How much would you estimate schools spend to lobby or market to improve their rankings?

The ranking system is sort of lobby-proof. Talking to US News isn’t going to improve your ranking because they’re based on quantitative numbers, a formula, but certainly schools send out brochures, try to raise their profile among other presidents and deans because of the academic survey. I think it’s more subtle how they’re spending money to improve in the rankings. With Washington University or UNC, they may be spending money to improve student services so they get a higher graduation rate. The way to improve in the rankings is through the institution itself, not by lobbying US News, which is actually a good thing because students benefit from that.

How has your formula changed over the last ten to fifteen years?

At the beginning they were 100% reputation, and today they’re 25% reputation and 75% quantitative data, so that’s certainly one change. We’ve de-emphasized admissions data to some degree. We’ve switched the weight to output like graduation and retention rates. We’ve also dropped “yield.” At one point we had yield in the model, but now we don’t.

Which colleges, in your opinion, will be making a jump in the rankings?

Rochester has been falling recently. For the next few years, the rankings are going to be impacted by the recession. States have been cutting the budgets of the some of the major public schools. It’ll be interesting to see whether the UCal schools can maintain their position. It’s unclear whether the tuition increase is going to be enough to cover the budget cuts. They may start taking more out-of-state students. The UCals take almost no out-of-state students, so there’s talk that they’re going to take a greater percent of out-of-state students because their tuition is so much higher. It’s going to be harder for in-state students to get into the publics from their own state as those schools accept or enroll a greater proportion from out of state as a revenue enhancer.

If the UC schools drop in the rankings, who comes up?

Some of the privates who’ve been managed [constructively] may be able to maintain their budgets. Some of the privates’ endowments have really fallen. The way these rules work, you have to average your endowment spending over x number of years, so that will have an impact on their budgets. There are rules: you have to spend 4 or 5% of your endowment each year, so if your endowment is shrinking, that’s why schools like Harvard have to cut back. The point is, it’s hard to know how all these cutbacks and trends are going to impact the rankings because it’s happening in both publics and privates in different ways.

I know that schools have tried to emphasize their alumni giving. That’s how schools game the rankings, by boosting their alumni giving rate. We’re not counting the average contribution; we’re counting the average portion of alumni that are giving – not the amounts. But it’s not a heavily weighted factor.

How do you see the ranking system changing over the next few years?

Using the web, we can create a use-your-own-ranking. Students can develop their own ranking, so if they think the student-faculty ratio is more important than U.S. News does, they can weight our factors using their own weights to come up with where they stand. We’re going to build more interactive features on our website, trying to take advantage of what the internet offers to students.

I think maybe within a few years there will be more outcome measures, more ways of viewing the student experience: student engagement or student learning. That’s what’s missing from the rankings: some indicator of what’s going on in the classroom, or how much students have learned.

Do you think that U.S. News would benefit from factoring in what students do after graduation?

Definitely. But [right now] it’s only spotty data. We measure what happens after graduation in our MBA rankings and our law rankings because we have placement data, career outcomes for the most recent class, but there’s nothing like that available at the undergraduate level. Yes, if there were data like that, it would be pretty powerful.

Have any notable schools called or emailed to contest their rankings?

Schools call and contest their rankings all the time. The schools don’t really lobby us … schools call about their rankings. A couple years ago we had something about UC Davis saying that they’d misreported some data, and they called up all upset about it. What you find, the very top schools – the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton’s – they will try to stay above the fray. They don’t send out press releases and they’re not going to be in contact with us on the rankings.

A lot of it is, Why [do] they rank the way they do, or, Explain how the rankings work, or, Where’d you get that data – because in some cases if they’ve assigned filling out the surveys to some other office, then when the rankings come out, a senior person in the president’s office says, Well that can’t be right. Of course we can prove that we got it from the school. Sometimes you can call up two or three offices at the same school and get slightly different answers to the same questions. So we face that when we collect data from schools.

This concludes Top Test Prep’s in-depth interview with Bob Morse of U.S. News & World Report. Stay tuned for some more great interviews with college admissions experts.

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

Tags: Admissions Advice, Admissions Data, College Rankings, Colleges // Add Comment »

Have you seen any questionable practices put in place just so a college can increase its ranking?

There was an event in the summer that came to light, even though I think it was debunked: that the president of Clemson … they were not voting honestly on the peer assessment survey … but we have safeguards to prevent strategic voting.

Some schools have put in ways to boost their application count. They may have a one or two or three part application, and reject a student on the second part. They may not have had any intent to seriously consider the student.

When they report their data, some schools leave out minorities or certain types of students … they’ll have left out special cases who are beneath their SAT or ACT profile, so they may look like their scores are higher than they are. It’s unclear why they actually do that, because they may be inhibiting people from applying. I haven’t seen any specific names.

How does a college break into the top rankings?

It’s very difficult. It’s relatively easy, if you’re right beneath the top half, to break into the top half, or to move up somewhat if you’re in the middle of the pack. If you’re in the middle of the pack, it’s easy to move up somewhat, and college presidents  have a reputation doing that, like Clemson or Northeastern. There are many schools – Arizona State, University of Arkansas, to name some – who haven’t been that highly ranked, but because their profile isn’t that high, they’ve moved up into the bottom of the top half.

It’s very crowded at the top. It’s really hard to change your academic profile – to become another Harvard, Yale, or Princeton – for a number of reasons. It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult. It’s probably easier now in some ways than it used to be, because schools are becoming more international. There is a much bigger population in the US or the world, so the top 1 or 2% of SAT scores is bigger. Places like Stanford don’t have enough spaces for the top 1 or 2% of students. You can tell by their rejection rates. They’re rejecting people with a 1600, they’re rejecting valedictorians, they’re rejecting … the saddest part of the whole process is high school students who’ve played by all the rules … they’ve created the perfect application packet, and they can get rejected, whereas 20 years ago the odds of you getting into those top schools was greater. There’s a pool of these students who have to go somewhere. That’s why Duke and MIT and Washington University and USC … their academic profile is much higher than it used to be – their admission profile. In some cases they’ve used scholarships, but in other cases there’s just more people out there.

What are some of the major trends you’ve noticed in the rankings?

When we first started doing the rankings, they were ignored in some ways by college presidents. Now it’s become an acceptable thing among some college presidents to have as a goal: improving in the college rankings. This is at places such as Northeastern and Arizona State and Clemson, so the acceptance of the rankings as an academic benchmark, that’s certainly been one trend.

Another trend along the same lines is that many schools brand themselves by how well they do in our rankings or other rankings. When the rankings first came out, they wouldn’t consider doing that. It’s not that we were asking them to do it, but that speaks to the school’s needs of having an external force telling the public they’re good.

Another trend: the schools have gotten way more sophisticated in understanding the rankings and how they work. I think the public has benefitted because there didn’t used to be a lot of higher education data out there. [With] the amount of higher ed data that exists, schools have gotten much better at producing information on themselves, so they’ve responded to the consumer’s need for comparative higher educational data.

Have some schools rebelled against the rankings?

Reed, Oregon, St. John’s in Annapolis and its cousin schools – those are some of the … biggest rebels.  They refuse to turn over their statistical data, or they refuse to fill out certain parts of the survey, so they’re taking this supposedly principled stance. They think that being against the establishment is going to be appealing to their particular applicant pool. I think that’s the main reason they do it.

It’s fine if they don’t want to do that, but what the schools have to realize is that there’s so much public, available data. They have to turn in essentially the same data to the government, so we’re able to get the same information from other sources. There’s been a movement among certain liberal arts colleges to not participate in the peer surveys. Amherst, Swarthmore, Reed, Oberlin. Lloyd Thacker has a movement called “college unranked.”

How should students use the rankings?

Nobody, a student or a parent, should ever use the rankings as the sole basis for deciding to go to one school. It should not be the most important factor.

The UCLA freshman survey asks freshmen to choose what factors have been very important in choosing to go to [their] school. The rankings themselves are not a top factor, but certainly they’re more important among minority groups or international students. For people who are going to more selective schools, the rankings are more important. I understand why: if you’re coming from overseas, you want to go to a brand name, because that’s going to be important when you come back to the country. To some parents, when you’re paying, as the price of college has gone up, people want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth, trying to analyze the best value, so that’s another factor in why the rankings have become a more powerful source.

I think it’s a minority who uses the rankings as a primary factor, but some do. Admissions counselors or high school counselors have told stories about parents who come in and are effectively saying, “I only want my Johnny or Jane to go to a school above this line,” or “The schools you’ve recommended aren’t too highly ranked by U.S. News.” We’re not the best friend of counselors who feel it’s offering a simplistic answer to a complex problem.

More to come …

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

Tags: Admissions Advice, College Applications, College Rankings, Colleges // Add Comment »

Meet the man behind the single most influential list in college admissions. Bob Morse is the Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, the head of its revered college ranking system. As the force behind a series of annual publications that have achieved unanticipated fame within higher education, Bob Morse has helped to create the college ranking system as it exists today. He was nice enough to sit down with Top Test Prep and answer some questions.

Start by telling us a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been at U.S. News since 1976. I have a BA in economics and an MBA in finance, so I have a research and quantitative background. Doing the rankings is a research and quantitative analysis project. It’s not journalism in the sense that even though I do have a blog, the rankings themselves aren’t reporting … they’re creating information, while typical journalism is reporting on an event or analyzing an event or giving context to something that’s happened.

You have a blog?

I write the blog once or twice a week – Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings. Prior to the blog, U.S. News wouldn’t really write about rankings except at the time that we published the college and grad rankings, so the blog gives us the ability to … make announcements.

How did you get connected to U.S. News & World Report?

I worked on Wall Street briefly, at a company called E.F. Hutton. A lot of them don’t exist anymore – they merged away – but I used to work there in the mid-70’s. I was at U.S. News, but in another department. It doesn’t exist anymore … a research department called the economic unit.

U.S. News was moving from doing the rankings just based on reputation only – in the very beginning, before I was involved, they were done very simplistically, in ’83 and ’85. They wanted to make them more sophisticated.

How did the rankings come about?

At the beginning … we didn’t have the thick guidebook and we didn’t have the web, so it was just something that appeared in the weekly magazine in a very limited sense, sort of a top ten list. It was not some guerilla force in admissions or higher ed – it was just information for consumers and our readers. Nobody thought that it was going to evolve into anything but an occasional feature or cover story. In ’87 I was put in charge. We were going to make it more sophisticated, a combination of reputation and quantitative data, and we were going to start doing this annual guidebook. I got involved in it because they wanted someone with a quantitative research background.

How do you assess a school’s reputation?

It’s become one of the more controversial parts of the rankings … controversial among people in the higher education establishment. The rankings themselves aren’t controversial to the public. The public, obviously, uses them and is attracted to them to a significant degree – otherwise we wouldn’t keep doing them.

We give college presidents and admissions deans and provosts a list of schools and we ask them to rate which ones are excellent and good, so it’s a subjective judgment about the relative standing of schools based on their academic reputations. The academic establishment doesn’t like that – or some of them don’t. Maybe liberal arts schools don’t. I think research universities do.

What’s most interesting to you about the rankings?

A couple things. One, how it’s become this force in higher education. Some colleges are trying publicly to do better in the rankings and … make educational decisions to improve in the rankings. I think that’s pretty interesting.

I think that we’ve filled an informational gap. There’s been a decrease in high school counseling – not at private schools, but at public schools – high school counseling has been diminished by budget cuts, and the public is really searching for tools to help them decide what’s the best school for them. So they’re forced to make decisions on their own and fend for themselves. It’s been satisfying that we’ve been able to fill this informational void. People are becoming more quantitative in judging the best schools.

Another interesting thing is that we’ve been part of this accountability movement. Schools are being held accountable for how they spend money, and whether they’re succeeding in educating students: how well are they doing at what they’re supposed to be doing. So it’s been interesting to be part of all these trends.

Which colleges have seen their rankings improve the most over the last two or three years?

The rankings are more stable than people think. Typically over a two- or three-year period, the rankings don’t move that much, but I think two schools … Universtiy of Southern California and Washington University in St. Louis … have over the last decade or so made a strategic – they have a strategy to improve themselves, and their strategy is across-the-board improvement, step-by-step. They take small steps each year institution-wide, and that’s the formula to improve in the rankings.

What kind of “small steps” are colleges taking?

They’re not small in the sense that they’re little things. They just do them a little bit each year. For example, [a college] would raise the SAT average, so maybe one year it was 1200, the next year it was 1225, the next year it was 1250 … but they wouldn’t go from 1100 to 1300 in one year; they would do it over a ten-year period. Or they would increase the freshman retention rate. They’d put money into increasing freshman retention. The graduation rate would be another one, or faculty salaries. They might put more emphasis on small classes and reduce the number of large classes. They’ll do this a little bit each year, focusing on many factors of the academic environment.

To be continued …

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

Tags: Admissions Advice, Admissions Data, College Counseling, College Rankings, Colleges // Add Comment »

1. Start researching now.

Don’t assume you’re ineligible for a scholarship without thoroughly researching what’s out there. Use the internet, see where your friends are applying, buy a scholarship guide at a bookstore, and ask your college counselor for suggestions. There are scholarships for everything, from tall brunette women to musical prodigies. Through diligent searching, you’ll discover you’re a candidate for more than a few.

2. Increase your chances.

If you start researching scholarships early, you may still have time in your educational career to become a good candidate. A scholarship might require that you’ve completed a certain project or spent time on an extracurricular interest by the application deadline. If you know in advance which scholarships interest you, you can work these things into your free time or your classes.

Another way to increase your odds of receiving  scholarship money is to apply for scholarships with very specific candidate criteria, scholarships for which fewer people will be applying.

3. Consider schools that offer academic scholarships to attract students like you.

Review the schools’ websites to see what kinds of recruitment scholarships they offer. Schools will invest in high-caliber students in order to boost their rankings. Additionally, schools may use scholarship money to attract students from different geographical areas, students who can contribute to the school’s ethnic and cultural diversity, and students who are involved in less popular areas of study. Check to see whether these schools require supplemental materials or separate applications from students interested in scholarship money.

4. Take applications seriously.

Be sure to do everything a scholarship application asks of you. Approach your potential patrons with humility: they’re considering giving you money, after all. The application itself – and how well you’ve managed to follow the directions – will influence your eligibility.

5. Write a killer scholarship essay.

Approach scholarship essays with the same seriousness of purpose (and attendant anxiety) you reserve for admissions essays. Remember that the people bestowing scholarship money are interested in you as an individual. They want to sponsor candidates that they can easily picture profiting in specific ways from the education they’ll be helping to fund.

Top Test Prep offers admissions counseling that can help you manage your search for scholarships and financial aid.

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

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There are two ways to approach writing a college admissions essay: finding a unique subject, or finding a unique angle on a familiar subject. In addition to displaying your writing abilities, a college admissions essay helps round out your character to an admissions committee. It reveals – or is intended to reveal – who you are. Try not to be intimidated when a college gives you the freedom to choose any topic. Once you have a list of possible topics, trust that a unique angle – in other words, your honest perspective – can make almost any subject interesting, even if it’s something the college has heard about many times before.

First, ask yourself if you’ve had any outstanding experiences – a moment in time, a vacation spent volunteering, sports camp, or a semester abroad. “Outstanding” doesn’t have to mean exotic. It can be an experience that meant something to you – whether it made you sad, made you grateful, or challenged you in a particular area. Maybe it was the three months you spent on crutches sporting a giant plastic boot. Or maybe it was the week you helped your parents make all the traditional Thanksgiving foods from scratch.

If your outstanding experience took place over a significant span of time, consider narrowing in on a particular moment that is especially representative. A good friend of mine and a fellow Harvard grad wrote his college admissions essay on the moment he bought a boutonniere for his prom date, who also happened to be a boy. He used this moment to illuminate the experience of being openly gay in high school, and the challenges that came with it. A single moment or anecdote can jump-start your essay, leading into a broader theme.

Stories are fascinating. I will always recommend working a narrative element into your college admissions essay, whether it’s starting out with a story, working some background and some analysis into the middle, and finishing the essay with how the story ended.

Ensure that your admissions essay appears polished by 1) giving it a title and 2) making absolutely sure that there are no grammatical errors or misspellings. Enlist an editor you trust to read it over before you submit it.

Top Test Prep offers college admissions counseling, including help with your college admissions essays.

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

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1) Watch your body language.

Sit in a way that feels comfortable but still shows that you’re taking the situation seriously. Don’t cross your arms or adopt a posture that appears closed. Talking with your hands can seem friendly and enthusiastic, but don’t let it distract from whatever you’re saying.

Give your interviewer a strong handshake, and sustain eye contact during introductions. Remember your interviewer’s name, and don’t be afraid to use it over the course of the interview.

2) Dress professionally.

When it comes to dressing for an interview, it’s better to be too formal than too informal. You might want to choose your clothes ahead of time so it’s one less thing to think about on the day of your interview.

3) Practice ahead of time with a friend.

Think of the questions you may be asked, and ask a friend to put you on the spot. Your friend may come up with some good follow-up questions, depending on your answers.

4) Get feedback.

Ask your friend to tell you honestly how you come across. Your friend may notice things that are simple and easy to adjust, but important in creating a good impression.

5) Lock down your safety schools.

Come prepared to every interview with relevant information about the school to which you’re applying. The interview is a great opportunity to demonstrate sincere interest in a school that may consider you overqualified.

6) Leave a good last impression.

Shake hands with your interviewer and thank him or her when you leave. Be sure to address him or her by name when you say goodbye.

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

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The Problem with Being Un-Special

When I was faced with describing my “greatest accomplishment” in a college admissions essay, I was at a total loss. In inviting such a description, the committee had managed to pinpoint my greatest shortcoming. I was exposed as the bland, provincial, un-special person that any college would thumb its nose at: I hadn’t accomplished anything. I lived in the suburbs, in Connecticut. I hadn’t overcome discrimination based on my gender, sexual orientation, or race. The most exotic locale I’d traveled to had been Nova Scotia, a cold, mosquito-ridden province on the coast of Canada.

The problem was that when I pictured a “great accomplishment,” I literally pictured a mountain – the mountain from the logo for Paramount Pictures, snow-capped and triangular – and imagined that a person with real accomplishments would have already climbed it. This accomplished individual would see the mountain as something conquered, a standing tribute to his or her talent and determination, not to mention the unique and fascinating circumstances into which he or she had been born. I couldn’t come up with a single thing I’d done that could possibly compare to that. We didn’t have snow-capped peaks in Connecticut. And if we did, I certainly hadn’t gotten around to scaling any. I did well enough in school – was that an accomplishment anyone wanted to hear about? Sometimes, when a friend came to me with a problem, I was able to offer comfort and advice. Over time, those moments had grown in number – but could I count them together as one big triumph? Whatever they had accomplished, it wasn’t something you could measure.

After reading the question, I immediately felt jealous of people who’d suffered terrible hardships. What had I done to deserve so much happiness, so much stability right up through age 17? Troubled by this response, I reverted to feeling annoyed with the admissions committee. What did they expect from me, really? I was 17 years old. Of course I hadn’t accomplished anything! And they wanted to hear about my “greatest” accomplishment, as if I had more than one!

The funny thing is, I can’t even remember what I wrote. Maybe that means my answer was as bland as I’d feared. Or maybe it goes to show that no one’s mind is swimming with remembered accomplishments. Most of us don’t have the image of a looming mountain to refer to when pressed, to pull out and present as evidence of our worth, our  unique status. The admissions committee wasn’t expecting a story about a mountain. I needed to dig. Accomplishments are subjective: what they really wanted to know was what I valued, and how I applied my time and energy to it. Whether I’d achieved my goal wasn’t as important as how I’d gone about it. A good essay wouldn’t depend on the accomplishment I chose to write about; it would depend on how well I communicated what it meant to me. My task was to make a genuine mountain out of a molehill, and to help the committee see it that way.

Top Test Prep offers admissions consulting and private tutoring to help students get into top private schools, colleges and graduate schools.

Amary Wiggin is an academic tutor and blogger for Top Test Prep. She graduated from Harvard in 2009.

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Hi, my name is Amary Wiggin, and I’m a new contributor to Top Test Prep’s blog. I graduated from Harvard College in June with a degree in English. A veteran of many standardized tests, I attended New Canaan Country School from 6-9 grade, and The Lawrenceville School from 10-12, graduating in 2005. Applying to boarding schools was my mini-introduction to the college admissions process.

In addition to writing for the blog, I am a tutor for Top Test Prep. This blog, along with the services Top Test Prep can offer you, is intended to help you prepare for the next big test – and let’s admit it, they never end – in your journey through school and beyond.

Meet our private tutors!

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• Develop a theme: instead of listing every extracurricular activity you’ve done or all the things you have done throughout high school, write one consistent theme that embodies who you are as a student.  Example -  if you are an athlete but also enjoy biology, write an admissions essay or personal statement about what it is like being a student scholar on your team, and how people perceive you as a student and teammate.
• Proofread, proofread, and proofread: Nothing looks worse on an admissions essay than grammar or spelling errors. Proofread your admissions essay, correct the errors and then do it again. Read it out loud, read it backwards, and ensure that all mistakes are removed.
• Think Critically: As you proofread your essay think about every sentence and every paragraph critically. Could you write something differently to make a bigger impact? Is your word usage correct? How could you improve upon what you have written to make it even better?
• Admissions Essay Help: Along with taking steps one and two yourself, have someone you know do the same. Your friends, your teachers, or even your college counselor may have ideas that can help your admissions essay become that one element that pushes you over the top and gets you into the college of your choice.  We also offer admissions essay help which is excellent for students applying to all programs, whether private schools, colleges or graduate schools.   Our Ivy League editors and admissions consultants are here to help you get into the best schools.
• Revise Accordingly: As you work through the first three ideas, revise your admissions essay accordingly. Each time you do go right back to step number one and edit your essay again. If you work through these steps a few times you will get to the point where you feel it can’t be improved anymore.

“Writing the Best Admissions Essays” was written by admissions expert and college consultant, Ross Blankenship.  Ross is the President of TopTestPrep.com, which provides private tutoring and admissions consulting to students and parents.  If you’re applying to top schools, call (800) 501-PREP today.

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Part 2 of our series continues with answers about college admissions, private tutoring and test prep.

How can my kid get into an Ivy League School?

The formula for getting into the Ivy League is a  mixture of exceptional high school grades, high test scores and a background that says you’re interesting and will contribute to that Ivy League School.  Because so many college admissions decisions are subjective, meaning that the admissions offices wants some unique students and not just test scores, you have to make a college application theme that is different from the rest.

What happens if our college counselor is not very helpful?

At Top Test Prep, we see this situation all the time:  a parent calls in needing help – a student has tried to get in touch with his college counselor for days at his or her private or public school – and still no answer or response.   Their high school is either too big or too impersonal to give them the opportunity to have a college counselor review admissions applications, so they need Top Test Prep to help them with their college applications.  We’ll be happy to help.  Get in touch with us today (800) 501-PREP.   Our admissions consulting is geared for each student and personalized to make sure you have all the information you need to get into top schools.

How many college admissions essays are required?

This all depends on the number of colleges you’re applying to, and whether you’re using the Common Application to apply to these schools.  On average you’ll have to write around 3 to 4 admissions essays when you apply to any given college.   The more the merrier, we think, so let us know if you need help with your admissions essays, personal statements or resumes.

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Most commonly asked questions for Top Test Prep (Part 1):

What’s a “good” SAT or ACT score?

A good SAT or ACT score depends on which college or university you’re applying to during the admissions season.  If you’re GPA is great (3.7+) and you score above the median SAT or ACT range of a University (Example, Harvard University at 2250 SAT Score), you’re chances of admission obviously are solid.  However, if your GPA and SAT score are well below the median, you should aim to improve each SAT (or ACT) section by 10% or more.  This means if you’re scoring between a 1900 and 2000 on the SAT, aim to improve each subject by 80 to 90 points.  Think gradual improvements.  A perfect SAT and ACT score takes time – and you need to prepare yourself with test prep or private tutoring that works for your schedule.

How many times should I advise my son or daughter to re-take the SAT exam?

As many times as they feel comfortable.  Even with the new SAT reporting rules which allow greater student flexibility, you shouldn’t expect a score increase simply by re-taking the exams.  Instead, get the private tutoring you need to improve your scores.

How many colleges should I apply to?

On average you should apply to roughly 3 to 4 “safety” schools, 5 “middle ground” schools”, and 3 reach schools.  This averages out to roughly 10 to 12 colleges.  Do your research on college admissions or let us help you with admissions consulting to make sure your college applications are perfect.  We’ll help you figure out which schools you should apply to based on your background, SAT and ACT scores, and general interests.

What’s the best college in America?

This is a subjective test – it’s like asking which Coffee tastes the best.  Focus instead on the quality of education at each school, the academic opportunities and then which college offers the academic programs you’re looking for overall.

When should we start saving for our kid’s college education?

You should begin saving the moment your child is born.  Set up a separate savings account for your child that factors in a reasonable return on investment.  Balance your investments wisely and watch your returns grow and your chances of affording a college education increase.  Remember, it’s extremely important to begin saving for your kid’s education now – as colleges are increasing tuition at a rate greater than inflation.

How can we prepare for the college interview?

The best way to prepare for a college interview is to practice with friends and family.  Ask tough interview questions that probe the interviewee’s character and desire to attend X university.  For example, instead of asking “what interests you had in high school – ask “what exactly does Stanford (or any college) offer that an Ivy League doesn’t.  Other questions like, “what would your friends say about you if we called them and asked them to describe you as a person…”.  These are better college interview questions.

Where can we find a private tutor?

Simple question, easy answer.

FYI:  More college admissions questions to follow…stay tuned.

TopTestPrep.com

(800) 501-PREP

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