We were shocked and saddened by the tragedy in Texas this week, and our thoughts are with the victims and their families. I have a fourth grader too, so it hit especially close to home for me. As we prepare for Memorial Day weekend, we are also thinking of the men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country - as well as the incredible sacrifices made by their families and friends left behind.
BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK
SUMMER AND FALL 2022 SAT REGISTRATION IS LIVE
The College Board typically opens registration each June or July for the entire following school year (I.e. in June 2022 for August 2022-June 2023 test dates). This year, they changed things up and just released the ability for students to register early for the August 2022, October 2022, November 2022, and December 2022 test dates. All students planning to take one of these tests (or even considering it) should register as soon as possible! The August and October administrations are already filling up quickly.
2022-2023 COMMON APPLICATION UPDATES
The Common Application held a session yesterday to share upcoming changes in advance of the 2022-2023 application release. They confirmed that application rollover will take place on August 1, as in previous years. Students’ login information will remain the same, and all of the information in their profile, family, education, testing, activities, writing, and courses and grades sections will roll over.
(Remember: It’s great to take advantage of the rollover function - definitely get started early and fill all of this out in advance. But MAKE SURE to print/save PDFs of each individual page in case there is some type of rollover error. This does happen occasionally and it would be so awful if all of your hard work was lost!)
Some new changes: “Mx.” and “Other” are now prefix options, and the order of the gender, pronoun, and name questions have moved. There will also be some adjustments to the order and criteria of the questions relating to fee waivers.
PRINCETON FIRES JOSHUA KATZ
In 2018, Princeton University suspended Professor Joshua Katz, pending an investigation into a relationship he had with one of his undergraduate students. On Monday, the school fired the tenured professor, citing a lack of cooperation with this investigation. This is a particularly unusual occurrence, as Katz was a tenured professor at the university. Katz argues that the firing came on the heels of an article he published that criticized the school’s anti-racist policies, and is not an issue of his relationship but instead a blow to free speech.
GEORGETOWN SENIORS SHUT DOWN LINCOLN MEMORIAL
The Lincoln Memorial was shut down on Saturday morning after hundreds of Georgetown University seniors left broken bottles and spilled wine and champagne covering the monument’s steps. The site was open to the public again by 11:00 am on Saturday.
COLLEGES REIMPOSE INDOOR MASK MANDATES
As COVID cases spike, colleges around the country have started to reinstate their mask mandates on campus, including the University of Delaware. Public school systems in Philadelphia, PA and Providence, RI have also reinstated their mask mandates in response to cases in the area.
BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
We shared an article a few weeks back with one professor’s opinion of how the pandemic has affected student’s learning ability and focus in the classroom once they arrive in college. Now, a disability rights advocate has published a response, citing mental health issues rather than online learning as the reason why so many students are struggling. Several other letters to the editor continue this dialogue, offering remote learning and mental health related responses to the perceived crisis in students’ engagement.
Price hikes at a number of colleges have reinvigorated the conversation around whether college is really worth the cost. Enrollment continues to drop, even with the worst of the pandemic (hopefully!) behind us, and in a recent Boston Globe poll, only 10% of respondents felt that college was definitely worth the investment. Spring 2022 college enrollment has dropped nearly 5% from last year - in addition to the overall pandemic drop of almost 10%. This is a surprise to some colleges that expected enrollment to bounce back this cycle.
OFFICE HAPPENINGS
We’ve offered up our own lists of fiction and nonfiction reads for students to check out this summer, and we’d like to add these three career-focused books for college graduates! If you want even more info on summer reading, current members and clients can check out our Membership Vault summer reading guide.
Pro Tip: We also recommend reading a newspaper or two regularly this summer - this will definitely help you out in interviews when you are asked to talk about a recent news story or political issue that interests you, as well as on applications (like Princeton’s!) that may ask about which publications you read regularly.
Still looking for more summer opportunities? Gettysburg College’s inaugural Civic Engagement Camp is still accepting applications until Friday, June 3. The program aims to teach students about American democracy and the importance of civic engagement, all against the background of Gettysburg’s history (and with a day trip to Washington, DC).
Have a great weekend!
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