College News from Texas

Ivy League Schools ... Is there a method to getting admitted ? (Beyond Good Grades and Test Scores)

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:28:00 +0000

Brought to you by: Lone Star Ed Consulting , CEO Lauren Kahn, MA 512-294-6608

Lauren@lonestaredconsulting.com Follow Me @LoneStarEd

Lauren Kahn is an educational consultant located in Austin, TX and helps families find colleges and school placements for students throughout the country.

Written by: Lynell, a former college counselor

Who is gaining preferred admission status to the Ivy League Schools and the other elite schools?

So by now you’ve figured out that Ivy League schools are admitting some infinitesimally small percentage of students who apply. These students are truly the needle in the haystack of college-bound applicants. Who are they? And what exactly have they done to get in the front door of the hallowed halls of this nation’s most selective colleges?

First, a definition-There are 8 Ivy League Schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale). It is not their selectivity or prestige that initially brought this group together as the “Ivy” League. It was football. That’s right, the Ivy League was an early athletic conference that has, in fact, evolved into a collection of this country’s most selective colleges and universities.

There are schools that are as difficult (or almost as difficult) to get into as the Ivy League schools, but we cannot neatly amass them into one plant-like athletic conference the way we can with the Ivies. This “Ivy-esque” group includes schools like (but not limited to) Duke, Stanford, Georgetown, MIT, Rice, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury and Amherst, just to name a few. In some cases, some of the schools who are not part of the original athletic conference, admit fewer students than those who were in the founding group.

In this country, however, there is a fixation on attending the eight institutions in the Ivy League, but that’s much easier said than done. Consider these stats: Brown University received almost 29,000 applications for about 2,600 spots for an admit rate of 9.2%. Cornell University received over 40,000 applications for just over 6,000 offers of admission. Dartmouth admitted 10% of their 22,500 applicants, included in that 10% are 39.4% who are valedictorians of their high school classes. Harvard sent out 2,029 offers of admission. That’s 5.8 percent of the 35,023 who applied. Princeton said it had offered admission to 7.3 percent of almost 26,500 applicants, and Columbia accepted 6.89 percent of the more than 33,500 students who applied. University of Pennsylvania admitted 3,785 students, for an admit rate of 12.1 percent while Yale’s acceptance rate was 6.7%.

So, who are they admitting? Who aren’t they admitting, and what does it mean for your chances of getting in? It goes without saying that EVERY applicant must meet certain academic standards. While schools may be a little more flexible about those standards for certain populations of applicants, they are not taking students that are terribly far off from their averages and standards. They are not taking an athlete who will be a success on the field but who has very limited ability to succeed in the classroom. These schools have the luxury of choosing students who can do both. So, beyond academic success, schools will look hard at students who help them fulfill certain institutional priorities. These priorities often include:

-alumni children (though it’s harder than ever to get these spots)

-recruited athletes

-under-represented minorities

-first generation college students

-students with other special talents (oboe player, dancer, entrepreneur, etc.)

Consider the information Brown University lists on their website. Brown received applications from all 50 states, with California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Texas as the most common. They also had applicants from 145 foreign countries (the most ever). The majority of all applicants intend to study social sciences (29%), life or medical sciences (27%), or physical sciences (25%), with biology, engineering, international relations, economics, biochemistry, and molecular biology as the most popular intended concentrations. Realize that if you are a member of one of these pools, you are competing against even more people than say, if you were an applied mathematics major from Iowa or North Dakota.

This year’s applicant pool is the University’s most ethnically diverse, with 38 percent of applications submitted by students of color (African American, Latino, Native American or Asian).

These students are all important to the institution, and the college admissions office will consider more than just grades and test scores when admitting a class. A child from a war-torn African country with lower standardized test scores may be selected over other candidates because of the diverse perspective he brings to campus. A talented ice hockey goalie keeps alumni engaged and involved, helps rally student spirit which in turn makes students happy and all of these help the overall institutional success.

Harvard’s mid-50^th percentile for SAT scores is 1410-1590 (Critical Reading and Math) out of a possible 1600. While 25% of enrolled freshmen have scores below and above this average, there are also loads of applicants with scores within this range who are not admitted. The majority of these students are probably perfectly capable of doing the work at Harvard, but there simply is not enough space to admit every qualified applicant.

For every 100 spots, Harvard admits only six prospective freshmen(well, 5.6 really). Let’s say that upon initial review, 80 percent of applicants have standardized test scores and coursework rigorous enough to keep them in the running, yet 74 of them will get letters denying them admission. First, Harvard will look at the “buckets” that need students in them. Has the swim team filled all of its spots? Does the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature still have spots to fill? But when it comes to the more common majors, biology, international relations and the like, who does Harvard (et al) decide to take when they have a pool of applicants who are all academically qualified? Harvard then looks beyond grades and scores to see what else these students have to offer, and it’s here you realize the incredible talent and uniqueness of the students with whom you are competing for spots. These students have often been active politically on the national level. They have made a scientific discovery. They have started a business, played music professionally or started an international non-profit. They are Native Americans mentoring their fellow tribe members to go to college. They are the national or international presidents of youth groups (these are all true).

For students who fall within the statistical averages of the Ivy League, but who still don’t gain acceptance, you didn’t get denied because of something you did wrong or because of something you were missing. Instead, there was someone else who helped fill an institutional priority or who has done something so unique and so extraordinary that they were almost unrivaled.

Consider these students who did not receive a place at any of the Ivy League schools to which they applied. “J” is from a good suburban school district. She has taken numerous AP classes including 4 her senior year in high school. She has received 5’s on all of her AP exams. She is ranked first in her class and has test scores well within the averages at the Ivy’s. She is a two sport varsity athlete with substantial volunteer work and leadership. She got denied or waitlisted at every Ivy to which she applied.

“C” is also from a good suburban high school. He has taken the most rigorous classes that his school has to offer and has earned A’s in all of them. His standardized test scores are very strong. He is a varsity athlete and has started his own non-profit which has collected used sporting goods equipment for kids who cannot afford their own. He is involved in many clubs and holds several leadership positions. He applied to 3 Ivy League schools and did not receive an offer of admission from any of them.

What should you do with this information? Realize that the odds of getting into any of this country’s most selective colleges are quite remote. Try it, you don’t have a lot to lose, but be realistic. You should also know that none of the Ivy League schools give out academic merit scholarships. When every student is so well qualified, it becomes incredibly difficult who deserves merit money and who does not. As a result, the Ivies give out money ONLY based on financial need and NOT on merit. For some people, this may be a factor in your college search. The good news about the Ivies being so selective is that it makes that next tier of schools better. There are so many bright, capable, intellectually curious students who won’t be ivy bound that they enrich other institutions.

Go back to the beginning of the article.

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I believe there are several schools that are ideal for each candidate and it is what you make of your college experience. In order to give yourself the optimum number of choices for college, have several people that you revere, review your college applications. College consultants help students stay on track with their college applications and find colleges that match their interests and strengths.

Lone Star Ed Consulting offers essay and resume editing services, college selection assistance, and can provide rush services for a fee. Please download my registration form or email me at Lauren@lonestaredconsulting.com if you are interested in learning more about my educational consulting services.

Twitter: @lonestared Website: www.lonestaredconsulting.com

The information was provided by Lauren Kahn, CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting. If you would like more information about Lone Star Ed Consulting's college planning services, please e-mail Lauren Kahn or call her at 512-294-6608. You can also view LSEDC's brochure here.

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"Admission" - The Movie (The Harsh Truth)

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:18:00 +0000

Introduction by: Lone Star Ed Consulting , CEO Lauren Kahn, MA 512-294-6608

Lauren@lonestaredconsulting.com Follow Me @LoneStarEd

Lauren Kahn is an educational consultant located in Austin, TX and helps families find colleges and school placements for students throughout the country.

Every spring, high school seniors anxiously await letters of college admission that will affirm and encourage their potential. In the movie, "Admission", which takes place at Princeton University, admissions officer Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) is a gatekeeper evaluating thousands of applicants.
The movie touched me as a former admissions recruiter that spent nearly four travel seasons and umpteen days on the road traveling to find and collect the perfect class of students. Is there a formula to get in for every school? No, but are there the "shoulds" and "should not" things to put on resumes, recommendations, and the common application. There is the unwritten code. In addition, there are definitely protocols to follow for the alumni interview and cliche topics to avoid for admissions essays.

As an admissions officer, I was never allowed to divulge the absolute truth about how we evaluated students in admissions. As a college consultant, I can help you navigate the daunting and sometimes unfair process of applying and gaining acceptance to college.

I am now on the other side. I believe that there is not one perfect college match, but there are multiple possible places for a student to attend and thrive at. One of my biggest disappointment in the movie, is that the student of interest, Jeremiah Balakian (Nat Wolff), never considers or applies to another university besides Princeton. It was a Princeton or bust mentality and one I cannot endorse. I think the humor in admissions and the underlying relationship story of a mother and daughter make it still a grade "A-" movie choice.

Article by Nancy Greisemer, from the DC area.
If you blinked at just the right moment, you might have
missed Princeton Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye’s big screen debut in “Admission,”
a newly-released comedy starring Tina Fey.

Hitting local theaters the weekend before admissions
decisions are due to be sent to thousands of Ivy hopefuls, “Admission” pokes
fun at an admissions process that appears to benefit wealthy, connected or
otherwise “distinctive” students.

And the film makes admissions professionals look a little
self-centered, silly, and very disconnected from the students over whom they
hold great power.

Even the tour guide is insufferable, but very familiar if
you’ve ever had the experience of walking a campus with an undergrad who
applied to 21 colleges and got into all 21 after achieving perfect SAT scores
and founding several nonprofit organizations—as we did several years ago during
a tour of none other than Princeton University.

But Dean Rapelye’s appearance midway through the movie in a
scene with Tina Fey proves that even admissions professionals can take a joke
at their own expense.

According to insiders at Focus Features, the on-campus
footage shot at Princeton was left toward the end of production. With full cooperation from the university,
various campus locales such as Blair Arch, Whig Hall, Holder Court, and
Firestone plaza were captured on camera.

And as evident from the rhododendron in bloom, access to
campus facilities became feasible after school-year classes ended.

Along with Dean Rapelye, Dr. Shirley M. Tilghman,
soon-to-retire university president, and Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr., whose history with Princeton was told in the Academy Award winning film, “A Beautiful Mind,” also stopped by the set but stayed out of camera range.

Focus Features reports that scenes during which final admissions
decisions were hotly debated and voted on were shot on a soundstage—the real Princeton
committee room does not feature a trap door or so we are assured.

For admissions junkies, another cameo appearance worth
noting was the on-screen close-up of Admissions Matters, an outstanding
guidebook authored by Sally Springer, Jon Reider, and Marion Franck, who just
finished a third edition due out in coming weeks. A handful of other guides and
one poor bonsai tree completed the backdrop.

Based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, who graduated from
Dartmouth and was a part time reader for Princeton’s Office Admission during
the 2006 and 2007 seasons, “Admission” touches on a familiar range of human emotion
that surface during the college application process. And it’s good we can laugh about it.

“I did apply to Princeton, because it was a dream of my
mother’s that one day I would try to go there,” Tina Fey reveals to Focus
Features. “I was a good student, but I
wasn’t ‘Princeton material,’ as Wallace Shawn’s character [Shawn plays the dean]
would say…So I did not get into Princeton, but I went to a great school—the University of Virginia.”

While it may be a little scary if you’re waiting for a real
decision from Princeton, “Admission” is a funny film with a good message—more about
a parent’s love than college admissions.
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I believe there are several schools that are ideal for each candidate and it is what you make of your college experience. In order to give yourself the optimum number of choices for college, have several people that you revere, review your college applications. College consultants help students stay on track with their college applications and find colleges that match their interests and strengths.

Twitter: @lonestared Website: www.lonestaredconsulting.com

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TCU and SMU Add Early Decision to Application Options for Fall 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:02:00 +0000

Brought to you by: Lone Star Ed Consulting , CEO Lauren Kahn, MA 512-294-6608
Lauren@lonestaredconsulting.com Follow Me @LoneStarEd

Lauren Kahn is an educational consultant located in Austin, TX and helps families find colleges and school placements for students throughout the country.

TCU

It was bound to happen sooner or later. TCU has now added a binding early decision option and SMU has added a second early decision deadline. These universities want to know who is choosing them first and this binding option allows them to increase their confirmed yield rate for their incoming first year classes. Most likely, students will be somewhat rewarded for making that choice and will have an advantage in the admissions process if they apply early decision by the November 1st deadline.

Nancy Greisemer reports:

All too often colleges
fail to publicize or otherwise let counselors know when they’re moving
deadlines, changing requirements or otherwise making adjustments that have a huge
impact on applicants and those who advise them.

They simply change a few words on the webpage and expect the
world to notice.

But several Texas universities are letting everyone
know—well in advance—that they have some new policies for students applying
this fall. And here they are:

SMU and TCU add
Early Decision

Beginning fall of 2013, Southern Methodist University (SMU)
and Texas Christian University (TCU) will offer a binding Early Decision (ED)
option to their respective application processes. According to their joint press release, SMU
and TCU will also continue to offer an Early Action (EA) option, which will
remain non-binding. Both schools have
set November 1, 2013, as the deadline for all early admission applications—ED
as well as EA. SMU, however, will offer
students a second-round binding application option (ED II). This allows students who identify SMU as
their first choice later in the process to indicate their commitment to attend
SMU if offered admission.

SMU's list of deadlines for Fall 2014 (1st Year Students)

Decide which application deadline is right for you

SMU POOL

Early Decision I: November 1
Early Action: November 1
Early Decision II: January 15
Regular Decision: January 15

Texas A&M sets
New Application Deadline

The new deadline for students applying for admission for the
Fall 2014 semester and forward is December 1, 2013. This new admission deadline aligns itself
with the scholarship application deadline at A&M and coincides with that of
the University of Texas. Students can
apply for scholarships and admission online at www.applytexas.org. ApplyTexas opens August 1.

TCU superscores
the ACT

TCU joins a lengthening list of colleges and universities superscoring
the ACT (most colleges automatically superscore the SAT). To superscore the ACT, colleges recompute the
“composite” score by selecting the highest subscores from different test dates to
come up with a new higher composite or superscore. Since students are increasingly turning
to the ACT as their test of choice, and 20 percent of the states in the
nation require it for student assessments, more students have multiple test
results that could benefit from superscore policies.

(Lauren Kahn, educational consultant from Austin, TX, is particularly excited about the superscoring option, because students can really waiver in scores between sections and this gives them the best possible composite score).

ApplyTexas
announces New Essay Topics

Like the
Common Application (CA), ApplyTexas is changing essay topics for the
2013-14 application season.
Unfortunately, there’s little in the way of overlap with the five
prompts recently announced by the CA.
ApplyTexas essay choices will be:

Essay A:
Describe a setting in which you have collaborated or interacted with
people whose experiences and/or beliefs differ from yours. Address your
initial feelings, and how those feelings were or were not changed by this
experience.
Essay B:
Describe a circumstance, obstacle or conflict in your life, and the
skills and resources you used to resolve it. Did it change you? If
so, how?
Essay C:
Considering your lifetime goals, discuss how your current and future
academic and extra-curricular activities might help you achieve your goals.

This article was originally posted on the blog College Explorations by Nancy Greisemer

Twitter: @lonestared Website: www.lonestaredconsulting.com

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The Common Application has a New Look

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:21:00 +0000

Brought to you by: Lone Star Ed Consulting , CEO Lauren Kahn, MA 512-294-6608
Lauren@lonestaredconsulting.com Follow Me @LoneStarEd

Lauren Kahn is an educational consultant located in Austin, TX and helps families find colleges and school placements for students throughout the country.

As we enter the season of college acceptances from the regular decision pool, not far behind is the rush of juniors who realize it is time to concentrate on their upcoming college application process.

In Texas, we have the ApplyTexas process which most Texas residents complete in order to gain acceptance to Texas A&M, Texas State, and / or the University of Texas system, among others. In addition, we also have what most people refer to as the foundation application, the Common App. It is a generic application filled out online by students that more than 300 universities accept. Recommenders are also very familiar with it as well. Of course, there are the supplements that must be submitted in addition.

The Common Application has taken on many makeovers over the years, but this time it will actually be so simple that even those that are inept with technology can figure it out. Although the new updates won't take effect until August 1st, we can take a sneak peek now.

Nancy Greisemer, another educational consultant, has summarized and commented on some of the upcoming changes to the Common App.

In a series of advisories dubbed “First Look,” the Common Application today began the process of formally introducing the CA4—the next
generation of the Common App, set to launch on August 1, 2013.

After a two-year, $8 million development process, the new
Common App boasts of a more modern, simplified user interface offering many of
the features requested by member colleges, counselors, and applicants.

To accommodate these changes, application
operations, maintenance, and support will no longer be outsourced to a
third-party technology company. By July
2014, all technology and staff will be entirely housed within the Common
Application—a tremendous undertaking by any standard.

In the meantime, here is a sneak peek of some of the basic
changes CA4 will offer starting this August:

CA4 will be an online-only application. It will no longer be available in paper form
or as a downloadable document for mailing (counselors and teachers will still
have the option to submit on paper).
The Arts Supplement will be replaced by Slideroom.com for
colleges having an "exclusive" arrangement with the Common Application (no competing
applications)—a perk of membership. All
other members may “host” their own arts forms if needed.
The Athletic Supplement will be discontinued. Information about athletic participation will
be collected on the application and available to coaches if admissions offices
choose to forward it.
The process of providing “alternative” versions of
applications to individual colleges will be simplified. Students will be able to make unlimited edits
to the application with the exception of the essay. The essay will allow for three submitted
versions with corrections and updates permitted.
In CA4, college-specific questions will be collected in two
separate areas—the Member Page (an expanded and customized version of the
current Future Plans section) and the new Writing Supplement.
The Writing Supplement will collect short-answer or
essay-length responses to specific questions along with submissions such as
resumes, research papers, and graded assignments for colleges wishing to invite
them. Students will submit using either uploads or text-entry—depending
on the college’s preference. Note that the “extracurricular” short answer
question will be moved here as an option for colleges.
College-specific questions on the Member Page and Writing
Supplement will go online August 1, with the launch of the system each year—no
more delays on the part of colleges.
The required essay will offer 5 specific essay prompts and
will enforce 250- to 650-word boundaries.
In addition to the essay, the CA4 will offer two additional
writing opportunities—additional information for applicants wishing to report
circumstances or qualifications not reflected elsewhere and a separate required
explanations section based on responses to questions about discipline, criminal
history, etc.
Outside of the optional Writing Supplement, all written
documents will be text-entry only.
Students can compose their responses directly in the application or
cut-and-paste a response from another word processing program, and the CA4 will
allow for basic formatting (bold, italics, underline, and accented
characters).
The CA4 will introduce a new form for non-academic
evaluations that can be submitted by peers, coaches, clergy, instructors, or
others. Each member college will decide
whether they want them or not.

While many questions remain, the “First Look” memos resolve
a number of lingering questions about application basics. If colleges want them, uploads for resumes will be permitted. Counselors may tailor recommendations by submitting paper
forms, and the process for editing or changing the form has been simplified. Essays will allow for basic
formatting, and everything will go online at once on August 1.

How well the new software will work on Apple products
remains to be seen, but the emphasis on mobile/touchscreen devices is a good
sign. YES!!! We all know how much time high schoolers spend on their phones. Now, they can be doing something productive while on the phone besides Facebooking and texting.

In the meantime, the Common Application is working with
various membership organizations to provide training sessions and answer
counselor questions—all to ensure a smooth start on August 1.

I recommend all juniors begin writing their essays for their personal statements in July. The prompts for this next application season 2013-2014 have been announced. Say good bye to the "topic of your choice" essay and hello to more structure and thought provoking questions.

The new Common Application has released five new essay prompts for the 2013-14 admissions season, Inside Higher Ed reports.

Here are the new essay prompts:

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

One of the keys to a successul college admissions process is time management. College consultants help students stay on track with their college applications and find colleges that match their interests and strengths.

Twitter: @lonestared Website: www.lonestaredconsulting.com

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Coursework Matters: The Impact on your SAT Scores

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:38:00 +0000

Brought to you by: Lone Star Ed Consulting , CEO Lauren Kahn, MA 512-294-6608

Lauren Kahn is an educational consultant located in Austin, TX and helps families find colleges and school placements for students throughout the country.

From: College Board.com

If anyone doubts the validity of the importance of high school performance for long term academic success, here is the proof on this topic below. It has also been confirmed there is a strong correlation between completion of a core high school curriculum with higher SAT scores. Although the findings from College Board’s 2012 SAT Report on College and Career Readiness are not surprising, it is important to share this news to all. Do not dismiss the importance of completing the recommended high school plan, in favor of more time for athletics or electives.

As an educational consultant, I want to emphasize the importance of taking college prep classes early on in high school and the continuation of a rigorous curriculum all the way through senior year. You will be better prepared for standardized tests required for the college admissions process and will be a better student in college. Study skills can be taught, but need to be acquired early on to become habitual. AP classes and dual credit classes are a great idea for high school students that are college bound ready.

By: Kathryn Juric Special Contributor from the Austin-Statesman

When it comes to education policy in the United States today, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: coursework matters.As states move to implement the Common Core State Standards, the positive impact core course work and advanced study can have on college readiness is already evident in the SAT performance of recent high school graduates throughout Texas and the nation.

According to The College Board’s 2012 SAT Report on College and Career Readiness, which was released this month, students who completed a core curriculum in high school did significantly better on the SAT than those who did not. A core curriculum is defined as four or more years of English, and at least three or more years of math, science, and social science or history.

Central to the report is the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark, which measures the academic preparedness of groups of students for higher education and beyond. Achieving the benchmark score of 1550 on the SAT is linked to a 65 percent likelihood of earning a B-minus average or higher during their freshman year of college, which in turn is linked to a strong likelihood of staying in – and graduating from – college within six years.

This year, 43 percent of all SAT takers achieved the benchmark, suggesting that more needs to be done to improve college readiness, even among college-bound students. The numbers are different however for those enrolled in a core curriculum. Forty-nine percent of SAT takers who completed a core curriculum achieved the benchmark, compared to only 30 percent of those who did not – nearly a 20-point improvement.

A similar result can be seen in the mean scores of Texas’s SAT takers, where the 76 percent who completed a core curriculum earned an average SAT score of 1,494 – a staggering 138 points higher than the average SAT score of Texas students who did not complete core course work.
Beyond underscoring the need for all college-bound students to complete core course work, the report also illustrates the positive impact that access to honors/Advanced Placement courses can have on college readiness. For example, honors/AP math students in Texas scored 212 points higher, on average, on the SAT.

But the only way to track what percentage of college-bound students is meeting the benchmark is to ensure they take the SAT in the first place, which is why The College Board has made a continuing effort to increase SAT participation, particularly among underserved minorities and low-income students. We have also intensified our efforts to expand access to and success in AP courses across the state.

In Texas, 28 percent of SAT-takers in the class of 2012 took the test for free through the SAT Fee-Waiver Service. Nationwide, the College Board dedicated more than $44 million to SAT fee-waivers and related services this past school year.

Our collective effort to democratize access to higher education is paying dividends. More than 1.66 million students from the class of 2012 took the SAT, 45 percent of whom were minority students and 36 percent of whom are the first in their families to attend college. In Texas, 59 percent of the state’s nearly 173,000 SAT takers were minority students and 44 percent reported being first-generation college-goers.

Standardized educational assessments may not be exciting or glamorous, but when they are valid and well-designed, they can tell us a lot about the state of education – how well we are preparing our children for postsecondary success and what we can do better.

As the new SAT report shows, increasing core curriculum completion rates and expanding access to advanced course work to qualified students of all backgrounds is the key to increasing college readiness and completion – not just in Texas, but across the nation.

This article was published originally by the Austin Statesman.

Lone Star Ed Consulting offers essay and resume editing services and can provide rush services for a fee.

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Housing Crisis Influences College Choices

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 18:03:00 +0000

Housing Wealth Impacts Where You Go to College By: Lisa Scherzer

Brought to you by: Lone Star Ed Consulting , CEO Lauren Kahn, MA 512-294-6608

Lauren Kahn is an educational consultant located in Austin, TX and helps families find colleges and school placements for students throughout the country.

image from: directbanc.com

At the height of the housing boom in the early 2000s, it was natural for homeowners to feel wealthier than they were. Inflated property values translated into a so-called wealth effect: Confident the value of their homes would climb ever higher and bolstered by the cash obtained by easy refinancing, owners spent freely.

A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research looks into what role this housing wealth — a household's overall finances — played in homeowners' decision-making when it comes to sending their children to college.

The study -- "The Effect of Housing Wealth on College Choice: Evidence From the Housing Boom" and co-authored by Professors Michael Lovenheim and C. Lockwood Reynolds -- found homeowners that experienced a windfall from the housing boom were more likely to send their children to college, to send them to four-year public institutions instead of two-year institutions and to send them to state "flagship" institutions — which are better resourced, have higher faculty-student ratios and SAT scores and are also more expensive to attend -- rather than nonflagship public institutions.

More specifically, the study found that a $10,000 increase in a family's housing wealth in the four years leading up to a student becoming college-age increases the likelihood he or she attends a flagship public university by 1.8%. It also lowers the probability that a student will attend a community college by 1.6%.

If your family owned a home in the Miami area in 2004, for instance, you experienced a huge increase in housing wealth, compared with, say, Jacksonville, Fla., where the increase was less notable. "In some sense, think about it as a lottery: Kids born in the right place and the right time — their families have seen a massive increase in wealth in the early 2000s," says Lovenheim, assistant professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell.

So if your parents owned a home in an area that saw big jumps in property values during the four years before you turned 18, chances are you attended a flagship public institution. For example, you were more likely to go to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, than to Western Michigan University (no offense, WMU). Another key finding: An increase in housing wealth meant students were more likely to apply to flagship schools. (Private institutions were included in the analysis, but Lovenheim and Reynolds found that housing wealth had no effect on whether students go to a private versus a public university.)

Lovenheim says the effects were most pronounced among lower- and middle-income families making less than $75,000 a year. These families are too well off for the generous federal Pell grants, which are based on financial need. (The authors used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which includes family background and demographic information of children ages 12 through 18, and home-price data from the Conventional Mortgage Housing Price Index, or CMHPI.)

So the natural question is, does the housing wealth-college choice effect work the other way around? Would the housing bust that followed the boom — and which some have declared over — have the converse effect on college choice and graduation rates?

Lovenheim says it's difficult to make a direct correlation between the housing bust and college choice, but in the paper says the evidence suggests home price declines — starting in 2006-07 — will have an impact on the quality of schools students attend, particularly lower-income students. And, he says, "to the extent that these changes in attendance decisions translate into declines in graduation and labor market outcomes, the housing bust may have long-run effects on the supply of high-skilled labor and on income inequality."

Lauren Kahn's commentary: As a college admissions recruiter, as well as a private consultant, it is clear to me that the housing impact is greater for the lower middle class, in situations where large amounts of low interest loans in financial aid are difficult to obtain. It is important to work with organizations that know FAFSA to increase your financial aid options. Also, students should be looking into scholarship opportunities during their junior year and not wait until senior year. Juniors and seniors should stay active in extra curricular activities for four years and not drop out their senior year. Consistency, leadership, high grades, a rigorous curriculum, high class rank, and strong test scores are the components needed to grasp those scholarships out there. Do not let your parent's financial struggles take away your opportunity to go to your dream college.

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College Admissions: SAT Scores, Cheating, and Ethics

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:29:00 +0000

Written by: Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant / CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC
512-294-6608 Lonestaredconsulting@gmail.com

SAT Answer Sheet
From: longIslandPress.com

SAT and ACT scores are crucial in the college admissions game and pretty much everyone in high school and in the higher education industry is aware of this. However, committing identity fraud to achieve high scores is not the way to win an admit letter. As an educational consultant with sound ethics, I am a proponent of finding schools that match student's abilities with their performance. I want to report on this matter, because I think the pressure to provide high test scores in the college admissions process is mounting, due to admissions stakes increasing and public school grade inflation. The consequences to identity fraud and cheating are real and sometimes can impact you long-term. Think before you act.

CBS Allison Stewart Reports on the January 1st 60 Minutes Show "The Perfect Score: Cheating on the SAT"

For Sam Eshaghoff, getting a high score on the SAT college admissions exam was more than a point of pride. It was a lucrative business. As Alison Stewart reports, other students paid Eshaghoff up to $2,500 each to take their tests using easily manufactured fake IDs. His scam came crashing down in fall 2011, when he was arrested for criminal impersonation and fraud. Eshaghoff has since accepted a plea deal, but the case still raises major questions about the integrity of the test itself.

This past September, a 19-year-old college student named Sam Eshaghoff made national news when he was arrested and charged with fraud and criminal impersonation. His crime was taking the SAT and ACT tests for other people. He was so good at it other students paid him thousands of dollars to take the exams for them.

Until he was arrested in September, Sam Eshaghoff seemed like the perfect kid. At New York's Great Neck North High School, he was a top student, vice president of the business club and a varsity athlete, but what may have been his greatest talent was the one that got him in trouble: his ability to ace standardized tests, which was how he began a double life as a con man.

The district attorney who charged him says Sam Eshaghoff was able to take the SATs at least 16 times which has raised questions about the integrity and security surrounding one of the most important tests millions of high school students ever take.

Sam Eshaghoff says paid test takers were an open secret among students at Great Neck North. He became the best known, but he says he was not the first.

Eshaghoff says in the interview, "I had heard of it happening successfully in my own high school. ... Well, it all started with some kid approaching me. He's like, 'Yo, you're good on your SATs and I'm not. And you know this is possible so how much is it gonna take?'

Excerpt from the Transcript on CBS News:

Here's how he did it: it was as simple as making a high school ID; one of six forms of identification accepted at SAT testing centers.

Eshaghoff: A school ID is what? Like what is that? It's like, it's some colors with literally a name and picture on it. So what I would do is, I took the template from my high school ID, pasted my picture on top of it, and whatever person's name whose test I was taking, I would have their name and date of birth on it. And it was really as easy as that.

Stewart: No social security number?

Eshaghoff: No.

Stewart: No driver's license, no passport?

Eshaghoff: Name and date of birth.

Stewart: On a little piece of plastic?

Eshaghoff: On a little piece of plastic that got laminated once.

Fake ID in hand, and with a bad case of nerves, Eshaghoff began his lucrative career. He did this successfully 16 times, and got many students into schools they otherwise would not have been accepted to given their grades, class rank, and extra-curricular involvement. This is a travesty to what the SAT is supposed to do, which is even the playing field for all high schoolers to create a standardized evaluation system.

According to the collegeboard.org website, these are the acceptable forms of ID acceptable to take the SAT:

Driver's license
State-issued ID
School identification card
Valid passport
Student ID Form (that your school can prepare)
Talent Identification Program ID/Authorization to Test Form (grades 7 and 8 only); photo not required

Kurt Landgraf is president of the Educational Testing Service, which administers the test for the College Board and is responsible for SAT test security. Landgraf says roughly 11 million dollars is spent a year on identifying and preventing cheating on the SAT and other college board tests. However, the security measures are not strong enough and this leads to temptation to cheat the system.

As we embark on another season of students taking the SAT and ACT, think twice before engaging in illegal activity. If test taking is not your cup of tea, enroll in a test prep course early to improve your test taking skills and hire an educational consultant to find schools that do not emphasize the importance of test scores or are test-optional schools.

I believe there are several schools that are ideal for each candidate and it is what you make of your college experience. In order to give yourself the optimum number of choices for college, have several people that you revere, review your college applications.

Lone Star Ed Consulting offers essay and resume editing services and can provide rush services for a fee.

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College Payoff: Education, Occupation, and Lifetime Earnings

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 05:36:00 +0000

Brought to you by Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant, from Lone Star Ed Consulting

Originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education

When it Comes to Earnings, Higher Education Isn't the Whole Story

By Beckie Supiano

How much money people make has a lot to do with how educated they are, but sometimes less-educated people earn more.

This spring, Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce injected some nuance into the debate over what a college degree is worth when it released a report showing how what people study in college affects their earnings. That report, based on the center's analysis of a trove of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, compared workers whose highest degree was a bachelor's. Now the center is following up with a new report that works to untangle the relationship between earnings and education more broadly.

The new report, "The College Payoff: Education, Occupation, Lifetime Earnings," released Thursday, is also based on data from the bureau's American Community Survey. In this case, the researchers calculated a lifetime-earnings figure for full-time, full-year workers with various levels of education, from less than high school to doctoral and professional degrees.

Unsurprisingly, they found that median lifetime earnings rise with education level: The typical worker with less than a high-school diploma earns $973,000 over a career, in 2009 dollars, while a worker with a professional degree (mainly in law or medicine) earns $3.6-million. But that is not the whole story. "There was a time when the differences by education level were really much more powerful," says Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the center and lead author of the report. Education level still matters. But what really intrigued the researchers was the diversity of experiences underneath that general pattern.

For example, while the median lifetime earnings of bachelor's degree holders (about $2.3-million) are higher than those of associate-degree holders (about $1.7-million), 28.2 percent of those whose highest degree is an associate earn as much as or more than does the typical bachelor's holder (see interactive chart).

Video is from ABC news.com

That diversity is largely the result of differences in earnings among occupations. Within each occupation, like health professionals or sales and office workers, the more education a person has, the more that person is likely to earn. But some occupations pay better than others, so less-educated workers in them can earn more than more-educated workers in a different line of work. That finding echoes the center's report on college majors, since college major is closely tied to occupation.

The overlap between earnings at different educational levels varies quite a bit. Only 1.3 percent of workers with less than a high-school degree earn as much as or more than does the typical worker with a professional degree, while 41.9 percent of those with some college but no degree earn the same as or more than what the typical associate-degree holder makes.

"What you take away from this and the majors report, in both cases, is the devil is really in the detail," Mr. Carnevale says. A program of study should let prospective students know what fields its graduates work in, and how much they make, he says. An academic program "ought to be able to tell people where this takes you, other than where it takes you intellectually."

That is not to say that the purpose of college is "to make foot-soldiers for capitalism," Mr. Carnevale says. Still, he says, education has little purpose if it does not lead to a job, since in our society, "if you can't get a job, you're not really a citizen."

Like the study on college majors, this new research also reveals earnings gaps for women and minorities. The report refers to gender and race as "wild cards that matter more than education or occupation in determining earnings."

Women earn less money than men over a lifetime at every level of education. At the median, a man with some college but no degree earns nearly as much as a woman with a bachelor's degree, and a woman must hold a Ph.D. or professional degree to surpass what a man makes with a bachelor's.
White workers earn more than African-American and Latino workers at every level of education. Asian workers, in contrast, make more money than white workers at the three graduate levels: master's, Ph.D., and professional degrees.

The report also includes lists of the 10 most common occupations for workers with each level of education and their median lifetime earnings, which help illuminate the occupation-based variation within education levels.

As Michael Murray, a reporter from the ABC Global News noted in May of 2010:

That English major might seem more fun than math or engineering, but it won't pay off nearly as well in the long run, according to a Georgetown University study released today. Researchers compared the average earnings for various fields over a 40-year career and found a 300 percent difference between the average salary of the highest-earning petroleum engineers and the lowest-earning high school guidance counselors.
"Going to college and getting a bachelor's degree is important, but the major that you take is more important than that," Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, told ABC News. "If what they are interested in is money, they should go directly to engineering, computer science, the hard sciences or business."

The study found that earning a technical degree by age 35 meant one was more likely to become a manager, and that's when earnings jump.

As an educational consultant, we can assist students in choosing a career path that is both satisfying and has great earning potential. Contact one today!

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Early Decision / Early Action Results are In .... Deferment, Acceptance, and Rejection

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 21:10:00 +0000

Commentary by Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant / CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC
512-294-6608 Lonestaredconsulting@gmail.com

By Caralee Adams from Ed Week written on December 19th, 2010

"Early Decision Up, Yet Still Small Part of Admissions Pie"

Lunch rooms, hallways and Facebook are abuzz with news of who got in where as colleges begin to send out early decision and early action notices this month. Perhaps I'm hearing about it more because I have a high school student or is this the new pathway into college?

First, to clarify the terms:

Early decision is when a student applies to his first-choice school and, if accepted, the decision is binding.

Early action is similar to early decision, but the student doesn't have to commit immediately. She can still apply to other colleges and wait to make a decision until spring.

(Lauren Kahn says that if you have any hesitancy about your first choice, go with early action and do not sign up for the early decision option. The elite universities do share information in secretive ways about their accepted students. If a student that has been accepted early decision backs out for non-financial driven reasons, they could be penalized in the regular decision pool with other universities.)

About 18 percent of colleges offer early decision and 24 percent have early action plans, according to the 2010 State of Admissions Report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). These plans are more common at private colleges.

(Harvard, Princeton, and University of Virginia eliminated the early decision option from their application process in 2007, announcing it in the fall of 2006. A commenter from the Huffington Post writes, "Students need several backup schools in order to evaluate their financial aid packages across a wide range of schools. Yes, Harvard, Amherst, and a couple other schools have widely hailed scholarship programs for poor students. It is middle income students - family income between $60,000 - $100,000 that are facing the highest stress and uncertainty.”

For students who have their hearts set on a school, it can boost their chance of getting in over the regular admission process. Colleges with early decision policies reported a higher acceptance rate for their early decision applicants as compared to all applicants (70 percent versus 55 percent), and the gap between the acceptance rates has grown in recent years.

Students are catching on. For the third year in a row, about half (47 percent) of colleges reported increases in the number of early decision applications and nearly three-quarters (74 percent) had an increase in early action applications.

(For University of Pennsylvania, applying early decision is actively encouraged amongst Penn Alumni as a strategy to boost their chances for admission) See below these startling statitistics.

Penn’s approximate admit rates over the last five years:

The admit rate for legacy applicants in the early decision pool is between 38 - 42%, while the non-legacy admit rate for students applying early decision is between 28-42%.

Here is what may shock you: The regular admit rate for students that are legacy and non-legacy is between 13-15%. For the full-cycle the admit rate is 32% - 34% for students that are legacy and 16% - 18% for non-legacy. See the complete memo from Penn Alumni here.

While legacies are admitted at a slightly higher rate, particularly during the Early Decision round, the Alumni Office is very sensitive to the fact that nearly two-thirds of legacy applicants are not admitted to Penn each year. (If you would like to review the most current statistics for University of Pennsylvania, we encourage you to visit the Admissions Incoming Class Profile: www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile.) Colleges are finding it's (EA and ED) a helpful tool, as well to gauge who is most interested in their school. About 65 percent of colleges report admitting more students under these plans in 2009, and 43 percent in 2008 also reported an increase.

Still, early decision applicants represent only a small portion of the total applicant pool at colleges that have these policies. Only 7 percent of all applications for fall 2009 admission to early decision colleges were received through early decision, the NACAC report showed.

So, it's somewhat of a gutsy move to go early decision—a little less so for early action. Both scenarios require students to be focused and get their act together early in their senior year. Those lucky ones who now know where they are headed next fall can enjoy the holidays—hopefully with no second thoughts about their commitment—while many of their classmates will spend winter break filling out more applications and agonizing in the coming months about their future.

Well, here are the EA/ ED results in thus far compiled from IvyEyesEditing.com:

MIT: On Thursday, the first 772 students were invited to join the Class of 2015. MIT received 6,405 early action applicants, and those accepted have until May to commit. (Admissions Web site)

Yale: On Wednesday officials announced they had invited 761 students to join the Class of 2015. The school had 5,257 early applicants, denied admission to 1,497 and deferred 2,952 students to the regular decision round. The early action program is non-binding. (Yale Daily News article)

Johns Hopkins: On Wednesday morning, admission officials mailed acceptance letters to 518 students who were selected from a pool of 1,330 early-decision applications. Then, starting at 6 p.m. they hit send on an e-mail alert to all of the applicants. Those accepted are expected to pull all other applications and attend Hopkins. (Hopkins Insider live blog)

Georgetown: Officials announced Wednesday they had accepted 1,120 students from a pool of 6,654 early applicants. The early-action program is non-binding, and students have until May 1 to commit. (Press release)

Duke: On Tuesday evening, officials e-mailed 645 students and welcomed them to the Class of 2015. More than 2,200 students applied to the early decision program this year, and those accepted are expected to enroll. (Duke Chronicle article)

Dartmouth: This week officials announced they had accepted 444 students from a pool of 1,759 early-decision applicants. The deadline for admitted students to declare their intent to enroll is later this month. (Press release)

University of Pennsylvania: Early applicants sat at their computers Friday afternoon waiting to check the admissions website at 3 p.m. Out of a pool of 4,571, the university accepted about 1,195 students. The offer is binding and students are only allowed to apply early to one school. (Daily Penn article)

Stanford: Friday afternoon officials e-mailed more than 5,900 early applicants — 754 were accepted, and about 500 were deferred. Students have until May 1 to accept. (Stanford Daily article)

University of Notre Dame: They accepted 1940 students out of the 5300 applications they received. They accepted approximately 36% of those that applied EA for the graduating class of 2011. They had an increase of 21.4% in applications for early action.

Chart Below from NY Time Choice Blog:

More from the NY Times Choice Blog:

New York University said it had received 3,125 applications by the Nov. 1 deadline for its binding, early decision program. While that is about as many as last year at this time, the figures are not comparable; this year, as opposed to last, the university is enabling students to apply during a second round of early decision, with a deadline of Jan. 1.

Among colleges with nonbinding early-action programs — in which those accepted can wait until spring to make their decisions — early applications to the University of Chicago are up 18.5 percent; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about 15 percent; Georgetown, nearly 9 percent; and Boston College, 7 percent.

Lauren Kahn notes: Don't panic if you applied early action or early decision, and received a deferrment or rejection from one of these elite schools above. There is time to regroup and apply to several other schools that could be a great college match for you over this winter break. (January 1st and January 15th are the most common deadlines for regular decision applications.) I do not believe in the soulmate concept for college. I believe there are several schools that are ideal for each candidate and it is what you make of your college experience. In order to give yourself the optimum number of choices for college, have several people that you revere, review your college applications.

Lone Star Ed Consulting offers essay and resume editing services and can provide rush services for a fee.

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The Myths and Truths on the Legacy Factor in College Admissions

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 05:29:00 +0000

10 Myths About Legacy Preferences in College Admissions (some are half-truths in my opinion)

Brought to you by Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant, from Lone Star Ed Consulting
Originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education

By Richard D. Kahlenberg

Legacy preferences, which provide a leg up in college admissions to applicants who are the offspring of alumni, are employed at almost three-quarters of selective research universities and virtually all elite liberal-arts colleges. Yet legacy preferences have received relatively little public attention, especially when compared with race-based affirmative-action programs, which have given rise to hundreds of books and law-review articles, numerous court decisions, and several state initiatives to ban the practice.
The secrecy surrounding legacy preferences has perpetuated a number of myths, including the following:
1. Legacy preferences are just a "tie breaker" in close calls. MYTH

While some colleges and universities try to play down the impact of legacy preferences, calling them "tie breakers," research from Princeton's Thomas Espenshade suggests that their weight is significant, on the order of adding 160 SAT points to a candidate's record (on a scale of 400-1600). Likewise, William Bowen, of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and colleagues found that, within a given SAT-score range, being a legacy increased one's chances of admission to a selective institution by 19.7 percentage points. That is to say, a given student whose academic record gave her a 40-percent chance of admissions would have nearly a 60-percent chance if she were a legacy.

The children of alumni generally make up 10 to 25 percent of the student body at selective institutions. The proportion varies little from year to year, suggesting "an informal quota system," says the former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden. By contrast, at the California Institute of Technology, which does not use legacy preferences, only 1.5 percent of students are children of alumni.

2. Legacy preferences have an honorable history of fostering loyalty at America's great institutions of higher learning. MYTH

In fact, as Peter Schmidt, of The Chronicle, notes, legacies originated following World War I as a reaction to an influx of immigrant students, particularly Jews, into America's selective colleges. As Jews often outcompeted traditional constituencies on standard meritocratic criteria, universities adopted Jewish quotas. When explicit quotas became hard to defend, the universities began to use more-indirect means to limit Jewish enrollment, including considerations of "character," geographic diversity, and legacy status.

3. Legacy preferences are a necessary evil to support the financial vitality of colleges and universities—including the ability to provide scholarships for low-income and working-class students. HALF TRUTH

While universities claim that legacy preferences are necessary to improve fund raising, there is little empirical evidence to support the contention. In fact, several colleges and universities that do not employ legacy preferences nevertheless do well financially. As Golden notes, Caltech raised $71-million in alumni donations in 2008, almost as much as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($77-million), even though MIT, which does provide legacy preferences, is five times the size and has many more alumni to tap. Berea College, in Kentucky, favors low-income students, not alumni, yet has a larger endowment than Middlebury, Oberlin, Vassar, and Bowdoin. And Cooper Union, in New York City, does not provide legacy preference but has an endowment larger than that of Bucknell, Haverford, and Davidson.

Moreover, a study included in our new book, Affirmative Action for the Rich, finds no evidence that alumni preferences increase giving. Chad Coffman, of Winnemac Consulting, and his co-authors examined alumni giving from 1998 to 2007 at the top 100 national universities (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report) to test the relationship between giving and the existence of alumni preferences in admissions. They found that institutions with preferences for children of alumni did have higher annual giving per alumnus ($317 versus $201), but that the advantage resulted because the alumni in colleges with alumni preferences tended to be wealthier. Controlling for the wealth of alumni, they found "no evidence that legacy-preference policies themselves exert an influence on giving behavior." After controls, alumni of legacy-granting institutions gave only $15.39 more per year, on average, but even that slight advantage was uncertain from a statistical perspective. Coffman and his colleagues conclude: "After inclusion of appropriate controls, including wealth, there is no statistically significant evidence of a causal relationship between legacy-preference policies and total alumni giving at top universities."

The researchers also examined giving at seven institutions that dropped legacy preferences during the period of the study. They found "no short-term measurable reduction in alumni giving as a result of abolishing legacy preferences." For example, after Texas A&M eliminated the use of legacy preferences, in 2004, donations took a small hit, but then they increased substantially from 2005 to 2007.

Nor can legacy preferences be said to be necessary for colleges to maintain high standards of excellence. It is intriguing to note that, among the top 10 universities in the world in 2008, according to the widely cited Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, are four (Caltech, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge) that do not employ legacy preferences.

4. After a generation of affirmative action, legacy preferences are finally beginning to help families of color. Pulling the rug out now would hurt minority students.

In fact, legacy preferences continue to disproportionately hurt students of color. John Brittain, a former chief counsel at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, and the attorney Eric Bloom note that underrepresented minorities make up 12.5 percent of the applicant pool at selective colleges and universities but only 6.7 percent of the legacy-applicant pool. At Texas A&M, 321 of the legacy admits in 2002 were white, while only three were black and 25 Hispanic. At Harvard, only 7.6 percent of legacy admits in 2002 were underrepresented minorities, compared with 17.8 percent of all students. At the University of Virginia, 91 percent of early-decision legacy admits in 2002 were white, 1.6 percent black, and 0.5 percent Hispanic.
Moreover, this disparate impact is likely to extend far into the future. In 2008, African-Americans and Latinos made up more than 30 percent of the traditional college-aged population but little more than 10 percent of the enrollees at the U.S. News's top 50 national universities.

5. An attack on legacy preferences could indirectly hurt affirmative-action policies by suggesting that "merit" is the only permissible basis for admissions. MYTH

The elimination of legacy preferences would not threaten the future of affirmative action, because the justifications are entirely different. Affirmative-action policies to date have survived strict scrutiny because they enhance educational diversity. (For some members of the Supreme Court, though not a majority, affirmative action also has been justified as a remedy for centuries of brutal discrimination.) Legacy preferences, by contrast, have no such justification.

Because they disproportionately benefit whites, legacy preferences reduce, rather than enhance, racial and ethnic diversity in higher education. And rather than being a remedy for discrimination, they were born of discrimination. Affirmative action engenders enormous controversy because it pits two great principles against each other—the antidiscrimination principle, which says we should not classify people by ancestry, and the anti-subordination principle, which says we must make efforts to stamp out illegitimate hierarchies. Legacy preferences, by contrast, advance neither principle: They explicitly classify individuals by bloodline and do so in a way that compounds existing hierarchy.

6. Legacy preferences may be unfair, but they are not illegal. Unlike discrimination based on race, which is forbidden under the 14th Amendment, it is perfectly legal to discriminate based on legacy status, as the courts have held.

Remarkably, legacy preferences have been litigated only once in federal court, by an applicant to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill named Jane Cheryl Rosenstock, in the 1970s. A New York resident whose application was rejected, she claimed that her constitutional rights were violated by a variety of preferences, including those for in-state applicants, minorities, low-income students, athletes, and legacies. Rosenstock was not a particularly compelling candidate—her combined SAT score was about 850 on a 1600-point scale, substantially lower than most out-of-state applicants—and she was also a weak litigant. She never argued that, because legacy preferences are hereditary, they presented a "suspect" classification that should be judged by the "strict scrutiny" standard under the amendment's equal-protection clause.

The district-court judge in the case, Rosenstock v. Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina, held that it was rational to believe that alumni preferences translate into additional revenue to universities, although absolutely no evidence was provided for that contention. The decision was never appealed. As Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit notes, the 1976 opinion upholding legacy preferences in Rosenstock addressed the issue "in a scant five sentences" and is "neither binding nor persuasive to future courts."

A generation later, two new legal theories are available to challenge legacy preferences. First, Carlton Larson, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, lays out the case that legacy preferences at public universities violate a little-litigated constitutional provision that "no state shall ... grant any Title of Nobility." Examining the early history of the country, Larson makes a compelling case that this prohibition should not be interpreted narrowly as simply prohibiting the naming of individuals as dukes or earls, but more broadly, to prohibit "government-sponsored hereditary privileges"—including legacy preferences at public universities. Reviewing debates in the Revolutionary era, he concludes: "Legacy preferences at exclusive public universities were precisely the type of hereditary privilege that the Revolutionary generation sought to destroy forever." The founders, Larson writes, would have resisted "with every fiber of their being" the idea of state-supported-university admissions based even in part on ancestry.

Second, the attorneys Steve Shadowen and Sozi Tulante argue that legacy preferences are a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause. While the amendment was aimed primarily at stamping out discrimination against black Americans, it also extends more broadly to what Justice Potter Stewart called "preference based on lineage." Individuals are to be judged on their own merits, not by what their parents do, which is why the courts have applied heightened scrutiny to laws that punish children born out of wedlock, or whose parents came to this country illegally.

Shadowen and Tulante argue that legacy preferences at private universities, too, are illegal, under the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Unlike Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination only on the basis of "race, color, or national origin," the 1866 law prohibits discrimination on the basis of both "race" and "ancestry."

7. Legacy preferences—like affirmative action, geographic preferences, and athletics preferences—are protected by academic freedom, especially at private universities and colleges.

It is true that the courts have recognized that colleges and universities should be given leeway in admissions in order to promote academic freedom. But that freedom is not unlimited, even at private institutions. As Peter Schmidt notes, the Supreme Court held, in Runyon v. McCrary (1976), that private schools could not engage in racial discrimination in admissions. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), it struck down the use of racial quotas. And in the 2003 Gratz v. Bollinger decision, the court invalidated a policy that awarded bonus points to minority students. Ancestry discrimination—providing a leg up in admissions based not on merit but on whether a student's parents or grandparents attended a particular university or college—likewise falls outside the protected zone of academic freedom.

8. Legacy preferences have been around a long time and are unlikely to ever go away, because powerful political forces support them.

In fact, legacy preferences are not only legally vulnerable; they are politically vulnerable as well. Polls find that Americans oppose legacy preferences by 75 percent to 23 percent, and in the past decade or so, 16 leading institutions have abandoned them. As affirmative-action programs come under increasing attack, legacy preferences become even harder to justify politically.

Moreover, as a matter of tax law, legacy preferences are fundamentally unstable. Assuming it is true that they entice alumni to provide larger donations than they otherwise would—a claim that has not been empirically proven—then IRS regulations raise questions about whether those donations should be tax deductible. If universities and colleges are conferring a monetary benefit in exchange for donations, then the arrangement, writes the journalist Peter Sacks, "shatters the first principle underlying the charitable deduction, that donations to nonprofit organizations not 'enrich the giver.'" The IRS regulations place universities in a legal Catch-22: Either donations are not linked to legacy preferences, in which case the fundamental rationale for ancestry discrimination is flawed; or giving is linked to legacy preferences, in which case donations should not be tax deductible.

9. Legacy preferences don't keep nonlegacy applicants out of college entirely. They just reduce the chances of going to a particular selective college, so the stakes are low.

True, legacy preferences don't bar students from attending college at all. But the benefits of attending a selective institution are substantial. For one thing, wealthy selective colleges tend to spend a great deal more on students' education. Research finds that the least-selective colleges spend about $12,000 per student annually, compared with $92,000 per student at the most-selective ones. In addition, wealthy selective institutions provide much greater subsidies for families. At the wealthiest 10 percent of institutions, students pay, on average, just 20 cents in fees for every dollar the college spends on them, while at the poorest 10 percent of institutions, students pay 78 cents for every dollar spent on them. Furthermore, selective colleges are better than less-selective institutions at graduating equally qualified students. And future earnings are, on average, 45 percent higher for students who graduated from more-selective institutions than for those from less-selective ones, and the difference in earnings ends up being widest among low-income students. Finally, according to research by the political scientist Thomas Dye, 54 percent of America's corporate leaders and 42 percent of governmental leaders are graduates of just 12 institutions. For all those reasons, legacy preferences matter.
10. Everyone does it.

Legacies are just an inherent reality in higher education throughout the world.
In fact, as Daniel Golden writes, legacy preferences are "virtually unknown in the rest of the world"; they are "an almost exclusively American custom." The irony, of course, is that while legacies are uniquely American, they are also deeply un-American, as Michael Lind, of the New America Foundation, has argued.
Thomas Jefferson famously sought to promote in America a "natural aristocracy" based on "virtue and talent," rather than an "artificial aristocracy" based on wealth. "By reserving places on campus for members of the pseudo-aristocracy of 'wealth and birth,'" Lind writes, "legacy preferences introduce an aristocratic snake into the democratic republican Garden of Eden."

For the most part, American higher education has sought to democratize, opening its doors to women, to people of color, and to the financially needy. Legacy preferences are an outlier in that trend, a relic that has no place in American society. In a fundamental sense, this nation's first two great wars—the Revolution and the Civil War—were fought to defeat different forms of aristocracy. That this remnant of ancestry-based discrimination still survives—in American higher education, of all places—is truly breathtaking.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is the editor of Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions, being published this month by the Century Foundation Press.

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National Merit Finalist Contest: PSAT Cut Off Scores are in for 2011 Class

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0000

Written by Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant / CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC
512-294-6608 Lonestaredconsulting@gmail.com

Updated on January 2011
Before we delve into the "overachiever" scores for the 2009 PSAT (Class of 2011), I want to put things in perspective. If you are a national merit semi finalist for the 2010/2011 school year, you performed exceptionally well on this standardized test and scored in the top 1% of your state. Bravo to you. To see the next steps in the process to cementing your place as a National Merit Finalist and possible scholarship recipient, click here.

According to the College Board, the average Selection Index for students in eleventh grade is about a 141. Note: Only students in eleventh grade are eligible to enter NMSC scholarship programs. This score is equivalent to about a 1000 on the CR and Math combined for the SAT. The PSAT Selection Index, which is used to determine eligibility in National Merit Scholarship Corporation programs (NMSC), is the sum of the three scores in each test section (CR + M + W). The Selection Index ranges from 60 to 240.

Therefore, your chances of getting into Stanford or Harvard are not completely shot if you did not score above a 210 on the PSAT. It is a preliminary SAT and is meant to be a practice test to see how you function on a standardized test in a pressure cooker environment. SAT Prep or ACT Prep can greatly improve your scores. It is possible to game the tests to an extent. Contact me directly if you would like advisement on test prep companies in Texas.

College consultant, Nancy Greisemer says, "Each year, a magic wand gets waived over the total universe of PSAT scores, and a list of merit scholarship finalists appears. These finalists are invited to compete for a host of benefits ranging from scholarship money to automatic college admission. They’re lauded in the press and labeled as among the most distinguished high school students in the nation. What did they do to earn all this fame and fortune—take one test on one day. And if luck would have it, they happened to live in a state where their PSAT/NMSQT Selection Index—a combination of math, critical reading, and writing scores—happened to be above the cut-off."

The methodology for determining who gets the merit scholar nod is loosely described on the NMSQT website. To begin the process, high school students must take the PSAT in October of their junior year. In the spring after the test, 50,000 high scorers are contacted for program recognition as “commended” or “semifinalist” based on a selectivity index generated by the combined PSAT scores. 20011’s class national cutoff for recognition was 201.

High scorers are then notified of their final National Merit status in September of senior year. Students who received a score below the semifinalist cutoff specific to their state will be “commended." Even if you move states after you took the PSAT, you are subject to the score selection index cutoff for the state you were enrolled at for high school during the administering of the PSAT. Those above the cutoff—about 16,000 students—are invited to continue in the competition as semifinalists. Approximately 90% of the semifinalists eventually earn the finalist distinction.

Each state has a different cutoff and these cutoffs vary by year. According to College Simplified, here are the PSAT state cutoffs for the graduating class of 2011 (PSAT administered Fall 2009):

Qualifying Scores for the Class of 2011 National Merit Semifinalists:

Alabama 210
Alaska 214
Arizona 209
Arkansas 203 *Correction from what was previously listed*
California 219
Colorado 212 *Correction from what was previously listed*
Connecticut 219
Delaware 215
District of Columbia 223
Florida 210
Georgia 215
Hawaii 215
Idaho 208
Illinois 214
Indiana 212
Iowa 209
Kansas 211
Kentucky 208
Louisiana 210
Maine 213
Maryland 220
Massachusetts 223
Michigan 209
Minnesota 213 *Correction from what was previously listed*
Mississippi 205
Missouri 210
Montana 208
Nebraska 210
Nevada 208
New Hampshire 214
New Jersey 221
New Mexico 206
New York 217 *Correction from what was previously listed*
North Carolina 214
North Dakota 202
Ohio 212
Oklahoma 206
Oregon 215
Pennsylvania 216
Rhode Island 211
South Carolina 208
South Dakota 205
Tennessee 212
Texas 215
Utah 203
Vermont 212
Virginia 218
Washington 218
West Virginia 202
Wisconsin 209
Wyoming 202
Commended 201
International 223
New England Boarding Schools 223

Qualifying Scores for the Class of 2010 National Merit Semifinalists:

Below is a chart listing selectivity indexes for 2010 (PSAT Administered 2008):

Rank	State	2010	Rank	State	2010
1	DC	221	25	Indiana	211
1	Maryland	221	25	Kansas	211
1	Massachusetts	221	25	Missouri	211
1	New Jersey	221	25	Ohio	211
5	Delaware	219	25	South Carolina	211
6	California	218	32	Arizona	210
6	Connecticut	218	33	Idaho	209
6	New York	218	33	Iowa	209
6	Virginia	218	33	Kentucky	209
10	Rhode Island	217	33	Michigan	209
10	Washington	217	37	Alabama	208
12	Texas	216	37	New Mexico	208
13	Colorado	215	39	Louisiana	207
13	Minnesota	215	39	Nebraska	207
15	Georgia	214	39	Oklahoma	207
15	Hawaii	214	39	Wisconsin	207
15	Illinois	214	43	Utah	206
15	North Carolina	214	44	South Dakota	205
15	Pennsylvania	214	45	Montana	204
20	Maine	213	46	Arkansas	203
20	New Hampshire	213	46	Mississippi	203
20	Oregon	213	46	West Virginia	203
20	Tennessee	213	49	Nevada	202
20	Vermont	213	49	North Dakota	202
25	Alaska	211	50	Wyoming	201
25	Florida	211

* State Chart created by: Nancy Greisemer of College Explorations

Because scholarship money, prestige, and college admissions are at stake, the NMQSC is a huge deal and knowing the cutoff for your state can give you some guidance as to whether or not you qualify as a National Merit Semi-Finalist. These scores above will tell you if you are close to the cut off score for your state. Although you will not the precise cutoff score for national merit for the 2011 graduating class until September of 2010.

Imagine living in California and scoring a 215—an outstanding score that would earn semifinalist status in most of the country, and definitely in all of your neighboring states, but because of your address, you will only be commended. Do you think they should nationalize the scores or leave them as determined by state index? Congratulations Louisianna on increasing the quality of your student's test taking skills. See below.

Local PSAT/NMSQT cutoffs:

Year Students will Graduate	2011 (Actual)	2010	2009	2008
Texas	215	216	215	215
Oklahoma	206	207	208	207
Louisiana	210	207	208	206

As of August 31, 2010, the below national merit semi-finalist cut off scores were posted on Talk Confidential for 2011 NMSQT. (Not all states have been revealed.)

* PSAT State Scores were verified from the College Planning Simplified for the 2010 and 2011 PSAT national merit scores.

FREE TIP from LONE STAR ED CONSULTING:
If you are a boarding school student, there are separate boarding school region cutoffs for the PSAT. According to a primary source at the NMSC, the cutoff scores have not been determined yet by the National Merit Scholarship office. Stay tuned for more information.

Related Blogs:
PSAT
SAT

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Women in College Exceed Men ... The Gap is Widening

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:12:00 +0000

Written by Educational Consultant, Lauren Kahn, M.A., CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting
Commentary from Nancy Greisemer of College Explorations and Mark Perry from University of Michigan (Flint)

When I graduated from Emory University in the late '90s, there was nearly an equal ratio of 1:1, women to men in my undergraduate class. Today, 52% are female and 48% are male. This may not seem like a significant gap, but let me break it down for you in numbers. In a freshman class of 1300, there will be 52 more women than men, which means it will be even harder for a woman to get a date on campus, much less find a nice gentleman to help her with her heavy groceries. All kidding aside, whenever there is a significant gender discrepancy in any direction, it affects the college climate.

Women continue to account for a disproportionate share of the enrollments at postsecondary institutions.
This trend has become an increasing problem and will soon be impossible to regulate in admissions standards amongst the genders. According to research by the US Department of Education. it is likely to become an even more dominant presence on campuses over the coming decade.

The numbers, collected and published annually by the department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), indicate that by 2019 women will account for 59 percent of total undergraduate enrollment and 61 percent of total “postbaccalaureate” enrollment at colleges and universities throughout the country.

Between 1993 and 2007, the percentage of males enrolled in higher education dropped from 45 percent to 43 percent. And evidently, over the next ten years, the percent of males is expected to drop by an additional two points.

Why is this happening? In part, because there exists a gap between sexes in high school graduation rates. Fewer males than females are taking and passing college preparatory courses, and fewer are graduating from high school. In 2006, approximately 10.3% males and 8.3% females dropped out of high school, which is a double digit decrease from the percentage of drop outs from the 1960's. (infoplease.com)

An economist from the Flint campus of University of Michigan, Mark J. Perry, has begun to explore this issue of inequality of gender representation on the college campus. He states, "The only degree category where men are currently slightly overrepresented (50.6%) is for 'First-Professional Degrees,' which includes M.D., D.D.S., and law degrees. The Department of Education estimates that by 2014-2015 there will be more women than men earning those degrees, and by 2018-2019 women will earn 51% of those degrees (see chart above). There are hundreds, if not thousands, of University and College Women's Centers across the country. A Google search of "College Women's Centers" finds almost 6,000 links on the Web. A Google search of 'College Men's Centers' finds only a few hundred links on the Internet and asks the question: Did you mean: 'College Women's Centers'?" Perhaps, we need to refocus our recruitment energy on the male gender for post-secondary education.

As an educator in the public schools, I have firsthand seen the lack of motivation exhibited from many of my low-income male students at the high school level. In contrast, I have seen a real sense of ambition and drive for success from many of my female students. Have we forgotten to nurture the male student in the classroom and adequately teach in ways that interest him as well as his female classmates?

And what does this gender gap mean? College consultant, Nancy Greisemer says, "Well for some, it means it’s going to get harder to get a date for Saturday night or to recruit new fraternity brothers for the local chapter of Phi Kappa Psi. But it’s also going to mean that at some colleges, the standards for admission of women may get even higher particularly at schools determined to keep the balance between sexes even."

Late last year, the US Commission on Civil Rights announced an investigation of DC area colleges to determine whether admissions offices might already be discriminating against women. Nineteen colleges and universities were selected for review. Although findings have yet to be published and the investigation continues, the latest enrollment projections from NCES suggest the possibility of an even larger problem on the horizon, as the percent of women in the applicant pool steadily grows.

In 2008, women accounted for 57 percent of the overall undergraduate population. According to College Navigator—a search engine maintained by NCES—most DC area college enrollments reflect the demographic bias toward female undergraduates. In Texas, the gender gap can be seen more prevalently at private universities, but is still evident even at the largest public universities. Below is the percentage of undergraduate women enrolled at a mix of universities throughout the United States.

American University: 62%
Austin College: 55%
Catholic University: 54%
Christopher Newport University: 55%
College of William & Mary: 55%
George Mason University: 53%
George Washington University: 56%
Georgetown University: 54%
Johns Hopkins University: 50%
Loyola University of Maryland: 58%
Texas Christian University: 59%
University of Mary Washington: 66%
University of Maryland: 48%
University of Pennsylvania: 51%
University of Richmond: 53%
University of Texas - Austin: 52%
University of Texas - SA: 51%
University of Virginia: 56%
Virginia Commonwealth University: 57%

Note that the percent of women currently enrolled at any college or university can be very different from the percent who applied or who were actually admitted. For more information on individual admissions and enrollment patterns, go directly to the College Navigator website.

How do you think admissions should handle this increasing gender gap problem? Should they give males the advantage in the admissions process or do you see this as unfair discrimination?

The information was provided by educational consultant, Lauren Kahn, CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting. If you would like more information about Lone Star Ed Consulting's college planning services, please e-mail Lauren Kahn or call her at 512-294-6608. You can also view LSEDC's brochure here or purchase LSEDC's services on the blogsite on the right hand side.

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The Graduation Gap in Texas Universities

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:01:00 +0000

Reprinted from The Texas Tribune and brought to you by Lauren Kahn M.A., lead college consultant from Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC 512-294-6608

The Graduation Gap in Texas Universities

Written by Reeve Hamilton
May 11, 2010 |

Picture of Texas State University Business School by Lauren Kahn

For years, Texas universities have focused on getting more students, particularly low-income students, onto their campuses. The hard part, it turns out, is getting them to leave — with degrees.
Of the 32 Texas state universities tracked by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, only five schools have self-reported graduation rates above 50 percent.

The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have the highest graduation rates: Both graduate 78 percent of their students in six or fewer years, but that's still a step behind national peers like the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan, which graduate 90 percent and 88 percent, respectively.

At the bottom of the Texas list is Texas Southern University, which graduates just 12 percent of students in six years, followed by the University of Houston-Downtown and the University of Texas at Brownsville, each at 16 percent.

The Higher Education Coordinating Board tried to tackle the issue in late April, approving new formula-financing recommendations from Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes. Included is a seemingly small change that he hopes will go a long way to improving success rates: Paredes wants to change the “census date,” on which funding is based, from the 12th day of classes to the final day of the semester — ensuring, he says, that schools get paid only for successful students. But others, including state Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, the vice chairman of the House Public Education Committee, believe that change would succeed only in starving colleges targeting low-income students of much-needed revenue, creating a perverse incentive for schools to avoid admitting harder-to-educate students.
University of Houston - Downtown
pictured above.

Paredes and Hochberg and other policymakers agree that graduation rates must improve to justify investments in higher education, of which students themselves are bearing an ever-increasing share amid tightening state budgets. “If you look at Texas Higher Education over the past 20 years, it’s very clear that the emphasis has been providing more and more access, particularly to low-income students,” Paredes says. “We have made tremendous gains in access. We haven’t made commensurate gains in terms of students actually graduating.

“The point of his financing proposal, he says, “is to create incentives for institutions to place emphasis on more than simply enrollment. It’s not just who you enroll. It’s who you keep.”
Rewarding admissions, not achievement.

Bottom 5: Six-Year Grad Rate	2007
Texas Southern University	12%
University of Houston-Downtown	16%
The University of Texas at Brownsville	16%
Sul Ross State University	19%
The University of Texas at El Paso	29%

Hochberg — who ultimately may have more control than Paredes over financing changes — says he’s already considered and rejected that argument.
“I disagree with it,” he says. “I didn’t do it in the last legislative session. I had the chance to push it forward. I did not.”
Colleges can easily predict graduation rates based on student demographic data, Hochberg says. So such a change merely rewards universities with tougher admissions standards — thereby excluding students more likely to drop out.
“If you just say, ‘We’re going to pay for completed courses,’ then what you’ve done is just given a big boost to A&M and UT-Austin,” he says. “You would expect UT-Brownsville to have a lower graduation rate than UT-Austin, but you wouldn’t expect it to be 10 points below similar institutions in other states.”
Hochberg hasn’t yet figured out an alternative to Paredes' proposal. “I’m trying to learn the answer to that right now,” he says. “I’m in the process of setting up meetings with university presidents. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading what other institutions have done, what other states have done.” He says it’s “absolutely” his intent to have a game plan ready for next session.

Top 5: Six-Year Grad Rate	2007
Texas A&M University	78%
The University of Texas at Austin	78%
Texas Tech University	56%
The University of Texas at Dallas	56%
Texas State University	55%

Sharing the load
In his recent financing recommendations, Paredes also proposed a “comprehensive shared responsibility model,” hoping all stakeholders in the success of college students — the state, institutions of higher education, the public education system, families — are collaboratively pulling their weight.
“We are working with K-12 to increase numbers that graduate from high school ready to do college-level work,” he said. “We also want the state to recognize what its responsibility is.”
Both Hochberg and state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, advocate bolstering college advising, noting with dismay that students are too often encouraged to lighten their course loads. “They arrive with a mindset of receiving a four-year degree, and almost immediately they develop different mindset: that they have six years to get that same degree,” Zaffirini says.
Parents and students should realize that getting the degree in less time can save them money, she says, and the state can reinforce that message with initiatives like Texas’ B-On-Time program. Established by the Legislature in 2003, it’s essentially a no-interest loan that gets forgiven if a student graduates in four years with a “B” average. But the program has suffered from lack of state financing, she says.

In his formula financing recommendations for the next biennium, Paredes only suggests an increase to account for enrollment growth. “A lot of people in higher education would argue that the status quo is underfunded,” he acknowledges, “but we know it’s going to be a tough budget situation, so we’re just asking to maintain the status quo.”
But even the status quo will cost more than $700 million additional dollars — a number that Hochberg calls “a big bite.”
Zaffirini believes higher education financing should focus on the long-term economic benefits to the state rather than only on the stress on the current budget cycle. By increasing state investments, she says, “we are increasing the educated students’ earning capacity and their potential for generating tax revenue.” Her fellow legislators, she contends, do not all see it the same way.

Closing the gap
In 2000, Texas launched Closing the Gaps by 2015, a strategic plan to bring the state to national parity on graduation rates, and other measures of higher education success, in 15 years' time. A study by the Perryman Group, a economic research firm based in Waco, found that meeting those goals would result in increases of $489 billion in total spending, $194 billion in gross state product and $122 billion in personal income — as well as 1 million new jobs by 2030.

Though progress has been made, not all targets have been met thus far. The coordinating board recently approved an Accelerated Plan for Closing the Gaps by 2015, an update to the original that emphasizes the need to focus on the higher ed participation of Hispanic and African-American students, particularly males. Paredes stops short of saying he’s confident the state can meet those goals, though “it’s doable and I’m hopeful,” he says. “But we have to get certain things to fall into place.”

From Lone Star Ed Consulting ... What are your thoughts regarding the Graduation Gap in Texas Universities? What do you propose we do to ensure that other universities, besides the top 5 universities in Texas, remain prosperous and continue to graduate deserving candidates? Is the recession going to merely increase this issue and widen the graduation gap for low-income families?

College News from Texas will delve further into a related issue, the increasing Gender Gap in Post-Secondary Education. By 2019, it is estimated by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that women will account for 59 percent of total undergraduate enrollment and 61 percent of total “postbaccalaureate” enrollment at colleges and universities throughout the country.

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Post April 1st ... The Countdown To Making Your Final College Choice

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:49:00 +0000

Written by Educational Consultant, Lauren Kahn, M.A., CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting

It is now post April 1st and you still have not made your final decision on where to attend college next year. Perhaps, you got offered the wait list from your first choice school, but a great scholarship opportunity from your "safety" choice. Maybe, you have decided you would like to defer going to college for a year. What to do? No need to fret just yet.

Please find below some helpful guidelines and blogs on how to make this life altering decision more palatable.

You’re on the Waiting List. Now What?

By JACQUES STEINBERG

When some of the nation’s most selective colleges announced their decisions last week, thousands of applicants found themselves neither accepted nor rejected. Like passengers bumped from an overbooked flight — as one commenter on The Choice put it this weekend — they were instructed to sit tight in a crowded, virtual lounge, and wait to see if an opening presented itself over the next few weeks. Officials at Stanford and Yale, for example, told me they had each offered nearly a thousand applicants spots on the waiting list. At Duke, the figure was more than 3,000.Read more

Here is some admissions data from some of the most selective public and private colleges and universities. It will be updated automatically. (It is from The Choice Blog from the NY Times)

From the Hill Country News .... By Christine Bolalos

It can make a high school senior shout excitedly at the top of his lungs or maybe cry in disbelief and disappointment. It's the dreaded college decision letter with the power to change the course of a teenager's life. For Brett Ferdinand, an Advanced Placement and wrestling student at Cedar Park High School, applying to college has been nerve-wracking, especially since he forgot to send his standardized test scores to what should have been his “safe school.”

“Earlier this (March), I received my first and only college decision letter (at the time). It was from UT Austin, informing me that since my complete application had not been received by the deadline, I could not be admitted into the fall semester,” he wrote on his blog which is part of The New York Times' special college admissions and financial aid blog section “The Choice.” “As soon as I realized this omission, I had those scores sent, but it was too late.”

Comments from Lauren Kahn, CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting:

The College Board says to do some soul-searching to figure out which of your colleges would provide the best fit for you and I could not agree more. My number one goal is to match students with college that fit their ability and interests.

Do not wait until you receive a confirmation or a letter stating that a school is missing your transcript. Be pro-active and check your completion application status online no more than one week after submission of all items.

Send your final application at least one week before the impending school deadline. The top schools do not make exceptions for delayed test scores or transcripts. Mishaps do happen and it is your job to stay on top of it.

If you have been denied by all of your school choices or simply can not afford your only remaining college option, perhaps it is time to consider a GAP Year option or attending community college for a year. Contact LSEC to discuss options and schedule an appointment. 512-294-6608.

Although you are certain you like the schools you were accepted to, it is now to weigh all of your choices in consideration of all of these factors:

academics, internship options/ career placement, student life, proximity to home, possible student debt that you and your parents will accumulate in four years, alumni connections, weather, and parent's input.

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March Madness Impact on College Admissions

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:36:00 +0000

Written by Educational Consultant, Lauren Kahn, M.A., CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting

It is "March Madness" in NCAA College basketball and this year has been captivating in terms of the number of bracket busters, buzzer beater games, and Cinderella teams in the Sweet 16. Unfortunately, the Texas Longhorns did not come out on top after their 1 point loss to Wakeforest in round one.

So, how does this relate to college admissions? Through history from the past 30 years, college basketball teams that make the cut for the Sweet 16 may boost the number of students applying to their schools by as much as 3 percent next year, while the winner of the NCAA basketball tournament, often called "March Madness," may see a 7 percent to 8 percent jump in applications, according to a Virginia Tech researcher.

March Madness creates heightened emotions amongst college and high school students across the country. Let me take a brief moment to educate the virgin to "March Madness."
Primarily held in March, this is a tournament where the top 65 division 1 basketball teams compete against each other, single elimination style and there are no consolation games for the NCAA Basketball Championship title. The single-elimination format produces opportunities for Cinderella teams to advance despite playing higher seeded teams and it is broken up into four regions. Despite the numerous instances of early-round Tournament upsets, including four instances of a #15 seed defeating a #2 seed, no #1 seed has ever lost in the first round to a #16 seed. The 2010 "BIG DANCE" did not produce an upset of that magnitude either. However, we have many surprise "no name" basketball teams in this year's Sweet 16.

How will this year's Sweet 16 appearance impact St. Mary's or Cornell's admission statistics? Cornell already receives approximately 34K undergraduate college applications every year for less than 6600 spots in their freshman class, producing about a 19% acceptance rate.* Will they move up in the rankings next year due to an increase in alumni donations and selectivity? Until this year's Big Red victory against basketball powerhouse Wisconsin, an ivy league school had not made an appearance in the Sweet 16 since Penn in 1979. The results will probably not truly be revealed until the completion of the 2010 - 2011 college application season.

Time tells all. I do think a Sweet 16 victory for Cornell will convert to higher ticket sales for next year's basketball season and greater alumni dollars devoted to their basketball program. Although, Cornell's win over Wisconsin completed the demise of my already debilitated bracket, I could not be happier about the Cinderella story.

Jaren Pope, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has co-authored a paper to be published in Southern Economic Journal that finds a link between college sports success and college admissions around the country. "We looked at how high-profile sports success influences where students choose to apply for college," Pope said. "Anecdotally, college administrators have known for some time that basketball and football success translates into increased applications. What we have done is to move a step beyond previous research and anecdotal evidence by quantifying the average effect across all NCAA Division I schools using a credible empirical methodology," he said. (Virginia Tech and Newswise)

I surmise that a small "no name" academic and sports school like St. Mary's or Northern Iowa, a medium sized public school from the mid-west, will gain larger increases in their applications than an Ivy league school. The Northern Iowa Panthers have appeared in the NCAA tournament five other times, but have never made it past the second round until now. University of Northern Iowa is located in Cedar Falls, Iowa and has an undergraduate population of approximately 13K, with a 85% acceptance rate. Perhaps, they will have the opportunity to be more selective next year.

St. Mary's College is a small liberal arts school, affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, located in Moraga, California, a small suburban community about 10 miles east of Oakland, with roughly 3800 students. Their success in this year's tournament is not a complete shock to basketball predictors. The Saint Mary's Gaels have Omar Samhan as their center; a 6'11 giant, weighing in at 260 pounds. He scored 32 points in the March 20th game against Villanova. Although, I doubt he will be returning to St. Mary's next year. I think the NBA might have their eye on him.

Pope combined data from the Peterson's college guide, which records information about the incoming freshman classes of 330 NCAA Division I colleges and universities, with information on how well these schools did in football and basketball each year from 1983 to 2002. According to the study, the 64 schools that make it into the NCAA basketball championship tournament have a 1 percent increase in student applications the next year, schools in the Sweet 16 have a 3 percent increase, the Final Four have a 4 percent to 5 percent increase, and the championship winner has a 7 percent to 8 percent increase.

The title of Pope's paper, which he co-authored with his brother Devin Pope, an assistant professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is "The Impact of College Sports Success on the Quantity and Quality of Student Applications."

In addition, colleges and universities with football teams in the top 20 have a 2.5 percent gain in the number of student applications the next year while teams in the top 10 have a 3 percent gain. Schools that win a football championship see a 7 percent to 8 percent jump in applications. For each school, the spike in the number of applications due to basketball or football success continues for several years before returning to normal.

"These numbers tend to be larger for private schools than for public schools," Pope said. "For example, private schools in the Sweet 16 see a 4 percent to 5 percent increase in applications compared to a 2 percent to 3 percent increase for public schools."

George Mason University has increased their enrollment by over 9% since their Final Four appearance in the NCAA Basketball Tournament in 2006. During the 2006-2007 application season, they received a 20% application increase from the previous application cycle. Mason receives over 13,000 applications each year for its incoming freshmen class of approximately 2,300 students each year. They have become somewhat more selective over the past few years and their strong athletic program has been one of the factors noted for their application increase.

* - Cornell statistics from Cornell Admission's office for entering class of 2009.
* - Picture of Cornell / Wisconsin game from NYDaily.com

The information was provided by educational consultant, Lauren Kahn, CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting. If you would like more information about Lone Star Ed Consulting's college planning services, please e-mail Lauren Kahn or call her at 512-294-6608. You can also view LSEDC's brochure here or purchase LSEDC's services on the blogsite on the right hand side.

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Campus Visit Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:46:00 +0000

Provided by Lauren Kahn M.A., Educational Consultant / CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC

Maximizing the College Campus Visit

Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors ....

What college campuses will you visit this spring break?

College Campus Visit Guide

Top 10 Ways to Test Drive a College, with Some Added Features

Brown University - Spring 2007

by: Lauren Kahn, M.A.

NOTE: If you are staying in town this spring break and live in the Austin metro area, you may want to consider attending Lone Star Ed Consulting's Essay & Resume Writing Workshop. March 15th - March 19th, 2010. For details, click here.

Lone Star Ed Consulting will provide you the first six tips in this blog. Contact us directly if you would like to receive the remaining college campus visit tips or call us at 512-294-6608 to schedule a college planning consultation. We serve families throughout Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC.

1. Timing of Your Visit - Lauren highly recommends visiting a college campus during the academic school year. Try and visit a campus while school is in full swing to get an accurate picture of everyday college life. A prime time to visit is during your high school spring break. Colleges often have spring breaks at different times. Check which schools do not overlap with your break and start your college visit planning.

College Tool Kit reports, "Although summer might be the most convenient time to make such excursions, it is the worst time to experience a college; most smaller schools are not in session, so students and classes are absent. Dorm rooms are empty and devoid of all personal touches, making it difficult to envision oneself there. Bulletin boards, usually so revealing of the cultural and social opportunities of the college, are bare. The campus grounds, on the other hand, look neater and cleaner than they will look again the entire year."

2. Learn about the college before you visit. Read materials from the college and check out their web site. If you are visiting more than one on a particular day, refresh your memory about that school just before you arrive. Be sure to spend at least one-half day at each college.

3. Evaluate the environment of the campus. Is the campus too big or too small for you? Do you like the nearby town or do you feel isolated? Consider how you would get around campus, particularly in the rain or snow.

4. Visit the admissions office and participate in the information session. Ask questions that help you clarify the academic program at the school and the type of student who is most comfortable and successful there. You may choose to have a formal interview with an admissions staff member. Seniors, bring a resume which includes your grades, activities, and test scores (Although, no one will probably ask you for it). Dress nicely, but not out of character. Make sure to sign in when you check in. Some schools prioritize their admission decisions based on interest level. If you take time out of your hectic high school schedule to visit their campus, they appreciate this.

5. Take the student-led tour of campus. Take advantage of the opportunity to ask questions about campus life from a peer. Recognize, however, that tour guides are not necessarily typical of all students since they formally represent the school.

6. Check out the dorms. Find out about the dorm options available, such as all-Freshman or co-ed. Arrange in advance to spend the night in a dorm, if possible. Picture yourself living in a dorm. Are you comfortable with where they are located on campus, such as the proximity to classes or the campus center?

If you want the rest of Lone Star Ed Consulting's tips on how to test drive a college campus visit, click here.

Twenty Questions to Ask during a College Visit (Plus Nine Annoying Questions
Your Parents Should Ask)

The object of the game Twenty Questions is to get enough information to be able to correctly identify an object. These twenty questions can help you figure out whether a school is the perfect college for you. Ask them during your college tour or admissions interview.

Five Questions To Ask the Admissions Counselor

1. What services are available to help students make a successful transition to college life?
2. Are most freshman classes taught by professors or by graduate students? How many students are likely to be in my first-year and introductory classes?
3. What kind of financial aid do most students receive? What scholarship, work-study, and grant programs am I eligible for?
4. What makes this college different from [a similar or competing college]?
5. Do most of the college’s students get good jobs after graduation? Do many apply to graduate school? Do they have a high acceptance rate?

Five Questions to Ask Your Tour Guide or Other Students

1. What do students do on the weekends? Do most students go home, or are there lots of activities to participate in?
2. Do you feel that your professors really care about you and the other students? Can you get help when you need it?
3. Where else did you look when you were applying to colleges, and what made you choose this one?
4. Is there anything you don’t like about this school? What do you like best?
5. What are the top three issues that concern students here?

Five Questions to Ask a Professor

1. What is a typical workload of homework, papers, and tests in your classes?
2. How accessible are you to students? Are you only available during office hours, or do you interact with students outside of class?
3. What are the main differences I can expect between a high school and a college class?
4. Do students have the opportunity to assist with faculty research? Are students encouraged to pursue their own research?
5. What do you like most about teaching here? Why did you decide to teach at this school?

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Will I fit in with the students I’ve seen and met during my visit?
2. Will the academic programs challenge me and prepare me for a career?
3. Are there clubs, activities, and organizations that interest me?
4. Did I feel welcomed by the staff and students? Can I picture myself living here for four or more years?
5. Is the mission of the school in line with my value system and personal goals?

Nine Bothersome, but Necessary Questions Your Parents Should Ask

1. What is college campus safety like? Can students request escorts to their dorms late at night? Are there emergency call boxes throughout campus? What kind of training do campus security personnel receive?
2. What security measures are in place in the dormitories? How is access to the dorms controlled?
3. Can students have overnight guests? Are there rules about visitation by members of the opposite sex? Are there any single-sex dorms? How about substance-free dorms? (Notre Dame does not allow co-mingling of the opposite sex in their dorms after mid-night on weeknights and after 2AM on the weekends. These housing rules are strictly enforced.)
4. What academic and emotional support systems are available to students? Do you have a counseling center? Is there tutoring help available?
5. What medical services are available on campus? Where is the nearest hospital? How are students billed for medical services? Is student health insurance available?
6. Is there much partying on campus? Are there certain activities that are grounds for expulsion? Will I be informed if my child does something illegal?
7. How are roommates chosen? What is the process for handling conflicts or incompatibility between roommates?
8. What is the return rate for second-year students? What are some of the reasons students leave or transfer?
9. What is a typical financial aid package like? Do most students receive financial aid? Can you help us with the financial paperwork? Under what conditions might my child lose financial aid?

Compiled by EduGuide.com and edited by Lauren Kahn from Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC.

Related Blogs:
Campus Visits
Test Scores

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Blizzard Delays Impact the ACT Too

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:55:00 +0000

Reprinted by Educational Consultant, Lauren Kahn, CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting 512-294-6608

Written by Nancy Greisemer of College Explorations

Among the casualties of the first blizzard to hit the DC area were the many ACT tests scheduled for last Saturday. Most—but not all—test locations rescheduled and posted new dates on the ACT website. They range from as early as next Saturday, February 13 to as late as February 27.

If you were supposed to take the February 6 ACT, at one of the centers closed for snow, you should be notified of the rescheduled date and given complete instructions. This process is taking time as many of the centers have been continuously closed since the original storm.

The ACT advises that in the event you cannot attend the rescheduled February date for your test center, you have two options. First, you may go to another test center on the day of the test and ask for a test center change. If they have space available, you may be able to make the switch.

For example, if you were scheduled to take the February 6 ACT at Oakton High School and have a conflict with the February 27th rescheduled date, you may go to Robinson Secondary on February 13th or Herndon High School on February 20th and ask for a test center change. If space is available, you will be seated for the exam. Because of the huge number of postponements for the February test, ACT will not process changes in advance. You simply have to show up and take your chances.

If this isn’t going to work for you, you may reschedule for either the April 10th or June 12th test date by calling ACT Registration at 319.337.1270 (M-F, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central Time). Identify yourself as having been registered to test at one of the centers that closed on February 6 and indicate you want to make a date change to a future test.

You may reschedule for any available site on any regularly scheduled national Saturday test date at no additional charge—as long as you make the change via phone by the registration deadline (March 5 for April and May 7 for June). Although you may make the same change online using your Student Web Account, you will be charged a test date change fee. Don’t ask me. I don’t make the rules.

For more information and specific reschedule dates, check the ACT website or call ACT registration at 319.337.1270. Original ACT test dates for 2009 -2010 posted here below.

Related Blogs:
ACT
PSAT
SAT

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PSAT: National Merit Scores Are In - Did you make the cut?

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:00:00 +0000

Written by Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant / CEO of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC
512-294-6608 Lonestaredconsulting@gmail.com

Updated on August 31, 2010
Before we delve into the "overachiever" scores for the 2008 PSAT (Class of 2010), I want to put things in perspective. If you are a national merit semi finalist for the 2009/2010 school year, you performed exceptionally well on this standardized test and scored in the top 1% of your state. Bravo to you. To see the next steps in the process to cementing your place as a National Merit Finalist and possible scholarship recipient, click here.

According to the College Board, the average Selection Index for students in eleventh grade is about a 141. Note: Only students in eleventh grade are eligible to enter NMSC scholarship programs. This score is equivalent to about a 1000 on the CR and Math combined for the SAT. The PSAT Selection Index, which is used to determine eligibility in National Merit Scholarship Corporation programs (NMSC), is the sum of the three scores in each test section (CR + M + W). The Selection Index ranges from 60 to 240.

The methodology for determining who gets the merit scholar nod is loosely described on the NMSQT website. To begin the process, high school students must take the PSAT in October of their junior year. In the spring after the test, 50,000 high scorers are contacted for program recognition as “commended” or “semifinalist” based on a selectivity index generated by the combined PSAT scores. Last year’s national cutoff for recognition was 201.

Each state has a different cutoff and these cutoffs vary by year. Below is a chart listing selectivity indexes for 2010 (PSAT Administered 2008):

Rank	State	2010	Rank	State	2010
1	DC	221	25	Indiana	211
1	Maryland	221	25	Kansas	211
1	Massachusetts	221	25	Missouri	211
1	New Jersey	221	25	Ohio	211
5	Delaware	219	25	South Carolina	211
6	California	218	32	Arizona	210
6	Connecticut	218	33	Idaho	209
6	New York	218	33	Iowa	209
6	Virginia	218	33	Kentucky	209
10	Rhode Island	217	33	Michigan	209
10	Washington	217	37	Alabama	208
12	Texas	216	37	New Mexico	208
13	Colorado	215	39	Louisiana	207
13	Minnesota	215	39	Nebraska	207
15	Georgia	214	39	Oklahoma	207
15	Hawaii	214	39	Wisconsin	207
15	Illinois	214	43	Utah	206
15	North Carolina	214	44	South Dakota	205
15	Pennsylvania	214	45	Montana	204
20	Maine	213	46	Arkansas	203
20	New Hampshire	213	46	Mississippi	203
20	Oregon	213	46	West Virginia	203
20	Tennessee	213	49	Nevada	202
20	Vermont	213	49	North Dakota	202
25	Alaska	211	50	Wyoming	201
25	Florida	211

Local PSAT/NMSQT cutoffs:

Year Students will Graduate	2011 (Actual)	2010	2009	2008
Texas	215	216	215	215
Oklahoma	209	207	208	207
Louisiana	207	207	208	206

As of August 31, 2010, the below national merit finalist cut off scores were posted on Talk Confidential for 2011 NMSQT. (Not all states have been revealed.)

These scores were not confirmed by the National Merit Corporation and are considered unofficial until stated otherwise:

Alabama 211, Arkansas 214, Colorado 214, Florida 211, Georgia 215, Iowa 209, Illinois 218, Indiana 219, Kansas 211, Kentucky 210, Michigan 224, Minnesota 216, Missouri 210, Montanta 208, North Carolina 215, New York 221, Ohio 212, Oklahoma 209, Tennessee 218, Texas 215,

As other state cut off scores come in, I will update the list.

* PSAT State Scores were verified from the College Planning Simplified.

FREE TIP from LONE STAR ED CONSULTING:
If you are a boarding school student, there are separate boarding school region cutoffs for the PSAT. According to a primary source at the NMSC, the cutoff scores have not been determined yet by the National Merit Scholarship office. Stay tuned for more information.

Related Blogs:
PSAT
SAT

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University of Texas at Austin Ends Sponsor of National Merit Scholars

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:06:00 +0000

Reprinted from The Chronicle, with additions from The Daily Texan
By Elyse Ashburn

Provided by Lauren Kahn, Educational Consultant, Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC

Starting in the fall of 2010, the University of Texas at Austin will end its scholarship program for National Merit Scholars, instead devoting more money to need-based aid amid mounting budget pressures.

"When we looked at what was happening in the economy, we decided it was important to redirect resources to make sure that all students that are qualified to be admitted to the university are able to attend regardless of need," said Tom Melecki, director of student financial services.

The university will honor the National Merit Scholarships of current students, Mr. Melecki said, and it will continue to offer both universitywide and departmental merit-based scholarships for which scholars will be strongly considered.

Previously, the university had awarded most National Merit Scholars $13,000 over four years. In 2008, the university sponsored 213 of the 281 freshmen at Texas who were selected by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation competition. It enrolled more freshman scholars that year than any college other than Harvard University, according to data provided by the corporation.

Students enter the competition by taking the PSAT by their junior year, and must score above a certain cutoff, which varies by year and state. Of the 1.5 million students who compete, about 16,000 are selected as semifinalists based on their scores. From that group about 15,000 are selected as finalists based on academic performance and their SAT scores.

Recently, the National Association for College Admission Counseling criticized the program for using PSAT cutoff scores as the primary factor in selecting scholars. Admissions tests, the group argues, are not designed to serve as the primary screen for scholarship applicants, and should only be considered as one of many qualifications.

In a letter to NACAC, the College Board, which owns the PSAT and is a partner of the scholarship corporation, defended the selection process, saying that it is the fairest way to evaluate 1.5 million students a year and that the PSAT serves as an "access and equity tool" because it introduces many low-income students to the college-going process.

Mr. Melecki said Texas' decision had nothing to do with how the scholarship program is run. Rather, it was one of the easiest merit-based aid programs to end because most such scholarships at the university are endowed by private donors. The National Merit Scholarships were primarily paid for by the university, but about 20 percent of their cost was covered by an endowment.

The Daily Texan provided this perspective and praised the administration's decision to end National Merit Finalist large financial awards.

Those who argue that canceling this program signals that the current administration is not dedicated to attracting top students are wrong. The University still has hundreds of merit-based scholarship programs to attract top students that test well. The Austin-American Statesmen notes that the University will award more than $60 million in aid that is wholly or largely merit-based, even after ending this program. The choice to end the National Merit Scholarship program should be applauded. It brings UT closer to competing with top universities for truly top students and further from the pool of mid-tier colleges desperate to attract Merit scholars.

Related Blogs:
PSAT
SAT

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College Applications on the Rise for Class of 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:34:00 +0000

Provided by: Lauren Kahn, M.A. from Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC 512-294-6608

USA Today reports, "College applicants are facing one of the toughest years ever to gain admission to the nation's public colleges and universities as schools grapple with deep budget cuts and record numbers of applications. As cash-poor state governments slash budgets, colleges are capping or cutting enrollment despite a
surge in applications from high school seniors, community college students and unemployed workers returning to school."

It is a real issue for public schools this year. As I suspected earlier this year, private schools will still be selective, but will not have the necessary reduction in enrollment numbers that public schools do. The 10-campus University of California reduced enrollment of California-resident freshmen by 6%, or about 2,300 students, and is expected to shrink enrollment further this year even as a record number of applicants applied for admission for the fall of 2010, said Nina Robinson, UC director of student policy. (USA Today.com)

Nancy Greisemer, College Explorations Consultant, reports there are double-digit increases in applications all over the country. The number of students competing for spots in the class of 2014 is up by 28 percent for the California State University system, 25 percent at the University of Hawaii Manoa, 21 percent at UC Merced, 20 percent at Brown, 19 percent at Princeton, 18 percent at DePauw (and still counting), 11 percent at Duke, and 10 percent at the University of Notre Dame.

Other recently-released numbers include:

• Harvard: +5%
• Dartmouth: +4%
• Cal Poly: +12.1%
• University of California Santa Barbara: +7.7%
• University of California Davis: +6.5% (transfers +26%)
• University of California Santa Cruz: +5.4%
• University of California San Diego: +2.3%
• Northwestern University: +7%
• University of Illinois Urban Champaign: +3%

Although final numbers have not been released by area colleges, early admissions figures suggested similar increases are in store locally. Early Decision applications were up by 46 percent at American University, 24 percent at George Washington, 15 percent at the College of William and Mary, and 10 percent at Johns Hopkins. Nonbinding Early Action (EA) applicants increased by 18 percent at Georgetown and by 13 percent at Howard University. Therefore, do not be devastated if you were deferred or denied admission during the early action / early decision process.

As of December 1st, applications filed through the Common Application system were up by 24 percent over the same time last year.

Schools have moved up some of their deadlines, so this could be one of the reasons for the rise in early applications. However, only time will tell the complete picture for this peculiar application season, which entails economic hardship, an increase in students wishing to attend college, and a mandatory reduction in enrollment numbers for several public universities.

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FAFSA: Priority Deadlines ... File Just in Case

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:34:00 +0000

By: Lauren Kahn, M.A. from Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC 512-294-6608

Don't jeopardize your son or daughter's opportunity to attend their dream college by not applying for financial aid. You may have heard stories from friends where families did not apply to the FAFSA, because they assumed they did not qualify, only to find out later that they lost out on some serious grant money or loans to finance their children's education. According to the Department of Education, the U.S. government will provide more than $116 billion this year to help millions of students and families pay for post-secondary education. All federal aid applicants, regardless of family income, are eligible to participate in the unsubsidized Stafford loan program.

Schools have a limited amount of financial based aid to offer students from the U.S. Government, therefore it is imperative that you apply for financial aid in a timely fashion and abide by both admissions and financial aid deadlines. For example, Texas Tech may have a June 1st admissions deadline, but their financial aid deadline is April 15th. Therefore, if you need financial aid, you must apply for admission and financial aid to the university by April 15th. (You will only get a financial aid package offered to you if you are actually accepted to the university.)

"College News from Texas"

FAFSA Financial Aid Priority Deadlines for Popular Texas Universities

SMU: February 15, 2010 (new freshman) for fall 2010
TCU: March 15, 2009. You also must be admitted by this date for our office to receive your FAFSA information. Students that are either granted late admission to TCU, or file the FAFSA past the priority date will be awarded based on available funds at the time the results are received. We can only guarantee late students will receive loans and a Pell Grant (if you are eligible).
Texas A&M: March 31, 2010 (new freshman and transfers) for fall 2010
Texas Tech: April 15th (new freshman and transfers) for fall 2010
Texas State University: March 31, 2010 (new freshman and transfers) for fall or spring 2010
University of Texas – Austin: March 31, 2010 (new freshman and transfers) for fall 2010
University of Texas – Dallas: February 15, 2010 (new freshman and transfers) for fall 2010
University of Texas – San Antonio (UTSA): March 31, 2010 (new freshman and transfers) for fall 2010

So, what if your parents all of a sudden won the lottery and no longer need financial aid?
Guess what, you're not locked in to your chosen college's financial aid offer. You are not required to accept the entire aid package as offered. For example, some students decline a student loan or work-study award, or accept a loan for a lesser amount.

Once you have chosen a college and have accepted their financial aid package, notify the other colleges that you are declining their offers of aid so the awards can go to other students. For past information on financial aid from Lone Star Ed Consulting, click here.

FREE Tip of the Week from Lauren Kann, M.A. of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC:

If a school really wants a candidate and knows that there is a gap between their estimated family contribution and the cost of tuition, they will somehow work out a "special" financial package for them if warranted. They will offer grant money, work student options, give merit based aid, etc. Despite what the admissions office might tell you, sometimes the lines between need and merit can be blurred.

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FAFSA - The definition of a "parent" according to the government

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:03:00 +0000

Are you a parent or step-parent of a student about to go off to college? If yes, read on ...

Here are some answers to possible questions regarding who qualifies as a “parent” in the financial aid process. You might be surprised by some of the results.

Definition of a parent for financial aid purposes
What is a dependent student for financial aid purposes?

Dependency is not based on age of the student, but on a series of questions that the student answers on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Dependent students must provide both student and parent information on the FAFSA. For the 2009-2010 academic year, a student is considered dependent on his or her parents if he or she answers "No" to all of the following questions:

o Were you born before January 1, 1986?

o As of today, are you married? (Answer “Yes” if you are separated but not divorced.)

o At the beginning of the 2009–2010 school year, will you be working on a master’s or doctorate program (such as an MA, MBA, MD, JD, PhD, EdD, or graduate certificate, etc.)?

o Are you currently serving on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces for purposes other than training?

o Are you a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces?

o Do you have children who will receive more than half of their support from you between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010?

o Do you have dependents (other than your children or spouse) who live with you and who receive more than half of their support from you, now and through June 30, 2010?

o When you were age 13 or older, were both your parents deceased, were you in foster care or were you a dependent/ward of the court?

o As of today, are you an emancipated minor as determined by a court in your state of legal residence?

o As of today, are you in legal guardianship as determined by a court in your state of legal residence?

o At any time on or after July 1, 2008, did your high school or school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?

o At any time on or after July 1, 2008, did the director of an emergency shelter program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?

o At any time on or after July 1, 2008, did the director of a runaway or homeless youth basic center or transitional living program determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless or were self-supporting and at risk of being homeless?

Parents' marital status

The FAFSA asks about parents' marital status because your marital status directly affects the treatment of income and assets in the EFC calculation. Parents must report their marital status as of the date the application is completed.

Who is considered a Parent?
The term "parent" is not restricted to biological parents. Sometimes a person other than a biological parent is treated as a parent, and in these instances, the parental questions on the application must be answered, since they apply to such an individual (or individuals).
Parents who are both living and married to each other
Answer the questions about each parent.

Parents, who are living together and have not been formally married
Those who meet the criteria in their state for a common-law marriage, should report their status as married. If your state does not consider your situation to be a common-law marriage, then you should follow the rules for divorced parents. Check with the appropriate state agency concerning the definition of a common-law marriage.

Foster Parents, Legal Guardians, and Grandparents:
A foster parent, legal guardian, or a grandparent or other relative is not treated as a parent for purposes of filing a FAFSA unless that person has legally adopted the applicant.

Adoptive Parent:
An adoptive parent is treated in the same manner as a biological parent on the FAFSA.

Deceased Parents:
If one, but not both, parents died, answer the parental questions about the surviving parent. Do not report any financial information for the deceased parent on the FAFSA. If the surviving parent dies after the FAFSA has been filed, the student must submit a correction updating his/her dependency status to independent, and correct all other information as appropriate. If the surviving parent is remarried as of the date the FAFSA is completed, answer the questions about both that parent and the person he or she married (stepparent).

Divorced Parents:
Answer the questions about the parent the student lived with more during the 12 months preceding the date the FAFSA is completed. If the student did not live with one parent more than the other, provide information for the parent who provided more financial support during the 12 months preceding the date the FAFSA is completed, or during the most recent year that the student actually received support from a parent.

If this parent has remarried as of the date the FAFSA is completed, answer the questions on the remaining sections of the FAFSA about that parent and the person he or she married (stepparent).
Stepparents:
A stepparent is treated in the same manner as a biological parent if the stepparent is married, as of the date of application, to the biological parent whose information will be reported on the FAFSA, or if the stepparent has legally adopted the student. There are no exceptions. Prenuptial agreements do not exempt the stepparent from providing required data on the FAFSA. Note that the stepparent's income information for the entire base year, must be reported even if parent and stepparent were not married until after the start of the year, but were married prior to the date the FAFSA was completed.

Legally Separated Parents:
The same rules that apply for a divorced couple are used to determine which parent's information must be reported. A couple doesn't have to be legally separated in order to be considered separated for purposes of the FAFSA. The couple may consider themselves informally separated when one of the partners has left the household for an indefinite period of time. If the partners live together, they can't be considered informally separated. However, in some states, a couple can be considered legally separated even if they still live together. If the couple's state allows legally separated couples to live together, and they are legally separated, then they are considered separated for purposes of the FAFSA. In this case, the applicant would report the information on the parent that provided the majority of the student's financial support.

Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act
The California Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2003, which extends new rights, benefits and obligations to individuals in California Registered Domestic Partnerships, became law on January 1, 2005. If you or your parent(s) are in a Registered Domestic Partnership, this legislation may affect your eligibility for state and university financial aid. If this new law reflects your family's living situation, contact the Financial Aid Office. You will be asked to complete a Domestic Partner Information Form, and your eligibility for state and university aid will be reevaluated. Your eligibility may increase or decrease based on the new information provided. The provisions of the Act do not apply to federal aid.

Parental marital status + FAFSA = a complicated situation. Know the rules and you will be fine.

The information above was provided by UC Davis and Lauren Kahn, M.A. Educational Consultant of Lone Star Ed Consulting, LLC.

If you would like more information about Lone Star Ed Consulting's college planning services, please e-mail Lauren Kahn or call her at 512-294-6608.

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Seniors, Time to Apply for Federal Financial Aid (FAFSA)

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:18:00 +0000

Provided by: Lauren Kahn, M.A. Lone Star Ed Consulting 512-294-6608

Seniors, besides merit scholarship options, there is also another way for you to finance your college dreams. Apply for federal financial aid. As FinAid.com says, "Few students can afford to pay for college without some form of education financing." It is time for the U.S. government to show you the money! If your parents make less than $150K in combined income and you are a U.S. citizen, I would advise you to at least submit your application for federal aid. Financial Aid comes in all sorts of packages: including grants, loans, and work study options. If you need information on the types of financial aid available, visit finaid.com.

If you plan to attend a private four year school, the retail cost of your first year of college could be as high as 60K. This estimated cost includes the total cost of attendance, including tuition, fees, room and board, books, travel and incidental expenses. The average cost of a private four year school for the 2008-2009 year was approximately $36,000.00 (collegeboard.com). At a public four year university, the average cost for a first year student was approximately $16,000.00, with only $6,600.00 for tuition and fees. The room and board cost for students is estimated at $8K a year. However, this cost will greatly vary based on dorm options and food plans. (It is my recommendation that most first year students live on campus in university housing, unless there is limited housing on campus and there are safe housing alternatives nearby campus.)

This is a reminder for the parents of college-bound seniors to submit their online FAFSA in the next few days. Parents need to keep in mind financial aid is given on a first-come, first-served basis from “pools” of money; waiting to submit the FAFSA may be harmful to your son or daughter’s potential for receiving significant need-based financial aid awards.

To complete the online FAFSA: Click below.
1. Go to FAFSA

2. Select the “2010-2011 FAFSA” in the “Select” box on the page lower right,

3. Click on “Next” in the blue arrow button,

4. Read the information about internet browsers and if your computer meets the system and browser requirements, click on “Next” in the blue arrow button (if not, click on the “CUSTOMER SERVICE” button to seek help).

5. To proceed with completing the FAFSA, enter your son/daughter’s personal information and create a password. Be sure to write down your password on paper for safekeeping.

6. Click on “Next” in the blue arrow button,

7. Complete the FAFSA application by entering your family’s financial information and submitting online. The online FAFSA should be signed electronically by both student and one parent by entering your FAFSA Personal Identification Numbers (PINs).

8. Before submitting the online FAFSA, print a copy of your summary information.

One-to-three days after the online FAFSA is submitted, you should receive a Student Aid Report (called the “SAR” or “E-SAR”) via e-mail from FederalStudentAidFAFSA@cpsemail.ed.gov. Be sure to check your bulk or junk mail because the SAR may be delivered to these folders. The SAR is a summary of the information entered into the FAFSA. You should review your son/daughter’s SAR to make sure all the information listed is correct.

Also, the SAR will show your son/daughter’s calculated Expected Family Contribution (EFC) based upon the financial information entered. The EFC is the amount of money your family is expected to pay for college expenses. The best possible EFC is zero, meaning your family is expected to pay $0 for college tuition, housing, etc. The EFC is an indication of how much financial aid your son/daughter is ELIGIBLE to receive; it does NOT mean they will definitely receive large amounts of need-based financial aid. The calculated EFC will be used by federal and state governments and the colleges listed on your son/daughter’s FAFSA to determine the amount of need-based financial aid they are eligible to receive (NOT how much he/she WILL receive).

The EFC is shown on top of the first page (on the example SAR, the EFC is 3256. This means the family is expected to pay $3,256 toward college expenses). If you have trouble with technical aspects of the online FAFSA (such as why it’s not working on your computer – not if you’re having trouble understanding the questions on the form or what answers to give), you can send an e-mail to get your questions answered at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/contact.htm or chat online live with a FAFSA assistant (to chat live online, go to contact and click on small underlined blue letters, “Live Help” in the page center).

If you don’t receive your son/daughter’s electronic SAR within 1-to-2 weeks of submitting the FAFSA, call the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243) between 8 a.m. and midnight (Eastern Time), seven days a week. Best of luck with submitting your FAFSA!

FREE Tip from Lone Star Ed Consulting:

If the school that you are applying for has a budget for increasing merit aid awards, they'll give you more if they want you and think you're seriously considering accepting an offer from another school. Leverage your financial aid package offers. If you applied and were accepted early decision, you cannot do this, because you have committed to attending that particular university.

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Is Facebook Distracting you from your College Goals?

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 03:44:00 +0000

Blogged by Educational Consultant, Lauren Kahn, M.A.

In October, Facebook reached 54.7 percent of people in the United States ages 12 to 17, up from 28.3 percent in October last year, according to the Nielsen Company, the market research firm. The average user spends 55 minutes of their day on Facebook, and I imagine this time is exponentially longer for teenagers.

While Facebook has many highly valuable services, it can also be a major distraction to getting things done.
Some teenagers are actually making the responsible decision during finals and near college application deadlines to temporarily disable their Facebook accounts. A forced vacation from Facebook during finals is something I highly recommend for my students. As a professional, I sometimes create a self-imposed break from facebook.com by blocking it as an allowed site from my wireless network. Are you disciplined enough to self-regulate your exposure to facebook and other internet sites?

From NY Times.com

Many high school seniors, now in the thick of the college application process, are acutely aware of those hours spent clicking one link after another on the site. Gaby Lee, 17, a senior at Head-Royce School in Oakland, Calif., had two weeks to complete her early decision application to Pomona College. Desperate, she deactivated her Facebook account. The account still existed, but it looked to others as if it did not.
“No one could go on and write on my wall or look at my profile,” she said. The habit did not die easily. Gaby said she would sit down at the computer and find that “my fingers would automatically go to Facebook.”

In 'Alone Together' (Basic Books, 2010), Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discusses teenagers who take breaks from Facebook.
For one 18-year-old boy completing a college application, Professor Turkle said, 'Facebook wasn’t merely a distraction, but it was really confusing him about who he was,' and he opted to spend his senior year off the service. He was burned out, she said, trying to live up to his own descriptions of himself.
But Facebook does not make it easy to leave for long. Deactivating an account requires checking off one of six reasons — “I spend too much time using Facebook,” is one. “This is temporary. I’ll be back,” is another. And it is easy to reactivate an account by entering the old login and password.

After several failed efforts at self-regulation, Neeka Salmasi, 15, a sophomore at Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, Mich., finally asked her sister, Negin, 25, to change her Facebook password every Sunday night and give it back to her the following Friday night
Neeka quickly saw an improvement in her grades. Still better, she said, is that her mother no longer visits her room 'every half an hour to see if I was on Facebook or doing homework.'
'It was really annoying,' she said.
Last year, Magellan Yadao, 18, a senior at Northside College Preparatory High School in Chicago, went on a 40-day Facebook fast for Lent.

(NY Times, December 20, 2009)

FREE ADVICE from Lone Star Ed Consulting, Lauren Kahn, M.A.

Another reason that I recommend high school seniors take a break from Facebook during this time period is the immense pressure to reveal your college acceptances or possible rejections on your FB wall. For many seniors, this is a particularly unkind year in regards to Early Action / Early Decision acceptances and Facebook is an automatic announcement of your college app status. Seniors, enjoy the holidays and spend time with your friends and family. Privacy is important and don't give away your college application statistics unless you are prepared for the aftermath in either direction.

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Texas State and other colleges counting economic blessings - for now

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren Kahn, M.A.) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Excerpt from Austin American-Statesman.com

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, December 07, 2009

SAN ANTONIO — Denise Trauth, president of Texas State University, tries not to gloat. But when she meets with counterparts from across the nation, as she did at the annual gathering of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities recently, she feels fortunate to be in Texas.

Many public colleges and universities across the nation are laying off employees, reducing student financial aid and taking other painful steps to cope with the economic downturn and declining state appropriations.
The University of North Alabama, for example, has raised tuition 9.5 percent in each of the past two years. California State University, Bakersfield, has scaled back academic programs and enrollment in response to a $15 million, or 25 percent, cut in the state portion of its budget. And Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has proposed merging three public, historically black universities to cut costs.

Institutions of higher learning in Texas haven't been immune to the belt-tightening. Hiring for many positions throughout the 15-campus University of Texas System is frozen. UT-Austin is laying off some staff members to free up money to retain and recruit top professors. But schools in Texas, with its relatively strong economy, have largely been spared the harsh cuts taking place in many other states. Indeed, the Texas Legislature increased higher education funding this spring by $1.2 billion for the two-year budget and boosted financial aid by 35 percent, to $1 billion.

To read more of this article, please click here.

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