Aside Archives - Page 10 of 32

U Hawaii’s Food: From Good to Great

Forbes: “Last semester, University of Hawaii at Manoa students such as Frank Lloyd started to notice a difference in their campus food. It wasn’t just better — it was some of the best college food ever … Did Gordon Ramsay take up residence at this commuter campus in Honolulu? No, something far more interesting, and instructive, happened here. Within a 24-month period, the campus foodservice provider, Sodexo, hatched an ambitious plan to upgrade the campus restaurants. The results seemed to surprise even the managers behind the idea.”

“Sodexo overhauled its menus, adding more vegetarian and vegan options … Sodexo deployed Bite, its smartphone app, to allow students to track their calories and they integrated the Tapingo to enable mobile orders. A visit to one of the cafeterias during the busy lunch hour shows the results. There are no lines. That’s because there are more than 500 daily transactions using Tapingo … Sodexo also phased out a well-known fast-food restaurant that specializes in tacos and added Stir Fresh, a new stir-fry restaurant that served local fare.”

“Before the changes, students would simply go home after class. Now, there’s a sense of community around the coffee shops and restaurants, and people are more likely to hang out … This fall, customer satisfaction reached 94%.” Mark Nakamoto of Sodexo comments: “We learned a lot about student needs. And I think they, in turn, learned how businesses work.”

Successful Applications Are Matter of Fact

Daily Pennsylvanian: “Like most universities, Penn does not have a standard system for fact-checking applications. Admissions officers perform initial reviews in as little as four minutes, and a call to a high school guidance counselor or an email to an applicant is as thorough as checks get … Given the massive volume of applications the University receives — 44,957 applicants for the Class of 2023 — current and former admissions officers agree that fact-checking applications is not feasible and instances of outright fabrication seem to be rare … Despite the lack of a formal fact-checking system, former admissions officers say they have still caught applicants lying.”

Elizabeth Heaton, a former regional director of admissions for Penn,”recalled an instance when a regular decision applicant plagiarized their essay based on an essay written by another student who had already been admitted early decision. The former Penn regional admissions director said when she noticed the stark similarities between the two essays, she decided to make a call to the student’s high school.” She comments: “We denied the student who had plagiarized and the other kid was able to keep his acceptance.”

Kathryn Bezella, Vice Dean and director of marketing and communications for Penn Admissions, “confirmed that following up with a guidance counselor or applicant is rare.” However: “Bezella said because of the high number of applications she reads and familiarity with her region, she can typically identify false transcripts and essays.” She comments: “After you’ve read several thousand essays by 17-year-olds, you do have some sense of ‘this is not how a 17-year-old writes’.”

Night of the Living Deadlines

The Wall Street Journal: “The deadline to apply for admission to Oberlin College was Jan. 15. Until it wasn’t. The Ohio liberal-arts college sent an email blast last Tuesday alerting high-school seniors that the deadline had been extended to Feb. 1. Other elite colleges, including the University of Chicago, George Washington University, Washington University in St. Louis and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have also extended their application deadlines this winter.”

“Delayed deadlines are a sign of the growing pressure many schools face to fill their incoming classes. They are receiving more applications than ever in part because stressed high-school seniors see record-low admit rates from some top schools, fret about their own chances and expand their list of targets. The Common Application makes it easy to apply to more schools without much additional work.”

“That all makes it challenging for colleges to predict who wants to actually enroll. Thirty-five percent of seniors applied to at least seven schools in 2016, up from 18% a decade earlier. In that same time span, the yield, or share of admitted students who enrolled at a given four-year college, fell to 34% from 45%.”

Harvard & Berklee: Dual-Degree Harmony

Harvard Gazette: A “five-year program, launched in 2016, allows students to pursue a bachelor of arts (A.B.) degree at Harvard and a master of music (M.M.) or master of arts (M.A.) at Berklee at the same time. During their first three years, students pursue a degree in the concentration of their choice at Harvard and take private instruction at Berklee. At the end of their third year, students complete an audition and interview to confirm their readiness for the Berklee master’s program. The fourth year focuses on completing all Harvard requirements, and the fifth year on the requirements for the M.M. or M.A.”

“Avanti Nagral, a junior psychology and global health concentrator … is a singer-songwriter whose most recent single, ‘The Other Side,’ draws on her experience of living between two worlds: Boston and her hometown of Mumbai, and now Harvard Square and Back Bay. ‘I remember sitting and reading a neuroscience textbook while I waited for a private lesson at Berklee,’ she says with a laugh. ‘People didn’t know why I was looking at pictures of a brain. But I’m interested in all of it.'”

“Nagral also finds ways to make her Harvard coursework applicable to her music. In the negotiation and conflict-management course she took this fall, she tailored some assignments to deal with contractual and legal issues in the music industry. She also convinced her professor in a gender studies seminar to accept an original song for her final class project.”

Boston College Adds ‘Early Decision’

BC News: “Boston College will introduce an Early Decision program for undergraduate admission this year, in an effort to meet the growing preference of today’s high school students and enroll more ‘best fit’ applicants for whom Boston College is a first choice, the University announced today. The decision will result in a shift from BC’s non-binding Early Action policy to a binding Early Decision program that will include two opportunities for students to apply early to Boston College.”

“For high-achieving high school students who view Boston College as their top choice, Early Decision I will offer a November 1 application deadline with a decision notification by December 15. Early Decision II will feature a January 1 application deadline with a decision notification by February 15. Students who prefer to apply Regular Decision will continue to have a January 1 deadline with a notification of April 1.”

“In moving to Early Decision, Boston College joins a growing number of peer institutions, including Wake Forest, Tufts, Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Emory universities, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. Overall, 21 of the top 40-ranked national universities in U.S. News have Early Decision I and II programs.”

Ivies Trim Early Acceptances

The Daily Pennsylvanian: “Every Ivy League school that has released its early admissions data saw declines in their early acceptances compared to the previous year. Columbia University is the only Ivy that has yet to release its ED numbers. Penn had the smallest decline in selectivity. The University’s ED admissions rate decreased by only 0.55 percentage points from 18.55 percent. The small change comes just one year after Penn had the most drastic decline among the Ivies, tapering early admissions by 3.5 percentage points.”

“Brown University had the largest decline in ED admission rate compared to last year, boasting an 18 percent rate of admission for the Class of 2023, which is 3.1 percentage points lower than last year’s class. Dartmouth College experienced the second largest decrease, a 1.69 percentage point drop from the previous year. Cornell University had a similar drop of 1.66 percentage points from the Class of 2022.”

“At 13.2 percent, Yale University reported the lowest rate of early admission among the Ivy League, beating out Harvard University, which has been the most competitive university for the past two years.”

Student YouTube: A Lens Into Campus Life

Chronicle of Higher Education: “Search any college’s name and you’re likely to see a student-produced dorm-room tour or move-in day video among the top hits … Videos uploaded by college students offer an authentic lens into student life and campus culture, which are helpful for high schoolers looking to visualize themselves on a specific campus … Keri Nguyen, a Florida high-school senior, even applied to a few colleges she felt were a reach for her academic record because of the YouTube videos she watched.”

“Olivia Pongsrida, a junior majoring in sociology at the University of Washington, started her channel in her sophomore year as a creative hobby … Many of these college Youtubers see themselves as unofficial academic ambassadors, well aware of the influence they have on anxious high schoolers applying to college. Pongsrida and May Gao, an influencer from Brown University, have offered to read applicants’ college essays. They interact with the online communities they’ve developed, answering questions and comments on social media.”

“At West Virginia, students in a video titled “The Most Honest WVU Campus Tour Ever” entertainingly exaggerate how great the campus is. The University of Oregon featured random students walking around campus in a “Duck Advice for Freshman” video … But what is most appealing to a high-school audience is rarely found in college-produced content — personal detail and a sense of trust between YouTuber and viewer. College influencers offer up their high-school GPAs, test scores, extracurriculars, even the essay that got them into college. This level of transparency is invaluable to viewers, especially those applying to college.”

Tuition Question: Ivory Tower or Bargain Basement?

The Washington Post: “As soaring tuition scares off many families, a growing number of private colleges have embraced a marketing tactic associated more with selling airline tickets or flat-screen televisions than higher education: a price cut … The movement exposes a reality of higher education long hidden in plain sight: The difference between sticker prices and what the average student actually pays is often vast.”

“Twenty-three private institutions have reduced tuition since 2016, according to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities … Their reasons vary. Some need to bolster recruiting in the face of major financial challenges. Others want to escape a pricing formula that assumes prospective students view high tuition as a mark of educational quality even though they simultaneously seek significant discounts or financial aid.”

“The most prestigious schools enroll large numbers of students willing and able to pay full price. Federal data show the share of full-paying undergraduates in 2016-2017 — those who received no grants — was 42 percent at Princeton University, 50 percent at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and 57 percent at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn … But many schools have few full-pay students. The Washington Post found more than 310 colleges and universities in 2016-2017 where at least 95 percent of undergraduates received grants or scholarships.”

Community College Transfers Soar at Elite Schools

The Atlantic: A new study “finds that graduation rates of community-college transfers meet or exceed those of students who enroll at selective institutions as first-time freshman. Community-college transfers also graduate at higher rates than students who transfer from other four-year colleges … For the students who do ultimately transfer to selective colleges, it’s not that there are just a few shining stars skewing the data … The greatness is everywhere. ‘Fully 84 percent of the nation’s two-year institutions transferred at least one student to a selective four-year institution in fall 2016,’ the report says.”

“These days, the typical (community college) student is likely older, or lives off campus, or has a full-time job, or is going to school part-time, or has a child, or has some combination of any of those traits. And more often, students are starting their higher education at community colleges. In fact, more than 40 percent of all U.S. undergraduates attend community colleges.”

“Foundations such as Jack Kent Cooke have been working with colleges to help them enroll and fund transfer students, and organizations such as the American Talent Initiative have been pushing to get more community-college students into these schools. Even still, the mighty few who have large endowments, a working business model, and few empty seats may not feel compelled to enroll more transfer students. Still, this report shows that if admissions officers will accept them, community-college students are prepared to succeed at any college—even the most selective.”

Who’s The Most Selective Of Them All?

Chron: “College ranking site Niche just released its ranking of America’s most selective colleges. The study looks primarily — about 60 percent — at each school’s acceptance rate, as determined by the U.S. Department of Education. The other factors are SAT/ACT scores in the 75th and 25 percentile. Niche compiles this data based on the department of education as well as self-reported data from Niche readers. On the list are some familiar Ivy League campuses, as well as some lesser-known schools. Claremont, California reigns supreme as the town with the highest concentration of most selective universities.”

Not surprising, the top five are: Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, Yale and Princeton. You can review the complete list here.