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At EducatedQuest there has always been a saying” Colleges are priced like houses and sold like cars.” This is very true with respect to the ways that publicly-supported schools post tuition and fees.

Whenever you shop for a car you might see ads that mention a sticker price, which is a low-ball base price before taxes, license fees, destination charges and popular options  are tacked on. That price is meant to get you into the showroom where the sales people will try to get you into a better-equipped vehicle and take the dealer’s financing. Thankfully, car buyers have the Internet; they can find a true market value, usually a lower price, for the car they want as well as the true value to the dealer for the car they already own. Not quite so with many state schools.

Whenever you visit a state university Web site you might find the following:

• An honest depiction of tuition and mandatory fees for the coming school year or the one that is concluding. There are still schools that charge one price to all full-time students–typically 12 to 18 credits–regardless of their major;
• A higher tuition and fee charge for students enrolled in specific schools within the university. For example, Temple charges full-time students at its Fox School of Business and its Tyler School of the Arts more than it charges students in the liberal arts college or the communications school;
• A higher cost-per-credit for courses taken in a specific school within the university. For example, Miami University of Ohio, among other schools, charges an additional $50 per credit for all courses taken within its undergraduate business school. The students might be enrolled in the business program or in other schools within the university; or,
• A higher fee, in addition to tuition, for students who are enrolled in specific schools within the university. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Madison mentions that business students are assessed an additional $1,000 in tuition and fees, while engineering students pay an additional $1,400. Rutgers-New Brunswick charges a “campus fee” for students who live on campus; commuters do not pay this fee.

There are reasons colleges choose the latter three practices. For one, they want to show that they are trying to hold down tuition increases, so they will seek an increase somewhere else. Some colleges, for example those that have a top business or engineering school, have decentralized career services or alumni relations offices. In you attend one of these schools you are an alumnus of the university as well as an alumnus of the school within it. Both might hit you up for donations when the time comes. These schools may run separate career development programs–it’s not uncommon, for example, for an engineering school to run its own co-op program while other colleges in the university do not–though some really help the students. Others run “capstone” or group courses that occupy considerable faculty hours.

These practices will continue. There’s no sense trying to fight them, especially if your student is attending a university that is known for excellence in career services. The university is taking advantage of the demand for education; those student enrolled in high-demand majors help to subsidize the education of those who are not.

What can students and families do?

• Read the fine print on the tuition and fees page. Know exactly what you will be expected to pay, and when. At some schools students are enrolled in a “pre” status for their first three or four semesters. They may pay the lower rate before they are formally admitted to their school and major.
• Ask a decision maker within the school to tell you where the additional fees are going. Are they used for student services, academic programs unique to the school, or something else?  If you are in a position where you are choosing between schools, go with the one that provides the more thorough and thoughtful answer. Also ask if these fees are likely to increase. Some costs, such as instructional expenses and technology, go up every year.
• Play with the net price calculator on the school’s financial aid Web pages and make sure these added fees can be factored into your costs as well as eligibility for need-based and merit-based financial aid. Some calculators may have a drop down for major or school, so that the appropriate tuition and fee charges can be factored. However, others may not. Assessments per credit are hard to factor. Not every student has the same course schedule. In that case, consult the financial aid office at the school.

Differential pricing is here to stay. While it is hardly a best practice, it is one that every student and family should be prepared to address. It might even be a reason to choose one major, for instance economics over a program in the business school or chemistry over chemical engineering. But if the school is going to do more for the extra money, don’t fret over the dollars and cents.

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Ed made his furthest trek west to date to visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While there he attended some writing classes, as he had done in prior years. Only this time it was a working trip and he came out of it with enough material to write his usual comprehensive profile. He also made his first Pinterest board with more photos to show. We’ll be making Pinterest boards from all our visits from here on; this gives us more room to share more photos with you!

Wisconsin is a great university, one of the best performing in the country. It is also one of the few places you can go tray-sledding or sailing, when either are in season, without leaving the campus. Madison, aka “Mad City” or “Mad Town” is also one of the best college towns in the country. Any student who is ready to take on the challenges of going to a large university can get a great education and have fun here.

For more, check out Ed’s profile and Pinterest board now!

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Parents, students and others who follow college admissions know that May 1st is the deadline by which enrollment deposits must be submitted for the 2012-13 school year. Those who do not like their current college options, though they might have submitted a deposit somewhere, might want to know that other options are still available.

According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), there are 375 colleges and universities reporting that they still had room to consider and accept more applicants for Fall, 2012. NACAC posts the list of schools as well as summary information on their site through June 29th.

According to NACAC, a total of 362 school have space for entering freshmen, while 374 have room for transfer students. While these schools likely overlap, there are 373 that still have financial aid available as well as 354 that can provide housing. The total number of schools with space available is the highest it has been in more than ten years. Seventy percent of these schools are private while 30 percent are public.

Among the schools on the NACAC list are:

Top Liberal Arts Colleges

• Sarah Lawrence College (NY)
• Smith College (MA)

Colleges That Change Lives: These liberal arts colleges were listed in Loren Pope’s book as being schools that provided a quality education:

• Agnes Scott College (GA)
• Birmingham Southern College (AL)
• Centre College (KY)
• Eckerd College (FL)
• Evergreen State College (WA)
• Guilford College (NC)
• Hampshire College (MA)
• Hope College (MI)
• Juniata College (PA)
• Kalamazoo College (MI)
• Knox College (IL)
• Lawrence University (WI)
• Lynchburg College (VA)
• Marlboro College (VT)
• New College of Florida (FL)
• St. John’s College (MD and NM)
• Southwestern University (TX)
• Ursinus College (PA)

Up-and-Coming Public Universities:

•  Truman State University
• University of Maryland-Baltimore County
• University of North Carolina-Wilmington

Big Schools in the Major Football Conferences:

• Arizona State University
• Louisiana State University
• University of Arizona
• University of Florida
• University of Iowa
• University of Oklahoma
• University of Utah

And a very good big school that doesn’t play football:

• University of Vermont

Some Basketball Powers, too:

• Gonzaga University
• University of Kansas
• Valparaiso University
• Villanova University
• Xavier University (OH)

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Ed spent the past week and a half traveling to schools in Ohio.  He spied a copy of this book in the Miami University of Ohio bookstore. The he read it from cover to cover for the duration of his trip.  Curran, the former director of career services at Duke and Greenwald, a education policy expert at MIT joined together to write one of the best career guides that any high school or college student or their parents could buy. Published in 2006, the advice and information is fresh today.

Smart Moves is organized in three sections. The first  focuses on the need for liberal arts students to take more charge of their career development earlier in their college education. Choose the subject(s) they love but learn what students before them have done with the knowledge. The authors admit that liberal arts students face more challenges in the job market, but also explain why they are not insurmountable for the student who is continually learning and seeking relevant experience, even if it means working for free.  This section also dispels six myths about a liberal arts degree as well as the five smartest moves on the way to career success. These won’t be listed here. Buy the book.

The second section, the true meat of Smart Moves, profiles the career paths taken by 23 liberal arts graduates in business, public service, creative fields, employment overseas and offbeat jobs. Interestingly enough, most of these graduates did not continue their education immediately after college; they found internships, and often full-time jobs related to their interests and grew a career from there. Sometimes the career involved an advanced degree later, other times it did not. But none of these people found that their college education was wasted. The profiles range from eight to 16 pages each; you’ll get a very full picture of each person.

The last section, also useful, indexes careers and terms to the individual profiles. You can learn how the graduates profiled use alumni interviews or business skills or which found work in education, journalism or law, among other subjects and fields. This encourages the reader to review the profiles more than once to learn the most from peer experiences.

Smart Moves is one of the best of its kind because it profiles graduates who started out as peers to the students who are most likely to read it. Most of the people profiled started with little to nothing in the way of money or connections, but they learned to take charged of their careers early in their working lives. It is not hard for students to stop by a career center early in their college education, but it takes peers to get them to make the best use of the time they spend in that office. Smart Moves is highly readable, a great book for parents to give the high school or college graduate. After they read it for themselves.

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This week parents and students are down to the wire, trying to select schools from those that have offered admission, and quite possibly those that have a waiting list. The very good student, as opposed to the best of the best, has an interesting choice: go to a “brand name” school such as a flagship state university or one that is lesser known in the media that might have offered a generous scholarship.

EducatedQuest has profiled schools that have very strong brand names, such as Penn State, UConn and UNC-Chapel Hill and some like Ramapo College of New Jersey and SUNY-Geneseo that known mainly in their home state.  The quality of education a student will get in the classroom does not depend on the brand, but on the efforts made by the school and the students. Having very good and excellent students will help any school maintain high retention and graduation rates. But the best performing public schools profiled here do “something extra” to help their students succeed. It might be a first-year seminar, experiential learning, accessible advisors or some other practice that helps guide them to graduation.

However, while public schools have been the first one profiled here, it is important to tell you that many private schools also serve their students well. They are not all “elite” schools where a student needs 2100 SATs across the board to gain admission or receive merit-based financial aid.

For example, imagine a college-bound student in Pennsylvania who wants to stay in-state. S/he can get into Penn State-University Park which is a fine state school university. However, if s/he falls in the middle of the applicant pool, around a 3.6 GPA and between 1800 and 1900 across the board on the SATs, it is almost impossible for this student to qualify for merit-based aid. That same student might also qualify for admission to some very good liberal arts colleges including Allegheny, Juniata and Ursinus, and qualify for enough merit aid to narrow the gap between the costs of the public and private schools.

Penn State is certainly better known across the country than Allegheny, Juniata and Ursinus. It has more living alumni, over 560,000 at last count, than practically any state school in America. The success of the football team extends their brand. Regardless of wherever they live, Penn State graduates will be able to run into enough of their kin to be able to organize a watch party. So, the brand can help build bonds and connections with strangers as well as friends.

But branding has little to do with learning in the classroom. Suppose that student is interested in biology. At Penn State s/he will sit in large lecture classes during freshman and sophomore year and take multiple choice tests. Labs will be in large rooms as well and led by teaching assistants. For those who can learn without the help of a professor, this is fine. They’ll get through the class. But it’s fair to ask how much biology they will actually learn. And not everyone can learn this way. Those people might be happier, and have a better chance to earn a biology degree, at the smaller liberal arts college.

The keys to choosing the right school are to ask:

• Will we receive the aid we need to stay here?
• How have the faculty and administration done at guiding students to graduation?
• Are the alumni enthusiastic enough to be an effective network?

Sometimes the lesser known schools have better answers to these questions. And they will be the better fit. Don’t worry too much about a name. Choose the school that will work hardest in your student’s best interest. If its the one with the large alumni base and the football team, then Mazol Tov, and put the sticker on the rear window. If it is not, buy the sticker for the right school anyway. Show everyone you made the right choice.

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Today there is a story on Yahoo that mentions that one out of every two recent college graduates is underemployed or unemployed. To quote the story:

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Read the comments following the story. You might be disturbed by their tone. The tendency is to blame President Obama or to blame the graduates for choosing a “useless” major. Blame neither, for students need direction from family, school teachers and counselors and working professionals to help them make a career decision. College has historically been a place where students “find themselves.” Those who are serious discover a major, or even a career path with the help of faculty, advisors or internship sponsors. Those who are not might wind up with a degree, but little else. It’s fair to ask if these people should have ever gone to college in the first place.  Some of them might have benefited more from employment or a shorter academic path to a job. Or maybe they could have been better prepared to tackle college-level work.

For those who are concerned that their son or daughter might not succeed in college ask yourselves:

• What kind of job could s/he get right after high school?
• Would that job pay enough for him/her to live on their own within a short time?
• What schools could s/he be admitted?
• Do they offer an attractive alternative to a traditional four-year degree?
• How much debt do their students incur after graduation?
• Do they do a good job helping students find part-time and full-time work?
• Will they require your student to take remedial courses?

It used to be that high school graduates could find work in the local factory and advance to a good-paying job within three or four years, provided the employer didn’t skip town. Those employers also trained their employees on the job site. That’s far from reality today. While factory workers do not need a four-year degree, they do need skills in math, statistics and quality control that they are not likely to acquire in high school. That means a certificate, mostly likely from a community college or a reputable trade school.

It used to be that a high school kid could buy and fix up a used car for less than a thousand bucks. If he was good he could turn a profit and become a mechanic right after he got his diploma. But a car from the 60s had the same basic platform as a car from the 70s: straight six or V-8 engine, two or three speed automatic transmission, three or four-speed manual transmission and rear wheel drive. If you tweaked a ’67 Firebird in the garage, you could tweak a ’77 Firebird. But today’s car buyers have more choices: gas, diesel or hybrid engines; transmissions with as many as eight speeds; front, rear or all-wheel drive. Chances are there’s a popular combination of car that an 18 year-old grease money will not know how to fix. That too, means at least a certificate, or quite possibly an associate’s degree, mostly likely from a community college or a reputable trade school.

The point is that college is not useless or a waste of time when students and their families work together to find the best way to use that time. The traditional four-year degree may not be the right path, or the most lucrative, for everyone, but higher education offers options for students of all interests and abilities. It is a shame when the media leads people to believe that it is only an expensive ticket to debt and despair.

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One thing you will never learn about from a campus tour or information is the relationship that a college or university has with its alumni. While the schools provide alumni giving rates to U.S. News and other media, that is only one picture of how they stay in touch with their graduates. Top-performing schools consider their alumni their most important asset and look to them for more than just financial contributions. They see them as a network for each other as well as for current students. Some schools, most notably Rutgers-New Brunswick and the University of Mary Washington (VA), relate to their alumni by asking them to maintain ties to the activities and organizations that they took part in as students. Class reunions have become a less important outreach than those past ties.

All of the school profiles on Educated Quest feature information about alumni relations including online services, special activities and long-standing traditions that bond an alumni community. It obviously helps when a school has a strong athletic identity as schools like Penn State, UConn and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The ties come through sports events. However, other schools such as St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the University of Mary Washington do not field teams that play on national TV, yet these schools have higher alumni giving rates than many flagship state schools. They can bring alumni who live close by to campus for special events.

Students and parents should make it a point to meet with the alumni relations office as a means to whittle down a short list of schools where they have received acceptance letters. Here are a few questions to ask during the meeting:

• How many living alumni does your school have?
• Where do the most recent graduates live and work?
• Do alumni network with each other through a school Web site or through social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?
• Are all alumni members of the alumni association, or only those who pay dues?
• What services are provided to all alumni online?
• Are there opportunities for students to interact with alumni when they are seeking an internship or full-time job?
• Do alumni come back to campus for events?
• Do they interact with students at those events?
• What traditions bond all alumni, regardless of when they received their degree?
• Are there local alumni clubs where our family lives, and how helpful are they to students?
• Do these local alumni clubs run “send-off” events for incoming freshmen?
• Do they provide scholarships?
• Does the alumni relations office help to promote the school to employers?

Alumni are not only a school’s most important asset, they are also its most unique asset. The more active an association is at providing social activities and maintaining connections to alumni, the better the school is likely to be.

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Educated Quest has been to several top-performing public colleges and universities, while Ed, our master school profiler has also worked with many private schools. When he visits a school he attends the same information session and takes the same campus tour as students and parents do.

In general student ambassadors do an excellent job of representing their schools. They should. They are chosen from a larger pool of the most enthusiastic students on campus. They are involved with extracurricular activities and are usually doing well in their major. While every tour is different, you will know where to find the student union, the admissions office and the major academic buildings before you leave. You will also know the major historic landmarks and whether you can buy tickets to the major sports events. Most of the time you can see a freshman dorm room. But here are 10 things you are not likely to learn from the tours and information sessions.

1. How much has tuition gone up since your (the student ambassador) freshman year?
2. How long did it take for you (the student ambassador) to adjust to this school?
3. What academic programs are the easiest/hardest to get into as well as get through?
4. How easy/hard is it to get a job after graduation?
5. How much debt am I likely to take on?
6. What percent of the entering freshmen graduate on time?
7. How many living alumni does this school have?
8. Where do most of them live and work?
9. Do people attend the football and basketball games when the team is losing?
10. What do people do on campus when there’s no football during the weekend?

We can think of more questions, but these are a good start. You can find the answers to these from other sources, and we can help. If you have a questions that has frequently gone unanswered, please share it with us.

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This past week the educated quest took us to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Long regarded as one of the nation’s best public universities, Wisconsin is the rare flagship university that cannot house more than 25 percent of its students. With the completion of a new dorm, Lakeshore, this year will be the first that Wisconsin can provide housing to all freshmen who ask for it. Continuing students will also have the opportunity to choose a dorm room on a first-come, first served basis. While Wisconsin and Rutgers-New Brunswick both have approximately 29,000 undergraduates, Rutgers, with the opening a new 1,500 bed apartment complex, will have twice as many beds on campus.

Whenever you visit Wisconsin, or any other large state university, you should not only know where your student is likely to live during their freshman year; you should also know where s/he is likely to live afterwards. Very few state schools will guarantee housing to continuing students. Lotteries are not unusual. Schools will also make housing assignments based on accumulated credits. However, no school wants to limit its residence life to their freshman class. Continuing students work as resident advisors, but they are also desired as residents.

Here are some housing-related issues to consider over the next couple of weeks if you and your student have not chosen a college:

• What is your selection of housing options for the freshman year? Some schools dedicate rooms, wings, floors or entire residence halls to freshmen. This helps bond an incoming class, however it makes it harder for freshmen to get to know upperclassmen who know the school better.  Freshmen who have the option of living with students in other classes should visit the residence life Web site and ask themselves: Where might I want to live for four years, if I have to live in a dorm room? Some dorms have more amenities, while others are located closer to classes or social activities. However, residence life officers like continuity. Priority for assignments sometimes goes to people who already live in the building where they want to live.
• Can your student join a learning community? Learning communities are organized around shared interests, some academic, others social or service oriented. Non-academic learning communities also need leadership, which continuing students provide. Academic learning communities may have programs that are tied to course credits, but credit may be limited to freshmen.
• What is the range of housing options outside of the residence halls? In Madison students could share houses, pledge fraternities or sororities, live in private residence halls that have services which mirror those in university buildings, and lease luxury apartments, some with lakefront views. Contact the housing office on campus and research the rental Web sites.  Your student should have a back-up plan if s/he cannot live in a university residence hall during the sophomore year.  In Madison it was possible for students to spend more than they would to live in university housing, but there was also the opportunity to spend the same, or less, if s/he knew their options.
• If you want your student to live in a modern apartment complex then shop early but commit as late as possible, While landlords love to get deposits early, those with vacancies in the spring are more likely to offer incentives to fill up their units for the fall. Some landlords will offer 10 month leases versus 12 months, knowing that students go home during the summer.
• Price and location will determine not only where your student is likely to live, but also a need to use public transportation to get to classes. At Wisconsin students ride local mass transit for free, as part of an agreement with the student government. Other schools, including James Madison and UNC-Chapel Hill, provide free access to similar services. Rutgers-New Brunswick operates the second-largest bus system in New Jersey. Most universities do not want student vehicles on campus.  However, not all students like to ride buses.

The best college towns, like Madison, have a very high quality of life, but it also comes with a high price tag. It is possible to spend as much to live in a luxury apartment in Madison as one would spend to live in a nice neighborhood in Chicago or Minneapolis. However, it is also possible for an astute student and family to find the right mix of price, location and quality when they do their homework.

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Today’s edition of Inside Higher Education has an interesting piece about a study conducted by Rachel Rubin, a doctoral candidate in education at Harvard, about how the most selective colleges manage a holistic admissions process. Rubin managed to contact admissions offices at 63 of the 75 most selective colleges and universities, mostly private schools and pursued them to explain how they evaluate applicants. Rubin’s finding was an eye-opener, at least for me.

Seventy six percent of these schools, she learned, start the process by considering an applicants academic merits. To quote the author directly from the story:

This may be based on grades, rigor of high school courses, test scores and so forth. While there is some difference in the relative weight given to various factors, there is a straightforward value on doing better than others in whatever formula the college uses.

However, 21 percent consider a student’s fit first, presuming that most if not all of the applicants are academically qualified. These were the most important criteria when fit was considered first, based on Rubin’s survey results:

When admissions committees consider fit first, Rubin says, they consider the academic qualifications afterwards. Most schools have two readers make the first review of the applicant’s file; others become more involved when there are disagreements between their findings.

However, one of her findings, according to the story, might prove to be controversial. Whether applicants are first considered based on academics or fit, they are often considered against applicants most similar to themselves, especially when it comes to special talents (athletics, the arts, for example, or past preparation in an academic major that has limited enrollment) or a student’s ethnicity or their home state or country rather than against the entire applicant pool.

In other words, a school has concluded that it needs to fill certain voids. The need to fill them dominates in selecting a class. Applicants who do not help the school fill such voids have less chance of gaining admission. Those who do must be the best qualified in their group, no matter how large or small that group is. It’s obviously better to be part of a small, but interestingly unique group when applying to these schools. For example, an excellent student from a war-torn nation that is an ally of the United States is more likely to gain admission to a selective school than a peer who has a year’s worth of advanced placement credits from a top prep school that sends tens of applications to that college each year.

In addition, Rubin writes, after schools have used up their budget for need-based aid, the review process will favor applicants who can pay the full cost of attendance. These applicants are also evaluated against each other, as opposed to the full applicant pool. This might appear to favor students who do not need financial aid, however, the number of prospective full-pay students who apply to their schools is likely to be larger than the number of students who have special talents or are members of an under-represented minority. However, the excellent student from a middle to upper middle class background loses out.

What this tells me is that students who are seriously interested in these schools need to consider why they want to go and how they might stand out in the applicant pool. A desire to be one among an elite many is not something to write about on the application form.   Authenticity and uniqueness catch the admissions officers eyes.