College Fit and Social Engagement

On the one extreme are the campuses where apathy tends to reign supreme:  most students are primarily concerned with their various activities, academics, and personal lives.  On the other extreme are the colleges where virtually everyone on campus seems to have a cause they support, and where community service is central to college life.  Whatever the merits of political and social engagement, students must ask themselves where they fit on this continuum.  How engaged are you now, and how engaged do you want to be over the next four years?

Keep in mind that most college campuses lean to the left, politically speaking.  There are many reasons for this, and an exploration of these reasons would take us on a tangent.  However, there are many campuses where more conservative students will feel quite comfortable and plenty of kindred spirits.

So the first order of business is to take your own political and social temperature.

• Are there issues that you care deeply about?  Examples might include animal rights, the environment, abortion, or homelessness.
• Have you ever been or wanted to be more politically active?
• Philosophically speaking, do you think one of the reasons to pursue an education is to learn how to be a more effective, more active citizen?
• Or is education primarily a means to get a successful job and contribute to society in that way?

What are the questions you might ask to get a bead on the level of political and social engagement on campus?

One way is to look at the college’s mission statement, and then ask students, faculty, and staff the degree to which they feel that mission is put into practice.

Examples might include themed “living and learning communities,” principles of course design, numerous and active student organizations, or particular campus-wide programs that help to channel student engagement in specific directions.  In each case, make sure to compare campus priorities and initiatives with your own:  is this the sort of place where you envision making your own contributions to society?

If so, it may be a perfect match.

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.  

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With nearly 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other. 

The post Elements of a Great College Fit – Social Engagement first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

• Type of learning environment;
• Level of rigor;
• Majors offered;
• Structure of curriculum

Academic College Fit: Learning Environment

Some students are excellent independent learners and need little guidance from their instructors. They can take ideas gleaned from a lecture, and use those to fan the flames of their own intellectual curiosity. Students don’t need much hand holding in developing ideas into term papers or independent projects. They are not afraid to approach their peers or their professors with questions or further exploration of course material.

They have a good sense of what is important in a subject. They can marshal their own resources to ensure their own academic success. These students will likely be successful in any academic environment, even large universities with enormous lecture classes. These students are active in their own learning, so the mode of instruction is less important. The passive presentations of lectures and readings may be enough to activate the innate learning impulses of this sort of student.

Other students enjoy learning most when instructors are able to bring the material alive and help them tie abstractions to the practicalities of everyday life. These students may not yet have developed their own internal academic compass. They may not be as confident with their basic academic skills. Or they may simply enjoy the higher level of interaction that occurs in smaller classes that require a high degree of participation by both teacher and student.

Match the college learning environment with how best you learn

Thus it is critical to match a student’s learning habits and preferences with the sort of learning environments that exist at different colleges and universities. This is more difficult to extract from students in a short discussion. Most students have never really considered why they prefer one teacher to another, or why they are more successful in one class than in another. Most people never give much conscious thought to their own learning.

Some will thrill to the art of a well-crafted lecture by a distinguished professor and be able to convert that thrill into independent learning. Others, however, simply cannot develop a personal relationship with the material without a personal relationship with the human beings in the classroom. In order to make a recommendation about the appropriate learning environment then, it’s important to discuss with high school students why some classes are more successful and to uncover the reasons why others are less so.

Academic College Fit: Level of Rigor

High schools tend to offer various levels of a course (college prep, honors, AP) to provide various levels of academic challenge to different sorts of students. Some prefer to take courses that challenge them intellectually at the top of their game. Others prefer to coast a bit more. Some seek a cohort of students who are as academically driven (or not) as they are, while others prefer to hang with students who are smarter. Still, others prefer to be a big fish in a smaller pond and standout in a less challenging environment.

When you and your family visit colleges, try to get the general academic vibe on campus and rank your schools on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being over-the-top academic. Which schools appealed to you most? Hop on Tik Tok, Instagram and other online resources to confirm or reject your campus visit.

Academic College Fit: Program Offerings and Majors

It’s pretty obvious that finding the right major is important. But it’s important to go beyond the student’s first answer, no matter how confident they appear about their top choice of major. The fact is that the vast majority of students change their major at least once in college and many change two or three times. So as we help our students look for the programs that they want most we also try to be on the lookout for other programs that may interest them.

For example, a high school junior may tell us confidently that they want to be an architect. But they may also enjoy foreign language and literature. Thus it would not be enough to simply list the schools of architecture. We need to consider which schools also would make it possible to continue that interest in a second language.

A student may or may not change majors; but college is also a time in which students are introduced to academic disciplines they have never had any contact with in high school (aeronautics, psychology, philosophy, linguistics) that may end up becoming a passion. So while we start with programs and majors a student identifies as first choice, we also try to tease out what other academic interests the student has. These alternative interests may become a well-spring of electives, a potential minor, or an about-face major alternative down the academic road.

Academic College Fit: Curricular and Program Structure

Some students simply don’t like to be told what to study, while others feel more comfortable making choices within a more structured, controlled environment. Some have a very good sense of what they want to learn and why. Others are still exploring and are happy to have at least a bit of guidance to help them make sense of the smorgasbord that is a collegiate course catalog. Fortunately, there is a college to match this preference.

At one extreme are the colleges that make very few demands and impose few—if any—curricular requirements. The curriculum may be completely individualized and tailored to each student’s interests and passions. At the other extreme are the colleges that allow for virtually no choice in what courses students take. And then there is a broad spectrum of colleges and universities that fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum.

Here again, curriculum structure can be difficult to discuss with high school students for whom their entire academic experience has been laid out to them. Electives have been few and far between, especially compared with the options available in college. In order to make a recommendation, then, one has to measure a student’s academic maturity and ability to make good, future-oriented decisions.

While it’s completely fine not to declare a major until the end of the sophomore year, students still need to put a plan in place to ensure they can graduate on time. Students with less self-discipline may be better off in a more structured program or one that at least has a very strong and personalized system of academic advising.

Evaluating Academic College Fit: Conclusion

Academic fit is the single most important factor in choosing a college, in our view. While the environment, availability of extracurricular opportunities, and social climate are all also very important you must remember that families are not choosing a country club or vacation resort. The primary purpose in college is to get an education—one that suits them best and allows them to achieve their own intellectual and professional goals.

How to Find A Great College Fit

There are many other aspects of finding a great college fit. Please check out our other posts on this topic:

Evaluating social engagement on campus

Evaluating campus social life

Finally, here’s a video on how the team at Great College Advice can help you find a great college fit.

GreatCollegeAdvice.com

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.  

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With nearly 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other. 

The post Find the Right Academic College Fit first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, I’m Ali, I am from London and I am a freshman here at Dartmouth. Obviously, being from London, I didn’t know a lot about the American admissions process, and so I got Mark to help me out with that, and honestly I’m very grateful he did because I don’t know how I would have made it through the process without him. I had a very difficult admissions process. I have friends who got into their first-choice colleges early decision and that was it. That was amazing and I’m really happy for them. That did not happen for me. I had almost three rounds of letters and not quite acceptances and trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and at one point I was enrolled in a different college which I didn’t end up attending. I’m ecstatic that I’m here now but that was a really tough time for me and I think having someone there who kept me sane, who helped me work out what I wanted to do through the emotional aspects and making sure that things like essays and applications and letters all got done. I know myself and I would have let that fall to the wayside. I’m very grateful for that and I recommend Mark’s services.

The post Educational Consultant Keeps Student Organized on Journey to Dartmouth first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

But with public, taxpayer support for higher education declining with the recession, families may have to recalculate their understanding of value.

An article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) describes the cuts in student services that will have a detrimental impact on the student experience at public colleges and universities.  Of course, most institutions of higher ed want to protect these front-line services, because they know that such services help them to retain and support students through graduation.

But student-affairs divisions are still taking their share of cuts. As a result, she says, staff members are reporting concerns about negative effects on their campuses. They expect fewer face-to-face interactions with students, less progress on new projects, and slower response rates to students’ requests. Staff members also anticipate higher stress levels, increased workloads, and anxiety about further layoffs.

So what is a prospective student to do?  Inquire. Ask about cutbacks and layoffs.  Visit the student affairs office, the financial aid office, the freshman dean’s office.  Ask how the economic crunch has had an impact on that campus. Talk to other students and ask about how easy it is to get good academic advice, or how long the lines are at the financial aid office, or whether the clubs they belong to are getting sufficient financial support from the university.

The fact is that the economic crunch is having an impact on all campuses, public and private.  And it behooves savvy consumers of higher education services to know exactly how budget cuts will affect their educational experience.

Further, it may make sense, given the economy, to consider private colleges and universities.  While no college has gone through the economic downturn unscathed, some have been better able than others to protect student services budgets (as well as financial aid and faculty salaries).  After all, value is a function of both the quality of the service and the price, and you may find–as with so many other things in life–that you get what you pay for.

Educational Consultant

The post Calculating the Value of a Public Education When Student Services Suffer Cutbacks first appeared on College Admission Counseling.