Has the College Application Process Evolved into an Arms Race?

With the college application season coming to a close, this is the question writer Jennifer Moses attempted to answer in a recent Wall Street Journal article. A video interview with Moses and the Journal’s Kelsey Hubbard can be found here. In the article, Moses outlines several expenses associated with her 17-year-old twins’ college application process: Total cost of her twins’ standardized test fees = $522 Total cost of travel, including air fare, gas, hotels, food and incidentals, for both twins accompanied by one parent each = $3,9908.23 Total cost for private college counselor = $701.25 (to date)

The Typical College Student

…doesn’t exist. Hollywood visions of undergraduate college often evoke historic brick buildings of lore, gently sloping campus paths lined with seemingly-erudite trees. Besweatered students rest on the grass with leather knapsacks, frisbees flying overhead. A young frat pledge hands out half-sheet flyers as students file into the dining center. With the exception of the satirical new TV series “Community,” a clear-cut stereotype of the average undergraduate college student rests comfortably in the American mindset: age 18-22, bachelor’s degree track, middle-class, full-time student, beer enthusiast, likes to sleep in. Perhaps a sprinkle of Marxism or newfound love for performance art thrown in to spice things up. But like any other demographic pool, the fish are much more diverse than your average koi pond.

Collegiate Attrition After Year One

College students have a lot on their minds these days. From balancing classwork, a job, extra curricular activities, and budding social lives, it can all become one huge blur. And sometimes, all this pressure can force students to withdraw from their university studies. And should students choose to pull out, there’s a group people beyond the students themselves who pay the price: taxpayers. That’s right, taxpayers. A new report shows that states appropriated almost $6.2 billion for four-year colleges and universities between 2003 and 2008 to help pay for the education of students who did not return for year two.

Summer Vacation, College Tour-style

While the freedom of summer vacation makes this a logical time to hit up some campuses, the mad rush from quad to quad can also be a little overwhelming. Here are some tips from the experts.

The agony of small envelopes

College acceptances and rejections

Springtime Spawns Senioritis

As a 2nd-semester high school senior drifting through the flora and fauna of April, May and June with a college acceptance letter in hand, school was the last thing on my mind. Sure, I was mildly inspired by my final flower-box project for Ceramics 1, and I had glimpsed the smiley-face bulletin board postings reminding all seniors to “Keep those grades up! Senioritis didn’t get you into college.” And sure, I had gotten a rather passionate start on my English senior paper on Kurt Vonnegut’s recurring motif of meaninglessness, but my passion contradicted the thesis’s theme of nihilism, so I had to stop caring. Truth be told, it is hard to care about school when graduation is within reach and a new life at college is only a fun-filled summer away. I found myself impatiently counting the seconds to the end of each school day, using my 18-year-old parent waiver [...]