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Penn State Creates Early Action Deadline for Fall 2019 Applicants

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Big news for students in the high school Class of 2019. Pennsylvania State University, which for many years has had a Priority Application deadline of November 30 for first-year applicants applying for fall admission, has just announced that starting this summer (for students applying for admission for Fall 2019 and later) the popular university is instituting a new Early Action deadline.

Students applying by Penn State’s new November 1 Early Action deadline will receive an admissions decision – admit, deny, or defer – by no later than December 24. Penn State will still offer a November 30 Priority Application deadline for those students choosing not to applying by the university’s new Early Action deadline, and students choosing this later Priority Application will still hear of their decisions by January 31, 2019. In the past, students have heard back from Penn State in a rolling manner if they applied in the weeks leading up to its November 30 Priority deadline.

In addition to announcing the new Early Action option, Penn State has made additional changes to its application timeline that are important to note:

  • Penn State’s application for undergraduate admission will become available on August 1, 2018
  • Schreyer Honors College’s priority filing date will now be on November 1, 2018
  • The FAFSA recommended filing date is now December 1, 2018 (FAFSA goes live on October 1)
  • Early awarding of student aid begins for Early Action applicants in Mid-February, 2019

The big take-away is that Penn State is telling high school counselors to encourage their students to apply using the new Early Action deadline, which sounds to us like getting into Penn State using the priority deadline is about to get harder than ever. Students need to get their applications together quicker than ever for PSU; yet, their Early Action deadline is still later than early birds University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and University of Georgia, which both have EA deadlines of October 15.

It should also be noted that students hoping to apply to Penn State’s accelerated pre-medical/medical program or to its music, theater, musical theater, acting, dance, and golf management programs, will need to submit supplemental information to complete their applications – such as interviews or auditions – that will preclude Penn State from offering December 24 decisions for such applicants. Such niche program applicants, along with World Campus applicants, are not invited to participate in Penn State’s new Early Action program.

Penn State accepts its own institutional application and the Coalition application for domestic freshmen applicants. International students, U.S. citizens or permanent residents living abroad, and all transfer students must apply to Penn State via its institutional applicantion, which is available at MyPennState.

To learn more, visit Penn State’s admissions office here for additional information on the application review process and take a look at Penn State’s Early Action FAQs here.

 

 

 

The Most Essential College Admission

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He was on his way home from just having dropped all his classes at the local community college.  Having graduated from high school sixteen months ago, every one of his postsecondary plans had failed to come to fruition, and the drive home from campus gave him time to ponder what would come next.

As it turns out, he didn’t have to ponder long.  He came across a home construction site on the route home, and had always had an interest working with his hands.  He swung his car up to the site, got out, and asked the first hard-hatted worker just what it might take to get a job like this.  The worker turned out to be the contractor, who said that anyone who had the guts to pull up and ask was worth taking a chance on.  Find yourself a good pair of boots, he was told, and come back tomorrow.

That was the beginning of a postsecondary plan that stuck.  At age nineteen, he took on a job that paid $42,000, less than the median household income for his state, but far more than he would have earned working at the local sandwich shop.  His brief stint at community college left him little debt to be concerned with, and while his short-term plans doubtlessly included continued residency with his parents, it wouldn’t be long before he could afford an apartment of his own—and after that, his own home.

This is a remarkable story for several reasons, but what’s most noteworthy is the response this story receives from the school counselors and college admissions officers who hear it.  To nearly a person, they are convinced this young man has thrown away his future.  Citing countless personal and professional histories, they speak with clear certainty that he will regret his choice by the time he’s twenty-eight, only to find himself saddled with a mortgage or the well-being of a young family, unable to go back to college on a full-time basis, and therefore destined to be trapped in a job that appeared to pay well in his youth, but will limit his opportunities later in life.

This story comes to mind as we are weeks away from headlines that decry a different kind of postsecondary story:  the headlines of another round of record applicants to a handful of the most selective colleges in America, where statistics suggest admission is less likely than being struck by lightning.  Every seat in these colleges will be filled this fall by a promising, eager student, but the headlines turn their attention to the vast majority of exceptionally bright students who also had the potential to do great things at these colleges—except the college ran out of room before they ran out of quality applicants.

The way most stories tell it, these hapless applicants are victims of the postsecondary wheel of fortune, destined to try and make do at a college that likely is still highly regarded, but not quite as highly regarded, forced to devote part of their lives to perpetually looking back, and wondering what would have been if they had been one of the fortunate few whose cell phone had played the school’s fight song when they opened their emailed admissions decision.

Much has been written about the need for reform in America’s higher education system, and while there is ample agreement that the current system has need of correction, there is no clear consensus what that correction should look like.  Not surprisingly, testing companies insist the answer is more testing at an earlier age, while advocates of test-less admissions policies are convinced their approach is the only one that will open the gates of higher learning to a wider audience.  Others advocate for stackable college credentials that measure a semester’s worth of work as the only way to make college affordable, while developmental purists fret this approach would reduce the developmental benefits young people receive in the delayed gratification that is part of the four-year college experience.

These arguments make for interesting intellectual exercises, but they do little to help the students who had to “settle” for studying at the honors college of a four-year public university, or the students whose knowledge of geometry put college out of reach, but made them experts at framing walls and cutting pipe.  Our current system of higher education has many challenges, but the biggest one lies in changing the perception that there can only be a handful of winners once high school is over.  Different talents and different needs require different plans, and honoring those differences doesn’t require us to sacrifice the quality of the unum, simply because we honor the talents of the pluribus.

Our country is supposed to be a tent of opportunity.  Let’s advance that idea by seeing all our high school graduates as residents of the big top.

UNC and a tale of one – make that four – acceptance rates

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June 7, 2020 Update: Do you want to learn how to get into University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? Watch this in-depth video.

March 22, 2018 Update: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Vice Provost for Enrollment and Undergraduate Admissions, Stephen Farmer, informed high school counselors that his institution received more than 43,000 applications during the 2017-2018 admissions cycle – another record and a six percent increase from last year.

“We’re grateful to every student who honored us by applying, and we’ve enjoyed getting to know them over the course of the last five months. At the same time, this increased interest has made our decisions especially difficult. With more applications, a class no larger than last year’s, and yields that we expect to remain healthy, we will reluctantly need to decline the applications of many students who would have received better news from us a year ago.” wrote Farmer.

Previously: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released its Early Action decisions on Friday, January 26, 2018; therefore, now is as good of a time as any to remind our readers that UNC at Chapel Hill doesn’t have one annual acceptance rate – the one that is published in popular college guides and online data sites such as CollegeBoard.org. In fact, UNC at Chapel Hill has a grand total of four annual acceptance rates for first-year applicants. Understanding this reality will put your recent acceptance or rejection or your future acceptance or rejection in proper perspective.

First, what the student on the street would say about UNC at Chapel Hill acceptance rates: “I will just go on Naviance Family Connection or College Board’s Big Future to figure out my chance of getting into UNC at Chapel Hill…Oh look, Naviance Family Connection says the university’s acceptance rate is 28%. College Board’s Big Future says UNC at Chapel Hill’s acceptance rate is 27%. That’s a bit odd. La di da di da…Let me compulsively check Snapchat…”

But as a reader of admissions.blog you are not going to be the student on the street. You are going think multi-demsionally and realize that University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill actually has multiple acceptance rates EACH admissions cycle, four of which are extremely important to know in order to properly place the university into either the safety, possible, or reach section of your college list.

For first-year applicants, UNC at Chapel Hill offers both Early Action and Regular Decision consideration each admissions cycle; yet, the university has quite different standards for students applying from North Carolina versus students applying from outside of North Carolina. Thus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill actually has four distinct acceptance rates each admissions cycle:

1. Early Action (North Carolina Residents)
2.Early Action (Out-of-State Residents)
3.Regular Decision (North Carolina Residents)
4.Regular Decision (Out of State Applicants)

We are only half-way there so far this admissions cycle, so we only have the two EA acceptance rates (reportedly 48 percent for EA North Carolina Residents and 18 Percent EA Out-of-State Residents).  Those two numbers tell us quite a bit, as it’s clear that UNC is statistically far more difficult for out-of-state residents to get in than it is for in-state residents. That trend will continue Regular Decision even as the exact acceptance rates for Regular Decision will differ from those EA. At the very least, please note that the 28% and 27% acceptance rates mentioned above for UNC that are reported on two of the most trusted online college websites are averages of the four distinct acceptance rates that UNC has each year. Long story short, right about now, with EA decisions sinking in, North Carolina residents are not nearly as impressive as they feel and non-North Carolina residents are not nearly as unimpressive as they feel.

While Naviance Family Connection and College Board’s Big Future don’t even try to explain to visitors the differences in first-year applicant acceptance rates between in-state and out-of-state applicants to UNC at Chapel Hill, we are thankful that UNC at Chapel Hill itself at least shares on its website that the overall first-year application acceptance rates for in-state and out-of-state residents differs quite dramatically.

We are big fans of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill here at admissions.blog, but we would appreciate if in the future the university could err on the side of even greater transparency by also reporting its bifurcated acceptance rates by admissions plan so that prospective students, their parents, and those who advise them are able to make more accurate assessments of students’ chances of admission in the years ahead. Until that happens, though, do note that UNC is slightly harder to get into for both North Carolina residents and out-of-state residents Regular decision than it is Early Action. So, if you didn’t get an admissions decision EA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this January, buckle up for Regular Decision later this spring, which is sure to bring acceptance rates of lower than 48% for North Carolina residents and lower than 18% for out-of-state students. Good luck.

30 Summer STEM Camps for High School Freshmen

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Summer STEM Camps

NOTE: This article was first published in 2018; some links are out of date, but most programs are still running. If links no longer work, type the program name into a Google to find the latest links to these impressive programs.

Summer is a good time for high school students to explore their interests. A little research and planning can uncover ways to investigate an idea, acquire a new skill, or demonstrate a specialty with independent research or projects. In the fields of STEM, especially, there are many options available, including residential summer camps.

The problem for current high school freshmen (rising sophomores), however, is that many of these camps restrict attendance to their older classmates: rising juniors and seniors.

The reason, says Jill Tipograph, founder and director of the independent summer educational consultancy Everything Summer & Beyond, is many of these programs are offering college-level coursework that requires students to have foundational academic experience to be successful. “With higher level quantitative and science exposure as prerequisites, (younger) high school students will not have had the opportunity to complete them…”

This does not mean high school freshman should wait to begin finding ways to learn more about the fields that interest them.

“There is great value,” says Ms. Tipograph, “to younger students taking these summer opportunities… to identify and pursue passions. They can gain exposure and then build on their interest in a deeper capacity the following summer.”

You’ll have to be a little more flexible and dig a little deeper to find available summer STEM camps if you are currently a freshman. But if you are fortunate enough to have the available time and financial resources (camps can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars), here are 30 options nationwide during the summer of 2018 for high school freshmen interested in STEM camps.

Boston Leadership Institute Longwood Medical Center, Boston, MA

Canada/USA MathCamp Colorado School of the Mines, Golden, CO

Careers in Engineering University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

COSMOS University of California, San Diego, CA

Discovering Biology: The Building Blocks of Life Boston University, Boston, MA

Engineering Camp Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

Engineering High School Camp University of Kansas , Lawrence, KS

Engineering Innovation Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (more locations)

Engineering Summer Academy University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Explore Engineering for HS Girls Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA

High School Engineering Institute Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Intensive STEM Academy Duke University, Durham, NC

Mathematics Academy University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

MathILy Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA

Mathworks Texas State University, San Marcos, TX

Michigan Math and Science Scholars  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Pre-Engineering Institute Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO

Prove It! Math Academy Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Ross Mathematics Program Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

STEM II  Brown University, Providence, RI

Summer Accelerator North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, NC

Summer Bridge STEM Program for Girls Radford University, Radford, VA

Summer Engineering Exploration   University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Summer Immersion George Washington University, DC

Summer Scholars Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Summer Science and Engineering Program Smith College, Amherst, MA

Summer Session for High School Students University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Summer STEM US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD

Summer Studies in Math Hampshire College, Amherst, MA

UMassAmherst Precollege Programs University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

Northwestern ED Acceptance Rate Now 26 Percent

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Northwestern University received a record 4,050 Early Decision applications this fall, and the Evanston, Illinois university is only accepting 1,073 of them ED, taking its ED acceptance rate down to a slender 26 percent overall.

Northwestern aims to accept a bit more than half of its class through ED this year, which is in line with previous years.

If you do get the unfortunate deferral letter, please read this important article: How to Respond to an Early Decision or Early Action Deferral. If you get the stinging rejection letter, please read this article: How to Recover from Early Decision or Early Action Rejection.

Congratulations to those admitted.

 

Washington U. Accepts 40 Percent of Class ED

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Ronné P. Turner, Vice Provost of Admissions & Financial Aid at Washington University in St. Louis, has shared with counselors that Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) will accept forty percent of its Class of 2022 through Early Decision. This is a meaningful increase from WUSTL’s more typical thirty-six percent of its entering class being filled through the ED pool. Last year, WUSTL accepted thirty-five percent of its Class of 2021 through the ED pool.

In addition WUSTL received two percent more ED applicants this year – 1,850 – compared to last year.

Not shared was WUSTL’s overall ED acceptance rate this admissions cycle. Last year the university had an ED acceptance rate of thirty-eight percent and and overall acceptance rate of fifteen percent.

If you do get the unfortunate deferral letter, please read this important article: How to Respond to an Early Decision or Early Action Deferral. If you get the stinging rejection letter, please read this article: How to Recover from Early Decision or Early Action Rejection.

If you get in, congratulations!

Visit Admissions Intel’s College Acceptance Gift Collection.

Princeton Early Action Acceptance Rate Drops to 14.6 Percent

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Just 799 students were accepted out of 5,402 applicants who applied to Princeton this fall using the university’s single-choice early action deadline for Princeton’s Class of 2022.

Princeton’s Office of Communications shares that its single-choice early action pool was the “largest in the last seven years, representing an 8 percent increase over last year’s early applicant pool and a 57 percent increase from 2011. The admission rate was 14.7 percent this year compared with 15.4 percent last year, and 21.1 percent in 2011.”

Decisions were mailed to students on December 13 and they are also available online to applicants on December 13.

Of those applicants accepted, forty-eight countries and forty-four states, in addition to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, are represented. Forty-four percent of the admitted students are U.S. students from “diverse backgrounds,” fourteen percent are the first in their families to attend college, seventeen percent are children of Princeton alumni, and eleven percent are international students.

The gender breakdown of accepted applicants was fifty percent male and fifty percent female.

Interestingly, twenty-one percent of the admitted students indicated they want to study engineering.

In 2011 Princeton began offering an early application round for prospective students whose first college choice is Princeton. Princeton’s early action applicants are allowed to apply early only to Princeton and public colleges concurrently. If admitted, such applicants may still wait until May 1 to accept Princeton’s offer of admission.

If you do get the unfortunate deferral letter, please read this important article: How to Respond to an Early Decision or Early Action Deferral. If you get the stinging rejection letter, please read this article: How to Recover from Early Decision or Early Action Rejection.

If you get in, congratulations!

Visit Admissions Intel’s College Acceptance Gift Collection.

MIT Received 16 percent more Early Action Applicants this Fall

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MIT Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services, Stu Schmill, has provided context relating to the Early Action notifications that MIT will be sharing with students on December 14 at 6:28 p.m EST.

According to Schmill, MIT received approximately 9,700 applications, which is 16% more compared with last year’s Early Action pool.

“Last year, we admitted 657 students in Early Action; we plan to admit a similar number this year. As you may know, our early admission rate tends to be relatively low, as we try to avoid admitting a disproportionate percentage of our class in Early Action,” Schmill shared. Taking that information at face value, that would mean that MIT’s EA acceptance rate would be roughly 6.8% this year.

“Because our applicant pool is so strong, we defer many applicants to Regular Action for further review. While many of them are not ultimately admitted, we do admit some portion of our deferred applicants. In the last few years, we’ve typically admitted ~100–300 deferred applicants,” Schmill continued.

Finally, Schmill added, “While this is always difficult, we will give definitive decisions to applicants if we are certain they will be denied admission this year, so that they can focus on their other college options.”

If you do get the unfortunate deferral letter, please read this important article: How to Respond to an Early Decision or Early Action Deferral. If you get the stinging rejection letter, please read this article: How to Recover from Early Decision or Early Action Rejection.

If you get in, congratulations!

Visit Admissions Intel’s College Acceptance Gift Collection.

University of Iowa is the Sweet Corn of the Big 10

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They say that Iowa sweet corn is knee high by the Fourth of July. Well, we say that University of Iowa has grown much taller, so much so that it’s time for Iowa Hawkeyes’ to be invited to the big boys’ table. Not only do University of Iowa athletic teams compete in the Big 10 against major powerhouses like Penn State, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, and Purdue; University of Iowa’s students, academic programs, and campus rival its more selective Big 10 rivals. In fact, if you are looking for a SAFE and large campus in an urban area that is also filled with everything from sports teams to root for and Greeks to join, University of Iowa is likely a superior choice to its bigger name Big 10 rivals.

Tag along on our recent visit to Iowa City to explore University of Iowa up close.

Best and Worst Colleges for Meeting Demonstrated Financial Need

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To wrap our financial aid week, we turn again to some extremely valuable data meticulously compiled by independent educational consultants Jennie Kent and Jeff Levy.  In recent years the two consultants have put out annual lists, two of which deal with financial aid stats at American colleges and universities:

  1. Domestic Undergraduate Need-Based Aid and Merit Aid: Excel | PDF
  2. Financial Aid for Nonresident Alien Undergraduates: Excel | PDF

Today we delve a bit deeper into analyzing one statistic in particular: the percentage of demonstrated need met by colleges across the U.S.A. Demonstrated need is a loaded term. It does not translate into what families think they can pay for college each year; it instead is defined as the difference between total college costs and the family’s ability to pay – as deemed by the college (and whatever formula it uses to determined family need).

With this mind, here are the the bottom 25 colleges in terms of meeting demonstrated need for domestic students (percentages indicate percent of need met for all undergraduates):

U. of Colorado – Colorado Springs 20%
Ohio Northern University 23%
Brigham Young University3 33%
Missouri U. of Sci. and Tech. 35%
SUNY – Geneseo 41%
James Madison University 43%
U. of Cincinnati 44%
Adelphi University 45%
Auburn University 45%
U. of Wisconsin – Milwaukee 45%
San Francsico Cons. of Music 46%
Eastern Michigan University 47%
Virginia Commonwealth U. 48%
Salisbury University 48%
U. of Mary Washington 49%
Biola University 50%
SUNY – Buffalo 50%
Utica College 51%
U. of Colorado – Denver 51%
California Poly – Pomona 51%
New Jersey Instt of Technology 52%
Georgia Inst. of Technology 52%
U. of Pittsburgh 52%

Next, a better list: the top schools for meeting demonstrated need – a sixty-way tie for first between all schools that meet 100% of domestic students’ demonstrated financial need:

Amherst College 100%
Barnard College 100%
Bates College 100%
Boston College 100%
Bowdoin College 100%
Brown University 100%
Bryn Mawr College 100%
California Institute of Technology 100%
Carleton College 100%
Claremont McKenna College 100%
Colgate University 100%
College of the Holy Cross 100%
Colorado College 100%
Connecticut College 100%
Cornell University 100%
Dartmouth College 100%
Davidson College 100%
Duke University 100%
Franklin & Marshall College 100%
Georgetown University 100%
Grinnell College 100%
Hamilton College 100%
Harvey Mudd College 100%
Haverford College 100%
Kenyon College 100%
Lafayette College 100%
Macalaster College 100%
Massachusetts Inst of Tech. 100%
Middlebury College 100%
Mount Holyoke College 100%
Northwestern University 100%
Oberlin Coll. and Conservatory 100%
Occidental College 100%
Pitzer College 100%
Pomona College 100%
Princeton University 100%
Reed College 100%
Rice University 100%
Scripps College 100%
Smith College 100%
Stanford University 100%
Swarthmore College 100%
Trinity College 100%
Tufts University 100%
Union College 100%
U. of North Carolina – Chapel Hill 100%
U. of Notre Dame 100%
U. of Pennsylvania 100%
U. of Richmond 100%
U. of Southern California 100%
U. of Virginia 100%
Vanderbilt University 100%
Vassar College 100%
Wake Forest University 100%
Washington & Lee University 100%
Washington U. in St. Louis 100%
Wellesley College 100%
Wesleyan University 100%
Williams College 100%
Yale University 100%