Useful SAT Subject Test nitty-gritty

I mentioned to my son that he should register for another SAT, so he can get the SAT II Subject Tests needed for some colleges out of the way. There are two test dates remaining this year. He surprised me by being on top of it and informed me that the June 7 test date offers more subjects than the May 3 test date.

His information source is the registration form itself, and I can't figure out how to link to it.

This sounds like something to be aware of for testing this spring or in general for future tests.

Subject tests offered on the May 3 test date:

U.S. history, literature, chemistry, physics, French, Spanish, math level 1, math level 2 and biology.

On the June 7 test date, all those are offered plus the following:

World history, Latin, Modern Hebrew and German.
(OK, it's not a lot more. World history is the topic of interest in his case.)

Registration deadline for the May 3 SAT: Regular April 1, late April 10 (there's a late fee).
Registration deadline for the June 7 SAT: Regular May 6, late (with fee) May 15.

Aced out by some A-lister's dumb kid?

Here's an essay posted entirely to make us regular people feel less like failures if we don't do our superhuman utmost to claw our way — or our kids' way — to the most inaccessible pinnacles in the college admissions scramble. The fix is in. You can't fight it. So relax and look for a college that fits the applicant, and vice versa.

Boston Globe 9/28/07
Op-ed: At the elite colleges — dim white kids
By Peter Schmidt (author of "Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action")

... Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.

A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

Applicants who stood no chance of gaining admission without connections are only the most blatant beneficiaries of such admissions preferences. Except perhaps at the very summit of the applicant pile - that lofty place occupied by young people too brilliant for anyone in their right mind to turn down - colleges routinely favor those who have connections over those who don't.
Read the rest of the commentary.

Trees die as colleges bombard prospects

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a whole lot of snail-mail from colleges has been landing in our mailbox recently. Many schools got my son's name from a couple of college fairs and sometimes online queries to them. But the mail stepped up after the PSAT scores for this year's juniors came out.

I asked East Bay college counselor Kate Augus about the mail deluge. She confirms that it's from the PSAT, "especially if (the student) checked the box that they are interested in being contacted (which most students in fact check)."

Kate adds some cautions:

Unfortunately most families are not as savvy as you and think that "Joe College U" is actually pursuing their student personally when all the college is doing is drumming up more applications to up their rejections and their rankings. It's bad for the trees and bad for students.

For those who haven't followed this issue, in the all-powerful U.S. News & World Report college rankings, institutions get a big boost from rejecting a high percentage of applicants. So while luring a lot of applicants of course means a more wonderful student population for a college, it also means a boost in the U.S. News rankings as they reject many of them.

Affirmative action vs. Asians?

From USAToday.com, a commentary by the author of the book Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War over College Affirmative Action.

Opinion: Asians, not whites, hurt most by race-conscious admissions
By Peter Schmidt

The long-running debate over affirmative action in college admissions just got more complicated, thanks to a new study that challenges the common assumption that whites are hurt most when colleges take applicants' race and ethnicity into account.

The study, published by the University of California-Los Angeles Feb. 8 in the scholarly journal InterActions, suggests that it is mainly Asian-Americans not whites who are held to a higher standard when top colleges use affirmative action.

Where such institutions have been banned from considering applicants' race, the study finds, enrollment of Asian-Americans has increased while admissions of whites remained flat or, in some cases, declined. The study, an analysis of long-term enrollment trends at several exclusive public universities, found that the Asian-American share of enrollment increased.

Read the rest of the commentary.

It hasta be FAFSA: Financial Aid 1A

Unless you plan to blow off trying for any financial aid at all, you need to grapple with the FAFSA. That's is the labyrinthine Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

It seems odd to me that this info is largely aimed at the students. I know there are students who have to work this entire process themselves, but for the many who don't, this level of detail about the family finances is not the kids' bailiwick.

But anyway. For parents/guardians or students doing the process themselves, FAFSA4caster is a place to start, aimed at juniors:

If you want to begin exploring your financial aid options and get an early start on the financial aid process, FAFSA4caster is for you! By using FAFSA4caster, you and your family will receive an early estimate of eligibility for federal student aid.

And here's the dread FAFSA itself.

Deadline for Cal Grants application March 2

Parents/guardians of seniors (and students doing this yourselves) — don't miss this crucial deadline. Information is here.

Will the non-rich have more access to Stanford?

Following up on Stanford's announcement of a new financial aid policy that makes college positively cheap to the moderate-income, San Francisco Chronicle business columnist Kathleen Pender addresses the obvious next question: Who has access to Stanford anyway?

The elite schools hope their new aid policies will encourage more low- and middle-income students to apply. But "this doesn't guarantee they will enroll more low-income students," says Robert Shireman, executive director of the Project on Student Debt.

"They tend to use criteria that make it difficult for lower-income students to qualify. If you expect someone to have 10 (advanced placement) courses, been in the orchestra and traveled Europe, then you are going to have fewer low-income students who are able to meet those expectations in the first place. That is the next issue for these colleges."

(Speaking of such criteria, I'm fascinated with the trend for high-income students to do really expensive community service trips to work in Third World countries, both to do good in the world and to burnish their college applications. A young friend who attends Lick-Wilmerding, a high-end San Francisco private high school, said information circulated about a $3,000 trip to build housing in Uganda. He wondered if a bunch of unskilled high school students were really much use, and if it wouldn't be far more useful to the impoverished of Uganda to just send the $3,000.)

Stanford: Free tuition for incomes under $100K

From today's San Francisco Chronicle: Stanford University has announced that it will offer free tuition to students from families with incomes below $100,000, and free tuition AND room/board to students from families with incomes below $60,000.

The debate on this policy, as well as Harvard's similar new program (tuition is 10% of income to families with incomes $120,000-$180,000; lower for families earning less), is whether those schools will simply admit fewer students in those income brackets. They are, undeniably, perfectly free to do that. And, by the way, it's really, really hard to get into Stanford in any case.

(Disclosure: My husband wrote the Chronicle article.)

Stanford drops tuition for some students

By Steve Rubenstein
Chronicle staff writer
Feb. 20, 2008

Palo Alto — In a radical change to its financial aid program, Stanford University will announce today that it will no longer charge tuition to students whose families earn less than $100,000 a year.

In addition, the university will waive room and board fees for students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year.

University President John Hennessy will make the announcement today on campus, university Provost John Etchemendy confirmed late Tuesday.

The university is making the change in the wake of published reports last month that its endowment had grown almost 22 percent last year, to $17.1 billion. That sum had begun to attract attention from lawmakers who want wealthy institutions to do more to reduce tuition costs.

Financial aid also will increase to families that make more than $100,000 a year.

"Thanks to our increasingly generous financial aid program ... attending Stanford will cost less than most private and many public universities," Etchemendy said.

To pay for the new tuition assistance, the university said it will increase its annual endowment payout to 5.5 percent. The new plan, which begins in the 2008-09 academic year, eliminates the need for student loans for qualifying students.

"We are committed to ensuring that Stanford asks parents and students to contribute only what they can afford," Hennessy said. "No high school senior should rule out applying to Stanford because of cost."

Stanford is among dozens of high-end colleges and universities where tuition has grown faster than the rate of inflation and where tax-exempt endowments have increased by more than 10 percent annually.

Last month, after a report from the National Association of College and University Business Officers called attention to the swollen tax-exempt endowments, a prominent U.S. senator began to question the practice.

"They're supposed to offer public benefit in return for the privilege of tax exemption," said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "If endowments increase by double digits from one year to the next, it raises the idea that maybe these schools aren't using enough of their endowments to help students afford college."

Stanford's endowment is the third largest of any university in the country, behind only Harvard and Yale.

In the past 10 years, tuition alone at Stanford increased from $21,3000 to $34,800 — roughly $7,200 more than if it had held to the rate of inflation during the decade.

The university said 3 out of 4 students currently get some financial aid. The new program is expected to reduce the average bill paid by a student's family by 16 percent.

The university said it would continue to take into account a family's assets and overall situation, in addition to earnings, in determining the financial aid it could receive. The university said it would continue its "need-blind" admission policy, guaranteeing that students will be accepted to the university regardless of their ability to pay.

How families benefit

Stanford provided these hypothetical examples to help illustrate the impact of some of the changes to its financial aid program. In each of these cases, none of the families has assets of more than $20,000 beyond their homes.

A family of four in Massachusetts: This family has one child at Stanford, a 15-year-old in high school, a father who works as a teacher and a mother as a freelance graphic designer. The parents have a total income of $54,600, and have home equity of $275,000. The new financial aid program would eliminate the $3,800 that the parents would have been expected to pay in the current school year. Their son would no longer need to borrow $2,000, though he would still be expected to contribute his earnings from work during the summer and academic year. The total scholarship would be $45,550, an increase of $5,250 from this year.

A family of six in Nebraska: This family has one child at Stanford and three others younger than 12. The mother is a homemaker, the father an engineer, and they have a total income of $80,000 and home equity of $155,000. The new plan would cut the parents' payment in half, reducing their total payment to $5,450 from $10,965. Their child at Stanford would no longer need to borrow $1,600, though still would be expected to contribute earnings from school year and summer jobs. The total scholarship would be increased by $7,100 to $40,050.

A family of three in Silicon Valley: This family has one child at Stanford. The father is a software executive, and the mother works as a receptionist. The parents would be asked to draw less from their annual income of $120,000 total and home equity of $560,000. Their parental contribution would decrease by one-third — $8,180 — to $16,135 from $24,315. Their daughter would no longer need to borrow $1,600, but would be asked to contribute the amount equal to the earnings from part-time work during the school year and a full-time summer job. The total scholarship would be $29,400, almost $10,000 more than the previous year.

Source: Stanford University

Important dates for juniors

Gordon Chalmers, college counselor at San Francisco School of the Arts, sent out this calendar of college-related dates for juniors:

March 1 – SAT test date
7 – ACT deadline for the April 12th ACT

April 1 – SAT deadline for the May 3rd test
12 – ACT test date
17– College Fair at the Concourse Center (635 Eighth St. near Townsend, San Francisco) from 3 to 7 p.m.. A must for juniors and sophomores plus parents

May 3 – SAT test date
5 – Advanced Placement testing begins
6 - SAT deadline for the June 7th test
7 – Deadline for the June 14th ACT

June 7 – SAT test date
9 – Finals begin
13 – Last day of school
14 – ACT test date

To register for tests:
ACT – go to ACT.org
SAT – go to collegeboard.com

The wise junior takes the ACT in April, the SAT in March, the SAT II in either May or June and repeats the ACT in June.
Notes:
The deadline for the September ACT will be in August before school starts
The deadline for the October SAT will be right after school starts in September
The SAT II or Subject Tests are required by the University of California but not by California State Universities. Two subjects are required by U.C.s, but it is wise to take three tests as they will take your best two.

In my own family's case, my junior took the SAT in January and the ACT last Saturday, Feb. 9. He still needs to take the SAT II (Subject Test). He's not going to take the SAT or ACT again — he's done.

College outreach? More of a deluge

I sat down to do a blog post just listing the colleges from which my son has received mail in the past few days, including some that would be definite long shots for him. I had an alert in my inbox about a blog post mentioning what must have been an interesting panel discussion between Lloyd Thacker, the nation's leading critic of college rankings (especially the U.S. News & World Report rankings), and U.S. News editor Brian Kelly. Must have been lively.

Meanwhile, envelopes large and small, plus postcards and disks, arrived in our mailbox addressed to my son from these colleges (this is maybe four or five days' worth):

Emory University, Berklee College of Music, Northeastern University, Tulane University, NYU, Washington & Lee University, Santa Clara University (two separate mailers), Drexel University, University of Oregon, University of Puget Sound, and Ohio State University (a big fat 9x12 envelope). Also a CD of a jazz concert from CSU Northridge, but that was by request — I e-mailed to get on the Jazz Studies Department's e-mail list, and they responded to ask if we'd like a CD.

Now, my son undoubtedly would not get into all of these colleges, and might have a shot at no more than a few of them. It's about drumming up lots and lots of applicants. Obviously that gives them a more desirable pool of students, but also, the more applicants they turn down, the more it boosts their rankings.

Library college workshops -- for teens only?

The San Francisco Public Library offers regularly workshops for teens on the SAT and on college financial aid, listed under Teen Programs on the library's online calendar. (There are more entertaining programs too, such as knitting and autobiographical writing for teens.)

Sounds worth checking out. Although ... I'm not really onboard with the concept of aiming financial aid workshops exclusively at the student. I know there are high-schoolers who need to work the entire college process themselves, and they should get the first and the most assistance. But for teens whose parents are present, tuned in and competent, the family finances are still the adults' realm.

On that same topic, I note that the many online resources for choosing colleges and otherwise strategizing about admissions are also aimed at the student. If a parent wants to sign up, you basically have to represent yourself as your kid. The problem with leaving the parents out of the loop is that for most applicants, the parents' input — especially about the financial piece, as in, "Can we afford it?" — really is essential. The only applicants to whom that wouldn't apply, it seems to me, are kids so rich that money is not a factor in the choice, and kids whose parents are not able or willing to contribute and participate at all. There's a pretty wide swath in between.

I'm a little unclear on the concept there. I'll keep registering as my kid on college search sites and giving my own e-mail, I guess.

Resources for finding scholarships

San Francisco School of the Arts College Counselor Gordon Chalmers sent out a list of resources for seeking scholarships. Get ready for a lot of legwork. But at least you don't have to research where to start:

• FASTWEB.com
  
• Finaid.org
  
• FindTuition.com
  
• StudentScholarship.com
  
• FinancialAidforum.com
  
• ScholarshipExperts.com
  
• CollegeGoalSundayUSA.org
  
• Collegenet.com 
  
• Freecollegescholarship.net
  
• CollegeAidaward.com
  
• Schoolsoup.com
  
• Collegedata.com
  
• ECOS for those of you with accounts
  
• Scholarship.online-free.org
  

I've added these links to our blogroll for easy reference.

Drop in and schmooze your prospective college?

I noted this cheery invitation on the website of the California State University Northridge Jazz Studies Department:

Students should take a moment to contact us so that we may know who they are in advance. Students are invited to visit our classes, meet our majors and listen in on a master class and/or rehearsal — all are welcome.

The mom of a college applicant in musical theater tells me about a response like this from CSU Fullerton, a strong school in that discipline. She heard that prospective applicants were invited to visit, but when she called the university's main number, the response was along the lines of "oh, no, they're much too busy to have applicants hanging around." But she persisted enough to call the Arts Department itself, and got an enthusiastic invitation. The faculty set up visits for the applicant with dance, voice and theater classes, invited him to sit in on a rehearsal for the upcoming musical, and arranged for current students to take the applicant and his mom to dinner.

How likely is a prospective applicant to get an invitation like that from any given department anywhere? I haven't found out, so far. But it sounds worth trying.

Spring SAT dates: don't let them go by

Here are the remaining SAT dates and deadlines for this school year.

(The SAT is given on the same days worldwide at many locations near you, unless you live in Antarctica. If you register on the late side you have to take whatever location still has room.)

Registration is closed for the next test day, which is March 1.

Next date you can register for: Saturday, May 3 (SAT and subject tests). Regular registration deadline: April 1. Late registration deadline (extra fee applies): April 10.

Last date of this school year: Saturday, June 7 (SAT and subject tests). Regular registration deadline: May 6. Late registration deadline (extra fee applies): May 15.

If you go to the College Board website and create a profile, handy reminders tailored just for you will land in your inbox (it's a little Big Brother-like, but convenient).

Written word/art/media prize: $500-$2,500

Talented teens who can lose the attitude long enough to turn out a polished entry can win $500-$2,500 in the Save Me a Spot in College scholarship contest. Click here!

Juniors, juniors everywhere: largest class ever

Is that why there seem to be so many high school juniors around, or is it just because one of them is mine? The New York Times tells us that the class of '09 is the largest high school graduating class ever.

New York Times Jan. 17, 2008
Applications to Colleges Are Breaking Records
By KAREN W. ARENSON

Applications to selective colleges and universities are reaching new heights this year, promising another season of high rejection rates and dashed hopes for many more students.

Harvard said Wednesday that it had received a record number of applicants — 27,278 — for its next freshman class, a 19 percent increase over last year. Other campuses reporting double-digit increases included the University of Chicago (18 percent), Amherst College (17 percent), Northwestern University (14 percent) and Dartmouth (10 percent).

Officials said the trend was a result of demographics, aggressive recruiting, the ease of online applications and more students applying to ever more colleges as a safety net. The swelling population of 18-year-olds is not supposed to peak until 2009, when the largest group of high school seniors in the nation’s history, 3.2 million, are to graduate. The rise in applications at three universities — Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia — came about as they ended early admissions policies, which had allowed students to receive decisions by mid-December, months ahead of others. The universities said early admissions benefited more affluent and sophisticated students and required students to commit without being able to compare financial aid offerings from various colleges.

Click to read the rest of the article.\