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College Admission

In October, the Washington Post published Seven College Admission Myths. Even though admission to most Kansas colleges is a relative breeze, I thought a few of the myths were worth reprinting here.

"3. The admissions department adores you.

Many schools dump lots of money into transforming their campus visits into personal experiences, building connections through social media and making average students feel aggressively recruited. They also flood mailboxes with personalized invitations to apply, and are sometimes even willing to waive the application fee. Don’t think this makes you special. Realize that this is all strategic marketing. Despite the overly personal facade, admissions departments are receiving numbers of applications and the evaluation process is often a technical, impersonal one.

4. It’s best to crowd your application with a volume of extracurriculars.

In most cases, admissions staffers are not impressed by long lists of extracurriculars that fill in every single line on the application. In asking about your out-of-class interests, colleges usually want to hear about your interests, passions and leadership. Rather than spreading your time and dedication over a dozen activities you care a little about, focus on a couple that mean the most to you.

5. It’s better to have a high GPA than to take difficult classes.

It’s always better to challenge yourself, even if it means a lower grade. Just don’t fail.

6. Essays don’t really matter much in the end because grades and test scores are so dominant in admissions decisions.

Don’t believe it. A poorly written, typo-filled essay can kill any application, and a beautiful piece can lift a student over another who looks similar on paper. Yes, college admissions officers can often tell if a student didn’t actually write the essay. Some compare the writing with SAT and ACT essays. And no, don’t think every subject will work as long as it is well written: Admissions officers have no interest in a student’s love life, brushes with the law or the trip to Costa Rica to fulfill a community service requirement in which the applicant wound up learning more from the locals than the locals got from the applicant."

Courtesy of: Schools.com

What If You Don't Know What You Want To Do?

Channel One has published a set of videos and career planning that you might find interesting if you are trying to decide what you want to do with your life. Additional videos include a Career Finder Quiz, and information on High-Tech Manufacturing, Teaching, Biotech, Truck Drivers, Video Games, Software Engineering, Google, Green Collar Jobs, Medicine, and Heart Surgery.

 

Are You Really a Digital Native?

Exploding the ‘Myth of the Digital Native’

The most alarming finding in the ERIAL studies was perhaps the most predictable: when it comes to finding and evaluating sources in the Internet age, students are downright lousy.

Only seven out of 30 students whom anthropologists observed at Illinois Wesleyan “conducted what a librarian might consider a reasonably well-executed search,” wrote Duke and Andrew Asher, an anthropologist at Bucknell University, whom the Illinois consortium called in to lead the project.

Throughout the interviews, students mentioned Google 115 times -- more than twice as many times as any other database. The prevalence of Google in student research is well-documented, but the Illinois researchers found something they did not expect: students were not very good at using Google. They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources. (For instance, limiting a search to news articles, or querying specific databases such as Google Book Search or Google Scholar.)

Duke and Asher said they were surprised by “the extent to which students appeared to lack even some of the most basic information literacy skills that we assumed they would have mastered in high school.” Even students who were high achievers in high school suffered from these deficiencies, Asher told Inside Higher Ed in an interview.

In other words: Today’s college students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar.

“I think it really exploded this myth of the ‘digital native,’ ” Asher said. “Just because you’ve grown up searching things in Google doesn’t mean you know how to use Google as a good research tool.”

Inside Higher Ed, September 24, 2011 "What Students Don't Know", August 22, 2011

Ask For Help If You Need It!

One thing the librarians now know is that their students' research habits are worse than they thought.

At Illinois Wesleyan University, “The majority of students -- of all levels -- exhibited significant difficulties that ranged across nearly every aspect of the search process,” according to researchers there. They tended to overuse Google and misuse scholarly databases. They preferred simple database searches to other methods of discovery, but generally exhibited “a lack of understanding of search logic” that often foiled their attempts to find good sources.

However, the researchers did not place the onus solely on students. Librarians and professors are also partially to blame for the gulf that has opened between students and the library employees who are supposed to help them, the ERIAL researchers say. Librarians tend to overestimate the research skills of some of their students, which can result in interactions that leave students feeling intimidated and alienated, say the ERIAL researchers. Some professors make similar assumptions, and fail to require that their students visit with a librarian before embarking on research projects. And both professors and librarians are liable to project an idealistic view of the research process onto students who often are not willing or able to fulfill it.

“If we quietly hope to convert all students to the liberal ideals of higher education, we may miss opportunities to connect with a pragmatic student body,” wrote Mary Thill, a humanities librarian at Northeastern Illinois. “… By financial necessity, many of today’s students have limited time to devote to their research.” Showing students the pool and then shoving them into the deep end is more likely to foster despair than self-reliance, Thill wrote. “Now more than ever, academic librarians should seek to ‘save time for the reader.’ ”

Before they can do that, of course, they will have to actually get students to ask for help. That means understanding why students are not asking for help and knowing what kind of help they need, say the librarians.

Inside Higher Ed, September 24, 2011; "What Students Don't Know", August 22, 2011

150 Great Tech Prep Careers

If you are beginning to seriously brainstorm ideas about your career path, 150 Great Tech Prep Careers, might be helpful. The book describes rewarding jobs in a number of fields that require "only on-the-job training, an apprenticeship, a certificate, or an associate’s degree. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, many of the selected careers in this useful new resource are predicted to have fast growth and a high number of openings in the coming years. Covering a variety of industries including computers, education, health care, technical repair, and more, the jobs selected offer opportunities at many levels of skill and education. Each job article describes the job duties, required education, training, skills, expected earnings, and much more.

This accessible career guide also includes an introduction explaining how the jobs were selected, along with overviews of the hottest career fields." (Taken from Infobase Publishing)

Student Loans

This infographic is from College Scholarships. The site has lots of excellent advice about paying for college in a sensible way.

Reading at 16 Linked to Better Job Prospects

This is a British study, and I snipped it from the University of Oxford site. Take heart, Readers!

"Reading books is the only out-of-school activity for 16-year-olds that is linked to getting a managerial or professional job in later life, says an Oxford study. 

Researcher Mark Taylor, from the Department of Sociology, analysed 17,200 questionnaire responses from people born in 1970, which gave details of extra-curricular activities at the age of 16 and their careers at the age of 33.  The findings, to be presented at the British Sociological Association today, show that girls who had read books at 16 had a 39 per cent probability of a professional or managerial post at 33, but only a 25 per cent chance if they had not. For boys who read regularly, the figure went up from 48 per cent to 58 per cent.

None of the other activities, such as taking part in sports or activities, socialising, going to museums or galleries or to the cinema or concerts, or practical activities like cooking or sewing, were found to have a significant effect on their careers. Mr Taylor also found that playing computer games frequently did not make it less likely that 16-year-olds would be in a professional or managerial career at 33, but this was linked to a lower chance of going to university.

Mr Taylor said: ‘According to our results there is something special about reading for pleasure. The positive associations of reading for pleasure aren't replicated in any other extra-curricular activity, regardless of our expectations.’

He suggests that reading might be a factor because it helps to sharpen the mind or employers feel more comfortable appointing someone with a similarly educated background. It might be simply that students who were already destined for better careers tend to read more anyway.

Reading books was found to be linked with a higher chance of students going to university. For 16-year-old children whose parents worked in admin or sales, their chance of going to university went up from 24 per cent to 35 per cent for boys and from 20 per cent to 30 per cent for girls. If they read books and also did one other cultural activity, such as playing an instrument or going to museums, the chance rose from 24 per cent to 54 per cent for boys and from 20 per cent to 48 per cent for girls. Playing computer games regularly and doing no other activities reduced their chances from 24 per cent to 19 per cent for boys and from 20 per cent to 14 per cent for girls.

The research, based on responses from the British Cohort Study, finds that although reading is linked to a more prestigious career, this does not necessarily mean they will enjoy a higher salary. It shows that none of the extra-curricular activities at 16 were associated with a greater or lesser income at 33."

Sites to Help You Choose a College

College Confidential includes hundreds of pages of articles about choosing a college, getting into the college you want, how to pay for it, and much more. You'll also find the Web's busiest discussion community related to college admissions. Also check out Free Technology for Teachers post called Seven Sites to Help Students Choose and Apply to Colleges.