U.S. News has a blog post about paying for college in the current economic climate.  The advice they offer is one we have been giving for years:  Maximize grades and test scores; apply early; do your homework.

With changes come opportunities.  Students who wish to attend top schools can make the dream reality…if they put in the hard work.  Take a rigorous class schedule.  Get high grades.  Ace the SAT and ACT.  Apply for scholarships.  Hitting the magic numbers in grades and test scores opens doors.  Once schools find you an attractive candidate, they will roll out the merit aid — particularly if your application comes in early before the aid runs out!

An investment in the Mackler Advantage carries a lifetime return on investment.  Students who work with us see anywhere from 2 to 10 times the return in scholarship money alone!

The Regents of the California colleges has changed its admissions procedures.  No longer will they require two SAT Subject Tests for admission.  And they have lowered the guaranteed percentage of top California graduates to 9%.  And they have established a new review process to consider applicants whose numbers do not trigger automatic consideration.

While all these changes seem an attempt to create a more diverse class and evade some of the strictures of Prop 209 (affirmative action), it seems it will have a boon for out-of-state applicants by freeing up previously guaranteed spots at the top end.  So…those who thought a California state college seemed too much of a pipedream have a better chance for admission starting in 2011.

The College Board has released its Report to the Nation on 2008 AP results.  Nationally, 15.2% of students taking an AP test scored a 3 or higher.  Maryland had the highest state percentage — 23.4%.  Missouri had a rather dismal 6.5%, one of the lowest in the nation.  Nationally, 25% of high school students took at least one AP exam; in Missouri, only 10.8% did so.  The most popular subject areas in Missouri were Social Sciences (15.4% of all high school students) and English (12.2%), with math at 9.3%.  With regard to results, 8.4% of Missouri students earned a 3 or higher on one of the Social Science AP exams, 7.1% did so in English and 5.6% did so in math.  This means that between only 50% and 60% of students taking an AP exam in Missouri are earning at least a 3.  Colleges usually require a 4 to earn transfer credit.  The most popular AP exams in Missouri were English Literature, U.S. History, English Language, Government, Calculus and Psychology.

So…Missouri students do not take advantage of the AP exams and, when they do, fail to perform at a high enough level.  One could draw many conclusions from this data about the quality of the courses offered, but that would be risky since we do not know the school-by-school breakdown and the percentage of students in each class taking the test compared with the grade they received.

But…we can conclude that Missouri students are wasting a great opportunity.  The AP represents the chance to enter college with enough credits to start as a sophomore.  In today’s economic climate, that is an unbelievable bargain.  To earn that credit requires acing the AP exams, and that takes additional work and preparation.  But look at the benefit…one year of college, which can range from $15,000 to $50,000!

We encourage students to take AP courses and seize the credits, and we help them maximize study time and work on year long preparation for the exam.  If done properly, AP courses offer not only better educational opportunities for learning, but also the chance to save thousands of dollars in college tuition!

We want to wish everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Watch for posts on the impact of the financial crisis on colleges — you might be surprised at some of the counterintuitive results we have found!

As all but the comatose must surely know, today is Election Day.  Be part of history.  Exercise your precious right to self-determination.  Go to the polls and vote!  For those of you in your first election, you enter at a rare time in the history of our country.  If you do vote for the first time, come back and share your thoughts here.

As I reported in an earlier post, the College Board has planned to add a new test, a miniature version of the PSAT, to its arsenal of tests.  ReadiStep would be given to eighth graders and have three 40 minute sections:  1 math, 1 verbal, 1 writing.  The level of difficulty of the test would be consistent with eighth grade expectations. The test will be available for use next fall.  It will be interesting to see a sample version of the test and measure exactly what level the College Board sees for eighth grade performance.

A recent report indicates that America suffers from a high school dropout crisis of epic proportions.  Today, kids are less likely than their parents to graduate high school.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Think about it.  How is this really possible?  In an era where a college diploma is required for so many entry level jobs, how can we put millions of kids in such jeopardy by not even graduating high school?  How can we allow one-third of our minority population to dropout?

Some may say that if a child chooses to leave school without graduating, that is his or her choice.  This is America, land of free choice right?  But that seems a complete copout.  We live together as a community, and our community survival hinges on our children becoming better educated than we.  We spend so much time criticizing the educational system about quality, but this bottom line result is truly criminal, and we must do something about it.  Now.

High school is a rite of passage and graduation is the capstone ceremony.  One cannot have the rite without actually passing, yes?  We must pass laws that mandate high school graduation as a condition of obtaining a driver’s license past the age of 19.  If someone is over 21 and has not graduated high school without a documented medical reason, that person should be guilty of a crime.  Yes, the incentives must be so high because the cost is unbelievable — what type of life can a person who lacks a high school education expect in this world today?  Employment and earnings at the lowest level.  Poor access to other resources like health and wellness.  The probability of becoming either a virtual ward of the social welfare system or the criminal justice system is staggering.  High school is a pivotal, critcal access point.  We must take drastic measures to avoid losing generations of people to lives of poverty.  We owe that to each other as a community.  And if you want to think selfishly, if you want to shrink the crime rate and the drain on Medicaid and “welfare” draws, put everyone at least through high school.  What a national tragedy.

As some of you may have read, Baylor got itself into some hot water when it was revealed that the school paid already admitted students with book credits or scholarships if they retook the SAT and increased their score by 50 or 100 points.  Baylor did so to increase their overall SAT scores they report, and presumably, to thereby improve their ranking in U.S. News.  Many have chided the school for ethical impropriety or gaming the system.  It would seem that U.S. News should simply ban a school using scores after the student has been admitted.  But the real folly of the incentive program is its probable lack of success — the odds of a student moving more than the standard deviation without test preparation is highly unlikely, so as incentive programs go, this one is weak for the student, as the cost of preparation would outweigh the scholarship offered.  And figuring that most students won’t do the prep, they won’t get the score increase, so the whole program would have flopped anyway!!!

This interesting article from MSNBC updates some of the latest controversies over dress codes, which I have written about in previous posts.  What I find striking about the article is how the trend toward uniforms has grown and that those insisting on them take such a no-exceptions policy, stating either safety concerns or sexualizing children.  Of course, the schools need to make these justifications in order to pass constitutional muster.  But the research does support their contention that uniforms encourage better learning environments by removing distractions and differences and creating a learning community.

In what seems to be a new low trend, students trying to get into the most selective universities have taken to anonymously trashing their competition, usually from the same school.  They send letters, emails, even post campaigns on MySpace and Facebook.

Why do students resort to this tactic?  Do they think colleges actually pay attention to anonymous trash like the writing in a bathroom stall?  If so, they can forget about a selective college.  Do they think they cannot get caught, that all this electronic behavior can be traced?  Do they think libeling someone will go unpunished?

Some say this is an indication of competition gone awry, of too much pressure to get into college.  I say this is nothing more than a culmination of culture feeding into the college application process.  What do teens see in the media, whether reality TV, magazines, fiction?  Or perhaps in the latest financial crisis news?  They see people using any means necessary to get the end — the end always justifying the means.  They see that instant gratification and “I want it, it’s mine” is the ethic of the time.  The madness must stop if character and integrity will have any meaning in the future entering classes of our great institutions of higher learning.

A modest proposal.  All colleges must have two students write evaluations for other students who apply to their college.  Sort of a secret shopper.  But the kicker is that no one knows who their secret shopper is, and everyone who is going to apply to college must be secretly shopped.  This nudge behavioral modification would encourage many students to play by the rules and be kinder to their fellow classmates, who just might be the key to ending their college hopes.  Admittedly this proposal has its weaknesses, from Big Brother tone to policing problems.  But finely tuned and widely deployed, it just might be the honor system we need to change the culture of our schools.