CollegeBoard Southern Regional Forum Update # 1 - Wed.
It is rainy and cold in ATL today but unexpected grace came my way. In the middle of a horrible Atlanta traffic jam on the expressway system Mapquest routed me around and I had no problem, and my room was ready when I arrived. Nice touch. This morning I attended the College Admissions Panel - admissions representatives from 6 colleges around the south - public, private and community colleges. 4 things came out. Parent involvement in the admissions process is having some really negative results. Parents are becoming too involved, complaining and demanding, which is hurting students. Middlebury college did a small study and found an inverse correlation between parent involvement in admissions and student success. The more the parent did for the student at admissions time the poorer the student performed in college. Secondly, community college scholarships are underuntilized. Perhaps it is because community colleges cost less and finances are not such an issue. Perhaps people think community colleges do not offer scholarships. Nevertheless some of these scholarships go begging. One Comunity college rep told a story about a scholarship for “women is science”. There was only one applicant. It was a male. They gave it to him. The third thing involved how colleges look at student applications. The buzz word of the day is “holistic”. Test scores, GPA, essays, extracurricular school activities, community service and anything else an institution can learn about a student is being considered in this highly competitive environment. The last piece of advice we recieved was to advise students to be careful what they post on Myspace and Facebook. Also students need to choose appropriate email addresses. At FLVS we have all seen some doozies. We need to get our studentrs to clean up their acts. How about a “successful email addresses” campaign?
Lunched with Elizabeth McKenzie, Senior Educational Manager Higher Education Services. She knew about FLVS and took my card to have a rural district in Tenn. contact me for information about our AP courses.
Hot off the presses: I just attended the Guidance & Admissions Assembly as a delegate from FLVS. The March 2009 administration of the SAT will be the first administration at which students can exercise CollegeBoard’s new score control. Students will now be able to control which SAT scores are sent to various colleges. The ACT has long had this level of control. Also Admissions representatives from Furman University and The University of Georgia reported that their studies show that the SAT writing portion is an excellent predictor of student success. They were two of 110 higher ed institutions that used the writing portion of the SAT of admissions decisions. They are currently requiring the writing portion for admission and consider it a valuable tool.
