This is the time of year when high school seniors are dealing with letters from admissions offices. The ‘fat envelope’ signifies the offer of a place and is a cause for celebration. The ’skinny envelope’ usually means the college is not offering you a place. You have to deal with the rejection and move on. Usually, but not always. There’s actually a third type of letter, a ’skinny envelope’ that lets you know you are on a “wait-list” - neither accepted nor rejected.

Colleges issue wait-list letters to prospective students who they would very much like to have if space permits. They are a strategic reserve of applicants who will be offered a place if another accepted student turns down a place. A place might open up or it might not. There’s no guarantees.

So what to do? What’s the best course of action to negotiate with a college that puts you on their Wait List?

Some very sensible advice was posted in the official Colby College admissions blog by admissions staffer Dory Streett. She advises that you have a number of clear steps you can take to maximize your chances of turning the wait-list letter into a fat envelope:

First. You need to decide if you still want to go to this college. If you’ve been accepted elsewhere, let the wait-listing college know. This creates good karma by opening up the list for students who do aspire to go.

Second. If you really do want to go to this college, be sure and let them know that.

Third, “take another look at your options – literally. Visit the campuses where you’ve been accepted, attend a class if you can, eat in the dining hall, talk to students. If you change your mind about Colby’s wait list, you can let us know at any point.”

Finally, if the wait-list turns into an acceptance, realize you’ll be as successful as all the other undergraduates who enroll in the Fall. There’s no stigma attached to being on their wait-list. A place at college is a place at college.

Update on our last post about the CollegeWeekLive site. I was under the impression that this site only had content available during the two days the online college fair was in session.

In fact, the site has archived all the presentations and chat sessions.

So you can go to www.collegeweeklive.com anytime, login and browse some great discussions on everything from SAT testing, gap year experience to individual chat sessions with students at a whole bunch of colleges around the country.

Check it out!

CollegeWeekLive is a unique experiment in providing on-line, real-time, college information resources for students and  parents. It’s a “virtual college fair” designed to replicate the look and feel of attending a college fair in a fancy exhibition center.

The program is an intensive, live,  two-day event which started yesterday and concludes today.  It features some of the superstars of the college admissions world giving video keynote presentations; video chats with current college students providing an insiders perspective on their school and the admissions process; virtual booths for colleges, featuring electronic brochures, videos, webinars, podcasts and real-time IM and video chat between admissions counselors and students and parents. And it runs from noon to 11:00pm (EST) each day. Wow! 22 hours of college admissions frenzy - for free. More than anyone can absorb in one sitting. So, what’s it actually like?

Experiencing CollegeWeekLive

Once logged in to the web site you’re welcomed into a “Second Life style” hall where photo-realistic figures wander the Lobby area and signs point the way to expert presentations, student chat sessions, a resource center and career panels. Navigating the site is easy. Obviously this is not for the techo-phobic, but for teenagers and parents accustomed to video games and chat rooms it will seem very familiar. The technology behind the scenes is provided by a company called PlatformQ - an high-tech company based in Needham, Mass.

Yesterday we enjoyed a presentation by Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, the author of What High Schools Don’t Tell You and What Colleges Don’t Tell You discussing summer activities for college-bound students. We also checked out the virtual chat areas for a couple of the colleges where students answered questions people posted.

Today, we hope to check in on more of the exciting Agenda.

CollegeWeekLive is an interesting experiment in “virtual reality” that allows parents and students access to a wide variety of resources without leaving the comfort of their own homes. It’s a great place to check out colleges and hear students.

Two suggestions to improve the experience:

1. How about archives of the presentations for anyone who missed the live event?

2. How about going the whole way and hosting a future CollegeWeekLive on Second Life?

Meanwhile, if you read this blog posting before 11:00pm EST on Wednesday March 26th, check it out!

We’re big fans of the discussion boards over at College Confidential. They’re one part of a much larger website with a wide range of articles and other resources. The discussion boards are a wonderfully supportive and informal place to ask questions, or solve someone else’s problem or just join in a conversation about anything to do with college admissions.

There’s literally millions of archived discussions on topics as wide-ranging as the quality of food in the cafeteria, the test results and GPA’s of accepted and rejected students, interview strategies, or how to deal with a homesick first year student who’s not sure if they want to break up with their high school sweetheart.

Of course, as with all user-generated content, you need to use good judgment when reading someone’s opinion. If anything too off-the-wall is posted other members are quick to clarify things.

Since this is the time when many colleges send out their ‘fat or skinny’ envelopes the discussion boards are hopping. Some parents are logging on daily to monitor the acceptance frenzy “as it happens”.

One self-confessed addict is Sunday Chicago Tribune columnist Barbara Brotman, whose article on the site appeared yesterday. She calls it “Explicit. Exciting. Revealing…a virtual peep show for a goggle-eyed parent of a high school junior. “ Brotman values the site for more than the mountains of raw data she finds there. There’s a sense of community that families going through the stress of college applications appreciate:

College Confidential is often sensible and sweet. I now have a circle of online friends who are there for me any time, any day. Parents counsel and help one another, on one forum volunteering to serve as emergency contacts for other parents’ children attending far-away schools.

Here’s a typical posting that came in just yesterday from the Dad of a student accepted to UCLA:

Posting for my child, who was accepted:

GPA 4.2 uweighted, 3.96 unweighted, 32 ACT (equiv to 715 avg SAT), SAT II math advanced 760, chem not sure but in low 700s I think. Some APs and honors courses though not all the very hardest ones. President of a low profile club, sports team all four years though no star, decent amount of charity work, and worked very hard - many iterations - on essays.

Everyone is posting basic stats but keep in mind the holistic process. It may explain some of the seeming inconsistencies in who was accepted and who was not. And it may convince you that there’s now more subjectivity in the decision. Perhaps an essay that hits home with the right admissions officer can make a difference.

Just some guesses!

Also, was accepted into the honors program. I would be curious what percent of entering freshman, all great students, got this offer. Also, would love to hear whether it’s worth it from UCLA students who tried it.

A dad

If you’re applying to college and need to find anything out about the process, spend some time getting to know your way around College Confidential.

Parents have paid tuition bills which have risen faster than the rate of inflation for many years. This at the same time that 76 of the wealthiest schools have amassed endowments in excess of $1 billion. Harvard have $35 billion salted away, Yale $22.5 billion and the University of Minnesota has a $3 billion endowment. This has attracted the attention of Iowa senator Charles Grassley. He is looking at the gains in college endowments in recent years and asking why tuition costs are rising. His request:

“This isn’t just an issue of college access. It’s also an issue of tax fairness. Universities hold at least $340 billion in endowments. The donations to those endowments and the endowments themselves are all tax-exempt. American taxpayers are subsidizing that tax-exemption, and they deserve public benefit in return. Meanwhile, I hope Congress is motivated by Harvard and Yale’s action to continue a discussion of whether to impose a mandatory endowment pay-out requirement on well-funded colleges. Colleges are tax-exempt, and other tax-exempt entities, such as most private foundations, have a mandatory pay-out requirement of 5 percent a year. It’s reasonable to consider a mandatory endowment pay-out requirement for colleges.”

Minnesota Public Radio hosted a fascinating debate about this issue between an administrator from the University of Minnesota and a past-chancellor of the University of Wisconsin who argue the university case for ever-larger endowments (their main claim being the need for ‘inter-generational’ savings for the future and honoring donors rights to link their gifts to specific programs.)

The opposing viewpoint is championed by Steven Roy Goodman, an educational consultant and admissions strategist. He is the author of College Admissions Together: It Takes A Family and points out the challenges parents and students face in financing an education today. One option students have is to go to a university overseas for a better deal in education. A student he advised is enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His impassioned plea for a reasonable tuition policy included the stunning observation that “If a gallon of milk had risen in price since 1980 the same amount as college tuition it would now cost $15″. Wow! Got grades?

The callers to the program include a Twin Cities resident planning to move out of state in search of affordable education; a donor who wants to tie his grant to the school to a specific purpose and others.

The program lasts an hour. Well worth listening to.

When Sandra and I started this blog I looked around for other blogs to reference as a resource. There did not seem to be any bloggers who wrote about college admissions on a regular basis. We listed College Confidential  in the ‘Blogroll’ to the left, but that’s more of a discussion forum than a regular blog.

I was delighted to come across Brian’s blog Accepted to College. He’s been posting great material on an almost daily basis since mid-January this year. He’s a young guy with experience in the test-prep area and has worked in admissions offices. So why is he writing this blog? Here’s what he says:

The idea for AcceptedToCollege.com started in 2007. A family member asked me a question about college admissions, and I started searching around the web to find an answer. It seemed, though, that every website I found was either a bottomless quagmire of links and backlinks to sites full of advertising and devoid of content, or were pages devoted to selling overpriced and dubiously helpful sessions with “admissions gurus”.

Even worse, it took me hours of wading through advice that I knew would hurt applicants rather than help them before I found the information that I was looking for. I knew that something was wrong and that something had to change.

We absolutely recognize the problem he is addressing. It’s great to see someone taking the time to share useful information in a concise and easy to follow manner. That’s a goal we share at Step into College.

Brian has posted some great information in his blog. In addition, his website has many well-researched articles on Standardized Tests, Choosing a College and more.

We’re looking forward to reading Accepted to College on a regular basis.

If anyone knows of other useful blogs please let us know by in the comment below and we’ll add them to our blogroll.

What steps can parents take to help with the admissions process? Invest in test-prep tuition? Arrange a tour of local colleges, or a trip to another part of the country? Hire a private college admissions counselor? What’s reasonable? What are other parents doing? Where’s the line between support and over-involvement?

Is giving up your job to devote yourself full-time to helping your son or daughter with the application process going too far? Of course it is! But that’s exactly what some parents are in fact driven to do. This according to columnist Sue Shellenbarger writing in the Wall St Journal last week.

She tells of Suzanne Ducharme, a New York human-resources manager, who quit her job, she says, “to be here full time” with her daughter as she applied.

This might be an extreme. But Shellenbarger says:

As the biggest high-school graduating class in history — the class of 2009 — begins the college-search process, parents are abuzz over how to help. One mother of a high schooler, a manager for a New York financial-information concern, says friends are pressuring her to devote full time to the college search. With other parents on the case 24/7, she says, “they argue that by working, I’m putting my daughter at a disadvantage in today’s hypercompetitive college-admissions game.”

Part of the reason is the money involved. Today’s high tuition bills (over $200,000 for four years at a private school) give parents a big stake in the process. Putting your kid through college can be the largest expense for a family after buying a home.

But, c’mon, as complex as the admissions process is, giving up your job to help your kid figure it out is as ridiculous as giving up work to figure out how to complete your tax returns. Like the admissions process, the American tax system is mind-bendingly complex. But most of us invest $50 in Turbo-Tax, or pay H&R Block a couple of hundred dollars. Those with more complex returns might run up a bill of a few thousand with an accountant. But giving up work to do the job ourselves - that’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

So with the admissions process. At the high end there are many excellent private college counselors. Test-prep services and other online resources are available for free or at a reasonable charge. If you are a newbie at this, check out our Tips Booklet for a quick primer on what’s involved. There’s a list of resources in Next Steps above.

Remember to keep things in perspective. A major role parents can play is to take the stress out of the process.

Shellenbarger advises:

Step back and give your child ownership. It’s fine to accompany teens on campus visits, backstop on deadlines and serve as a cheerleader and coach.

Bottom line: invest the time to help, but don’t give up your day job!

More on this story and other parents comments in the WSJ blog.

Don’t forget that there are important deadlines coming up soon.

The next SAT Reasoning and Subject Tests are being held on May 3rd. The deadline to register is April 1st and the late registration (which incurs an extra fee) is April 10th. Register online here.

The next ACT Test is April 12th. The deadline to register is already past. But late registration is open until March 21st. Register online here.

The next couple of years are a bad time to turn 18 if you plan on applying to a selective college. But for younger siblings life might be getting easier.

This, according to the Sunday New York Times, is all due to shifting demographics.

This year and next the annual number of high school graduates will peak at 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. We’ll then start to see a decline in the number of potential applicants. Good news if you are still in 7th or 8th grade, not so if you are in 11th or 12th.

What does this mean for colleges?

The Times notes that “while many admissions deans expect to look nostalgically on what has become, for them at least, a golden era in college admissions, some say that a letup in the admissions craze might not be so bad”.

Well, yes. It’s been a golden era for colleges partly because, as parents are all too well aware, we’ve been sending them all of our gold!

But seriously, some colleges are looking beyond their balance sheets:

“I actually think it’s kind of good,” said Monica C. Inzer, dean of admission and financial aid at Hamilton College. “We need a shakeup. I think the anxiety families are feeling right now is not the way we planned it.”

It’s refreshing to hear this. Certainly from the parent’s side of the fence it’s hard to believe that the higher education ’system’ in this country was actually planned by anyone. In many ways it’s as dysfunctional as the American health care or taxation system. But, just as we are unlikely to get either socialized medicine or a flat tax rate anytime soon, we have to adapt to the vagaries of the educational establishment and learn to navigate it as best we are able. Finding the right strategy is not always easy.

One interesting approach which works for many students is to start off at a local community college and then transfer to complete your degree. The Times writes:

The new recruiting strategies take many forms. Bucknell, Cornell, Amherst and the University of Michigan are among eight colleges and universities to receive grants from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to create partnerships with community colleges; the goal is for some of the most promising graduates of two-year schools to transfer to the elite universities for their last two years of college.

That’s one way to get a degree while hanging on to some of your gold!

One of the most significant and daunting tasks in any teenagers life is applying to college. No matter how gifted and talented, how confident and self-assured, most kids must overcome incredible hurdles in order to get into the college of their choice:

• How do they maintain an adequate GPA over four years of High School?
• What’s the difference between the SAT and ACT tests?
• Which teachers and counselors do they ask for letters of recommendation?
• What extra-curricular activities will a college admissions office find of interest?
• What financial aid will they need and where can they find it?
• And on and on…

How can parents help? How do they advise their son or daughter? What’s the answer to questions like:

• How much will college cost?
• What options are there for financial aid?
• Are test-prep services worth it?
• Do High School counselors have all the information we need?
• Should we hire a private college admissions counselor? What do they charge?
• Are there any good books to help make sense of the process?
• How I can help minimize the stress involved?
• And on and on…

Families must deal with many, many other issues. We know. We have a a daughter who went to college this year and a son who’ll be applying in three years. We are not college counselors, test prep experts, financial aid officers or university admissions staff. We’re Mom and Dad.

We’ve started this blog to discuss some of the questions that come up when a son or daughter applies to college. We don’t have all the answers. But we’ll share resources that worked for our family. And as we find other useful bits of information we’ll share those as well.

We’ve already posted a bunch of tips and a list of resources on our website. Check them out and let us know what you think.

Ian and Sandra