This concept has been around for a while now so I did some looking into it yesterday and it really surprised me how many schools do this. The college I am attending for my master's program had this, and frankly at the time it appealed to me because of how expensive it was to apply to grad school. For students wanting to apply to multiple colleges the multiple applications can really start ringing up the dollar signs at $30-$75 a pop to apply. Ouch.
So some schools are bucking the trend and making their online application completely free of charge.
Do a quick search on our website and look up these colleges:
Simmons College
Concordia University (OR)
Clarke College
Central Methodist University
Aquinas College
Averett University
Silver Lake College
Hamline University
Regis University
Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology
Ranken Technical College
Viterbo University
Ouachita Community College
Unity College
St. John's University (NY)
Green Mountain College
Totally free to submit an application to these schools. There may be a lot more but this was just on a quick sweep through our member colleges on the site, and what I could find on the first page of the online application.
What I wonder is if this will cause students to apply to schools they may not have or may not be as interested in... I wonder how many attend a school because of being able to apply for free. What I also wonder (I'm very curious today apparently) is how much extra work this might cause an admissions department to weed out students who just applied online because it's free... I don't know. I can't imagine applying to a college I wasn't interested in just because I could, but then again I've seen what my younger brothers who are in high school do when they're bored!
What do you think? Would you submit an application to a school you're not terribly interested in just because it's free? Do you wonder too?
Showing posts with label college enrollment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college enrollment. Show all posts
Friday, April 17, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Hurray, US Dept of Education!
Not too often that you see that as a blog title, right?
Last week they did something really cool- yet very simple- for people using the web to try and navigate some of the higher education websites that they have. The web address for the Department of Education has always been http://www.ed.gov/- which makes sense to many of us who work in higher education, but not always to the every day person who is trying to figure out their (or their child's) Federal Financial Aid. The other government departments aren't abbreviated like that, for example there is http://www.justice.gov/ or http://www.treasury.gov/... but http://www.education.gov/ took you to an error page.
Not anymore! They have updated it to take you to the REAL US Department of Education page.
Why is this such a big deal? As also shown in this article, there are many websites that will take advantage of students who don't know as much about the FAFSA (free application for Federal Student Aid... free being the key word) and will charge them to file it through their site. Yep- that's right you can pay a fee to file your FREE application for Federal Student Aid through other sites. These sites were coming up instead of the education site
One service advertises that for the "low fee" of around $80 they will help you fill out your FAFSA, review and submit it. Maybe I'm biased working in higher ed, but I've been doing my own for years (including when I was a dependant student) and I thought the thing was pretty easy to do myself. Even students who I worked with who had never done it before found out it was easy after they got over the initial jitters of filling the form out. The FAFSA literally puts what line on your tax form you'll find the information on so you can go right down the line and fill everything in!
Last week they did something really cool- yet very simple- for people using the web to try and navigate some of the higher education websites that they have. The web address for the Department of Education has always been http://www.ed.gov/- which makes sense to many of us who work in higher education, but not always to the every day person who is trying to figure out their (or their child's) Federal Financial Aid. The other government departments aren't abbreviated like that, for example there is http://www.justice.gov/ or http://www.treasury.gov/... but http://www.education.gov/ took you to an error page.
Not anymore! They have updated it to take you to the REAL US Department of Education page.
Why is this such a big deal? As also shown in this article, there are many websites that will take advantage of students who don't know as much about the FAFSA (free application for Federal Student Aid... free being the key word) and will charge them to file it through their site. Yep- that's right you can pay a fee to file your FREE application for Federal Student Aid through other sites. These sites were coming up instead of the education site
One service advertises that for the "low fee" of around $80 they will help you fill out your FAFSA, review and submit it. Maybe I'm biased working in higher ed, but I've been doing my own for years (including when I was a dependant student) and I thought the thing was pretty easy to do myself. Even students who I worked with who had never done it before found out it was easy after they got over the initial jitters of filling the form out. The FAFSA literally puts what line on your tax form you'll find the information on so you can go right down the line and fill everything in!
Some people do have really complicated taxes (or rather, parents do) and at that point if you can't figure out where to go/what to do that is what your college financial aid department is there for. They know that thing inside and out and can help you out- for free!!
So back to my original point. These outside companies were often coming up fairly high on the search pages when www.education.gov would send people to an error page, and the new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, finally got on the tech folks around the Dept of Ed and had them update the links.
Because really, searching for a college is hard enough that getting error messages from the sites you depend on for information is not something you need!
Friday, March 6, 2009
Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!
No really.
Guys- what's happening? We ran our demographics for the site last week and this is what we found on scholarship applications:
73% to 27% female to male?
But that's been shown in many new studies that the big push for girls to get a higher education and into math and science courses has paid off- to the point that many universities are reporting less than 40% of their 4 year degrees are being awarded to men.
A few speculate that it's due to men earning more in the workforce so going straight to work after high school is viable since they can still make a good living, whereas it's seen that women must have a degree in order to have a good income... I'm not sure about that since I haven't done a lot of research, but it's just what I've read.
Anyone else seeing this anywhere? Guys... any response to what's happening??
Guys- what's happening? We ran our demographics for the site last week and this is what we found on scholarship applications:
73% to 27% female to male?
But that's been shown in many new studies that the big push for girls to get a higher education and into math and science courses has paid off- to the point that many universities are reporting less than 40% of their 4 year degrees are being awarded to men.
A few speculate that it's due to men earning more in the workforce so going straight to work after high school is viable since they can still make a good living, whereas it's seen that women must have a degree in order to have a good income... I'm not sure about that since I haven't done a lot of research, but it's just what I've read.
Anyone else seeing this anywhere? Guys... any response to what's happening??
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