But then there are the colleges who have ambitious plans for growth. Lehigh University has announced plans to add numerous buildings to its campus. It will build enough new residential halls to accommodate a 20% increase in its student population. Along with a new life sciences laboratory building and a health technology building. In uncertain times, Lehigh is making a big bet in its future, that students who want to get into a great college will continue to land on Lehigh. 

What does this mean for those who are looking for colleges?

Well, if you’re looking at small colleges, you really need to think about solvency. Then again, for schools like Lehigh, we might want to look at how much debt even a relatively solvent university is taking on in order to grow. Some universities have a very conservative growth policy, while others resort to the financial markets in order to raise capital.

It’s not clear from the Washington Post article whether Lehigh plans to raise all the funds for its new building through fundraising. Or whether the leadership plans to borrow–with the idea that “if we build it, they will come.” Lehigh’s application numbers and selectivity may signal that the capital markets will be willing to lend the university some money. I’ve learned from deans of admission that a college’s bond rating is closely tied to its ranking in US News and World Report. Still, it will be important to watch this growth spurt at Lehigh to ensure that its financial health remains secure.

Great College Advice
Educational Consultant and Admissions Expert

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Transcript:

Hi, I’m Sofia La Porta. I’m a high school senior and I live in Hanover, New Hampshire. I’ve been working with Mark since the summer after my freshman year. I think I thought the college process was going to be about me following directions. Getting 2400 on my SAT and getting straight As. And I quickly learned that that wasn’t going to be the way it was going to go, possibly.

Because I got a B+ in the first semester of my freshman year and realized the 4.0 out of reach at that point. And I sort of started to tell myself that I wasn’t capable. And I think that I thought that admissions officers would be able to see right through that. And that they’d see my blemished GPA and say, “Oh, she’s not worthy.”

Why Brown University

I’m not really sure how my fascination with Brown University started out. I think that someone I knew had gone there and talked really highly of it. It was the only college I really knew about so I was like, “That’s the one. That’s it. I’m going there. Gotta go there.” So I went on Naviance and was like this is the GPA I have to have. And this is the SAT I have to have, and I strove for that.

And so three years later I applied for early decision. I got deferred, and it was heartbreaking. But not in the way that I had expected because I think that when I was applying. It was the only school that I could think about. But as I started to write supplements for other schools I started to fall in love with all these other options that I could have.

And in a way I started to feel like, was it too soon to commit to something that maybe just my heart was into. But I wasn’t so sure that my mind was really following my heart. And then I ended finding out that I did get into Brown, where I will be attending in the fall.

Mark’s Help

I think, as I’ve talked about, Mark was really helpful in terms of figuring out ways that I could channel my interests. And even if he didn’t know the exact person that I could work with he was really great at giving advice about how I could get from uninterested, ninth-grade Sofia to this person who cared about things, and who cared about making the world a better place, and that was hugely important.

Also, I think that knowing that someone was looking over all of my documents and everything that I was writing, my college essay, my supplements, looking at what I was doing to prepare for standardized tests was hugely stress-relieving, not only for me but also for my parents, who didn’t go to college in the United States so it was a pretty new process for them.

And I think knowing that someone knew what was going on and knew how to take certain signals and was able to really proofread my essays to deleting two words or adding one, or how I was going to take away a sentence and make sure that that information, that sentence, was still replicated throughout the rest of the essay, was invaluable to my college process.

The post Student Gets into First-Choice Ivy League School with Help of Educational Consultant first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

How Lynn University Does it

Here on the campus of Lynn University, they do everything with a personal touch. And it was very clear in both the tour and in our lunch today, with the Director of Admission and Associate Director of Admission, that really, they tailor their programs here to individual students. Small class sizes, really focused on student needs, and focused on trends for the future.

But one of the things that you can see here is that they even welcomed me by putting my name on the parking sign. As we pulled in the car to park, here’s my name. So they pride themselves on developing a very personalized experience for every student who comes here, because they know that the experience that every student has as a student is also very personal. So that’s the message they want to project and to communicate with you if you’re coming.

Some universities care a lot if you visit. Lynn cares a lot. I’m telling you, Harvard couldn’t care less if you attend an information session and a tour; they really don’t care. But a place like Lynn, they’re going to pay attention to you. They want to make sure that they’re doing the things that will make you successful as a student. So it starts when you pull your car in the parking space. It’s a personal touch.

The post Admissions Counselor on Visiting Colleges: Some Care, Some Don’t first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

Here on the campus of Lynn University, I am in the International Business Center. It’s named after Mohammed Indimi, who gave the money for this building. And besides seeing these absolutely phenomenal study rooms that any student can reserve with a swipe of their ID, I wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of other innovative features at Lynn University.

Number one saving money tactic

They have a January term here, so that during the month of January, three weeks, you take one class — sometimes you can take two — one class that is more intensive, shorter duration, but still gives you credit towards your degree. One of the advantages of the J term and a way that Lynn organizes their academic calendar is that it’s possible to get your undergraduate degree in three years instead of four. So as our tour guide said when we asked her, “So why would you do that?” She says, “To save a bunch of money!”

So that’s a great thing about Lynn, again, Lynn likes to do things a little bit differently, so they have found a way to make it possible for students to do that exact same amount of coursework, the exact number of credit hours, as any other university. But they do it in a more condensed fashion so the students can reduce their time to their degree, and then reduce their opportunity costs. They can get out. They can get into the workforce much more quickly. So it’s an innovative way to keep things moving for students and to reduce the costs of higher education, which we all know in this country is extremely expensive. So Lynn is making it possible for you to save money and still get a quality education.

The post College Expert on Saving Money Lynn University Style first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

So I’m here on the campus of my alma mater, Dartmouth College. I’m here for a reunion and it’s been a fun, nostalgia-filled weekend, and I always enjoy coming up here. And one of the things I like to do when I come here, too, is to connect with some of the students that I’ve counseled in the past.

This morning I had coffee with, she’s a freshman and she’s a tour guide here on campus. And we got to talking about being a tour guide and how all that works, and we were also talking about the fraternity system, so I was asking her, “So what is the admissions saying to students when they’re coming on campus and want to know about the fraternity system and how many students are really a part of it?” And the party line statistic is 50%. Now, that’s accurate, but a little misleading, perhaps. Because that makes it seems like the statistic is much lower than the number, which is 68% of eligible students are in the Greek system. So 2/3 of students.

Greek System

The reason there’s a difference between these two statistics is because freshmen are not allowed to be in the Greek system. You rush in your second or sophomore year. So it’s true that if you take the entire student body, you have only 50% of students that are in the system. But then when sophomore year happens, 2/3 of your cohort is going to be rushing for the Greek system.

So it’s one of those things where it’s like where are they bending the truth? Are they bending the truth? No, they’re not, they’re stating a fact, but they’re also giving you a statistic that is perhaps going to make Dartmouth a little bit more palatable to you if you’re thinking the fraternity system may be not what you want, or if you’re worried about it, they want to make it seem less of a force in the social life on campus. It’s a force, there’s no getting around it that the Greek system is a very strong aspect of social life on campus.

Why do I bring this up? Not so much to criticize my alma mater, I love the place, but it does have some warts and one of them, one could say, maybe, is the fraternity system. But I think what I want to point out most for anyone who is thinking about going to college is remind yourself that the admissions office is the sales and marketing division of the college. And so when you’re walking around the campus, what you hear from the tour guides and what you hear in those information sessions is going to be the rosy picture.

Do Your Own Research

It’s going to be the positive spin on anything that might be a little bit controversial or, “Let’s cover up those warts a little bit more.” And if you really want to know the facts you’ve got to do some research on your own. You’ve got to be looking at data on the government web sites or on CollegeData. If something’s important to you, you need to get kind of underneath whatever you’re being told by the admissions office. It’s not a fib, but it’s also not necessarily a full understanding of the truth. So colleges have stories to tell. And you want to listen to them, but then again you want to verify. As Ronald Reagan used to say, “Trust, but verify.”

The post Educational Consultant Warns of College Spin first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

So I’m on the campus of the University of Miami. And one of the things that comes to mind is this whole question of financial aid. And who gets financial aid. I have a professional listserv that I belong to. It is a bunch of counselors, and there was a question that came out on that list about financial aid. “Why didn’t my kids get accepted to this or that school?” Also then one of the things they put in the question was, “My students needed a lot of financial aid in order to be able to attend.”

So that immediately starts me thinking about money because money is a lot of what drives higher education. It’s expensive. So one of the ways to think about this at the University of Miami, it’s a 38% acceptance rate. So it’s a pretty low acceptance rate. Hard to get in. But 48% of the students receive financial aid. What does that mean? That 52% of all the students who go here, according to this data that I got from government sources, 52% of the students who go here pay the full price.

The reality of getting financial aid

So 38% acceptance rate. The reality is, as unfortunate or as unfair as it may be. Is that a school like the University of Miami is thinking about who can pay and who can keep the lights on. And keep this campus as beautiful as it is and pay all the people who populate this campus to help you with your higher education. The fact is that no matter who you are, you have a better chance of getting into a top private university with a high price tag if you need less financial aid. If you need a lot of financial aid, you better be at the top end of their application pool in order to draw that aid toward you.

So what’s the lesson?

Get good grades. Work on those test scores and make sure they’re as high as the possibly can be. Because if you need financial aid, that’s how you get it. By being an excellent student. So if you want to attend a place like this and get really great financial aid or any other private institution that costs a lot of money, study. You gotta work hard, and that’s who gets the money.

The post College Admissions Expert on Financial Aid at Private Universities first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m on the campus of Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, where they do things differently. This is a university, as the director of admissions told me, he said, “When other universities zig, we zag.” And one of the examples of that is what you see behind me, the library, and how they actually deliver reading materials to the students. This is an iPad university, this is an iTunes university. They have every single reading that the students require on the iPad, on a drive. So each class has its own file and all of the readings are on the iPad. So the student, in effect, carries their library in the palm of their hand.

A Library for Show

So when we went into the library, I got kind of a chuckle out of it because the tour guide was saying, “Well, here we have some books but they’re kind of just for show.” She said, “We have a renovation plan for the university, we’re going to renovate the library, and we’re going to get rid of the books. They’re really kind of a fire hazard anyway.” I’m laughing, having been a high school teacher and a college professor, I’m like, library? That’s the most important building on the campus!

But if you think about it, for the 21st century, it may not be. For a lot of students, the library may not be that important. If you can do all of your readings on the iPad, you can interact with the reading on the iPad, you can highlight on the iPad, you can print from the iPad if you need to, there is no reason to have a library full of hundreds of thousands of volumes.

Everything Technology

So Lynn University is embracing this future of the 21st century, and saying it’s all about technology, we’re teaching our students how to use this, we’re using it day to day in every single class that we offer here, we don’t need a library in the old-fashioned sense. Yes, many universities will need it, but we here at Lynn University, not so important. So zig versus zag. If you’re looking for the zag, think of Lynn.

The post Admissions Expert on Lynn University: Books Are So 20th Century first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

So I’m here on the campus of Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, central Florida. And when I visit colleges I try to meet with admissions officers if I can to just get a sense. To kind of get the quick and condensed version of what they’re looking for. And what they offer as an institution. And so I sat with two admissions officers today and asked them, “So what are the three things I need to know about Stetson University?”

The Size of the School

So the first one is the size. The size of the school is small, it’s a little bit under 3,000 students, and the size offers two advantages. Academically, there’s a lot of connection between students and their faculty. Stetson still requires a senior research project of all their majors. Business is a little bit different. But all majors are required to do a major research project in their senior year.

So that’s one aspect academically. And then the other piece is that in terms of size, the leadership potential or possibilities for students is much greater. Because they have fewer students. So if they have 100 clubs, well, they’ve got 100 presidents of all those clubs. So it’s possible to really gain substantial leadership ability, or experience, on a campus as small as this.

Location, Location, Location

Second thing that they mentioned was location. Because it’s in a small town, it’s not tiny but not in the middle of nowhere. It’s about an hour from Orlando and about 30 minutes from Daytona. So that there are possibilities for things like internships. As well as the connection with the community because of its location here in central Florida. And you should also add that it’s Florida. So it’s warm and you can wear flip-flops most of the school year. Right now it’s a little bit chilly here in January, but it’s actually a quite cold day for Florida.

Get Involved

And then the third thing they talked about was engagement and the possibility to be really engaged. This is a Bonner Scholars school, so they have a strong community service program and they actually recruit kids who have a strong background in community service. They actually put the Bonner Scholars in with the honors program students in a separate dorm. So engagement is a big part of this school and what it means in the community.

So three things: size, location, and engagement. That was what I was told to remember about Stetson. And then you can also remember that this is the rock pile. This is sort of a symbol that every school has some sort of a rock that’s sort of the anchor of the school, but here at Stetson they decided recently to add a whole bunch of rocks because it symbolizes that from many rocks, we have a community of rocks here at Stetson University. So fun place to visit; I enjoyed my visit very much.

The post Admissions Adviser on Stetson University: A Place to Get Involved first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, Mark Montgomery coming to you with more Great College Advice, and today we’re going to talk about Columbia University. There are two things that you need to remember about Columbia University if you’re trying to figure out whether that’s the school you want to attend. Two things. The first is the core curriculum. The core curriculum, well, it could be really summed up by thinking about the old dead white guys. Columbia maintains this core curriculum that is grounded in the great books of western civilization.

Core Curriculum

The two courses that you take, it really takes up about a third of all the classes you will take in the first couple of years. They’re composed of basically two components. One is contemporary civilization, known as CC. This is political and moral philosophy, you read a lot of those classics of political philosophy, moral philosophy, to help understand what makes a good society and how to move that society forward. The second thing is literature and humanities. Which is again more of the great books in literature and more philosophy. But still more grounded in the literary tradition.

So these are classes that every single Columbia University student must take. It’s a little bit less rigorous if you’re an engineering student. But generally everybody else has got to take this core. So if that’s something that excites you and really makes you want to jump up and down when you go to class every day, Columbia is perhaps the school for you. I think it’s great, I did this when I was in college, and I don’t regret it a bit. I think this grounding in the western tradition is fantastic, but it is not for everyone.

The Big City

The second thing you have to think about is pretty obvious: New York City. It’s what attracts students to Columbia. But there a couple of things that you need to think about in terms of that city location. The first is that the university is almost 100% residential. 95% or so of students live on campus all four years in the residence halls. And while they’re small, it’s really the best way to forge a community with the people that you’ll be going to school with.

So that’s a great thing, but the other thing about New York City is it does tend to weaken some of the bonds that many other colleges are able to forge. So it doesn’t have the spirited ra-ra kind of fierce loyalty that other schools like, say, a Notre Dame, maybe a Georgetown, a Dartmouth, will create. Because you’ve got the city there. And so instead of necessarily being involved in the campus community where that may be the only thing there is for you to do, someplace like South Bend,

Indiana, the city is your world, right? So you can go out with other students and participate and enjoy the Big Apple, and that becomes part of the whole campus experience, the whole student experience of going to Columbia.

Public Transportation

You could think of it this way, too: whereas most other Ivy League schools have the playing fields right on the campus or adjacent to it, some of the playing fields are 100 blocks away, and you’re going to take public transportation or some sort of a shuttle or a bus to get to those fields. So it’s not forging the same kind of intense community that some of the other Ivies and some of the other top universities in the United States will create.

So again, Columbia, core curriculum, New York City. If you’re trying to figure out which Ivy League school is best for you, give me a call. I’d be happy to try to help. Or take a look at some of the other articles about Ivy League schools here on the blog. Thanks very much.

The post Admissions Expert on Columbia University: Ivy League Education in the Big Apple first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Mark Montgomery with some Great College Advice, and right now we’re going to answer that perennial question. If I have bad grades, can I still go to college?

I get a lot of questions on my blog. None of them are more common than the question, “If my grades are bad, can I still go to college?” For example, recently I just received a comment from a boy named Christopher who wrote that he’s in his sophomore year. Who’s got all As’ in his ninth grade year? But in sophomore year, he ran into some trouble.

He got a couple of Bs, and he got a C in geometry. He’s panicked, he’s worried that he’s not going to be able to get into college, and it’s really stressing him out. But then I also have students like David, who really are stressed out. Because David is a freshman in high school. He was a 4.0 student in middle school, and he’s got a 1.5 GPA right now in ninth grade. And he’s totally freaking out and feeling like his life is over.

Yes You Can

Well, to go back to the question, “If my grades are bad, can I still go to college?” The answer is yes. In both of these cases and in most cases, frankly, you can still go to college. Remind yourself that the average acceptance rate in the United States is almost 70% across all four-year colleges. So there is going to be a college out there that is going to want you. And is going to pick you up and lift you up and give you the opportunity you need to be something great.

There Might be Consequences

However, you also need to understand that when you do get bad grades, there are consequences. I mean, a 1.5 GPA is going to have an impact. But that impact can be easily mitigated if, David, you pick yourself up, you recognize that you’re not working as hard as you need to, and you get with the program. You begin to study and work hard and pull those grades up to the level you know, and probably your teachers and your parents also know, that you can actually do.

Get Yourself Together

So don’t get depressed, don’t wallow in self-pity, pick yourself up and start doing what you need to do to get those decent grades. You know what to do. Make it happen. And depending on how far you go, that’s going to tell us in two to three years how colleges will reflect upon your freshman year. Why did that happen, temporary insanity, probably, but just know that you’re not doomed. Yes, will an Ivy League school pick you up with a 1.5 in your freshman year? Probably not.

Will you sacrifice some scholarships at certain kinds of colleges that you may be interested in, merit-based scholarships? Maybe, depends on where you apply, and remember, 25 schools or so don’t give merit scholarships at all anyway, those are the Ivy Leagues, the Stanfords, the MITs of the world, and they’re only giving scholarships to those people who basically walk on water. But there are plenty of other schools who are going to look at you as somebody who made a mistake and made up for that mistake. So things are still possible for you. Again, no self-pity, just keep going.

Christopher, with your C in geometry, is that going to doom you? Well, no, just remind yourself that there are Davids out there who have it a lot worse than you do, but if this C is really bothering you, ask yourself, why did you get this C? What do you need to do differently so that you can make sure that you don’t get a C in the future? Or that maybe at the end of this semester you pull it up to a B, or better, to an A.

Don’t Freak Out

So I don’t know exactly how to do that, but freaking out about college right now when you’re in ninth or tenth grade, that’s the wrong emphasis. The right emphasis is to ask yourself what is it that you need to do to pick up those grades, and then also ask yourself what is the end result that you’re asking for. If you’re asking to get into Stanford at this point, well, you know. Stanford is really tough for any human being to get into, so it’s a really competitive playing field.

But will you get into college? Will you get a decent education? Will you make something of yourself and go on to do terrific things? Sure. One day at a time. Start today, think about what’s necessary for you to pick up your grades, and go out and do it. And you know what? College is going to take care of itself. You’re going to be awesome. But first, get to work!

The post If I Have Bad Grades, Can I Still Go to College? Expert Educational Consultant Has the Answer first appeared on College Admission Counseling.