Michelle Kretzschmar of Do It Yourself College Rankings and I will be holding our second in a series of summer college webinars tonight at 6 p.m. PDT. We hope you can attend and please bring a quesiton to ask — the best part of the webinar will be your questions! Lynn O’Shaughnessy

I don’t have to tell you that one of the biggest stresses of the entire college process is the standardized testing.

The prospects of taking the SAT and/or ACT is daunting, particularly since so much can ride on the results. I wasn’t happy about the amount of time and money spent in my house on these tests for my own two kids.

Time and money – and many families don’t have it to spend – won’t raise the test scores for everybody. When that happens, however, there are many colleges and universities that don’t require that students to submit their test scores or they de-emphasize the scores.

As you’ll see from the list, a significant number of liberal arts colleges are test optional. In fact, more than a third of the top liberal arts colleges in the country fall into this category.

In contrast, there are few top universities that are test optional. Unlike universities, colleges are more likely to evaluate applicants holistically which means they look beyond the numbers — test scores, grade point averages and class ranks. Wake Forest University is probably the most notable exception. It announced its decision to go test-optional in 2008 and it’s been a big success.

A List of Test-Optional Schools

According to FairTest, a nonprofit that helps schools adopt test-optional policies, there are roughly 850 schools that don’t require test scores, but many of them have easy admission policies. The schools you’ll see below are highly selective or selective schools.

You’ll see that a few of the schools on this list are test flexible. At test flexible schools, students can choose – in lieu of the SAT or ACT – other scores to submit such as from Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams. Some test-flexible schools require the scores of SAT subject tests.

I am sharing an email that I received this week from a dad who had just completed a college trip with his daughter and had some helpful suggestions for schools on how to operate better college tours. At the end of his suggestions, you will see which state university that the family visited. Lynn O’Shaughnessy

Hi Lynn,

I hope you will be willing to indulge me on this, but you seem to have a way of getting information about the college process out, so in the hopes and spirit of constructive exchange, I’d like to pass along some thoughts to college admission offices that might help the process.

An open letter to college admission offices,

Today we completed another multi-day trip to visit a large, well known university for an admissions tour.  Your campus was beautiful, the buildings impressive, the campus legends cute.  But you missed a golden opportunity to close the sale because you did not know your product.

In talking to my daughter on the way home, what she most stood out to her was what you did not mention and the questions you could not answer.  This led us to discuss what a tour should be like to better help prospective students.

a.  Dress like you are representing the school in a professional manner.  This doesn’t mean suit & tie but a polo shirt in school colors and khaki shorts/slacks/skirt means more than a T-shirt and cut offs.  And wear a name tag.

b.  Don’t walk off and leave the tour group wondering where you are or struggling to catch up.  You may have walked this path a hundred times, but we are trying to observe as we go, and some older parents cannot keep up.

As an example our group left the admin building and looked for our guides only to find them across the street and leaving us behind before some folks had even gotten out the door.

c.  Be able to talk and discuss with us as you walk.  Practice walking backward and talking to the group as you go.  Long dead periods as we race across campus are killers.

d.  Know the critical information about campus.  Not just the useless trivia about campus legends and cute folklore, but tell us about the academics.  Ultimately that’s why people go to college – to learn.

We don’t expect you to know every class or major, but you should have a good idea of core curriculum everyone takes.  If your university has access to one of a kind facilities, mention that.  Heck, show us if you can.  Most people will be impressed by a particle accelerator, even if they don’t understand it.

e.  Show us some academic buildings from the inside so we can see where classes happen.  Tour the library.  And don’t forget the dining hall.  Let us understand what the meals are and what the meal plans are.  These things are important to parents who pay the bills.

f.  And finally, make that potential student feel welcome, like you can’t wait for her to be a fellow student.  Friendliness and openness does incredible things.

Why Does This Matter

Clemson University

I’m passing these along because college visits take time and are costly.  This trip was a three day round trip, with gas, hotel bills, and eating out.  As parents, we need to ensure these trips are worth the cost in terms of information gained.  Thank you Lynn for taking the time to understand and pass along.

In this case the latest university we visited was Indiana.  My daughter still plans to apply, but mainly due to information we have researched on line.

In many ways she was better informed on the academics than the guides were.

During the drive home she contrasted it with the tours at other schools we’ve visited and Clemson has become the standard she compares against.  At Clemson, for example, she noticed how welcoming everyone was when we arrived on campus – everyone we met that day made her feel like they wanted her to join them, from the lady who checked her in to the students who served her ice cream at the snack bar.

Our tour guide at Clemson took time to speak personally to everyone on the tour while walking between buildings and made sure to point out the related academic buildings for majors people were interested in.  She was able to talk knowledgeably about everything from academics to dining to recreation to campus safety.

I’m sorry this has grown so long, but my primary reason for trying to pass this along is not to complain, but improve the process at all schools.

There are thousands of students and parents spending hundreds of dollars for each college visit they make.  Some of my daughter’s friends are even flying across country to check out certain colleges.  When parents and students are spending that kind of time and money, colleges need to maximize the value out of those two or three hours the student is on campus.

 Michelle Kretzschmar of Do It Yourself College Rankings and I will be holding our second free college webinar on at 6 p.m. PDT on June 22. Hundreds attended our first webinar and we are hoping for another great turnout as we share tips to help you make college more affordable. To learn more, visit my webinar page. I hope to see you on Monday! Lynn O’Shaughnessy

In my last blog post, I shared this reality:  many college career service offices are lame. Too many schools are failing to prepare students adequately for the work world and part of the problem can be traced to moribund career services.

If you missed the post, here it is:

What’s Wrong With College Career Offices

A University That Gets It Right

I pulled the following details about the ambitious Wake Forest program from a report, A Roadmap to Transforming the College-to-Career Experience, that I mentioned in my previous post.

When you are asking a college or university about how it prepares its students for the work world, compare the response you get to what this trailblazing university is doing. What we need are college administrators across the country to start taking career and personal development as seriously as the folks in Winston-Salem.

Wake Forest University, Undergrads and Careers

Transformational change at Wake Forest came from the top. In 2009, as part of his strategic plan, President Nathan Hatch envisioned a campus culture in which personal and career development would be a mission – critical component of the undergraduate student experience. He imagined and set out to ensure an undergraduate experience in which students would gain not only an academic education, but also a career education by utilizing all four years to learn about themselves and their options in the world of work.

A Cabinet-Level Approach to Career Development

Soon after, he appointed Andy Chan as the Vice President for Personal & Career Development, the only known cabinet-level career development professional in higher education. Assuming President Hatch’s vision, VP Chan conceived of an innovative, well-resourced office designed to successfully prepare students for the world of work in a comprehensive way. By audaciously aiming to impact every student and to activate the entire college community, a new paradigm for personal and career development was launched.

Fast forward to 2013 and the new Office of Personal & Career Development (OPCD) has made huge strides. At a time when the average college has slashed its career office budget by 16 percent, Wake Forest is investing heavily in this critical area.

Impressive Job Placement Stats

Over the last three years, Wake Forest has raised more than $10 million to invest in a state-of-the art office, unique “College-to-Career” courses, enhances employer relations, and quadrupling the size of its team to address not only career development, but also mentoring, leadership, innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, family business and professional development.

The approach is paying off as 95 percent of the class of 2012 was either employed or attending graduate school six months after graduation, according to first destination survey respondents (78 percent of the student body).

Getting Started Freshman Year

In this new model, Wake Forest begins the personal development process early. Starting with the first day freshmen set foot on campus during orientation activities, students learn about the process and the

importance of utilizing their entire college experience – and not waiting until their senior year.

As the name of the office communicates, students must first engage in their personal development and understand the importance of assessing and knowing their own interests, values, beliefs, personality, strengths and goals. Students are encouraged to study themselves and learn frameworks for self -understanding, to explore their personal interests and desires, and think about their values and purpose – asking “Who am I and who do I want to be?” before “What shall I do?” Students achieve this through assessments and mentoring conversations with their respected and influential “adult fans” such as faculty, parents, advisors, mentors, counselors and coaches.

Wake Forest Career-to-College Courses

Students also have the opportunity to earn course credit for this self-assessment work. With financial and staff support from the OPCD, the academic Department of Counseling offers a series of four College-to-Career Courses  with the first focusing on self-discovery. Entitled “Personal Framework for Career Exploration,” this course provides thought-provoking activities, readings and reflections to help students understand their personal strengths, interests, values and beliefs, which strengthen their abilities to make sound career decisions.

In the second course, “Options in the World of Work,” students begin the crucial task of understanding the range of careers available and consider which careers will best align with their interests and needs. “Strategic Job Search” is the third course in which students learn about and create professional documents such as resumes and cover letters while learning how to network and interview effectively.

In the final course, “Professional and Life Skills,” students consider the concept of a holistic life and learn the practical aspects of independent living such as personal budgeting, basic financial planning, choosing health and insurance benefits and understanding the dynamics and expectation of the 21st century global workplace.

LinkedIn and Networking

Wake Forest is also innovative in its expansive use of LinkedIn in the career exploration process. Wake Forest students are taught and encouraged to learn about the world of work through proactive networking and researching. The OPCD has enabled students to utilize LinkedIn to connect with alumni, parents and employers to learn about various careers and industries. During counseling appointments, workshops, courses and instructional videos on the OPCD website, students learn how to create a LinkedIn profile and are taught how to utilize this resource to find informational interview contacts.

Additionally, the OPCD has created a LinkedIn group called the “Wake Forest Career Connectors” designed exclusively to connect Wake Forest students with helpful faculty, staff, parents, and alumni in different careers around the globe. Currently, there are more than 6,300 members in the group including approximately 2,000 students, 75 parents, 130 faculty and staff, and 4,100 alumni, and it continues to grow and evolve daily.

Wake Forest Career Treks

To supplement this digital approach, Wake Forest encourages in-person career exploration outside of campus as well. In new initiatives this year, the OPCD has taken students across the country on a series of career treks and set up job shadowing opportunities for students over fall, winter, and spring breaks. Partnering with Stanford University and the University of Chicago, Wake Forest offered career treks to students in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco.

Fifteen students from each school attended each trek where they became familiar with companies in the respective cities, expanded their and were able to explore the city as a potential destination for themselves after college. With similar objectives in mind, Wake Forest also offered a job shadow day with companies in North Carolina for more than 60 students over fall and spring breaks. Wake Forest alumni have played a significant role in providing opportunities like these to students.

College-To-Career Community

A signature feature of the Wake Forest model is its College-to-Career Community. The OPCD partnerswith faculty, advisors, parents and alumni to provide career guidance and support to Wake Forest students. This community complements the resources and programs offered by the OPCD and enables students to ask for and receive important information from the people they trust most. Over the last three years, the office has met with hundreds of faculty and partnered with every single academic department in the college to provide a career-elated event.

Academic Department Involvement

Many departments are now hosting as many as five events a year in partnership with the OPCD. On an individual level, faculty are also given support in their roles as advisors and mentors. The OPCD has a dedicated staff member who works with faculty to provide them with resources and advice which can then be passed along to students, helping them

connect their academic disciplines to the world of work.

Tracking Results

A final, yet crucial component of the OPCD’s offerings has been the detailed, transparent reporting of student outcomes – by academic program and by major. All constituencies highly value this information for making decisions about major and career direction. Subsequently, the perception of the career office rises when these constituencies have data that reflects the mantra that a liberal arts education is highly valued.

Through this reporting, all community members begin to buy into this new approach as they see evidence that it is working and they can see the wide range of career outcomes of their own students.

NOTE: I will be holding a college workshop at the University of California, San Diego on June 22. You can learn more about the event and how to sign up  by heading to my workshop page. Lynn O.

Before spending an obscene amount of money on a bachelor’s degree, families want to know if their children’s job prospects are good.

As I’ve mentioned in past college blog posts, it’s difficult to get a good grasp of this because the employment statistics that schools share are usually meaningless.

Institutional job statistics usually rely on grads returning surveys and few do. And, as you can imagine, the ones that do participate in surveys are the ones who found employment.

You might assume that one logical place to look for a school’s commitment to job preparation is an institution’s career services office. But, here again, the reality can be discouraging.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to an executive at a Fortune 500 company who told me that his company doesn’t bother with university Career Services Offices to find employees. This company that hires many STEM  majors, works with professors at certain universities that provides recommendations. This executive was downright condescending when he spoke of career service offices.

This weekend I was talking to a friend, who is an career expert, who worked for many years at a major flagship university and who is quite familiar with university career placement efforts. She observed that career services offices aren’t much help. For starters, she said the offices are typically understaffed. Schools count on the majority of students not to use their services.

Just as alarming, the people in these career offices, she noted, are often removed from what’s happening in the work world. If you want much more than help with a resume, you could be out of luck

I am mentioning these conversations now because of a new crowd-sourced report issued last month – A Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience – that takes a critical look at college career services. The report, which was edited by Andy Chan and Tommy Derry, at Wake Forest University, was the culmination of a conference hosted by Wake Forest that brought together 250 college administrators, professors, corporate executives and thought leaders.

The report summarized the problem with career services in general:

While transformational changes have occurred in the world of work, many college career offices look and
function the same way they did twenty years ago. When we think about how dramatically the world of work has
changed, it is remarkable that the methods utilized to prepare students to enter it have remained static. Yet
instead of investing, schools slashed career office budgets by an average of 16 percent this past year while
prospective students and families pleaded for increased support to help find gainful employment.1 Unless we
can demonstrate to prospective students and their families that the four years spent at college will result in better
employment prospects, there will continue to be those who disparage a college education as a waste of money.

The conference participants agreed, according to the report, that schools must reexamine their existing models and construct new methods to help students successfully enter the world of work. Many ideas were examined, but everyone agreed on one point: schools must reexamine their existing models and construct new methods to help students successfully enter the world of work.

To generate meaningful change, senior administration and faculty must make this a priority. Career office must reach out to influential groups around campus, particularly academic advancement, communications, information system and alumni relations offices.

Why Are Career Service Offices So Lame?

I think a one reason why colleges haven’t made career services a priority is because they have been able to get away with it. Since a way didn’t exist for families to measure how well schools did at helping their grads find jobs, they didn’t have to be accountable.  This, however, is thankfully changing.

In a modest first step, the federal government recently unveiled College Reality Check that serves as a mini report card for schools. The U.S. Department of Education eventually hopes to include employment data on the scorecards. Here is my post on this:

Measuring a School’s ROI With College Reality Check

The real action has been on the state level as a growing number of states have set up systems that track and share what average salaries are of young college graduates at specific schools within their states. Even more helpful, you can see salaries for specific majors. The states where you can find this information are Texas, Colorado, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia. An easy way to access this information is through CollegeMeasures.org.

Promising Legislation to Make Schools Accountable

Finally, the heat is being applied in Congress to share job data on schools throughout the country. Why roll out salary data one state at a time when the federal government could provide it coast-to-coast?

A bipartisan bill, sponsored by Senators Mark Rubio (R-FL) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced legislation last week that would link individual student records with wage data nationally. The ultimate goal of this legislation is to empower families with information they need to make smart college decisions.

Shamefully, this effort was stymied five years ago when opponents of transparency, including some private colleges and universities and conservative Republicans, convinced Congress to ban the federal government from creating a so-called “federal unit-record database” that would have allowed us to check the overall salaries of grads of any school, as well as the salaries of grads of particular majors.

The resistance to this consumer tool has thankfully been softening. I hope the bipartisan bill passes.

I don’t, by the way, believe that initial salaries tells us everything we need to know about a school and this tool should not be the only one used. I do think transparency is desperately needed because it is the only way to force schools to treat job preparation seriously.

There are too many students with $250,000 educations that are living back home with their parents.

NOTE: Michelle Kretzschmar of Do It Yourself College Rankings and I will hold our second college webinar at 6 p.m. West Coast time on June 17. To attend the webinar, just visit my webinar page at the appointed time.

One more thing….

If you’re going to be in San Diego on June 22, I will be holding a college workshop that day that will cover all the most important college topics that families face.  You can learn more about this workshop by visiting my workshop page and/or by dropping me a line at Lynn@TheCollegeSolution.com.

When students are shopping for colleges, admission representatives typically urge them to ignore the sticker price.

Here’s what these college reps routinely say:  We’ve got lots of financial aid and scholarships. Just APPLY!

I was reminded of why applying blind is such a reckless strategy when a mom contacted me after her husband, who is a financial advisor, heard me give a college talk at a posh hotel in Los Angeles. Her son had gotten into Syracuse University, a private school in upstate New York. The kid is super excited, but the parents are stressing.

Getting Stiffed by Syracuse

The affluent family’s expected family contribution of $30,000 or so is much higher than most. The EFC is what the family would be expected to pay at a minimum for one year at Syracuse or any other school.

Since tuition and room/board at the university costs nearly $54,000 and books, travel and incidentals will boost that price, that would leave room for Syracuse to give this student some need-based financial aid or a merit award. But the teen got nothing. When I heard this, I asked about the teen’s academic profile and the mom said he had about a 3.4 GPA.

I’d suggest that the student’s academic profile is the problem. Most schools give their best awards to the students who will help them move up in the US News & World Report college rankings. At this school, a student with a 3.4 GPA isn’t going to do that.

When I checked the average grade point averages of Syracuse’s incoming freshman at the College Board, it showed that 63% of the students had GPAs of 3.5% or higher. A 3.4 GPA isn’t special at this school.

How Many Students Receive Grants

I then checked with the federal College Navigator and noted that 71% of students at Syracuse receive institutional grants from the school.  Consequently, it’s not surprising that a child who was close to the bottom third of the class would receive nothing.

Coming Up Short at State Universities

The boy also didn’t capture money at any of the other schools that he applied to, which is somewhat unusual when you consider that two-thirds of college students who attend state and private schools receive some type of grant or scholarship. What’s more, 87% of students who attend private schools receive a price break in the form of in-house grants.

The student didn’t qualify for any need-based at the state schools in California that were on his list. That’s hardly surprising since the family makes too much money to receive aid at the lower-priced state schools. The other schools on his list were out-of-state public universities including Indiana University and I believe the mom said the University of Oregon.

What Public Universities Care About

Some state schools will give highly talented out-of-state students scholarships with top GPA’s and standardized test scores, but these state institutions are primarily focused on charging very high tuition to nonresidents to bring in needed dollars.

The teen’s GPA and presumably his SAT scores weren’t high enough to receive a price break from state universities, which routinely evaluate students based on their academic stats. In contrast, private schools and particularly colleges can take a more holistic admissions approach.

It’s not easy to be shut out of award money by every school on a teen’s list, but it happened to this family. Ironically, there would have been plenty of private schools that would have given this teenager a price break. The mom told me that she and her husband had enough saved to pay for one year of Syracuse. They aren’t sure what to do after that.

I feel for them.

More on The College Solution:

Tuition Hogs: The Priciest Schools in America

Is Your EFC Too High?

Calculating Your EFC

NOTE: I will be holding a college workshop at the University of California, San Diego on June 22. You can learn more about the event and how to sign up  by heading to my workshop page. Lynn O.

 Michelle Kretzschmar of Do It Yourself College Rankings and I will be holding our second free college webinar on at 6 p.m. PDT on June 22. Hundreds attended our first webinar and we are hoping for another great turnout as we share tips to help you make college more affordable. To learn more, visit my webinar page. I hope to see you on Monday! Lynn O’Shaughnessy

Should  you take the SAT or ACT?

This is a question that has puzzled millions of teenagers.

Today I’m sharing test-selection advice from Adam Ingersoll, a co-founder of Compass Education Group, which is a large test-prep firm in Southern California. I wrote about his predictions regarding the SAT changes to come in this recent blog post:

Predictions About the New SAT

Here are four things Ingersoll suggests students should do:

1. Decide what test to take at the end of 10th grade.

To find out if you should devote your time to the SAT or ACT, take a practice test for each. A significant minority of teenagers do better on one of these tests. A slight majority do equally well on each test.

You can find the practice tests on the ACT and College Board websites. Here are the links to each:

Free SAT practice test

ACT practice test and ACT test questions

To take a complete ACT practice test, you have to pay $19.95 to get access to the ACT’s online test program. The ACT sample test questions are free on the site.

You can also get full-length tests by buying The Real ACT Prep Guide and the College Board’s Official SAT Study Guide. If you buy the College Board book, you’ll have access to a special test-prep section of the College Board’s website.

Many test prep firms will also give free practice tests to teenagers as a way to attract new customers.

2. Compare ACT and SAT scores.

It can be puzzling knowing whether your ACT or SAT scores are superior. Visit ConvertYourScore.org or use this chart to find out:

3. Don’t change your mind.

By the beginning of 11th grade, lock in your test choice and live with it. Focus on either the SAT or the ACT and don’t change your mind. Don’t worry about schools favoring one test over another. It’s really a non-issue.

4. Don’t take your first real test too early.

Ingersoll is finding that a growing number of students are taking the real ACT or SAT in June as they finish tenth grade.

He advices student NOT to start that early. These students aren’t as mature and their reading skills haven’t developed enough. He said it’s also usually premature for students to take the ACT or SAT in the fall of 11th grade.

Students are more likely to do better if they wait to take their tests in the spring of 11th grade and the fall of their senior year.