Good news! 2007 college graduates are earning higher salaries than last year’s grads, according to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Starting pay offers rose for bachelor’s-degree graduates in 26 out of 29 majors, the study shows. Among business majors, marketing graduates enjoyed the largest increase — 10.3% — for an average salary offer of $41,285.

60% of employers surveyed by NACE report plans to hire more college graduates this year than last. They expect to increase recruiting for this group by about 20%, the survey shows.

Job / Salary

Accounting - $47,975
Consulting - $51,120
Management Trainee (Entry-Level Mgmt.) - $41,894
Sales - $39,316
Public Accounting - $46,289
Financial / Treasury Analysis - $50,476
Project Engineering - $52,258
Design / Construction Engineering - $48,731
Teaching - $32,488
Software Design & Development- $54,624

Michael Winerip has written an insightful and touching article for the Parenting section of the New York Times this week.

Winerip, a Harvard alum, has volunteered to interview Harvard applicants every year for 10 years. Only one applicant, out of the “40 or so” he says he’s interviewed has actually gotten into Harvard. This is the painful reality of applying to the Ivy Leagues today.

“No matter how glowing my recommendations, in all this time only one kid, a girl, got in, many years back. I do not tell this to the eager, well-groomed seniors who settle onto the couch in our den. They’re under too much pressure already. Better than anyone, they know the odds, particularly for a kid from a New York suburb.”

But Winerip had a realization - that happiness and success do not require an Ivy League degree. His essay encourages parents to help their children “find their own best path.” This is a surer way to excellence than a Harvard degree.

Winerip’s own children are not Harvard-bound. The end of his essay reads, “Pops, hey, Pops!” It was Sammy, one of my twins, who’s probably heading for a good state school. He was in his wetsuit, surfing alone in the 30-degree weather, the only other person on the beach. “What a day!” he yelled, and his joy filled my heart.”

His words echo other wise ones - like those of this NPR series that we wrote about earlier and this story about smart girls looking beyond the Ivy Leagues for schools that are the “right fit” for them.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo
School | school, college, greek

I was shocked, and saddened to read this New York Times article about MIT’s Dean of Admissions who just resigned after admitting she had “padded up her own resume.”

“Ms. Jones’ had claimed on her résumé that she had received degrees from Albany Medical College, Union College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but in fact she had not.”

Yikes.

It’s a classic case of the doctor not taking her own medicine:

“In a book she wrote with Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Ms. Jones said that the competition to get into the best colleges is putting an undue strain on young people.

The book, “Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond,” became part of Ms. Jones’s campaign to persuade parents and her colleagues that it was time to tone down the pressure to get into the elite colleges and universities.”

Ms. Jones lies come on the heels of another scandal - The Great American Loan Scandal, involving officials from several major universities like Columbia University, The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California.

“…officials at three universities that listed Student Loan Xpress as a preferred lender — Columbia University, The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California — were found to have sold shares in the company. The official at Columbia, who earned more than $100,000 on the sale, bought his shares for about $1 each and sold them for about $10…”

Bribery, “insider trading,” false impressions - these are not the words that should be associated institutions that are among the world’s best.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo
School | school, college, greek

We saw this story on feministing.com. Their attempt at “satire” was bungled to say the least. It’s good to know that the women’s Center at UCSD is holding a letter writing get-together about this.

The Princeton Review, for 25 years, has been coming out with a list of best value schools, both public and private.

Here’s their newest list of “best value” public schools:

1. New College of Florida
2. Truman State University, Kirksville, Mo.
3. University of North Carolina at Asheville
4. University of Virginia, Charlottesville
5. University of California — Berkeley
6. University of California — San Diego
7. University of California — Santa Cruz
8. University of Minnesota, Morris
9. University of Wisconsin — Madison
10. St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St. Mary’s City, Md.

And now a drumroll for the “best value” private colleges:

1. Rice Univ. (Houston, TX)
2. Williams College (Williamstown, MA)
3. Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA)
4. Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA)
5. Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, CA)
6. Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN)
7. Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA)
8. Amherst College (Amherst, MA)
9. Scripps College (Claremont, CA)
10. Harvard College (Cambridge, MA)

It’s difficult to value these rankings without know what criteria was used. Here’s a quote explaining the logic behind the numbers.

Said Robert Franek, Princeton Review VP-Publishing, “Families searching for colleges with excellent academics, generous financial aid packages and / or relatively low costs of attendance will find outstanding choices in this book. We selected the 165 schools for this edition and its two top 10 ranking lists based on data we collected from 650 institutions during the 2005-2006 academic year and our surveys of students attending them. To winnow our list of “best values,” we considered more than 30 factors in four areas: academics, tuition, financial aid and student borrowing.”

With students graduating from college with more loans than ever before, this might not be a bad list to make a note of. The average student graduates with about $19,000 in loans. Check out this article for some advice on how to pick a school you can afford. One piece of very good advice the author offers is to stick to federal loans - you’ll be thankful when your loans start accumulating interest. Private loans will have higher interest rates and might start accruing interest immediately rather than when you graduate.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo
School | school, college, greek

For shame! Even Ivy educated women are earning less than men. Is it due to career choices? Nursing? Teaching? Counseling? How wide is the gap when they’re looking at the same profession?

Here are some shocking statistics:

A report released on April 23, 2007 by the American Association of University Women found that “women one year out of a 4-year college earn 80% of what their male counterparts earn.”

10 Years After Graduation - Women earn 69 cents to every dollar that men earn 10 years after graduation; the wage gap widens to 12%.

Educated Women Experience a Greater Pay Gap - Catherine Hill, research director at AAUW tesified that attending a highly-selective institution does little to boost a woman’s pay, and educated women experience a greater pay gap than women overall.

Source:
Pay Gap Exists as Early as One Year out of College, Says New Research Report

women | jobs, work, careers

If you are an undergraduate or graduate student, you’re most likely filling out a FAFSA - the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. I filled mine out recently and was curious about all the information that I was being asked to excavate like - “my credit for federal tax on special fuels.” A recent New York Times article just shed some light on this for me. The article suggests that perhaps, the government is collecting more information than it needs through the FAFSA.

“The government is collecting way more information than is needed to calculate someone’s aid,” says Judith Scott-Clayton, a doctoral candidate at Harvard who is studying higher education.”

For most families, all that matters in the final number crunching is the adjusted gross income from the year prior, according to the Times article. As a result some industry specialists are calling for a simpler, shorter FAFSA form. I’d be all for that.

A useful tool that I found out about through this article is the Fafsa4caster, a nifty tool that allows families to calculate approximately what sort of financial aid they can expect.
Posted by Sindya Bhanoo
school, college, greek | tips

Psychology professor Barry Schwartz from Swarthmore has a very interesting solution to the Ivy Game insanity that I’ve been so cranky about lately. Read his op-ed in the LA Times. He has some sound psychology-based arguments for making the college admissions process a “crapshoot”.

“There is a simple way to dramatically reduce the pressure and competition that our most talented students now experience. When selective institutions get the students’ applications, the schools can scrutinize them using the same high standards they currently use and decide which of the applicants is good enough to be admitted. Then the names of all the “good enough” students could be placed in a metaphorical hat, with the “winners” drawn at random for admission. Though a high school student will still have to work hard to be “good enough” for Yale, she won’t have to distort her life in the way she would if she had to be the “best.” The only reason left for participating in all those enrichment programs would be interest, not competitive advantage.”

The cynic in me (I know I must read like a Pollyanna, but I’m totally not) assumes the helicopter parents will find some way to warp that system, too, and their kids will still end up freaked out and incapable of rational thought. But it’s still something to think about.

I, however, am at a loss. After I thought myself into a corner with the grey blobs of plasma, I ran out of ideas for making this college admissions gauntlet less psychotic. I have very young children, so I have time to hone my College Admissions Gauntlet Philosophy before I actually have to give my kiddos advice about their college careers. Besides telling my kids that they have free will (sometimes I like to implement off-the-wall ideas) and can go to college or not, it’s up to them, I think I might also forbid them from applying to any Ivies. That won’t work either; then they’ll go to Harvard just to piss me off.

Posted by Alexa Harrington