Another Source Declares Which Colleges are the Best!
- Nina Berler
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Bom dia, parents and counselors! Last week, I some time away, which included a trip to a spectacular campus in Coimbra, Portugal (see below). Thinking back, it reminds me that we never know where the college process will take us, but it's sure to be an adventure. And what about your student's journey? Follow along for the latest on college-related issues.
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To Find Out Which Colleges are Best, Who Would You Ask?
We can get out of the country, but we can't escape this endless, marketing-fueled discussion. Last month, I mentioned that LinkedIn had its version of best colleges. Now, the Wall Street Journal has announced the 26 Best Colleges in America:
You don't need to get beyond the AI-generated summary to find out that Stanford led the pack.
The Journal placed Babson just behind Stanford, citing the Wellesley, MA, college's entrepreneurial focus, including pitching ideas in a capstone course.
We really like that Baruch College (NYC) topped the list of colleges offering best value. Baruch is a special part of the CUNY system.
But what does the best really mean? The Journal evaluated which colleges provide "financial success for graduates." But In an era of content creation and hype, please don't believe what you read about [name of] college being better than [name of college] or [name of college] falling to [wherever it winds up on the list]. What's good for your student may be the wrong environment for their closest friends. Moreover, a student's college experience isn't defined by its branding but rather by what the student makes of their experience.
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Which Math is Best? That Depends . . .
Should students take calc or stat? This is frequently discussed in my meetings with families. Sure, there are occasional humanities students who find calculus stimulating and will succeed in the math courses. But calculus can be quite difficult and anxiety-provoking with little or no use later in life.
The word to high-flying applicants is to attempt the calculus, alleviating any doubts in the minds of admissions officers. Meanwhile, College Board didn't help with its AP Precalc, perhaps more a revenue producer than a college course at many institutions.
As reported in Inside Higher Ed, the calc-stat debate was the subject of a panel at last month's NACAC annual conference. A panelist from nonprofit Just Equations shared survey feedback, including comments from a school counselor who described “'an arms race' among students seeking ever higher-level math courses, where 'the more everybody takes, the more everybody else takes.'" It sounds like APs! Andy Borst, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Georgia, told attendees that some engineering profs found students with calc "getting pummeled by their Calculus II or differential equations classes in college," resulting in frustrated professors and students who changed their learning trajectories.
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Not Usually Trending: World Language
Leave it to Bruno to counter a trend, this time involving world language. As reported in Inside Higher Ed, Brown students launched a Tagalog@Brown campaign. You see, students already have access to Tagalog through a Group Independent Study Project (GISP), a hallmark of Brown learning, but they want Tagalog to be a standard course offering. Notes author Karin Fisher: "The Brown effort stands in contrast to broader trends in foreign-language learning at American colleges. Language programs have increasingly been on the chopping block as institutions deal with budget shortfalls." That's just so very sad.
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Is Grade Distribution Still a Thing?
Remember the grading curve? Recently, Inside Higher Ed profiled what's going on in a particular department at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. That department, Communication, Professional and Computer Skills (CPS), is staffed entirely by adjunct faculty, who received an email telling them how (not) to grade: "instructors of standard, nonhonors courses must make the GPA of each section average between 3.3 and 3.5, and honors course GPA averages must fall within 0.2 points of the 'section’s cumulative student GPA.'"
According to the article, the such directives are already in place at Michigan's Ross School of Business, where "core class instructors must follow a distribution that allows 40 percent or fewer undergraduates to earn an A-minus or higher, 90 percent or fewer undergraduates to earn a B or higher, and at least 10 percent of undergraduates must earn between a B-minus and an F."
Is your student thinking about IU Kelley? They have a new way of applying this year known as direct admissions. According to a post, "The new direct admissions process allows students to move beyond traditional metrics and share their academic and professional interests directly with the Kelley Admission Committee." Students not admitted to Kelley used to be able to appeal. Now, they can try to transfer into Kelley after a year in another IU program, with the decision based on course and GPA requirements.
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Higher Ed in Portugal: Getting the Campus Right!
Last week, this college counselor made an unusual college stop: the University of Coimbra. The university, over 700 years old and a UNESCO World Heritage site, is high up in the hills between Lisbon and Porto. I checked out many of its magnificent STEM buildings along with its chapel and palace.
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What Does $90,000 a Year Get You? A Badge!
As featured in Inside Higher Ed, another liberal-arts institution is going career-ready, thanks to a $25 million investment. This time it's Brandeis, which will launch a Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts. Students will be assigned a career advisor and receive a career competency-based transcript. They can even "earn digital badges in classes and co-curricular activities to verify the skills they’re learning." (Try putting that on a resume.)
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October is a month for settling in comfortably after a brisk walk. But don't cozy up to college on your own; reach out with questions or to set up a meeting.
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