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Admissions Blog Round-Up: November 16

Posted by Erin Lewis at 9:16 am

Want to know what’s going on in the admissions blogosphere? We’ve rounded up some recent posts for you to enjoy over your Monday morning coffee:

Everyone knows that researching colleges can be one of the most time-consuming parts of the admissions process.  Guide and Seek’s latest post spotlights InsideCollege, a site that vets colleges and groups them by a particular attribute to help students pare down (or build up) their own college list.  The post gives examples of InsideCollege lists including:  honors programs at a public university, loan-free education to low-income students, and colleges known for their school spirit.   There are over 700 lists to choose from.  The value added is that you may find new reasons to apply to college that you’ve never even considered before!  By the way, the site has a list of colleges with no tuition.

CollegeInSight, currently in beta, is another college search site picked up by the College Admissions Partners Blog.  This site allows for a search by statistics, so you are responsible for doing the actual research.

Allen’s College Admissions Blog highlights the tough competition facing students transferring into California’s state university system from its community colleges.

This morning’s blog post at The Choice is also about community colleges.  This post is about the entire nation’s overburdened community college system as gauged by the Community College Survey of Student Engagement.   You can also leave questions and comments for the director of the center for Community College Student Engagement, Kay McClenney, from the site.

Interested in having your blog featured?  Let us know in the comments!

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: allen's college admissions blog, blogs, college admissions, college admissions partners, college search, collegeinsight, guide and seek, insidecollege, the choice

2009 State of College Admission

Posted by Erin Lewis at 10:16 am

This morning, the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) released “2009 State of College Admission.” According to today’s New York Times article, this report reveals an increase in the number of students applying to college and a decrease in the acceptance rate at 4-year schools.  The silver lining: after this year, the number of students graduating from high school is expected to decrease— from a high of 3.33 million, that is.

Perhaps the most staggering statistics are the ones describing the situation in guidance offices across the country.  Student-to-counselor ratios are averaging 800, 900—even close to a thousand—per counselor in some states.  One student who commented on this report called the application process “strenuous and exhausting.”  I wonder if this is because she is one of the many students struggling to find adequate help.

I’d like to invite my readers to read my comment to The Choice blog post about this report.  I’d also like to invite readers to share their own experiences with their guidance counseling offices.  What does it do well?  What could be done better?

Finally, if you have a question about the application process that you’d like answered by a former admissions officer, as always, place it in our comment box and we’ll get back to you!

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: 2009 state of college admission, college counseling, nacac, the choice