What We Don’t Talk About on the Admissions Tour

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The season of submitting applications to colleges and awaiting their decisions has come to an end in my house. But I’m not talking about the job market.

We now face a nerve-racking month of figuring out which college my oldest daughter will attend. I should be more precise: She is deciding where she wants to go, and my wife and I are deciding whether we can afford it. She has been offered excellent scholarships and financial-aid packages by some institutions that are further down the pecking order. But, as is typical, the package was less generous from her dream university. I’m spending a lot of late evenings with my calculator and financial statements, assessing the impact of each choice on our household budget—and weighing the implications for her four younger siblings.

Read the full story here.

NYC College Line, by Graduate NYC!

This is an excellent online resource. Ask a question to a college advisor and receive a response in less than 24 hours!

Click here to check it out: NYC College Line

The site also offers accounts that help keep the student organized.

Common Application webinars – Tomorrow and Wednesday, May 21-22

The Common Application will host two free webinars for counselors. CA4: First Look will offer a tour of the new CA4 applicant interface.  Please click on one of the links below to register:

Tuesday, May 21 – 11:00 AM ET

Wednesday, May 22 – 3:00 PM ET

The sessions will be identical, so choose the one that’s best for your schedule.  If you cannot attend either one, don’t worry: we will post a recording on the CA4 information page.

$15 Million Gift and New Name for Community College

From the New York Times:

For prestigious private colleges, where donations that top $100 million are increasingly common, $15 million might buy naming rights to a new building or a laboratory. But for a community college, a donation of that size is both rare and transformative, and so New York’s newest community college is getting a new name: the Stella and Charles Guttman Community College.

Read the full story here.

Workshop: Transition to & Success in College, Wednesday May 29

In May 2013, seats are still available for the following upcoming workshop:

Transition to & Success in College
Wednesday May 29
8:30am-3:30pm

A variety of support systems exist to help students succeed in college, and effective college advisors must be able to refer their students wisely. Participants consider the many challenges in getting to and through college.

Key topics include:

• Potential complications of students getting to college, class registration, the loan process, and more
• Ensuring financial aid is in place at the start of school
• Addressing homesickness or the challenges of commuting to college
• Helping students adapt to new social and cultural environments
• Resources and strategies to support student retention

Click here to register.

College Confidential: a Field Guide

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Day and night the locals chatter. They counsel and console, bicker and rant. Their questions are endless. Though often hopeful, they never stop pounding the drums of worry.

“Do I have a shot at my dream school?” pacgirl4101 wants to know.

“So sick of asians whining about affirmative action,” macmill writes, “get over it.”

“How much debt is too much,” Jay520 asks, “for a computer science graduate?”

“A party school and you will always be just a number there,” seniorchick writes of Arizona State University. Northern Arizona University, she adds, is “for hippies and ugly people.”

This is College Confidential, a vast virtual realm where visitors can find the best and worst of human nature. Here, in moderated discussion forums, people help strangers. They also belittle strangers, question their intelligence, and mock their chosen colleges or alma maters.

Read the full article here.

SUNY College Fairs: Sunday, May 19 – Tuesday, May 21

We are writing to invite your juniors and their families to join us for The State University of New York’s 2013 Spring College Fairs!

College Fairs are an excellent opportunity for your students to find answers to their questions about SUNY. Representatives from more than 30 campuses will be available to discuss their academic offerings, student life, financial aid and more.

SUNY’s spring college fairs will be offered in three locations:

Sunday, May 19
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Armory Track & Field Center
New York City

Monday, May 20
6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Sheraton Parsippany Hotel
Parsippany, NJ

Tuesday, May 21
6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Broome Community College Ice Center
Binghamton, NY

We hope you will help us get the word out about SUNY’s spring College Fairs by sending this notice to your students.

Program details and online registration for the College Fair programs are available here. Or students may register by contacting the SUNY Recruitment Response Center at (800) 342-3811.

We look forward to meeting your students at one of our spring SUNY College Fairs!