<p>T’is the season of the college brochure - and this article certainly gets into the spirit of the wonderful, technicolor world of college admissions and enrollment management:</p>
<p>"Somehow, word got out that my daughter is planning to attend college in a few years, and lately hundreds of full-color brochures touting the charms of various institutions of higher learning have begun pouring through our mail slot at home. Here are the top ten things I’ve learned about U.S. colleges from grabbing a random handful off the hall floor.</p>
<li>They are all located in New England in the fall.</li>
</ol>
<p>That includes colleges in New Mexico and above the Arctic Circle, where hundreds of multicolored deciduous trees are shipped by FedEx during this yearlong season.</p>
<li>At least one neo-Georgian building, glimpsed through heavy vegetation, dominates the campus.</li>
</ol>
<p>Since photographers have to stake these babies out, spending days lurking in the bushes waiting for one to sail on by, branches and leaves are often in the frame. Sometimes, satellite surveillance images are used, and a building or two of this description may be seen poking up among autumnally correct trees. Interiors feature the dining hall from Hogwarts and the library from Cambridge. All other buildings are modern inside, however, and include cavernous clerestory-windowed recreation centers; science labs with complex mazes of tubes, wires, and banks of important-looking equipment; and computer labs with rank upon rank of the latest model desktops. All classrooms are about the size of the average mudroom and seat no more than ten.</p>
<li>Small groups of students composed of at least one Asian, one African American, one Caucasian, and one of indeterminate ethnicity roam the campus frolicking on the grass, playing Frisbee, or eating lunch together.</li>
</ol>
<p>Although groupings of various nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities are usually seen in such high concentrations only at international food festivals, students on these campuses are rigorously multiethnic, multicultural, and multinational.</p>
<li>Their campuses are all conveniently situated at the center of something and are within a short distance of at least one other major or quaint thing.</li>
</ol>
<p>Three-dimensional arrows like those from major airline hubs radiate from campus into the stratosphere above and point to such places as Paris or Istanbul, where the college has a sister institution. Meanwhile, right next door is either New York City or a lovely little town used as the alternate-set for Gilmore Girls.</p>
<li>Their faculty members use extravagant hand gestures.</li>
</ol>
<p>Photographers must often interrupt classes in American Sign Language to capture these images. Or maybe the profs are conducting groups of music students who have forgotten their instruments.</p>
<li>Judging by the facial expressions of the students in classes, lectures are either riveting or hilarious.</li>
</ol>
<p>Compared with the students in average college classes, who may be found sleeping or doing other assignments, students in these classes are reacting as if the professor was either bursting into flames or doing Robin Williams doing Jim Carrey doing Jerry Lewis.</p>
<li>Other small groups of students around campus may typically be seen staring at some item that a faculty member is holding up in front of them.</li>
</ol>
<p>It may be a microscope slide, a smoldering test tube, a stuffed armadillo, or a ping-pong ball, but it holds some mesmerizing control over all of them. Variation: three or four people are staring at a computer screen while the professor-like the old comic-book character Mandrake the Magician-has frozen everyone with a hypnotic gesture.</p>
<p>8, None charge tuition, or if they do, it is surprisingly affordable, and there is a great deal of financial aid to be had for those who qualify.</p>
<p>The registrar keeps all financial information on file and will be happy to give exact figures upon subpoena by the proper authorities. Scholarship award amounts will be determined the week before classes, when bids for all other colleges have expired.</p>
<p>Note: Financial terminology is often specialized at these academic institutions where, unlike at banks, the word “aid” is used to mean “loan.”</p>
<li>These schools have close to a thousand major areas, many of which are interdisciplinary.</li>
</ol>
<p>Want to major in history or English? How unimaginative of you when you could get a degree in synchronized swimming studies, waterless cookware of the ancients, Klingon mating customs, or Botox body sculpture. All fiefdoms and separate turf areas on campus work together in complete harmony in melding the coursework into a satisfying and complete credential-granting experience.</p>
<li>They are in the top ranks of something.</li>
</ol>
<p>Whether it’s for “Most Variegation of Fall Vegetation” (see above), “Highest Number of Underground Passageways for a School in the Snow Belt,” or “National Leader in Use of Macaroni Products in Food Service,” all have claims of distinction. Students seeking “Best Kegger Party School” had best look elsewhere.</p>
<p>I think you can see from the above examples that picking a college from these brochures, given all their superlatives and special attributes, can be a challenge for aspiring college students and their parents. Applying the tried-and-true system used by many of these fine colleges themselves in the admissions process may help: simply throw the brochures down a flight of stairs and pick those that fly the farthest."</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3860/is_200307/ai_n9261675[/url]”>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3860/is_200307/ai_n9261675</a></p>