Throughout March I empathize with nervous high school seniors and their families as they await college admissions decisions. The seniors have dedicated so much time and effort into their high school experiences, their decisions of where to apply, and their actual applications. The waiting process naturally causes feelings of extreme doubt and stress.

Yet unlike basketball’s March Madness with its set schedules and championship Monday, the college notification process is unpredictable and complex. Thirty years ago as I waited for my decisions, there was only one method of notification — snail mail. That waiting process nearly leveled my parents and me as we rushed to the mailbox every day looking for thick (happy) or thin (unhappy) envelopes.

With the advent of various technologies, notifications now vary dramatically and make the waiting process even more agonizing. High school seniors must now wade through a myriad of college admissions portals, processes, usernames, and passwords — often facing more than one portal for an individual college. Keeping track of all their applications and notifications is incredibly complicated. Some students learn about acceptances via emails. Others must check onto a college portal at a certain time or receive information about decisions via the postal service (thick and thin envelopes still exist).

Sadly, few colleges even post on their websites the actual time and date of their actual releases of decisions. Of course, many colleges notify students over time without one release date. Yet even then, notification of that process would be ideal. One senior I know just found out she has been waitlisted from a one of her top choice colleges after a friend told her to check her portal. She learned that the college’s decision had been there for 10 days and never received an email to check. She could have used that time to prepare a waitlist response and perhaps a new visit to that college.

Fortunately some colleges effectively use technology to announce the exact time and date of their simultaneous decision release methods — (cleverly often on the eve of their spring breaks).

For example, two weeks ago, MIT announced its upcoming simultaneous release of decisions — online at 6.28 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Thursday, March 14, International Pi day. MIT’s decisions may ironically turn thousands of kids away from Pi, but not from its notification process. MIT emailed all applicants of its notification plan and posted the exact notification time on its website — well in advance of the release time. Thankfully, after the average high school day ends, all MIT applicants — whether accepted, waitlisted, or rejected — can learn their fate.

The worst occurs when individual colleges do not release decisions at the same time. One college consistently sends out acceptances via snail mail first and then follows a day or two later with rejections. Seniors painfully watch their classmates and friends get in before they receive their rejections — a process that is palpable and unnecessary.

Technology does not cure this notification process. I spent an awful Friday afternoon last week as a senior watched as students around the country posted their acceptances to one particular college on Twitter and on a new Class of 2017 Facebook page. The college emailed acceptances out first and a few hours later, its rejections. After a few hours of hopeful waiting, the senior knew she had been rejected before the email rejection arrived in her inbox.

It would be ideal if the National Association for College Admission Counseling and other college advocacy groups would encourage colleges to develop a unified method of communicating decisions to students. The waiting process is hard enough without the stress of making sure students don’t miss admissions decisions or find out through a process of elimination.

Technology offers us this possibility. MIT and other colleges that use simultaneous notifications and make it clear how and when decisions will be made save so many students and their families from the unnecessary pain of finding out via the process of elimination.

Thank goodness colleges use the same MAY 1st intent to register day. Deciding where to attend is equally confusing for many students and their families, but at least the acceptance deadline is clear. May the same thing happen soon to reduce March Madness for college admissions decisions. We would rather watch college basketball.

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PDF Version from ESPN

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Cameras and family members in tow, they flock to campus in crowds, and with every step and every curious glance, they come closer to making a decision about where they would like to spend four years of their lives.

Around this time of year, high school students — mostly juniors — avidly research potential colleges to apply to, often taking advantage of their spring breaks to visit campuses and soak in each university’s offerings. But no matter how much emphasis their tour guides and promotional materials place on specific university programs and resources, there is one aspect that prospective students cannot help but notice: the area surrounding the school itself.

Of eight high school students interviewed, seven said that the location of their future university is a consideration to them, even if it may not be the main factor.

“I would love to be comfortable on [a university’s] campus,” said Anika Kim, a high school junior at Phillips Academy in Andover who is embarking on her college search. “At the same time, a city just offers a lot of opportunities, and I would want to take advantage of both.”

Admissions offices understand the importance of a school’s location and market it accordingly in their promotional materials. But for some universities, the task poses more of a challenge than it does for others.

NOT BOSTON OR NEW YORK

Within the first 20 pages of Columbia University’s 115-page viewbook, the school references its urban setting several times, presents a detailed map of its location and calls New York City a “living laboratory” for students.

“Our New York,” the viewbook reads, “is a neighborhood, a classroom … a testing ground … a home, a friend, an indispensable resource.”

Other selective universities boast about their locations in similar ways. Harvard University emphasizes its proximity to Boston, Stanford points to the short distance between Palo Alto and San Francisco, and the University of Chicago describes itself as having “a water park bigger than Belgium in its front yard.” UChicago also promotes its “Chicago studies” program, an academic curriculum crafted around its city.

New Haven, on the other hand, appears on page 88 of the Yale admissions viewbook sent to prospective Yale students — and the tone is different. The four pages in the 123-page book that focus on New Haven feature a quote from the New York Times, descriptions of restaurants and attractions in the Elm City and a picture of a student running through East Rock. Then, the viewbook switches back to promoting the University itself.

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said schools such as Columbia and Harvard present their locations differently than Yale does because they are able to rely on students’ pre-existing assumptions about the cities.

“Probably the quantity of coverage we give [to our city] is not dissimilar to the quantity of coverage that others give theirs,” Brenzel said. “But they have more of an ability to rely on pre-existing impressions, whereas we have to be more specific.”

The pre-existing impressions of New Haven, unlike those of Boston or New York, are not always favorable.

“When people think of Yale and its neighborhood — to be really frank about it, the image of New Haven is not really a positive one. It’s known for its high crime rate,” said Sung Woo Hong, a high school senior at Andover.

However, Brenzel said that concerns about crime do not usually come to the Admissions Office and are unfounded. When prospective families ask about safety around campus, Brenzel said staff members usually direct inquiries to Yale’s public safety website, which offers a comprehensive report of crime statistics. The site includes a comparison of Yale’s crime metrics measured against peer institutions, indicating with graphs and charts that Yale has fewer incidents of crime.

“The perception of crime in New Haven is currently running about 15 to 20 years behind,” Brenzel said. “In terms of trying to address that perception, it can easily come across as defensive, when there’s nothing to be defensive about.”

Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93, Yale’s deputy chief communications officer, also dismissed the characterization that New Haven is crime-ridden and unsafe.

“For years and years reporters have asked these questions,” Morand said. “Any misperceptions are lingering because they are perpetuated by reporters.”

Most students interviewed were aware of New Haven’s negative stereotype. Lauren McIsaac, a senior at Avon High School in Connecticut who applied to Yale, said that in her high school class, New Haven is discussed frequently in a way that does not leave the “best impression” of the city.

To counter negative impressions, the Admissions Office added a poster of New Haven attractions to its admitted students mailings two years ago. Brenzel added that while there is no specific committee within the Admissions Office to promote New Haven, the hundreds of pages of printed materials — including information on New Haven — are continually being looked at and revised.

AN UNDISCOVERED CITY

Admissions officers at Yale have a twofold challenge when marketing New Haven to incoming students: They must fight New Haven’s existing stereotype while also promoting a city most students know little about.

“Even though I live in Connecticut, I don’t know as much about New Haven as I do about Philadelphia or New York,” McIssac said. “I haven’t really explored much about it.”

Another prospective student, Arthur Erlendsson, a senior at Hawken High School, said he was not concerned about New Haven crime because Yale is “actually quite isolated.”

Erlendsson added that the leaders of the information session at the University of Pennsylvania talked frequently about job opportunities and internships in Philadelphia, while at Yale, he was told that the city was relatively safe and diverse.

Brenzel said that once students visit New Haven, their opinion of the city changes.

“When students visit and go to school here they’re often surprised that New Haven itself is a vibrant cosmopolitan and interesting place. As college towns go, New Haven’s pretty cool,” Brenzel said.

For some, the size of New Haven is a positive factor. “It’s not too crazy for me,” Erin Kaminski, a senior at Avon High School said. “I wouldn’t like too much excitement like in New York City.”

Hong, the Andover senior, emphasized that he has personally visited New Haven and did not consider it to be a “dangerous place, especially if you only stay on campus.” The city’s reputation seems exaggerated, he said, and in his personal college search, he did not consider the location of the school to be a particularly important factor.

CAMPUS OVER CITY?

Indeed, most high school students seem to give much more consideration to the campus itself than the city in which the school is located. Several students said they would attend Yale no matter how the conditions were in the city of New Haven, because, according to one student, “after all, it’s still Yale.”

David Mele, a high school senior at the Collegiate School in New York, said he would have chosen Yale if it were located anywhere. The only aspect of the city he considered was its size, he said, and New Haven suited his interests as an urban city that was neither too large or too small.

Brenzel said that while the Admissions Office is aware of the popularity of large metropolitan cities for prospective students, the actual impact of those locations on students is fairly small.

“We do understand that it can be an apparent attraction for a school to present itself as being adjacent to Boston, New York City or Chicago,” Brenzel said. “Those urban resources are attractive to many people. But what we know is that students and families are often surprised at how little time [students] spend going off campus to those cities.”

According to the Admissions Office’s survey examinations, Brenzel said, prospective students tend not to consider the exact location of the college in their primary consideration of the school. Even so, he said the office makes an effort to “present information that we can’t count on them knowing” about New Haven, including details about the city’s artistic community and high level of community service engagement with the University.

Although Morand praised New Haven, he cited Yale’s residential college experience, teaching, research and international opportunities as more important than the city’s surrounding area for prospective students.

“We try to convey that there’s more in New Haven than you might think,” Brenzel said. “It’s a city you can get your arms around, a walkable city. In my experience, students at most campuses — particularly universities of our size and nature — would not have as many opportunities in their local communities as students here.”

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Another day, another story about some poor fool posting something they shouldn’t to Facebook — and losing their job in the process. I almost can’t believe this is still a THING, but apparently no one is learning the lessons of those who have been fired before them. Today’s cautionary tale comes courtesy of an official with the University of Pennsylvania, who was recently dismissed for posting portions of student application essays on her Facebook profile.

Well, not only was she sharing the essay topics — she was making fun of them. So the lady whose job it was to coordinate college applications was OPENLY MOCKING the students’ essays.

Facebook? Facepalm, more like.

Granted, I’m sure this person encountered some real doozies in her daily tasks of organizing the admissions process. And who hasn’t felt the urge to complain about their job online on certain trying occasions? But there’s a pretty big difference between posting something vague like “Having a rough day — can’t wait for happy hour!” and posting an actual student essay in order to ridicule the topic.

Apparently the admissions officer — Nadirah Farah Foley, a 2011 Princeton University graduate — had on one occasion written “Stop the madness” when posting part of one student’s essay in which he cited the fact that he had been circumcised at Penn Hillel years ago as being an example of his “long and deep” connections to the University. Foley also quoted part of another essay where the applicant described overcoming his fear of using the bathroom outdoors while camping in the wilderness, and sarcastically added, “Another gem.”

Sadly for Ms. Foley, her run as Snarky Penn Application Essay Critic didn’t last long, because screenshots of her online posts were sent anonymously to Dean of Admissions and The Daily Pennsylvanian on December 3. She’s since confirmed that she no longer works for the University, and Penn says they’re currently reviewing policy changes that “cover the privacy of applicant data and essay information.”

Man, I can’t even fathom what this girl was thinking. Not only was it beyond obnoxious to post content from those essays in order to make fun of them, it was spectacularly stupid to think she wouldn’t get caught. Not only did she lose her job, but any future employer who Googles her name will likely learn what she did. All for a couple of cheap laughs on Facebook

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Parents and their high school students are fascinated by the grade point average and what it means in college admissions, but the truth is that a number of colleges and universities are not all that interested.

Admissions officers at some of the nation’s most selective colleges, who are now sending acceptance letters for their fall freshman classes, say they barely look at an applicant’s GPA.

“It’s meaningless,” says Greg Roberts, admissions dean at the University of Virginia, ranked as the top public university in this year’s 150 Best Value Colleges, published by The Princeton Review and based on academics and affordability.

“It’s artificial,” says Jim Bock, admissions dean at Swarthmore College, the top private college in The Princeton Review’s Best Value rankings. So unimportant is the GPA that Swarthmore doesn’t bother calculating it for guidebook publishers.

Some confusion among families is understandable, especially because GPAs can confer bragging rights during high school commencement season. At an Arizona high school last May, a dispute over which of two graduates with the same GPA — 4.82 — should be named class valedictorian prompted the school district to scrap the title.

Research consistently shows that a student’s high school grades are the best predictor of their likelihood of success in college. Annual surveys by the National Association for College Admission Counseling show that most admissions officials put a high priority on grades — particularly grades in college-prep courses.

“It’s very hard for parents,” says Janet Rosier, an independent counselor in Woodbridge, Conn. “They know what they know. They know their student and they know their high school. But they don’t really have an understanding of the bigger picture.”

She tells them that each college scours high school grades and transcripts according to its own criteria. Swarthmore’s Bock, for example, says he looks for evidence that students have taken the most challenging classes they can. University of Florida’s admissions staff recalculates student grade point averages based on five academic areas: English, math social science, natural science and foreign language, says Zina Evans, vice president for enrollment management.

Neither The Princeton Review nor U.S. News & World Report factor high school GPAs into their college rankings formulas. The Princeton Review publishes GPAs if schools provide the information, says David Soto, director of content development.

In this year’s guide, nearly a third — 49 — didn’t, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Yale. No school listed a high school GPA for its freshman class below a 3.0, or B, average. An even dozen schools list GPAs of 4.0 or higher.

And the number makes a difference for some of them.

“The GPA is very important in our decision-making process,” says Robert Bennett, senior associate director of admissions at Clemson, where the average high school GPAs for new freshman catapulted from 3.59 to 4.10 over five years. The range on math scores remained the same, 580-680 out of a possible 800.

A number of factors likely contribute to the increase, he says, including greater access to Advanced Placement courses, which can be weighted more heavily by high schools, and a growing number of applicants. “We’re kind of a hot school,” Bennett says.

Grade inflation may also play a role, but it matters little, he says. High schools “present their students in the best light,” Bennett says. “We want to see their students in the best academic light.”

Contributing: The Arizona Republic

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When I close my eyes, a game of Tetris appears. The blocks fall flawlessly. Each one perfectly fits into the contour created by the previous blocks. The structure has no lapses.

When I’m actually playing the game, however, the situation is different. The descending block does not always find its place in the structure I construct. It’s usually my fault: I misjudged the situation, failed the plan in advance, or expected something different.

My college application is very similar to this game of Tetris. In my imagination, everything is perfect. But I’m smarter than to expect the same in reality.

When I applied under single choice early action to Stanford University, I knew that my chances were low. I’m a relatively ordinary international student who needs nearly full financial aid. Still, I applied, encouraged by the financial aid I was offered for summer school at Stanford earlier this year.

Looking back, it may not have been the soundest decision I’ve made. One part of me is gathering every ounce of hope possible. The other part is preparing for the worst, lest a rejection should crush my spirit.

With that thought, I began working on my remaining college applications fervently. The other colleges on my list are all equally selective.

I recently completed all my applications and filled out financial aid forms. Now all that remains is to insure that I’ve sent all the required materials and requested interviews, if possible. Having crossed the major hurdles, I spend much of my time brooding about the numerous possibilities.

On Tetris, when I encounter too many ill-fitting blocks, when I know I could have played better, I opt for the “restart” at the corner of the screen. In reality, I know that is not an option.

So, I simply hope to able to be to embrace the rejections coming my way. No matter what, the game must go on.

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On November 8, George Washington University in Washington, D.C., advised U.S. News that it had erroneously reported its high school class standing information for more than a decade. This misreporting resulted in George Washington submitting to U.S. News a value for the percent of the fall 2011 entering class in the top tenth of their high school class that was inflated by 20 percentage points.

This incorrect data was used in the calculation of GW’s overall rank in the 2013 edition of the Best Colleges rankings, published in September, thereby making its rank in the National Universities category higher than it otherwise would have been. The proportion of enrolled freshmen at National Universities who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes counted for 6 percent of the Best Colleges rankings methodology.

Because of the discrepancy in the rankings, U.S. News has changed George Washington University from being a ranked school to an ”Unranked” school in the Best Colleges section of usnews.com. Unranked means that U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for this school. 

This Unranked status will last until next fall’s publication of the 2014 edition of the Best Colleges rankings, and until George Washington confirms the accuracy of the school’s next data submission in accordance with U.S. News‘s requirements.

We have noted this Unranked status on the school’s profile page and have replaced the misreported data there and in our U.S. News College Compass tool with the new data reported as accurate by George Washington, where such data were provided by the school.

U.S. News will continue to handle each instance of data misreporting on a case-by-case basis. U.S. News has not changed the ranking of any other school in the current Best Colleges rankings.

This list shows how George Washington University’s corrected data compare to what George Washington falsely first reported for the 2013 Best Colleges rankings:

FALL 2011 ENTERING CLASS

Freshmen ranked in top 10% of high school class

Actual after correction: 58%

As first reported: 78%

Freshmen ranked in top 25% of high school class

Actual after correction: 90%

As first reported: 95%

Freshmen ranked in top half of high school class

Actual after correction: 99%

As first reported: 100%

Freshmen ranked in bottom half of high school class

Actual after correction: 1%

As first reported: 0%

Percent of students who submitted high school class rank

Actual after correction: 38%

As first reported: 51%

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*TIME

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