Admissions Intel

National School Counseling Week & Thoughts on College Counselor Caseloads

Posted on February 3, 2018 by Craig Meister

2018 National School Counseling Week^TM, “School Counselors: Helping Students Reach for the Stars,” which is sponsored by the American School Counselor Association, will be celebrated February 5 through 9, 2018, to focus public attention on the unique contribution of school counselors within U.S. school systems. 2018 National School Counseling Week^TMhighlights the tremendous impact school counselors can have in helping students achieve school success and plan for a career.

National School Counseling Week is always celebrated the first full week in February, which is nice because many high school-based counselors who help students with post-secondary guidance would not have time to celebrate if this celebratory week occurred any time between August and January, as college application season sort of dominates the lives of many high school-based counselors who help their student with post-secondary planning. Yet, there really isn’t ever a slow period for high school-based counselors at American public schools, as these counselors are often asked to provide social emotional counseling and college counseling to students in their caseloads and each of these unique and important roles are full time jobs in their own right.

As our focus here at Admissions Intel is on the undergraduate college admissions process, we would like to celebrate all high school-based counselors – whether they work at U.S. public schools, private schools, or international schools. The best gift, however, that we could give high school counselors who support students during the college admissions and post-secondary planning process, would be a commitment on the part of school systems and school leaders to reduce student to counselor ratios in order to ensure students get the personalized post-secondary counseling support that they need and deserve throughout their high school experiences in order to help students navigate their journey into adulthood.

Many private school counselors feel overwhelmed by 50 to 1 high school senior to counselor ratios; yet, counselors in public schools often have 300 or 500 to 1 high school senior to counselor ratios! Having helped students transition from high school to the world beyond for thirteen years, I believe that all of these ratios are completely out of whack. To truly personalize the post-secondary counseling process for high school students, high schools that have their post-secondary counselors work with students over all four years of students’ high school careers should have counselor to student ratios of 33 to 1 per grade, totaling 132 students (split evenly between freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors) to 1 counselor overall – or 33 students to 1 counselor per grade/class.

Such a ratio would allow all high school counselors who are tasked with supporting students transition from high school to the post-secondary world develop strong four-year relationships with their students over students’ high school careers. It would also permit counselors to devote the time and attention necessary to help students transition most successfully from high school into their best-fit post-secondary environments.

Would it cost schools and school districts a lot of money they are not currently devoting to post-secondary counseling? Yes; yet, it’s an investment worth making if the school or school district is serious about providing post-secondary counseling that is personalized and best positioned to help students fully weigh their options and meet their post-secondary potential.

Yale goes full PC: Freshmen are now ‘First-Year’ students

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Admissions Intel

In a sign of Yale’s total descent into pointless politically correct virtue-signaling, the formerly revered institution of higher learning has announced that in 2018 and moving forward it will only use gender-neural terms to describe completely harmless words such as upperclassmen and freshmen, which will now be referred to as upper-level students and first-year students. The Ivy League school follows brethren Columbia, Dartmouth, and Cornell in leaping head first into abyss of trying to please the unpleasable.

Freshman Year for Free

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Admissions Intel

For the first time ever, any student anywhere can take top-quality courses online in every major freshman college subject, taught by professors from the most prestigious universities, that lead to full academic credit at 2,900 traditional colleges, such as Purdue, Penn State, Colorado State and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, all absolutely free.

There is no tuition cost. No text book cost. No administrative or connection fees. No taxpayer subsidy or federal Title IV funding required. And this is not a plan for the future, but a working reality available to students now, already built, entirely as a private 501(c)(3) philanthropy, at an exceptionally efficient price.

Read More of this piece by Steve Klinsky in RealClearLife.com (8/22/17)

Professor of the Month: Gad Saad

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Admissions Intel

Starting this month, August 2017, Admissions Intel will feature a conversation with a college professor each month. August 2017’s professor is Gad Saad, an Evolutionary Behavioural Scientist, who joins Dave Rubin to discuss Canadian Bill C-16 and the complexities of discussing the politics of transgender issues, the psychological reasons someone might support Donald Trump, Gad’s new book about Ostrich Parasitic Syndrome, the psychological differences between men and women, robotics, evolution, and more.

Vocational education rebranded as career and technical education in effort to spur economic revival

Posted on August 11, 2017 by Admissions Intel

“West Virginia’s heavy push on vocational education comes as leaders of both parties have talked about making it a priority, a shift from the No Child Left Behind era of education reform, in which college for everyone was often the goal. In 2015, fewer than half of 25- to 34-year-olds nationwide had earned an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to census figures.”

More in The New York Times @ Seeing Hope for Flagging Economy, West Virginia Revamps Vocational Track (8/10/17)

Richard Dawkins Speaks on his De-Platforming, Campus Culture, Science

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Admissions Intel

Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist, ethologist, and popular-science writer who emphasized the gene as the driving force of evolution and generated significant controversy with his enthusiastic advocacy of atheism. He recently spoke with Dave Rubin about the current state of higher education and his new book Science in the Soul.

One way to say ‘thank you’: Veteran-friendly colleges and universities

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Nancy Griesemer

The Amherst College War Memorial

One of the ways in which a grateful country says “thank you” to those who have served is by continuing to invest in educational benefits targeted to veterans and their families.

And with support from the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) created the GI Bill Comparison Tool designed to make it easier for veterans, service members and their dependents to calculate these benefits and learn more about approved college, university and other post-secondary education training programs.

The GI Bill Comparison Tool draws on information from more than 17 online sources and the three cooperating federal agencies to provide key information about cost and quality of education. Data delivered on a college-by-college basis includes the number of GI Bill students on campus, the availability of veterans support groups and a compilation of various outcomes such as retention, graduation, salaries and loan repayment rates.

According to the VA, the current version of the Comparison Tool not only reformats the federal data, but also has new functionality including a “more robust” GI Bill benefits calculator and additional information of interest to veterans. Specifically, the calculator provides a personalized estimate of Post-9/11 GI Bill tuition and fee, housing allowance, and book stipend benefits that would potentially be paid to the student.

Anyone who has worked with with College Navigator, a wonderful free college search tool supported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), will be familiar with a series of dropdown charts covering programs for service members and vets. This data forms part of the basis for the Comparison Tool plus a little more. For example, it includes valuable links to college-specific tuition policies for veterans as well as bar charts illustrating the number of students receiving benefits/assistance within a specific institution, the average amount of benefits awarded through the institution and retention rates for first time, degree/certificate education benefit users pursuing bachelor’s degrees.

Roughly 1.3 million men and women served in the military in 2016, and a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates there are over 21 million veterans of the armed forces currently living in every corner of the country and abroad.

And these veterans are returning to school in significant numbers. The American Council on Education reports that about four percent of all undergraduates are veterans. The VA estimates that 73 percent to 80 percent of student veterans are male, and 21 percent to 27 percent are female. On average, at the start of their postsecondary education, vets are 25 years old. Of these, 77 percent attend a college located less than 100 miles from home and 44 percent are in bachelor’s degree programs. One in five veterans major in STEM fields, and 42 percent work full time (excluding work study).

In other words, vets make up a large, diverse, and growing market for colleges and universities across the U.S.

To help veterans make informed decisions about where to spend their education dollars, the Military Times annually evaluates four-year degree-granting institutions for its Best for Vets ranking of colleges and universities. To be considered, colleges had to complete a detailed 150-question survey. Rankings were then based on survey responses as well as on data collected via the Comparison Tool. The top-20 ranking for 2017 is as follows:

University of South Florida, FL
Rutgers University, NJ
Syracuse University, NY
Armstrong State University, GA
D’Youville College, NY
Colorado State University, CO
Georgia State University, GA
South Dakota State University, SD
University of Nebraska at Omaha, NE
University of Kansas, KS
Florida State University, FL
Lipscomb University, TN
Western Illinois University, IL
Western Kentucky University, KY
University of Southern Mississippi, MS
Stockton University, NJ
Eastern Kentucky University, KY
California State University, San Bernardino, CA
Northwest Nazarene University, ID
University of Texas at Arlington, TX

As is usually the case, this ranking is based on a weighting of select metrics and should be considered only in the context of other relevant sources of information. But the important take-away for veterans and their families is that there are many different affordable opportunities available for them to earn degrees and succeed at rates similar to the traditional college-going population. You just have to do a little research using readily available tools.

Berkeley roundly rebuked while getting away with suspension of First Amendment

Posted on April 30, 2017 by Admissions Intel

Conservative author Ann Coulter and UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich both disagree with UC Berkeley’s decision to prohibit Ann Coulter from speaking on the flagship campus of the UC system. But, has the university paid a price?

Claremont McKenna Rights a Wrong

Posted on April 11, 2017 by Admissions Intel

Claremont McKenna College is as a serious academic institution committed to exploration, discussion, debate, and the pursuit of knowledge.

In April 2017, the Claremont McKenna College administration temporarily allowed the suppression of the free and open exchange of ideas in favor of a what resembled a medieval mob of uneducated savages. The root cause of the breakdown was probably the local police who chose not to take more proactive measures against the agitators.

The good news is that Claremont McKenna in July 2017 had the fortitude to suspend students who spearheaded the attempt to suppress free speech on campus. Props to CMC!