254.Unstack the Odds--GO TO COLLEGE: LINKS

Unstack the Odds: Help All Kids Access College—and Graduate!
by

Joe Rottenborn

Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

20. GO TO COLLEGE: LINKS

Here are some other links to articles of interest, drawn from the Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP) blog, with the original posting number shown.

Miscellaneous:

48. 2010 Admission Rates
To see what percentage of all applicants were accepted to a number of public and private universities, click this link to The New York Times:http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010-admissions-tally/

To read the comments of Kevin Carey on admission rates, see his blog-post of April 19, 2010, entitled "Real College-Acceptance Rates Are Higher Than You Think," at this link:http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Real-College-Acceptance-Rates/23231/

To read a summary of the various guides that "rank" colleges, click on the post "Which College Rankings Set Should You Use," by Danielle Wiener-Bronner on The Huffington Post of 9/14/10, at this link:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-wienerbronner/which-college-rankings-se_b_716526.html

56. Wait-List
Sometimes, a college or university won't either accept or reject a student's application for admission--rather, it will put them on its "wait-list." These lists can range in size from hundreds to thousands of students who still await a decision on their application's acceptance or rejection. Many students will opt not to keep a place on the wait-list and, instead, decide to accept another school's offer of admission. Other applicants, however, decide to remain on the wait-list until they hear, one way or the other, if they will be asked to enroll. To read Lynn O'Shaughnessy's blog-post "Getting Off a College Wait List: 5 Things to Do Now," click this link: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/college-solution/getting-off-a-college-wait-list-things-to-do-now/1846/?tag=col1;blog-river

To read "The Early Line on Admission Yields (and Wait-List Offers)," by Jacques Steinberg in his blog of May 12, 2010, for The New York Times, click this link: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/yield-3/#more-20099

65. Graduation Rates in Ohio
As the cost of college increases, more attention is being paid to the percentage of students who graduate from particular schools. A report entitled "Diplomas and Dropouts: Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Don’t)," dated June 2009, was written by Frederick M. Hess, Mark Schneider, Kevin Carey, and Andrew P. Kelly as A Project of the American Enterprise Institute. Using 6-year percentages reported by the colleges and universities to the U. S. Department of Education for the student cohort enrolling in 2001, the authors compared graduation rates by various levels of schools' selectivity, according to groupings in Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges. The 6-year graduation rates for colleges and universities in Ohio from this report (pp. 59-61) have been copied and pasted below in this link to our MVCAP blog. The entire report can be accessed at this link:http://www.reducemycollegecosts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/graduation-rates-for-all-states-6-091.pdf

66. Transfer Admissions
Many students--approximately 1/3--will transfer from one college to another before graduating. The criteria used for transfer admissions can be different from those employed for high school seniors and can vary from private to public institutions. So, too, can admissions rates differ. A report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling discusses these topics; you can read an article from Inside HigherEd on this report at the following link:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/27/transfer

67. College-Going Rates
The U.S. Department of Labor indicated on April 27, 2010, that the percentage of high-school graduates going on to college is rising. In 1999, 62.9% matriculated to higher education, while 68.6% did so in 2008. By 2009, 70.1% of U.S. graduates (ages 16-24) opted for postsecondary education. Rates varied by gender, with 66% of males matriculating compared to 73.8% of females from the high school Class of 2009.To read Sara Murphy's article, "Grads Head to College In Record Numbers," from The Wall Street Journal of April 28, 2010, click this link:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703832204575210244203411342.html?mod=e2tw

68. Who Graduates in Four Years?
To determine the impact of advising by the Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP), names from its electronic database (in the software Prep HQ) of former advisees in the Class of 2004—the first loaded online—were submitted to the Ohio College Access Network (OCAN) to check matriculation and graduation rates with the National College Clearinghouse data. Results can be seen at this link to our MVCAP blog.

To read the article "College students take longer to graduate," by Cliff Peale in The Cincinnati Enquirer on May 3, 2010, which lists cohort graduation rates of Cincinnati-area colleges and universities, click this link:http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100503/NEWS0102/5030326/College+students+take+longer+to+graduate
70. Space Availability Survey 2010
For those high school seniors or prospective transfer students still looking for a college, the Space Availability Survey Results 2010--issued on May 5, 2010, by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC)--may be of interest and assistance; to access it, just click this link: http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Research/SpaceAvailabiltySurvey/Pages/SpaceSurveyResults.aspx
72. To-Do List Before Leaving for College
High school seniors heading off to college in the fall have much to do before they leave; at this link is a list of 10 things to do from the Admission Possible blog:http://blog.admissionpossible.com/uncategorized/seniors-about-to-become-college-students-10-things-you-can-do-to-get-ready-for-college/

74. Remedial Coursework
Many community colleges and public universities give admitted students tests on math and reading before they enroll. If scores are not at the school's standard, remedial courses must be completed before college-level coursework can be taken. To read an article from USA Today about the need for remedial math and reading in U.S. higher education, click this link:http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-05-11-remedial-college_N.htm

75. Is a College Degree Essential?
Many students--and their parents--wonder whether everyone really needs a college degree. Given the time, effort, and money involved, many are unsure if college is right--or necessary--for them. Well, each student's situation is unique: what is their best fit in the world of higher education and careers? For one article on this question, from the Associated Press on May 14, 2010, click this link:http://www.vindy.com/news/2010/may/14/is-college-degree-essential/

For an extended version of the same article, click this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/13/college-for-all-experts-s_n_575396.html

192. 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. Too many hours on the job could put high school teens at risk, by Sophie Terbush - USATODAY.com: http://t.co/Z6JboyT

‎"According to the study, students who worked more than 20 hours a week had lower expectations for educational attainment, lower school engagement, higher levels of substance abuse, and other problem behavior. However, these same students also showed more autonomous decision-making and had slightly higher grade point averages than teens without jobs."

2. A College Opts Out of the Admissions Arms Race, by Jacques Steinberg - http://nyti.ms/fXDWPs

“You know as well as I that those numbers aren’t real,” Mr. DiFeliciantonio said by phone from the school’s campus in Collegeville, Pa. “People count anything that moves as an application. Everyone is going up 10 percent every year for 20 years. It’s absurd.” “At some point,” he added, “the credibility of those numbers is questionable.”

3. Maximum Pell, at All Costs, by Doug Lederman - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/eFSFu2

‎"While the GOP measure would slash the maximum Pell Grant by $845, end funding for several other student aid programs (as well as the AmeriCorps national service program), and slice billions of dollars from agencies that support academic research, the Obama budget for 2012 keeps those and other programs largely intact."

4. Where Are the Student Voices? by Tara Watford, Vicki Park, and Mike Rose - Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/fwG6QQ

‎"A recent study from the Institute for Higher Education Policy found that about half of low-income young adults in the United States enroll in higher education, but only 11 percent of them earn a postsecondary degree. . . . Low-income students, compared to their middle-class peers, tend to have longer transitions between high school and college and, once there, lower retention."

5. ‘Tiger Mother’ meets reality: Asian-American students struggle, too, by Jennifer Oldham - Hechinger Report: http://t.co/KBMPjh1

‎"Like Lo, about half of the nation’s Asian-American students enroll in community college, where they often struggle to pay for classes and scramble to find room in remedial courses. They get far less attention than overachievers like Chua’s highly micromanaged daughters, whose rigid childhood is described in a book that’s sparking debates about Asian-American student success. . . ."

6. Obama Budget Proposes Significant Increase for Schools, by Sam Dillon and Tamar Lewin - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15education.html?_r=1&hpw

"Last year, the president said that, to remain competitive, the nation must increase the number of college graduates. But forced to make deep cuts in many areas of government, the president now proposes to eliminate some provisions of the Pell program, which has doubled in size over five years, and serves nine million low-income students."

7. President's Budget Protects Pell Grants, but Makes Cuts to Career and Technical Education, by Kelly Field - http://chronicle.com/article/Presidents-Budget-Protects/126370/

‎"To maintain a maximum Pell award of $5,550, the president's fiscal 2012 budget would eliminate the in-school interest subsidy on loans to graduate students and end a policy that allows students to receive two Pell Grants in a single year. It would provide level support for most other student-aid programs, including Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants and Federal Work-Study, while making deep cuts to career and technical education. . . ."

8. Colleges embrace older students, part-timers, by Sandra Block - http://usat.ly/fUa604 via @USATODAY

‎"That means many non-traditional students must pay the entire cost of their education, which is why it often takes them several years to earn their degrees, O'Riley says. That's how Conlan handled her tuition bills. She and her husband took out a home-equity line of credit to help pay for their children's college education, and she didn't want to take on any more debt."

9. How to avoid college scholarship and aid scams - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/college-life/how-to-avoid-scholarship-scams.html

‎"There is no fee to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). But there are a number of websites that charge you money to do it. Many people try to find application on-line with the wrong terms: fasfa com, fasfa edu, fasfa gov, fasfa gov edu, FASA, fasa com, fasa edu, fasa gov, fasa gov edu. They can wind up on a website that asks you to pay a fee to file the form, and sometimes, to file the wrong form. The correct website is http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/#. If you need help, talk to your school’s financial aid officer or call 1-800-433-3243."

10. Why Obama’s 2020 graduation goal isn’t attainable - http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/high-school/why-obamas-2020-graduation-goa.html

‎"A 2010 study of Chicago students found that fewer than 20 percent of students who were below grade level in third grade attended college, compared to about a third of students who were at grade level, and nearly 60 percent of students who were reading above grade level. It would take some sort of miracle to turn around that cohort of kids. Don’t count on it."

11. Bar education consultants' race to the cash: editorial cleveland.com: http://t.co/AQr5XxK

"Now that the Ohio Department of Education has been promised $194 million and 487 school districts and charter schools are getting $206 million from Race to the Top, contractors and vendors are swarming like bees to honey. And the consultants' cut -- in fees, conference costs, overhead and salary -- could be hefty, Plain Dealer reporter Edith Starzyk found in a special report in collaboration with Andrew Brownstein, a freelance writer with Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news outlet, and the Education Writers Association."

12. Ohio State, Miami universities accused of racial bias in admissions, by Encarnacion Pyle - http://t.co/jZ1PyxA

"The Center for Equal Opportunity released a study this morning that it says shows that the schools treat undergraduate students with similar academic records differently. It says black students were favored at Miami by a ratio of 10-1 over white students with similar ACT scores, and that the ratio at Ohio State was 8-to-1. When comparing students with similar SAT scores, the group found a ratio of 8-1 ratio at Miami and 3-to-1 at Ohio State."

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66. Transfer Admissions

Many students--approximately 1/3--will transfer from one college to another before graduating. The criteria used for transfer admissions can be different from those employed for high school seniors and can vary from private to public institutions. So, too, can admissions rates differ. A report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling discusses these topics; you can read an article from Inside HigherEd on this report at the following link:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/27/transfer

48. 2010 Admission Rates

To see what percentage of all applicants were accepted to a number of public and private universities, click this link to The New York Times:

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010-admissions-tally/

To read the comments of Kevin Carey on admission rates, see his blog-post of April 19, 2010, entitled "Real College-Acceptance Rates Are Higher Than You Think," at this link:

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Real-College-Acceptance-Rates/23231/

To read a summary of the various guides that "rank" colleges, click on the post "Which College Rankings Set Should You Use," by Danielle Wiener-Bronner on The Huffington Post of 9/14/10, at this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danielle-wienerbronner/which-college-rankings-se_b_716526.html