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The Inside Scoop on Getting Into A School
College admissions officers tell you whats most important in an application-and provide other key tips to follow.
By Paul J. Lim
Paying for your kids' college education is one thing. At least you can decide how to save your money and where to invest it. Getting them into the school
of their dreams is an entirely different matter.
Or so it seems to Marilyn Hamlin.
The mother of a 17-year-old senior at New York City's Stuyvesant High School, which last year sent 19 kids to Harvard, Hamlin knows exactly what her son wants to do: James hopes to study aeronautical engineering or, as she puts it, "He wants to be in space."
To help him get there, she wakes up at 5 a.m. most weekdays to make his breakfast while he prepares for school. She takes him to a private tutor to work on math and biology. And she keeps a calendar of all the tests James needs, including the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT); he scored 1,440 out of a possible 1,600 the first time he took the two-part SAT I exam, putting him among the top 1% of achievers in the verbal portion and top 8% in the math.
Nevertheless, Hamlin says she feels powerless, knowing that in a few short months she and her son will have to turn over a dossier of information to a nameless, faceless admissions committee that will decide James' fate. "It feels like you're stuck behind a brick wall and you can't do anything to help your child," she says.
If you're the parent of a high school student, you probably feel the same way. But rest assured, there are steps you can take to improve your children's chances of getting into their first- or second-choice schools. According to a Money survey of more than two dozen college admissions directors and consultants throughout the country, the two most important factors are grade point averages (GPAs) and academic rigor (the difficulty of a student's course load). But scores on standardized tests such as the SAT count too, and so do intangibles such as the impression an applicant makes in an essay. The following advice from the college experts Money consulted can help your child excel in all parts of the admissions process.
First and foremost, concentrate on classwork. "People worry about test results, but standardized-test scores take a back seat to a student's overall academic record," says Daniel Walls, dean of admissions at Emory University in Atlanta. Scores on the three-hour SAT I or the ACT Incorporated Assessment Test may give schools a rough idea of how well a student could theoretically do in college. But grades let the admissions committee know whether a student has not only the potential but also the work ethic to succeed.
So no matter what you may hear elsewhere, grades matter. While maintaining a 4.0 GPA throughout high school is great, however, it's not so impressive if earned only in the easiest courses offered. Like judges at a diving meet, admissions officers will give an applicant points for increased degree of difficulty. So an A in a journalism class might not be worth as much as a B in Advanced Placement (AP) calculus. "We are looking for some sense that the student has ambition," says Larry Dow, director of admissions at Trinity College in Hartford. If your child's high school does not offer honors or Advanced Placement courses, he says, taking a course at a nearby community college or state university looks just as good to admissions officers.
Bottom line: All the extracurriculars imaginable won't matter if your child's academic profile doesn't put him or her in the running for acceptance.
With standardized tests, more is better. In general, it makes sense for a
high school student to repeat the ACT or SAT I as many as three or four times until he or she feels comfortable with the score, admissions officers say. Some colleges will take all the scores into consideration, but most will judge an
applicant only on the top performance. And many schools will use the highest verbal score and the highest math score, even if they were achieved on two different tests.
Colleges are automatically informed of all an applicant's SAT I scores. But before taking the SAT IIs, which many of the nation's elite colleges require, your son or daughter can select the so-called score choice option. Then, after seeing the results, he or she can decide whether or not to have them sent to colleges. The SAT IIs test knowledge in specific subjects, such as a foreign language or a science. So even if a college your child favors doesn't require SAT IIs, he might want to take the test in a subject he excels at and then report a good score to enhance his application.
Get an edge with early action.By
applying for early decision, your child can boost his or her chances of admission. One caution, though: As the story Strategies That Can Cut Costs 30% or More points out, your chances of getting a fat financial aid package might decrease.
At the University of Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia, 44% of the 1,829 students who applied for early decision last year got in, vs. just 25% of the regular
applicant pool of 13,630. What's more, the average SAT I score for applicants
accepted early at Penn was 1,365, 18 points lower than those admitted from the regular pool.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore also gives early-admission applicants an edge. "We accept nearly half of our early-decision applicants, and their SAT scores are slightly lower than those we accept through regular decision," says dean of enrollment Robert Massa. "I have no problem saying that because it's the truth. But I would not want parents to use early decision as a strategy unless that college is their child's absolute first choice."
Although public universities rarely have early-decision programs, many weigh applications on a rolling basis, which means they are acted upon the moment they come through the door. "The earlier you apply, the better," notes Steve Adams, director of admissions at one such school, Illinois State University in Normal, Ill. "I've been here for 20 years, and I've seen us cut off admissions as soon as December, based on how quickly we fill the seats."
Personal details make recommendations and essays work best. Most admissions officers advise applicants to get recommendations from people who know you well and can tell why they like you, not how much. As for essays, "Here's the opportunity for students to present themselves in a personal light," says Parker Beverage, dean of admissions at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. That's why admissions officers say they want essays that convey a human element. In the case of a wrestler accepted by Trinity, that consisted of reporting the emotional turmoil of facing a blind competitor. A recent applicant to Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. impressed the committee with a topic as simple as describing a conversation she had with a friend while sitting in a tree. "What's most important in an essay is that it comes from the heart," says Doris Davis, dean of admissions at Barnard College in New York City.
Whatever you do, say admissions officers, don't go for gimmicks. For example, they don't have time to play the hundreds of videotaped essays sent to them each year. And Harvey Mudd's director of admissions Deren Finks recalls getting an essay that was printed in a spiral pattern, obviously in hopes that the admissions committee would remember it. "I read 50 files a day, and there are two essays a file," says Finks. "The last thing I have time to do is turn
a piece of blue and purple paper round and round to read it."
Be selective about extracurricular activities.In the past, schools were looking for well-rounded applicants. Now, many are looking for well-rounded classes too. That means students can sell themselves as specialists. It stands to reason that if colleges have sports teams, theatrical clubs and orchestras, they need athletes, actors and musicians. But the desire for students with special skills goes well beyond athletics or the performing arts.
"If I'm an applicant and I'm well within a school's GPA and SAT range, and I know that college is very competitive in parliamentary debate and I'm a debater, I'm going to highlight that," says Johns Hopkins' Massa. "Not only that, I'm going to ask the admissions office to put me in touch with the president of the debate club."
Massa tells of one recent Johns Hopkins applicant, a photographer, who "contacted students on our yearbook staff, on our school paper and in our photography club. By the time we were considering her application, we got two or three calls from students saying what a good addition she'd make to the campus. That wasn't the only factor in her admission, but her efforts certainly made her application stand out."
Overall, say admissions officers, they're not impressed by what one describes as a "laundry list of activities." College applicants should focus their
efforts on extracurricular activities that they can participate in with real passion�and in which they can demonstrate the core qualities colleges look
for throughout the entire selection process: responsibility as well as special talents and strengths. |
