Colleges Like Boys Better Than Girls

Sixty percent of college students in America are women; men go to college in fewer numbers.  Some campuses are content to reflect this gender gap, but many are not.  Most strive for a balance of men and women on their campuses.


The result:  boys are favored in the admissions process, sometimes with a 10-20% better admit rate than women.


While we wait for the lawsuit that will reverse this advantage (remember that affirmative action programs based on race are under fire by the courts), we do well to keep this in mind.


US News & World Report did a quick video on the gender gap that focuses on the College of William & Mary and the University of Richmond.


Mark Montgomery

College Counselor of the Male Persuasion


Socio-Economic and Racial Disparities Reflected in SAT Scores

It it no surprise whatsoever that black and brown students score lower on standardized tests than their white and yellow peers. This fact is one more indicator of the “achievement gap” between minority students and white students in the United States. (For more on this, see the article from Inside Higher Ed).

Some analysts are more careful to draw socioeconomic distinctions, rather than racial ones. The fact is that poorer students generally have fewer educational opportunities, inadequate schools, and are held to lower standards than kids in wealthier areas–where parents raise tens of thousands of dollars each year in silent auctions and other fundraisers–all to ensure that their kids continue to get the best of the best.

The College Board has announced that more young people–including ones from lower socioeconomic backgrounds–are taking the SAT test than ever before. Even so, the average score for each component of the test has remained about the same: critical reading (502), mathematics (515) and writing (494).

This steady average masks some uncomfortable realities. First, even though more poor students are taking the tests (which might bring scores lower, on average), more rich students are also taking the tests–sometimes 2 or 3 times. So just because the average is steady does not mean that scores among students at the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder or performing better.

Further, African American, Native American, and Latino students consistently score well below Anglo and Asian American students. Here are the averages for those groups:

African Americans: Critical reading: 430; Math: 426; Writing: 424

Hispanics: Critical reading: 455; Math: 460; Writing: 447

Native Americans: Critical reading: 485; Math: 491; Writing: 470

Note that scores for each of these groups went DOWN this past year over the previous year, while average scores for Anglos and Asian student went UP.

No wonder more and more colleges are making standardized tests optional in the admissions process, or are finding some other ways to evaluate the potential of minority students. There is no getting around the fact that students from poorer communities score worse on these tests than wealthy students. So how can colleges correct for these tests–legally–and recruit and retain more qualified minorities onto their campuses?


TAKE THE POLL!

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{democracy:2}



Mark Montgomery
College Admission Counselor

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The Low Cost of College Tuition

The New York Times published an article today that provides a comprehensive look at the colleges that have been moving swiftly to lower their tuition rates for lower income and middle class families. Primarily, the colleges that are making these price reductions are the more wealthy, upper-tier institutions. But the article points out, as I often do to anyone who will listen, that most families do not pay the “sticker price”–and many pay far lower tuition rates that we might expect.
Amid all the hullaballoo about ever-rising tuition costs, it pays to consider that how one chooses a college has a bearing on one’s financial aid strategy. One of the problems, however, is that families with limited means–including middle class families–often don’t know enough about their college options to develop compatible college selection and financial aid strategies.
Mark Montgomery
College Counselor in Colorado

Elite Colleges Take More Students from Waiting Lists

This was a brutal year for admissions to top colleges. The applicant pool was larger than ever before. Harvard and Princeton did away with their early decision programs. Many elite colleges, including the Ivies, Lafayette, Bowdoin, and Stanford, announced generous new financial aid policies.
And many colleges increased the size of their waiting lists, in part because of the uncertainty these changes wrought in admissions offices at these schools.
The result is that many colleges are taking many more students from their waiting lists than in the past.
Here’s a snippet from a recent article about waiting lists from the Wall Street Journal:

The wait-list bonanza isn’t because colleges have more slots available for students — in fact, overall enrollment levels at many schools remained the same as last year.

Instead, colleges this year faced more uncertainty in the applications process. For one thing, there’s a growing population of high-school seniors — many of whom submit applications to multiple schools. But for highly selective schools, what really affected the process was the move by two Ivy League schools to end their early-admissions programs. Also at play were policy changes that made more financial aid available to middle- and upper-class students.

So while this is good news for some students on waiting lists, keep in mind that the numbers are still quite small. Here are the numbers that will pulled off the waiting list at some schools:

University of Wisconsin-Madison: This year: 800; Last year 6
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: This year 300; Last year 226
Boston College: This year 250; Last year 117
Harvard University: This year 200: Last year 50
Princeton University: This year 90; Last yaer 47
Georgetown University: This year 80; Last year 29
Yale University: This year 46; Last year 50
Hamilton College: This year: 36; Last year: 24
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: This year 35; Last year: 20
Johns Hopkins University: This year: 30; Last year: 86
Swarthmore College: This year: 22; Last year: 42
Pomona College: This year: 16; Last year: 17
University of Chicago: This year: 10 to 15; Last year: 0
Stanford University: This year: 0; Last year: 0
University of Virginia: This year: 0; Last year: 150

 

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor

 

Student-to-Faculty Ratio: Is It Really An Important Statistic?

students sitting in classroom and teacher is standing while poiting towards screen

Student-to-faculty ratio is generally considered to be an indicator of the quality of the educational experience at a college. The lower the ratio, the more personal and intimate the experience ought to be. And yet some colleges have very low ratios and enormous class sizes. Plus, these statistics are easily manipulated by campus administrators.

But what do they really tell us about the quality of a campus. I spent some time on a campus recently and asked students and faculty about the student to faculty ratio. Everyone said it was important, but no one could explain why it’s an important indicator.

Have a look at what I posted on YouTube.

Check out these links for more insights about student-to-faculty ratios and average class size as indicators of educational quality.

And if you want to explore the unintended, negative consequences of having small classes and low student-to-faculty ratios, check out my explanation.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant and College Planner

Carnivals, Old and New

cotton candy machineThe latest edition of the Carnival of Education is up today at the Elementary Educator, and it’s full of interesting posts, as usual.
In addition, the third edition of a new carnival, the Carnival of College Admission is up. I’m happy to see this Carnival get going–so happy, that I’ll be hosting it next week.
This week’s Carnival of College Admission has articles on extracurricular activities, writing the personal statement, and notes on a couple of plays written by students about the thrills and chills of the whole admissions process.
So have a look around and consider adding your own post to the Carnival. You can submit your entry by using the handy-dandy form.
Mark Montgomery
Great College Advice from
Montgomery Educational Consulting

Changes in How US News Calculates Rankings

US News & World Report’s infamous rankings system may include new sorts of data, according to an article today in Inside Higher Ed.
They may add survey data collected from 1600 high school counselors, who are being asked to rate colleges on a scale of 1 to 5.  This data may–or may not–be used in calculating the rankings the next time they come out.
Many members of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling are outraged, largely because they believe the rankings are misleading, counterproductive, and based on faulty methodology.  College counselors generally want students to make  college choices that reflect their values, educational needs, and no on someone else’s opinion of what is good or bad.
I agree.
Opinions are opinions, even if they come from experts.  Every time I am asked, “what’s the best college,” I always answer, it depends on who’s asking.  For me, the best college might be a small, private liberal arts college.  For you, it might be a large, public university.
The answer depends on the criteria that are important to you, not the criteria that some editor at US News cooked up.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
GreatCollegeAdvice.com

Eight Tips For Handling Rejection in College Admission

Forbes.com recently did a series of articles on the aftermath of the college admissions season, and looked at how kids are handling rejection.
I was featured as one of their experts in providing tips on how to handle rejection. Check it out; scroll through the slides.
This little slide show was an accompaniment to a more detailed article by Hana R. Alberts, called Handling Rejection. It’s a very balanced piece.
Mark Montgomery
Expert in College Search and Admission
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Student-to-Faculty Ratios: What Do These Statistics Mean?

teacher and students in a classroom

The other day I received this question from a client:

Hi, Mark. I’ve been reading college profiles, and nearly all of them cite student-to-faculty ratios, all of which fall in to a relatively narrow range of perhaps 12:1 to 20:1. How important is this statistic in choosing a college?

My short answer: not very

The student-to-faculty ratio is supposed to reflect the intimacy of the educational experience. One would assume that the lower the ratio, the more contact a student will have with faculty members. One might also assume that institutions with lower ratios would have smaller class sizes, on average, than one with a higher ratio.

Let’s look first at the view from 30,000 feet. What is the national student-to-faculty ratio? According to the National Center for Educational Statistics’ Digest of Educational Statistics for 2007. There were 18 million college students and 1.3 million college faculty. A quick calculation tells us that nationwide, there are 13.8 students for every faculty member in America.

However, there are only about 700,000 full-time faculty members in higher education, and about 600,000 part-time faculty, or adjuncts. So if we recalculate the ratio, there are 25.7 students per full-time faculty member.
So how do universities report their student-t0-faculty ratios? Because a low ratio is associated with higher quality education. A college administrator has an incentive to keep this ratio as low as possible.

Every major publication and ranking system (e.g., US News, the Princeton Review, the Fiske Guide) slavishly reports these figures and uses them to compare one college against another.

So look behind the ratios!

  • Does this figure include part-time faculty who may be brought in to teach a single course? If so, keep in mind that students have much less access to adjunct faculty (who rarely have their own office or even a place to hang their coats).
  • Does this figure include faculty who teach only graduate courses–or may teach predominantly graduate students? If so, the ratio exaggerates students’ access to some of the most senior faculty–many of whom simply do not like teaching undergraduates.
  • Does this figure include research faculty, who generally do not teach undergraduate courses at all, but may simply guide doctoral candidates or teach in a graduate professional school? If so, the ratio may be inflated.

When I was a college administrator, my colleagues and I always agonized about how to report our student-to-faculty ratios. The recipient of this information usually colored our responses. If we were reporting to the Office of institutional research (which is required to report information to the federal government in standardized formats). We were fairly careful in giving a more nuanced, detailed accounting.

But if the admissions office was asking for figures. We’d drum up every faculty member we could in order to report a low student-to-faculty ratio. So take these ratios with a grain of salt. As my prospective client noticed, the range of ratios does not vary all that much from one institution to another. And the ratio may not tell you all that much about the classroom experience.

You will want to ask other questions that may tell you more about the intimacy of the educational experience.

For more on whether student-to-faculty ratios tell us much about the quality of a college, click here.

Mark Montgomery
Independent College Counselor