WIth many college deadlines past, we get a glimpse of just how competative it is out there:
11% (vs. this time last year — deadline is 3/1) Temple
“down” Maryland-College park
-0.7% Yale
Whitman (no change)
+1% Bowdoin
+1% U Conn
+2% U of California System (overall)
…..+5.5% UCLA (72,000 –> 76,000 apps!)
+2.3% NYU
+3% George Washington
+3% Illinois Urbana-Champaign
+3% Lafayette
+3% Union
+3% Vassar
+3% Williams
+3% [...]

I agree with Jeffrey Brenzel, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale,when he explains that “We’ve reversed the equation–that the college is going to make something out of your life, when actually it’s the student who makes something out of college,” he says.He goes on to explain in an interview with the Huffington Post
:
“Any strong college [...]

Simply fascinating…and depressing. Cheating has long been a major plague of education. In a rare glimpse inside Korean students seeking admissions to US colleges, The Korea Times has launched an investigative series. The first examines Ghost writers–students hiring professionals to not only write their college admission essays, but also art portfolios.
A high school graduate in [...]

What They’re Reading on College Campuses
1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 2 (in previous survey)

3. Nightlight: A Parody by the staff of The Harvard Lampoon 10

4. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown 1

5. [...]

From The Economist:

Based on the study from OECD. Learn more:

The BBC reports that: “As of January 22, the number of UK-based applicants, 499,451, was up 22.1%, while overseas applications rose 28.7% to 71,105. And more would-be students may yet apply.” This is just the latest of several years of increases.

The BBC further reports that the Russell Group–a consortium of the most competitive universities–experienced increases [...]

This time at Vanderbilt:
On Feb. 5, an email that was supposed to be a courtesy to international applicants waiting for their letters of acceptance from Vanderbilt was sent accidentally to 56 other students who had not made the cut.

Someone was a little too quick on the draw over at George Washington U and sent acceptance emails to students who were not accepted…
“A very small number of Early Decision 2 applicants received the email in error,” Napper said in an e-mail Wednesday. “We realized the computer glitch soon after it was sent and have [...]

The AMA made a profound mistake years ago in predicting there would be too many doctors. This resulted in only 1 new medical school opening in a thrity year period. It, of course, proved dumb since the US population kept going up and up. Rural communities already go without doctors. Of course this scarcity has [...]

Times–they are a changin’–or so it goes in financial aid for international students. Up until recently, things had looked more positive with 8 colleges offering need-blind for international students:

MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts
Harvard University in Massachusetts
Princeton University in New Jersey
Yale University in Connecticut
Williams College in Massachusetts
Middlebury College in Vermont
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire
Amherst [...]