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Admissions 2009

Deferred on an Early decision?

Many students who applied to college Early Decision or Early Action are finding that they've been neither accepted nor rejected, but deferred. If you find yourself in this limbo, here are some guidelines for how to proceed.

1. Don't Panic

Although your application wasn't outstanding enough to get in, you are still in the game

2. Find Out Why You Were Deferred

It is important you know why you were deferred. Find out if “pieces are missing"in your application or if it simply needs a boost.In most cases the AOs will be happy to discuss this. Let them know that you still care about getting to "the" College.

3. Update Your Information

Mid Year grades, improved SAT scores, a new extracurricular activity, a new award – anything that will make an impact and that  was not provided earlier should be sent

4. Send a New Letter of Recommendation

Unless specifically mentioned not to do so, feel free to send in a good recommendation that talks about the specific personal qualities that make you an ideal match for the particular college that has deferred you.

5. Be Polite

As you try to get out of deferral limbo, you're likely to correspond with the admissions office several times. Be positive, keep the anger and frustration out of your correspondence.

6. Have a Back-Up

While many deferred students do get accepted during regular admissions, many do not. You should do all you can to get into your top choice school, but you should also be realistic.

7. ED Round two

See if there are colleges that can come in under this category. Remember the same rules apply here

More Colleges Expected to Offer Online Interviews

In a move to better the match between students and campuses, more and more colleges rae planning on online interviews with prospective students. They believe they are able to get a better idea of student's backgrounds and capabilities and expectations from both sides are aired out. This would create a more homogenous enrolment pool and better graduate outcomes

New SAT Score-Reporting Policy

Designed to reduce student stress and improve the test-day experience, the College Board has approved Score Choice, an important change to the current SAT score-reporting policy. This new policy will give students the option to choose the SAT scores by sitting (test date) and SAT Subject Test scores by individual test that they send to colleges, at no additional cost. This will allow students to put their best foot forward on test day by giving them more flexibility and control over their scores. Score Choice is optional, and if students choose not to use it, all scores will be sent automatically. The new score-reporting feature will launch in spring 2009, and will be first available to students in the class of 2010 participating in the March 2009 test administration.

After implementation, students will have the ability to send scores from tests taken prior to the launch. However please note the following

You can't mix and match subscores. .

If you want to take advantage of Score Choice, be careful when you register to take the SAT that you do not provide names of schools to be recipients of your results.

Not all colleges observe the Score Choice option.

Resist the temptation to take the SAT over and over until you get the scores you want to submit.

Finally, ownership is the essence of Score Choice.

Source: Collegeboard

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New RAE ratings announced

The results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2008) confirm the dominant position that universities and colleges in the United Kingdom hold in international research.

RAE2008, which is based on expert review, includes the views of international experts in all the main subject areas.

Taking the top three grades together (the third grade represents work of internationally recognised quality), 87% of the research activity is of international quality. Of the remaining research submitted, nearly all is of recognised national quality in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

The findings and its analysis are significant in determining the contribution of Universities through research and innovation in 15 educational segments. For more details please contact Team IU

The University of Europe: accessible to all

Universities in Europe are looking to embrace a new form of learning, called open content, which could blow away the division between university students and the rest of the population.

Universities in the Netherlands, for instance, have an open source initiative that is mainly in English. The University of Paris is also using open content and 800 educational resources from around 100 teaching units have been made available by 11 member universities of the ParisTech Open CourseWare Consortium.

However, the pioneers are in the US, where thousands of courses have been made available by university-based projects, including MIT OpenCourseWare. Another open-access facility creating a buzz in the world of elearning is Mooc — Massive Open Online Courses. These are super-sized open education courses. David White, co-manager of technology-assisted lifelong learning at Oxford University, says there is a huge shift happening in universities, which has big implications for the role of lecturers and students. Instead of being teachers, lecturers are likely to become "facilitators", helping students and others navigate the web and leading online discussions.

He adds that open content will mean academics can compare their performance globally. Students, on the other hand, could be enrolled at Oxford, but do a large part of their learning at, say, MIT, through online forums. Not only will they be more in control of their learning, but they will be able to learn through peer networks via social networking platforms.

The Netherlands hosts one of the major peer-to-peer media sharing services, Kazaa. It is also home to innovative peer-tutoring work, such as the Pair [Peer-allocated instant response] project, which matches up students with the best-suited peer candidate for online support.

White says students will need to be schooled in new-media literacy so they can manage all the different streams of information and collaborate at a distance: "These are key skills for the new century."

Source: the Guardian

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India restricts qualification from
off-shore campuses

In a new mandate India has made a distinction between degrees awarded by the offshore campus and the Indian one. The mere completion of a degree program at the foreign campus does not necessarily mean that the degree is acceptable in. So, for example, an Indian medical student graduating from a private Indian university's overseas campus would not automatically be eligible to practice in India unless the student satisfied the conditions of eligibility in India

American model for Indian bachelor degrees

While the US has made changes to recognize the three year bachelors degrees from India, India after examining the suggestion proposed by three academies —Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore , Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, proposed in October 2008, the University Grants Commission (UGC) and Delhi University (DU) may soon offer a four year B.Sc. Programme. After completing four year B.Sc. course students would be able to enroll for a dual M.Sc. and Ph.D. course.

Those wanting to opt out a year after enrolling in the dual course would get an M.Sc. degree. If the new system gets good response, it could also be extended to other streams such as humanities, especially economics.

Many important universities are likely to adopt the new four-year system.