Admissions Directory Weekly Roundup (9/21)

Here are the college admissions resources that were added to Admissions Directory over the past week:

Unigo College Search

The Women's College Coalition

Work Hard, Play Hard, Work Hard Some More at MIT

Vanderbilt Class of 2012 Profile

Omniac Education Blog Interview, Part II

Here's part II of my interview with Mark Truman on the Omniac Attack college admissions blog. In this segment I give the background behind the creation of Admissions Directory, and describe how I see it helping students and parents with their admissions research.

Here's part I of the interview if you missed it.

Shameless Self Promotion

Today I'd like to draw your attention to the latest post by Mark Truman on his Omniac Attack blog. Mark was curious about what brought me into the college admissions blog/web business so he interviewed me on the phone about a week ago. This is the first of two installments covering the first half of the conversation.

There's not much information about me on my Blogger profile, so here's a way to learn a little more about my background and motivation for writing this blog and launching AdmissionsDirectory.com. So it truly is shameless self promotion!

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I enjoy reading Mark's blog. He's an admissions and test prep consultant in the Southwest who writes insightful and entertaining posts on a variety of admissions topics. I thank him for taking the time to interview and feature me on Omniac Attack.

Admissions Directory Weekly Roundup (9/14)

Here are the college admissions resources that were added to Admissions Directory over the past week:


College Interview - Be Prepared For These Common Questions
MIT: Meet the Class of 2012
The Value of College Visits
Tips for the 6 Essay Options on the Common App
College Board Majors and Careers Central
College Admissions Essay Coaching

Colleges May be Visiting Your Area This Fall

(updated with several additional schools including Northeastern, Rutgers, SMU, Tulane & Washington U. in St. Louis)

I just noticed a link on the MIT admissions site with their Fall travel schedule. MIT shows up here in Atlanta in mid-October. Here's MIT Admissions Director Matt McGann's overview of what will be covered. If you live near a major city it's likely that many selective colleges will be visiting this Fall. Check the admissions sites for colleges you're interested in to see if they'll be visiting your area. As another example, here's Carnegie Mellon's Fall travel schedule.

College Travel Schedules:

MIT
Carnegie Mellon
Vanderbilt roadshow schedule -- a 56 city blitz.
Duke
Stanford
Johns Hopkins
UVA
Cornell
Drexel University
Northwestern
Princeton
Purdue
Penn
Harvard, Princeton & UVA
Dartmouth
Columbia
NYU
Northeastern University
Rutgers
SMU
Tulane
Washington University (St. Louis)

Upcoming Duke Engineering & Rice Admissions Activities

If you're interested in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering or Rice University there are a couple of upcoming admissions activities you should be aware of.

The Pratt School at Duke is hosting "In Focus" on Saturday October 4, from 8:15am-4:00pm. Click on the link above for a full agenda. Unfortunately this is happening on the same day as the SAT (who planned that?!), which Greg is taking, so we won't be flying up to Durham to attend.

Rice is hosting "Discover Rice", a general admissions program aimed at interested students from outside the Houston area. It happens the next day, Sunday October 5, from 1pm - 6pm in Houston. We may take this trip. Greg's interested in Rice and it seems like a good fit. His main concern is that it's located in Houston. So since he's never been there a good way to see if it's worth applying to (and possibly attending) Rice is to experience the campus and the city first hand. If we're going to do a campus visit before applications are due this seems like a good opportunity. Of course between the day trip to Houston and the SAT, it will be one busy weekend.

Admissions Directory Weekly Roundup (9/7)

Here are the college admissions resources that were added to Admissions Directory over the past week:

Ranking of Top Universities with Great Engineering
Yale Student Essay Advice (& rough drafts!)
Stop Applying to Schools You Hate
Writing the College Application Essay: The Key to Acceptance at the College of your Choice
4 Tips on Nailing Your College Admission Essay
High School Grades Matter More Than You Think
MIT 2008 Admissions Statistics
College Admissions Road Shows

Ranking Top Universities with Great Engineering

Greg is interested in going to a great engineering school, and specifically one with a strong computer science program. Greg is also interested in going to a top ranked university with a strong liberal arts curriculum. Some colleges are ranked high in both (e.g. MIT & Stanford), but many are strong in one and relatively weak in the other (e.g. our hometown Georgia Tech which ranks 4th in undergraduate engineering but 35th overall according to the US News Rankings).

Now that the 2009 rankings have been published I've created a special composite ranking of colleges that blends the US News engineering, computer engineering and overall 'best' national universities lists. (of course keep in mind that any college ranking is imperfect/controversial and should only be used as a general guide for your own detailed research.)

Without further ado, here's the first ever US News/Cobb Ranking of Top Colleges with Great Engineering:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Stanford University
3. California Institute of Technology
4. Princeton University
5. Cornell University
6. University of California--Berkeley
7. Carnegie Mellon University
8. Northwestern University
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. University of Michigan
11. Rice University
12. Columbia University
13. Duke University
14. Johns Hopkins University
15. Georgia Institute of Technology
16. University of California--Los Angeles
17. University of Illinois
18. University of Wisconsin

This list tracks pretty closely with how Greg had intuitively ranked these schools based on his research. The one surprise was Northwestern, which hadn't been on his radar until now.

If you'd like a copy of my spreadsheet, or more detailed description of the model I built to generate these rankings, please leave a comment with your email address.

Three Different Essay Writing Resources

Tonight I stumbled upon and entered three different 'Essay' resources into Admissions Directory, so I thought I'd share them with you.

I started by reading this post on Omniac Attack written by Mark Truman, an Admissions and Test Prep counselor/blogger who I really enjoy reading. It was posted a few months ago with the premise that summer is a good time to start on your essay(s). Even if you're not already underway, it's not too late to start. In fact Mark's first point in his article "4 Tips on Nailing Your College Admission Essay" is to start writing early. It's still early. Get started!

Continuing to catch up on past Omniac posts I found this one about a current Yale student and admissions blogger that described his (obviously successful) essay tips. Besides providing some good essay advice, 'Daniel' also included all the different drafts of his essay and commentary on the changes he made between each of them.

In his post, Daniel also raved about a book called On Writing the College Application Essay: The Key to Acceptance at the College of your Choice. I haven't read (nor heard of this book), but 24 people rated it 4.5 stars (out of 5) on Amazon, and of course Daniel used it to get into Yale!

Make Personal Contact with Admissions Directors

In a recent post entitled "College Admissions Directors are People Too" admissions counselor Mark Truman makes the point that you should try to interact with admissions directors at high priority colleges as a way to enhance your chances. "And because of that desire (to see applicants succeed), reaching out to them is an extremely successful way to improve your application."

This rings true with what I've heard as we've toured various campuses. The admissions director at UVA spoke of how when it comes down to a close decision between two candidates she is the person who will be pitching you before the admissions committee. Obviously the more she knows you, about you and your strong interest in her school, the more effective she'll be arguing your case. I know I've heard from other admissions directors that they keep track of how many times candidates have contacted or interacted with the admissions office as a demonstraton of thier level of interest. Of course, don't over do it. Admissions directors are very busy people, especially starting in a month or so when they start reading all those applications. So don't stalk them and don't contact them for trivial reasons. If you're a pest this strategy could backfire. Instead, think of creative ways to establish personal contact so that they can put a voice with a name with an application.

In this vein, Greg plans to find and call 'his' admissions director at Duke to arrange a conversation with someone in the Computer Science department. When we visited there the engineering tour was largely devoid of information about Computer Science. So Greg has a real desire to learn more. By reaching out to his admissions director he can gather this information, demonstrate interest and can meet her/him in the process.