(Atlanta Jewish Times) by Mark Fisher.
What happens when three regional college admissions groups unite for a super-conference? What can an educational consultant learn from such an event?
The Southern Association for College Admission Counseling and its Rocky Mountain and Texas counterparts met in San Antonio in April.
About 1,800 educational consultants and admissions personnel attended the meetings and sessions. One cannot attend all the educational sessions; the choice is one session out of many at a given time. One word that stuck in my mind throughout the event was “early.”
It wasn’t long ago when this counselor started meeting with students in the middle of their junior year in high school. That appeared to be an appropriate time to start, and it worked.
But times have changed. Now students in their sophomore year are beginning the college admissions process. What has happened? A few of the sessions told the story.
The first session I attended was “Earlier Is Better — But Is Regular Too Late?” High school students must study their college list and determine the rate of acceptance under early-decision, early-action and regular-decision acceptances. One college accepted so many students on an early plan that there were not many openings left for regular-decision candidates.
