Nearly one in five US students — a total of 9.3 million — attend rural schools. But far too often, the needs of these students are overlooked in national discussions.
The leaders at the Rural School and Community Trust hope to change that. The group released its annual Why Rural Matters report today to shed light on the scope and status of rural education.
Applying to schools and preparing for the college transition can be tough for any student. But for students dealing with a chronic illness, the process has added challenges.
The key to tackling those challenges? Planning ahead.
Teen Vogue recently published a list of advice to help students dealing with chronic illness clear those hurdles before heading off to college.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama has released a special back-to-school message.
“The harder you work in your classes this year, the more opportunities you’ll have to go to college and get the education you need to be who you want to be and build the life you want to live,” Obama tells students in a video message released by Better Make Room. “And that matters not just for your future, but for the future of our country and our world.”
Continue reading Michelle Obama Encourages Students to Reach Higher
Editor’s note: A version of this post was originally published on Admitted in December 2017. It’s being republished as part of NACAC’s Best of the Blog series.
Feeling stressed about the college application process? Take heart.
“There are plenty of great schools in this country, and what matters much more than how they are ranked is how you make use of their resources,” Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University (CT), writes in a column published by The Washington Post.
He continues: “When I talk to seniors and recent graduates from schools of all kinds and in various parts of the country, I find that it matters little how difficult it was to get admitted to that school and that it matters a great deal how hard they worked while attending it.”
Heading off to college is a huge period of transition for students and BUILD Series, a live interview series in New York City, wants to help ease some of the anxiety around the freshman year experience.
Host Matt Forte recently interviewed three current college students at New York University — Wade Cushner, Nettie Jones, and Liz Schilling — about parent relationships in college, making new friends, dealing with roommates, and how to get through the transition.
Inequities in opportunity begin far before college, according to a recent report.
In fact, the social class a child is born into is a better predictor than academic test scores when it comes to calculating future earning power, research from Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce shows.
Continue reading Report: Social Class—Not Smarts—Is A Better Predictor of Academic Success
Officials at the US Department of Education are urging incoming college freshmen to stay on track this summer.
A recent post on the department’s Homeroom blog notes that up to one-third of high school grads admitted to higher ed institutions fail to show up in the fall.
Continue reading Tips to Help Incoming Freshmen Stay on Track
You may recall the story about a class of kindergartners who are asked to raise their hands if they are artists. All hands fly up amid peals of delight. Then, a class of ninth graders is asked the same question. Few or no hands appear. What happened to still those creative hands? Unfortunately, as they grow older students are often led to believe that delving deeply into the fine arts will result in an unreliable and unprofitable future. Students are steered to more “practical” endeavors like science, engineering, or business—as if knowledge were deposited like grain into sealed silos.
As college counselors, let us ventilate those silos with windows of opportunity. Each fine artist is imbued with imagination, curiosity, and creativity, and through these windows light pours into every corner of the mind. Albert Einstein declared: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Einstein is in the good company of Leonardo da Vinci, who, had he been practical and followed his father’s profession, would have become a clerk. Imagine the loss, not only to art.
Continue reading Windows of Opportunity: The Fine Arts Advantage
Reach Higher hosted the fifth annual Beating the Odds Summit Tuesday to support first-generation college-bound students.
“No matter how much you may front, there is a part of you that is wondering whether this was a mistake and whether I belong and whether I can do this. Can I go on this campus or start this program? Am I really worthy of it? Those were the messages I had going on in my head and they still come up in life,” former First Lady Michelle said.
“…But here’s my one big message. This is not a mistake. You are here because you are more than capable of doing it.”
Continue reading Michelle Obama Speaks to Students at 5th Annual Beating the Odds Summit
School counselors face large caseloads and an ever-growing list of demands as they work to serve the social, emotional, and academic needs of their students. But could a small part of this workload be shared by counseling graduate students?
This is the idea behind Postsecondary Readiness Night, a program that pairs the school counseling program at the University of Scranton (PA) with local school districts in Pennsylvania.
The most recent event, funded by a NACAC Imagine Fund grant, was geared toward high school juniors, seniors, and their parents and offered stations focused on topics such as financial aid and college visits.
