Admissions

One peek in your son's room confirms that he's in the midst of the college application process. His floor is littered with school viewbooks, post-it notes obscure his computer screen, and his test score summary has gone AWOL. One thing is certain: if colleges are looking for well-organized students, he'll be getting mostly thin envelopes. You wonder how he'll ever pull it all together!

It may sound strange, but if your family received a “scholarship” to buy a car would it lead you to buy it?  We encourage college parents to consider the implications for your own college admissions experience and be careful to understand the difference between a true scholarship from what would otherwise be viewed as a […]

Don’t Catch Senioritis! It Could Cost You Your College Acceptance NBC News By Elizabeth Chuck provided a useful report for college students and parents worried about a school revoking their admission.   The report indicates that even though the “college application process is over, graduation is approaching and spring is in full bloom, making conditions […]

College Parents of America has a long history of making observations regarding the insanity of the college admissions process, but nothing really prepared our editors and contributors for the college admissions scandal that was announced yesterday by the FBI. It is very disappointing and disconcerting to those of us who promote the value of higher […]

December is a hectic month for college-bound parents and their students. For students who have applied for an early admission decision, they will likely hear the results this month while also working to complete their applications to other colleges or universities.

This is the time of year when college families are looking for tips and insights into the college admissions process.  Over the year's we have published lists of suggestions but one of the best sources to gain some quick tips and insights to the admissions process is from the founder of Princeton Review and Tutor.com -  John Katzman.

College Parents often ask what is college life really like. With polarized politics, rising student debt, mental health concerns, and increased institutional efforts to confront and prevent campus sexual assault represent some of the heated national topics that colleges and universities helped us measure in 2016. One resource we greatly respect is the Higher Education […]

May 1st is the deadline for college decisions and therefore the stress is growing across the nation as students determine with some helpful guidance of their parents the right college for them to choose.

The college visit is an important part of the college admissions process, but parents may not be sure how best to participate in and maximize that visit. This article suggests some things parents should think about as they prepare for and make the college visit. According to VisitDays, about a quarter of campus visits by prospective students occur in April. So now is the time to consider how to make the most of your visit and how best to use your time on campus.

We are big fans of Frank Bruni – the long-time contributor to the New York Times and author of Where you Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, about the college admissions mania. We reviewed some of the articles that appeared in the New York Times and highlight some of the best reminders for college parents who […]

College Parents of America - reminds all college families - not to panic: We agree with the statement "If you work hard and get good grades and test scores, there is very likely a place in the best schools for you."

Just mention the words “college admissions,” and the anxiety level for some future college parent households rises as quickly as the spring pollen count outside their front doors.Part of that anxiety, no doubt, is being driven by a recent spate of high-profile newspaper articles, followed inevitably by their cribbing on television or radio news programs, all of which are collectively making the point that college admission is harder than ever.

A Texas prison inmate wrote me recently asking for a free copy of my book after reading about it in a newspaper column on the importance of soft skills in the job hunt. He justified the request with a claim that he achieved a 3.7 GPA in getting his associate's degree and "acquired a lot of academic knowledge" but was not ready for the workforce when he completes his prison term soon. I hear this comment frequently from college graduates and current students everywhere from community college to the Ivies, and none of them are in jail.

There are some who suggest earning a college degree may no longer be essential. But data from Georgetown’s Center for Education and the Workforce. (CEW) suggests otherwise. The most recent CEW report indicates that “workers with at least some postsecondary education now make up 65 percent of the total employment and bachelor’s degree holders now […]

The 'hot' college that everyone in your class wants to go to will be harder to get accepted. Too many applicants from one school can cut down your chances. If there's a school you want to go to, keep your mouth shut!

What does the conversion chart say about the new SAT? This past week the CollegeBoard released several tables detailing student’s performance on the new SAT compared to the old SAT. The official conversion tables show that the new SAT has higher scores than expected across the entire score range (about a 60-80 point increase in scores […]

April is such a key month for collegebound families, in no small part because final family decisions on a college are on deadline. By now, your student has acceptance letters in hand. But maybe this spring brought your student a towering stack of acceptance letters to consider. In such a case, how do you discuss collegiate opportunity with your student? And how do you, along with your college student, weight the reality of college finances in choosing a school?

Given the public support our colleges and universities receive, let's begin asking our most elite institutions to serve more students and to consider the following questions.

The time and effort parents spend assisting their students is valuable. We remind parents to avoid "over-paying" for a college education and recognize that the financial value of a degree is largely depends upon major more than the source of a degree. A college degree is not just about financial results, as the Labor Statistics in chart below illustrate, a higher education not only increase earning potential but also leads to increased employment levels.

For college bound families evaluating schools it is useful to consider the case for the public university Honors College that is asserted by The New York Times – Frank Bruni. Bruni is well known for his best selling book – Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, 2015 […]