Focus 580; Admission Matters: What Students And Parents Need To Know About Getting Into College

Good morning this is Carol spin Dell sitting in today for David Inge and we're talking with one of the authors of a new book about college admissions. Today's high school students applying to college face a daunting process. A new S.A.T. fewer dollars in financial aid. Probable rejection and lots of myths about how to choose a college and how to get in. So how can you help your student gather accurate information to make the best choices for him or her. We're joined today by Sally Springer. She's the associate chancellor at the University of California Davis. She's also the co-author with Mary and Frank of a new book called admission matters what students and parents need to know about getting into college. Hello Sally and welcome to focus 580. Good morning Carol thank you very much. Now I understand that you are joining us from Tampa where you are at the National Association for College admissions counselors. Yeah that's correct. Grade welding college admissions is is the subject today here in Urbana and in Tampa. I'd like to mention to our listeners that if you have questions about college admissions

Please join this conversation by calling toll free 1 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Live or locally. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and will be glad to take your calls. Now maybe I'm rosy about the past but it seems to me that students used to pick one or two schools often close to home take one time to write one essay send the whole thing off unless they had completely overestimated their chances they often got back those big letters. And now it's very competitive especially at selective private schools. It's also increasingly competitive that public universities in states like California and Illinois and Sally what are the forces that have changed this process so much. Well there are several factors. One of the factors is demographic. If you take a look at population trends there's been an increase in the number of high school graduates starting and perhaps I guess maybe.

Mid 1990s and right now we're at a little less than 3 million graduates each year and it's going to be going up reaching a peak of almost three point two million in 2009 and it's going to stay pretty high for at least another 10 years after that although it won't be increasing at that rate. But that's just just part of the picture. There are more students wanting to go potentially who can go to college. More of them want to go to college because the message has gotten out that a college education is important for careers. So that's an additional factor a larger percentage of students are interested in going to college. It's also easier to apply to college these days if you have recent familiarity with the process. The old days of correction fluid and typewriter and so forth have gone the way of a dinosaur and their online applications that make it very easy for students to apply to lots of colleges. Colleges also are very

active in spreading the word about their offerings and you have a small liberal arts colleges that have an incoming class of maybe 500. Wouldn't sending out upwards of 50000 mailers to prospective students and so colleges are eager to build a strong diverse applicant pool. They have all of those factors entering into the equation. More students applying to two more colleges because it's easier. But the major factor and I wish I had actually come up with this quote myself but it's something that a very wise high school counselor indicated. The reason it's hard for students to get into college is that they all want to get into colleges that are hard to get into. And that means that there are a disproportionate number of students focusing on a very small group of colleges. Well you say in the book that all the stress and all this competition that we hear about

is really most of the time about the same 100 schools and that all these competitive top students apply to the same schools. And that other schools even have vacancies in their freshman classes. So why do you think it is that students and parents don't look beyond these schools. Well let me just modify a little bit so that the first sentence. It's true in our book we talk about a top 100 actually. That number's grown a bit we're probably looking at now maybe a hundred twenty five or maybe even a hundred and fifty schools. The reason I think parents and students focus on those schools are those are the ones they know about the colleges that have big football teams people know about because the names are always in the media. People know about the Ivy League. They know about the colleges that are nearby. But the fact is there are over 2000 colleges and universities four year colleges and universities in this country. And the typical family you know just a very small percentage of those.

And those are the ones that the students tend to focus on. So one of the first things for families is to figure out ways to find out about schools beyond that list that may be appropriate for their student. Right. I think absolutely. And the question is Well what is appropriate for a given student. And I think the whole process. It has to begin with a self assessment on the part of the student the student needs to ask himself or herself some some questions and to answer them as honestly as possible. What kind of student am I. What kind of environment academic environment do I thrive in. What are my academic interests. What kind of social cultural environment am I seeking. What kind of geographic environment. What kind of weather do I like what kind can I tolerate and so forth. So there are a whole range of factors that I think need to be carefully considered. And then the students and

family can go about looking for good matches. Well we hear a lot about rankings of schools and U.S. News and World Report puts out rankings every year. In the early fall and everyone seems to agree that these rankings are deeply flawed and yet they still get a lot of attention. You explain that. Yes rankings. Well I think one reason that they get so much attention is that they're easy and US News has a lot of money behind them a lot of publicity behind them and they get their magazines everywhere I walked into my local bookstore the other day and I thought there must have been a hundred copies of that U.S. News rankings issue prominently featured so you can't miss it. It's easy learning about colleges. Take some time. If you want to

learn about the various features of the college and how they would match up with your students particular needs and interests. It's easy to pick up a magazine and see which colleges are ranked the highest and I personally don't think it's a very good way to attempt to make that that kind of match. I don't think there's anyone in higher education who believes that you can distill the essence of a college into a single number and that you can then rank colleges in terms of. That of that ranking and have it mean anything. You know in the book you mention a survey program run by Indiana unit. Or a city that asks quite different questions in order to kind of evaluate the educational experience that students get at a given university or college. And can you tell us about that and do you think that's a better system.

Well this is a survey called the National Survey for Student Engagement. Our Nessie and I do think it's a much better way to get a handle on the quality of education at an institution and student satisfaction. And it asks questions of students such as. How often did you have to write papers in your classes What were the opportunities for discussion both inside and outside of the classroom. What opportunities were there for meaningful internships and that kind of survey gets at much more so at the heart of an institution's quality and approach to education and. Unfortunately there are some colleges that many colleges actually that don't use Nessie and some that actually do don't make their results public so those institutions that do make their results public have them on the web and they

can be a very useful source of information for prospective students. So if prospective students wanted to access that data how would they do it. Well I'm actually right now looking through my copy of admission matters looking for the you are L.. Actually I think you could simply type in National Survey of Student Engagement into a browser and come up with it that I'm actually right. Why you look for it let me repeat the phone numbers in case there are listeners who would like to call and ask a question if you have a prospective student. 1 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 or 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 4 if you have a general question about this issue of college admission. And you're welcome to call in. I found it Carol. OK. You can find out more about Nancy and the colleges that have chosen to participate by going to w w

w dot Indiana dot edu slash. And then this little squiggle little Tilda an S S T for national survey for student of Student Engagement. And then flash again. That'll take you to their web grade and you know we can put that on our website if listeners didn't get that down you can. We can put that on the Web site later today. Now let's go to the topic of financial aid. This has becoming acute has become a confusing and complicated maze. But maybe before we do that we should take we have a caller from Urbana So let's let them join the conversation. Nope. Hello. Are you there in your banner. Yes my number one. All right go ahead. I have a question about trends among students who are going to college. You talked about the increase in numbers but I'd like to know about the field that they're going

into back in the old days people said well just get a basic level as it's and get a little taste of everything then then pick a major. But I'm wondering if more students are going in the front door specializing in things like more technical kinds of courses. Go studies or something else. I mean is is it. Have you noticed any trends along those lines of what students are studying. Well I think if there is a trend towards education that is is more focused towards a career in education engineering programs are very popular to computer science and other kinds of program business programs as an undergraduate are very very popular. And in fact I think that may be one of the reasons why there is a trend over time for greater popularity of universities. And this gets us into a little bit of terminology I just need to say I'm just a little bit about. It is some institutions are called colleges. Some are called

universities and institutions can choose which one they want to call themselves. But the definition of the university is an institution with a very wide range of programs including doctoral education and so at universities you'll tend to find a much broader array of programs including the professionally oriented programs as opposed to liberal arts colleges that by and large don't have any of those professional programs and I think that's part of the reason why you see some of the enrollment trends that you do greater in romance at at the universities greater increases with proportional decreases. At the liberal arts colleges for that sort of parent. Quicker Well I don't know if it guarantees a job quicker I mean there are folks in it. It depends if you're thinking about going on for graduate work or not. For example if a student is thinking about going on for an

MBA a Masters in Business Administration you don't have to major in business as an undergraduate. In fact business schools look very favorably at students who come in with with other kinds of majors because they will give you what you need in that master's business administration. If you're thinking about being an engineer on the other hand whether or not you want to go on for graduate work you probably do need that bachelor's degree in engineering but I'm one of the maybe old fashioned folks who believe that a good liberal arts education a good sounding in the basic disciplines. Is this the best preparation of all for life and for most careers. OK thank you. You're welcome. Thanks very much to our caller. Hello Sally. Yeah I'm here. OK well let's talk about financial aid. Do you have any specific question on that.

Well it seems like a confusing and complicated maze. Some schools are new to where others are need blind. Some say right up front we give no merit aid others do use merit aid to recruit the students they want. And then you hear about many families who are sitting there at graduation facing huge debts that have to be repaid. I mean where should a family start to make sense of this when they're planning for their children's education. Well I think a very good place to start and in part it depends on where you are in the process. If you're the parent of a of a junior and high or sophomore or junior or perhaps a senior in high school and you want to get a good sense of your family's eligibility for need based financial aid. A good way to do that is with one of the online programs that allows you to determine what would be your expected Stanley contribution. Institutions take the following approach in

looking at financial aid. There's the cost of it. Education how much it's going to cost to send the student to college and that's tuition room and board books and so forth. And that's the cost of education. Then there's something called the expected family contribution and that is how much can the family be expected to contribute to the student's education. And the difference between those two. The cost and how much the family is exposed can be expected to contribute the difference between those two is the financial need of the family. I mean clearly if you have a more expensive school given that the family contribution is fixed that the financial need will be be greater. What a family needs to check. Women is what their expected family contribution will be. And there are two ways of doing that. Everyone has to

complete something called the FAFSA. If you're applying for financial aid it's called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And there are some websites that allow you to preview what the results of the FAFSA will be by putting in information about family income and savings and so forth. The SATs is used by virtually all institutions that awards federal financial aid. It will more complicated than that there's something called the profile which is another jewel that allows institutions to determine how much a family can contribute. But this one includes things like home equity where the FAFSA doesn't and so home equity given the run up in housing prices across the country makes families look a little more better off than they might otherwise be.

And so those two methods of Needs Assessment are the are the main ones and families can can preview those to get a feel for what the colleges might expect them to contribute to their students education. Talk about expected family contribution if it is defined by formula colleges do have a bit of wiggle room. But what a family can contribute is not determined by the feds. In terms of how much they're willing to contribute the family might feel they can't contribute as much as the needs assessment says they can. But the needs assessment results are what they are so I think it's important for families to to get a handle on that because there can be some surprises. Sometimes family might think oh gosh we wouldn't be eligible for any need based aid when in fact they are or you sometimes get surprises the other way a family might think that they are eligible but then the needs assessment comes out

showing that that that they're not. Well when I said I was going to interview you one parent said to me that her family scrimped and saved and they gave up they cations to save money for their daughter's college tuition. Then when the time came to calculate the FAFSA the need based financial aid. Those savings counted against them and their daughter received almost nothing. And another family that this family was aware of spent all their money on travel. And save nothing. And the first parent said that in retrospect she should have spent the money because she felt she lost out twice she didn't get the experience of the travel and her family didn't get the vacations and she didn't get a very good financial aid package for her daughter. Do you think middle class families are getting squeezed out of financial aid. Well middle class families. That is where the real problem in financial aid lies. But I'd like to address though the issue of saving and

so forth. Parental savings and here's where it is a good idea at least given the current laws with regard to federal financial aid. It is best for parents to save for college in their own name rather than in the student's name because that is assessed at a much lower rate when it comes to assessing financial needs. And so having money saved in the parent's name as opposed to student is is even if it's all planned to support college later on is this the best way to go. The reality is though that you just never know what's going to happen down the line in terms of financial aid and the form in which a need based financial aid might be awarded depending on on the college and the student's circumstances financially. Just kidding. Clued a large percentage of the award in the form of loans that have to be repaid. True there are low interest loans but but they do have to be repaid

and the family that has saved you know won't have to go the the loan route. But yes to answer your initial question it is the middle class that has that faces the greatest challenge when it comes to financial aid because clearly folks who can afford to pay full freight don't have to worry about financial aid and institutions are most generous with those at the lower end of the socio economic spectrum who you know can't contribute very much. Do you think that low income families may be very hesitant to encourage their children to apply to expensive private schools. And I wonder if some of those low income families may be perhaps missing out. Patooties there actually are out there at these need blind and need to wear our schools because of lack of adequate guidance counseling. Oh absolutely and I think colleges are increasingly aware

of the fact that students from lower socio economic groups are not applying because of the concerns that they won't be able to afford an expensive institution. But if you refer back to what I mentioned earlier about the way financial need to calculate it. You look at the expected family contribution. And then you have the total cost of education with financial need being the difference between the two. And so if the institution is is more expensive Well that means a financial need is going to be bigger and at many institutions it means bigger financial aid package. And in fact some very high profile institutions I'm thinking now Yale and Harvard and Princeton Yale and Harvard more recently have a basically said that for low income families for students who are admitted that the families don't have to. You beat anything. And some of the schools aren't even

including loans in the packages and so they are hard at work trying to get the word out that financial aid should not be there the need for financial aid should not be a barrier at these institutions that meet full need and that and despite that reality there is probably a very big difference between the guidance counseling that students receive even if we look at just public schools and we don't even look at private schools. But look at public schools in a city neighborhood perhaps or in a rural area and in a wealthy suburb you know you know that that's very true when you look at councilor to student ratio or student to Counselor ratios. There are public high schools in this country with with almost a thousand students for a single counselor at my high school there something like 600 students to a counselor. And these are all purpose counselors not just focusing on college. They're they're dealing with a whole spectrum of student

counseling issues and so there can be big disparities. Schools that are are well funded have had much richer ratios. And one of the reasons why we're actually it's probably the main reason why. Marion Frank and I wrote at Mission matters we wanted to try to level the playing field so that families would be able to access the kind of information that they might. Not be able to get from their counselors or they can better utilize the time that they have with their counselors because they'll come into the situation with a counsellor informed and then can focus on their specific needs in that personal situation. I know that our local public high school I was told by the principal that it's very hard to recruit and retain guidance counselors I don't know if that's a factor of our local salaries or I know there's a lot of increased paperwork the guidance counselors face now. But it seems to me that if we do want to level the playing field of college admissions and college and universities are doing their part by

offering these kind of programs that don't somehow all students need the same access to college counselor. Is there anything we could do about that do you think. Well I think that schools are tend to be their you know locally funded and I think parents need to be advocates for for their for their children. And to make the case for funding going into counseling programs they are very important. For for students success not only of college admissions but in dealing with a whole host of other issues associated with the high school years. It is a serious problem. Well and then on the other hand of course I think a lot of parents think that if their children don't get into the Ivy League Of Their their future is ended. But your book points out that. The data does not correlate future salaries or admission to selective graduate schools with having

gone to these very selective colleges. That's correct. If you just look at the data on the surface and you do comparisons of salary you know perhaps 10 or 20 years post graduation. You do find that the graduates of say the Ivy League have a higher annual income than graduates of lesser well but well-known institutions. And if you look overall at graduate school admissions you find a disproportionate number of Ivy League graduates in prestigious programs. But but the question is why. And some researchers that Dale and Kruger Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger said well maybe it has something to do with the fact that the students who go to the Ivy League are pre-selected in sin some fashion and that it's those factors that the students bring with them to the Ivy League that are the

determinants of the salary later in life for admission to prestigious graduate programs and so they did something I thought. Was very clever. They looked at students and who were admitted who applied to and who were admitted to Ivy League colleges and they divided them up into two groups those that actually went to an Ivy League college and then they also tracked those students who for whatever reason were admitted to an Ivy League school but chose to go to a less selective school and they compared those two groups. And as you can see what that does is it controls for the input factors and which do you find when you decide that there are no differences between the two groups except in the case of students from low socio economic backgrounds and in that case there is a bump associated with going to the the more selective institution but for for everyone else. There is no difference. And so those are two you know very crude indices of life success. You know your salary 20 years down the

line or your admission to a graduate program and you know no difference. You know that course all of us. Hope there's more to education than that that somehow can't be measured. Absolutely. I'd like to tell folks that success in life no matter how you choose to define it has absolutely nothing to do with the the bumper sticker or you know the back of the car. What is success in life have to do it. I think you are one of the factors that lead to success. I think one is you know how bright you are and smart you are. And this is an order of increasing importance now to how hard you're willing to work you know how motivated you are. And then lastly and most importantly your ability to establish and maintain a lasting meaningful relationships with other people and those things have absolutely nothing to do with what college you go to thin and you graduate.

OK well we have a collar here on line for on the cell phone. Welcome to the conversation. Oh I wanted to speak to the fact that university not all not all students are above average or you know have Area 4.0 grade average to be that have an average is an average student and are trying to get into you know like my daughters trying to get into a pharmacy school but they're great. If not a 4.0 student average act of life her ability to get into her pharmacy school. Well she's currently an undergraduate and she wants to go into a graduate program. You know she wants to transfer after a three year community college. OK so she's she's currently in a community college and she wants to transfer. OK. Well I think for transferring into programs especially from

a community college they are going to be looking for success in courses that student would have taken into originally gone into that particular program. So that they will be looking at the academic records. They probably have some kind of a testing requirement. So preparing for those would be good. Also if your daughter had an opportunity to get to know some faculty at the community college those kinds of recommendations can be very very helpful especially if her. Academe. Record sales isn't that's that strong for whatever reason if a teacher can attest to her her work ethic her motivation her interest in pursuing the field. That can be an important factor in the admissions process.

OK well thanks very much to our caller from the cell phone we have another caller from Kankakee. Hello are you there. My number one more significant chloroformed with reference to a bark and I heard the case in the play of the. So they're right it is their preferred route of one concern themselves with medicine and with finances. There one over on them are important. Some of the greatest center of higher education the well-known one of the better for scholars to go to those services that have to be educated for him and for him. Well I think one of the beauties about higher education in America is that it is so diverse and that we have so many wonderful institutions and that we're not necessarily just concentrated in a few places and we have excellence in many many places in this country and I actually think

it's one of the the great features of our country. Well. You know we hear OBOT of talk these days about the new S.A.T. and how that includes a writing component. What effect do you think that will have on admissions. Well I think it's too soon to tell Carol. The jury's still out on that because this is the first year the class of 2006 is the first class to take the new S.A.T. and colleges are still trying to figure out what to do with it. I mean the University of California which was actually in the 10 campuses of the University of California and indirectly was behind the creation of the new S.A.T. decided to go to incorporated into the admissions process. Some other college or most other colleges are taking the approach of well let's just let's just see this is something new. We don't know how well it's

going to predict performance in college. And so I think you'll find a number of colleges sort of just sort of looking at it but not quite being sure what to do with it yet. OK well we'll have to wait and see we have another collar line for on the cell phone Hello. Hello. Are you there on line for. No. OK. I guess not. Think back. Didn't the creators of the S.A.T. originally think that they were creating a task that would test ability rather than education and therefore increase the chances of students who hadn't gone to the best high schools who weren't the children of Yale Obama's and so on. But then they also thought that the test wasn't teachable or coachable which has been proven wrong so I mean this history of standardized testing seems to be a history of good intentions.

You're right it is. It is a history of good intentions that I guess some folks now feel are not really good intentions just aren't aren't good enough that the results are not what was intended. You're absolutely right. Originally the S.A.T. was was thought of as a way to get beyond the student's particular educational circumstances so that kids who had access to first rate schools would do very well on the Latin and other kinds of tests that were part of the admissions process. But that the S.A.T. would get at this sort of in some sense ability and enable you to find students who didn't have access to those rich educational opportunities. And so now so folks are concerned that. That DFAT is standing in the way of talent.

Students getting access to higher education opportunities because the test is has been shown to be highly coachable and the new S.A.T. is even more coachable than ever and one can argue well you've modified the test so that it. Allow students to prepare for it. And so you've sort of potentially leveling the playing field in that way but if you have differential availability of access to those tools to prepare that then you've got problems as well then you're introducing new kinds of inequities. Let me remind again if you're listening and would like to call and ask a question of Sally Springer. A new book called admission matters what students and parents need to know about getting into college. Our number here toll free is 1 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 or 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. I'm

Carol SP and sitting in for David Inge today. So Sally Are there other factors in the student's high school record that do correlate better than high test scores with good academic performance in college. Is it possible to predict who will do well in college. Well probably the best predictor of how well a student is going to do in college is how well they did in high school their grades in a demanding curriculum because if you think about it what is a student doing in college they're taking college level courses and if you've demonstrated the ability to do that well in in high school that the chances are you'll continue to do that in college. But of course we all know that motivation is a important factor in all of this and some students for whatever reason just don't like to use it. The expression don't quite get their act together until they're a little more mature. And so you can have students who

perhaps don't do particularly well in high school perhaps taking some time off or going to a community college or ending up doing spectacularly later on. And but right now if you had to pick the single best predictor it would be how well the student did as a high school student. In the most demanding courses available to to him or her but it's by it's certainly not a perfect predictor and the S.A.T. certainly isn't a perfect predictor either. Your co-author Marion Frank confesses I'm one of the personal accounts in your book. That one of the hardest things she ever had to do in life was to step back and not want to sort of shine personally. By seeing her children apply to and possibly get admitted to prestigious schools. And that's a very seductive process and I think here in a university time we see a lot of it. The temptation to push your children and you find out that you do get quite a bit of reflective glory

if they are successful. So how can parents navigate that very difficult process of being supportive without pushing. Well I think they have to realize. And let me tell you to step back for a moment a little anecdote. My son was accepted at a very selective college and I was happy and proud that that that he was. And people would ask me where he was going to school and I would tell them and I very quickly became embarrassed because of the gushing responses that that I received when I told him where he was going to school and I thought to myself you know he's just been admitted to college he hasn't won the Nobel Prize. I mean things have really gotten sort of warped and I think it's important for parents and students to focus on it to look at those colleges that will best meet the student's needs and to realize that those schools come in a wide range of selectivity

and that a highly selective institution isn't necessarily the best match. And I think once people focus on that prestige it gets moved to the back burner and I strongly encourage families parents and students to stop talking about college as much as they do in terms of oh well where is Johnny applying and where did Susie get in needy and so forth. That tends to feed the the frenzy. And focusing on that learning as much as you can about a wide range of colleges is the best way for there to be a very happy outcome. I know of one young woman who went to a highly selective college she wanted to go to the most selective college she could get into she went to one it turned out to be a terrible fit. She was miserable for the three and a half years she was there but wouldn't consider transferring because she wanted that sticker on the back of her car.

I say three and a half years because she graduated early because she didn't want to go back for that last six months. And I think she will reflect back and realize what a loss of a wonderful experience that that was. You wonder when you do read about admissions for these selective schools. Students have to be so good at so many things to get into these schools I was visited by a French educator who spent quite a bit of time in American schools and that's what she said to me she said you know French students work very hard. But she says what really strikes me about American students is they're expected to be so good at so many things. And do you think there's too much pressure on these kids who are very capable now. Well I actually I do. I think the whole college admissions process has created a level of anxiety and frenzy that is. It is harmful. In fact after our telephone call I'm going to be

going back to the meeting the National Association for College Admissions counseling and going to a session on mental health issues associated with the college admissions process. The idea that all of the stress that we're inadvertently placing on students has has its cost. And I think if the student and family steps back and realizes there are a range of colleges out there that offer wonderful opportunities that would be a terrific fit that. Takes a lot of the pressure off again. You know we're talking about somewhere between 100 and 150 colleges that accept less than 50 percent of the students that apply. And the other two thousand four year institutions in the country accept at least half of their students and many except you know 80 percent or more. So we had to focus on that very narrow group that's contributing to to that the stress

anxiety and so forth. Well so the ideal would be to have a student find a number of places where they feel that meet their criteria they can have a successful education they can probably get accepted. But you know it often seems like it doesn't work that way you need a lot of juniors even seniors who are saying I just don't know how will I know who this is the right college for me how can students know. Well I think again it goes back to doing that careful self assessment and then to learning as much as possible about colleges. That seemed to be a good match again you know there are over 2000 And so you can start going through all of them but you do this initial process there are online college search tools where you put in your criteria and outcome. Some colleges that at least. Computer program thinks would be a good match for the place to start you can then do some careful research. Learning about those colleges and also if you have the opportunity

going to visit them. That can be a wonderful way to see first hand whether there's a potentially good match if it is just part of it that you have to do that. The basic research being a college catalog the web dissipating and perhaps online chat rooms with current students at that institution. OK well we're going to go to mine one. We have a caller from Charleston. Hello line one from Charleston are you there. Yes. Good morning. With the advantage. That the experience that we've had in our family with our daughter graduate from high school about my thing 90 91 I recall a bright kid got good at 80 scores and so forth. She applied to a number of schools and was accepted to all Miami of Ohio which is understand it for good liberal arts school and she majored in one of the natural sciences. But frankly I don't think she was

mature ready to handle all that because she didn't. Getting her degree as we say in geology with a minor in bartending and that the grade point average suffered as a result. So when she went out into the job market she you know she did she was unable to get a job in her in her field though she worked in the ministry of job for a couple of years. Subsequently decide to go back to begin to get a degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech which she ended up paying for. And now you know 30 or 30 years old married and has a very successful career with the engineering consulting firm. So I think if we had to do it over again rather than pushing her out too. You know be the best you can be. I think a trial run at a good quality junior college for two years might have been a good idea. In hindsight I'd

like to hear your you know with the option to transfer to whatever school you can get in. I like to hear your opinion on that. Sure and you know again it varies so much from student to student that the community college route can be an excellent one. It gives the students the opportunity to go to mature. And then there's the opportunity to transfer to a four year institution so again it really comes down to the individual student. But at the community college route is is a fine one. And I tell the story I'll tell it really. Clea I was on the faculty for many years the psychology department at SUNY Stony Brook and a colleague of mine who turned out to have a spectacularly successful career who went from Stony Brook as a professor to Princeton she's now professor at Yale and psychology part which is one of the best psychology departments in the world. She began her career as an undergraduate at a community college. And

absolutely I think it's a wonderful option depending on the circumstances. OK thanks. Welcome. Well thanks very much for the call. We just have a few more minutes. So did you. Now you've been through this college admissions process at least once isn't that right. I have been my son is now a junior but I'm going through it right now my daughter is a high school senior. So you're getting to see how it's changed in a couple of years. I it is more competitive now. Even a couple of years so that the group of 100 to 150 colleges. So being someone who has personally experienced this who is involved with admissions at UC Davis you come at this from a number of perspectives you are involved in counseling. What what one piece of advice what if students if parents and students just take away one thing what would you like to say to them. Well I think you. I tell parents and students to focus on what what they can control

about the admissions process and not on what they they can't control and what they can control. Is it the self assessment process and the research into identifying that list of good fit colleges. If you identify a set of good fit colleges over a range of selectivity you're virtually guaranteed a happy outcome. And that's what I think everyone hopes for when they start the college admissions process. So it all comes down to selecting that right group of of of colleges. Well that is definitely what we want. And and I think too we are all concerned about a level playing field and want to see students who get to a place and who can be successful there who can have a good experience too so perhaps that right fit will lead to to a positive outcome four years later these these students are graduating and they want to look back and feel that they

did make a good choice. Absolutely. So did your advice work when your own child applied to college or have you modified your. The programs I actually learn even though I've been in higher education for more years than I care to count. I learned a lot about the institutions that I hadn't really known much about and so I think in working with my daughter my major contribution to her college application process has been to make her aware of some colleges that really weren't particularly on my radar screen when when my son was applying. So and I'm also trying to what is it walk the talk in terms of giving her you know lots of space and not adding my own level of anxiety too to the process. Well that sounds like a very worthy goal. We just appreciate so much you being with us this morning Sally we've been speaking with Sally Springer. She's the associate

chancellor at the University of California Davis. She is also along with Mary and Frank the co-author of a new book called admission matters what students and parents need to know about getting into college thank you so much for being with us today on focus 580. Thank you Carol it's been my pleasure. OK. Henry Frayne was our technical director today. Harry Williamson and Martha deal produced our program thanks to all of them. I'm Carol spin down. I'm sitting in for day. If it ends today on focus 580. Focus 580 is made possible in part by a grant from bodywork associates this year celebrating their 23rd anniversary bodywork associates has been providing professional massage therapy to Champagne Urbana since 1982. Today's broadcast is made possible in part by a grant from the Great Imposter. A restaurant serving food from northern Italy the great and pasta is at 114 West church in Champaign. The staff at the Great Imposter encourage you to

join them in supporting W. while I AM 580. And now we go to Dave Dickey who has today's numbers thank you very much. And good afternoon everyone we start today with the outside markets where we have nudes from the New York Mercantile Exchange which declared a foursome as your on remaining September natural gas delivery of stew to the closure of the Sabine pipeline which operates a key Henry Hub delivery port in a little leaves the end up in August. The Henry Hub shut down also during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina and reopened a day later after a facility avoided significant damage though it's the second straight month that we're seeing a force majeure after the August contract liveries were force majeure last month. Now September force majeure today isn't having that much of an impact at the moment though on the October natural gas contract. It's trading at 12:53 down 26 cents on the day. Over on the Chicago Board of Trade we're seeing some

interesting lock steps. We had led the corn higher for the last several sessions but wheat down today and that is in pulling the other commodities down as well although at the moment we're seeing on the Live to make wheat trying to make a little bit of a comeback a little bit of a rally. Let's go ahead and look at the current numbers for you December wheat at three thirty three and a half up one and a quarter March 3.