Day and night the locals chatter. They counsel and console, bicker and rant. Their questions are endless. Though often hopeful, they never stop pounding the drums of worry. This is College Confidential, a vast virtual realm where visitors can find the best and worst of human nature. Here, in moderated discussion forums, people help strangers. They…

Among the traditional measures of student quality, class rank is widely described by admissions officers as the fuzziest. That is why some colleges no longer use it in their evaluations of applicants, while many others do not consider it very important. The measure once had greater appeal. For one thing, it had the whiff of fairness. Seeing how an…

Some students at University of Florida can take classes only during the spring and summer semesters for as long as they are enrolled. Each year they will get a four-month break--the fall semester--when they can take online courses, study abroad, or do internships. Some may opt to work. Despite their schedules, the students are full-fledged…

Boston College saw a 26-percent decrease in applications this year, a drop officials largely attribute to a new essay requirement. Last year the private Jesuit institution received a record 34,051 applications for 2,250 spots in its freshman class. This year approximately 25,000 students applied, and all of them had to do one thing their…

The handyman has a tool for everything, but the admissions dean is not so lucky: He must make do with just a few. Every year, presidents and professors expect freshmen who are curious, determined, and hungry for challenges. The traditional metrics of merit, however, can't reveal such qualities. Standardized-test scores may or may not predict a…

The admissions process is awash in numbers. Students accumulate grade-point averages and test scores. Colleges use statistical models to predict enrollment outcomes, and they tout their place in commercial rankings. In many ways, numbers simplify this complex enterprise. However, they have come to carry undue weight, says Martha Blevins Allman,…

A new option that allows students to choose which of their test scores to send to colleges has generated renewed criticism of the College Board. College Board officials tout the option, called Score Choice, as a way to ease test taker anxiety. Some prominent admissions officials have publicly described Score Choice as a sales tactic that will…

This article reports that with a weak economy and a record number of applications at many campuses, admissions deans have deliberately undershot their targets and lengthened their waiting lists. For months a four-digit number has hovered over Douglas L. Christiansen. It's there when he falls asleep and there when he wakes up. The number is 1,550,…

This article profiles Loren Pope, a college consultant and a former education editor at "The New York Times" who touted "no name" colleges and called the nation's most famous university, Harvard University, a rip-off. In his influential book "Colleges That Change Lives" (Penguin, 1996), Mr. Pope profiled 40 institutions--most of them small…

Most people in admissions have a road story. There are tales of wrong turns, lost suitcases, and days when they were just well-dressed ghosts, walking in and out of high schools where no students came to see them. These are the trials of admissions representatives who leave their campuses for several weeks each fall. They trek near and far to meet…

The University of California has adopted changes to its undergraduate admissions policy that will enlarge its applicant pool and drop the requirement that students take the SAT Subject Tests. The policy is the most significant change in the university's admissions practices in at least a decade. It will increase the number of California…

Last year the National Association for College Admission Counseling (Nacac) asked William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard University, to lead a panel that would examine testing issues and recommend how colleges might better use entrance exams. The dean and his fellow panelists were to present their findings this…

Over the last decade, admissions has become a front-page fixation, and the industry's professionals have higher profiles than ever, on campuses and off. In turn, today's admissions jobs come with heavy doses of prestige and pressure. In this article, the authors discuss the results of a new survey of college officers which suggest that, despite…

Jeff Rickey is a numbers guy. But three years ago, a colleague asked him about something he'd never counted: applicants who came out of nowhere. The question intrigued Mr. Rickey, dean of admissions and financial aid at Earlham College in Indiana. He found that 17 percent of the college's applicants that year had not called, taken a tour, or…

Over the past two decades, college admissions has become a prime-time preoccupation. Most people know at least something about the process, especially if they have a teenager in high school and a college guide on their coffee table. Nonetheless, widespread public misconceptions persist about admissions requirements, the selection process, and the…