I just had to do a double take in reference to how many days of NACAC I still needed to blog about - I'm back in NYC but there is still so much to share from New Orleans!
Friday started for me bright and early with a pre-session breakfast hosted by the UC system. We got a great snapshot of a variety of UC campuses and the general feeling seemed to, understandably, be that the UCs are eager to increase out of state enrollment. Something that I view as a win-win situation for students having the chance to experience some really great schools with strong reputations (and 300+ days of sunshine per year). The most important thing for applicants to understand is the unique UC application - only able to be submitted during the month of November and 100% student driven with no transcript, rec letters, or outside input. The average non-resident GPA is 3.4 and all students must be UC eligible via a list of A-G subjects required by the schools. Luckily, the ElRo curriculum means that these A-G credits are never going to be a problem. The criteria for the arts credit where the student is in a year long course, where the first semester builds upon the second, could trip a few people up, but there is some flexibility for out of state students.
The first session I attended was called 'College Admission and Counseling in the 21st Century.' As if I wasn't already a huge fan of Lee Coffin (Dean of Undergraduate Admission at Tufts ;) this session bumped him up to a whole new level. His explanation and defense of the Tufts supplement detailed how Tufts has maintained selectivity AND worked to circumvent the poisonous cycle of staffs being asked to continually drive up application numbers and test scores and drive down admission rates was both refreshing and transparent. The theme of this session dealt with how the 21st Century selective admission is a combination of both data and voice, one without the other will make it hard for a student to be admitted.
Next, I went to a scholarship session with panelists from the Coca-Cola Scholarship, an individual from Fastweb.com, and the author of Million Dollar $cholar who is currently a Junior at Morehouse. They did a great job of dispelling some myths about scholarships and giving some resources about where students can go to apply. I won't list every myth here (to see them, you can buy the book Secrets to Winning a Scholarship) but two I'll note are:
1) "You can rely on scholarships to fund your entire tuition." In reality, more than 2/3 of scholarship winners win less than $2,500. The attitude to take is obviously one of effort and optimism, but don't put all your eggs in one basket expecting to use scholarships to fund the full bill.
2) "The majority of scholarships are for underrepresented minority students." In fact, the data shows that middle class caucasian students are over-represented statistically among scholarship winners and they are the ones with the highest probability of winning. I recommend interpreting this in a way that applies to a few of his other points too: you'll never win if you don't enter. If you find scholarships that you don't qualify, keep looking, they are out there. As the other panelist who is a current student shared, you need a scholarship state of mind if you want to win (aka focus on the positive and never give up).
The panel recommended visiting www.scholarshipproviders.org for an additional scholarship resources besides Naviance, Fastweb, and the individual Financial Aid websites of the school.
The afternoon session I went to was about the results of a study that investigated if there is gender or racial/ethnic bias in letters of recommendation. To the researchers dismay (but my delight) the study did not find any evidence of bias on most of the measures they looked at. It was interesting to think about this issue though as I get ready to write 100+ letters, we can always challenge ourselves to be more cognizant of these kind of issues.
On Friday night there were many great receptions to choose from, but we ended up going to the events sponsored by Tulane, Catholic Colleges Admissions Association, and the California schools. Thank you to each of the sponsors for treating us so nicely-- it was a long day but worth it!
Posts
