by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 24, 2018 | Blog, College Admissions, SAT Essay
Harvard University has announced that it will be dropping the SAT/ACT Essay requirement, beginning with the class of 2023. Along with Princeton, Yale, and Stanford, Harvard was one of the last holdouts to require that students submit this component.
I wrote a series of critiques of the redesigned essay when the new test was first rolled out, and I still believe that it is deeply problematic – I think colleges are justified in viewing it with suspicion. At the same time, however, I believe that there are very compelling reasons for schools to continue requiring some sort of writing sample completed under proctored conditions.
Although some of my initial concerns about the SAT essay were unfounded, the principal issue remains that it is fundamentally a nonsense assignment, one presented in muddled language that says one thing and means something else. It asks students to analyze how an author uses “evidence” to build an argument, but seeks to remove outside knowledge from the equation. In reality, this is an absurd proposition: any even slightly substantive analysis of “evidence” is impossible without actual knowledge of a topic. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Dec 28, 2017 | Blog, College Admissions
I’m beginning to think that high school students should be required to take a Statistics course just to be able to navigate the numeric thicket surrounding the college admissions process. As I’ve written about recently, the percentages that colleges throw around throughout the admissions process can’t necessarily be taken at face value.
Much like the overall acceptance rates that colleges release each spring, statistics involving Early Action and Early Decision deferrals require some interpreting as well. Depending on the college, a deferral can tell a lot about an applicant’s chances in the spring — or it can tell almost nothing at all. In some cases, a deferral can also act as a warning sign about the likely fate of someone’s applications at other schools of comparable selectivity; in others, it might do just the opposite. In either of those cases, an early deferral could spur you to make some last-minute alterations to your list. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Nov 3, 2017 | Blog, College Admissions
In an interesting coincidence, the day after I published my previous post, which detailed the ways in the which the college essay can be gamed by wealthy applicants, Eric Hoover, who covers admissions for The Chronicle of Higher Education, published a story in The New York Times describing the minefield that it is the elite college admissions process in 2017. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 30, 2017 | Blog, College Admissions
It took a while to happen, but college essays have begun to be placed under the kind of scrutiny traditionally reserved for the SAT. In just the past couple of weeks, articles have appeared in both the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed discussing the college essay industry and highlighting the vast sums of money some families spend on assistance with this aspect of the application.
These articles raise some very important questions: exactly how much help is too much? And how should colleges evaluate an assignment that some applicants have spent thousands of dollars to complete? (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Oct 16, 2017 | Blog, College Admissions
Over the past several decades, acceptance rates at the most selective United States colleges and universities have dropped dramatically. In the mid-1990s, for example, Yale University had an acceptance rate of around 18% for freshman applicants, whereas its freshman acceptance rate in 2017 was only one-third as high. Assuming that acceptances rates for the high school class of 2018 are similar to those for the class of 2017, all freshman applicants to Yale during the 2017-2018 admissions cycle will compete in a pool from which approximately 6% of freshman applicants are accepted.
Which of the following would most weaken the conclusion of this passage?
(A) Applicants who apply to Yale through Single Choice Early Action are accepted at far lower rates than they were in the mid-1990s.
(B) There is a significant difference in the acceptance rates of Single Choice Early Action and Regular Decision Yale applicants.
(C) The most competitive applicants to Yale often gain admission to multiple Ivy League schools.
(D) A smaller percentage of students apply to Yale through Single Choice Early Action than apply Regular Decision.
(E) The demographic makeup of Yale’s freshman class has changed significantly over the past several decades. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Sep 30, 2017 | Blog, College Admissions, Financial Aid
If you’re an international student interested in applying to American universities, you probably already know that studying in the U.S. isn’t cheap – and sticker prices just keep rising. With tuition and fees at some schools now topping $70,000 a year, the cost of higher education in the U.S., even at public institutions, easily costs tens of thousands more than it does in most other countries.
The good news is that schools do offer some kind of financial assistance for international students – in some cases, very significant amounts of aid. The bad news, however, is that navigating the American system requires a fair amount of savvy.
For example, consider the following list of the 10 universities offering international students the most financial aid, courtesy US News and World Report: (more…)
