The Times has discontinued The Choice blog, which was created four years ago to help students demystify
college admissions and financial aid. Although we will no longer update the blog’s monthly college checklists,
virtual
guidance office sessions, and student posts, these evergreen resources will still be available in our online archives.
Additionally, The Times will continue to serve student readers at The Learning Network, a blog dedicated to teaching and learning with The
Times, and our reporters will continue to cover issues most relevant to college-bound students and their families, including the admissions
process, paying for college, and the evolving industry of higher education.
Thanks to all of our readers and contributors who made this online community so dynamic, and best wishes to all students who are navigating the admissions process.
Brennan Barnard is the director of college counseling at the Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H.
Whether you are counting down the last days of school or have already started your summer break, we hope your summertime plans involve a good book.
We’ve asked a number of college admission deans and high school counselors for their summer reading suggestions. What follows is a sampling of their recommendations. Some are specific to college admission,
and others are just great reads.
Gloria Cordes Larson is the president of Bentley University, a private institution in Waltham, Mass.
The college search is about finding a place that is right for you, one that is going to best prepare you for a rewarding life and successful career when your college years are over.
“Prepare” is the operative word here. In a recent survey of employers by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, executives said they were looking
for graduates with both field-specific skills and broad knowledge in the liberal arts for long-term career advancement. Today’s college graduates should be armed with a well-rounded, purpose-driven
education that integrates concepts and numbers, people and profits, and left brain with right.
Here are some questions for college representatives that may help prospective students prepare for these long-term goals: Read more…
As this year’s high school seniors prepare to graduate, we’ve asked Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman, authors of “The Secrets of College Success,” to update their tips for incoming college freshmen. — Tanya Abrams
Here are some things incoming students should know about college:
You Have Control Over Your Courses
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You do not have to confine yourself to the standard program — a set of preselected courses that are designed to help incoming students fulfill general education requirements. As you select your courses, be sure that each one is on the right level
for you (in some cases, one can substitute higher-level courses for more basic ones). Once you have picked your program, you should attend each of the classes and decide whether the professor is someone
from whom you can really learn. Often, there are many instructors teaching the same course. By using the drop/add process, you may be able to get a much better teacher.
Read more…
In his final post, Bryan Stromer, a senior at the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, reflects on his college admissions process and prepares for life at Vanderbilt University.
Bryan Stromer, a student at the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, is one of eight high school seniors around the world blogging about their college searches.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been receiving e-mails from Vanderbilt University about the coming fall semester. One of them prompted me to start thinking about
which classes to register for. Another introduced me to my academic adviser and student mentor (also known as my Advise-a-Dore Mentor).
These e-mails echoed to me that my final days of high school were rapidly approaching; soon, it would be time for graduation.
So much of my senior year has been focused on preparing for college that I feel I may have overlooked that this part of my life is coming to an end. As my high school experience concludes, I see that my college
journey has given me so much more than a college acceptance letter.
This journey has exposed me to some incredible and caring people who have challenged me to grow in countless ways. I would like to give thanks to them. Read more…
Pins mark the locations of Goucher College students who were studying abroad in 2005, when the college announced that all students had to study abroad.Credit Steve Ruark for The New York Times
Katie Anne Scott was the only one of her friends to leave California for college. None of them understood her desire to leave, with so many terrific options for college in her home state. And yet to Ms. Scott,
from San Diego, that was just the point. Staying in California meant she would not experience anything new.
After enrolling at Emory University in Atlanta and accommodating to the South, where the car culture and the demographics were radically different, Ms. Scott found herself applying similar logic to her options
for study abroad.
“I might not have gone to Ghana if Emory hadn’t geared me for it,” Ms. Scott said during a Skype interview earlier this year from her adopted African home. “I just have one suitcase
here, and that’s fine. But most of my friends here don’t have that experience, so it’s definitely been easier for me. Ultimately, it’s still just a plane ride.”
Ms. Scott is just the type of student of interest among advisers for studying abroad who are trying to figure out why sophomores and juniors choose to study where they do. While these advisers need to know how
best to organize their annual budgets and which programs to finance or cut, many colleges are also busy strategizing how to effectively motivate students not just to go abroad, but also to choose developing
countries — with emerging markets and less familiar cultures — as their destinations.
The correlation between going far from home for college and studying abroad in more challenging countries has not been studied closely, experts acknowledge, but more general indications of comfort level often
prove determinative. Read more…
I never went on a college tour when I was a teenager. My parents wanted me to attend the college where my father was employed; it would have been tuition-free for me, and so they weren’t eager to encourage
other explorations.
Before I left on a recent college trip with my daughter I had believed these college visits yet another unnecessary aspect of the lives of privileged children. I thought the college tour was yet another accoutrement
without value in itself, but only as something to brag about.
However, while with my oldest child, Tova, on a four-day, six-campus jaunt, I came to appreciate that one can’t know what one wants until one sees it.
I love to browse physical stores. When a book’s title catches my eye, I peruse the table of contents and see who the author thanks in his acknowledgements. This, I then realize, is what I must read next.
The book wouldn’t have occurred to me at all until I saw it. When I am in a store, I can pick up an object, try on a piece of clothing to check the color, the feel of the fabric, and most importantly
the fit.
That seems to be the most overused word in the college search process: fit. But the college tour, my daughter and I have found, is a helpful way to try the campus out for size.
This is our advice to parents and students embarking on the college tour. Read more…
This week, The Choice is publishing its monthly Counselor’s Calendar, which is intended to keep students on track during the college admission process.
This installment focuses on juniors. (Seniors, your June checklist was published on Monday.) We’ve asked Kristen Learner, the director of college counseling at The Benjamin School in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and Jeffrey Wong, a college counselor at the school, for admission advice for the class of 2014. — Tanya Abrams
High school graduations, N.B.A. finals, the first days of summer and the last days of school make it easy to get wrapped up in fun and festivities. However, this month also offers many opportunities for rising
seniors to continue the college admission process.
Juniors, here is your college admission checklist for June: Read more…
This week, The Choice is publishing its monthly Counselor’s Calendar, which is intended to keep students on track during the college admission process.
This installment focuses on graduating seniors. (Juniors, your June checklist will be published on Tuesday.) We have asked Nikki Magaziner Mills, the director of college counseling at St. Albans School in Washington, for admission advice for the class of 2013.
— Tanya Abrams
The graduation invitations have been sent, and all that is left of high school may be giving handshakes, receiving diplomas and accepting well-deserved awards. Congratulations! You are on your way!
Seniors, here is your college admission checklist for June: Read more…
Every year, as one cohort of incoming students is accepted and another crop starts filling out applications, colleges across the country calculate one last measurement of their admission season success: the yield.
The admission yield percentage reflects the number of accepted students who have placed deposits, a definitive indicator of the institution they have decided to attend. With that data in hand, colleges also
report how many, if any, of their wait-list applicants will be offered admission.
We reached out recently to several dozen colleges to find out how many of their accepted applicants had placed deposits and how much those colleges intended to use their wait lists. The preliminary figures,
which will be updated as more data arrive, are included in the chart above. (To compare this year’s cohort to previous years’, click on the tabs of the worksheet above. You may also view
a printer-friendly version of the chart.) Read more…
