Education Matters

Hitting the submit button on college applications

By Marsha Sutton

Midnight on Dec. 31 not only rings in the new year but also signals the end for most high school seniors of a grueling college application process.
With most college application deadlines now behind them, students and their parents can finally relax for a bit.
Finishing touches have been put on applications, the last edits have been made to essays, and the final Submit buttons have been pushed.
Now the waiting begins. Everyone can look forward to two to three months of relative calm before another wave hits in late March, when anticipation builds up again as college decisions are released.
For most college-bound seniors and their families, the past three months have been fraught with tension, impatience, confusion, moodiness, flaring tempers and sleep deprivation. It’s a dreadful time for students who are faced with decisions they believe will affect them for the rest of their lives, at a time when they feel ill-equipped to make such monumental choices.
And their stress is contagious, as parents, too, ride the emotional roller-coaster. Peace in the home becomes a fond memory.
Financial worries combined with huge numbers of college-ready kids give a one-two punch to stressed-out families. Although official numbers have not yet been released, it appears that this year’s crop of graduating high school seniors will approach last year’s record number.
While the number of students may have decreased slightly, “the number of applications due to everyone being nervous is going to go up,” said independent college adviser Ruthi Warburg. “So it’s not going to be an easier year.”
“Many, many more kids are applying to public schools,” said Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz, founder and director of AdMission Possible, a private college counseling business in La Jolla. This means greater opportunity for admission to more private colleges, she said.
“The private colleges are hurting, so … [there is] a better chance for students to get into the private liberal arts colleges,” she said.
Warburg and Shaevitz say families seem more anxious about college costs than in the past.
“People are a lot more nervous than I’ve ever seen before economically,” said Warburg, whose business is located in Carmel Valley. “They’re nervous they’re not going to be able to afford it. Nobody really knows how the college financial aid situation is going to be this year, but obviously people think it’s going to be pretty bad.”
“There is multiple interest in financial aid across the board from what I would consider the wealthiest families to of course the not as wealthy families,” Shaevitz said.
Warburg said she encourages her students and parents to have frank conversations about what’s a realistic, affordable tuition for the family that won’t be unreasonable or burdensome.
With concern that the University of California and California State University systems will limit enrollment or toughen admission requirements to offset rising costs and insufficient funding, competition for space at these schools is predicted to be fierce as more kids with less money look to these more affordable public universities.
The irony, said Shaevitz, is that Stanford and the Ivy League schools are continuing to offer free or drastically discounted tuition this year to middle-class families making less than $100,000 annually.
“Some kids applied to [schools like] Harvard and Princeton this year who probably wouldn’t have before because of their financial aid policy,” Warburg said.
Making matters even worse is that more and more students are graduating from high school prepared for college – a good piece of news on its own but a complication for all those college-ready students vying for a finite number of seats.
Community colleges may also become a more popular choice, given the bad news about the economy and possible enrollment caps at UCs and CSUs.
While Shaevitz has observed that more kids are applying to the UC schools this year, Warburg said students seem to be applying to more schools in general, to hedge their bets.
Warburg said she tries to encourage her students to limit their applications to between six and 12 colleges, but she has noticed more students than usual this year applying to up to 20 schools.
The economic downturn may have influenced the choices students and families made as they evaluated potential colleges, but it also had an impact on the college counseling business itself.
Although both Warburg and Shaevitz said they were busy and had to turn away many students, Shaevitz did hear from several families who have been hit hard by the deteriorating economy.
“I am still very busy, although I have had a number of students’ parents call or email me to say that they can no longer use my services because one or the other parent has been laid off,” said Shaevitz, who worked this year with over 50 seniors. “I tell them that I will not abandon their children, and see the students at a reduced fee or no fee at all.”
Warburg said trends in essay topics this year included “some excitement about the Obama election,” Proposition 8 and stem cell research.
The dominant field of interest for students is business, Warburg said. “It seems to be more and more that parents want their kids to come out with something useful, particularly now in this economy,” she said.
Warburg said she is still seeing athletic scholarships, “but it’s mainly the blue-chip athletes.”
Those students applying Early Action and Early Decision heard back from colleges Dec. 15. Locally, elite Stanford is a popular choice.
Warburg said 28 students applied early to Stanford from La Jolla High School, “and not one got in, and these were spectacular kids,” she said. “Schools like Bishop’s that normally get in five to six got three, [La Jolla] Country Day got two or three, and Torrey Pines [High School] got five in but they had over 50 kids that applied.”
Overall, Warburg said there seem to be more rejections. “Last year they tended to defer more,” she said. “This year I saw outright rejections more.”
Around the nation
Many private colleges were expecting a dip in early-decision and early-action applicants because of the recession. But, according to a Nov. 20 article in the New York Times, the opposite has occurred: Stanford’s early-action applications rose 18 percent this year over last year, and applications at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for early action rose 25 percent.
According to the article there were jumps for early decision too: up 10 percent at Dartmouth, 15 percent at Northwestern and 20 percent at Pomona.
“Maybe education is the last thing people are willing to give up,” said one college counselor, in the article.
However, a New York Times article published one month later, on Dec. 22, revealed new data that the number of applications for regular decision is generally down from last year for most private universities, after seeing increased applications for early action and early decision.
According to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a survey of nearly 400 private higher-education institutions indicated that roughly two-thirds were concerned about declining enrollment.
“Admissions officers nationwide point to several possible reasons for the drop in applications,” reads the article. “Some students have pared their college lists this year. Many more are looking at less expensive state universities. Many institutions accepted more students under binding early-decision programs…. And some experts suspect that students are delaying their college plans.”
The article confirms what local private counselors Warburg and Shaevitz observed: “If some private colleges are grappling with the specter of too few applications, public universities and community colleges are having the opposite problem – more students at a time when their state financing is being slashed.”
Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, said in an article published Dec. 8 in the Los Angeles Times, “It is the most uncertain college admission year we have had in a very long time. … I think it’s a very worried and troublesome time.”
According to the article, “The economic downturn, with parents’ job losses and investment declines, is adding an extra layer of anxiety to what can be a stressful chapter of family life even in a booming economy.”
Guidance counselors quoted in the Los Angeles Times article say they expect students “to seek insurance, of sorts, by applying to more schools than usual and having more public schools in the mix.”
David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, was quoted as saying, “I think the term ‘hedging your bets’ will define the admission cycle this year.”
Many experts are advising parents to begin the search for financial aid immediately.
“Jan. 1, 2009 is the day you can begin the financial aid process, and let me tell you, the sooner you start, the better,” writes Bykevinm Doherty in the Dec. 15 Buffalo News.
He suggests parents first give birth to really smart kids, and then don’t let up on the search for college money. Establish and tap into the tax-deferred 529 plans, suggest to grandparents that a gift to their grandchildren’s college fund is a worthwhile investment, and don’t overlook the small awards. Accumulating a lot of little piles of scholarship cash can add up to something big, with patience and persistence.
Doherty says that the cost of college has risen 439 percent in the last 25 years, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Education. So loans may be an evil necessity, but be careful of terms. He suggests two starting points: Fastweb.com and collegefinancinggroup.com.
But don’t be hesitant to seek college loans. Adults need a college education today, to find work that’s both self-fulfilling and provides a comfortable lifestyle. “If you have to borrow money, education is about the best reason in the world to do so,” he states.
“I do think it will be critically important for students to submit their aid applications before deadlines this year and not wait until after an admission offer has been extended,” said Pomona College admissions officer Bruce Poch, in an on-line New York Times panel discussion published Dec. 19. “In a year many colleges and universities are experiencing a budget crunch, there may be nothing left at the end of an admissions cycle to actually meet their need if it has already been fully committed to those who got things in on time.”
“I suspect that families who can pay the full cost of education will be even more attractive to colleges now than in the past,” said Lawrence University college admissions officer Steven Syverson in the on-line discussion.
A provocative opinion piece in the Dec. 11 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, written by Eric Mink, argues that college is not affordable and we need to stop lying to our kids about it.
“We tell them that they are our future,” he writes. “We encourage them to follow their dreams and work hard to achieve anything they want. We hammer into their heads that the key to improving their lives – the key to achieving their goals and fulfilling their dreams – is education.
“And then every chance we get, we let that education slip further and further beyond the reach of young people from all but the most economically privileged families.”
According to Mink, a recent College Board survey indicates that the cost for tuition, fees, and room and board has increased 95 percent in 30 years at public four-year universities and 123 percent at private colleges.
In the same period of time, annual income increased by 3 percent for the poorest of families and by 22 percent for families in the middle.
“No one can keep up with these kinds of costs,” Mink writes.

* * * * *
As seniors take a breather and enjoy their well-deserved respite, with their fingers crossed that their dream schools come through, educators might do well to think about how this system can be improved.
If we really think all high school graduates, including low-income students, have a right to attend college, then let’s give them what they need to get there – and that means more than an excellent, rigorous education.
It means seeking them out and giving them early access to vital information on how to apply to and be accepted at colleges, including not just getting good grades but also how to build a resume, identifying an interest in extracurricular activities and community service, encouraging and promoting athletic skills, reminders of deadlines for SAT and ACT testing, tips on how to increase scores, guidance on essay writing, picking the right schools, and one-on-one tutorials on how to apply for financial aid.
And it means restructuring the system so college really is economically accessible for all.

Needing a roadmap

By Marsha Sutton

Time was, you could pick your three or four colleges of interest, get the applications, take one ACT or SAT test, report scores and grades, write a short essay, pay $50, and send in your application. Simple and fairly stress-free.
No more.
Today, college-bound students need a detailed roadmap for what’s become a mind-bogglingly complex system of rules and timelines, and often a guide who can translate what’s needed and when.
The National Association for College Admission Counseling [www.nacacnet.org] provides support for independent college counselors who have moved in to fill the void left by over-burdened public high school counselors who have little time to help college-bound seniors.
NACAC also supports increased numbers of trained high school counselors and lower student-to-counselor ratios, which the group says average 311:1 at public high schools and 234:1 at private high schools.
A recent study by NACAC showed that counselors at private high schools spent an average of 56 percent of their time on post-secondary education counseling, while counselors at public high schools spent only 23 percent of their time helping students with college decisions.
Furthermore, the organization states that counselors comprise only 2 percent of a school’s total staff, according to a 2005 report from the National Center for Education Statistics, even though their role is critical to a student’s successful transition from high school to college and adulthood.
A Dec. 14 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer states that NACAC recommends an ideal ratio of no more than 100 students per counselor, and no counselor “should handle more than 300 students.”
The biggest losers in this imbalance are those students from poor families who have no idea how to navigate the complexities of today’s college admissions process, nor parents to help them through it. These students can’t afford private schools where a significant part of a counselor’s job is to teach students how to get into college; nor do they have money for independent college advisers.
“The haves are getting armed to the teeth … and the have-nots are doing without,” said a spokesperson for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admission Officers, in The Philadelphia Inquirer article.
One high school counselor said her days are filled with meetings with “parents, social workers, probation officers, mental health assessors and outside support workers.”
Letters of recommendation that public school counselors are asked to provide to colleges also often fall short, because counselors barely know their students, have little time to write anything other than formulaic letters, and often fail to meet professional editing and grammatical standards, according to the article. Other problems include “delays in registering for the SAT, completing essays and organizing admissions materials.”
Even in high-scoring, affluent neighborhoods like Carmel Valley, Del Mar, Solana Beach, and Rancho Santa Fe, public high schools like Torrey Pines and Canyon Crest have counselors who handle hundreds of students and are often absorbed with high school counseling duties, leaving little time to attend to the post-secondary needs of their seniors.
This explains why so many local parents hire independent counselors to help their children through the process.
“Private educational consultants take up where overburdened high school guidance counselors leave off,” writes Julie Bick, in an article published Sept. 13 in the New York Times.
According to the Independent Educational Consultants Association, there are between 4,000 and 5,000 private college counselors in the country today, double the number from five years ago. The number is expected to double again in the next three to five years.
Families can pay independent college counselors hundreds of dollars an hour for limited services, up to thousands of dollars for year-long programs that often begin as early as ninth grade.
Consultants, like Carmel Valley’s Ruthi Warburg and La Jolla’s Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz, guide students through the process, keep them organized, remind them of deadlines for SAT and ACT tests, have them obtain letters of recommendation in time, help them complete college applications, and – most importantly – reduce stress. They provide a critical role in the process, one that can be a full-time job for parents or students trying to do it all themselves.
Until public high schools can provide similar kinds of services, with more counselors who have fewer students to handle and more time to devote to college application needs, look for local use of independent college advisers to continue to rise.