Admissions
Asking the Right Questions (Getting In)
Kt, 17 from United States writes...
I will be going on some college visits soon and I am making a list of questions to ask my guide. The thing is, I don't really know what to ask! The questions I have are pretty ordinary like how many people there are, what the dorms are like, is the food good, etc etc etc. What are some specific things that would be good for me to find out about the colleges I am looking at attending? Is there anything you wish you could have asked about but didn't even think of until after you actually started college? Thanks!Janet says...
It’s tough to know what questions to ask, especially now that we can get so much more information online about schools than in generations past. However, there is still plenty of ground that you can cover! Many examples of good questions to ask include:
If you were thinking about living on campus:
- Are the dorms spread throughout the campus or clustered in one area? Is there any kind of shuttle service between classroom areas, the library, the student union, and dorms? How late does it run?
- What is security like in the dorms?
- How are roommates chosen? If there are problems between roommates are there procedures in place to move one or both roommates?
If your tour guide or interviewer is a student:
- How many of your courses are taught by a big-name professor and how many by a teaching assistant?
- What are the strong majors? The weak majors?
- How hard do you have to work for your grades?
- Do fraternities and sororities dominate the social life of the college?
- What do students do on weekends? Do most go home?
- There are a lot of organizations on campus. Are they dominated by a few groups or is anyone welcome?
- What do you do on weekends?
- How many hours a week do you spend in class? Studying?
- Why did you choose this school?
- How is the food on campus?
If your interviewer is a college admissions officer or you’re just talking to an admissions officer:
- What makes this college different from other colleges?
- What percentage of freshman return for their sophomore year?
- Is it difficult to change majors or areas of study after the freshman year?
- Do I seem like a good fit with the college?
- What is the role of sports on campus? What options are available for different sports?
- What resources are available to help students make the transition to college life (or life at this specific college)?
Getting off campus:
- How easy is to get to places off campus? Are there places within walking distance?
- Are there places to get extra furniture, like bookcases, for your dorm room?
- Is there a supermarket nearby to stock up on snacks and soda?
- If you move out of a dorm after freshman year, what are the options in apartment complexes or buildings?
Though the biggest tip I can give you is, if you can easy find the information online, don’t ask it! They know what’s on the internet and it can make you look uninformed or desperate to ask questions found online. In a way, this leaves the burden to you to come up with original questions, but it also proves to them how interested you are in that school, and is that not the primary goal?
Tags: getting in, college, admissions, admissions interviews, admissions questions, college tours
US Colleges: Not as Selective as they Seem (Getting In)
From day one each of us is told to work very hard in school to get into a good college or even just to get into college at all. Well, a recent report by the National Bureau for Economic Research is suggesting that students, even those minimally qualified, are able to find seats in some college.
It turns out that for each minimally qualified high school graduate or GED recipient, there are 1.07 spaces in US colleges. Some schools are more competitive than others. Indeed Harvard and Stanford are not admitting marginal students, but there are hundreds if not thousands of smaller colleges as well as public universities that are willing to take a chance on students, even if they’ve got more than a handful of Cs on their records.
What does this mean? This means that even if you’d never planned on going to college and weren’t particularly focused on college or if you’ve ended up taking a series of classes that just don’t work for your academically you are not doomed from attending college.
The trend is different in many foreign countries due to the involvement the government often has in subsidizing post-secondary education. In foreign countries the greatest obstacle for college and university admissions is academic qualifications. In the United States the greatest barrier to education is money.
It’s tough to say which is better: a population with fewer graduates from college due to higher admissions standards or a population where attending college is based more on your ability to cobble together money. Some people theorize that the ease of college admissions in the United States cheapens the value of your bachelor’s degree. This then drives more people to pursue graduate and professional degrees than in other countries, then often flooding the market for people with specific qualifications and leaving a number of job that require less education impossible to fill (even if they’re well-paying and high-demand jobs).
But for the student about to graduate from high school, so long as you get a diploma, know that there is a school out there that would love to get an application from you and better yet like to have you attend their school, just don’t plan on going to Harvard!
Tags: getting in, admissions, college admissions, gpa, high school diploma, applications, high school grades, the perfect college, college selectivity, research
Owning Up to a Crush (Crush Zone)
It can be scary, telling a crush that you like them; there are a lot of things to consider before deciding to make that move: What if they don't like you back? What if they're already dating someone? What if they like you back but then you realize that you don't really like them, after all? What if you used to be best friends but now your entire relationship is awkward because they don't like you and now they won't even look at you? What if you end up going out and get married but then in twenty years you find out that they cheated on you one time, right after you got together? What if they're gay/straight/asexual? What if your best friend likes them too, and now won't even speak to you?Really, I could keep going on for pages of all the concerns - some more common than others - that might be going through your head when you're trying to decide what to do now that you've decided that, really and truly, you have a crush. But that would probably be boring to everyone besides me, so I'll stop now. Instead, I'll share some of my own stories with owning up to a crush. And I'm not going to change any names, because I really don't see the point.
The first time I totally owned up to a crush was in eighth grade. It didn't go too well. He liked my best friend, and not me, and I was heartbroken over it for maybe a couple of weeks. Luckily, he wasn't awkward about it, because we had been friends for a while and that would've been sad. His name was/is Aaron.
The second time turned into a bit of a disaster, really. His name was Charles, and after literally months of back-and-forth, he eventually admitted that he liked me, too. A few weeks later, he professed his love for me; I realized that I really didn't care for him that much anymore. I felt like a terrible person, etc.
Josh was a bit later. I shared my Skittles with him, told him that I liked him, and was generally sort of creepy, in what was apparently an endearing sort of way. We went out for a couple of weeks, until I entered Bad Decision Mode (there was a lot of stuff going on in my family), wherein I broke up with him and instead started going out with someone to whom I now refer to as Creepy Alex.
After Creepy Alex went away, there was Jacob. He was pretty amazing - still is, actually - but he moved to Alaska shortly after we started really talking, so I declined getting any more invested than I already was.
A few guys later (I feel like I went through them so quickly in high school), there was Trevor. I saw him in chess club (yes, I am a nerd), got his e-mail address from the chess club website, and introduced myself, admitting how attractive I found him and suggested we should start talking. Four years later, I have to say that that was a pretty good idea.
And, that is the (abridged) summary of most of the times I admitted to a crush that I liked him. Do you have any stories? I'd really like to hear them! And, again, if you have any ideas for submissions, or things you'd like to see, either comment here, under this article, or send it in as a separate submission to Crush Zone!
Tags: crush zone, admissions
From Prison to Foggy Bottom (School Girl)
I wanted to keep things light. It's been a good weekend here in Maryland and I hope everyone out there on the internet is feeling fine. It is the beginning of the holidays, I hope most of you are done with your applications, and I hope that you all start getting your acceptance letters!
So what makes Mario Rocha not your average freshman at George Washington University in Washington, DC?
Try ten years in prison for first-degree murder. It is nothing short of inspiring how this once wrongly-convicted man was wasting away in prison has made it to one of the most selective universities in the country.
If anything this story goes to show that if he can do it, any of you certainly can make it into college and succeed, regardless of the perceived obstacles.
Check out his story on the Washington Post.
Tags: getting in, mario rocha, admissions, george washington university, washington dc, obstacles to admission, gwu