Global University Choices

The hunt is on. Although the CommonApp requires one main essay, many US colleges ask for additional supplemental essays that are unique to their application. This year, many of the supplemental essays are not in the Writing Supplement part of the application but instead are found in the main application. Apparently some colleges and universities had problems with Writing Supplements last year because students must submit the supplement separately after submitting the main application. Many students didn’t realize there was a two-step submission process or forgot the second step.

Note that the following discussion may not make sense until after you have created a CommonApp account and added some colleges to My Colleges. This year, many schools opted to include their supplemental essays under Questions in the Application section (on the My Colleges tab) and don’t have a Writing Supplement part of the application. For example, you can see below that Cal Tech has added a section called Required Short Answer & Essay Prompts.

Note that I cut off most of Cal Tech’s questions and essay prompts. Syracuse University put their supplemental essays in the Application under Questions and then Other Information indicating that you need to check all the question sections. Other colleges, such as Brown, followed the traditional approach and the Writing Supplement is visible from the start.

Students must carefully check each college’s Questions in Common App to avoid missing some required essays until the last minute.  Colleges use these essays as one sign of how interested the student is in their institution and rushed responses might send an application to the deny pile.

To add to the challenge of finding all the supplemental essays, institutions such as Cornell ask different questions depending on which of their colleges or schools you wish to attend and the Writing Supplement does not appear until after you make selections in the Academics section. For example, many universities have an extra question for those applying to their engineering school. It is safest to complete the Academics section under Questions early on to be sure all questions are visible.

If you have questions about this, please leave a comment or contact me directly.

The New York Times recently published an issue of its Education Life supplement on professional school with a number of in-depth articles on different types of professional school as well as this great overview of  pursuing an advanced degree in Law, Business, Medicine, Dentistry, Education, or Engineering.  The overview article includes two interesting graphics comparing unemployment and salaries for people with a bachelor and an advanced degree in the same field.

Four major university ranking organizations recently gathered in London for a conference about “Employability and Academic Rankings” but few of their guests seem to support the attempts to connect rankings to the global job market.

Christian Schutz, the head of university relations for Siemens, the electronics company, said rankings had little impact on his company’s hiring decisions. For a conference on the theme of “Employability and Academic Rankings,” this was hardly an on-message contribution.

Read more.

Are you or your child  leaving Switzerland for higher education in the next years? If so, you should be aware of Tina Quick’s book entitled The Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition, Students leaving Switzerland for university face a double adjustment: They not only must transition to a new life stage as an independent adult but to a new culture as well. Even the home country culture can be foreign to them in many respects – something that can come as a huge surprise.

Tina, an international transition expert and author, spoke to parents and students this past spring in Geneva. For more information on her work, please check Tina’s website.  Families repatriating with adolescent children will find the psycho-social/psycho-emotional issues are also applicable for teens re-entering their home country.

For international students moving to the United States, there are many factors to consider that may be obvious to American students but not as clear to those coming from abroad.

TCKs: 5 Things To Look For In Your College Hunt.