The Enlightened College Applicant: A New Approach to the Search and Admissions Process

257 Pages·2016·11.65 MB·English

by  Andrew Belasco

The Enlightened College Applicant
The Enlightened College Applicant
A New Approach to the Search and Admissions
Process
Andrew Belasco and Dave Bergman
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB
Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Belasco and Dave Bergman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-4758-2690-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4758-2692-0 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To mom.
—A.B.
For Leslie and Clara, my two loves.
—D.B.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
The Enlightened College Applicant: An Introduction
1 The Big Picture
2 The Enlightened College Applicant: What Really Matters in a College
3 Getting In: Admission Mythbusters
4 Getting In: Improving Your Odds
5 Getting In: Applying
6 Planning the Financial End
7 College Advice for the Career Minded: So You Want to Be a . . .
Key Takeaways and Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 Top Honors Colleges
Figure 4.1 Selective Summer Programs
Figure 4.2 Great Colleges with Less-Than-Great Geographic Diversity
Figure 5.1 Admission Rates—2014–15: ED versus RD
Figure 5.2 Colleges Offering ED II
Figure 5.3 Admission Rates—2014–15: EA versus RD
Figure 5.4 The Most Selective Test-Optional Colleges
Figure 5.5 Common Alumni Interview Questions
Figure 5.6 Selective and Transfer-Friendly Colleges
Figure 6.1 Institutional Net Price (By Family Income)
Figure 6.2 Colleges with Great (Need-Based) Financial Aid
Figure 6.3 Selective and Generous: A Sample of Highly Competitive Colleges Awarding
Significant Merit Aid
Figure 6.4 Going Abroad: Popular Undergraduate Destinations for US Students
Figure 7.1 Top Feeders to Elite Medical Schools
Figure 7.2 Popular Health Care Professions
Figure 7.3 Top Feeders to Elite Law Schools
Figure 7.4 Careers Related to Law
Figure 7.5 Top Feeders (Engineering)
Figure 7.6 Top Feeders (Tech Companies)
Figure 7.7 Top Feeders (Banking)
Figure 7.8 Top Feeders to Elite MBA Programs
Figure 7.9 Careers Related to Business
Figure 7.10 Colleges Producing the Most PhDs in Psychology
Figure 7.11 PhD Productivity: A Ranking of Colleges
Figure 7.12 Top Feeders—News and Media
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the support and suggestions of our partner, Michael
Trivette. Michael, this book couldn’t have been possible without your help.
We also wish to sincerely thank our editor at Rowman & Littlefield, Sarah Jubar,
whose exceptional dedication to every aspect of The Enlightened College Applicant
throughout the publishing process truly went above and beyond.
The Enlightened College Applicant
An Introduction
Early in Lois Lowry’s classic young adult novel The Giver, a group of adolescents
nervously await their fate at The Ceremony of Twelve, where town elders will single-
handedly and irrevocably determine their vocational futures. For the book’s protagonist,
Jonas, and his peers, everything is riding on this one moment. How they will spend
every day of their lives going forward rests fully in the hands of these powerful
decision-makers.
At the ceremony, some are selected to high-prestige posts like doctors, scientists, or
engineers and others to more modest posts like street cleaners, landscapers, or general
laborers. In this fictional society, The Ceremony of Twelve is the watershed moment in
young people’s lives, and also one in which they have absolutely no agency.
Sadly, more than a decade and a half into the new millennium, the way in which the
college admissions process is approached by many Americans might as well be termed
the Ceremony of Eighteen. Each April, swarms of teens await word from their
prospective universities with bated breath, their hopes and dreams unhealthily tied to
gaining acceptance at a very select subset of name-brand schools.
Prospective college students, we do not envy you. You live in the age of information
overload, where advice about college admissions is abundant to a fault. Chatter and
hearsay on the topic is ubiquitous. In affluent neighborhoods, this phenomenon runs on
overdrive: “If he doesn’t get into Columbia, I just don’t know what he’ll do,” says the
woman in line at the deli as she waits for her chicken salad order to be filled.
The news media throws petrol on the inferno, regularly highlighting shrinking
admission rates at elite colleges. Attempts to navigate through the cacophony of voices
often result in students and families left adrift in the proverbial mile-wide, inch-deep
ocean of cyberspace. Going down the Internet rabbit hole, they land on College
Confidential or some other online forum, taking as gospel the words of some of the
most negative, misinformed fear mongers on the planet (Insert FoxNews/MSNBC joke,
depending on your political affiliation).
An internal monologue begins to develop in the heads of even the most reasonable,
logical young people. “If I don’t get into this school, my chances at success are
doomed.” Level-headed parents, even, ironically, those who attended nonelite colleges