On a recent tour of UCLA’s campus, I learned firsthand from admissions what they’re looking for in an essay.  It all boils down to the L.I.D.  In this third and final blog in a series we’ll be talking about the importance of L.I.D. in the UCLA essays.

First up is the L word (not what you think!).  L is for LEADERSHIP.  UCLA wants to see that you’ve held leadership position(s) and they want you to talk about them.  This pertains to more than just the class presidents.  Leadership can involve Sports, Scouting, Clubs – even jobs.  Any place in which you were organizing  or leading others.  A note of warning though: be honest about your leadership positions.  Don’t pretend that you were president when you weren’t.  That could cost you.

Next is the I word.  I is for IMPROVEMENT.  Just like your parents and teachers, UCLA likes to see improvement.  Whether it’s improving a tennis game or a swim time.  It can also be improving your grades or improving the lives of those less fortunate through your community service work.

D is DEDICATION.  This is where you let UCLA know how you weren’t a fly by night soccer player.  You stuck with the team even when you got injured.  Or you worked with the drama department for four years even when you weren’t the lead.  Or you’ve dedicated yourself to a cause.  You don’t have to save the world but it couldn’t hurt!

UCLA admissions stresses the importance of having more than one person read your essay.  Why not let that person be us?  Give us a call today.

Juliet Giglio
Educational Consultant in California

In this second of three blogs about the personal essays for the UC’s, we’ll be looking at the essay questions themselves.  What I like about the UC application is that they don’t give you a choice of essay prompts.  So you don’t have to waste time deciding which essay to answer. There are two questions and you have to answer both of them.

1) Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Okay, so this could be fun. You get to talk about what’s unique in your family and your town.  Talk about the environment that’s shaped you.  Have you overcome any obstacles in your world?  In particular, UCLA is looking for you to emphasize your CHARACTER.  Webster’s dictionary defines character as: one of the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an individual.  The key word is distinguish. How are you different?

Next essay question.

2) Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

Emphasize PASSION.  And I’m not talking about what happens at the senior prom!  Show the admissions department how much you love what you do and why it’s so important to you!

With over 57,000 essays being read, you don’t want to be subtle!  Talk about your awards in greater detail here.  Sing your praises but with a little bit of humility, of course.  Tell your story.  In terms of length, both essays shouldn’t total more than 1,000 words.  And no essay should be less than 250 words.  Most importantly, don’t wait to start writing!  And if you’re looking for help with your essays, give us a call today!

Juliet Giglio
Educational Consultant in California

Essays are particularly important to UCLA admissions as they don’t accept teacher recommendations.  This is really the only way they can get to know you beyond your test scores, GPA and extracurricular activities.  The essay is your one moment to tell your story, to talk about what makes you so special. It’s also your chance to explain any discrepancy in your transcript or test scores.

In the next blog, we’ll be looking at the personal essay questions themselves.

Juliet Giglio
Educational Consultant in California

It means that

1. Public colleges and universities have been taking on debt in the past five years, despite rises in tuition:  overall debt at the 200 institutions surveyed went up by 31% in the past four years.
2. At the 200 colleges and universities survey, debt has gone up more than their revenue growth, their total financial resource grown, and their enrollment growth.
3. The reasons for taking on debt include declines in state, taxpayer funding for public universities, weakened endowments, and higher expenses associated with growing enrollments.

So what does this mean for students?

It means that tuition will continue to go up at state institutions. It means that some public institutions may actually go bust if they keep on taking more debt–remember the housing bubble?  It means that students are going to experience the effects of cost-cutting.  Just a quick read through the higher education press yields myriad examples of department cuts (University of Colorado’s journalism school), faculty dismissals (University of Southern Mississippi), and incredibly long wait times to register for student orientation (UCLA).

It also means that tuition at state universities will continue to rise, which will continue to close the price gap between tuition at public and private universities.

We’re heading for some interesting times.  My prediction:  we’re going to see a lot of consolidation in the “industry.”  Some public institutions are not going to make it.  Some states will get smart and eliminate waste and redundancy in their programs (e.g., why does Colorado need several state-funded music education programs when music teachers have already been cut from the public schools?)

Public colleges and universities are not going to be immune to economic and  market forces any more than those people who fell victim to the mortgage bubble:  if you borrow more than you  can pay back, the piper is going to come to call.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant and Student of Economics

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Can we really tell which colleges are “better” than others in some objective way?
No. This is really the greatest lie that the entire college industry is built on. People who have explored colleges objectively — i.e. people who aren’t trying to spit out rankings to sell magazines full of car ads and guidebooks — have concluded that there just isn’t information available to determine whether one college leads to better outcomes than another.

A big part of the reason for that, I think, is that we’re talking about 18 year-olds, not six year-olds. Your kid is already basically an adult, and the idea that there’s some magical institution that will turn your stoner kid into an honors student is a myth. Your kid’s college experience will be determined by what he brings to it, not which institution he attends. Colleges are a lot more similar than they are different: a bunch of kids — some cool and some not cool — and a bunch of professors — some cool and some not cool.

You sing the praises of community colleges, and I agree that they are woefully underappreciated in our society.  What sorts of kids would you say should take seriously the idea of attending community college?
According to Marty Nemko, of students who graduate in the bottom 40% of their high school class and enroll at a four-year college, 76% won’t earn a degree within 8 1/2 years.

So community college is a good way to do a budget-minded test run if your kid is sort of college-marginal in terms of grades and motivation.

But community college is also a fantastic option for anyone on a budget. In the fall of 2007, Amherst College visited 22 community colleges to recruit top students. 9 out of 11 transfers that year came from community colleges. In 2006, 26% Stanford’s transfer students came from community colleges.

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To amplify Zac’s point a bit, it is true that there are no real, objective data that can prove–with any sort of scientific certainty–which colleges are better.  There are no standards.  Different colleges teach different curricula.  Some bemoan the lack of standardization in K-12 education in the United States.  But K-12 teachers in America are singing in unison in comparison to the educational cacophony at the tertiary level. Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education under George Bush II, made some noises about the need for measuring educational quality among our colleges and universities.  But the efforts went nowhere.

So we’re left only with this:  each individual has to decide for him or herself which college is best–for him or her.  It’s a matter of opinion, of “feel,” of impressions, and best guesses.  This is the value of an educational consultant.

Further, as Zac points out, it is sometimes the role of an educational consultant to help students and families consider all the options available–including community college.  While community college may not be best for everyone, kids who have not performed well in high school (for whatever reason) and families who want to save some dough would do well to consider starting at a community college.

I like Zac’s book because it makes us stop and think.  His contrarian viewpoints are useful in getting students and families to truly consider all their priorities.  For Zac, economic priorities are paramount.  And probably for most, this ordering is appropriate.  One thing is for sure: Zac Bissonnette is going to have quite an impact on college counseling in the United States.

Thanks for agreeing to appear on my blog, Zac!

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

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Why is it dangerous to think of college as an “investment”?

When I look at all the data on the returns of going to college and of going to one college over another, this is what I conclude: College is perhaps the best case of what economists call diminishing marginal utility you will ever find.

In other words, the long-term return on getting a bachelor degree at the lowest possible price is quite high. But  when you start to spend more than the minimum required, the marginal return plummets and it very quickly goes from being an investment to being consumption.

Think of it in terms of cars. People say all the time “A car is not an investment”. But that’s actually not true if you need a car in order to get to work. If a $5,000 car allows you to get to a job that pays you $50,000 instead of sitting at home doing nothing, that $5,000 car is a fantastic investment! But buying a more expensive car will not increase your income at all past the point that a solid reliable cheap car will. So once you’ve gotten to the price you need to get reliable transportation, any money you spend on the car stops being an investment and becomes consumption. College is exactly the same.

How important is choosing a college major in determining future financial success—or happiness?

I look at some research in the book that shows that choice of major is not nearly as significant in terms of its impact on financial success as people think: what matters its the career you decide to pursue, not what you happened to major in.

Clearly there are a few majors that really do track very directly with specific careers that you can’t get without that major. Like engineering and accounting, which are great if you want to be an engineer or an accountant. But beyond that, people shouldn’t fret too much about major. People get entry-level jobs in all sorts of fields with all kinds of degrees, and most employers are more interested in your GPA, internships, and work ethic than they are in your major.

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Zac offers some very strong opinions about college as an investment, and it’s hard to argue with him.  You cannot really know the value of your an expensive college education–in dollars and cents–until you have lived your entire life.  Even then, it will be virtually impossible to put a dollar value on that education in a way that isolates variables in any convincing, scientific way.  Are my earnings today a direct function of my Ivy League education?  Or my graduate degree?  Or my experience as a high school teacher making a whopping $14k per year? Or my sparkling personality?  Or the quality of friends I make on Twitter?

There is no telling. So when buying a college education, you really need to think about those other values. Does this education have other values that are not captured by economics alone?  And on the other side of the equation, is there something else I could do with these dollars earmarked for tuition that actually does pay a predictable return–in economic terms?

These are the sorts of questions that Zac–and I–encourage parents and students to really think about as they are selecting the right colleges for themselves.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

I have read his book cover to cover, and am glad (relieved?) to report that he actually quoted me in it.  Zac takes a contrarian view of college selection and admission.  Like Jay Mathews, who wrote a review of the book on his blog, I find this to be one of the best books out there on financial aid and college admission.  Zac, at the ripe old age of 22, resembles the boy who shouted that the Emperor is naked.  And he’s right:  naked as a jaybird.

I’m honored that Zac has agreed to guest write a few blog posts in response to some my questions about selecting colleges and about financial aid in general.  These posts will give you a teaser of his book (which was just released today, by the way).  But I heartily recommend the book to anyone and everyone who is jittery about college admissions and financial aid.  Zac provides a healthy tonic for what ails us in this business.

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What do you think is the A-Number 1 most important aspect of finding the right college fit?

Here’s the deal: attending a college that isn’t the right financial fit — and requires you to loot your retirement or saddle your kid with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans — has a much higher probability of ruining your child’s life than sending him to a college that isn’t the right fit in other ways. Families need to adopt more of a “suck it up and think long-term” attitude when it comes to college in order to avoid the consequences that so many graduates with excessive debt are dealing with. Don’t make the next twenty years of your life crappy in order to make the next four years as good as they can possibly be: recognize that the quality of the college experience is determined primarily by the student, not the school.

What do you think is the single greatest failing of college counselors everywhere, whether they be school counselors or private counselors like me?

I think guidance counselors aren’t cynical enough. They lead kids through this emotionally charged process of finding a school with blinders on and they really need to grab kids and say “Listen. No one cares about you except you. These admissions officers and financial aid people don’t care about you, and they especially don’t care about your financial life after you graduate.”

Guidance counselors should be spending the bulk of their time with students warning them about the dangers of student loans — the consequences of default, the ever-rising default rates, and the negative impact of student loans on lives even for students who don’t default. I’ve never heard of a guidance counselor pulling a kid aside and saying “If you want to go to graduate school, you need to pursue an affordable undergraduate option.” And yet a Nellie Mae survey I talk about the book shows that 38% of borrowers reported that their student loans contributed to their decision to forgo grad school!.

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Tomorrow, look for another installment from Zac. Then go buy his book.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

While it is important to submit your application by the posted deadlines, it is not necessary to do so months in advance.  It is more important to take the time to make sure you application is well thought out than “first”.

On the flip side, you also don’t want to leave it to the last minute.  When I was an admissions officer, I had a student write on his supplemental essay that it was 11:58PM the day before the application deadline and that he did not have time to complete his essay.  Needless to say, he was not admitted.

Here are some tips to ensure that your applications are going to stand out for the right reasons:

• Familiarize yourself with the Common Application site.  Watch their demonstration videos on how application and school official forms work.  Print out the forms and fill out some of the personal information by hand before you attempt to do it electronically.
• Look at the application requirements for the schools that you are interested in applying to.  You don’t have to make your final decisions now, but just be aware of what each school is requiring.
• Create a timeline with the deadlines for each school you are applying to and what is required for each application. Set goals for when you want to complete each application.  Break up what is required into small tasks so it does not seem so overwhelming.
• Begin working on your personal statement.  Also look at the supplemental essays.
• Ask for letters of recommendation from your teachers.
• Put together your resume or list of activities outside of the classroom.

Spending a few minutes to get organized can cut down on the anxiety that students often feel with this process.

Katherine Price

Educational Consultant

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