More activities, better admissions prospects?

San Francisco Chronicle College-Bound column 12/2/07

Custodial grandparents of a college-bound student discover how much college admissions has changed since their day. Do they really need to push their grandson into a flurry of activities to impress colleges?

A weekly guide to higher education

Joanne Levy-Prewitt

Question: My wife and I are guardians of our grandson, a sophomore in high school. He plays football and, despite several moves and family turmoil in the past few years, gets good grades. An acquaintance told us that to get into college, our grandson must do more, such as do civic volunteer work, be active in our church, or play multiple sports. She suggested he get a job after school, too.

Is this true? We are retired and are dedicated to giving him everything he needs. We realize that times have changed since our own children went to college.

Answer: In many ways, college admissions today bears no resemblance to past practices. Your acquaintance, however, sounds like she might be a bit of an alarmist. I imagine that when your children went to college, they just filled out applications and went to the college closest to your home, with little regard to finding what some now refer to as the "best match."

The reason for the concern is that college admission generally has become more competitive in the past few years. Selective public institutions such as the University of Virginia or the University of North Carolina accept only about a third of their applicants. The most selective of the University of California's nine undergraduate campuses — UCLA and UC Berkeley — accept less than one-fourth of their applicants. Elite private colleges — such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford — accept about 10 percent of their applicants. While those numbers might make admission seem impossible, most colleges accept nearly two-thirds of their applicants, and most students apply to colleges where they are more likely to be admitted than denied.

Nevertheless, the dismally low acceptance rates at a few colleges have created a fear among some parents that higher education might be inaccessible to their children. Consequently, they think that by encouraging their children to do more than just take college prep coursework, they will gain a competitive edge.

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