The Ivey Files

What an interesting year this is shaping up to be. It's only early September, and we've already received an unusual number of emails from people who have just started law school and are already looking to transfer. They're not even willing to give their schools a chance. Why is that?

I imagine that 2010 saw a large number of people saying "yes" to their law schools out of desperation, and now that they find themselves at school and are bumping into so many 3Ls who are up to their eyeballs in debt and still struggling to find jobs, they're having second thoughts.

My advice to law school applicants is not to say "yes" -- or even apply -- to a school from which you wouldn't want to graduate. Attending a school only on the assumption that you will be able to transfer to a more competitive one is too risky a strategy. You have to be a 1L superstar to launch yourself into a higher caliber of law school, and statistically, most people aren't going to find themselves at the top of their 1L class. It's not as hard to transfer to a peer school, but for many transfer applicants, that's not the goal; they're hoping to upgrade. When you accept an offer to attend a law school, you should be reasonably happy with the possibility (even probability) that you will end up having to stay.

If you find yourself in a situation where you want to transfer out, here are some tips to keep in mind as you plan your first year:

1. Grades, grades, grades. Transferring is all about your 1L performance. After your first year of law school, your undergraduate grades stop mattering, and your LSAT stops mattering. Why would that be, when those were so important for your applications the first go-round? Because admissions officers look to your LSAT and undergrad performance as proxies to try to predict how you're going to do in law school. Once they have your 1L academic record, they don't need proxies anymore; they have the real deal. So if you have your heart set on transferring, protect your 1L transcript, even if that means forgoing other things you might like to do during your first year. (That strategy will also help you when it comes time to interview for summer jobs. Sought-after legal employers are very grades-conscious, and grades are your best leverage during on-campus recruiting.)

2. Professor recommendations. In order to apply for transfer, you'll need to submit recommendations from 1L professors. That can be tricky, because 1L classes tend to be large classes involving one big final exam, so you have to be proactive. If you're the kind of person who tries to keep his head down and get through the Socratic Method with as little attention as possible, your professors aren't going to remember you very well when you ask them for recommendations. Of course, being the superstar on the final exam is the best way to get noticed, but it helps if, when reading your stellar exam, they're not thinking, "Who is this person?" Without being a pest, take advantage of office hours and opportunities for feedback after your first-semester exams. Be prepared for class so that when you get called on (or volunteer your thoughts), you'll be remembered for having contributed to the discussion and moved the analysis along in a meaningful way.

When it comes time to ask for a letter, be very sensitive to the diplomacy involved. By applying to transfer, you are in effect saying to the school (and its professors): you're not good enough for me. Nobody likes to hear that, so make sure to approach them in a way that minimizes any offense they might take. That means being able to articulate well thought out reasons for transferring. Do not approach your potential recommenders until you have something intelligent to say about why you're hoping to transfer. And if you find yourself unable to transfer out to your desired target schools, be mindful that you might face some awkwardness with professors and administrators at the school you were hoping to leave behind. Many of them will be supportive of you either way, but that's not always the case, and feathers can sometimes get ruffled.

3. The transfer essay. When you apply to transfer, you'll be expected to write an essay explaining to your target school why you are seeking to transfer. You'll need to be able to articulate your reasons for seeking to transfer, and you have to walk a careful line. It would not reflect well on you to talk negatively about the school you're trying to leave. That would be unprofessional and would also make you sound whiny. Instead, focus on the advantages of the target school. Are there better opportunities for federal clerkships? Do they have better placement in your preferred geographical job market? Do they have expertise in a particular practice area or academic subject that your current school lacks?

Practical, non-academic reasons for transferring are fine, too. You might be attending a perfectly good school for 1L but would like to move to Chicago/Boston/Miami/wherever because your spouse is doing her medical residency there. Personal reasons are perfectly valid, but make sure to supplement them with academic or professional aspects that also attract you to that particular target school.

4. Timing. Transfer application deadlines are very, very tight. Many law schools require you to have a complete 1L transcript before you can submit your applications, and many transfer applicants find themselves bumping right up against those deadlines. There are even suggestions (perhaps apocryphal) that some schools intentionally delay reporting the last set of grades in order to block students from transferring. Whether or not that's actually true (they are anecdotal stories), it is the case that some professors don't turn their grades in on a timely basis, so you might end up missing an application deadline because one of your professors couldn't get his act together. You don't have any control over the timing of your 1L grades, so be prepared for the possibility that you will make some deadlines but might have to miss others. It can't hurt to contact the target school whose deadline you're in danger of missing and finding out if they will grant you some kind of extension, but understand that they might say no. Transfers are like waitlists. When a school finds out that it has a spot to fill, it has to move quickly, and there's no upside (to the school) to wait for you if there are other perfectly good transfer applicants who can say yes right away.

Keep in mind why schools accept transfer applications in the first place: every 2L and 3L seat that goes empty represents lost revenue. It's like an unsold airplane seat. So when administrators find out how many spots have opened up (because some of their own students have transferred out, gone on leave, been accepted for a dual degree, etc.), they need to fill those slots, pronto.

5. Odds. For the same reason, the odds of transferring into a particular school are impossible to predict. Because schools themselves don't know how many slots they are going to have to fill until late in the game, and because the pool of transfer applications is relatively small, it's next to impossible to look at data for previous years and try to make any meaningful predictions. A school might find itself taking 10 transfers in one year and one the next. Or maybe last year it was able to snap up a superstar, but this year the best it can do is to take the person who got a B- on his Property final. Schools can't predict the quality of the pool or the number of spots in advance, either.

Also, because your final 1L grades come in so close to deadlines, you will very likely find yourself having to make decisions about whether and where you want to transfer, and get all your other application materials lined up, before you even know where you stand academically at the end of the year. If you end up at the top of your class, you're going to have nice options. If you're not at the top of your class, you'll have to throw some applications out and see what happens. Frustrating, but that's how it works.

Do you have transfer application stories or tips to share? Please post!

In a previous blog post about the Forbes rankings, I explained why I think understanding the methodology of a ranking is the key to determining if and how a particular ranking is helpful in your own college search.  Since US News is the granddaddy of the college rankings (now in their 26^th year), I’m always interested in how they change their methodology each year.

Yes, US News changes their methodology each year.  Why?  Well, according to them, it is because they are ever striving to make the rankings better.  I’m a little more cynical and believe they do it so that the rankings actually change a bit from year to year.  It is a hard to get people to buy an annual ranking publication if the rankings stay the same from year to year.  Why buy the 2011 edition if it has the same list as the 2007 edition?  (If you want proof that these tweaks in methodology do result in variances in the rankings from year to year, check out this chart that compares colleges' US News rankings from 1983-2007.)

Regardless of why US News changes its ranking methodology each year, they do.  So do this year’s changes make the US News rankings more or less helpful?  I’m sorry to say they make them less helpful and below I’ve explained why.  Just to make this more fun to read (as well as more interesting to write), I’ve imagined a point-counterpoint debate between US News and myself about each of the changes in methodology.  The US News quotes come straight from the horse’s mouth.  They can all be found within US News own description of the methodology.   I’ve taken the liberty of following my own rebuttals with explanations so you understand my thinking.

Change #1:  US News has renamed its categories for schools.

US News says, “To make the rankings more understandable and to reduce confusion, for the 2011 Best Colleges we changed many of the ranking category names.”

Alison says:  You failed, US News.  Your category system wasn’t a particularly good one to begin with, but now it is just a hot mess.

***

Before US News decided to change things, they ranked schools within 4 categories based on the degrees conferred by the institution:

1. Universities:  confers bachelors’, masters’ and doctorate degrees
2. Universities-Masters:  confers bachelors ’and masters’ degrees
3. Liberal Arts Colleges:  confers bachelors’ degrees with more than 50% in liberal arts & science majors
4. Baccalaureate Colleges:  confers bachelors’ degrees with less than 50% in liberal arts & science majors

The problem with these categories isn’t one of nomenclature, although US News claims it is.  The problem is that these categories don’t mirror the way students and families think about their college choices.  Students and families think in terms of selectivity.  Just stop and ask your average 11^th grade student or parent of an 11^th grade student: “What kinds of colleges are you considering?”  Do they say, “Well, I’m only considering Ph.D. conferring institutions.”  No, of course not.  They say, “Well I think I’m a pretty good candidate, so I’m shooting for the most selective colleges, places like Harvard and Williams.”  In the US News system, Harvard and Williams are in different categories and can’t be compared to each other, while Harvard and Wright State University are in the same category and can be compared to each other.  Come on.  Not a very helpful category system for real people.  I can say I have never had anyone ask me to compare Harvard and Wright State.  They simply aren't the same kind of institution.

To solve the supposed problem with the nomenclature, US News has renamed the categories, but not changed which schools are in them.  Can anyone say lipstick on a pig?  Worse still, the new names are actually misleading.  Universities-Masters become Regional Universities and Baccalaureate Colleges become Regional Colleges, while Liberal Arts Colleges become National Liberal Arts colleges.  Supposedly the “Regional” moniker reflects that the colleges and universities within these categories “tend to draw heavily from surrounding states.” Really?  Because I’m pretty sure that all the military academies draw from a national pool of students, but the Air Force and Coast Guard academies are labeled as “Regional Colleges” while Westpoint and Annapolis are considered “National Liberal Arts Colleges."

Change #2:  US News has precisely ranked the top 75% of schools in each category, instead of just the top 50%.

US News says:  “In response to a strong interest from readers in knowing precisely where all schools on their list stand, we've opted to display the rank of the top 75 percent of schools in each category, up from 50 percent. This top ranked group will be called the First Tier. The schools in the bottom 25 percent of each group are listed alphabetically as the Second Tier; which was previously called the 4th Tier.”

Alison says:  Be humbler, US News.  You can't possibly believe that you have the ability to distinguish between school #80 and school #81.  Just give us tiers and let us quibble about who is #1, #48, #325.

***

I happen to have been a fan of the US News tier system of rankings because I think they actually tell you something meaningful. In the tier system, schools were grouped by quartiles:  Tier 1 (top 25%), Tier 2 (26-50%), Tier 3 (51-75%), Tier 4 (bottom 25%).  I personally think that this is about as precise as you can be in a rankings system:  ask someone who knows colleges to separate them into the best, the above average, the below average, and the worst and those groupings won’t differ much from person to person or from criteria to criteria.  But ask for precise rankings and you see wide divergences because in order to be that precise, you have to start splitting hairs and deciding which hairs are more important.

US News thinks they have the ability to be precise.  They say that “the data are complete enough to numerically rank more schools given our robust methodology. The quality of the data we collect has improved over the years, so that it is now rich enough to rank more schools numerically.” I challenge that.  Lots of their data is suspect (see more below about reputational surveys and the new graduation rate measure) and the weights they assign to various data are not all that defensible (should reputation be more important that retention and graduation rates or quality and contact with faculty?).

Beyond that, their regular changes in methodology ensure that the rankings move from year to year, so how meaningful can a precise ranking be?  Far more meaningful is that a school consistently shows up in a particular tier.  For example, Brown has been as high as 7 among the national universities (1985) and as low as 17 (1992, 2003, 2004), but has always been in the top 25.  Obviously Brown is consistently in the top tier.  Do you really need to know more than that, and could you really prove to me that Brown is really 7 instead of 11 or 15 or 17?  I don't think you could and I don't think US News can either.  Besides, when you are doing a college search, a tier is enough to give you some basic guidelines.  Then you move on to understanding the nuances that really distinguish colleges and give each college a personality as distinct as a fingerprint.

Change #3:  Graduation Rate Performance (a comparative measure of predicted vs. actual graduation rates) has been given more weight in the ranking.

US News says:   “Graduation rate performance is more heavily weighted. This measure now accounts for 7.5 percent of the final score (compared to 5 percent previously) for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges. This variable—the difference between a school's actual graduation rate and the one predicted by U.S. News based on the students' test scores and institutional resources—has been well received by many higher education researchers because it's a measure of educational outcomes and also rewards schools for graduating at-risk students, many of whom are receiving federal Pell grants. This means that schools can benefit in the Best Colleges rankings by enrolling and then graduating more of these at-risk students.”

Alison says:  Pay attention to your customers' needs, US News.  You don't belong in the middle of educational debates about how to get more at-risk students enrolled at college.  You are providing a service to students and families who are using your rankings in the college search.  They do care about the outcomes, so give them the best data available about that, not some cooked up prediction you make.  Satisfy them, rather than pandering to critics in higher education in an effort to rehabilitate your own reputation within the higher education community.

***

I have always been skeptical of this so-called “graduate rate performance” measure.  It compares US News calculated predictions to actual college outcomes.  Why do we care about a prediction when we have the outcome?  Predictions are only valuable when you can’t know the outcome, but still need to make a decision.  Once you know the outcome, you should and do use that information in your decision making.  So if you are concerned about a college’s graduation rate (and everyone should be), then you consult their actual graduation rate, not the US News prediction of its graduation rate.

Interestingly, US News reveals why it even uses this measure and it isn’t to help their customers.  Instead, it is a “make nice” gesture to the higher education community who bemoan how the US News rankings (and others like them) discourage schools from all sorts of behaviors that serve loftier goals in higher education, including enrolling more at risk students.  US News is a commercial enterprise and the needs of its customers should come first.

Worse, I think that US News has sacrified its customers' needs for nothing but a token gesture.  Supposedly by including this measure, US News compensates for how its other measures penalize schools for enrolling at-risk students.  But it doesn’t.  This measure accounts for 7.5%; the measures that are negatively affected by enrollment of at-risk students (freshman retention, graduation rates, student selectivity) account for 35%.  7.5% hardly offsets 35% -- you do the math.

Instead of this "make nice" gesture, I wish US News had beefed up its data on college outcomes.  What about adding the percentage of students who graduate in 4 years (not just 6)?  What about adding the percentage of graduates who are gainfully employed or enrolled in graduate school within 6 months?  All that data is readily available, verfiable and helpful.

Change #4:  US News has included the results from a survey of pubic high school counselors in the calculation of a school’s reputation AND published it as a separate ranking.

US News says: For the first time, the opinions of high school counselors—a font of firsthand information about the schools their graduates attend—are factored into the ranking calculations for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges…  [We surveyed] 1,787 counselors at public high schools from nearly every state plus the District of Columbia that appeared in the 2010 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings… The counselors' response rate was 21 percent.

Alison says:  Get with it, US News.  It is already easy enough to challenge the validity of your rankings because of the inordinate weight given to reputational surveys.  Now you compound the problem by adding in the results of a survey that had a bad sample set and a pathetic response rate.  Hardly first-rate data.  In fact, it appears that your data amounts to the opinions of 375 people.  Not very impressive and certainly not worthy of being published as a separate ranking.

***

Now, US News will get no argument from me that college counselors are a font of wisdom – after all, I am both a college counselor and I'm certainly a font of wisdom.  And if US News is going to persist in using “reputation” as a fundamental criterion for ranking schools (reputation counts for 22.5-25% of a school’s ranking), I suppose college counselors are a pretty good group to survey.  But this survey and its data hardly represent the collective wisdom of college counselors.  First, why would US News limit itself to counselors from public schools that it ranked in another ranking?  No idea, but it is hardly a valid sample set.  What about private school counselors, a lot of whom specialize in college counseling, and what about independent college counselors like myself?  We are easy to identify through professional associations, so it really puzzles me why US News couldn't go to the trouble of selecting a valid sample set.  The only theories I can formulate don't make US News look good, so since they are nothing but theories, I won't offer them.

Second, the response rate was pathetic.  If you combine the limited sample set surveyed with the low response rate, you discover that 375 public school counselors had inordinate power this year.  Really I don't care who they are -- the opinions of the smartest 375 people in the world shouldn't comprise 7.5% of a school's ranking.  One interesting side note/back story here.  There were emails that flew between counselors within professional associations about whether the counselors who did get the survey were going to boycott it.  Many voiced their belief that rankings are more harmful than helpful and indicated they would boycott.  I suspect the response rate reflects this.

Bottom Line?

US News says:  Better than ever.  (Okay that's my summary, but I don't think they would argue.)

Alison says:  Worse on all counts.

Comments or Questions?

Anyone want to defend US News’ changes?  Anyone learn something they didn’t know?  Anyone want to offer a different point of view on the importance of methodology?  We’re interested.  Please post!

Alison Cooper Chisolm is a former admissions officer at three selective universities and used to compile all the institutional data that makes these rankings possible.  She submitted her first response to US News back in the dark ages -- 1991.  At Ivey Consulting, she now heads our college admissions consulting practice and provides one-on-one coaching to students and families about all aspects of the college admissions process.  A core component of that coaching is working with a student to compile his or her "right fit" college list -- a college list tailored to that student's particular interests, talents, and desires.

Berkeley / Haas:

https://ssl.haas.berkeley.edu/Admissions/Events/index.cfm

Chicago Booth:

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/admissions/events/

Columbia:

http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/events

Duke / Fuqua:

https://www.fuquaworld.duke.edu/www/public/infosess_all_view.jsp

HBS:

http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/events.html

Northwestern / Kellogg:

http://bit.ly/Zrg7b

Michigan / Ross:

http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/Mba/forumsreceptions/RossReceptions.htm

MIT / Sloan:

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/academic/events.php

Stanford GSB:

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/outreach/info_sessions.html

NYU / Stern:

http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/admissions/cgibin/sched_events.cgi

Dartmouth / Tuck:

http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/admissions/events.html

UCLA / Anderson:

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x5525.xml

UNC / Kenan Flagler:

http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/Programs/MBA/infoSessions/index.cfm

UVA / Darden:

https://apply.darden.virginia.edu/admissions/events/EventsSchedule.tap?sp=103

U Penn / Wharton:

http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mba/admissions/admission-events.cfm

Yale SOM:

http://mba.yale.edu/MBA/admissions/events.shtml

IESE:

http://www.iese.edu/aplicaciones/emba/events/events_emba.asp?lang=en

IMD:

http://www.imd.ch/programs/mba/infosessions/index.cfm

INSEAD:

http://www.insead.edu/mba/offevents/index.cfm?fuseaction=offcampus

LBS:

http://www.london.edu/programmes/infoevents/do?progSelect=MBA&locationSelect=

About Clear Admit:

Ivey Consulting has partnered with Clear Admit to provide comprehensive admissions information and consulting services to business school applicants.  We’re excited to feature their regular guest postings here on the Ivey Files. Learn more about them here.

Anna, I am an Iraq veteran and I have read that military service is anywhere from "extremely valuable" to law school admissions to something akin to any other job.  What is your take?  Is there anything I should do to highlight its strengths while also countering its possibly negative connotations?

As for another, more specific question: I am struggling with whether to include my platoon's "number of enemy captured/killed" on my resume.  It's a metric we use to gauge efficacy, and it conveys the gravitas of my deployment.  However, I can also see how it would be inappropriate for a resume as well.  Help!

Thank you for all of your efforts in facilitating law school candidates' applications and enabling us all to strive for acceptance to better schools.

Well, thank YOU for your service. I have the much easier job here.

You've asked a great question. In the Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, I advise applicants to quantify their work experience as much as possible. What's the impact you've had in your role? How can you best capture that impact in a bullet point? Your situation is a great reminder that guidelines are not gospel truths, and applicants should exercise judgment when it comes time to apply guidelines to their individual fact patterns. You are smart to wonder whether quantifying makes sense in your situation, so here's how I would think about presenting your work experience in the application process:

DO include your military experience in general. You were employed during that time, doing meaningful work, and you should get credit for that. A gap in your resume wouldn't help you.

DON'T be in any way defensive or apologetic about your military experience. Even people who are anti-war or anti-military can still be pro-soldier. To answer your question about how law schools view military service: All the admissions officers I know have great respect for it. They understand the gravity of being deployed, so your gravitas will almost certainly not be in question. Ex-military applicants are much loved by both law school (and business school) admissions officers, especially those service members who had increasing responsibility during their time serving and/or who graduated from the military academies. Ex-military students are nearly always hard-working, smart, disciplined, responsible, unflappable, and very happy to be back in school. And they bring a very interesting perspective to class discussions. Any school that would reject you because of your military experience (are they even out there?) is not one you personally would want to attend in any event. Ditto for applications to future employers. That being said...

DON'T quantify the number of enemy captured or killed. While most admissions officers will have great respect for you and the hard work you've been doing, there are many people -- even among those who are sympathetic to service members -- who don't want to be reminded that the military's job is to kill people and break things (as someone once said). Admissions officers, too, can be subject to cognitive dissonance.

DO quantify the kinds of successes or list the kinds of metrics that don't make people uncomfortable. Examples:

• Commanded 153-man rifle company in combat
• Managed $20mm budget and care and maintenance of $50mm aircraft
• Obtained Silver Star for Combat Leadership

DO include relative rankings or metrics. In your case, is there a way for you to convert the number of people killed/captured into a relative measure of platoon efficiency? Maybe, for example, your platoon was in the top 10% of your division.

This exceptions might apply in some civilian contexts as well. For example, one would say, "Led consolidation of two corporate divisions, cutting costs by X% and increasing profits by Y%" WITHOUT tacking on "...by laying off 1,500 employees."

So my big-picture advice, for both military and civilian applicants alike, is to quantify with hard numbers EXCEPT when the harsh realities of a job might make people squirm, in which case it's best to take this softer approach to quantification.

Please check in and let us know how you end up deciding to present your military experience, and keep us posted on your admissions success.

Congratulations!

You've arrived at the 52d week and college is officially in session (or about to be).  You've made it.  Take a bow!

As you finish this year and begin your first year of college, I can't resist giving you 3 final tips.

1. Manage your own expectations. College is a transformative experience and transformative experiences aren't always fun; in fact, they are work and they have as many miserable moments as joyful ones.  Expect lows as well as highs.  Expect homesickness along with the giddy delight that comes from your freedom.  Expect to hate it and to love it all at once.
2. Take academics seriously, especially at first. You are in a new environment where it is likely to be more academically challenging.  Don't assume that you can approach a freshman year the way you approached your senior year.  You're a beginner again.  So do yourself a favor and act like one.  Go to classes, do the reading, set up study groups.  And just like it did actually matter what your grades were in 9th grade when it was time to apply to college, it will actually matter what your freshman grades are when it comes time to apply to grad school or get the first job.  Don't blow it because you are simply too full of yourself (or worse partying so much you forget that the point of college is education).
3. Explore, explore, explore.  There are people to meet, new activities to try, once in a lifetime experiences to be had.  Don't limit yourself to things you've done before.  College is a brief four years.  Take full advantage.

Wisdom?

Before you turn your attention fully to college, I'd like to invite you to share some of your wisdom with those coming after you.  Post your best tips for those that are just about to begin the 52 Weeks to College journey! And if you have any questions you'd like us to tackle in future blog postings, please send them our way!

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here.

As many of our readers know, it has become increasingly common for younger individuals to apply to MBA programs.  Whereas the average age and years of work experience at the leading business schools has traditionally hovered at around 28 and five respectively, many programs are now carefully considering the more youthful end of the applicant pool.  Of course, the fact that admissions officers are taking a closer look at younger applicants does not mean that getting accepted to a top program is easy for this group.  In fact, it may be difficult for younger applicants to present themselves as fully prepared to contribute to an MBA program because they often lack leadership experience and extended business exposure.  This is especially true as they will be compared to their fellow applicants who have more years in the working world (often translating to more leadership experience and professional accomplishments).  With this in mind, we’d like to offer a few tips that will help younger MBA candidates leverage the strengths of their candidacies and become increasingly competitive applicants at their choice schools.

As you read this blog, you should be in the last hectic days before leaving for college.  You are so very close to starting this new chapter of your life!!!!  Since you are probably dizzy from excitement, not to mention a little dazed from all the end of summer social activities, I'm going to make your final checklist for you.

Ah, yes, there is a final checklist – you don't think I'd send you off to college without a final checklist, did you?  If you did, you have not been a faithful reader of this blog over the last 50 weeks.   Good news for those of you who have been faithful readers (and doers) – this checklist references back to lots of activities I have suggested you take care of earlier in the summer, so you'll be sitting pretty in these final days, while less faithful readers (and doers) have A LOT to take care of!

This checklist is organized into what I call the Core Four – the four areas of your life that you need to have in order when you are in the process of leaving home for college.

1)     Housing and Meal Plans (aka Food and Shelter)

• Do you know where you going to be living?  You should and you should have a hard paper copy of your housing assignment.
• Do you know what your dining plan is?  Again, make sure you do and you have documentation that you've paid for it.
• When can you move into your residence hall?  You don't want to be sitting on the curb with your stuff because you missed your window and can't get a key.
• Where is the dining hall?  What are the hours?  What will be the first FREE (aka prepaid dining plan) meal that you get?  Again, you need to know these things before your parents leave you.  If they go before you can start eating on your dining plan, you've missed some great opportunities for the parents to pay.  And believe me, all college students try to maximize the things that their parents pay for – it is a basic college survival skill.

2)     Essential Stuff (Clothes, Bedding, etc.)

• What is the essential stuff that you need for college?  See Week 44 for my list.
• Have you purchased it all or have a plan to purchase it right after you get to college?
• Is what you have packed and either shipped or ready to be loaded into the train, plane or automobile with you?  Also, if you are traveling by public transport, is there anything you are taking that is problematic, e.g. cleaning supplies that are explosive?  If so, figure it out before you are having to leave it behind with some kindly TSA officer who will pass it on to his kid.

3)     Money, Money, Money

• Are your tuition, housing and fees all paid for the first term? Do you have documentation of that?
• If you have financial aid, do you have all the documentation for that?  If your financial aid has not yet arrived, has the bursar/finance officer agreed to wait until it gets there or do you have to pay until it arrives?
• Do you have a budget and the cash to fund it for everything besides school, housing, and fees?  Understand that you'll need a fair amount of cash or credit in the early weeks of the term – why?  Books.  They are expensive and you've gotta have 'em.

4)    Relationships with the Family and Friends

• Have you done a proper goodbye and renegotiation with your family?  Week 49 gave you the directions.  If you haven't done these things yet, do them now.  You simply must.
• Have you had one last hurrah with the friends and thought/talked about how you are going to sustain your friendships across distance?  Week 50 is all about that.  Get going.

Comments or Questions?

Honestly, you really don't have time to post this week.  But if you have a burning question or comment, go ahead and post it.  We're always happy to respond and we've already been to college, so we have time right now.

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here.

The countdown continues.  You are almost on your way to college.  But you are still in the middle of ending the chapter of your life called high school.  This week is about one of the trickiest parts of this ending:  what to do about your high school friends.  So hang on and hang in – managing this well will make starting college easier and will give you practice for the rest of your life.  Because, after all, you do have lots more chapters ahead of you!

I propose you handle your impending departure for college in different ways depending upon the type of friendship.

Friendship Type 1:  Situational Friendships

If you are like most people, a lot of the people you call friends (and at least 95% of the friends you have on social networking sites) are situational friends.   Your friendships arise from particular situations – they are the friendship you have with the other members of your hockey team, with your classmates in 1st Period English, with the kind-of weird neighbor kids that have been with you in school and at church every year since you were like 5.  You really don't have a deep connection with these people; the friendships are not sustainable over time and space.

Here is how you handle these friendships:  LET THEM GO.  Sure you can stay friends on Facebook or be pleasant when you see each other at reunions in the future, but other than that, these friendships are done and you need to let them go so you can make space for the new friendships, like these, that you will have in college: friendships with your new teammates on your intramural hockey team, with your new study buddies you have in the 8a Econ class, and with the kind of weird but still nice enough people who live on your hall or quad.

Friendship Type 2:  True Blue Lasting Friendships

True blue lasting friendships are the friendships you can and should protect.  These friendships are with people with whom you share a deep and profound connection – you know who they are.  They are the people who always laugh at the same things you do, no matter how wrong it is.  They are the people who seem to just know without you having to tell them much.  They are the people whom you can count on; no matter what, they have your back.

The good news here is that you can SUSTAIN THESE FRIENDSHIPS over time and space.  But you do have to be intentional about keeping and feeding these friendships.  Here are my three tips for how to keep and feed friendships over time and space:

1. Make sure to say goodbye and set the plan for your next hello.  Don't get so caught up in the frenzy of leaving for college that you don't set aside some time for a proper goodbye with your true blue friends.  And before you go, compare school calendars and make a date for when you're both back in town on the first break.  Just knowing when you are going to see each other next makes the goodbye easier.
2. Stay in touch, but don't try to re-create what you have now.  The stay in touch is really easy now thanks to technology.  But, the temptation is to try and substitute ridiculous amounts of communication for the day-to-day closeness you have now.  Not possible.  You are going to be leading different lives in different places.  Accept that.  There is of course a silver lining in that bit of breathing space – you probably won't have many spats, and your true blue friends can offer a bit of perspective for you if they aren't embroiled in the same drama.
3. Stretch your friendship muscle and hold these friends close EVEN AS you are making new friends.  Really truly, you can make new friends and keep the old.  You are ready.  One important thing to remember, though: friendships wither when comparisons are offered.  Each friend is special and unique to you.  So don't blow it and blurt out "you're just like my friend at home" to a new friend you really like, or worse still, confide to your old friend, "I can't believe I've found a new best friend so quickly."  Just savor each of them and be grateful.

Friendship Type #3:  Romantic Friendships

I'm not going to bother describing romantic friendships.  You know what they are, so I'm just going to jump to the advice giving portion of this post.  Unfortunately, you probably aren't going to like what I have to say here, but it is the wisdom of the ages.  First love probably isn't true love.  The majority of romantic friendships last through the first semester of freshman year, because at first it is comforting and supportive to have a boyfriend/girlfriend but it quickly becomes limiting and frustrating.  I encourage you to just LET IT TAKE ITS COURSE.  That means not fighting with it, clutching it, keeping it alive on life support.  Date through the end of the summer.  Have a great last date.  Feel sad to leave your boyfriend/girlfriend behind, but don't make promises about the future in some last grand gesture.  Go to college and stay in touch but don't organize your weekend plans around visits.  Don't communicate all the time about how much you miss each other – you'll get stuck in a loop.  Wait until Christmas break to evaluate where you are.  If the relationship is still growing and deepening in spite of the separation, hang in.  But don't regress.  Stay engaged with your new life at college.  Summer break will come.  If the romantic friendship is one that is, in fact, true love, then it won't die just because of separation during the school year.

Comments or Questions?

Want to offer a shout out to your situational friends thanking them for the memories?  Post here.  Want to make a pledge of undying friendship that counts?  Post it.  Want to say why your first love will or won't be your true love?  Post it, we'd love to hear!

Alison Cooper Chisolm writes the series 52 Weeks to College. She has worked in admissions at Southern Methodist University, the University of Chicago, and most recently Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Yale College and the University of Virginia Law School. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Alison works with college applicants and their families as they navigate the college admissions process. Read more about Alison here.

Forbes has just released its annual ranking of America’s Best Colleges for 2010 (online at www.forbes.com/colleges and in hard copy in the August 30, 2010 issue of Forbes now on newstands).  I admit that I got it hot off the presses and spent way too much time online today playing around with the interactive tools.  Of course, I am a college counseling professional and a bit of a data nerd.  So I love college rankings of all kinds and I feel like I can make good use of them.  But here’s my warning to all you prospective applicants out there:  you’ve got to read the fine print and do some ranking of your own if you are going to compile a list of colleges that are right for you.

What’s the fine print?  The methodology and the data sets used to compile the rankings.  All the rankings publish them, so read them and think critically about them.  You can get the description of the Forbes methodology and data online by clicking here.

What does the fine print tell me about the Forbes list of so-called “Best Colleges?”

In terms of basic methodology, I’m intrigued by and generally agree that four of the criteria they use to compile their rankings are important to consider:  student satisfaction, postgraduate success, student debt, 4 year graduation rate.  But I’m baffled by the fifth criterion they use:  what are they thinking by including national competitive awards given to students and making it almost 1/10^th of the weighted score given to a college?  That just seems wacky and irrelevant to me.

In terms of data, I think Forbes falls down on the job here.  The Student Satisfaction data is particularly suspect because of the reliance on data from RateMyProfessors.com and MyPlan.com.  This data is a completely uncontrolled sample set and will be skewed by the differing participation rates at the different colleges.   For a college with a low participation rate, a few disgruntled students active on one of these sites could ruin a college’s ranking.  The Postgraduate Success data is also flawed.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Forbes has considered data relevant only to one type of success – namely business/corporate success.  In the Forbes ranking, success is measured by your pay grade, whether you bothered to fill out a Who’s Who listing, and if you have risen to the level of corporate officer.  Come on.  Success is much broader than that.  At a bare minimum, I think Forbes would bother to include the some data that measures whether a college has done its job of preparing you to get a job or get into graduate or professional school.  Data about the number of graduates who are employed following graduation and/or enrolled in graduate or professional degree programs is readily available and could have been incorporated.

My bottom line review of the Forbes rankings?  Pretty good methodology, pretty bad data, so not very helpful or illuminating in really revealing the "best colleges."  But if one of your primary criteria for a "best college" is the cost of education, including typical student debt, then you can get some good comparative data here.  The hard copy includes this information on the chart listing the rankings and it is available online only through the interactive tool called “Screener” found as a button about two-thirds of the way down the middle column on the landing page for the rankings article.

Comments?

What do you think? Post your thoughts on the Forbes ranking!

Alison Cooper Chisolm is a former admissions officer at three selective universities and used to compile all the institutional data that makes these rankings possible!  At Ivey Consulting, she now heads our college admissions consulting practice and provides one-on-one coaching to students and families about all aspects of the college admissions process.  A core component of that coaching is working with a student to compile his or her "right fit" college list -- a college list tailored to that student's particular interests, talents, and desires.

I am often asked how applicants can make themselves “look unique,” and I actually think it’s the wrong question to be asking.

To see why this is, let’s start with what the word actually means, courtesy of Random House Dictionary (here are the first three definitions):

u·nique
–adjective

1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript.

2. having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint.

3. limited in occurrence to a given class, situation, or area: a species unique to Australia.

Wow, that would be asking a lot. To succeed as a law school applicant, do you really have to be "unique" the way the sole copy of an ancient manuscript is unique? Or the way Bach's use of counterpoint is unique? Or the way an animal species in Australia is unique? Do you have to stand out in some way by having a job/activity/major that nobody else on the planet has?

Of course not. Even top law schools could never fill up their classes each year if those were really the standards.  (Check out how many law school students have interned on the Hill, worked as paralegals, majored in Poli Sci, competed in forensic debate, or tutored underprivileged children.) So uniqueness isn't actually the top priority for admissions officers; they’re looking for something else. And what is that? Simple: it's excellence.

More specifically, they want you to be unusually good in three areas:

1. Academics:

Can you demonstrate that you have the requisite

• intellectual horsepower
• work ethic
• critical reasoning skills and
• writing and speaking skills

to handle an unusually rigorous academic program?

2. Soft Skills/Life Skills:

If you can demonstrate that you are unusually good at the academic criteria, then (responsible) law schools will next worry about your soft skills, and in particular how you are going to fare on the job market and in the world at large. Can you demonstrate that you will be able to:

• interact with recruiters and legal employers professionally
• be proactive and focused in your job search
• get along and work well with people who are different from you
• have the grit and wherewithal and flexibility to land on your feet when the market gets tough
• be a great ambassador for the school, a role you would have for the rest of your life, and
• exercise good judgment and ethics, both in school and in the wider world?

3. Impact:

The most competitive law schools in the country will also care about your future impact. Will you be the kind of law school graduate who is likely to become a game-changer, whether in private practice, the public sector, the non-profit world, or in business? What in your background will give them the impression that you're going to have impact?

Note that none of the three metrics above assumes that you've done Activity X or Job Y. How you fill in the Xs and Ys doesn’t matter as much as being able to show that you’ve done them really, really well.

"Uniqueness" is therefore greatly misunderstood by many applicants (and misused by some law schools in the language of their applications). Applicants hear the word "unique" and think they have to be able to do something no one else can, and they sometimes despair if they haven't solved the Riemann Hypothesis on the back of a napkin or learned how to yodel Cameroonian folk music or summited Aconcagua on a pogo stick. You don’t even have to be the first in your family to go to college, or an exotic ethnic minority. All of those things are interesting -- and worth showing off if you have them -- but they are not necessary in order to be a successful law school applicant.

Whether or not you have a unique background, what makes you stand out in the application process is showing, in a very limited amount of space, that you are unusually good along the three metrics listed above. That's why law schools pay so much attention to LSAT scores, previous academic performance, experience in a professional setting, life experience, previous impact, and ethics.

Demonstrating those things is hard in and of itself, even if you don't have to be one of a kind or know how to yodel. Assuming you have achieved the underlying excellence, you then have to figure out how to feature all those various experiences and talents and ambitions in a few pieces of (virtual) paper. That's a big challenge, but nowhere near as daunting as being "the only one" or "having no equal" or even pursuing wacky activities. Wacky activities might make someone in the admissions office notice you, but they will almost never compensate for lack of excellence.

Schools want to see what you've made of the talents you were born with and the opportunities that life sent your way, or -- even better -- the opportunities you've made for yourself. Some of the most interesting applications come from people who took the lemons they were handed and made lemonade.

Bottom line: If you don't have an unusual background, no law school would expect you to go engineer an unusual background out of thin air so that you can be "unique," and they wouldn't expect you to try to present a non-unique background as unique. When applicants try to dress themselves up as something they're not, that almost always backfires. Better to present yourself at your best -- even if it's a background they see a lot -- than twist yourself into an artificial pretzel. So don't lose too much sleep about your "uniqueness." Concentrate instead on communicating your excellence.