366. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.
by
Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily on http://paper.li/rottenbornj

2. SAT Essay Question Proves Prescient, Jacques Steinberg: http://nyti.ms/tiKkNa - "The test-takers were then asked to answer a question — “Is it often difficult for people to determine what is the right thing to do?” — and directed to use “examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.”

3. Seeking Your Questions on Scholarships and Student Loans, by Jacques Steinberg: http://nyti.ms/rwHDtl - "I’ve once again asked Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid expert and founder of the Web sites finaid.org and fastweb.com, to spend a week in our virtual Guidance Office."

4. Latest Developments on Penn State Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/v6k4eS via AddThis - "For those seeking perspective on how the Penn State scandal compares to other major athletics scandals, Slate has assembled links to some of the better long-form journalism on such scandals in the past, as well as some more recent coverage."

5. HechingerEd Blog The new G.I. Bill: Big money, big challenges [podcast]: http://bit.ly/rDEFfU via AddThis - "In September, Hechinger Report writer Jon Marcus reported for The Washington Post that universities were heavily recruiting veterans to get a piece of the $11 billion made available through the new post-9/11 G.I. Bill, but providing little of the additional support that many veterans say they need."

6. Why Do Top Schools Still Take Legacy Applicants? http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants via @roomfordebate - "A recent article in The Times about the pressure felt by Ivy League alumni to get their children into their alma maters — and by those children to get into their parents’ colleges — demonstrated that legacy preferences are still a big part of the admissions process at top schools."

7. Affirmative Action for the Rich, by Richard D. Kahlenberg - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/affirmative-action-for-the-rich via @roomfordebate -"Legacy preferences provide the equivalent of a 160 point boost on the math and verbal SATs, not the “tiebreaker” that many universities claim. These preferences disproportionately benefit wealthy white students, providing, in essence, affirmative action for the rich."

8. How Do You Define Merit? Debra J. Thomas and Terry L. Shepard - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/humans-cant-be-ranked-by-merit via @roomfordebate - "Fewer than 100 of the nation's 3,500 colleges and universities -- less than 3 percent -- have so many qualified applicants that they have to choose among them. At this handful of institutions, legacies are only a small fraction of the candidates. Of these few legacies, not all are admitted, and many that are would have been accepted anyway."

9. Bad for Diversity, by John C. Brittain - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/legacy-preferences-are-bad-for-campus-diversity via @roomfordebate - "A study conducted by researchers at Duke University in 2005 found that underrepresented minorities constitute 28.2 percent of the U.S. population; 12.5 percent of the entire applicant pool of 18 national schools; but minority legacy applicants only accounted for 6.7 percent of the applicant pool. The researchers concluded that legacies today reflect the domination of whites that have in their words, “monopolized” higher education throughout history."

10. Respect for Tradition, by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg - Room for Debate
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/201...

- "More likely legacy admissions are a small number of a large group of set-asides, of special categories crafted and blended into a tapestry of talent that make up an incoming class: legacies, yes, but also musicians, athletes, veterans, minorities, students from all regions of the country and nations of the world, along with those who wish to study rare languages or STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)."

11. Hard-Core Economics, by Peter Sacks - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/hard-core-economics via @roomfordebate - "Elite institutions have struck an implicit bargain with their alumni. That bargain essentially says, “You give us money, and we will move your kid to the front of the line.” . . . The whole enterprise is brought to you by the generosity of ordinary American taxpayers, via tax breaks and subsidies. Their children are waiting patiently in the back of the line, buying into the myth that the system is fair and meritocratic, when in fact, the game is rigged, and the winners are pre-ordained."

12. Athletes Are the Problem, by Michele Hernandez - http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/13/why-do-top-schools-still-take-legacy-applicants/in-college-admissions-athletes-are-the-problem via @roomfordebate - "Like it or not, 40 percent of the class at most top colleges are reserved for "hooked" kids -- the largest group is generally recruited athletes (up to 20 percent), the rest are legacies, underrepresented minorities, development cases (donors) and V.I.P.'s (famous people's kids). It's hard for me to say legacy preferences are not fair because the truth is that the process isn't fair and legacies take up a relatively minor percentage of the class (typically 10 percent)."

13. Crime on Campus: Penn State Raises Question, Do Colleges Have Too Much Power? by Kayla Webley - http://ti.me/rZSq5p via TIME - "One of the few oversight tools the government has is the Clery Act. Named after a Lehigh University student who was raped and strangled by another student in 1986 in her dorm room, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act requires all colleges and universities that participate in federal financial-aid programs to disclose each year the number of alleged criminal offenses, including sexual offenses, that are recorded on campus or in other areas that are under university control, such as remote classrooms and fraternity houses. In addition, schools must also issue timely warnings in cases in which the reported crime represents a threat to the campus community."

14. Proof there is no proof for education reforms, by Carol Corbett Burris- The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/proof-there-is-no-proof-for-education-reforms/2011/11/13/gIQAAeVWJN_blog.html?tid=sm_btn_twitter via @washingtonpost - "Jonah Rockoff of Columbia University, who consults with the New York State Education Department on VAM (value-added modeling) scores and teacher evaluation, recently made a presentation at the Nassau Boards of Cooperative Educational Services. He included a slide, far more modest in its claims, regarding effective teaching and the achievement gap.When I questioned him about it, he was quite honest and admitted that there exists no empirical proof that three effective teachers in a row would close the achievement gap. It is merely a hypothetical extension of results from a model. He also honestly admitted that there exists no study that demonstrates that evaluating teachers using student test scores results in gains in achievement."

330. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Could No Child Left Behind be history? by Lesa Jansen – http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/22/could-no-child-left-behind-be-history/ via CNN - "Friday, President Obama will announce that his administration will begin reviewing state's applications to waive the No Child Left Behind requirements in return for tangible commitments to close achievement gaps."

2. Obama rolling back Bush-era education law – http://usat.ly/o6QD75 via @USATODAY -"Under the plan Obama was to outline Friday, states would be allowed to ask the Education Department to be exempted from some of the law's requirements if they meet certain conditions. That includes enacting standards to prepare students for college and careers and setting evaluation standards for teachers and principals."

3. Serving Soldiers? by Paul Fain - Inside Higher Ed http://bit.ly/pLSXLQ via AddThis - "At issue is the $4.4 billion in Post-9/11 G.I. Bill benefits distributed last year by the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as tuition assistance for service members. For-profit colleges received about $1.6 billion, or 37 percent, of that amount, according to a report released Thursday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Eight of the 10 institutions receiving the largest amounts are for-profits, and they raked in a combined total of more than $1 billion."

4. The Secret College Advantage: Money Talks, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/the-secret-college-advantage-money-talks/6671/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "According to Inside Higher Ed, some schools are so eager to attract students who can pay full price that they admit them despite lower grades and test scores. The interest in full-pay students is so strong that 10 percent of four-year colleges report that the full-pay students they are admitting have lower grades and test scores than do other admitted applicants."

5. Obama Administration Sets Rules for NCLB Waivers, by Alyson Klein - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k%2012/2011/09/obama_administration_sets_rule.html via @educationweek - "The waiver plan also appears to back off on a specific deadline for bringing all students to proficiency, a key facet of the current law. The blueprint would also have called for states to set a goal of having all students be proficient on state tests by 2020, as opposed to the 2013-14 school year in current law. But the waiver plan doesn't set a particular end date. Instead, states would still disaggregate data and set performance targets for every school and every student subgroup, and then set "ambitious but achieveable goals". They could set goals, for instance, to cut the achievement gap in half in six years."

6. Colleges Try to Unlock Secrets to Student Retention, by Caralee J. Adams - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/09/21/04college_ep.h31.html via @educationweek -"The gap between access and completion has put a new focus on ramping up retention—the percentage of freshmen who return to the same institution for a second year of college. And that’s a task, observers say, for precollegiate educators as well as their college counterparts. . . . Students’ lack of academic preparation in K-12 and lack of commitment to earning a degree were among the top reasons for attrition, according to the ACT retention survey."

7. No Child Left Behind Waivers for States, by Sam Dillon: http://nyti.ms/nup3sc -"Under the new policy, only those states that have adopted new academic standards that the administration calls “college and career ready” will be eligible to receive the waivers, according to White House documents distributed on Thursday."

8. Single-Sex Education Is Assailed in Report, by Tamar Lewin - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/education/23single.html?src=recg - "It asserts that “sex-segregated education is deeply misguided and often justified by weak, cherry-picked or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence.” But the strongest argument against single-sex education, the article said, is that it reduces boys’ and girls’ opportunities to work together, and reinforces sex stereotypes. “Boys who spend more time with other boys become increasingly aggressive,” the article said. “Similarly, girls who spend more time with other girls become more sex-typed.”

9. Highlighting Flow of Military Benefits to For-Profits, Senators Seek Changes in Key Rule, by Kelly Field -http://chronicle.com/article/Senators-Put-Spotlight-on/129127/ - "Under the 90/10 rule, for-profit colleges must receive at least 10 percent of their revenue from nonfederal sources to be eligible to receive federal student aid. But military benefits aren't counted as part of the federal share, so some colleges have courted veterans as a way to ensure their compliance with the rule. To discourage this practice, Democrats—and many veterans groups—want to include military money on the federal side of the formula."

10. Don Quixote, College Choice, and the Myth of Fit, by Mark Moody -http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/don-quixote-college-choice-and-the-myth-of-fit/28781 - "There is a popular slogan posted in many college counseling offices: “College is a match to be made, not a prize to be won.” This statement has become a mantra we repeat to families as an antidote to the media-driven obsession with rank, reputation, and prestige. . . . Our colleague Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College, once captured the frustration of a conversation about the whole business of Fit when she exclaimed, “Fit happens!” Happily, this tongue-in-cheek phrase nails it. We hope it can become the new counseling office motto, opening our kids to unexpected possibilities and a more authentic, empowering and reflective transition to the next phase of their lives."

11. A New ‘Poor Students Need Not Apply’ Policy at College? by Brad Tuttle - http://ti.me/oMI8Yd via @TIMEMoneyland - "Many American universities admit that they are actively trying to recruit students who don’t need financial aid and will pay full, non-discounted tuition. Sometimes, these students aren’t as qualified as other applicants, but they get in anyway because they’re willing to pay up."

12. Top 10 myths of college admissions, by Steve Cohen - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/top-10-myths-of-college-admissions/2011/09/22/gIQAEn8XoK_blog.html via Washingtonpost.com -"Unfortunately, many parents are navigating this world wearing blinders. They’re operating on rumor, wishful thinking, or outdated notions of how the system worked when they applied. Let’s address the top 10 myths."

13. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/x7cmxSo

7.

329. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.
by
Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. More college officials learn about applicants from Facebook, by Mary Beth Marklein – http://usat.ly/rpUwnK via @USATODAY - "Nearly a quarter (24%) of admissions officials at 359 selective colleges say they used Facebook, up from 6% the previous year, and 20% used Google to help evaluate an applicant, says the survey, conducted by Kaplan Test Prep. Kaplan, which did not identify participating colleges, queried 500 colleges listed in U.S. News & World Report rankings and in Barron's Profiles of American Colleges."

2. ‘Pursue your dream’ by Virginia Shank - Tribune Chronicle - Warren, OH - http://bit.ly/mQFLL9 via AddThis - "It makes sense," said Jasmine Wallace, 17, a senior and member of the school's yearbook committee. "It's important to show kids that there's far more to life than being on the streets, than just giving up on yourself and what you can do with your life. These are real people pursuing their careers and working hard at what they do. It gives you something to hold on to. It gives you hope that you can also make something of your own life."

3. Gazing Into Higher Ed's Future, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed - http://bit.ly/ns4co1 via AddThis - "And the gender gap, already a concern for many in higher education, would widen: with enrollments of women growing by 21 percent and men by just 12 percent, as the department projects, by 2019 women would make up 59 percent of all postsecondary students, up from the current 57.1 percent."

4. College Bound: States Pass New Laws to Encourage College Completion, by Caralee Adams - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/college_bound/2011/09/states_pass_new_laws_to_encourage_college_completion.html via @educationweek - "Nearly 80 new laws related to college completion have been approved in states so far in 2011, and the range of approaches are chronicled by Boosting College Completion, a two-year initiative by the Education Commission of the States funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."

5. For-Profit Colleges, Vulnerable G.I.’s, by Hollister K. Petraeus - http://nyti.ms/o9aZzl - "The schools have a strong incentive to enroll service members and veterans, in large part because of the “90-10 rule” created by the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act. Put simply, the rule says that a for-profit college must obtain at least 10 percent of its revenue from a source other than Title IV education funds, the primary source of federal student aid. Funds from Tuition Assistance and the G.I. Bill are not defined as Title IV funds, so they count toward the 10 percent requirement, just like private sources of financing.
Therein lies a problem. For every service member or veteran (or spouse or child, in the case of the post-9/11 G.I. Bill) enrolled at a for-profit college and paying with military education funds, that college can enroll nine others who are using nothing but Title IV money."

6. St. Mary’s U. Finds That When It Texts, Students Come, by Alex Campbell - http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/st-marys-u-finds-that-when-it-texts-students-come/33328 - "At St. Mary’s University, potential students are given the option to sign up for updates when they first make contact with the institution. Throughout the application process, they get alerts, and, if they reply, the university writes back to them individually. For the second straight year, students who signed up were more likely to apply than those who didn’t, and, if they got accepted, they were more likely to matriculate."

7. Grading the GOP Candidates on Education, by Andrew J. Rotherham - http://ti.me/nTMHie via Time - "As some start to drop hints about what their education plans might look like, here's a handicapper's guide to the leading contenders and their views — and record — on education."

8. Obama prepares to revamp ‘No Child Left Behind’ by Lyndsey Layton - http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-prepares-to-revamp-no-child-left-behind/2011/09/16/gIQAKUrXlK_story.html via Washingtonpost.com - "Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are scheduled Friday to detail plans to waive some of the law’s toughest requirements, including the goal that every student be proficient in math and reading by 2014 or else their schools could face escalating sanctions. In exchange for relief, the administration will require a quid pro quo: States must adopt changes that could include the expansion of charter schools, linking teacher evaluation to student performance and upgrading academic standards. As many as 45 states are expected to seek waivers."

9. The problem with Obama’s plan to issue NCLB waivers, by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-problem-with-obamas-plan-to-issue-nclb-waivers/2011/09/21/gIQAdVfQmK_blog.html via Washingtonpost.com - "States have been begging Washington to relieve them of the most onerous of NCLB’s provisions, Adequate Yearly Progress, a measure that requires public schools to ensure that nearly all of their students score as proficient on standardized tests in reading and math by 2014. Failing to reach sub-goals toward that end results in punitive measures that require schools to be restructured in one of several models. As the 2014 goal has approached, the number of schools in danger of failing has shot up."

10. More public universities turn dorms into residential colleges, by Jenna Johnson - Campus Overload - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/more-public-universities-turn-dorms-into-residential-colleges/2011/09/21/gIQA8tjGlK_blog.html via Washingtonpost.com - "The idea of a residential college is not new at schools like Cambridge and Harvard, or small liberal arts colleges. But lately many large public institutions are adopting the model, creating small academically driven communities where students can live all four years . . . . The idea is that by putting these students in a building with lots of gathering spots — movie theaters, fitness rooms, kitchens and gaming rooms — they will learn from each other and share ideas."

11. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via @rottenbornj ▸ http://t.co/x7cmxSo

328. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.

by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. Students work on big ideas at Harvard's 'hack night' by Steve Kolowich: http://usat.ly/oxOLVh via @USATODAY - "HackHarvard, which is in only its second semester, operates on two premises: that most students cannot turn good ideas into operational apps, nor operational apps into successful businesses, without help; and that there are plenty of good ideas to go around. The club's leaders describe it as an incubator where students can get feedback on their ideas, learn the nuts and bolts of building Web applications, and meet with like-minded peers and potential collaborators."

2. Admissions 2011, by Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed http://bit.ly/n0GFUA via AddThis - "For many colleges, a top goal of admissions directors is recruiting more students who can pay more. Among all four-year institutions, the admissions strategy judged most important over the next two or three years -- driven by high figures in the public sector -- was the recruitment of more out-of-state students (who at public institutions pay significantly more)."

3. Hechinger Report Getting a college degree doesn’t have to break the bank, by Justin Snider: http://bit.ly/qfSwOV via AddThis - "Cutting college costs has thus become a priority across the socioeconomic spectrum. The good news is there are countless ways to save money on college."

4. Universities Seeking Out Students of Means, by Tamar Lewin: http://nyti.ms/qnrxAJ -"More than half of the admissions officers at public research universities, and more than a third at four-year colleges said that they had been working harder in the past year to recruit students who need no financial aid and can pay full price, according to the survey of 462 admissions directors and enrollment managers conducted in August and early September."

5. Report Profiles Student Veterans Before Passage of New GI Bill - http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/report-profiles-student-veterans-before-passage-of-new-gi-bill/36454 - "Using data from just before the passage of the new GI Bill, the report, “Military Service Members and Veterans: a Profile of Those Enrolled in Undergraduate and Graduate Education in 2007-8,” found that the same proportion of undergraduates and graduate students, 4 percent, were service members or veterans."

6. Turn Middle School Into ‘Boot Camp for Life' by Valerie Strauss - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/middle-school/middle-school-as-boot-camp-for.html - "So let’s consider a different kind of education, one that would allow kids to learn skills in unconventional ways and that would give them far more time to engage in physical activity ouside the classroom."

7. Are High Schoolers Prepared for College? New Data Says Only 43% of Class of 2011 is Ready, by Gaston Caperton - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gaston-caperton/sat-college-gpa_b_970737.html?ir=College - "It is particularly fitting that we established the benchmark in a year when the SAT reached a record 1.65 million students -- many of whom are traditionally underserved -- and only 43 percent of them met the benchmark. After analyzing the results of a diverse group of students from more than 100 institutions all over the country, we set the national SAT benchmark at a composite score of 1550. That means, if a student's critical reading, math and writing scores add up to at least 1550, they have a 65 percent chance of earning a B-minus average their first year in college. Not to mention that students who meet the new SAT benchmark are more likely to enroll in, succeed at, and graduate from college."

8. Read The Joe Rottenborn Daily ▸ today's top stories about college access and success, via @rottenbornj ▸ http://paper.li/rottenbornj

9. Youngstown schools celebrate academic progress, by Denise Dick - http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/sep/21/youngstown-schools-celebrate-academic-pr/ via Vindicator - "Superintendent Connie Hathorn acknowledges the city school system has much work to do to improve student achievement. “We got beat up for celebrating that we’re in academic watch,” Hathorn told about 200 school district employees and supporters at the Covelli Centre on Tuesday. “I’m not happy about that, but we made progress.” The district moved from academic emergency, the lowest designation, on the last two state report cards to academic watch on the one released last month."

199. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. College coaches' fat paychecks stir controversy, by Chris Isidore - http://t.co/SJgHnBg via @CNNMoney

"The latest storm is in Lubbock, Texas, where Texas Tech football coach Tommy Tuberville is getting a 33% raise after just one year, to $2 million. The new contract is guaranteed through 2014.The school says it was making good on a verbal agreement made with Tuberville when he was hired. But the raise comes as many faculty members are going without raises, and the school prepares for expected cuts in state support."

2. Collective Bargaining Rights and Higher Education, by Maria Newman - http://nyti.ms/dFYehK

‎"Mr. Jaschik points out that most college faculty members nationally are not unionized. “A Supreme Court ruling has largely blocked faculty union organizing at private colleges, while state governments regulate collective bargaining in the public sector,” he writes. Unions are more prevalent in colleges and universities in the Northeast, Midwest and West, he said."

3. Roadblocks for ROTC? by Dan Berrett - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/epTDUE

"Opponents generally fall into two camps -- one opposing ROTC because of whom it excludes, the other because of what the military does (a third line of criticism arises from faculty concerns over the academic quality of ROTC programs)."

4. Professors in the Crosshairs, by Mary Hoeft - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/dHoim0

‎"Frequently, during class, he would turn to the young woman seated next to him and engage in a conversation. After asking him repeatedly to focus his attention on what I was saying, I finally asked him to switch seats. I made the request three times before he got up and moved. As he slowly walked across the room, I saw on his face what I had seen only one other time in my teaching career: hate."

5. HEARING: Preventing Abuse of the Military's Tuition Assistance Program - http://bit.ly/g9OyeW

"The hearing will examine the state of the Department of Defense's (DOD) Tuition Assistance Program, which provides tuition assistance benefits to active duty military personnel who wish to take classes while concurrently fulfilling their active duty service requirement. In Fiscal Year 2009, 376,759 service members participated in th...e program and DOD spent over $517 million on the benefit."

6. The Top Jobs For 2011: NACE Salary Survey - http://huff.to/dIRjRV

"College seniors studying accounting are in luck -- accounting firms are doling out more offers to members of the class of 2011 than companies in any other area, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' Winter 2011 Salary Survey. . . ."

7. Value of College-Admissions Test-Prep Classes Unclear, by Caralee J. Adams - http://bit.ly/fGQl1B

‎"Test-prep programs generally include three elements: a review of test content, practice on test questions, and orientation to the format of the test. In 2009, in cooperation with NACAC, Mr. Briggs reviewed three national data sets and found the average effect of commercial coaching is positive, but slight. Test-score bumps were more in the neighborhood of 30 points (on a 1,600-point scale at the time). . . ."

8. Can universities keep the minority students they woo? by Sarah Butrymowicz - Hechinger Report: http://t.co/Q9XFx2A

"But a study released last summer by the Washington D.C.-based Education Trust, which analyzed data from 456 colleges and universities, found a disturbing gap in graduation rates when disaggregated by race. At private institutions, 73.4 percent of white students earned their degrees within six years, while only 54.7 percent of black students and 62.9 percent of Hispanic students made it through the schools they started."

9. FAFSA frustrations? Financial aid expert online Thursday to answer questions, by Jenna Johnson - http://wapo.st/gB5pYC

"Starting at 1 p.m/ Thursday, I will be online to answer questions with Mark Kantrowitz, a leading financial aid expert and the publisher of Fastweb.com and FinAid.org. Mark has written three books about financial aid, including "Secrets to Winning a Scholarship." Please send us your questions now!"

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153. MVCAP fyi

See free MVCAP e-books on college admissions and financial aid for sharing, printing, and downloading at our online resource library: http://issuu.com/mvcap

1. Graduation Gap Bowl 2010 -http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/12/11/12_11_10_graduation_gap_bowl/

See the graduation gap on the football teams in upcoming bowls.

2. Deferral? Denial? Acceptance? A Daughter Tells Her Story, by Nicole Gerszberg - http://nyti.ms/eNZF6S

"This process has taught me a great deal. Not only did I learn how to package myself into “250 words or less,” but I also have a better sense of where I want to be in 10 years, what areas of study I would like to explore, and a lot about who I am."

3. In Over Its Head, by Elizabeth Redden - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/goaHgu

"How did Keuka College end up being a powerhouse player in China, with more than twice as many students enrolled there as in New York? Is it the little college that could or is it, per the account in the dissertation, the institution that got in over its head? These narratives are not mutually exclusive."

4. The Senate's Budget Approach, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/gb9xZC

‎"To the relief of many college officials, both pieces of legislation would provide $5.7 billion to close a shortfall in the Pell Grant Program, ensuring that -- with the help of mandatory budget funds Congress provided in last spring's Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act -- the maximum grant would remain at $5,550."

5. Tweaks to GI Bill Move Ahead, by Jack Stripling - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/gMFMne

"While the current law derives its maximum payout from the highest in-state public tuition in a given state, the new legislation would cap annual payouts at $17,500. Any expenses above that threshold could be covered by the Yellow Ribbon Program, which allows participating private colleges to enter into dollar-for-dollar matching agreements with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs."

6. Colleges With The Highest Graduation Rates - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/14/colleges-with-the-highest_1_n_796136.html#s206355

"On Harvard's heels are Yale University and the University of Notre Dame, with rates of 97 and 96 percent. Among public research universities, the University of Virginia had the highest graduation rate in 2008 at 93 percent, followed by the College of William and Mary and the University of California-Berkeley."

7. Stanford shares details of early-admit class, by Elizabeth Titus - http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/12/13/stanford-shares-details-of-early-admit-class/

"The University received a record-high 5,929 applicants, dropping the admission rate to 12.7 percent for Stanford’s “restrictive early-action program.” Applicants were up 6.5 percent from last year, when Stanford admitted 753 of its 5,566 applicants, or 13.5 percent. The University notified all early applicants of their application status via e-mail on Friday afternoon."

8. 14 Things You Didn't Know About College Students, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://t.co/HWVU1UG

‎"Did you know, for instance, that only 48% of undergraduates attend college full-time? This week The Chronicle of Higher Education assembled some statistics on undergraduates in such categories as household income, gender and where students are attending college that could change your perception of the typical college kid. Here are 14 facts about undergrads:"

9. Higher-Ed Groups Lay Out Strategies to Reach Obama's College-Completion Goal, by Eric Kelderman: http://chronicle.com/article/Higher-Education-Groups-Lay/125710/

"Changing how higher education is paid for "may be the hardest task of all, because it will mean abandoning well-understood and deeply ingrained practices that . . . serve to preserve the institutional status quo rather than creating incentives for vital changes, such as improved persistence and graduation rates, or cost containment," the report says."

10. Standardized snake oil, by Marion Brady: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/standardized-snake-oil---.html

"As a mountain of research makes clear, what ails them is primarily long-term poverty and the myriad problems poverty spawns. That’s a matter I’m not qualified to write about, but for those who think test scores actually mean something important, I’ll note in passing that Finland always ranks near the top, and their child poverty rate is less than 3%, while America’s rate is over 20% and climbing rapidly. Those who believe skilled teachers can level the education playing field enough to erase that difference in the quality of the material they’re given to work with aren’t just not in the game, they’re not even in the ball park."

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