Aside Archives - Page 12 of 32

In Tuition: College ‘Pre-Pay’ Gains Popularity

Times Union: “To broaden college access and affordability, lawmakers have in the past pushed for a ‘pre-paid’ plan that would let families lock in tuition for their kids by paying in advance … So far, 11 states have added pre-paid components to their 529 savings plans, according to the Rockefeller Institute study. Those include a plan in Massachusetts that lets savers lock in half of their future tuition: If tuition was, say, $10,000 today, a $5,000 Tuition Certificate would be guaranteed to cover 50 percent of tuition — no matter how much the tuition cost increases in the future.”

“Florida, which has the nation’s largest pre-paid, plan lets parents lock in tuition at a state school from a child’s birth. At the current rate, families that paid $186.28 per month from the child’s arrival would cover tuition and fees for 120 credits, enough to earn a bachelor’s degree.”

“A November report by the Brookings Institution found that parents accumulating six-figure loans for their children are making up a record share of borrowers for college loans … Not everyone is convinced that pre-paid programs are the answer. The New York Public Interest Research Group believes more financial aid is needed. It’s unclear what schools overall think of pre-payment plans … One potential challenge the schools might be contemplating: If costs go up faster than expected, schools might face a financial gap if a lot of families have locked in their tuition rates.”

Major Dilemma: What to Study at College?

US News: “College majors can be conventional, such as business, or off the beaten path. California State University—Fresno, for example, offers majors in viticulture and enology through its agriculture program, where students learn about grape cultivation, wine production and the industry … The most popular college majors, based on National Center for Education Statistics data on degrees conferred in 2014-15, were ‘in the fields of business (364,000), health professions and related programs (216,000), social sciences and history (167,000), psychology (118,000), biological and biomedical sciences (110,000), engineering (98,000), visual and performing arts (96,000), and education (92,000)’.”

“Another field experts expect to grow is unmanned aerial systems, often referred to as drones … uses for drones include agriculture, real estate, medicine, security and more. Another in-demand major at the University of North Dakota is petroleum engineering, which fetches the highest median earnings among college majors, coming in at $136,000 annually, according to research from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.”

“To help students narrow down their college major options, some schools offer online quizzes. Loyola University Chicago has a 35 question online quiz to help students learn more about potential majors … Marquette offers a similar quiz, but instead of suggesting individual majors, it groups students into categories such as communicator, entrepreneur, helper, problem-solver and thinker. When a student completes the college major quiz, suggested disciplines are matched to their results.”

Admissions Tip: Making the Grade with GPA

Jeffrey J. Selingo: “A recent survey of college admissions officers found that nothing carries more weight in deciding which applicants to accept than high school grades. Why? Research shows that a student’s high school grade-point average is consistently a better predictor than test scores of a student’s likely performance in college. It’s not just about whether those students will get good grades in college.”

“Grades matter in college admissions because they are a signal of a student’s effort, grit and determination … But it’s not only applications with all A’s that rise to the top of a pile in an admissions office. Officers look for students who challenge themselves by taking courses outside academic areas where they are strongest. They want applicants who are interested in studying engineering to also have taken a full slate of English courses in high school, even if they struggled at times.”

Tell The Truth: They Know When You are Lying

The New York Times: “The Common Application asks students to certify that they are telling the truth, but does not try to independently confirm that they are. It is up to colleges to take that extra step … Some universities require students to sign a sworn statement that they are telling the truth, under pain of prosecution. But officials admit they are not seeking to be law enforcement. Mainly, officials and counselors said, they look for inconsistencies. Do standardized test scores and grades match? Do certain words and phrases in an essay jump out as being in the vocabulary of an adult rather than a teenager? Are a student’s extracurricular activities too good to be true?”

“And they depend on high school counselors to give them honest appraisals of students who are applying. ‘If each component is not all pulling in the same direction, it becomes a kind of red flag,’ said Katharine Harrington, vice president of admissions and planning at the University of Southern California.”

“Scott Burke, the undergraduate admissions director at Georgia State University, knew something was amiss when the birth date on an application was far too old to belong to the high school student who supposedly filled it out. With a little sleuthing, his office discovered that it was a parent’s birth date … ‘All of us sitting here looking at those applications came to that thinking that the parent likely filled out the whole application,’ Mr. Burke said. But they could not say for sure whether that was the case, and after contacting the student, they gave the family the benefit of the doubt.”

Stress Test: How Brain Chemistry Affects Scores

The Washington Post: “Many a student has looked on in dismay as some ‘slacker’ who seems to barely engage in school rocks the SAT, leaving more-studious and high-achieving classmates slack-jawed or teary … As it turns out, some people underperform with more pressure, while others overperform. Depending on how the brains of different students process stress and brain chemicals such as dopamine, it is indeed like taking different tests.”

“… One of the best solutions for worriers is as simple as more practice, with some stress … Moreover, both the SAT and ACT allow kids to know and control their scores. The College Board allows score choice, which nearly all colleges follow, permitting kids to submit just what they want. And many colleges ‘super-score,’ giving kids the benefit of their best score and sweeping aside scores from an off day. Similarly, the ACT even allows students to delete scores permanently from their record, giving students ultimate control of their scores.”

“Another way to decrease a sense of threat is to visit FairTest, the website of the nonprofit National Center for Fair and Open Testing, to see the more than 1,000 colleges that are test-optional.”

Cannabis Class: UConn Goes to Pot

NBC: “The University of Connecticut is in spring 2019 going to offer a new course on marijuana and what it takes to work in the industry. It is already causing a buzz. ‘We ran out of seats before half of the university could register for the course,’ Professor Gerard Berkowitz, who will be teaching the class, told the Hartford Courant. ‘There’s going to be more students taught in this one class than in my department, all the professors, all the classes they teach, both semesters’.”

“Connecticut is one of 33 states that have legalized medical marijuana. It has also decriminalized marijuana possession to some degree, but the cultivation and distribution of pot are still felonies, according to NORML, an advocacy group for legalization.”

“In Colorado, the University of Denver offered a pilot course in 2017 on the business of marijuana. University of California, Davis, announced in January 2017 that undergraduates could learn how cannabis affects the body in a physiology of cannabis course. The University of Washington offers medicinal cannabis and chronic pain, described as a course for health professionals on the use of medical marijuana to treat pain.”

What to Do When You Are Deferred?

Yale: “Students who apply early will receive one of three decisions in mid-December: Accept, Defer, or Deny … Here’s the deal. A deferral means one thing and one thing only: We need more time to consider your application. It’s important to understand this. You were not deferred because there is something wrong with your application. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: if you were deferred it means your application is strong enough to continue to be seriously considered by the admissions committee.”

“You should not inundate your admissions officer with weekly emails and cards. More often than not it is the required pieces of the applications, like the essays and teacher recommendations that we already have, that make a student stand out for us. For the most part, we have what we need. We’ll get your mid-year grades from your school counselor to see how you’re doing in your senior year classes, and if you want you can send us one letter of update to let us know what you’ve been up to since November 1st.”

“The bottom line is that ‘deferral’ does not mean ‘we need more information’ or ‘something wasn’t good enough.’ It means we see a lot of great potential in you and we just need a little more time to sit in that committee room and mull things over … We appreciate your patience, and you’ll be hearing from us again soon.”

Emissions Admission: Duke Buys a ‘Carbon Farm’

The Chronicle: “With the purchase of rights to a roughly 16-square mile ‘carbon farm’ in eastern North Carolina, Duke University has potentially taken a big step towards carbon neutrality. The Hyde County farm could store enough carbon to help neutralize most of the University’s emissions to help it hit its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2024 … To reach that goal, Duke would need to cut its emissions by 84 percent in the next six years.”

“The farm—on peatlands that were once drained for agriculture use—works by locking carbon in the soil and plants by using ‘enhanced land management and conservation practices.’ It’s a new practice aimed at combating global warming.”

“Sixteen percent of Duke’s emissions come from employees that commute to work, according to a recently released report. As part of its vision to become carbon neutral, Duke plans to create better access to transit, to boost carpool networks and to back electric vehicle usage, among other things. Duke has also shifted away from coal and natural gas, and its new buildings use less energy.”

Which ‘College Towns’ Are Best?

Mlive: “The personal finance website Wallethub has once again named the home of the University of Michigan the best small college town in America in a survey released on Tuesday. This is at least the fifth-straight year Ann Arbor has claimed the top spot in the sub-category. Additionally, Ann Arbor was named the No. 3 college town overall, trailing only Austin, Texas, the home of the University of Texas and Orlando, the home of the University of Central Florida.”

“Wallethub analysts compared more than 400 U.S. cities of varying sizes based on 30 key indicators of academic, social and economic opportunities for students including cost of living, quality of higher education, nightlife and crime rate. Ann Arbor’s rank is thanks in large part to its ranking in the social environment category where it is No. 23. The category examines several factors including amount of young people, gender balance, nightlife, cafes, breweries, food trucks, shopping centers, sports, festivals and attractions.”

Read the entire report here.

The Tower & Girl of UT Austin

UT Austin: “For more than 80 years, the UT Tower has been the academic symbol and architectural emblem of The University of Texas at Austin. The 307-foot-tall Tower … is a commanding symbol of pride on the Austin skyline, especially at night. From its beginning, the Tower has been bathed in a combination of orange and white light to celebrate academic honors and sport victories … Most commonly used, the top glows orange to commemorate regular-season victories or a conference title in any intercollegiate sport, and it stands dark on somber occasions.”

“The Main Building and its tower were originally designed to serve as the campus central library … librarians were stationed on every other floor. They would roller skate to retrieve requested books and send them down to the desk via dumbwaiter to the students below … In recent years, the Main Building has been renewed as space for students. Within the atrium of the Life Sciences Library, freshmen now attend classes in small seminar rooms.”

“Above the Observation Deck are the bells of the Knicker Carillon, which ring on the quarter hour. With 56 bells, the carillon is the largest and heaviest in Texas, with the low B flat 2 bell weighing in at 7,350 pounds and the high G7 a mere 20 pounds … And above the carillon is one final sight to behold, but you’ll need binoculars. The building’s very top is home to a peregrine falcon, nicknamed ‘Tower Girl.’ She is the — ahem — apex predator of the Forty Acres. Tower Girl lives in Austin year round, and this fastest of all animals on Earth can be seen dive-bombing unfortunate grackles, pigeons and other prey.”