Hope everyone is staying safe and warm this week!

BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK

ACADEMIC INFLUENCE RANKINGS

A self-described “team of academics and data scientists" at an organization called Academic Influence recently released a brand-new set of rankings that they deem wholly objective and free from outside bias. What are the rankings based on? Influence. The researchers divided the number of influential alumni by the school’s undergraduate population to come up with a term called “Concentrated Influence.”

The rankings allow you to examine a school’s overall influence or even sort by field, which is pretty cool. I thought it was very interesting that they separate alumni field from area of academic study, acknowledging that people are often influential in fields in which they did not earn their degree. Love that! It’s so true. They use the example of Princeton, explaining that it has produced some very influential alumni in the legal field without having a law school.

If you are wondering how a person is deemed to be influential, you are not alone - I was wondering the same thing, but they seem to have a pretty sophisticated process that uses AI.

Check out the rankings here. Most won’t be surprising, but I did find the order to be interesting. For example, NYU is ranked #11 in concentrated influence while Penn is ranked #15 and Caltech is ranked #23. University of Wisconsin-Madison (which I might have called under-rated a few years ago, but I think everyone in our area has caught on by now) comes in at #27 just after Carnegie Mellon at #26, but UVa is #35 and Georgetown is #39. My alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, was ranked #61. Ouch!!

NCAA DEAD PERIOD EXTENDED THROUGH 5/31

Ughhh - again?! I feel so badly for high school athletes going through the recruiting process right now. The NCAA Division I Council announced yet another extension on the in-person recruiting ban that has been in place since last March. Word on the street is that this will be the last extension, but who really knows. It is insane to think by the time this is over, we will be looking at a minimum of fourteen months without official campus visits. I was sharing observations with a few counselors this morning about how coaches really seem to be prioritizing transfers as a result of this extended dead period.

RELEASE OF 2021-2022 COMMON APP ® ESSAY PROMPTS

We covered this earlier in the week, but the Common Application ® finally released the prompts for current juniors (Class of 2022). I’m not a fan of the changes, as I explained, but our whole team is really excited to start the process with our juniors. All current clients should have received an email last night with instructions to begin, followed up by their Wow Writing Workshop login information this morning!

Speaking of essays, we have some exciting news to share! One of our all-time favorite coaches, McClain, is going to come back this summer! YAY! We are so excited. She wrote a great guest blog a few years ago about maximizing the high school experience - check it out here. McClain is able to leverage her experience as a teacher, coach, and member of an independent school admission team into her essay coaching, and we’re so fortunate to have her back.

SHAKESPEARE’S BEEN CANCELLED

Boy would this have been welcome news in my life twenty years ago - I hated the mandatory Shakespeare class I had to take as an English major! In any case, some teachers are now refusing to teach Shakespeare or encouraging their students to view his work through a different lens. They are making these decisions on the basis that his work is anti-semitic, misogynistic, homophobic and more. Others are offended by the idea that his work is “universal.” After reading the article, I do vaguely remember writing a paper in college on anti-semitism in The Merchant of Venice. It will be interesting to see if this catches on.

BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK

A New York nonprofit, the National Education Equity Lab, has offered thousands of underprivileged students the opportunity to take for-credit coursework at Ivy League schools during high school. The program began with a 300-student pilot, and has shown that 89% of participants are able to pass the courses, which are graded at the same level as coursework for traditional undergraduates.

This sounds like a fantastic program, and I agree that graded coursework from an Ivy League institution will offer these students another data point in their application materials. But this line from the article made me laugh: “the students’ success has raised questions about how elite university gatekeepers determine college prospects.” Really? Their success raised questions? I think we’ve all had questions on this topic for a little while now :)

On the flip side, and I actually had to read this a few times to make sure I was understanding properly because it sounded so wildly discriminatory to me, the Faculty Senate at Stanford just voted to adopt two policies to de-emphasize wealth in the undergraduate admissions process. It seems like one of the main goals is to help prevent Varsity Blues-type situations with rogue admissions consultants, and I would support that. As the article states, though, close to 70% of students use college admissions counselors - it’s not a service limited to the wealthy. And “surveys to track the distribution of income and wealth levels for parents and undergraduates” seems highly inappropriate in my opinion. I’m honestly shocked that Stanford is publicly sharing their plans to do this. Anyway, it’s yet another reason to skip filling out that FAFSA if you know you won’t qualify for financial aid.

This won’t surprise most of us, but 18-to-29 year olds are having a particularly difficult time struggling with the isolation we’re all experiencing as a result of Covid. I get it - it’s so hard and it’s sad to think about years lost from their lives that they won’t get back. It’s actually my au pair’s 22nd birthday today and when I was writing her card earlier this morning, I was thinking about how most of the time she was 21 - a milestone year - basically disappeared. It is really sad!

OFFICE HAPPENINGS

Shannon took a much-needed vacation this week and let’s just say I cannot wait for her to come back! :) We are finishing up a number of transfer and grad school applications, in addition to helping some undergraduate clients with honors program applications at their respective schools, and things were very busy!

If you are a current junior client, please don’t forget to take our in-person services questionnaire to help us understand your priorities as we move forward with plans for the spring and summer.

Have a great weekend and stay warm!