by Leigh Moore A friend recently asked me to identify the ten most important facts when it comes to choosing a college. The higher ed choice starts and ends with the student’s unique priorities, but I liked the tacit question behind his challenge: What’s most important? Specifically, what data is most important? As some of you know, we have a senior at our house this year. He’s probably seen about half of the schools to which he’s been admitted. He simply will not be

by Leigh Moore, college advisor and proud Class of 2021 mom Note : This is a lengthy post, despite my best efforts at an economy of words. I hope it provides some measure of understanding for those families who are navigating uncharted waters. The enrollment management principle For years, people have talked about admissions as a game. It’s not; unfortunately, it’s a business which coincides with the pursuit of dreams, with kids who take personally dynamics beyond their contr

Admit rates are highlighted in yellow on this spreadsheet, but they don’t demonstrate the significance of a binding early decision application as well as other metrics can. In particular, look at the last couple of columns on the right. Even at highly selective colleges, most Regular Decision admits decline enrollment offers. At up to $75K per year per student, the stakes are very high for admissions offices when it comes to guessing a student’s intentions. ​ The ultimate way

March 10, 2020 All day, every day, the reality of one’s college experience is a lot more important than test scores or binding Early Decision stats. Spring is the time to set admissions hype aside, because hype doesn’t matter. Real college matters. It’s time to start differentiating between the sense of scarcity, the amenities which launched a million applications….and the real place the student plans to attend. It’s a little tricky to write about admissions hype without sou

As I labor over my efforts to articulate why a proactive approach to the college search is important both practically and developmentally, I’ll let some numbers speak for themselves. Whether we like it or not, Early Decision is incredibly important to the student who prioritizes admissibility to a particular institution. The published numbers, in my opinion, do not tell the whole story. The admit rates for binding early applicants are sometimes not much higher than those for

Tomorrow, May 1, will be college decision day for some students; for others, it’s six months past decision day. For more than a handful of colleges, it’ll be a day to calculate how much space still remains in the class and strategize ways to fill those seats. In our house, this May 1 will be Brian Beckley Day. Brian is our senior’s school counselor. He’s one of those people who is too wise for his years, and the philosophy he articulated to us a while back has come to inform