| Hi tokenadult,
I took one of my 10th grade sons to the "Exploring College Options" program in my area last night. It was held in a hotel ballroom, which was pretty much packed, think hundreds of people. (Harvard, Penn, Stanford, Georgetown and Duke.) Each admissions officer made a PowerPoint presentation lasting somewhere around 10-15 minutes. They all stressed their new financial aid policies and the fact that $$ matters should not preclude a student from applying. They talked about student faculty ratios, and the beauty and advantages of going to school in their geographic area. After all the individual presentations were done, they opened up the floor to some questions, stressing that they wanted general questions which would apply to many of the students in the room. One question asked was, "what are the important things you look for when evaluating an applicant?" The Harvard rep said, "Oh, you mean how do you get in?" A good chuckle was had by all. Then the question was answered seriously, and not surprisingly, the answer was that the student's record, the transcript, was the first thing that was looked at. Standardized testing was next, with the comment that there was no formula or cutoff used for those numbers. After a few more general questions, the large group was broken up into 5 smaller groups so that students could speak with the individual admissions officers. We didn't stay for that portion of the program since my S is only in the 10th grade. He actually thanked me for taking him to the program and said that seeing the presentations made everything seem more real. |