Feeder Schools

We're just about at the point where you'll have whittled down your list of college possibilities from a hundred or more to a few dozen or less. In the past few posts, I've written about finding schools with good programs in the areas of study in which you're interested. If you have a goal in mind that includes graduate study, you should consider whether your choices are good "feeder schools".

I've written about what a great resource Dr. Sowell's Choosing a College is. In it he speaks about schools that are good "feeder schools", those from which many respected graduate programs accept applicants. By reading Dr. Sowell's book, I found out that the Office of Institutional Research at Franklin and Marshall College issued a publication called, Baccalaureate Origins of Doctorate Recipients: A Ranking of 4-Year Private Institutions. I contacted the research office at Franklin and Marshall and they no longer issue the publication but Dr. Alan Caniglia was kind enough to respond to me and give me a lead that resulted in finding an article out of the University of Illinois. "Graduate and Research Programs" gives synopses of different sites that offer rankings and information about graduate programs. Studies are referenced that show which pre-professional undergraduate programs graduate the most students who get into graduate programs. I found the article at http://www.library.illinois.edu/edx/rankings/rankgrad.html The National Research Council in Washington is given as a source as it is in Dr. Sowell's book. However, these printouts are not free. Your guidance office or library might have a volume of the printouts entitled, Baccaulaureate Origins of Doctorate Recipients from US Universities.

What I found most helpful in the University of Illinois article was the synopsis of a great FREE article that was written by Elizabeth Bernstein, staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The article is entitled, "Want to Go to Harvard Law?" and was published in September 2003. It is available at http://wsjclassroom.com/college/feederschools.htm on The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition site. (I am struck by the number of times in these posts that I've referred to something I've found through The Wall Street Journal. It is a fantastic resource!) The article gives a list of the most effective feeder colleges and the methodology by which they were chosen. It is an excellent tool for students whose career goal necessitates graduate school.

That may have seemed like a very detailed and roundabout way to direct you to a site I could have given you in one paragraph. In December I posted about "leads", detecting information from a site that leads you to another where you learn even more. That's what I did to find this information. You should be doing the same. In this advanced technological age you can find information in a matter of hours that formerly might have taken days or even weeks. I remember snail-mail and microfiche! (I just asked my 20 something daughter how to spell that word and she said, "What's that?" You kids have it easy!)

Choosing a College, Continued

In the third post in this series on choosing a college, we are moving from websites to books. You remember those compilations of fact and fiction produced on tree pulp for general consumption. I guess that definition would have to be revised in this "Kindle" generation. Forget the social commentary. In this post I intend to focus on the Princeton Review's publication, The Best 373 Colleges.

In Choosing a College, Dr. Thomas Sowell seems not to place much stock in many of the college guides he reviewed. However, his book was published in 1989 and the Princeton Review series was first published in 1992. Had Dr. Sowell been able to include it in his treatise, I think he may have found many worthwhile features. This post will concentrate on a few that I think are most beneficial.

-The book provides a guide as to what a student should do during each year of high school to enable her to be admitted into college.

-It provides tips for getting financial aid in the form of scholarships and grants.

-It provides listings of "great schools" for 15 of the most popular undergraduate majors and the rationale for inclusion in the lists. The book gives detailed descriptions of how schools were selected from their surveys which included admisnistrative personnel and students.

-The Review presents 62 top 20 rankings in eight categories:
Academics/Administrative
Quality of Life
Politics
Demographics
Town Life
Extracurriculars
Social Scene
School by Type

-There are three "honor rolls" dealing with Financial Aid, Fire Safety and Green Rating.

In Part 3 of this volume, the schools that have been rated as the 373 best are then presented in complete profiles that contain facts and impressions by which you can decide to include or exclude the specific institution from your list of application possibilities.

It's a very good guide which I can personally recommend. Regarding good college guides, Dr. Sowell writes that,
Guides that are in your home can be read
whenever the time and the mood are right,
over a period of weeks and months.
Special things about particular colleges
can be underlined and comments put in the
margins to be looked at perhaps months
later, when you are ready to decide where
to send your applications - and still later
again, when making your final choice among
the colleges that accepted you. (p. 149)
Come to think of it, can you do all that with a Kindle? For these reasons and those listed above, I believe that the Princeton Review's, The Best 373 Colleges is a very wise investment.

As we begin the Spring Season (in reality, Spring Training), the constraints of other commitments will confine these blogs to a biweekly schedule. (I always liked alliteration!) The next post will be on March 16.

Choosing a College

By this point you should have an idea of what you would like to do and how to prepare for it. Does your career of interest require college, trade or technical school or even apprenticeship, a topic we'll investigate in the future? For those who require a college degree, the biggest dilemma which now presents itself is which college to choose. An invaluable book which I've referenced in the past is, Choosing a College by Dr. Thomas Sowell. The book doesn't seem to be available from Amazon.com but you may be able to find it in the library. (You remember the library, that brick building somewhere near the center of town with those pre-Kindle paper things called books!?!) Dr. Sowell is a brilliant economist who is quite prolific in writing about economics, education and history. As stated previously, the book was first published in 1989. While some of the information about specific schools is dated, the philosophy and technique underlying the college choice process is relevant and that's the major purpose of the book.

There are numerous resources available to help you in your search. Since I wrote about the College Board in the last post outlining use of PSAT results, I'll begin with that. There are many features of www.collegeboard.com that are excellent resources for students, parents and education professionals. The college search and match features are well worth investigating. If you know of a college in which you're interested, you can search it by name and get a complete profile of one of over 3,500 schools. If you haven't a clue or only have a school or two that you know of, use the college match feature. You are asked a series of questions which, based on your responses, will match you with specific schools that meet your preferences as to size, cost, majors and a host of relevant characteristics. You can then use the list of results to further refine your choices.

An excellent feature on this site is the side by side comparison. You can compare up to four colleges at one time. Once you put in the names, a one page "side by side comparison" results which gives you location, admissions criteria, size and cost. In addition, there is the "How do I stack up?" feature which lets you put in personal information as to your grades and test scores and results in a comparison of how you "stack up" against the competition at that school. You can save all of these results in a personal account which you can set up free of charge as a PSAT/SAT taker. This site is definitely a keeper!

The Glitch to Gliding

One of the key factors in college admissions is the applicant's GPA, Grade Point Average. When I first began counselling, my high school did not "weight" grades. Weighting is a formula by which grades in honors and advanced placement courses are given greater numerical value, i.e., weight, to compensate for the fact that they are more difficult in many aspects than core college preparatory courses - bonus points, if you will. It didn't take a student long to figure out that if he resisted placement in these advanced levels he would not risk his GPA. Students who didn't take the honors level courses would often rank higher in the class than those who challenged themselves with more rigorous placements. I campaigned for weighting, and, shortly after I began working in the high school, we had a weighted GPA and ranking system, much to the chagrin of those who hoped to continue to glide and not suffer any disadvantage.

Coasting through the core curriculum may have seemed to these students to be the way to go. They would be able to shine with little effort and get great letters of recommendation from teachers who welcomed their presence in class. They were only hurting themselves. One of the other big factors in college admissions is the rigor of the secondary school program. This factor is right up there with the GPA and rank in admissions criteria. College profiles in the Princeton Review's 2011 edition of the Best 373 Colleges back up this statement. Since many competitive colleges ask for a copy of the high school profile, they know if advanced placement opportunities existed for students who received A's and only took core college prep courses.

Another reason to take the most difficult classes you can handle is to challenge yourself. If you don't, you may be the one left behind in difficult college classes. Many of your fellow students who took honors and advanced placement courses may be knowledgeable about topics to which you weren't even exposed. Dr. Thomas Sowell, a brilliant economist and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University wrote a book, Choosing a College, a Guide for Parents and Students. It was published in 1989. While some of the information about specific programs and places is dated, the philosophy of how to make this most important choice is sound and relevant. In it he states, "In the admissions game, 'winning' cannot be defined as simply getting in. At a minimum, it must also include reasonable prospects of survival...". By testing and challenging yourself in high school, you can maximize your chances of not just surviving but thriving in college.

In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday and the fact that I'm hosting dinner, I will not be able to blog next Wednesday. I wish you all a very Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving. Patience, some of your relatives may not be so thrilled to see you either!!! Remember the great Ralph Kramden's mantra - "Pins and needles, needles and pins. A happy man is a man who grins." Keep smiling!