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.

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Great news!  Several admissions offices have made their early decision application “decisions” this past week and will be mailing the application results this coming week.

If you haven’t heard back yet from your top college, no worries.   Let us know what you hear, twitter @toptestprep.

Our admissions counseling and college counseling can help you get into these schools, no matter what the result this week. Call Top Test Prep at 800-501-PREP.

Below you will see when some colleges traditionally release their early decision application results and decisions.

Boston University – December 15th;
Bowdoin College – Mid-December;
Brown University – December 14th, 5pm EST online;
Caltech – Emailed on 12th of December by noon PST
Carnegie Mellon – Mailed as early as December 12th
Columbia ED – Online December 10, 5PM EST
Cornell University – Dec. 10, 5pm
Dartmouth College – December 8th 4PM EST
Dickinson College – ED – December 15th
Duke University – December 10th 6pm
Fordham University EA – December 25th
Georgetown University – December 15th
George Washington University – December 9 @ 6:00 pm online
Haverford College – December 15th
Johns Hopkins University – December 15th, 6 PM EST email, letters sent out same day.
Lehigh University – Letters out by 15th.
MIT – Dec 16th, 9pm
Northwestern ED – December 15th (2008)
Purdue University EA – begin December 11th, decisions posted daily.
Stanford University – December 15 3 pm PST
University of Chicago – December 13 (2008)
University of Michigan-by December 24
University of Notre Dame– Dec 15th by mail
University of Pennsylvania – December 11, 3:00 PM
Washington University in St. Louis- December 11th and 12th. Posted online.
Wellesley College ED – December 11th, 5 PM online
Williams College ED – mailed by December 15th (2008)
Yale University – December 15th @5 PM online

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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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Applying early to a college isn’t a simple decision. Whether your first-choice school offers early action or early decision, you may not want to hear the verdict on your application as early as December. Being denied admission to any school that early in your senior year can be demoralizing.

It’s true that applying early can give you a slight edge on the competition. Schools want to ensure that a certain number of admitted students will be filling their freshman class (and meeting or exceeding their admissions standards). If your first-choice school is well within your reach, it may impress the admissions committee that you are devoted enough to attend when higher-ranking institutions might accept you.

Consider applying early decision if:

1. You have a top-choice school.

2. You have thoroughly researched – and visited! – your top choice to determine whether it is right for you.

3. Financial aid isn’t a factor in whether you would attend.

4. Having any kind of answer early in your senior year would relieve some of the strain on your application process.

5. You would not benefit from having the college see your senior fall grades. (If you were rapidly improving in school, it might help you to wait.)

6. Your SAT scores are within the college’s acceptance range, and you do not plan on retaking the SAT.

If you can honestly answer “yes” to all of these, then applying early decision may be right for you.

Top Test Prep offers admissions counseling to help you manage your application process.

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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On what basis do most people choose a college? I’ve heard more than a few students admit to being strongly influenced by the person who gave them a tour of the campus. I can still remember what the cute tour guide at Columbia was wearing the day I visited, and that he was a vegetarian – like me. What do I remember about Stanford, my first choice, and what visions danced in my head when I slaved away at my application? Well, the walkways of course – so wide! – with bicyclists in flip-flops cruising by, and the mild weather, and the arches lining the pavilion next to the English building. As with my search for the right prep school, I was trying to get a “sense” of the place, awaiting a feeling that would guide my decision. Just how I arrived at that “sense” did not, at the time, seem as superficial to me as it does now. I wasn’t alone in my evaluative practices. A friend who graduated from Harvard admits to having had a deterministic crush on his tour guide. Perhaps we arrive with a crush on an entire school, ready to use anything as evidence in its favor. Do students really explore the areas of the college experience that will directly affect them – the social groups and extracurricular settings into which they are most likely to settle?

The Washington Post features an online group discussion on the topic. Apparently, I’m not the only student who’s proved susceptible to the touring experience.

But who’s to say that deciding this way is wrong? If a college clearly has a lot to offer any student who manages to meet its admissions criteria and be accepted, then what’s wrong with picking a place that just “feels” right? Most of us don’t choose a city in which to live according to the amenities or institutes based there. If the city wants us – if we’ve been offered a job there – and if it offers the advantages and excitement of any metropolis, then we’ll probably choose it based on “feel,” which may include the weather, the pace of life, and the people we bump into during a visit. If a studly urbanite happens to step into our subway car, well, we can’t help but be charmed and mark it down as a plus for the experience. Maybe intuition is something to be trusted when choosing a college. God knows we don’t get to practice it on the SAT.

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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In a recent article on the way standardized tests are graded, NY Times writer Todd Farley reveals that the people grading students’ essays don’t boast the credentials we might expect. The scores they assign are often influenced by emotions and circumstances.

No matter who ends up grading your admissions essay, there are certain qualities of good writing that every reader can appreciate, and it never hurts to include these in every essay you write. The reality is that all people, including editors who evaluate writing for a living, will find boring writing to be just that – boring. Writing that engages the reader, either because it’s humorous, insightful, dramatic, or lyrical, is far more likely to produce a favorable response, which may lead to a higher score.

Here are some guidelines for writing admissions essays that even “people off the street” will appreciate:

1)     Give your admissions essay a title. A good one.

Imagine, as Mr. Farley points out, that your reader has a whole stack of essays to  pore over, and it’s getting to be that time of day when his or her energy plummets. Choose a title that will rescue your reader from his or her afternoon slump. Don’t choose a title until you’ve finished writing the essay – how else will you know what it’s really about? Here’s a hint for coming up with your title: pick a word or phrase in the essay that expresses something essential about your topic. Or just pick a good word or phrase. Make that the title. Fiction writers do this all the time, and it can end up sounding mysterious and professional. It’s pleasurable for the reader to come across that phrase in the text. Suddenly, your title makes sense!

2)     Grab the reader with an interesting first line.

This is your “hook”: your chance to capture the reader’s interest and compel him or her to continue. If your essay begins with an anecdote, deliver us right into the action: “I was poised at the starting line, waiting for the gun to go off,” or “Andy handed me the news article that would change my eating habits forever.” Aside from starting a story with a bang, a good first line can include a confident statement. Consider using strong language, and avoid watering it down with a phrase such as “I believe.

3)     Section your admissions essay into multiple paragraphs, and begin each paragraph with a strong transitional sentence.

This sentence marks a slight change of focus – hence the new paragraph – while linking what is about to be said to what has been said already. Transitions give your essay a sense of continuity and wholeness.

4)     Know your strengths, and play to them.

If you’re funny, be funny. Obviously, the topic itself is something you should take seriously, but the occasional humorous line can lighten your tone and greatly improve the experience for your reader. If you aren’t funny, then be insightful or observant. Bring out the drama in a situation that is inherently dramatic. Most importantly, be you – at your best – so that your writing shines through any reader’s fatigue. Maybe you’ll get lucky and land someone alert. In that case, he or she will appreciate what you’ve done even more.

5)     Practice, practice, practice. The best way to improve as a writer is to write, and other people’s input can take your admissions essay to the next level. Top Test Prep offers admissions essay critiques and editing.

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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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I’ve decided to help parents see why hiring an independent college counselor – one not affiliated with a specific school- can and will help you:

(1) 98% of American high schools lack the resources necessary to dedicate to individual students who are applying to schools.

(2) Your acceptance rate WILL go up when you do; hiring a focused counselor will help you get an outside perspective on your applications.

(3) International students sometimes need help writing in a new language; applications can be complicated, tedious and long. We help you navigate the process.

(4) We can help you get the financial aid necessary to pay for school.

(5) Parents can use the extra help motivating their students to optimize their academic potential.

These are just a few reasons how and why we can help YOU succeed in the complicated admissions game.

Contact Top Test Prep.com today for help.

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Opinion piece from MetaEzra.com and Matthew Nagowski (Cornell ‘05):

With the early decision cycle only ten days away, there is undoubtedly a lot of chatter about the selective universities and what it means to be selective. Unfortunately, the dialogue is typically focused around acceptance rates and SAT scores, when the topic is a lot more complicated than that.

First, can we agree that acceptance rates as published tell you nothing? A much more meaningful statistic would be the percentage of student acceptances relative to the total population of applicants whom the school would deem fit to enroll were space not a problem. If one out of every five applicants to Harvard is doing it as a lark and they have absolutely no shot at getting accepted, what does Harvard’s acceptance rate tell you about selectivity? Nothing really.

Similarly, a lot of schools are now engaging in pretty… interesting… behavior to tailor their entering classes as they see fit, which can affect the acceptance rates in odd ways. Penn is enrolling 50 percent of its class early decision, way beyond the norm for any of its peer schools. And WashU has been known to purposeful reject candidates considered to be overqualified.

So acceptance rates tell you nothing.

That said, in my mind, there are two underlying qualities that colleges look for when they accept students — academic qualifications and what I will call extramural qualifications. These comprise the basis of what it is meant to be “selective”. Often two students may have the same academic qualifications but differ extramurally, and those factors will make all of the difference.

Now, it is impossible to quantify these extramural factors in any meaning form, so good luck with that.

But there is also a lively discussion to be had about academic qualifications…

Turning to the academic qualifications, there are many known issues with the standard statistics used. The first failure is that selectivity is often paired with statistics for the entering class, and not the accepted class. If selectivity is really to be a gauge for how difficult it is to get accepted to a school, I think the accepted class statistics should be used across the board.

More importantly, SAT and ACT scores are widely considered to be endogenously correlated with the household income of a student, suggesting that the wealthier a school’s student body is, the higher standardized test scores you should expect, all other things held equal (e.g. the academic qualifications of the student body are exactly the same). So if 10 percent of Dartmouth students are on Pell Grants, as compared to 35 percent of Berkeley students, I’m not certain you can make a meaningful comparison across the two institution’s SAT scores without taking this fact into account.

Another question I have in regards to selectivity is why class size doesn’t come into account more often. It seems to me to be pretty easy to create a selective class when you may only enroll 1,000 new students a year. But it is a lot harder to enroll a just as “selective” class when you enroll 2,500 or 3,000 students a year. If you look at the distribution of

I believe that the best indicator of academic qualifications is one’s academic record in high school. But there are a couple of issues with how to consider one’s academic record, especially as no two high schools are going to grade similarly.

There is also the problem of non-reporting of high school rank in class. Not all high schools feature the same caliber of a student body, so one who may be a top 10 percent in a certain high school might only hit the top 30 percent in another high school. Apples to oranges. And a majority of students no longer report it, so I’m not certain how meaningful it is anymore.

Finally there is the role of interest and motivation in all of this. Somebody could be fascinated by birds or driven to play music all day, but really struggle in English class. If Cornell is enrolling some of the world’s future premier ornithologists or Oberlin is admitting some of the best chamber musicians in the country, but they just so happen to have a spotty record in some traditional academic subjects, how can you compare this type information with other schools? You can’t.

In the end you need to trust that each institution is accepting and enrolling the students they think will make the best use out of the resources and opportunities offered. That is important. It’s what education should be all about. But quite frankly, I’m not so certain that is happening anymore at a lot of schools, as everybody falls prey to this rankings madness. Intellectually curious students are being passed over for drones who have good test scores but can’t come up with an independent thought to save their life.

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Matthew Nagowski is a great writer and friend from Cornell; Matt and Andy Guess manage an informative and enlightening blog called MetaEzra.com;
We found this piece particularly helpful as early decision deadlines are looming.

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