Ivy League Admission
The Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

If you’re someone who wants to work in the business world after college, that doesn’t mean that you have to be one of the many undergraduate business majors. Just as med school applicants can major in philosophy (so long as they satisfy medical school course requirements), students who want to work in corporate America or as entrepreneurs do not in any way have to major in business. It’s completely not necessary and, in many cases, it can even hurt these students during their career.

There is no need to major in business at the undergraduate level. And people are starting to take notice.

According to an article on undergraduate business by Melissa Korn in “The Wall Street Journal,” “The proportion has held relatively steady for the past 30 years, but now faculty members, school administrators and corporate recruiters are questioning the value of a business degree at the undergraduate level. The biggest complaint: The undergraduate degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don’t develop enough critical thinking and problem-solving skills through long essays, in-class debates and other hallmarks of liberal-arts courses.”

The fact is that businesses value and seek out students with certain skills (i.e., the ability to program in Java, PHP, etc.) rather than seek out students who have certain degrees. Take a film major as an example. Do you think a film executive in the entertainment industry is going to hire an applicant because she majored in film? No. She’s going to hire her because she thinks she’ll do a great job, because she’s a strong writer, an avid reader, and eager to do grunt work. Sometimes a major in an area outside of what you end up working in can really be to your benefit. A major in computer science can often prove more valuable as students seek out employment in Silicon Valley than a business major. Even if they are seeking employment at a startup. The same is true on Wall Street. A psychology major can sometimes be more helpful than a major in business. The list goes on and on.

At The Ivy Coach, we believe in the merits of a strong liberal arts education. If you’re at Wharton (the business school at the University of Pennsylvania), you’ll be studying undergraduate business. But, at most schools, don’t think that you need to major in business to get a leg up in the business world (as it’s often not a leg up at all!).

We’re often asked around this time every year why our students who were admitted via Early Decision aren’t invited to their school’s admitted students weekend. After all, they committed to attend their future alma mater over every other college. They sent in applications back in the fall, so sure that this was the college for them. So why don’t they get invites to admitted students weekend? That’s an easy one! Because the college doesn’t have to convince them to matriculate! They only have to convince Regular Decision admits to attend.

Yale, like many highly selective colleges, hosts students admitted via Regular Decision every spring (photo from the "Yale Daily News").

The point of admitted students weekend is for the college to boost their yield. They roll out the red carpet. They assign prospective students a current student who will house them. They serve prospectives lobster dinners and sing and dance. This weekend is, in no uncertain terms, the best marketing tool the college has — its own students. No flyer will have the energy of current students. No email will make you feel like this is the college that you must attend over all others.

So if you’re a student (like many of ours) who was admitted early and didn’t get the invite to admitted students weekend, don’t worry too much. Maybe you can ask the admissions office if you can attend. The answer is likely no, though, as they quite often simply don’t have the room to put you up with all of the other prospective students on campus. During this weekend, you’re just not the priority. They already have a binding commitment from you! One last thing — don’t forget to be on your best behavior during this weekend if you do end up going as the last thing you want to happen is get your admission rescinded. It happens each and every year.

Check out our Ivy League Admissions Statistics.

Parents have a habit of embarrassing their children on college tours. Usually, they don’t intend to embarrass their children. It just happens. Even just being on the college tour can embarrass their children. It’s a fact of life. But what can parents do so as not to embarrass their children on college tours? There are a few things!

The actor pictured above may have once asked a question on a college tour that embarrassed his son.

Parents should avoid prodding their children to ask questions. If a kid isn’t asking questions, chances are good that the kid doesn’t want to ask questions. Maybe she doesn’t have any questions. Maybe she’s too shy to ask. Maybe she can find out the answers online so there’s no point in asking the question. So many parents so obviously prod their child to ask a question on college tours (as well as at information sessions). They want their child to make a good impression. But really all the leader of the info session remembers is how you, the parent, embarrassed your child. Sometimes admissions officers do lead info sessions and sometimes applicants can leave an impression. But parents cannot force this. It just doesn’t work.

Parents shouldn’t ask embarrassing questions on college tours. Several years ago, one of the stars of the former ABC sudster “All My Children” was on a tour at Tufts University with his son. The actor asked how much it would cost to give the university a library. The child was mortified! How embarrassing! He quickly separated from his father and pretended he was with another family. Don’t ask how much a library would cost. And don’t ask if there’s drinking inside fraternities. Assume there is based on common sense!

Lastly, let your child form an impression of the university. Don’t form an impression for them by letting them know what you think of the school. Let them tell you what they think of it first as, otherwise, you’re priming them with information that will influence their opinion. And the school that you like may well not be the school that they like.

There’s a link between college majors and earnings. Indeed there’s an article out in “The Washington Post” about how not all college majors are created equal in terms of potential earnings after graduation. Michelle Singletary, the article’s author, starts off by saying how when college students say what their major is, she often thinks of whether or not that will lead to a job. When she hears English major, she thinks “nope.” When she hears engineering major with engineering internships, she thinks “yup.” In fact, she thinks, “Ding. Ding. Ding.”

Recent graduates in computer science, math, and engineering tend to make more money than students who major in other fields. Shocker (not really).

According to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, the unemployment rate among “Agriculture and Natural Resources” majors is 7%. Among “science life/physical,” it’s 7.7%. “Computers and mathematics”? 8.2%. “Education”? 5.4%. “Health”? 5.4%. “Arts”? 11.1%. “Business”? 7.4%.

“Recreation?” Ok, time out. What on earth is a “recreation” major? They majored in swinging and monkey bars? No wonder they can’t get jobs! Anyway, “engineering” has a 7.5% unemployment rate. “Social science” has an 8.9% rate. “Law and public policy” has an 8.1% unemployment rate. And “humanities and liberal arts” stands at 9.4%.

Do any of these figures surprise you? Would it surprise you to know that recent engineering grads earn on average $55,000 a year? Recent graduates in computers and mathematics earn on average 46,000 a year. So the majors that we think are easier to earn jobs from still have unemployment rates around the same range as other college majors. But recent grads tend to earn more coming out of college with majors in computer science, math, and engineering.

Let us know your thoughts on this article and the study by posting below! And check out this post on College Career Counseling.

There’s a great piece up on “The Huffington Post” today by Nina Vir, a sixteen year-old at Beverly Hills High School. It’s very well written and insightful about what high school students should be doing when they’re visiting college campuses. It’s such a good piece that one might think Andrea Zuckerman wrote it. If you didn’t get that joke, it’s alright. We won’t take it personally. It’s a “90210″ reference. No, not the “90210″ on The CW. The old “90210″ with Brandon, Brenda, Kelly, Dylan, Donna, Steve, and David. It wasn’t that long ago. Really.

When visiting college campuses, feel free to wander off from your tour. Ask a student to show you his dorm room. Eat a meal at a dining hall. Get to know the school on your own terms.

Anyhow, in “The Huffington Post” piece on visiting college campuses, Vir points out that college tours don’t always give you a good sense of what a college is all about. Vir encourages you to wander off from the tour, to get a campus map and walk around. She encourages you to pick up a campus newspaper and to people watch. Check to see if students are smiling — it’s a great indication of whether or not they’re happy at this school (the transfer rate is another good indication, FYI). Have a meal in a campus dining facility. Take photos so you can remember the school when deciding on which schools to apply to later on (and also so that you can cite specifics in your Why College Essays).

Have a look at our newsletters on Campus Visits and The Campus Visit and Fantasy Sports. And let us know your ideas of what you should be doing on your college visits so you can best get a sense of what a university is all about!

Grade inflation. You’ve heard the term. But exactly how bad is grade inflation among colleges? The answer, points out Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, is pretty clear — bad. In their research in which they collected grade data from 200 four-year colleges, it is quite evident that more students are receiving A’s than ever before, that B’s remain pretty high, that C’s have declined, and D’s and F’s remain quite low (and have even declined).

According to a post by Catherine Rampell on the “New York Times” “Economix” blog, “Most recently, about 43 percent of all letter grades given were A’s, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. The distribution of B’s has stayed relatively constant; the growing share of A’s instead comes at the expense of a shrinking share of C’s, D’s and F’s. In fact, only about 10 percent of grades awarded are D’s and F’s.”

Ever wondered how bad college grade inflation is? Here's your answer.

Check out this chart to the left by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy from the “Economix” post on college grade inflation. And have you ever wondered if private colleges are more likely to inflate grades than public universities? Your suspicions were right. Private colleges give out more A’s than public ones. In fact, there has been a lot of research on grade inflation at Ivy League colleges in particular. We’ll be covering that another time! In the meantime, check out this post on high school grades and college success. Let us know your thoughts on college grade inflation by posting below!

Yield statistics for colleges are trickling in. The yield is the percentage of admitted students for a particular college who choose to attend that college. Yield statistics may fluctuate over the course of the summer due to “summer melt.” Summer melt occurs when students decide not to matriculate to the college they committed to typically either because they had a change of heart or because they got admitted off the waitlist at another university that they’d rather attend. Colleges seek to admit students who they think will attend because yield is one of the college admission statistics that impacts a college’s “US News & World Report” all important ranking. Check out this article on Ivy League interest.

Harvard University once again will likely have the highest yield among top colleges, an important college admission statistic for "US News & World Report" rankings.

Let’s take a look at some of the yields around some of the top college campuses this admissions cycle. This data is from Dartmouth grad and education reporter Jacques Steinberg of the “New York Times” “The Choice” blog.

Harvard University – “More than 76%.”

Stanford University – “72%.”

University of Pennsylvania – “63%.”

Dartmouth College – “55%.”

Cornell University – “49%.”

If you’re a student who received tons of brochures, posters, and e-mails from top universities and were surprised to then be denied admission by these very colleges that “recruited” you, you’re not alone. In recent years, colleges have increased their recruiting efforts by sending promotional material to students who they know full well have no chance of admission. They do it to boost their application numbers so their admit rate goes down and the college appears more selective. And don’t forget — college applications cost money. At an application fee of $75 to $100 the money that schools take in each year when all of these unqualified students apply adds up to a sizable sum.  Just think…for the Class of 2015, the average number of applications received at all eight of the ivy league universities was over 30,000.  Multiple that by $100 per application and you get $3,000,000.  In this economy, this is a great source of revenue! But do you think this kind of college admissions recruiting is unethical?

Jeffrey Brenzel, Dean of Admission at Yale, seems to think that this type of college admissions recruiting isn’t right. According to “Bloomberg,” “Yale, which admitted 7.4 percent of applicants this year, cut its mailings by a third since 2005 to 80,000, Jeffrey Brenzel, dean of undergraduate admissions, said in an interview. ‘I feel obligated to be reasonable in recruiting so we’re not creating unrealistic expectations of applicants,’ Brenzel said. ‘If a student has only the most remote chance in admission, I feel it’s inappropriate to try to persuade a student to send an application.’”

Some college admissions counselors view the practice of recruiting unqualified students to apply in order to boost their own stats to be unethical.

If you’re wondering how in fact the colleges even get a high school student’s personal information that begins the mailing solicitations, look no further than when they sit down and take a test. On the SAT, for example, students are asked 42 questions such as what size college they’d like to go to, what sports they play, etc. According to “Bloomberg,” “While the Federal Trade Commission’s 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prohibits personal information from being collected online from children 12 and under without ‘verifiable parental consent,’ teenagers aren’t covered by the law and neither are nonprofit companies like the College Board.”

Despite some college admissions counselors claiming that they’re scaling back these advertisements to unqualified students, we don’t anticipate this type of recruitment ending anytime soon. As long as the admission rate and number of applicants matter, colleges will do anything to make those statistics as good as possible.

Check out our posts on University Admissions Recruitment and College Recruiting. And check out the “Bloomberg” article on college admissions recruitment.

In an article published in “The Dartmouth” today, Dartmouth’s Director of Admission Outreach, James Washington, cited a 27% increase in minority applicants to the college. He also cited a 24% increase in international applicants to the college. Both of these statistics reflect Dartmouth’s (as well as many other colleges’) efforts to recruit students from all different backgrounds all over the world. The increases in minority college applicants and international college applicants are likely the rewards of the latest admissions outreach efforts.

More minority students applied to Dartmouth College this year than any year in its history.

According to Washington, “A lot of the growth in our pool is from international and students of color. It means our outreach efforts are producing results.” But can these students afford the cost of admission to Dartmouth? Many cannot, particularly since Dartmouth has the second highest tuition rate among all Ivy League colleges (Columbia University has the highest tuition). And with Dartmouth’s decision to cease offering loans to students whose parents earn over $75,000, there may be even greater reason for concern over whether or not their admitted minority applicants actually matriculate. The data on college yield will be coming in shortly.

Check out the article in “The D” by Daniel Bornstein on the climb in minority applications. And check out our post on Minority University Applicants.

For those students who chose to remain on university waitlists, you likely sent in a card indicating that you wish to remain on the waitlist. But is that all you did? Have you just been sitting back and waiting for that university to get back to you? If so, your approach is all wrong. Getting off the university waitlist requires proactivity. You should have contacted your regional admissions officer at that university. You should have sent in a letter of enthusiasm to the university. You should have inquired about sending an additional letter of recommendation. Or what if since you applied in January, you received a Nobel Prize? Unlikely but if you accomplished something great (it doesn’t have to be a Nobel Prize!), you should ask your guidance counselor to update the university admissions office that has you on the waitlist.

Being proactive can prove important in getting off the university waitlist.

Getting off the university waitlist requires persistence, attention to detail, and creativity. Just think about it — most students do nothing. Absolutely nothing. This is your opportunity to stand out, to let it be known to university admissions counselors that you still want to attend and that if admitted off the waitlist you will attend. Listen to this audio from “The New York Times” on Christoph Guttentag, the Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke University, who suggests these very things to get off the university waitlist. He would know…he offered 3,383 students spots on this year’s waiting list at Duke!

Check out our newsletters: The College Waitlist and Waitlisted? Welcome to Limbo!.