Today a client and I had a long conversation about how to report her intended college major on her applications. Was choosing a major necessary when she is only 16 years old? She has been stressing out about it. She has many, many interests and an equal number of talents. And she just can’t decide what to be when she grows up.

I told her to join the club.

First, let’s take a look at the philosophical implications of choosing a major. In the grand scheme of things, a major isn’t all that important. Even career advisers say so. The fact is that beyond your first job out of college, your major won’t matter.  You’ll learn new skills on the job, and your career will mutate and morph as the economy evolves, and (more important) as your own understanding of where your interests and talents lie.

To give you more insight, you might want to take a look at a guest post in which a recent college grad recounts his own experience in choosing a major and making career choices right out of college. His conclusion is that what’s important is that you love what you are learning and that you build experiences, contacts, and skills that will help you pursue the jobs that most interest you.

It’s Not Necessary to Choose a Major Before You Get to College

The fact is, your job–and your career–will likely change many times before you retire. An article from the New York Times also admonishes parents (and college counselors) that it’s sort of unrealistic to expect that an 18 or 22 year-old can or should make career decisions as if they are making a decision that is lifelong and permanent. We all have the option of changing our priorities, of chasing new careers, of refashioning our professional selves at many different points throughout our lives.

So from a counseling point of view, I tell most of my students not to stress out about college majors and career choices. If a student has interests in engineering or business or other specialized fields it does make sense to understand the requirements necessary to enter those fields. For example, if there is a possibility that a student wants to go to medical school then she should know what the prerequisites are and thus be careful to complete them.

Or a prospective engineer may have to major in engineering from the get-go (but he may change his mind down the road as he learns more about engineering and about himself). Undecided does not mean “without decisions.” It’s smart to know what the options are and how to keep options open for as long as possible.

Sometimes It Make Sense to Choose a Major Early

However, with regard to completing college applications, there are times when it makes sense to declare a major. Why? Because admissions officer are also social engineers. They are looking for people to populate certain departments. Especially those hard-to-fill ones like art history, anthropology, music (at some schools), geology, geography, and others. So if you have a passion or skill that you plan to share on campus. It certainly doesn’t hurt to express that focus by announcing your intention to major in that subject.

Similarly, if a college has a particular strength or reputation in a certain issue, it makes sense to tell the admissions folks that one of the reasons that you are applying to that school is the excellence of that department–you are showing that you have thought about what makes that school a good fit for you.

Still, the majority of students heading to college are undecided. It’s okay in America to be undecided. Most of us are still undecided. We’re exploring, discovering, and learning. And isn’t that what it’s all about, anyway?

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 Choosing a Major for College first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Clients ask the team at Great College Advice repeatedly to explain the relationship between the financial aid and admissions offices to help them understand how financial need is factored into admissions decisions. Usually, these questions revolve around whether a college is “need-blind” or “need-aware.” So in this post, we’ll try to shed some light on how the admissions and financial aid offices work together. More importantly, we’ll provide some insight on the difference between a need-blind and need-aware college and how a college’s financial aid policy may impact whether you ultimately decide to apply there based on affordability.

Need-Blind Admission Policies and Enrollment  Management

Generally, the Admissions and Financial Aid offices are operated separately. But usually, the two are overseen by a Dean or Vice-President of Enrollment Management, or some such title. This should give you a clue that the two offices, while administratively independent, are two sides of the same coin.

Both are tasked with recruiting and then retaining students, providing just enough resources to keep the income flowing into the university. Tuition dollars, after all, are the lifeblood of any institution of higher education. Both offices have the responsibility to keep the dollars flowing in.

As prospective students apply to the university, they send their applications to the office of admissions, naturally. They apply for financial aid around the same time. Their applications for aid are processed by the Office of Financial Aid. So, it seems, in some ways that the two are separate, and most colleges like to help create the image that admissions decisions are completely separate from financial aid decisions.

Believe me, they are not.

Colleges That Offer Need-Blind vs Need-Aware Admission

Only one group of colleges can make any claim that the two decisions are separate: those practicing “need-blind” admissions. These colleges are generally very wealthy with large endowments, and their number is quite small. I’ll come back to this exception in a moment. But suffice it to say that the financial aid and admissions offices must work together if they are to ensure the continuity and adequacy of the institution’s income stream.

Both the admissions and financial aid offices start the process with an annual budget–an amount of money that can be used for financial aid.

Some of this budget is “hard” money (interest income from endowed scholarships). But the overwhelming majority of financial aid is given in the form of discounts on the price of tuition. Colleges may call these “grants” or “scholarships,” but internally colleges discuss their “discount rate”: the average discount off the tuition sticker price they will offer in a given year.

A large percentage of the financial aid budget goes to fund currently enrolled students. Most (but not all) colleges distribute their aid budgets to ensure that current students can continue their progress toward their degrees. Keep in mind that any individual’s financial need can change from year to year, or even from semester to semester. In order to retain students, perhaps 75% or more of the total financial aid budget goes to continuing students.

Does Need-Blind Admission Really Exist?

Admissions officers try to read your application without prejudice. But admissions officers have clues regarding a family’s ability to pay.  Most applications ask whether you plan to apply for financial aid. If you check “no,” then you are considered a full-pay student. In addition, colleges review family background. If the father is a surgeon and the mother an attorney (or a plumber and a waitress, respectively) admissions officers make some plausible assumptions about the ability to pay. All colleges subscribe to demographic analytic software packages which provide detailed income information on zip codes and even neighborhoods!

Once the admissions office has made a decision on which students to admit, the director will submit the entire list to the financial aid office for review. The financial aid office compares the aggregate financial need of the entire class with the amount of aid available for incoming freshmen. If the need far exceeds the dollars available, financial aid will kick the list back to admissions with the comment, “if we admit this class, we’ll go broke–go back to the drawing board.”

If this occurs, then the admissions office begins another review of applications, focusing on those kids who are “on the bubble,” or who are borderline admissions cases. Needy students on the borderline will be rejected, and replaced with students who didn’t quite make the cut–but who can pay full price. This process will continue until the admissions office can resubmit the list, and the financial aid office is satisfied that the institution will not over-commit itself.

Now let’s look at the small number of colleges who claim that their admissions process is “need-blind.” These colleges are wealthy. They not only have a high discount rate, but they also have endowment funds to draw upon if, for some reason, the admissions office ends up admitting way too many students with financial need. But “need-blind” does not mean “need-ignorant.”

Experienced admissions staffers know that they cannot admit a freshman class comprised solely of students who need a full tuition scholarship. They have to balance the full-pay students against the full-pay students. Even wealthy colleges have budgets that are not infinitely expandable. Admissions staff at “need-blind” colleges simply have a bit more wiggle room.

As I have said, admissions officers do have clues about a student’s ability to pay right on the application. In this sense, all college admissions processes are “need-aware.”

More evidence that need-blind admission is a myth

There is one other piece of evidence that helps us to understand that need-blind admission doesn’t really exist in ideal form. Colleges publish statistics about how many of their students receive different types of aid. We can track, for example, the percentage of the entering freshman class received need-based at Brown.

If Brown were truly and completely “need-blind” and not “need-aware,” we would expect that from year to year, there would be relatively big fluctuations in the amount of aid awarded. Some years, the class might be comprised of lots of kids who had high financial need but were otherwise remarkable applicants. In other years, maybe fewer remarkable, poor kids apply.

What the statistics tell us, however, is that Brown’s financial aid budget is fairly steady from year to year (discounting inflation). And–more important–the percentage of entering students receiving need-based financial aid is also fairly steady in the mid-40% range (for the Class of 2028 cohort 829 of 1719 enrolled students received need-based aid with the average award package totaling almost $69,000).

We do not see those expected fluctuations from year to year based on the quality of the applicants. Strangely, no matter who applies, the percentage of aid recipients stays roughly the same from year to year and even decade to decade.

Need-Blind vs Need-Aware in Admission–A Summary

So what conclusions can we draw from this relationship between admissions and financial aid?

• First, full-pay students have an admissions advantage over scholarship students at most universities. This fact is not one that we like to admit, but reality bites, sometimes.
• Second, students who need aid to afford college should consider applying to schools where they are at the top of the selectivity curve. You do not want to be “on the bubble,” because you either are less likely to be admitted or your aid package is likely to be less generous than at a college where you are one of the top recruits.

To be even more specific, if the middle 50% (25th – 75th percentile) score on the SAT for Lafayette College is between 1390 and 1490, the high-need student with a 1390 will be less desirable than the high-need student with a 1490. If you have a 1390 and need a generous aid package, look for colleges that have a middle 50% SAT range of 1250-1350, and your chances go up for both admission and financial aid.

Need help with the college admissions process? 

The team at Great College Advice has years of experience working with thousands of students as they navigate the college admissions process.  We can help you prepare, select, and apply to colleges to give you the best chance of being accepted to your top choices.  Not only can we help identify the right fit schools that also fit your college budget, but we will also help you with every other aspect of this process. Want to learn more?  Just contact us on this form and we’ll set up a no-cost, no-obligation meeting so we can learn more about you and discuss how we can help make the college admissions process more successful and less stressful. 

The post Financial Aid, Admissions, and “Need-Blind” Policies first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Sadly, there is very little research to indicate how much you could expect to earn after gaining a degree from this, that, or the other college. We do have statistics reports of averages. This one at Payscale.com is an example. But an average is not a prediction of what your son or daughter will make upon graduation. About half the kids make more than that. And half make less. Which will be your child? Above or below the average?

Even with salary averages by college, educational ROI would not be predictive for an individual student. An average is an average, after all, and how could we predict that Susie would earn above the average and that Sam would earn below that average? (Unless, of course, Susie were from Lake Wobegon…where all the children are above average…).

Plus there are kids at cheaper schools that make way more than the averages for those expensive private schools. Who made the better bet: the kid who paid less for college, or the one who paid more?

The fact is that aggregate data is unhelpful in providing clear guidance to individual high school graduates. Would you buy a Harvard degree if you were destined to earn below the salary average for that institution? What crystal ball will tell us where we will end up five, ten, or twenty-five years after graduation?

The reason for the dearth of the sort of solid research for which we all pine is that it cannot be done. Solid, scientific, and predictive research requires double-blind experiments with variables that can be controlled. When it comes to educational ROI, such controlled experiments would be impossible.

Why? Because human beings are darned complex, and too many uncontrollable variables enter the equation. What are the variables that have an impact on one’s financial success in life (other than the name of the university on one’s diploma)?

Let’s start a list.

• Educational background prior to entering college (e.g., Philips Exeter vs PS 142)
• Socio-economic status prior to entering college (e.g., New England blueblood vs. first-generation Sudanese)
• Grades earned in college (e.g., a studious 3.5 GPA or a slacker 2.4
• Major in college (e.g., engineering vs. education)
• Location a person chooses to live in after college (e.g., Santa Barbara vs. Omaha)
• The type of profession one seeks (e.g., teacher vs. neurosurgeon)
• Other skills a student develops beyond the major (e.g., the philosophy major who also studies organic chemistry)
• Jobs or internships the student might have had during college (e.g., dishing ice cream on Cape Cod vs. doing an accounting gig with PriceWaterhouseCoopers)
• Absence or presence of well-connected family members (e.g., a mom who CEO of Acme Technology and raised gobs of dough for a presidential campaign vs. a dad who drives a cab in Brooklyn)

Get the picture? Controlling for all these variables so that we could develop a scientific study that gave us meaningful comparisons to help us predict educational ROI for a particular student is virtually impossible. No aspiring academic with an understanding of research methodology would take this on.

But the biggest problem is that we can never compare a single kid who had two lives one in which he went to a high-priced college and one in which he went to a community college and later transferred to the state school.

Or the student who majored in business in his first life and then majored in English in his second.

Or the student who earned good grades in his first life, and then floated by with a C-average in his second.

Now, if we could clone people and set the clones off in two different directions that would be really cool. And conclusive. We could see which genetically identical person earned the most after having attended this school or the other. As long as those genetically identical individuals had lived identical lives in the same household to the age of 18 (if, however, the clones were “separated at birth,” we’d see our research devolve into the nature vs. nurture morass).

The fact is, folks, that we all want to be able to scientifically tote up the numbers to come up with a predictive return on our educational investment.

Can’t be done.

So we’re left with a silly, vapid argument between those who say “spend the money” and those who say “save your money.” Both are right.  Both are wrong. The argument gets us nowhere.

Fundamental principles we can consider in making the decision

Still, might there be some fundamental principles we can consider in making the decision about whether to spend tons of money on a college education? Let’s see if we can’t come up with some.

1.  How big an investment is the price tag, relative to current family income? Some can easily afford a quarter of a million dollars for an education. Some cannot. So if you have the money, it’s worth it. If you don’t have it, it’s not worth it. (Remember Aesop’s fable of the “Fox and the Grapes”?). Hmmm…this is not a very satisfying fundamental principle. Next!

2.  Will you have to go into debt to finance this expensive degree? The bigger the debt burden, the less likely the return on the investment will cancel out that debt. Then again, it depends on what you end up doing after that degree. If you’re a brain surgeon or a successful venture capitalist, then who cares? You’ll be able to pay off that debt in the blink of an eye. But if you become a teacher or an unsuccessful venture capitalist, then clearly the investment wasn’t worth it. But notice: you can’t know whether the investment was worth it until AFTER you have a successful–or unsuccessful career! This is getting frustrating, isn’t it?

3.  Speaking of which, your professional aspirations do play a role. If you plan to be a kindergarten teacher or an orchestral musician, then spending a quarter of a million bucks for an education isn’t worth it. However, if you want to be a brain surgeon, you have no choice but to go to college…and then go into debt for medical school. But here’s a contrarian thought: do you have to go to college to be a successful business executive?

Not necessarily, of course (we all know the story of Bill Gates, for whom Harvard “wasn’t worth it”). To go a step further, do you really have to go to college at all to make a lot of money? I have a cousin who went to school to learn how to do auto body work. He can now buy and sell me several times over, sends his kids to elite private schools, drives a brand new Mercedes, and has a vacation home in Vermont. Where did I go wrong….?

4.  Savvy shoppers for educational services should do some price comparisons. But the fact is that very few students pay the actual tuition sticker price. You see, because of the way financial aid (both merit-based and need-based) is allocated, each individual pays a different price for that education–especially at the colleges with heavy price tags.

So here again we have another variable for which we much provide some scientific control in our research: we need to compare students who paid full price or students who received a full scholarship. Or half a scholarship. Or something. (Oh my:  not another variable for which we need a control!)

5.  There are aspects of education that do not boil down to dollars and cents. For some, education is not merely about preparing for a profession. For some, it’s also about intellectual inquiry–pushing your capacities to the limit. There is a spiritual element to education that transcends a “market price.” This is all well and good: but it certainly doesn’t get us any closer to calculating our educational ROI. To do a calculation, we need numbers, and these folks who find an intrinsic value in education just aren’t numbers people.

The fact is that the argument as to whether or not an expensive private education is “worth it” simply cannot be won. The argument isn’t really an argument: it all boils down to one’s personal values and preferences.

Can people who go to state universities have satisfying, successful careers?

You bet. Can Ivy League graduates end up earning less than $40k per year for the past 25 years? You bet (I have a Dartmouth friend who is a respected ornithologist who lives in the Amazon, has discovered many new species, and has never made more than $40k in a year: was his Ivy League investment “worth it”?).

Advice on the worth of an expensive private college education

So in the absence of research, we need a crystal ball. Or we need good, solid, personalized advice from someone who can help a family identify their priorities. Perhaps a professional guidance counselor who can help a student explore his or her academic strengths and weaknesses.

Who can discuss “educational philosophy” with a family to find out whether the educational priority is on “getting a job” or on “leading the examined life.” What it all amounts to is “different strokes for different folks.” My job is not to win an argument. My job is to figure out which stroke you’re swimming and help keep you moving in your chosen direction.

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The post Is An Expensive Private College Education Worth the Money? first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

A client of mine is a budding architect. He is taking an independent study in architecture at his high school. He has become very enthusiastic about the possibility of turning his interest into a career. But he is unsure about what road to take as an undergraduate. Should he look for universities that offer a Bachelors degree in architecture. Or should he opt for a liberal arts degree. What classes should he take to be an architect? Then, head for graduate school to get his Masters in Architecture and his license to practice?

Not being an architect myself, I asked a college classmate, Cary Bernstein, who has her own successful architecture practice in San Francisco, if she would mind fielding a few questions from my student. She agreed. She also agreed to let me share her answers with our readers. So here is her case for why the liberal arts provide excellent preparation for a career in architecture.  (I’ve reproduced it here in a “Q&A” format to make it more readable).

Question 1: What Should I Study to Be an Architect?

I am extremely interested in pursuing architecture as a profession. But, I don’t want to commit to something that I may later realize I don’t want to do halfway through college. What would you recommend I study in college so that I can study architecture but I can still make changes if I decide that I want to take a different direction?

Response: You should study things that interest you. You are more likely to do well at subjects that keep you engaged.  It is important to develop your writing, research and analytical skills. You can do that in almost any subject within the humanities or social sciences.  You should take as many drawing or shop (i.e. wood shop, metal shop) classes as possible, but you do not need to major in art. 

I majored in Philosophy and have found it to be extremely useful for understanding theory, intellectual history, interpreting text and constructing positions in (unfortunately) adversarial situations.  But mostly, I just love Philosophy.  You should have some basic computer skills because so much work is done on the computer and the programs keep changing all the time.

Question 2: Which Is More Important, Design or Engineering?

If I were to go straight into architecture, what classes would you advise to someone who is much more interested in the design aspects of a structure instead of the engineering that goes into it?

Response:  Take as much painting, drawing and other studio art as possible.  But also take as many humanities  – where you will have to write papers and do research – as possible.  The people who do poorly in the profession are those whose verbal skills are weak – you need to be able to talk about your project as well as design it.  You would think this is just about design, but architectural practice requires verbal as well as visual skills – which is what makes architecture the coolest profession ever.

Question 3: What Has Made You a Successful Architect?

Being a professional architect, what did you gain the most out of your college studies and what classes were the most valuable to your future in architecture?

Response:  I never worried about how my undergraduate classes would be directly “useful” in graduate school.  In college, in addition to Philosophy, I studied languages (Russian, Italian and French). They have been useful in so many ways (how to think about different systems of communication, different cultures, exposure to other parts of the world) and have led to an interesting life.  Philosophy, as mentioned above, has been incredibly useful. But it’s a dense subject so if you don’t like it don’t study it. 

I wish I took more courses in History and Literature but there just wasn’t any more room in my schedule.  Architecture is the “mother of the arts” – it encompasses everything (art, science, history, economics, psychology). So most subjects feed it well but I would steer you towards history, literature and language studies first and foremost.  The more time you can spend making things and drawing things the better. But you’ll get plenty of this in a graduate program.  Classes in art/architectural history are also helpful – you should know the history within these subjects.

Question 4: How Can I Decide Whether to Study Architecture?

What would be the best way for me to discover if I really want to pursue architecture? I am already in an architecture class but I feel I could be doing more to truly know if this is what I want to do.

Response:  There are summer classes, such as the Harvard Career Discovery Program (also known as “Career Disco”) which many people find helpful.  I believe Columbia University also has one.  You should also try to get an internship in an architecture firm (do anything). Or, if you can get a job in construction spend the summer building something.  Work for Habitat for Humanity or other community groups that build things.  I hope this is helpful.  Architecture is an incredible pursuit – I wish you the very best for your future.
 
Clearly, Cary Bernstein is very content with her educational trajectory. What is your educational trajectory? How can I help you choose the college–and major–that fits you best?

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The post Want To Be An Architect? Study the Liberal Arts! first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

I reviewed a question the other day on LinkedIn. The question was this:  what can you do with a major in philosophy? I thought I would share my response with you.

Here’s the question:

Is philosophy a good major?  Why?  Just wondering what you can get with a philosophy major or if it’s worth the time and money.

And here is my response:

Good question. I get this sort of question a lot in my line of work.

The answer to your question does not lie in the opinions of others. It must come from within yourself.

What can you do with a liberal arts major?

Let’s be philosophical. Some value college as training for a profession. Others, who tend to pursue degrees at liberal arts institutions, see college as a process of training the mind. As you may have experienced, most folks who hear this question. Immediately begin thinking about the economic value of a philosophy degree–immediately upon graduation. But what they don’t know, is that plenty of philosophy majors at liberal arts institutions go on to very successful careers.

Did you know, for example, that statistically one of the best majors with the highest percentages of acceptance to medical school is (drum roll….) philosophy? Medical schools like people who have thought deeply about what it means to be human, to appreciate beauty, and to have thought theoretically. Medicine has plenty of technicians, but not an awful lot of deep thinkers. And medical schools value deep thinkers.

Furthermore, in a liberal arts context, I firmly believe that it matters little what you major in. What matters more is what you can do–the skills you acquire (a second language, computer programming skills, strong economics, scientific research skills). You can acquire some of these skills even as you complete a philosophy major. Or you may acquire them in graduate school or in the working world after graduation.

It’s possible that you can prepare for several careers (as you are statistically apt to have at least seven before you retire) simply by training your mind to be flexible, creative, analytical, and quick. If you read Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. For example, you may be convinced that philosophy actually is much better training for careers of the 21st century than accounting or marketing or biology, even.

Finally, you ask whether the degree is “worth” the time and money. Well, be philosophical: define “worth.” Certainly a philosophy major does not have immediate, tangible value that is easily calculated in “return on investment” (ROI) terms. Such a calculation is easier with a professional degree (MBA, JD, Engineering) or with a licensing program (e.g. teaching/education).

But if you define “worth” more broadly, you might agree with Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So maybe you want to examine human nature, appreciate the concept of beauty, think about what constitutes the “good life.”

While I respect the opinions of those who pooh-pooh the value of a philosophy major, I wonder how many of them have actually ever taken a philosophy course. How many of them know successful people in business, the arts, the law, journalism, medicine, and other professions who pursued a liberal arts degree and majored in philosophy?

So what can you do with a major in philosophy?

So to reiterate by returning to your question: “what can you get” with a philosophy degree? On the one hand, absolutely nothing. On the other, everything.

People who major in philosophy can work in artificial intelligence, science policy, medicine, law, banking, and just about any business you can imagine. Philosophy majors work in high tech. They work in government. They run organizations.

The skills of analysis, logic, and problem solving are relevant to any profession.

In the end, doesn’t the answer to your question depend on many variables well beyond your choice of major?

As was inscribed above the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” Start there, and the answer to your question will be come, well, self-evident.

What if I can’t decide my major?

Most young people have a difficult time settling on a major. Despite the Oracle at Delphi, most teens are just getting to know themselves and figure out what is important to them. If your family has a teen who is struggling to make this sort of decision–and struggling to create a solid college plan, give us a call at Great College Advice. We helps students wade through these tough decisions and create an action plan.

Mapping College Journeys. It’s what we do.

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TRANSCRIPT:

So today I’m on the campus of Fordham University in New York City. It’s located in the Bronx, one of those five boroughs of the City of New York, and absolutely gorgeous campus. This park-like environment with trees and a big, huge quad, beautiful buildings, including the new business school building. Division I sports, there are about 5,800 or so students on this campus. And then Fordham also maintains a campus in Lincoln Center downtown in the city. Only about a 20 minute or so subway ride away.

The Best of Fordham

This has a fantastic business school, it’s a liberal arts university with the Jesuit tradition. So the Jesuit schools include, for example, Boston College, Georgetown, the Loyolas, Regis University in Colorado, Seattle University, Gonzaga, just a ton of them in the area, all over the United States. But the interesting thing about Fordham is that you’ve got the best of both worlds in some ways. You’ve got this park-like, bubble campus that’s really beautiful. So you feel like you’re away from everything.

You could be in Vermont, for gosh sakes, in some ways. But you’re right next to the city. You can just get on the subway, walk out the gate, be on the subway and be in Manhattan in just a few minutes. So students have the access to the city. And the internships and the possibilities of the city. And yet they can have this really traditional campus environment.

The Lincoln Center campus has about 1,700 students. It has only four programs, all of which are related to business. Also it tends to be a more diverse campus, it also has — about 50% of the students there are commuters. It also tends to be a more international campus. So it has what critics, if you read the guidebooks, anyway, critics of this campus talk about is that it lacks diversity here at the Rose Hill campus, but with the university overall, it has great diversity and great possibilities for a student who wants to go to school in New York City.
 
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TRANSCRIPT:

Cornell University

Right now I’m on the campus of Cornell University. And a visit to Ithaca, New York is the easiest way to see the variety within the Ivy League. There are eight universities within the Ivy League. And the only thing that really unites them is the fact that they play sports against one another. There are some academic similarities in terms of the competitiveness of the schools. But in terms of the undergraduate experience, there’s a huge breadth of experience that a student might have.

Here at Cornell, there’s a school of architecture, and art and planning. There’s an engineering school, there is the hotel management school, there’s the human ecology or something, I forget exactly what they call it, the human ecology school, and the labor relations school. All of these are professional tracks for an undergraduate that are quite apart from the traditional liberal arts where you might major in sociology, biology, chemistry, classics, English literature, etc.

Dartmouth University

At Dartmouth, for example, with only 4,000 undergraduates. Versus Cornell with over 14,000 undergraduates, it’s a huge research university. A beautiful campus but much more eclectic. Much more a mix of old buildings and traditional architecture with very modern square buildings.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this really is a university with big graduate programs. It’s also a university that allows you to not only major in the liberal arts, like at Princeton, or at Dartmouth, or at Yale. Which is the only thing that you can major in as an undergraduate.

University of Pennsylvania

So this is one of the Ivy Leagues that is more similar to the University of Pennsylvania than it is to, say, Princeton. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad, that doesn’t mean that it’s good. I think that it’s important to remember that the Ivy League, while it does denote a certain amount of competitiveness in the admissions process, that these institutions are quite different in their structure. In the organization of the curriculum, and in the offerings, the academic offerings that you could pursue here.

So don’t be fooled by the title or the label of “Ivy League.” Remind yourself that it’s important to decide, do you want a great big university like this with 14,000 or 15,000 undergraduates, or do you want something more compact and more of a residential community like a Dartmouth, a Yale, or a Princeton? And on that residential piece, only 55% of undergraduates live on campus in Cornell, whereas virtually everyone at Dartmouth lives on campus.

So again, you have this variety. You need to think about what’s important to you. And then choose the school that matches your preferences. Don’t just pick the label “Ivy League,” pick the school that suits you the best.
 

Great College Advice

The post Educational Consultant Defines the Ivy League first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Part of a series on Bates College.
Part 3 … Part 5

TRANSCRIPT:

Another thing that sets Bates apart from many of its competitor schools. If you will, is that the outdoors is an integral part of this campus. It is located in Maine, which is a beautiful state, and the outdoors is so much a part of what Mainers are really about. So you have the mountains and skiing that’s about an hour away, it’s really great, fantastic skiing. And then you have one of the most spectacular natural sea coasts in North America. So you’ve got plenty of outdoor opportunities.

Now keep in mind, of course, this is Maine, so there will be snow on the ground. It’s green and beautiful today in the summer. But there will be lots of snow on the ground so it’s winter sports. And Bates also has Division I skiing, including Nordic skiing so winter sports are really, really popular here.

So outdoor activities, if you’re interested in getting outside, going camping, going hiking, being part of the beautiful outdoors of America, Maine and Bates: you need to think about those.

Mark Montgomery
Expert Educational Consultant

The post Educational Consultant on Bates 4 of 5: An Outdoorsman’s College first appeared on College Admission Counseling.