Universities Weblog

Applying to US Universities had a nice piece the other day on scholarships for working moms. It seems that eLearners.com, American Intercontinental University, walden university and DeVry University have a $2 million block of scholarships for working moms - called (appropriately enough) "Project Working Mom - Putting Education to Work." The program has an online application available.

As the father of two lovely daughters, I've always paid attention to scholarships for women in case I came across one that Hannah or Abbey (shameless plug for my two daughters) could take advantage of. And there are plenty such scholarships…

Scholarships Dot Com just ran a piece this month on Women's Scholarships. Their piece features six scholarship programs focused on women. It was a useful piece…

Wanna go to Columbia? The university just revised their financial aid policy. And now you can probably get out without dragging around a Student loan for a decade after graduation - if your family income is less than $60,000 a year, according to the College Admissions Counseling Blog.

Columbia's move is part of a much larger trend to revamp financial aid. America's top tier college's and universities want to attract a larger part of the cream of the crop, and in order to do that they're removing money from the formula by making it less and less expensive for middle and working class families to send their kids to an Ivy League school. The only question becomes, "Can you get in?" After they look at your SAT scores, your high school GPA, your references, the essay you wrote, the clubs you were in, etc., did you make the cut?

According the the College Admissions Counseling Blog, six colleges this month have joined the trend away from student loans and toward better financial aid packages for lower income applicants.

by _Gene_

Besides Columbia, those schools are Lafayette College, Claremont McKenna College, Lehigh University, Vassar College, and MIT.

These school join the likes of Stanford, Cornell, Duke, Harvard (just to name a few) in revising their financial aid philosophies to benefit lower income students.

At a time when Clemson University could be soaking up a little glory over the performance of it's Basketball Team, the institution instead is having to put up with criticism over its handling of money…

The Chronicle of higher Education is among sources reporting that Clemson is being sued because ti hid $80 million in cash reserves from the state legislature in South Carolina while asking that body to approve a tuition hike. A former executive secretary to Clemson University's Board of Trustees alleges in a lawsuit that "top officials of the public university hid $80-million in cash reserves from legislators while requesting more money from the state and increasing tuition," the Chronicle is reporting.

Board Chairman Leon J. (Bill) Hendrix Jr. is denying the charge.

Since 2001, in-state tuition at Clemson has risen from $5,090 to $9,870.

If you guessed Harvard, you were right.

The Princeton Review ranked Harvard as the toughest school to get into in its 2008 edition.

Seven of the eight toughest schools to get into where in the Ivy League. After Harvard comes Princeton, then MIT and Yale. Stanford, in the PAC-10, ranks fifth. Then it's Brown, Columbia, and Penn. Washington University in St. Louis and Cal Tech round out the top ten. Duke, Dartmouth and georgetown also ranked in the top 20.

The Princeton Review doesn't keep of list of the easiest schools to get into because because of the number of "open enrollment" colleges that accept all students from within their state if they graduated high school.

Believe it or not, the Princeton Review ranks colleges on how happy students are. The winner? Students at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, were the nation's happiest. And why not? The smallish, private college has a 10:1 student faculty ratio, an average GPA of 4.0, and only about 1,450 students on campus.

Perhaps you've heard of some of the other colleges and universities in the top ten for student happiness…

You're preparing to apply for college. Do you take the SAT or the ACT?

Amanda Sopko recently published a piece that looks at the differences between the two tests. And there are some profound differences. How example, the ACT tests your knowledge of content while the SAT tests your ability to reason, to use logic.

If you're good in math and science you should be aware that the SAT tests math only through about the ninth grade level (some algebra and some geometry) while the ACT has math questions that go all the way into trig. And while the ACT tests science knowledge, the SAT doesn't test science at all.

There are a number of other differences to consider. Let's look at one of the biggest differences…

Many colleges want you to get letters of recommendation as part of your application for college from people who know you.

The first thing to consider it waiving your right to see those letters. If you don't waive that right, you can go in later to the college's admissions office, ask to see your admissions file, and read the recommendations. If you do agree to waive your right to see those letters, you'll never know what the people who wrote them said, but the letters will carry much more weight with the college's admissions committee.

Applying to US Universities has a good spot on why you should waive your right to see the letters.

So how do you get a letter of recommendation? Here are a couple of things to remember…

Jamie Littlefield across the hall from me here at Creative Weblogging had a good piece last week at her Online Universities Weblog about life experience credit.

Jamie talks about the distinction between diploma mills (the kind of place where you can get your degree in astro-engineering or nanocomputing by writing a couple of term papers) and legitimate institutions that offer life experience credit for things you've actually done. Paying a few hundred dollars to get a nice sheepskin diploma from the University of Mail Order Credentials won't really get you anywhere in life. But many accredited colleges and universities offer different forms of life experience credit that can translate into time saved as you work toward a recognized degree.

The Princeton Review provides a lot of valuable information on individual colleges and universities, including how they compare to each other in areas like academics and campus life. It does this by ranking about 350 school across North America.

One of the comparisons it makes allows it to decide where the best party school is, and for 2008 that's West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV.

The people over at the Review use a variety of factors, including drug and alcohol use, time spent studying, and the strength of Greek organizations on campus.

Other schools in the top 20? Let's talk about them…