Great College Advice

Sometimes peer pressure is a good thing.

I read an article the other day in Inside Higher Ed that Baylor University had implemented a policy to pay admitted students to retake the SAT scores, in a bid to build an appearance of greater selectivity and (so Baylor officials said) to give away more scholarship money.

On Thursday, [...]

Abilene Christian University decided to educate students about the dangers of fire in a dormitory.  So they constructed a model dorm room in the center of campus, tossed a match in the trash can, and within 2 minutes, the entire room was ablaze.

Take a look at the news story describing this simulated conflagration at the [...]

Just a couple of weeks ago, the National Council for College Admissions Counseling issued a report calling on colleges to reduce the importance of standardized scores in the admissions process.

But as long as public rankings of colleges and universities, such as those issue by US News & World Report, it’s unlikely that colleges will dump [...]

When I visited Austin College last fall, I was really impressed by this little gem of a campus north of Dallas, Texas. The students I met were enthralled with the place, and I sat next to a very dapper professor of Spanish at lunch, who, despite my grilling, could not find a single bad [...]

Last week, I spent a few hours on the campus of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. It’s an excellent liberal arts college located in a vibrant, culturally rich city. After having visited Dallas and Houston a few days before, I was glad for the more relaxed, informal atmosphere of San Antonio.
Here are [...]

In a single day, I spent 4 hours on each of these two campuses. No two institutions could be more different, despite their geographical proximity. Apples and Oranges. Mutt and Jeff. Oliver and Stanley.
I wrote more about Austin College here. I really liked the place. And I liked SMU [...]

I recently spent half a day in Sherman, Texas, visiting Austin College. I was very impressed with the campus, the students, the administration, and the faculty. What’s not to like about it? Very little. The students are academically serious. The faculty does an outstanding job of preparing students, and everyone [...]

Yesterday I spent an hour or two wandering around the campus of the University of Saint Thomas in Houston, Texas.  It’s a pleasant, little campus in the museum district of Houston.  The architecture is boxy and very 1960s, but the campus was pretty active…plenty of kids walking about with purpose.
Little did I know that the [...]

Today I visited the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. UD is a small Catholic college with a classical liberal arts curriculum. As one of the faculty members described it, UD offers a 21st Century Renaissance education. As such, UD is not a college that will appeal to everyone. But it [...]

I spent some time on Baylor’s campus today. It was not the best day for a visit (Sunday) and I arrived around noon before the campus was awake.  Thus I had a nice, solitary, reflective walk around the sprawling, well-kept grounds.  Once the buildings opened around 1 pm, I poked around the library and the [...]