President's Day: College Style

Lincoln_DC
Originally uploaded by maryn0503

We don't have school this week - a perfect opportunity for 11th and 12th grade students to visit college campuses without missing school. I'm going to be taking a break from blogging but I couldn't resist posting this fun link from Wikipedia with a list of where every US President went to college.* There may be a few campuses on there that you weren't expecting. See you next week!

*All but 7 US Presidents have attended college - the last to be elected without going to college was Grover Cleveland.

AP Mania!

This week the 10th and 11th grade will each have an assembly to talk about AP offerings for the 2011-2012 year. As a small school (with a small teaching staff), we have to strike a very careful balance in terms of the number of AP subjects we can offer and the size of the AP classes. This means that every year some students are disappointed because we either don't offer a course they wish they could take or we are not able to include them in the course due to more demand than there are slots (or their failure to meet eligibility criteria).

You can read more about our AP Policy here, but click below where you'll find some basics for AP course selection.

The Time Has Come!

Junior College Meeting forms went out last week. The ball is officially rolling for Juniors. Reminder: in order to get your appointment assigned, students must not only return the signed form, filled out with their scheduling preferences, but they are also required to fill out the Junior survey in Naviance. This can be found by logging on to Naviance, clicking on the 'about me' tab, and clicking on the survey link on the left hand side of the page. The survey must be officially submitted in order for me to know that it is complete. And be careful, the page will time out and you will lose your work if you don't save often. Parents/Guardians do not have a Naviance survey to complete, but they are invited to submit a parent questionnaire to aid in the writing of the letter of recommendation. Another copy of the Junior Parent Questionaire can be downloaded here.

I've got over 140 meetings to schedule, so please be patient and flexible if you don't get your first choice. The junior meeting will last about 45 minutes and parents/guardians are invited to be in attendance.

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Want out? Speak now or . . . .

One aspect of a law called FERPA helps protect the privacy of students from having their information released without their consent.

There are two new initiatives going on right now that are requesting information from schools - one at the Federal level where the US DOE plans to track FAFSA completion rates (the FAFSA is the application for Federal Student Aid that 12th grade students fill out) the other where the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) plans to track what happens to students after high school (in other words, do they go to college, if so where, if so do they graduate, etc).

Every student will have their information released unless they complete the opt-out form, found by clicking here. The information they plan to release includes your name, birthday, graduation year, and address. There is no penalty for opting out. My understanding is that these pieces of data will not be made available to the public, but they will be made available to the US DOE and NSC who are compiling the data about these two issues (FAFSA and post-secondary outcomes).

If you want to opt out the form must be returned to Ms. Feldman in the main office by no later than February 20th. If you can't print it out, see Ms. Feldman for a hard copy.

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Application Season By The Numbers

(Image January 21: LOST Originally uploaded by keribeth)

I could stare at this list of college application trends for hours. My take aways: the Common Application really does have a huge impact, some people are clearly smitten with schools that they shouldn't be, and we've apparently finally discovered Macalester.

Before you have a knee jerk freak out reaction (so many applicants, so few spots, I'll never get in!), I'm reminded of the thoughtful comments of Jim Bock Dean of Admission from Swarthmore during a pre-NACAC tour in 2009: when a school gets more applicants that normally indicates a larger trend that the student has more schools on their list, which means the college has to send out a larger number of admit packets to fill their class. So be sure you think about the numbers in context, the percent admitted at some of these schools may not actually change.