CollegeFit

Grit for Juniors

Beth Shak — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 02:05:37 +0000

“I’m delighted to inform you that the Admissions Committee has voted to admit you to Middlebury College for the term beginning in September, 2013….Our decision-making process considers not only the academic qualifications of our candidates, but also their character and fortitude….”

“It is with great pleasure that I write to offer you admission to the University of Virginia and to invite you to join the first-year class in the College of Arts and Sciences. Your inclusion in this group is a testament to your hard work and superior academic performance as well as the personal qualities that distinguish you from your peers.”

Tonight I am thinking about my Juniors who have taken their ACT today, preceded by their SATs last Saturday, and further preceded by their AP exams last month. They are also taking their finals this week and next. They are fueled by the promise of a respite during the summer, slated to begin in only a few short weeks, during which they will have the opportunity to work on their college application essays and to prepare for yet one more (perhaps final) round of standardized testing in the Fall. They can hardly wait to power up their Common App accounts when the Common Application goes live for next year on August 1.

What keeps these kids going? It’s not the cheering of their parents, who by this point are too awestruck by the perseverance of these kids to do much more than step aside, fearful of doing something to break the (albeit fragile) momentum that drives these students forward. There is no external force that can push these students as hard as they can push themselves. They are motivated by an internal drive to perform to the best of their abilities. Grit provides their adrenalin. Grit has kept them working hard not just during these final weeks of junior year, but week after week, month after month, year after year.

And guess what? Colleges notice grit. Many of the most selective colleges, like Middlebury College and the University of Virginia in the opening passages above, actually place a significant value on “character and personal qualities” in the admission process. Whether they call it character, personal fortitude, persistence, perseverance or determination, one character trait of enormous value (and not just in college admissions) is Grit.

Colleges seek Grit because Grit is becoming more and more recognized as a significant factor in determining who will succeed. Indeed, the work of University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth has determined that Grit – the tendency to sustain interest and effort toward a very long-term goal – is a significant indicator of success. Duckworth claims that Grit contributes to success more than Talent and more than IQ.

Colleges seek students who are likely to succeed and recognize Grit as a significant predictor of college retention and overall success. According to information they report on the Common Data Set, some of the colleges that place Character on equal footing with Grades and Academic Rigor (“Very Important” in the admissions decision) include Amherst, Bowdoin, Babson, Brown, Bucknell, Bates, Claremont-McKenna, Colby, William and Mary, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Chapman, Emory, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Middlebury, NYU, Pomona, Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, Tufts, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Washington & Lee, Wellesley and Yale. Others like Bentley, Colgate, Boston College, Carleton, Case Western, Lehigh, Trinity College, Notre Dame, Wesleyan and Williams consider Character only slightly less significant (“Important.”)

So Juniors, when you are working on your essays this summer, be sure to tell your story. Colleges will not know about your grit unless you tell them about it in your application. You can do this through the story you tell in your essay or in the way you are described in your counselor’s or teacher’s letters of recommendation. Be sure your counselor is aware of any obstacles you have overcome during your high school years. Prepare a resume and give it to your counselor so she can easily reference your achievements and attest to your perseverance.

But most of all, be confident that your grit is likely to be more valuable than any singular “dream college” might be in helping you to achieve your goals.

5-5-5-5: It’s time to pick your courses!

Beth Shak — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:44:21 +0000

High school students are solidifying their course selections for next year, and (rising seniors especially) often wonder about the impact of dropping a foreign language or lab science.

College admissions officers are most impressed with students who have taken 4 years of 5 “academic solids” – English, Math, Social Studies, Science (with Lab) and Foreign Language. An admissions officer might summarize an applicant’s coursework to his colleagues at a committee meeting as “5-5-5-5”; this means that the student has taken all 5 academic solids in each of Grades 9-12. This is basically a prerequisite for highly selective colleges, although there can be more flexibility among the majority of colleges that are less selective. Colleges typically outline their minimum requirements on their Admissions pages of their website. Among selective colleges, however, successful applicants often exceed the minimum requirements.

It takes under an hour to check out a few college websites in the early high school years to determine their admission requirements. This can prevent you from making a high school curriculum decision that you will regret later.

For example, the University of Vermont reports these admission requirements:

UVM – Minimum entrance requirements
four years of English
three years of mathematics (Algebra I, Algebra II and geometry (or equivalents)
two years of the same foreign language (American sign language meets this requirement)
three years of a natural or physical science, including a laboratory science
three years of social sciences

In contrast, minimum entrance requirements for Dartmouth College look like this:

“Most applicants to Dartmouth present strong secondary school transcripts that include the following courses:

4 years of English
4 years of mathematics (often through calculus, if available)
4 years of social science
4 years of laboratory science
4 years of a foreign language”

As you can see, Dartmouth is looking for 5-5-5-5. Exceeding the minimum requirements and striving for the 5-5-5-5 benchmark is a sound admissions strategy for many colleges, not just the ultra-selective.

Want more? This article dissects the admissions-speak of discussions surrounding an applicant’s high school curriculum.

Finding Merit Aid Behind The Need Aid Door

Beth Shak — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 14:40:54 +0000

True or False?

Work hard in high school, get your best grades in the most challenging courses and score well on your standardized tests and you will be well-positioned to receive scholarships at many colleges. True… but what about colleges that don’t offer merit scholarships?

Don’t apply to colleges that don’t offer merit scholarships, because they will be more expensive. False.

Private colleges are too expensive. It depends.

Confused Yet?

The truth is that for most students, a college’s sticker price is meaningless. The only students who pay the sticker price are students who are not eligible for financial aid at colleges that don’t offer merit aid (Don’t assume that that’s you.) For everyone else, your net price will depend on these things:

your family’s demonstrated financial need
how much of that need your college will meet
whether your college includes loans in its financial aid package
your academic profile
the extent to which you might help a college to meet its’ own institutional goals

In this article, I want to talk about how your academic profile can enable you to receive what is essentially merit aid at colleges that don’t offer any.

Huh?

Here’s how it works. The most selective colleges typically do not offer merit-based aid, because they consider all of their matriculating students to be meritorious. But they do meet 100 percent of your demonstrated financial need. Simply by virtue of being admitted to one of these schools (by virtue of your academic merit,) you have access to some of the most generous need-based financial aid in the nation. This is essentially merit aid through the need-based aid door.

All of these colleges with full-need policies are competitive, some ridiculously so, with single digit acceptance rates. As these things usually work out, the ultra-selective colleges are typically the most generous. But some of these colleges are within the reach of a student with a combined CR/M SAT score in the 1200s who is in the top 20% of her high school class. In fact, many of the “full-need” colleges in this category – selective but not impossibly so – also offer merit aid! The sweet spot indeed.

Here’s an example of how full-need policies can work.

Assumptions:

Family Adjusted Gross Income $120,000
Parental Assets – $10,000
Student Income – $1000
Student Assets – $3000
2 married parents, 2 children (student plus a 14 year old sibling)
$200K in home equity

Here’s what this family would encounter at three colleges: one ultra-selective full need school (Yale), one less selective full need school (Trinity) and one private college that does not meet full need (Roger Williams.) Sticker prices below include direct costs (tuition and room/board) as indicated on current Net Price Calculators.

Sticker Price Versus Net Price

	Yale	Trinity College	Roger Williams

Cost of Attendance (Sticker Price)	$59,800	$61,756	$46,296

Need Based Grant	$45,142	$32,604	$4,300

Merit Scholarship	0	0	$11,000

NET PRICE	$14,658	$29,152	$30,996

Interestingly, you can see how Trinity’s net price for this student turns out to be lower than that at Roger Williams, even though Trinity’s sticker price is much, much higher. That’s the power of a full-need financial aid policy.

Your grades and the rigor of your coursework is not the only factor considered by admissions committees at a selective college, but it is generally the most important one. Although many high schools no longer provide rankings on high school transcripts, the admissions committee can often derive your approximate rank by examining your transcript in the context of your school profile. Either way, your calculated rank is typically derived by weighting your courses, with more weight given to honors and AP courses, to the extent they are available at your high school. Generally speaking, you need to be taking some of the more rigorous course options available to you in order to end up with a rank in the top deciles of your class.

Here is a compilation of all the full-need colleges together with the standardized test scores of their enrolled freshmen and the percentage of enrolled freshmen in the top decile of their high school class. You’ll want your academic profile to be the best it can be to give you the best chance to be admitted to one of these colleges and have access to the most generous need-based financial aid policies.

Academic Profiles at Full-Need Colleges

College	25th-75th Percentile SAT CR	25th-75th Percentile SAT Math	25th-75th Percentile ACT Comp	% Top Decile High School Class	Notes

Amherst College	670 – 780	680 – 770	30 – 34	84
Barnard College	630 – 730	620 – 710	28 – 32	82
Bates College	640 – 720	640 – 710	29 – 32	69
Boston College	630 – 720	640 – 740	30 – 33	81
Bowdoin College	690 – 760	680 – 760	31 – 34	86
Brown University	660 – 770	670 – 780	30 – 34	92
Bryn Mawr College	600 – 710	600 – 730	27 – 32	65
California Institute of Technology	730 – 800	770 – 800	34 – 35	100
Carleton College	660 – 750	660 – 760	30 – 33	70
Claremont McKenna	660 – 750	690 – 770	30 – 33	78
Colby College	610 – 710	620 – 720	28 – 32	61
Colgate University	630 – 720	650 – 750	29 – 32	72
College of the Holy Cross	610 – 690	620 – 690	28 – 31	56
College of William and Mary	640 – 730	630 – 740	29 – 33	81
Columbia University	690 – 780	700 – 790	32 – 35	98
Connecticut College	620 – 710	620 – 700	29 – 31	52
Cornell University	650 – 740	680 – 770	30 – 34	87
Dartmouth College	680 – 780	680 – 770	30 – 34	93
Davidson College	610 – 720	620 – 720	28 – 32	74
Duke University	670 – 760	690 – 790	31 – 34	90
Franklin and Marshall College	590 – 680	630 – 710	27 – 30	na
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering	690 – 760	720 – 790	32 – 34	na
Georgetown University	660 – 750	660 – 750	29 – 33	92
Grinnell College	630 – 740	660 – 760	30 – 33	69
Hamilton College	650 – 730	660 – 740	30 – 33	75
Harvard University	700 – 800	710 -800	32- 35	95
Harvey Mudd	680 – 770	740 – 800	33 – 35	88
Haverford College	670 – 750	660 – 740	31 – 34	94
Lafayette College	580 – 680	620 – 720	27 – 31	63
Macalester College	640 – 730	630 – 735	28 – 32	65
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	680 – 770	740 – 800	33 – 35	97
Middlebury College	630 – 730	630 – 740	30 – 33	74
Mount Holyoke College	610 – 720	610 – 730	28 – 31	56
Northwestern University	690- 770	700 – 790	31 – 34	90
Oberlin College	640 – 730	620 – 720	28 – 32	61
Occidental College	600 – 690	610 – 700	27 – 31	55
Pitzer College	610 – 700	610 – 700	na	60	Only 14% submit SATS
Pomona College	690 – 770	690 – 770	31 – 34	91
Princeton University	690 – 800	710 – 800	31 – 35	96
Reed College	660 – 750	630 – 730	29 – 33	52	Reed not full-need for waitlist
Rice University	680 – 760	710 – 790	31 – 34	88
Scripps College	640 – 750	620 – 710	28 – 33	83
Skidmore College	560 – 670	570 – 680	25 – 30	43
Smith College	620 – 730	620 – 740	28 – 31	62
St. Olaf College	560 – 700	570 – 690	26 – 32	52
Stanford University	680 – 780	700 – 790	31 – 34	95
Swarthmore College	680 – 770	680 – 770	29 – 34	88
Thomas Aquinas College	590 – 700	570 – 640	23 – 31	29
Trinity College	570 – 660	580 – 680	25 – 29	23
Tufts University	680 – 760	680 – 760	30 – 33	90
Union College	590 – 680	630 – 720	28 – 31	64
University of Chicago	720 – 800	710 – 790	32 – 35	98
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill	600 – 690	610 – 710	27 – 32	78
University of Notre Dame	660 – 750	680 – 770	na	90
University of Pennsylvania	670 – 760	690 – 780	30 – 34	94
University of Richmond	600 – 710	620 – 720	29 – 32	59
University of Rochester	600 – 700	640 – 760	29 – 33	72	meets 97% of need
University of Southern California	620 – 720	660 – 760	29 – 33	na
University of Virginia	620 – 720	630 – 740	28 – 33	89
Vanderbilt University	710 – 780	720 – 800	32 – 34	91
Vassar College	670 – 750	650 – 740	30 – 33	69
Wake Forest University	590 – 690	620 – 730	28 – 32	77
Washington and Lee University	660 – 730	660 – 730	30 – 33	81
Washington University in St. Louis	700 – 770	720 – 800	32 – 34	92
Wellesley College	650 – 740	640 – 740	30 – 33	78
Wesleyan College	650 – 740	640 – 740	30 – 33	78
Williams College	680 – 790	670 – 770	31 – 34	95
Yale University	710 – 800	710 – 790	31 – 35	95

Data above is for class entering in Fall 2014, except for the following colleges for which data is for the class entering in Fall 2013: Connecticut College, Duke, Georgetown, Pitzer, University of Pennsylvania, Yale. For Middlebury, the % in top decile is for the class entering in Fall 2013.

Choosing Your Safety School: The Theory of Relative Deprivation

Beth Shak — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 14:09:06 +0000

Common wisdom frequently dictates that students should always elect to attend the “best” school to which they are accepted. Whether “best” is determined by some intangible measure of reputation, US News and World Report ranking or the lowest acceptance rate, there is often inadequate lip service paid to the merits of intentionally choosing one of your “likelies.” Why in the world would a student want to consider selecting one of his “likelies” (aka “safeties”) when he has also been accepted to some “matches” and “reaches”?

Malcolm Gladwell answers this question better than I ever could in this video explaining “The Theory of Relative Deprivation.” In a nutshell, he offers proof that STEM students are more successful when they are smarter than their classmates. In other words, he tells us that the smartest science/math student at a less selective college is more successful than the average science/math student at Harvard.

This incredibly entertaining and enlightening video will open your mind to a whole new way of thinking about your college selection. As an added benefit, you are more likely to secure merit aid when you are at the top of the admissions pool!

Don’t Create a Scandal: Know What To Expect From Your Student Loans

Beth Shak — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:24:55 +0000

If you max out your federal student loans over a 4 year undergraduate career, you will have student loans totaling $27,000. At current interest rates and under the standard 10 year repayment plan, this will require payments of $282 per month. Private loans beyond this amount will result in higher repayments and can make it tough!

College is a wise investment in your future, but you need to know what your loans will mean down the road. The federal government now offers repayment options with lower initial payments that increase together with your income.

Consider financial factors in your college fit and don’t end up sounding like Quinn Perkins in this video!

Not So Fast … Pulling the Trigger on Early Decision 2

Beth Shak — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 21:35:54 +0000

The deadline for applying Early Decision 2 is only days away at many selective colleges. Early Decision 2 can be an appealing option for students who were denied (or deferred) at their Early Decision I choice. It can also be attractive for many who just needed more time to decide on their first choice college, or for those who needed to polish off some fine fall grades and/or another standardized test to be more competitive in the admissions process.

Like ED1, ED2 is a binding application. In other words, if you are accepted, you are expected to attend. However, a student is released from the binding nature of the ED application if he is unable to attend due to financial considerations. The language in the ED agreement that must be submitted with the application looks like this :

“Should a student who applies for financial aid not be offered an award that makes attendance possible, the student may decline the offer of admission and be released from the Early Decision commitment.”

Every college is required to have a Net Price Calculator on its website, which enables a family to enter data regarding its’ income and assets in order to yield an estimate of the student’s net price. It is a good idea to go through this exercise to be sure that the college being considered for early decision is at least in the ballpark for affordability. If a student is accepted ED but the financial aid offered is not consistent with the results of the Net Price Calculator, or if the family has special circumstances which are not reflected in the FAFSA and/or PROFILE, the family should always consult with the financial aid office to see whether additional assistance might be possible. ED applications should always be made in good faith.

One of the most compelling reasons for considering Early Decision is the statistical bump in admissions that it frequently provides. But ED2 does not offer quite as much of a statistical advantage as ED1. The acceptance rate for ED1 exceeds that of ED2 by more than 10 percentage points at all five of these selective liberal arts colleges.

College Acceptance Rates: Class of 2018

Early Decision 1 Early Decision 2 Regular Decision Overall

Bates 45.2 35.3 23.2 25.4

Colby 54.1 38.8 25.8 28.1

Colgate 48.4 36.9 24.3 26.2

Hamilton 40.7 29.2 24.9 26.4

Middlebury 41.8 15.8 15.1 17.3

Applicants typically look to the overall acceptance rates (column 4) to consider their admissions chances. It is actually more realistic to review the Regular Decision acceptance rates (column 3), which do not include the higher acceptance rates attributable to Early Decision applicants. It can help you to decide whether ED2 makes sense by comparing the ED2 acceptance rate to the Regular Decision rate. Except for Middlebury, ED2 still provides an advantage in admissions for the above schools. Any student considering ED2 should know these numbers for his target school in order to make an informed decision. We can help you to assemble this information and to decide if ED2 is right for you.

Colgate University

Colby College

Many schools also give you the option of applying Regular Decision and then switching your application to ED2 before a deadline. For example, Colgate allows a student to apply Regular Decision and then switch to ED2 before March 1, with the submission of the Early Decision Agreement. This provides some extra time to consider strategy and finances.

One HUGE caveat – Early Decision is not a way to gain admission to a school for which you are not qualified. In other words, if your grades and test scores are below the averages for the college’s most recently enrolled class, ED is not likely to give you an edge. But if your academic profile is as good or better than the averages for the most recent class, you just might be admitted under Early Decision before space becomes scarce in the regular round.

Hamilton College

Bates College

Many liberal arts colleges fill almost half of their classes in the early decision rounds. Early Decision helps colleges to deal with the otherwise unpredictable enrollment of students admitted in the Regular Decision round. If your academic profile is above the 75th percentile, your essays are strong and your extracurriculars are solid, they might love to take you during the Early Decision round when they know you will attend and your stats will raise the academic profile of their school.

Middlebury College