Philadelphia Inquirer – March, 2008
“It’s a Great Time to Be Applying to College!” apparently isn’t the kind of headline that captures readers’ attention, although it is true. The annual batch of articles appearing these days in the popular press on the topic of college admissions is much more likely to contain titles such as “Top Colleges Reject 90% of Their Applicants!” For the most part they focus on the staggering numbers of applications some colleges are receiving, the steadily climbing GPAs and standardized test scores of their applicants and the stories of the insane lengths to which students, and often their parents, will go to in order to improve their standings in the pools. The latter may include, for example, paying a consultant as much as it costs to attend an expensive private college for an entire year. The statistics may be accurate as far as they go but they mask some much more important points.
Continue reading “Ignore the statistics: It’s a great time to be applying to college”