You can get an idea by looking at a school’s Common Data Set.

If you don’t know what a Common Data Set is, you’ll want to read the posts that I wrote last week on this valuable document:

Researching Colleges With the Common Data Set

Common Data Set 101

Today I want to focus on the financial aid section of any school’s Common Data Set. You’ll find all the financial aid information located in Section H of the document.  I’m going to use Macalester College in St. Paul for my example simply because I learned from Alexa, which ranks websites by Internet traffic, that the biggest concentration of people visiting my blog come from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Who knew?

To obtain Macalester College’s Common Data Set, I just Googled the school’s name and Common Data Set. Macalester has its nine most recent Common Data Set’s posted on the Institutional Research section of its website.  FYI, you can often find other information about a college on its Institutional Research site. For instance, I discovered the Macalester College Fact Book on its site that contains lots of valuable info.

When I look at the financial aid section of  any Common Data Set, I’m interested in finding out these sorts of things:

• Average financial aid package.
• Percentage of financial need met.
• Average institutional need-based scholarship or grant.
• Average need-based loan.
• Average non-need-based scholarships or grants for affluent students, who don’t require need based financial aid.
• The number of students who receive need-based or merit aid.

Macalester College’s Financial Aid Stats

At Macalester, 400 freshmen were determined to be eligible for aid in the 2009-2010 school year. Of that number, 397 students received need-based grants.

The average financial package was $32,533. That looks very impressive, but you also want to know how much of that comes from grants or scholarships versus loans. In Macalester’s case, like many elite institutions, the vast majority of this aid was free money (grants), which is great. The average grant for those receiving financial aid was $28,280. The average need-based loan that students received was $2,909. Students also cut their cost with work-study jobs.

When looking at financial aid awards, you obviously also need to know what the cost of the school is. During the 2009-2010 year, Macalester’s tuition, fees and room and board added up to $49,124.

I also like to see whether a school gives merit awards to students who are wealthy and won’t qualify for need-based aid. You can find this information in H2A. At Macalester, the average institutional scholarship for these affluent students was $10,000. Only 29 wealthy students, however, received a merit award from the school.

Macalester’s Common Data Set clearly shows that this is a school that dispenses most of its institutional awards to students who truly need a helping hand. This practice is common among elite schools. In fact, the most selective schools — such as Ivy League institutions — don’t provide any merit money to wealthy students.

Bottom Line:

When evaluating any college or university, I’d download a copy of its Common Data Set to learn far more about the school’s financial practices than you’d ever get from an admission officer.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

Researching Colleges With the Common Data Set

Today I’m going to explore how you can use the Common Data Set to gain insights into what admission officers are looking for at an individual school. For this example, I’m going to use Cal Tech’s CDS.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Obtain a school’s Common Data Set.

To do that, you’ll want to Google the name of a school and “Common Data Set” to find the document. As I mentioned yesterday, most schools post their Common Data Sets on their websites. Look for a school’s latest CDS. By now, most schools have posted this document for the 2009-2010 school year.

The document will either be saved as a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet.

2. Head to Section C.

Section C of every Common Data Set is going to be titled, First-Time, First-year (Freshman) Admission.

You’re going to discover lots of statistics about a school’s latest crop of freshmen including SAT/ACT scores and grade point averages. These are the sort of stats that you can find if you buy those big thick collegiate guides from Princeton Review, Fiske and elsewhere, but any Common Data Set will provide more in-depth numbers.

Statistics that can be particularly revealing in this section involve the acceptance rates of men and women. Sometimes the gender acceptance rates are very similar at colleges, but sometimes they differ dramatically. That’s the case with Cal Tech.

For the 2009-2010 admission season, 3,318 men applied to Cal Tech and 390 men were admitted. That’s an acceptance rate of 11.7%. In contrast, only 1,095 women applied and 284 were accepted. That’s an acceptance rate of 25.9%. Obviously, women have an advantage at this school where 58% of the students are men. You will see this same phenomenon if you look at MIT’s Common Data Set.

3. Check Out Basis for Selection

We’re still in Section C, but I want you to scroll down to line C6. Here is where every school shares what academic and nonacademic factors the institution weighs — or doesn’t weigh — when making admission decisions.

The schools ranks a total of 19 factors in four ways:

• Very important
• Important
• Considered
• Not Considered

It’s rare to see a school rate only one factor as very important, but that’s the case with Cal Tech. That one factor is the rigor of secondary school record. I’d interpret this to mean that if a student didn’t take a lot of Advanced Placement or other comparably rigorous classes, you can forget about this school.

Cal Tech considered seven factors important:

• Class rank
• Academic GPA
• Standardized test scores
• Application essay
• Recommendations
• Extracurricular activities
• Character/personal qualities

It can also be interesting to see what a school doesn’t care about. Cal Tech, for instance,  does not consider whether a applicant has expressed interest in the school before applying. The school also doesn’t care about interviews or what state a student resides.

In contrast, some schools favor applicants who have visited their campus, had an interview and requested materials. That’s referred to as “demonstrated interest.” Some schools also give brownie points to students who live outside their  state or region.

There’s a lot more to discover in any school’s Common Data Set. In my next post, I’m going to share some additional ways to examine a school’s Common Data Set.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

College and universities all over the country produce their own Common Data Set every year. The Common Data Set is a document about 32 pages long and within the pages you will find these sorts of statistics:

• Average financial aid award.
• Break down of loans versus grants in average financial aid package.
• Percentage of financial need met for typical student.
• Amount of merit money (if any) for affluent students who don’t qualify for need-based aid.
• Number of students who receive merit money.
• Academic profile of freshman class — including breakdown of GPA and SAT/ACT scores.
• Criteria for admission
• Undergraduate class sizes
• Faculty/student ratio
• Cost of institution

The Common Data Set is a uniform document so the format of the Common Data Set belonging to Harvard is exactly the same as UCLA’s, Lehigh, Notre Dame and every other four-year college or university. So when you’ve mastered one CDS, you’ve mastered them all.

The Common Data Set was dreamed up years ago as a way to satisfy collegiate publishers like US News & World Report, Peterson’s and the College Board, which have voracious appetites for higher-ed statistics.

The easiest way to find a particular Common Data Set is the Google the term and the name of the school. I just did that with the University of Virginia. Here is  UVA’s most recent Common Data Set.

Common Data Set Examples

Here are links to Common Data Sets at a handful of other institutions in different parts of the country:

• Amherst College
• Colorado College
• Northwestern University
• Penn State University
  
• Yale University
• Centre College
• New York University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Texas
  
• Whitman College

I’ve been able to find the Common Data Set of most institutions through Google. Unfortunately, some schools, such as Washington University in St. Louis, decline to make their Common Data Set available to the public. I don’t understand why!

On my next post, I’ll show you some nifty ways to use the Common Data Set.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com. Follow her on Twitter.

It took me all afternoon, but I finally figured out how to record a video and post it on YouTube. You have no idea how long it took just to figure out how to insert a title. I’m hoping that I can now get the darn thing on my own college blog.

It’s my first video so it’s definitely not polished, but I trust that I will get better as I go along. If I get the hang of it, I think chatting about college will be a lot easier than writing all the time.

In other news: I’m announcing the winners of the free copies of Debt-Free U: How I Paid For An Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents. I picked two people who commented on yesterday’s post about the book. The winners are “John N” and “M.” Congratulations.

I will be sending the runners up an electronic version of my eBook, Shrinking the Cost of College.

Then you’re the right demographic for a new book, Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents.

Zac Bissonnette, who is an editor and writer at AOL Finance, wrote Debt-Free and, get this this, he’s a college student.

Debt-Free U is already an Amazon bestseller – it helps to land a spot on the Today Show (here’s the clip) – and it’s packed with lots of advice on getting college costs down.

Book Giveaway

And here’s good news, you might be able to get this book for free. I’m going to be giving away two copies of the book to people who write a comment on this blog post.

Here’s all you need to do to win the book: I’d like you to tell me what you think are the best way(s) to cut the cost of college. Type in your comments and you could be a winner. If I only get two comments, you will be a winner!

I’m hoping for some good comments – or heck, any comments. So let me know what you think.

Here’s where you can read my review of Bissonnette’s book that I wrote for CBSMoneyWatch:

Debt-Free U: Paying for College Without Going Broke

I wrote a second blog post on the book today for CBSMoneyWatch that focuses on an interesting way that Bissonnette has reached out to powerful mentors that can help him with his career. Here it is:

Boost Your Job Prospects: Email a Celebrity

While the advice was intended for college students, I think what he’s done could help other people land jobs regardless of their age.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com. Follow me on Twitter.

US News & World Report, the big college rankings  gorilla, released its latest lists of the best liberal arts colleges and best universities earlier in August.  Forbes Magazine rolled out its best college list this month too and the Washington Monthly unveiled its picks for  best colleges a few days ago.

For all you college rankings junkies out there, here’s where you can find the latest results of the annual collegiate beauty pageants:

US News Best College Rankings

Washington Monthly College Rankings

Forbes Magazine’s Best Colleges Rankings

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be such slavish attention to college rankings. Teenagers would look for schools that work for them academically and financially and pecking orders wouldn’t exist.

Of all the rankings, I like Forbes Magazine’s the best because the academics, who designed the methodology, have attempted to measure the type of learning experience students have in college and what kind of success they encounter getting jobs when they graduate. Strangely enough, US News doesn’t use these measures. The factor that US News weighs most heavily in its methodology is the institutional reputation of each school. To me, that’s just nuts.

If you’re interested, I wrote a post last year on Forbes’ college rankings for my blog over at CBSMoneyWatch:

The Best Colleges You’ve Never Heard Of

Frankly, I’m bored with always sharing the names of the colleges or universities, which manage to win the yearly rankings competitions, whether they deserve to or not, and in the process hog all the media attention.  So today, instead of sharing the names of the top 25 or 50 schools, I’m going to start at No. 50 — Lawrence University — and end at No. 100 — Washington & Jefferson College.

These schools come from the Forbes list, which ranks 610 top four-year colleges and universities. There are about 2,800 four-year colleges and universities in this country.

Forbes Best College List

50. Lawrence University (WI)

51. Colorado College

52. Georgetown University (Wash., DC)

53. Emory University (GA)

54. Bates College (ME)

55. Macalester College (MN)

56. Bucknell University(PA)

57. Brandeis University (MA)

58. Wofford College (SC)

59. Wheaton College (IL)

60. Virginia Military Institute

61. Lafayette College (PA)

62. University of North Carolina

63. Barnard College (NY)

64. DePauw University (IN)

65. University of California, Berkeley

66. Oberlin College (OH)

67. Dickinson College (PA)

68. Principia College (IL)

69. Reed College (OR)

70. Cornell University (NY)

71. UCLA  (CA)

72. Wake Forest University (NC)

73. Kalamazoo College (MI)

74. Hamilton College (NY)

75. Knox College (IL)

76. Washington University, St. Louis (MO)

77. Denison University (OH)

78. Grinnell College (IA)

79. Mount Holyoke College (MA)

80. Skidmore College (NY)

81. Westmount College (PA)

82. Juniata College (PA) (My daughter’s school)

83. Connecticut College (CT)

84. University of Richmond (VA)

85. St. Mary’s College of California (CA)

86. Occidental College (CA)

87. Sweet Briar College (VA)

88. Johns Hopkins University (MD)

90. Furman University (SC)

91. Drew University  (NJ)

92. University of Michigan

93. University of Florida

94. Cooper Union (NY)

95. Wells College (NY)

96. Trinity College (CT)

97. University of Illinois

98. Gustavus Adolphus College (MN)

99. Franklin and Marshall College (PA)

100. Washington & Jefferson College (PA)

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com. Follow me on Twitter.

Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas A. Benton, an English professor at Hope College made a stab at answering that question. He observed that the  universities receiving the highest graduate school rankings aren’t always the best places to earn a graduate degree – at least in the humanities. That makes sense to me since the colleges that “earn” the highest rankings for undergraduates aren’t always the best either.

The graduate schools and programs that receive the top rankings don’t always deliver when graduates are looking for jobs. The elite research universities prepare their graduates to teach at other research universities, but most teaching jobs are at non-elite colleges.

Hiring committees at the schools lower on the food chain, however, can be suspicious of candidates from top-ranked graduate school programs. They suspect that these graduates will leave as soon as possible.

So how do you evaluate a graduate degree program without looking at the dubious rankings? Here are some of the questions that Benton says future graduate students should ask:

1. What kind of financial support can a student expect to receive during the entire course of the program?
2. How much educational debt do graduates leave with?
3. How many discussion sections and courses are graduate students required to teach in order to receive a stipend each year?
4. What is the average annual teaching load for graduate students?
5. How many years does it typically take to graduate?
6. How long are graduates on the academic job market?
7. Where is every graduate employed in academe and in what positions: tenure track, visiting, adjunct?
8. Where are graduates working, if not in academe?
9. Does the program lead to appealing career paths outside of academe?
10. What percentage of students earn doctorates?
11. How many earn master’s degrees?
12. What reason do students drop out?

If you’re considering graduate school, this is a great list of questions to start off your search. And whatever you do, don’t believe the rankings hype.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com. Follow me on Twitter.

America’s Most Popular Graduate Degrees

Not surprisingly, the MBA was the most popular master’s degree program for both men and women. What I found interesting, however, was how quickly the most popular master’s degree programs diverge for men and women.

Women clustered around master’s programs involving education. Seven of the top 10 master’s degree programs for women involved education. For men, only two program in the top 10 were education related.

In contrast, men focused on technical degrees such as computer science, accounting and mechanical engineering.

Law is the most popular professional degree for men and women and medicine is a distant No. 2.

Tomorrow I’m going to share advice on how to pick master’s degree programs.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

I thought I’d share the question posed by a mom, lets call her Susanna, whose daughter wants to apply early decision to William and Mary College in Williamsburg, VA.

If you don’t know what ED is, here is the definition of early decision.

This is the mom’s email message:

My daughter is looking at applying to a college early decision.  William and Mary is the school and we are not residents of the state of Virginia.  The school is a state university and as an-out-of-state applicant, the likelihood of receiving merit scholarships is very small. Our EFC is very high based upon doing a trial run of the FAFSA.

The advantage of early decision for her is a higher likelihood of admittance. But what is the down side? What are the pros and cons of doing this?  On the early decision application, it appears as if the parents are required to sign, and the student is then committed to attending that school if accepted.

We are quite certain we can not pay the steep costs – $39,000 out-of-state tuition/room/board, plus travel costs, without some merit scholarships to help, as might be the case with various private liberal arts colleges.  But, if we sign the early decision application, are we committed?

My Early Decision Response

Here is my initial response to Susanna:

After reading about your circumstances, I would not recommend applying early decision to William and Mary. You should only apply early decision if your child plans to attend regardless of any money she might receive from the school. That sure doesn’t appear to be the case with your family.

Your daughter would be expected to attend, but the school would have to release that commitment if you show financial hardship. As a practical matter, no school can force you to attend.

In a subsequent email, Susanna asked if her daughter might be eligible for a merit scholarship from William & Mary. As I’ve mentioned on my blog before, many state universities will cut the price for top out-of-state students. She was wondering how her daughter might get such a discount.

To answer her question, I took a look at William and Mary’s Common Data Set. After checking the Common Data Set, I could see that the state school provides very few grants to affluent families and the amount – $6,246 – would be negligible for an out-of-state kid. I couldn’t tell if out-of-state students are even eligible for this.

Bottom Line:

There is absolutely no reason for this teenager to apply to William and Mary.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

Many students won’t receive their financial aid awards until the spring. And colleges expect families to start paying a short time later.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could know well ahead of time whether a school is going to be generous to your child? If you had this information in advance, your child could skip applying to schools where the prospects for financial aid were slim to none and focus on the ones that are clearly willing to provide a discount.

This isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem.

Financial Aid Crystal Ball

Many schools will give you a pre-read on what kind of financial aid package your child might receive based on the family’s finances and the teen’s academic profile.

In the past I have mentioned that Muhlenberg College will give prospective students a financial aid pre-read, but I didn’t know whether other colleges provided this valuable service.

I learned at a conference last week that apparently lots of colleges will provide a predictive financial aid package, according to Angel B. Perez, director of admission at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.

If you want a financial aid heads up, timing is everything. Perez says that the financial aid staffs are too busy at certain times of the year to provide this information.

When should you approach a college’s financial aid office? Early fall and late spring are the best times to contact a school, Perez says. You might think that summer would be the best time to call a financial aid office, but it’s during those months that the staff is packaging the financial aid awards for the returning students.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.