College admissions 2009 report and confessional

I had big plans to blog my way through my oldest child’s college admissions process, and co-blogger/technical guru KC Jones set up this blog for that to happen. Well, here’s why that fizzled during the most intense parts of the process:

1. I discovered that when your kid is a teen, you can’t pour out your soul about what’s going on with him the way you can when you have an incoming kindergartner. Au contraire.

2. So I moved away from that concept and started trying to aggregate the most useful information I could find for other parents about college admissions. But then it became clear that parents who are paying attention are inundated with an overwhelming barrage of information – far more than we can process – and the parents who aren’t paying attention aren’t going to read this blog either.

But with my son graduating from high school next week and the college search behind us, here are some key things I learned from the process.

We Class of 2009 families were told it would be extra-tough for our kids – this high school graduating class, and reportedly the ones immediately before and after it (2008 and 2010), are the largest ever, in U.S. history.

And we were told that our kids had to be not just superstars but veritable gods and goddesses to get into the most sought-after schools; that the competition would be crushing.

I’m happy to say it wasn’t that bad. For example, short of the Harvard-Stanford pantheon, UCLA is often presented as the holy grail of the 21st-century college search. Here’s the anecdotal information: Quite a few of my son’s friends got into UCLA without a sweat – all wonderful, amazing, talented kids, but within the range of normal; not necessarily jaw-droppingly perfect in every way. Others are going across the bay to now-prized UC Berkeley – also great kids, but still normal mortals.

What about Harvard (pictured) and Stanford? One of my son’s classmates is going to Stanford, and she is indeed an impressive, accomplished achiever. I know that a couple of his more-ambitious classmates applied to Harvard, though not with wild eagerness, and didn’t get in. The one kid we know this year who did is a talented musician from a very high-end Bay Area suburb – and who is going without enthusiasm, to please his parents.

Here’s a random and partial list of colleges that accepted kids this year in my son’s SFUSD world: Berklee College of Music, Cooper Union, Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, McGill, New York University, Oberlin, Pace University, the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, University of Indiana, University of Michigan, University of Southern California, George Washington University, University of Washington, plus many other UCs and CSUs.

And here’s my son’s story: He’ll go to Oberlin Conservatory (a venerable private liberal-arts college outside Cleveland) to study jazz trumpet. He was very specific about what he wanted during his college search – unusually focused, I would say – and applied to a limited number of colleges, with Oberlin the most ambitious. He was accepted to all of them, most being CSUs. As an applicant, he was a distinct package: a jazz trumpeter with a long music resume, high test scores and an indifferent grade point average (it slid as his list of music activities grew every year).

Obviously, a BFA in jazz trumpet is not the most marketable of degrees, but it’s unstoppable. (I keep meeting college journalism majors who seem utterly unaware that there is no paid future whatsoever in their field, unless they re-create the entire industry on their own; at least my son is in touch with reality.) Oberlin has both a stand-alone conservatory and a traditional college and does offer a dual-degree program, which my son is considering moving into, possibly to pursue his passions for history and/or politics.

Here are a couple of other lessons learned.

• By now I’ve seen many, many students who were accepted to fine colleges that they could not, in the end, afford financially. (We were lucky; pricey Oberlin is offering us sufficient financial aid.) Many settled for a second or third choice because that’s what they could afford. Since I’ve listened to so many parents of young children trying to assess schools based on what colleges their graduates ultimately attend, this is a really important point to understand – you’re largely looking at family income, not academic outcome. This is especially true of many students attending many CSUs, and even more so with San Francisco State, City College, and suburban Bay Area community colleges like Skyline, Laney and College of Marin. (And those schools are providing excellent educations, too.)

• I watched as some kids handled the whole process themselves, without parental involvement, compared to others in which the parents were on top of things the whole time. We were in the latter camp except for the fact that my son did the research, quite doggedly, and chose the schools to apply to. He insists that the outcome would have been the same if we’d left him to do it all himself. But my observation – strictly anecdotal – is that while there are indeed many students who work the entire process themselves, with great success (a demographic in which this is especially true is the children of Chinese immigrant parents), there are others who I think would have had a more shining outcome if there’d been some parental involvement and guidance. That’s not to say that those kids won’t be happy and successful at college – or that those who were steered to prestige, big-name schools by pushy parents will be better off.

I still think there’s a need for a particular kind of blog; actually, KC has been doing this part of the College Admissions Beast blog already. What busy applicants and their parents do need is ongoing reminders landing in their inbox of dates, deadlines and obligations throughout the process, plus opportunities such as local college fairs, SAT prep options and such. It needs to be steadily maintained and relentlessly localized. Another huge need is one that some benefactor should be providing for SFUSD – high-level college application counseling and guidance at all SFUSD high schools, as opposed to the uneven, catch-as-catch-can resources that are provided now.

Congratulations to the Class of 2009! You're the future leaders, peacemakers, artists, innovators who will bring us a better world. We're so proud of you.

What's the point of the PSAT?

A couple of new comments on an old post reminded me that it's now the season for juniors to be waiting for their PSAT scores and wondering what it's all about. Last January I interviewed college admissions counselor Kate Augus to answer that question. Here's a link to that post for those wondering about it this year.

An update on the college applications

When this blog started, I envisioned posting personal experiences as we went through the application process with my son. I kind of forgot about the fact that at 18 he's old enough to object to invasions of his privacy, so during the busiest part of the process, I've posted almost nothing. Here's a lite version, though.

Right now is the time when different colleges' deadlines are upon us. The deadline for the UC system and the smart deadline for the CSU system was Nov. 30, though some CSUs continue to accept applications (I wouldn't recommend pushing it). In our case we have applied to four CSUs and two other colleges: Oberlin Conservatory (application deadline Dec. 1) and Purchase College-State University of New York (application deadline today). My son is looking at jazz trumpet programs and made his picks accordingly. We did not do college visits except within California, but he did his research other than that.

He has considered others and still mentions Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., as a possibility. Since it doesn't seem to be a serious candidate, I'm not even sure if he's checked the deadline and am not worrying about it if it's past. Lawrence appears to be the world's whitest college, which is just a weird environment for an urban kid.

As some readers may have noticed, the economy is having a little trouble lately. This will have an impact on our situation — on what choices he can afford to make and possibly on the outcome of his applications. "There is no such thing as need-blind admissions," college admissions expert Peter Van Buskirk said in a presentation at my kids' school last year. Of course a slight silver lining is that for any applicant who gets rejected everywhere and winds up at City College, it could easily be due to the economic downturn, and who's to know?

My e-mail inbox and my son's are revealing an interesting aspect of this process. We both get e-mail after e-mail from some colleges urging him to apply and making offers like "waived admission fee" and "no essay required." I didn't even know till after the fact that my son had applied to University of the Pacific on this basis (great jazz school in a pathetic place — poor beaten-down Stockton, the nation's foreclosure capital). (It's also in the $50,000 range.)

I'm assuming these colleges are both trying to drum up some hot applicants and also trying to increase their applicant pool to artificially raise their rating on the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. When this process is done I intend to do some research on what's going on with that, but not while we're still in it. Some of the colleges sending those e-mails are Fordham, Rensselaer, and the University of Montana. I'll go through them and list more later. This does not mean my son is guaranteed acceptance at any of them.

Hidden details in application instructions may matter

My son is applying to Oberlin Conservatory, or at least that's the current plan. I made a binder of college application materials and dutifully printed out the four-and-a-fraction pages of Conservatory Application Instructions, in a tiny though elegant type font. Of course I meant to read every single word, but hadn't quite gotten to it.

The part that registered with me seemed pretty clear: "Applicants in jazz are required to submit a screening CD, DVD, audiotape, or videotape..." (by the Dec. 1 deadline, it indicated in several places). So plans were underway to get him together with other applicants for a rush recording session.

Then a mom whose daughter is also applying pointed out the brief, buried sentence, which we had missed: "Regional auditions do not require a screening recording." Oberlin holds a regional audition in San Francisco in January.

A good lesson in reading the fine print (in this case the entire set of instructions is in fine print).

And just now, when I called up the website again to link to it, I discovered that it had been redesigned since I printed out those pages six weeks ago, and looks much more user-friendly. So now there are two lessons: Read every word, and recheck the websites every so often.

One week to get your CSU, UC apps in!

If you have an unofficial transcript, your high school report cards or a good memory you can do your CSU application with no further fuss or muss, right now, in a few minutes.

Nov. 30 is not strictly the drop-dead deadline for all CSUs, but here's why it's important, from the CSUMentor website:

Priority filing deadline for Fall 2009 is

Nov. 30, 2008

Why is this important?

With California State budget cuts and fewer enrollment spaces available,
applications submitted by Nov. 30 will receive priority consideration.

For UC applications, be working on those personal statements.

By the way, a parent mentioned to me that her senior was working on his CSU app but was stalled for two reasons.

First, the website wouldn't accept the page on which his grades were listed, because one requirement technically was not met (the grade is being raised after he made up work). But he hadn't noticed a checkbox allowing the applicant to override and file the application anyway.

Second, he needed the family's financial information to complete the Educational Opportunity Program part of the application. But actually, the EOP is a specific program with clear-cut income caps that didn't apply to that family (maximum family income for a dependent is $42,900 for a family of four). Applicants know that other types of financial aid allow for more flexibility, and that many middle-class families are eligible, but that wasn't the case with this specific program.

So the family was able to submit the application immediately after all. Applicants are strongly urged to apply to their service-area CSU as a backup, if it's not their first choice. For residents of San Francisco and San Mateo counties, that's San Francisco State.

Two-week alert: 14 days to get UC, CSU apps in!

The deadline is Nov. 30! CSU applications are automated and easy — there's no essay needed and the only legwork is getting an informal transcript so you can plug in classes and grades in the dropdown format. Don't delay!

Application deadlines have been flexible in the past for most CSUs, but with looming budget cuts threatening to limit the number of applicants they can accept, take this one seriously.

New urgency: Get those CSU applications in

All 23 California State University campuses may have to turn away applicants for next fall after being slammed by the state's budget crisis, news reports tell us.

"Preferential admission would be given to entering freshmen within each campus' local community or "service area" as well as transfer students from nearby community colleges who have successfully completed their lower-division requirements," yesterday's Chronicle reported.

Application deadline for oversubscribed ("impacted"); campuses is Nov. 30; for the others, it's March 1. There isn't a first-come-first-served policy, but with some qualified applicants possibly subject to being waitlisted, it still seems like there might be some benefit to not getting an application in at the last minute.

The online CSU application does not require an essay or teacher recommendations, and is entirely fill-in-the-blank and check-box — it's easy. The only legwork beforehand is getting a copy of the transcript, unless you have scrupulously saved all the report cards or have a really good memory.

College admissions calendar for seniors

When I helped start this blog, I had the notion I would be describing our actual experiences as my family went through the college admission process. Of course, I kind of forgot that that would mean publicly discussing a lot of personal details about my child and our family, which doesn't work for all of us. So that concept has been truncated somewhat. There are things I wish I could share, but I just can't.

So I'll just note that Oct. 1-Nov. 30 is the magic period for applying to California State University campuses. It's Nov. 1-30 for UC's . My senior is currently applying to two CSU campuses — the ones known for the top jazz studies programs, Northridge and Long Beach. It was like pulling teeth, but we have filed those applications (go to www.csumentor.com). He is currently not planning to apply to any UC's, though there's a brief window to change his mind.

The CSU applications don't require an essay or recommendations, so the only legwork needed is acquiring a transcript so as to enter the grades accurately. In fact, there IS no place on the application to describe an extenuating or unusual circumstance. (For example, at my son's school, San Francisco School of the Arts, students are required to take 10 units — double credits — in their arts discipline every semester. On the CSU form, the school counselor told us, that means listing Band (in our case) under arts and again under electives — but this needs to be explained somehow. I called the admissions offices and faxed an explanation of that and a couple of other things.

Newsweek puts out a publication every year, "How to Get Into College." (I bought a copy at the Lucky on Sloat in San Francisco.) The 2009 version has a useful checklist: The Ultimate Planning Calendar. With full credit to the publication, I'm excerpting the October items that are still relevant, and quoting most of the November items:

October:
Check out www.commonapp.org to see which colleges accept the Common Application.

Start contacting financial aid offices and discuss aid options with your college counselor.

Many colleges use data from CSS/Financial Aid Profile to provide nonfederal financial aid. Begin applying online at https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/index.jsp

Finish a draft of your essay.

Some Early Decision or Early Action deadlines were Nov. 1, so that's past, but some are Nov. 15 — heads up.

November

Time to start preparing if you're taking the Jan. 24 SAT or SAT Subject Tests. Make sure colleges will accept those scores.

Follow up with your teachers and coaches to ensure that recommendations are sent in on time.

Mail applications for colleges with "rolling" deadlines ASAP.

Continue polishing your college essay. Make sure to proofread!

For those taking SAT Subject Tests, remember that Language Tests With Listening are offered in November only.

It's not too late for campus visits. Check to see if any nearby colleges are in session.

Nov. 5: Registration deadline for Dec. 6 SAT and SAT Subject Tests.

Nov. 7: Registration deadline for Dec. 13 ACT.

Nov. 18: Late-registration deadline for Dec. 6 SAT and SAT Subject Tests.

Nov. 20: Late-registration deadline for Dec. 13 ACT.

And now for something really different...

A spiffy brochure landed on my desk from Deep Springs College, "nestled in an isolated valley in Eastern California's high desert," probably the most unusual college in the country.

The website has the same info as the brochure:

Deep Springs is an all-male liberal arts college located on a cattle-ranch and alfalfa farm in California's High Desert. Electrical pioneer L.L. Nunn founded the school in 1917 on the three pillars of academics, labor, and self-governance in order to help young men prepare themselves for lives of service to humanity. The school's 26 students, along with its staff and faculty, form a close community engaged in this intense project.

Deep Springs operates on the belief that manual labor and political deliberation are integral parts of a comprehensive liberal arts education.

Each student attends for two years and receives a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year. Afterwards, most complete their degrees at the world's most prestigious four year institutions.

Deep Springs isn't for the faint of heart. A line from the brochure:

The students at Deep Springs College in California must excel academically, but they also have to learn to lasso cows and slaughter pigs.

I was trying to remember whether my son has ever been on a horse. I think this one is a long shot in any case. But if you're interested, sent a post by owl — oops, wrong fantasy world.

Oh, and note that Deep Springs is free, as intended by its founder, Lucien Lucius Nunn. If there isn't a movie about that guy, I don't know why not.

Unconventional guys and their parents, check it out — you never know!

Reed, Oberlin visits to SF Oct. 26

Reps from Reed College and Oberlin College will be in San Francisco on Sunday, Oct. 26, 1-3 p.m., at the Jewish Community High school, 1835 Ellis St. RSVP by Oct. 23 to http://www.oberlin.edu/admissions. To schedule an interview with the Reed rep, call 800/547-4750.

The new world: elite colleges and financial aid

Elite colleges like Harvard (pictured), Yale and Stanford have made big news in the past couple of years for their new policies of generous financial aid to the middle class -- with "middle class" defined as incomes below $180,000/year or even $200,000. An article in the 2009 Newsweek "How to Get Into College" guide explains:

Harvard "announced a range of new financial-aid policies aimed at easing the strain on middle- and upper-middle- income families. ...

"Within months, a score of other Ivies and well-endowed schools publicized their own aid overhauls aimed at the same target: middle- and upper-middle-income families overwhelmed by the spiraling cost of higher education."

Read the Newsweek article.

Economic crisis upsets college plans

Today's San Francisco Chronicle looks at the impact of the economic crash on families' college choices:

Economic crisis upsets students' college plans
By Tanya Schevitz

An increasing number of college-bound students who had favored private colleges are applying to public institutions in California and across the nation this fall as the faltering economy shrinks family savings and makes loans harder to find, experts say.

Many parents and children who might not have considered state schools, where tuition is typically a fraction of private schools, are re-evaluating their college options, college counselors say.

And some prospective college students are finding they cannot afford a higher education and are putting plans on hold.

Read the rest of the article.

Families looking at college for next year are reminded that you need to fill out the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. File it no matter what colleges you're applying to -- California public, out-of-state public, private. It can't be submitted until Jan. 1, 2009, but it's a big project and you should be starting early. In California, the deadline is March 2, 2009, to qualify for state assistance.

Check out the FAFSA4caster, too: You can use FAFSA4caster to learn about the financial aid process and get an early estimate of your eligibility for federal student aid.