That's not me. My hair is usually messier.

In the 8.5 months since I last posted to the Ego and the Ed, social media seems to have reached that tipping point where it’s simply no longer a fad or trend. It’s here to stay and will continue to make its mark in unexpected ways. I mean we saw Facebook’s founder named Person of the Year by TIME. A prestigious honor also held by Gandhi, FDR and Churchill amongst others. Like Hitler and Stalin.

But I digress. So, the start of a new year seems like a good time to jump back into this business of getting good information out to the people who want it. The feedback’s been great and I’m excited to get back in the mix. On some days it may be via Twitter (follow me!), and other days through this blog. And once a month, it’ll be through a monthly online show an old colleague and I have been doing as of late. In just 45 minutes, I think we do a pretty darn good job packing in lots of good information. Sure, the production values look rather DIY, but that’s only because it is DIY. We shoot it live, but it’s also available “on-demand” if you prefer. Anyways, watch a few episodes and decide for yourself: http://www.justin.tv/collegewise.  The next one is January 11th at 6pm PST and we’re going to focus on what high school underclassmen should be doing right now if they have their eye on going to college. If you do watch, come with questions because we’ll use the last 15 minutes to answer anything you throw our way!

Like I said, I’m excited to jump back into the mix. And as always, I appreciate your readership…let the good times roll!

Last Thursday, President Obama donated his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize award to ten charities, six of which directly support higher education for traditionally underserved groups.

One of them is College Summit, an organization I have spent part of the last six summers volunteering for as both a writing coach and director of college counseling.  As reported in the Christian Science Monitor:

Students and teachers cried with delight as soon as they heard news of the donation to College Summit, says J.B. Schramm, founder and CEO of the Washington-based group. It plans to divvy up the $125,000 gift among the 12 states where it has 170 partner high schools.

Click here to read more »

His future is secure.

And we just live in it. The National Association of Colleges and Employers just released their quarterly survey of which college majors produce the highest starting salaries.  No surprise that 8 out of the top 10 are in the field of engineering.

Petroleum engineering earned the highest starting salary reported at the bachelor’s degree level—$86,220—more than one-and-one-half times the average starting salary reported for bachelor’s degree graduates as a whole ($48,351).

“While a variety of factors play a role in determining salaries, new graduates with degrees in the technical fields tend to benefit from their relatively low supply. There is more competition for their skills, driving up their salary offers,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

For example, petroleum engineering degrees account for less than 1 percent of all bachelor’s degrees conferred.

“Not every case is that extreme, but, in general, candidates with technical degrees have an advantage in the job market,” says Mackes.

I would never suggest a student pick a college or a major solely based upon what kind of salary they might look forward to, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider it as one of many factors either.  In this kind of economy, even with my liberal arts bent, I can see the value in the stability technical fields provide.

3 of the top 12 All Time Most Viewed videos on YouTube are by Billy Ray's daughter. Come on, America!

For anyone who has seen the  rather epic battle of videos between Shoreline and Shorewood High Schools in Washington, it’s no surprise that this generation of high school students knows their way around technology pretty well.  (FWIW, my vote goes to Shorewood doing Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True.”  Shot entirely backward with even lips completed synced. See it to believe it.)  So, it was also no surprise when I recently came across this article about how Tufts has incorporated YouTube videos made by applicants directly into their decision-making.

I applaud any attempts to evaluate students on factors that don’t boil down to crude numbers like SAT scores.  At the same time,  I get nervous about this particular approach on account of two groups of kids out there.  First, there are many kids out there w/o the resources to do this.  And by resources, I don’t mean just computers and audio-video equipment.  I also mean TIME.  I watched more than a handful of these videos and several of them were flat-out terrific.  Props to those kids.  However, many of them also would have required dozens of hours of planning and production.  How many kids applying to an ultra-selective school like Tufts have that kind of time in fall of their senior year?  I certainly can’t think of too many from my own experience.  And while shooting just one might be a fun way to break up some of the drudgery of the process, I can’t imagine if a kid needed to do several of these, personalizing them for various schools.

Click here to read more »

Tree huggers like me sometimes forget that money doesn't grow on them.

It’s with a great deal of pride that I’ve watched groups of students at the UCs recently protest fee hikes and incidents of intolerance. Their generation is often maligned as the “me-generation” but thousands of them are showing exactly how wrong that is.

My own activism tends to take place in lower-key ways. The past couple of years, I’ve been heading up to Sacramento to take part in WACAC’s annual legislative conference.  Our focus has tended to be on issues centering around providing financial support to the neediest of California’s students via programs like the very successful Cal Grants.  Last year, we were even there during the 11th hour of the budget crisis which hinged on just one Republican vote.  It was political drama at its highest. Despite being somewhat in awe of how direct democracy can be in even the world’s 8th largest economy, I still leave chagrined at how every “solution” feels like a tiny Band-Aid on gaping wound.

This morning, I was reminded that “gaping” doesn’t really do it justice.  San Andreas Fault-sized maybe? A Chicago fraternity brother sent me an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal regarding the immense toll that public sector pensions are having on California’s finance. But since I pretend to blog about admissions, what does this have to do with that?  More than you’d ever imagine. 15,000 retired public employees with annual pensions over $100,000. Really!?! This at the same time I’m listening to stories on NPR about college kids having to use food stamps and food pantries to afford their education!?!  I’m by no means a numbers guy but additional figures were shocking:

In the last decade, government worker pension costs (not including health care) have risen to $3 billion from $150 million, a 2,000% jump, while state revenues have increased by 24%. Because the stock market didn’t grow the way the legislature predicted in 1999, the only way to cover the skyrocketing costs of these defined-benefit pension plans has been to cut other programs (and increase taxes).

Yes, it’s easy to have that knee-jerk tendency to see “WSJ” and assume this is one of their concern-trolling bits that in reality pits various liberal factions against each other. That’s unfair in this case. Education is something both parties clearly agree on.  They simply disagree on how it should be done. (In a slight aside since this is my blog and I can do that, recently disgraced Republican state senator Roy Ashburn was a huge supporter of the Cal Grants as I learned from visiting his office last year. I imagine his vote won’t be there next time.) Anyways, read on for a couple more cherry-picked excerpts that illustrate my concerns nicely, or sadly as the case may be… Click here to read more »

Maybe Diddy could do a recession remix, "It's All about the Hamiltons."

A school is already pretty awesome in my eyes when that school is one that once asked kids applying, “If you were reduced to living on a flat plane, what would be your greatest problems?”  But they just got a little more awesome when I caught a piece in today’s Inside Higher Ed that Hamilton College is going need-blind in their admissions process at exactly the time many other (and wealthier, ahem, Williams/Dartmouth) schools are now being a lot less generous.

“On Saturday, its board voted to become need blind for all domestic students — while continuing its commitment to giving all admitted applicants aid packages to cover their need.”

They deserve huge props for making such a bold move and going against fear and conventional wisdom.  It’s far more heartening to hear about increases to need-based aid than it is to merit-based aid which nearly universally tends to advantage the already advantaged.  (The 25 full-scholarship winners at Caltech one year I was there included 21 who had BOTH parents with advanced degrees. i.e. Dad with Ph.D./Mom with J.D., Dad with M.D./Mom with M.B.A. I can’t do the math but I’m pretty sure that’s hitting the tippy-tippy-top of statistical indicators for a child’s success.)  It’s unlikely, but I hope Hamilton’s decision will give pause to other elite schools of their caliber who were hoping to move away from being supportive of all students regardless of their socioeconomic background.

What, you wanted Madonna or Letterman's Smile?

Last night, I attended the Los Angeles Gap Year Fair at Harvard-Westlake School.  For those not in know, the term “gap year” typically connotes a separate year spent between high school graduation and the start of college.  Sometimes the “year” may be only a few months and other times it really is a full year.  (If you want to learn more, here’s an excellent place to start: http://www.planetgapyear.com/)

Much like you’d see at a college fair, 35 outfits and organizations set up table staffed by reps to discuss everything from the well-known National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to City Year that is a service program part of AmeriCorps to Brown Ledge Gap Year where students learn documentary film production and then create their own doc film in New Orleans/El Paso.  The wide variety was somewhat startling as compared to last year’s fair, there were nearly twice as many tables!

I’m heartened to see the growth in interest for gap years.  They’re not for everyone, but boy, for the right kid, it’s a perfect way to unwind from the stress of high school, recharge in a purposeful way, and start college one year wiser and more mature.  A mother whose daughter did a gap program spoke of her child living in a village of Senegal for several months with no electricity, running water or (gasp!) Internet.  I couldn’t help but think how much more interesting that young woman will be wherever she matriculates this fall.  She’ll have her own nuanced views on global development, the environment, African music, whatever and all informed by personal experience.  Studies have repeatedly shown that students who engage in a gap program perform better academically in college. Click here to read more »

When Queen sang "Under Pressure," it surely wasn't their hair they were singing about.

The NYT is featuring a nice 5-minute mini-documentary called Advanced Pressure that speaks to students, administrators and teachers about the AP program.  I see moments of this pressure myself as kids overload themselves and teeter on the edge as they push through junior and senior years.  None of this is new to high school students and their parents.  And while some of the kids are a bit whiny–NO ONE is forcing anyone to take these classes and there are plenty of students who balance 3 or 4 APs quite deftly–I do hope that more than a handful of admissions officers out there will catch this piece and see the earnestness with which many kids pursue pleasing a system that doesn’t do a very good job of being transparent.

Which reminds me, I did talk about APs at greater length last month, How Many APs Does It Take to Get Into Harvard*, if you’re interested in hearing  a bit more on how I view the program in terms of class selection for hs students.

Wow. This is real.

Few things on Earth are as quotable as The Simpsons (except maybe Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy). And few characters on The Simpsons are as quotable as Malibu Stacy, the Barbie knockoff that little Lisa alternately loves and hates.  In addition to the post title above, Malibu Stacy has been known to say things like, “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” or my favorite, “Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl.”  (You can listen to fine selection of her quotes here.)

And while the vapid utterings of Malibu Stacy makes for giggles and seems like ancient history to most of the girls I work with, the very success of these same young women has had the unintended consequence of reducing the percentage of boys in college and creating a significant gender imbalance at many institutions.  So much so, it’s not uncommon to hear it regarded as a crisis.  An op-ed in today’s LAT lays it out all quite thoroughly:

After 17 years of concentrated effort to raise the academic achievement of girls, who in previous decades had often received less attention in the classroom and been steered away from college-prep courses, the nation can brag that female students have progressed tremendously. Though still underrepresented in calculus and other advanced-level science and math courses in high school, women now outnumber men applying to and graduating from college — so much so that it appears some colleges are giving male applicants an admissions boost. As a result, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is examining whether colleges are engaging in widespread discrimination against women in an effort to balance their male and female populations. Click here to read more »

In the future, we'll all wear lycra and name badges.

I couldn’t read this recent Bloomberg article packed with stats about the increase in applicant pools at most of the most selective universities, without being reminded of one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes.  In “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” a young woman in the future balks at undergoing a process that makes everyone in that society beautiful–and look virtually identical.  (And in a very Twilight Zone moment, aired exactly 46 years ago today!) Despite her protestations, she ends up undergoing it anyway and emerges looking like everyone else.  One of the classic lines in the show, gravely intoned, was “When everyone is beautiful, no one will be. Because without ugliness, there can be no beauty.”

And similarly, as every school continues to report increases left and right year after year, I fear we are moving past merely Groundhog Day, and into world where everything will eventually look the same.  I mean, even my beloved University of Chicago is reporting an unfathomable 42% increase in applications this year.  Maybe I’m old school, but I rather enjoyed the days when Chicago had smaller applicant pools than other universities because it’s applicant pool was different.  Nowadays, switching to the Common App and more marketing can beef up numbers to look good to a the board of trustees and U.S News rankings.  I just wonder what it’s doing for the kids themselves not to mention the personalities and quirks of colleges themselves.