While most high school students maintain an active online presence, they often have no idea that colleges are monitoring their actions and “scoring” them accordingly.
The Washington Post recently reported that admissions officers at the University of Wisconsin installed tracking software on their school website that indicated when a student visited their site, which pages were viewed, and how long the student spent on each page. Additional information profiling the student was provided, and the student was assigned an “affinity index” estimating his/her likelihood of attending the school, if accepted.
What greater holiday gift is there for a college bound student than to receive a fat acceptance letter, or a congratulatory email, from a college of choice? But in order to have a chance of getting such good news by the holidays, students typically need to submit their college applications by the “early” deadline of November 1st or, in some cases, November 15th.
Students can apply to as many colleges “early action” as they like and, if accepted, they are not required to attend. This differs from an “early decision” application which can only be submitted to one college and binds the student to attend, if accepted.
The 2020 issue of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” – often viewed as the bible to the college industry – is about to hit the newsstands. New Jersey’s Princeton University is still in first place (for the 9th consecutive year) as the “Best National University.” It’s followed by Harvard, in second place, and a three-way tie for third place among Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and Yale. Other universities in the top 10 include University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Duke and Johns Hopkins, which tied for 10th place.
This issue marks the 35th annual edition of the guidebook which rates colleges on a wide range of criteria. For example, each school is rated on its average freshmen retention rate. This is the percent of freshmen that return to the college for their sophomore year, indicating a level of happiness or satisfaction with their college. The top 25 national universities typically enjoy first-year student retention rates of 97% to 99%.
Students planning their college years are in a unique position to make their dreams come true. By identifying what is most important to them, they can easily narrow down their college search and then live the dream – at least for their college years!
If the passion is for golf, colleges and universities with highly rated courses include Yale, Ohio State, University of Georgia and Notre Dame. If the dream is all about skiing, opportunities are plentiful for students at Dartmouth, University of Vermont, and University of Colorado at Boulder.
