Just a few more details as a follow up from our previous post.

Ivy League courses are evolving. Keep checking around and looking at blogs and the school's web site for more information. They may go full swing into the distance learning mode in the near future.

For instance, Yale has announced that beginning in the 2007-08 academic year, they will offer digital video of taped lectures for free online. Again, these are not meant to be used towards a full degree, but you can get the benefit of the class experience.

In keeping with that trend, Harvard has made the same videotaped lectures available online for graduate and undergraduate credit. Not a full degree but a real nice experience nevertheless if you really WANT to try an Ivy League school.

The presidents of both schools have made statements about marrying information technology with education in a distance learning environment.

The long and short of it is that the application requirements will be the same as if you were applying in person, you really will need to have a great portion of your tuition on hand to attend the courses that are there online. Even then, I must emphasize, you will not have the option of taking a full degree online at an Ivy League institution: just the experience of hearing the material.

Source: Blog

The craziness surrounding wait lists is continuing with the New York Times reporting on some of the most selective colleges going to the wait list this year. We reported earlier on some of the issues surrounding wait lists and now that May 1 has passed it turns out that many of the most selective colleges will indeed be taking students off the wait list. Harvard will offer admission to 150-175 people from the wait list, Princeton and Penn will each offer take about 90 more students, Yale offered 45 students admission this week and maybe more next month, Amherst will take 25 students and Swarthmore and Pomona will each take 15-20 more.

With the most selective colleges taking students off the wait list, there may be a ripple effect to less selective colleges where the wait list students have already accepted a spot. But once again, remember that overall, the number of students effected by the wait lists at these most selective colleges is very small compared to the total number of students who applied.

UPDATE: The University of Pennsylvania has announced that they will be admitting about 90 students off their wait list as a result of decreased yield.

Post from: College Admissions Counseling

Source: college admissions counseling

For most students the question of how a college spends the money you send each term is never considered. But it should be a consideration because the quality of education you receive may depend on the answer. A new report from the Lumina Foundation examines the question of college spending in detail and

the findings of the report, at least in general, is an issue that families should be aware of before choosing a particular type of college. For people who are interested in all of the numbers the report makes fascinating reading. For those of you less inclined to look at charts, InsideHigherEd has a nice summary of some of the key data.

Want the Cliff Notes version? Spending per student at public community colleges and master’s level institutions is going down while these very institutions are the one’s most likely to educate first generation and minority students. In other words, the amount of money the college spends to educate you depends on whether you are new to the college scene or whether you family has a better understanding of how colleges work. Generally, the higher your economic status the more likely you are to get a better college education.

We all want to believe that if you are motivated and work hard that the dream of a great college education is possible. And for some that is true. But for many students new to the process of finding a college, the easy choices, the community colleges and other public schools, are becoming less attractive as educational institutions because of the problems with financing public education that has been ongoing for some time in this country. Students and their families need to educate themselves about how a college spends its money and ask the tough question of whether the public or for profit college really is the best choice. More money may or may not be the answer for the public colleges, but if this country wants to continue to have a strong public higher education system, legislatures and the colleges themselves, need to take a look at changing the way they finance their operations.

Post from: College Admissions Counseling

Source: college financial aid

This is part one in a series of tips and ideas for choosing an online bachelors degree.

If you’ve ever thought about going back to school for a degree, you may want to think about getting a bachelor’s degree online. More and more accredited schools are offering this to potential students, and there are a lot of benefits to getting your degree online, like making it fit your work schedule, no travel costs and benefiting from academic minds the world over. The most important four criteria for choosing the source of your online degree should help you choose the best degree and university for you.

First, when choosing to get an online bachelor’s degree, the first thing you want to consider is what do you want to study? Most online degrees focus on accounting, business, management and related fields of study. If any of these appeal to you or can help you move up at work, you may want to consider which one you want to tackle.

Second, check out the online schools. Are they accredited? Wasting money on a school that no one will recognize won’t help you. Accredited schools meet certain criteria with the Department of Education and the Higher Commission for Learning. Alternatively, you may choose a school that is accredited with the Distance Education Training Council (DETC). While many employers recognize DETC schools, the credits may not transfer to a traditional university if you choose to pursue more education later.

Source: Online Bachelors Degree

This time of year I get many phone calls from parents and students who are panicking because the student didn’t get accepted to any colleges or can’t afford any college to which they were accepted. Usually this results from having applied only to colleges that were a reach or without fully understood college financial aid. Either way, the question is, what do we do now?

One resource that I refer families to is the NACAC space availability survey that each year lists the colleges that are still accepting applications at this time of year. The student can search by state to find what colleges in a particular state might still have room for them to attend. While this is a great resource for the student who hasn’t been accepted any where else, financial aid at many of these schools is very limited and paying for college can still be a challenge.

I ..

Source: College Admissions Counseling