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CNN American Morning aired another segment today critical of the College Board.
To help parents of college-bound students better understand the challenges of the high-stakes SAT college entrance exam, The Princeton Review, Inc. (Nasdaq: REVU), announced today the official launch of its SAT Parent Challenge. Providing a small sample of the kind of questions students will encounter when taking the SAT, the 12-question online quiz is intended to not only give parents the opportunity to test their academic acumen, but experience — if only for 15 minutes — some of the challenges their kids will face when they take the actual, nearly four-hour SAT exam.
Available at http://inquiry.princetonreview.com/ugrad/satparentchallenge, the SAT Parent Challenge features questions from each of the three sections of the exam: Critical Reading, Math, and Essay Writing. After completing the quiz, parents will receive their results from The Princeton Review, as well as examples of techniques that may have helped them correctly answer specific questions.
“Not only is today’s SAT much harder than it used to be, but many colleges and universities have increased their average score requirements for first-year students,” says Robert Franek, Vice President/Publisher at The Princeton Review. “There’s also a growing reliance on college entrance exams to determine eligibility for grants and scholarships due to the dramatic increase in requests for financial aid this year.
Given all of this, there’s no question that parents and students must take these tests seriously and really prepare for them.” Franek noted that according to The Princeton Review’s 2009 “College Hopes and Worries Survey,” when asked to gauge their stress level about the college application process, student respondents indicated higher levels than their parents. Additionally, stress levels were the highest since The Princeton Review began the survey in 2003. “Much of this stress can be eliminated if you understand that it’s not always about learning more — or even remembering what you’ve learned — but knowing how to approach a question on a standardized test.
Bottom line: the right attitude and preparation for taking these tests can be an extremely important influence and play a key role in helping a student achieve the college test score they need and deserve.” As added incentive, parents who take the SAT Parent Challenge between July 3 and August 31, 2009 will be automatically entered into the Parent Challenge Sweepstakes, with three first place winners receiving a Princeton Review SAT Classroom Preparatory Course, valued at over $1,000. About The Princeton Review The Princeton Review (Nasdaq: REVU) has been a pioneer and leader in helping students achieve their higher education goals for more than 25 years through college and graduate school test preparation and private tutoring. With more than 165 print and digital publications and a free website, http://www.PrincetonReview.com, the Company provides students and their parents with the resources to research, apply to, prepare for, and learn how to pay for higher education. The Princeton Review also partners with schools and guidance counselors throughout the U.S. to assist in college readiness, test preparation and career planning services, helping more students pursue postsecondary education. REVU-G SOURCE The Princeton Review Source
PR Newswire: Princeton Review Launches SAT Parent Challenge Posted on: Monday, 10 August 2009, 09:50 CDT NEW YORK, Aug. 10
The staff at Princeton Review would like GMAT test-prep students to see the big picture. “It’s not just the knowledge being tested,” says John Fulmer, national content director for GMAT at Princeton Review. “It’s the approach to the problem.” Indeed, the company’s approach to teaching the GMAT and its dynamic, interactive instruction are its biggest strengths, says Fulmer.
Students in Hong Kong get a line of books, an online course, online tutoring, a seven-week classroom program with 30 hours of instruction, and in-person one-on-one and small group tutoring. Course price is $9,988.
Students may retake the GMAT course if they don’t have a score improvement.
Although GMAT instruction at Princeton Review hasn’t changed much in the past few years, Fulmer says the organization is constantly evaluating its courses. Students now receive homework assignments based on the areas in which they need the most improvement as determined by the results of their diagnostic test. Princeton Review is also starting to think about the changes coming to the GMAT in 2013. “Princeton Review is always abreast of changes,” says Fulmer. “Whatever comes down the road, we’ll be ready with the best possible test prep out there.”
Having a hand in all the standardized tests including the SAT, SAT Subject Tests, TOEFL, GRE, SSAT etc. is an advantage because the exams often have similarities. Princeton Review has a separate team, he adds, that works on teaching only the GMAT. And it already offers GRE courses.
Joan Yee, the Princeton Review Hong Kongs Executive Director explains why further education is important during these difficult times. She describes why attaining a Masters degree is the solution.
香港Princeton Review 行政總監, Joan Yee, 講解持續學習在現時的困難時期的重要性. 她亦解釋取得碩士學位為什麼是解困方法之一.
香港Princeton Review 行政总监, Joan Yee, 讲解持续学习在现时的困难时期的重要性. 她亦解释取得硕士学位为什麽是解困方法之一.
With Harvard, Wharton, and other top schools planning to accept the GRE for admissions, cracks are beginning to show in the GMAT monopoly.
The battle between two of the largest graduate school testing giants has been heating up recently as more business schools warm to the idea of providing students with an alternative to the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). Now another top-ranked business school is weighing in. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School(Wharton Full-Time MBA Profile) plans to allow MBA applicants to submit the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), for admission in the fall of 2010, says Admissions Director J.J. Cutler. It’s part of a move by the school to attract a broader applicant pool, including dual-degree students, younger applicants, and international applicants from far-flung countries without GMAT access.
“We are trying to open up a little bit the different types of people that we want to apply to business school and we don’t want to create additional hurdles for them to do so,” Cutler says.
More B-Schools Embrace the GRE
Wharton is following closely on the heels of Harvard Business School(Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile), which made waves this spring when it announced that it would allow applicants to submit the GRE for admissions. The institutions are joining the ranks of a small but rapidly growing number of business schools that are embracing the GRE, a standardized exam that students use to apply to a wide variety of graduate schools. The movement comes at a time when younger applicants—fresh out of college or just a year or two after graduation—are showing an increased interest in business school. For these applicants, many of whom have already taken the GRE, business schools that accept the test allow them to transition into an MBA program without studying for and taking another exam.
There are now more than 250 MBA programs that allow students, some on a case-by-case basis, to submit GRE scores with their applications, including most recently the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business(Darden Full-Time MBA Profile), Queen’s School of Business(Queen’s Full-Time MBA Profile) and Tulane’s Freeman School of Business (Tulane Full-Time MBA Profile). While most of the schools say they still prefer most applicants to use the GMAT, they say the GRE is becoming a valuable tool in attracting sought-after and unconventional business school candidates who might not otherwise apply.
“The GMAT is a very successful standard for business schools, but that is certainly not the only standard,” says Bill Sandefer, director of graduate admissions at Tulane’s Freeman School.
This type of attitude represents a seismic shift in business school admissions. For decades, the GMAT test, given by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), has been the undisputed king of the management education world. The exam has been used since 1954 by business school admissions officers to evaluate candidates on their math, verbal, and critical-thinking skills.
Opening the Door to Competition
Up until recently, the GMAT exam had a virtual monopoly over business school standardized exams. That all changed on Jan. 1, 2006, when GMAC cut its ties with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), with whom it had a decades-long partnership to develop and deliver the GMAT exam, moving instead to a new testing administrator, Pearson VUE. The severing of ties meant that ETS no longer had to abide by a noncompete clause with GMAC, giving it the green light to court business school admissions officers and promote the GRE as an alternative exam. Under the previous agreement between ETS and GMAC, this type of activity was forbidden.
“Once they ended the contract with us, we were able to move into this market,” says David Payne, head of the GRE program for ETS.
To capitalize on the opportunity, ETS has been aggressively marketing the GRE to B-school admissions officers in recent months, placing advertising campaigns in key business publications, paying visits to business schools admissions teams, and developing new testing tools that it hopes will convince more schools to use the GRE, says Payne. ETS has also been promoting the exam as a more affordable option for students; it costs $150 to take the GRE, versus $250 for the GMAT.
Top Schools Sign Up for GRE
ETS made headway several years ago when the Stanford Graduate School of Business(Stanford Full-Time MBA Profile) and MIT’s Sloan School of Management(MIT Sloan Full-Time MBA Profile) announced they’d allow students to submit the GRE instead of the GMAT. The testing group’s most significant coup to date was convincing Harvard Business School this spring to accept the exam for its MBA, as well its 2+2 Program, which accepts students straight out of college on the condition that they get two years of work experience before enrolling. Payne hopes that will have a ripple effect in the business school community.
“Now that Harvard has accepted it, I anticipate over the summer and into the fall we’re going to see a rapid increase of other business schools accepting it,” Payne says.
The University of Virginia’s Darden School is one of the schools that have recently become more open-minded about accepting the GRE. For the first time this year, the school allowed joint degree candidates to submit the GRE in lieu of the GMAT , says Darden Admissions Director Sara Neher, who herself took the GRE exam this year to assess whether it would be an appropriate assessment for Darden applicants. “I wouldn’t accept the GRE if I didn’t understand what it was asking people to do,” Neher says. “It’s definitely not as complicated of a math test, but it still tests logic, general analytic ability, vocabulary, and reading comprehension in the same way the GMAT does,” she says
In addition, the school is willing, on a case-by-case basis, to allow younger business school applicants who might have taken the GRE in college to submit those test scores for admission. For example, Neher says she’d talk to an applicant who took the GRE in anticipation of pursuing a master’s degree in English, but then had a change of heart. “I don’t want a test to prevent someone from pursuing business education,” she says.
Widening the Applicant Pool
That is also a mindset shared by Scott Carson, director of the MBA program at the Queen’s School of Business, who allowed students to submit the GRE for admissions the first time this past school year. School officials recently decided to expand its class size from 75 to 110 or 120 students and felt they needed an alternative admissions exam to help attract unconventional students, such as dual-degree students from the school’s law school, students with PhDs in other disciplines such as engineering, as well as more international students and women, he says. He expects only a handful of students to actually submit GRE scores—just one student submitted them this past school year—but says it is important to give students options.
“I think that business schools in general are looking further afield and trying to be more creative in ways that they source students,” Carson says. “The acceptance of the GRE is probably just part of that overall trend.”
At the moment, GMAC President Dave Wilson does not appear to be worried that some of the top MBA programs in the world are starting to embrace the GRE. His organization is busy working on expanding GMAC’s reach in the business school world, he says. There are now 4,700 business schools around the world that use the GMAT test for admissions and the organization recently added 363 schools to its roster this year. That’s a number far greater than the number of business schools ETS has signed on so far, he notes.
“I’m not going to let somebody else’s game plan dictate my value system,” Wilson says. “My job is to make sure that we continue to offer the best test and eventually the market will figure that all out.”
Measuring Intangibles
One tool ETS hopes will be particularly effective in helping it make the case to business schools is a workbook it developed called the “GRE Comparison Tool and Table.” The tool is based on the test scores of 525 students who took both the GRE and GMAT between January 2006 and July 2008. It allows an admissions officer to look at an applicant’s combined verbal and quantitative scores to predict the score they would have received on the GMAT. For example, a student with a verbal score of 490 and quantitative score of 680 on the GRE would have a predicted GMAT score of 570, according to the tool. This type of information is a “critical link” for b-school admissions officers, who up until recently were uncertain how to compare the results of the GRE to those of the GMAT, Payne says.
In addition, ETS also just released a new component to the GRE, the Personal Potential Index (PPI), a new evaluation system—offered at no additional charge to future test-takers—that it hopes will make the GRE more competitive in the graduate school testing market, especially in the business school sector. The index is a Web-based tool that debuted this month that allows recommenders to rank students based on six key personality traits: resilience, teamwork, planning and organization, knowledge and creativity, ethics, and communication skills. Students can elect to send the results of the 24-question standardized assessment to up to four schools, at no additional charge. ETS is billing the system as the first large-scale use of noncognitive measures, or soft skills, for admissions in higher education.
“Business schools have been telling us for years that they want to have this type of noncognitive information,” Payne says. “The index allows students to document these attributes in a way that is standardized and reliable.”
It remains to be seen just how valuable the tool will be to business schools and how much weight it will have in the admissions process. Many business schools say that their comprehensive application process already allows them to glean this type of personal information from candidates, whether through the detailed letters of recommendation or face-to-face meetings with promising applicants.
“I think that tool for us may be less useful than for a school that didn’t have an interview option or a school that didn’t have an opportunity to get a more 360-degree picture of a candidate,” says Kathryn Bezella, associate director of MBA admissions at Wharton.
But some think that it could eventually catch on, as more students and admissions officers become familiar with the PPI evaluation system over the next few admissions cycles.
“I think that business schools will see the value of it,” says James Wimbush, a dean at Indiana University’s Graduate School and the past chair of the MBA program at the Kelley School of Business(Indiana Full-Time MBA Profile). “They won’t do away with letters of recommendation, but I think this will be an additional tool to help them identify students likely to be very successful in MBA programs and thereafter.”
GMAC doesn’t have a similar assessment tool, thought GMAC’s Wilson says the organization has been searching for over a decade for a way to provide admissions officers with a reliable way of evaluating applicants’ noncognitive skills. None of the more than 200 assessment tools that the organization has examined has so far met GMAC’s stringent standards, Wilson says.
“If we can find something that will meet our criteria of being reliable, secure, consistent, and objective, than we will implement it, but to date we haven’t been able to find it,” he says. “If the [ETS] instrument works, than they have really improved the entire decision process.”
GMAT Studies for a New Exam
That’s not to say that GMAC is sitting on the sidelines while ETS makes inroads into the testing arena. The group is hard at work on developing a new-generation GMAT exam. GMAC recently asked 740 business school faculty around the world about how the exam could be enhanced and improved. The results of the redesign will be unveiled in 2013, Wilson says, and will result in a test that is “better tied to skills students need in this new era.”
For now, it appears that the majority of business schools are still playing it safe, with most of GMAT’s 1,700 member schools using the GMAT exclusively. But hundreds of business schools are watching carefully from the sidelines to see how the turf war between ETS and GMAC plays out.
Stuart Lipper, dean of Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business(Fordham Full-Time MBA Profile)—which allows applicants to submit only the GMAT for admissions—is one of these spectators. For now, he says the school is taking a “wait-and-see attitude” about allowing students to submit the GRE.
“I think you have some of the leading schools that can afford to play around a little,” Lipper says. “We can’t afford to do that. At a school like ours, I think we feel we sort of have to play by the rules a little more.”
The battle between two of the largest graduate school testing giants has been heating up recently as more business schools warm to the idea of providing students with an alternative to the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). Now another top-ranked business school is weighing in. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School(Wharton Full-Time MBA Profile) plans to allow MBA applicants to submit the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), for admission in the fall of 2010, says Admissions Director J.J. Cutler. It’s part of a move by the school to attract a broader applicant pool, including dual-degree students, younger applicants, and international applicants from far-flung countries without GMAT access.
By now, many prospective college students have received responses from all the colleges to which they have applied. But now comes the hard part: deciding where to go.
Luckily, there are some sites that help them in that endeavor and provide them with valid insight before they make their final decisions. Even better, these sites can also help those who have not applied yet and are starting their initial research.
For the high school junior who is considering applying to different colleges or the high school senior who needs to make a decision, these sites are outstanding resources.
BeRecruited: BeRecruited is designed specifically for the high school athlete. Instead of waiting for a team to find the student, BeRecruited gives them an opportunity to find colleges across the United States that have the kind of athletic program for which they are looking. They can then upload information about themselves and their high school athletic performance to attract the attention of team recruiters.
CampusExplorer: CampusExplorer allows students to search more than 6,000 colleges in the United States to find which campus is right for them. They can search by area, curriculum, or type of school. The site provides information on the size of the school, what it offers to students, and the attendance cost. It even has advice on getting into the school from students who have asked questions about the college on Yahoo Answers.
Cappex: Cappex requires students to sign up and create a personal profile that includes grades, extracurricular activities, and SAT/ACT scores. Once that profile is completed, they can search for colleges, learn about the schools in which they’re interested, and use a handy tool called “What are my chances?” to help them determine if they really have a chance at being admitted to a particular school.CollegeAnswer: Owned by college financial-aid company SallieMae, CollegeAnswer provides students with information about all facets of college admittance. From basic research on schools to information on paying for a college education, the site has it all. It provides in-depth information about colleges, including their demographics and attendance costs. But where it really shines is in its information about college life in general. It’s an outstanding resource for prospective and current students.
CollegeBoard: Although CollegeBoard is best known for administering the SAT exam, the organization has a great resource for college students to find practically anything they want to know about college life. The site boasts information on individual schools, including attendance cost, class sizes, and more. It also offers general information on finding a school, picking the right college, and finding a suitable budget. Much like CollegeAnswer, it’s a best-in-class informational site.
LocalSchools: LocalSchools brings a unique design to college research. The site connects prospective students to more than 3,400 colleges and universities in the United States through a map. Students create personal profiles and search the site’s Google Maps integration to see schools located in areas of interest. More importantly, LocalSchools allows college recruiters to join the site, so students can have all their questions answered before they make their decision.
Princeton Review: Princeton Review has solidified itself as one of the most trustworthy sources for college information in the space. And its site is no different. It features information on every accredited college and university in the United States. It ranks them based on the quality of their education. I could go on about the usefulness of the site, but suffice it to say that if students want some of the best and most in-depth information on colleges in the States, Princeton Review is the place to find it.
ReviewSchools: There are doubtless better ways to find out about schools than to listen to the students themselves. Realizing that, ReviewSchools might be a great resource for students who want to find out what college life at a particular university is all about. The site enables students to share their “story” about their college lives. Some students discuss curriculum, and others cite party life, but in either case, it helps a student decide if a school is the right fit.
U.S. News and World Report: Widely considered the leading and most objective college-ranking tool in the world, the U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings of the top colleges is an outstanding destination for students who want to go to the best-reputed college to which they can gain admittance. The colleges are ranked based on factors such as academic programs, extracurricular activities, acceptance rates, and research functions that can enrich the student’s campus life. It’s an influential resource among the most ambitious students (and parents).
USphere: USphere might not offer as much information as a site like Princeton Review, but it’s still worth consulting for students looking for colleges. The site provides information on thousands of colleges and universities in the States for free, but when students sign up, more information is made available to them, including in-depth data on schools, student information, and more. It’s worth trying out.
Zinch: Zinch adds a level of social networking to the college selection process in an attempt to connect users with more than 650 colleges and universities around the world. Students can input information about themselves on the site, and while researching colleges, find potential scholarships. More importantly, they can connect with others who might be attending the same school. Coverage of universities on Zinch isn’t nearly as broad as some of the others in this roundup, but the site puts a unique twist on college searches that might appeal to some students.
What is an appeal?
An appeal is a student’s formal request, in writing, that a college reconsider an application for admission. The appeal letter should be about one page and should explain your position why you believe you should be reconsidered for admission. Some colleges also invite you to include extra material that wasn’t in your original application, such as another teacher recommendation or a report card from the first semester of the senior year. While most appeals are not successful, students who can present compelling new information sometimes benefit from the formal request to be reconsidered.
Who should appeal?
As unfair as the admissions process may seem at times, most colleges are very thorough in their evaluation of candidates. That’s why the few appeals that are successful usually bring to light new information that was not available to the college when they were reviewing your application. For example, if your 7th semester grades were a dramatic improvement over your previous grades, or your club that you started raised a large amount of money for a charity event you planned, or the new internship you just secured happens to be in the field you plan on majoring in, these are things that can be taken into account when reconsidering your application. Students who do not have new information to share have a very difficult time presenting a compelling case for an appeal to be accepted.
Some students want to appeal a decision because they simply believe they are stronger applicants than other students from their school who were admitted. Unfortunately, while the fact that these students were admitted and you were denied may frustrate you, the colleges will not consider this a valid reason to overturn their original decision. It’s important not to criticize the decisions that were made in favor of other applications. Keep your tone positive and focus on what you have accomplished since you applied. Do not compare yourself to other applicants who were admitted.
How to appeal
1.
Carefully read the decision letter the college sent you, and research the admissions section of the college’s website to see if any information about appealing decisions is provided. Some colleges will come right out and tell you that they do not accept appeal requests. Other colleges will not only tell you that they accept appeals, but will also tell you exactly what to do in order to appeal the decision. Follow all instructions the college provides. And if any of their instructions seem to contradict what you read in this guideline, do whatever the college tells you to do.
2.
Write a letter as soon as possible explaining why you want the admissions committee to reconsider your application for admission. Be polite and respectful, and make sure to present new information; don’t just rehash what was in your application. Time is of the essence when it comes to appealing, so don’t wait to do this.
3.
If the college indicates that extra letters of recommendation will be accepted in appeals cases, consider asking a teacher to write a letter of recommendation (a different teacher than you used before). However, you should only do this if you feel this teacher will be able to present new and compelling information. For example, if you recently raised your grade dramatically, excelled in a class project, or received an academic award for your work in a particular teacher’s class, it might be worth asking that teacher to write a letter for you.
4.
If invited to do so by the college, consider submitting a recent paper or project you have completed in your senior year. If you will be submitting a paper or project, make sure you reference it in your letter, and make sure to explain.
5.
Send all of these materials in one envelope to the admissions office.
Final appeal thoughts
We know it’s disappointing not to be accepted to a school you really wanted to attend, and we understand why you might decide to try an appeal. But we want you to be excited about whatever college you ultimately attend, so we feel compelled to say that the very best thing you could do while you’re waiting for your appeal decision is to start falling in love with one of your other colleges that said, “Yes.” Visit those schools again. Buy a sweatshirt. Start imagining yourself there. You’ll feel much more positive and encouraged by focusing on a great school that admitted you, rather than lamenting the decision of one who said, “No.”
And remember that the vast majority of college freshmen report that they are happy with their college experience, even those students who were not admitted to schools that were their first choice at the time. Whether or not your appeal is granted, you’re going to go to college with a bunch of 18-22 year-olds and all you have to do is learn and have fun for four years. It might not feel like it now, but you’re going to be OK.
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Dason and Chris, two young Hong Kongers now studying in American universities, talk about their experience preparing for their standardized tests at the Princeton Review in Hong Kong.
In this short video, two members of the Princeton Review Hong Kong team introduce the school and answer questions about what students need in order to apply to an American University.
在這影片中, 兩名香港Princeton Review的職員將會為大家介紹學院及解答有關同學們申請美國大學時應注意的事項.
By ERICA HARBATKIN
Staff Writer
Michael Shmulevich decided last summer that his first-choice school was Princeton University.
But the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies senior had been preparing for Princeton long before he decided he wanted to go there.
As the number of high school students applying to college balloons to record numbers, college admissions are more competitive than ever. And that means students need to begin preparing for the application process years before the senior year application deadlines, guidance counselors and admissions experts say.
“When we meet with the parents of the eighth-grade students who are applying here, we tell them that too early is never early enough,” said Glenn Methner, principal of Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies, a public school for engineering-oriented students in Edison. “When you start your high school career you have to be focused on what you’re gonna be doing after postsecondary.”
KEY FACTORS:
Grades and strength of schedule are the two most important factors in most colleges’ admissions decisions, which means students should enroll in challenging courses beginning in ninth grade. Test scores are the next-most-important consideration at most schools, guidance counselors say.
“The academic record is, without a doubt, the single most important factor in admission to college,” said John Mammon, the counseling department chairman at Piscataway High School. “The standardized test definitely has its place, but it’s secondary to the academic record of the student.”
At both Piscataway High School and the Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering, students take the PSAT in ninth, 10th and 11th grades to prepare for the SAT. They should take their first SAT in 11th grade, admissions experts say, and can repeat the test in 12th grade, if necessary.
Meanwhile, the ACT has become a practical alternative in recent years, said Dan Coggshall, executive director of the Princeton Review of Central Jersey.
“One of the new realities is the SAT and ACT are equally accepted by colleges. There’s not a college out there that doesn’t accept the ACT if they accept the SAT,” Coggshall said. “Students should really be looking at both tests because there are significant differences between the two tests and some students do better on one than the other.”
Students can take both tests and only report the higher score, he said.
Shmulevich, an Edison resident, has a 2,190 SAT score on a scale of 2,400 and a 5.175 grade point average — the highest possible on the school’s grading scale.
SOMETHING EXTRA:
But Princeton is looking for more. In 2008, Princeton had 21,370 applicants and admitted 2,122 of those — less than 10 percent. And the admission rate for applicants with perfect GPAs wasn’t much higher — the university turned away five out of six applicants with perfect GPAs.
“Putting it real simply, they have to have something else of distinction about themselves,” Mammon said. “That could be the outstanding athlete, the gifted musician, another kid may be a tremendous leader.”
Beginning in ninth grade, students should participate in extracurricular activities that they enjoy enough to stick with through four years.
For Shmulevich, 17, that meant science and math league, debate club, model United Nations, tae kwon do and the student newspaper. He also volunteers with a group that refurbishes old computers and donates them to homeless shelters and church groups.
“Anything I had time for, I tried to be involved in,” Shmulevich said, adding that his interest in those activities made it easy to commit to them. “I wouldn’t suggest joining a club or anything that the person doesn’t find fun — but something they wouldn’t mind devoting a lot of their time to.”
The quality of the commitments is more important than the quantity, admissions experts say.
“What students should really be focused on is not a laundry list of activities, but really choosing two or three different activities that they’re truly passionate about and really focusing their time,” Coggshall said. “Colleges are looking for a significant commitment — not just showing up to one French club meeting your sophomore year.”
MORE COMPETITION:
Meanwhile, as the economy continues its slide, state schools are becoming more competitive. Rutgers University received a record 32,816 applications from first-year students in 2008 and accepted just under 60 percent of them. In 1999, the university accepted 67 percent of 26,593 first-year applicants. And the applicant pool is getting stronger, university officials said.
“We are seeing the academic profile of our applicants rising,” said Sandra Lanman, a university spokeswoman.
At Franklin High School in Somerset County, guidance counselor Ammon Barksdale tells students that beginning the application process early is paramount.
“A major fear (among students) is they think it’s a hassle or it’s highly stressful, but it’s only stressful with the points you can’t control — and that’s the getting-in part,” said Barksdale, the chair of the guidance department. “I tell students if you can master . . . time management and organization, the process is really quite simple.”
He recommends applying to seven to nine schools, including a “reach” school, “high-confidence” schools that students have an 80 percent chance of getting into, and a “safety” school.
“That way they’re covering all the bases,” Barksdale said. “We’re always reaching for the stars but preparing for the worst-case scenario so there will be a school to accept them once they graduate.”
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