Pamela T. Horne, Purdue University

Posted on Sun, 10/02/2011 - 22:47

Each month we invite a Dean of Admission to answer five questions. We may ask their best advice for applicants, how their office reads applications, their favorite thing on campus, or the most surprising fact about their college or university. If you'd like to pose a question to a Dean of Admission or if you'd like to nominate a Dean for us to feature, please email us at authors@collegeadmissionbook.com.

This month, we are pleased to welcome Pamela T. Horne, Purdue University's Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions, as our interviewee from the other side of the desk.

A Valuable Perspective on Paying for College

Posted on Wed, 09/21/2011 - 03:56

Get Smart About College from the Wall Street Journal examines the question of how parents and students think about paying for college. There's some excellent advice here from authors Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson, both admired experts on higher education, known for their trenchant and original thinking backed by data.  In particular, hurrah for their focus on fit and highlighting the fact that students who get into selective colleges but opt for cheaper schools are less likely to graduate -- a decision therefore that can be far more costly than it first appears. And the spreadsheet the authors suggest is basically our Financial Aid Package Evaluator that you can find in our book and right here on our website under the Worksheets tab. But read the whole article! All in all, it's a valuable investment perspective on one of the most expensive decisions most families will make.

The Winners!

Posted on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 23:04

Congratulations to those who won a free copy of College Admission! Our winners came from locations coast to coast and spots in between. They included: Katie of Phoenix, AZ; Katherine of northern California; Vijay of Raleigh, NC; Allison of Frisco, TX; Don of Clarksville, OH; Jeff of Lindstrom, MN; and Tony of Boston, MA. Thank you for signing up for our newsletter and becoming part of our online community!

Are you an early bird?

Posted on Thu, 09/01/2011 - 19:24

This is the time of year when students start hearing a lot about applying to college early from peers, parents, and newspaper headlines -- and maybe feeling some pressure as a result. But before you succumb to that pressure, spend some time understanding how decision plans really work, what the numbers in the headlines actually mean, and whether it's a good idea for you personally. Check out the Chapter Excerpt on the Book page here on the website to understand how your grades and scores could figure into a decision to apply early and benefit from the input on decision plans from the deans at Johns Hopkins, Drake University, and Northern Illinois University, as well as others.

Ferris Bueller Could Be Their Dad

Posted on Thu, 08/25/2011 - 03:41

And the Amazon is not just a river in South America for this fall's entering class of college freshmen. The Beloit College Mindset List was released this week with these and 73 more observations about the cultural reference points of the Tickle Me Elmo generation born just 18 years ago. (In other words, the Internet is older than they are. Yikes!) The Mindset List is the brainchild of the Wisconsin college's former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief and Humanities Professor Tom McBride, originally created in 1998 to provide a heads up to faculty about the rapidly changing reference points of each new entering class. Today, the list gets more than a million hits on its webpage. "Yadda, yadda, yadda." See what that means when you check out the rest of the Mindset's insights into the Class of 2015.

Win a Free Copy of College Admission

Posted on Wed, 08/24/2011 - 12:38

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Don't forget to sign up to receive our newsletter and be entered for a chance to win one of 10 free copies of COLLEGE ADMISSION! Just select the "Subscribe to our Newsletter" link on the Home page and enter your email address. The contest is open to everyone and will end on Labor Day, September 5th. We'll announce the winners on Tuesday, September 6, as everyone heads back to school - and work - from the long weekend.

More on Essays: What are you like when no one is looking?

Posted on Tue, 08/23/2011 - 22:47

Kudos to Laurie Fendrich, blogger for The Chronicle of Higher Education and faculty member at Hofstra University, who weighed in on the exotic essays front, as well: “In pushing college applicants to write college essays proving how “extraordinary” they are, we get application essays about the summer spent hiking in Nepal, the semester abroad learning Chinese, the Saturdays spent at soup kitchens, and the long hours at the violin. But all these extraordinary extracurricular activities are almost always artificially concocted. They’re a result of the savvy, ferocious ambitions of students, their parents and their guidance counselors, all of whom desperately work together to make sure the student looks “extraordinary.” “But what we really need to learn about an applicant is what he or she is like when no one is looking. What is the student like in a quotidien sense? In Katherine, we see a young woman who hadn’t ever done anything glamorous with her summers, but had instead spent day after day, for most of her young life, tending cows—and not because it would make for an interesting subject in a college application essay (although it probably would). She tended cows simply because she grew up in a family where she was required to do serious chores.