College Admissions Weekly Roundup February 4 2012

It’s February already.  Superbowl weekend, Valentines Day on the way, Presidents Weekend upon us…do you know where your children’s college acceptance letters are?

Of course, if you or your student applied regular decision – which most do, including our daughter – you’ll be waiting a while longer.  Most schools say April 1st, but many get you an answer sometime in March.

In the meantime, the Roundup is marching along, finding articles of help to you, whether you’re a high school Senior waiting for those letters, or a Freshman just having the college admissions light bulb go “on” over your head!

This week seems to be another one of those weeks where controversy lurks around every college admissions corner.

Our first two articles set up a “battle” between the NYTs and Forbes, and in being fair –  the Forbes headline is the instigator…

“Expert Advice on the Best Ways to Secure Financial Aid“, by Jacquelyn Nealon for the New York Times – was answered by “NY Times Is Wrong About Maximizing College Aid Chances“, by Troy Onink for Forbes.

The NYTs article was published just hours before the Forbes piece – you can see how the headline war was started by Forbes!

There is good advice in BOTH pieces, don’t let the headline wars get in the way of expert advice – it’s certainly just a ploy to get eyeballs. as we say in the publishing business! :)

The OTHER controversy this week is about the falsifying of SAT scores for incoming Freshmen at one of the country’s best Liberal Arts college – in order to increase the ranking of the school (so now we don’t really know if the school is one of the best, do we?), in commercial ranking services (such as USNews) lists of top colleges.

To get some background on the controversy, check out “U.S. college ratings game set for shakeup“, by Stephanie Simon for Reuters.  The article doesn’t go into specifics about the incident, but rather gives a general overview of some of the actions that may take place to avoid this type of “cheating” by institutions.

As always, have an awesome week – and stay tuned for weekly articles that we select from all around the Internet, to help you in your college admissions quests!  Happy Trails…