates than they did a generation ago, according to the report, which can be purchased on the council's Web site."
13. 'Full Ride' Athletic Scholarships Sue Shellenbarger answers readers' Questions -
"Less than 1% of all athletic scholarships are "full rides" covering all of a student's costs, including tuition, room and board, books and fees, says Dion Wheeler, a scout for the National Collegiate Scouting Association. The largest number of full scholarships go to Division I football players, where a coach is permitted a maximum of 85 scholarship athletes on the team. While coaches don't have to give full rides in football, "it is likely that if you get one, it will be a full ride," says Mr. Wheeler, author of a 2009 book on the topic, "The Sports Scholarship Insider's Guide." Smaller numbers of scholarship athletes are permitted in men's and women's basketball and ice hockey, and in women's gymnastics, tennis and volleyball, Mr. Wheeler says. In Division II sports and other Division I sports, such as track and field, scholarships may be split among any number of athletes; while full-ride awards can be given, they are usually reserved for top recruits coaches consider "must-haves," . . . ."
14. How to Tame College Costs—It's Not Just Tuition by Anna Prior WSJ
"With all the added costs associated with the academic side of college, it can pay greatly to look for ways to cut back in different areas of college life. According to the College Board, students at four-year universities spent an average of about $12,500 for the 2009-10 school year on things not related to tuition and fees. Here are five areas where you can cut college costs."
"Earlier this year, Forbes named Sarah Lawrence College as the most expensive school in America, with tuition, room and board adding up to $57,556. But what are the most expensive schools in the country when you just look at tuition costs? Campus Grotto ranked 100 of them. See the top 13 most expensive colleges according to tuition prices below, and for the full list, check out Campus Grotto."
"Now, imagine I'm taking a philosophy course online as part of my degree program. I'm just beginning a unit on epistemology, the study of knowledge and how we justify our beliefs. In my classroom, I've built a detailed profile, and I've been a student for 6 months, so the systems knows a good bit about me: I enjoy working in a learning team, I prefer podcast to video content, my GPA is .5 away from my goal, and, well, I struggle to turn things in on time. At the end of the unit, I am to write a reflection David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. My instructor has offered an introduction to epistemology, and now it's time to dive into the material. My hyper-personalized online classroom directs me to the text, which I read in sections, rating each one to mark my level understanding. With my cursor, I hover over unfamiliar words to reveal their meaning and make electronic notes in the margin. The system remembers which words stumped me and refreshes my memory in game-style...."
