So you have narrowed down your list, and come to the conclusion that you have a school that you LOVE and they offer early decision and/or school(s) that you like that have early action. Should you apply using early decision or early action?
Are your grades as good as they can be? If you are counting [...]

From Forbes

1. Williams College
2.Princeton University
3.Amherst College
4.United States Military Academy
5.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6.Stanford University
7.Swarthmore College
8.Harvard University
9.Claremont McKenna College
10.Yale University
11.United States Air Force Academy
12.Wellesley College
13.Columbia University
14.Haverford College
15.Wesleyan University
16.Whitman College
17.Pomona College
18.Northwestern University
19.California Institute of Technology
20.University of Chicago

VIEW THE COMPLETE LIST
As to their methodology:

No. 1: Student Satisfaction (27.5%)
Student Evaluations from RateMyProfessor.com (17.5%)
Freshman-to-Sophomore Retention Rates (5%)
Student Evaluations from MyPlan.com (5%)
No. 2: [...]

First up, Washington Monthly National University rankings:
Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research(producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). For an explanation of each category, click here.

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Institution
sort a-zsort by state

Social Mobility
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Research
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Service
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Overall
Score
Students
receiving
Pell grants
Predicted grad rateActual grad rateRank
Research
expenditures,
in millionsRank
Bachelor’s
to PhD
rank
Science &
engineering
PhD’s
awardedRank
Faculty
receiving
significant
awardsRank
Faculty in
national
academiesRank
Peace
Corps
Rank
ROTC
Rank
Federal
work-study
funds spent
on serviceRank
Community
service
participation
and hours
served
Rank
Service
staff,
courses and
financial aid
support
Rank

1
Univ. of California, San [...]

Now that the common app has been open for three days, time to start tackling your personal statement/college essay.
I have written extensively about the subject and gathered some of the best links on the web to help you–just click here.

A new book, Higher Education by Andrew Harker, is generating some intense discussion. As part of the research for the book, they have generated an interesting list of colleges where great teaching is happening:
As we traveled around the country researching our book, we, in fact, found some colleges that we thought were doing their job [...]

20 Million downloads at itunes U:

This impressive feet includes:

2,085,500 downloads
over 2,286,704 visitors downloaded files
currently averaging* 491,000 downloads a week
89.3% of visitors from outside the United Kingdom
1 in 16.5 downloaders go on to visit the OU website (to 30 June 2010)
314 albums containing 2,727 tracks (1,231 audio, 1,496 video)
250 of the albums contain audio visual material [...]

Today I gave a workshop on using personality testing in the college search process. The site we used:
Shanghai American School Guidance website.
Some great books on personality profiles (some college or career specific):

Amazon.com Widgets

I am now in Boston for the annual OACAC conference, this year hosted by Northeastern University. It is not only the largest OACAC conference ever, but the largest regional affiliate conference of NACAC ever! BOS10 has one its own iphone app.
2.6 Recruiting in China: The Elephant in the Room With Chinese student applications inundating admission pipelines, [...]

I asked a fellow college counselor what he guessed New York University Abu Dhabi’s selectivity would be in this first year. He thought quite selective–guessing taking about 1/3rd. He was wrong. 
Way wrong. 
Today they announced that they accepted 2.10% of their applicants. No, that decimal is not in the wrong place. Yes that is WAY more selective than [...]

Minnesota is leading the way of embedding online courses as part and parcel of the education experience in public education:

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Inside Higher education has a very detailed commentary on the push for online.