<p>-No A.A
-Allow a student to apply to a maximum of 3 Ivies
-Say bye-bye to all evil rankings!!!!</p>
<p>Some people have suggested getting rid of college rankings, but since none of those are official anyway, how could college rankings be eliminated without eliminating freedom of speech and the press?</p>
<p>I think the American college admission process is working just fine. Yes, it is abit cumbersome but it is what it is.</p>
<p>The reason you don't see students applying to both Oxford and Cambridge (but I suppose technically they could...) is because in the UK you have to rank schools in order of preferences when you apply through their centralized system. Oxford, cambridge, and I think London require that you rank them as #1 or it's an automatic rejection. </p>
<p>Personally, I like the American system where you can apply to as many schools and Ivies as you choose and you have the power to control the schools after acceptances and not the other way around. In the UK the universities control you up until the time your conditional acceptance becomes unconditional. (which could be as late as the August before school starts)</p>
<p>The changes I would suggest would have more to do with the financial aid process. I think I would make FAFSA begin May 1 instead of Jan 1. This would serve to:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>make things easier for most families as most would have completed their taxes by then so no more taxes and fafsa stress at the same time. </p></li>
<li><p>it would allow familes to beging the financial aid process (not estimates - but actual) PRIOR to college applications in the Fall. This allows for better planning as to what schools one can reasonably afford. Feb/March is too late to be dealing with financial aid issues - especially as the students have to give their answer by May 1st.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I also think that schools should indicate if they use Fafsa, Profile or both in their admissions advertising - not just in the financial aid info. There should also be some upfront disclosures by the schools as to the true cost of applying to them. (For instance, the SAT and 2 SAT subject tests, profile, and the application fees). </p>
<p>We often forget that many young people navigate this process on their own.</p>
<p>I wish every high school would calculate weighted grades. It's not fair that colleges using AI freely replace a weighted GPA with an unweighted GPA. In my case, I would be at least in the top 3% of my class with weighted GPA but since we don't use weighted GPA, my rank is barely in the 9th percentile.</p>
<p>Has anyone stated getting rid of the box on the common app that asks if someone else has attended the same college from your family? In short, get rid of legacies.</p>
<p>Standardize the common app, eliminate supplements. It got irritating after awhile to answer the same essay questions for every college again and again. </p>
<p>Eliminate the counselor report. Seriously, the counselor cannot possibly hope to give a detailed analysis of every student that requests one. </p>
<p>Get rid of racial quotas, aka affirmative action. College acceptance should be based primarily on merit.</p>
<p>Get rid of standarized testing. Really, people put way too much time into getting a high score when it often barely makes a difference in top college admissions process.
(for example, people with 2300s get rejected)</p>
<p>Finally, eliminate college ranking, such as the US report. Students put way too much emphasis in applying to colleges simply because they are ranked high, rather than if they would be a good fit.</p>
<p>Allow me to repeat myself: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>^^it might be worth it to give up free speech to get rid of the US News College Rankings...</p>
<p>Have 3 application periods:
Apply to only 3 schools each period. Total of 9 schools.
Oct., Jan. May.
If you get accepted into one of your schools the first round, you don't apply to anymore.
Students would think real hard about which schools they realistically fit in. It would increase everyone's chances for the school they would thrive at. Admissions would not waste their time on student who were never going to their school to begin with.</p>
<p>That would only be appropriate if there were universal merit awards - since each school awards its own merit funds (and then much later in the process), this proposal doesn't work and would be unfair to students.</p>
<p>Freedom is more precious than the bragging rights of your college. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>tokenadult:) thank you for yet another thoughtful thread!</p>
<p>Just as the colleges have May1 as an Universal reply date they need
to have a date that strongly couples notification of financial aid with
the admittance decision. For example March 31 could not only be a date
for admittance decisions but also for financial aid notification....?</p>
<p>Though most Deans of admissions have the titles Dean of Admission
and Financial Aid (at least to some of the colleges I applied to this year)
it was very apparent that the financial aid department does not seem to
share any of the deadlines or urgencies that the admissions side does.
I can understand for need-blind institutions why this might be so...however
the level of delay bordered on the ridiculous...April 30th at 2:00 Pm for
Petes sake!</p>
<p>Institutions that make first time aid offers way out of line with their announced policies (expecting the students to negotiate) should be
reprimanded publicly by the College Board when it is brought to their
attention.
(so to add to your other excellent thread about which colleges did
not give you good aid...the question could be which colleges did not
give you good aid until you yelled and went all the way to the top with
your feedback...)</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>How about some realistic feedback from the universities - if they have minimum requirements, say so. If you go to almost any upper echelon school's site, they will have an ode to the holistic process and how it's hard to say what statistics will be enough to get you in.</p>
<p>That's rather silly - if they haven't admited anyone with a GPA of 3.0 and SAT of 1300 in the past 4 years, why not save everyone a lot of time and just say so. I know we're supposed to "figure it out", but why not be direct?</p>
<p>I've used GPA/SAT here, but it could be other criteria as well - if in-state, criteria could be one thing, if OOS, another.</p>
<p>And if you don't meet the basic criteria, you file an "exemption" application, which makes the whole sorting process easier.</p>
<p>Let the sun shine in. Release detailed data on the specs of admitted and rejected students: SAT's, SAT II's, AP's, GPA's, Class ranks, by status: in state, out of state, region, legacy, race, recruited athlete etc. Let em do whatever they want but require full disclosure. This would be really valuable for students who are trying to realistically assess their chances. This will not happen unless it is required because it would, probably, adversely affect reported admissions rates for any given college.</p>
<p>I think college admissions needs time to stabilize more than reform efforts. The last half dozen years have been rather unstable due to some factors that will no longer be present or will at least be minimized in the years to come.</p>
<p>1) The baby boomlet hit. The number of HS grads has gone up steadily and dramatically over since 2000. Credentials that were good enough to get you into Top Tier U in 2004 were not good enough in 2008. The demographics spawned a lot of uncertainty. Now the demographics favor stabilization. The HS class of '09 will be the first on 6-8 plateau years. </p>
<p>2) International applications have seen a big increase in recent years. The increase in the past year was down somewhat.</p>
<p>3) The number of applications per students has increased. The uncertainty of being accepted at any given school leads to applying to more schools, and the common application has made it easier to apply to more schools. We are probably nearing some kind of plateau in the number of applications per student as well, although I can offer no proof. It is quite difficult to get a hold of recent data in this area.</p>
<p>No wonder the past few years have been so confusing and have resulted in many head scratchers and gross disappointment. However, I see the application landscape becoming more predictable, maybe not next year, but by 2010. HYPS admissions will always seem irrational, but for most schools, including most top-tier schools, admission will become more predictable. Even though the demographic plateau will eventually end, it will not go up as steeply as it has in this decade.</p>
<p>The one change I think is needed is for information to be both timely and clear. Great strides have been made in this area. College navigator is an example. One area I would like to see more emphasis on is near-term trends. College navigator provides tuition data for the past 3 years. I would like to see that extended to 5 years and would like to see other admissions data for 5 years as well, such as admissions rate, yield, SAT scores, GPA, size of freshman class, men/women ratio, etc. I would also like to see common dataset information available by October 15 at the latest.</p>
<p>I was only kidding. Don't tase me bro.</p>