Author Archives: Honorsadmin

Accepted to All the Ivies and Stanford–Chooses Alabama Honors

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Editor’s note: The following article is by Peter Jacobs of Business Insider. We are posting it here because it is a great illustration of the main advantage of many public honors colleges and programs–merit aid for highly talented students that they cannot receive at most private elites.

After some thought and consideration of all the schools’ offers, Nelson decided it wouldn’t be worth the financial strain to use this money on his undergraduate education. He plans on going to medical school after college, and knows he’ll be faced with more tuition costs.

“With people being in debt for years and years, it wasn’t a burden that Ronald wanted to take on and it wasn’t a burden that we wanted to deal with for a number of years after undergraduate,” Ronald Sr. said. “We can put that money away and spend it on his medical school, or any other graduate school.”

University Alabama Quad Denny Chimes Campus

Looking long term, Nelson doesn’t think his decision will impact his chances of getting in to a top medical school or other graduate program. After speaking with his teachers and guidance counselors, Nelson said, he realized that “any undergraduate school can prepare you for a graduate program. It’s just determined on how much work you’re willing to put in.”

At UA, Nelson will be part of the university’s “Fellows Experience” through its honors college. A visit to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as part of the program’s multiround interview process helped seal the deal for UA. He got to meet other students he would study with over the next four years and was impressed by them.

“It was kind of amazing being around so many like-minded students, which is why I think I’ll be able to have a similar situation [to an Ivy League school], considering the type of students they’re attracting,” Nelson said.

The financial incentive for attending Alabama was high. Due to his high standardized-test scores on the SAT and ACT, UA waived Nelson’s out-of-state fees and covered his tuition costs. Through the fellows program and his National Merit scholarship, Nelson will also have stipends for extra campus costs and potentially studying abroad.

While some people may see his decision to turn down schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford as ill considered or shortsighted, Nelson said he’s received a ton of support for choosing UA. One teacher, he told Business Insider, complimented him for “making such an informed decision” about where to work towards his undergraduate degree.

“I’ve had a lot of people questioning me — ‘Why are you doing this?’ — but after I explain my circumstances, they definitely understand where I’m coming from,” Nelson said.

Overall, though, Nelson doesn’t appear to have any regrets about his decision and seems excited to start college in the fall.

“The Ivy League experience would certainly be something amazing, to make these connections, and have these amazing professors,” he said. “But I really do think I’ll be able to make the same experience for myself at the college I chose.”

The Top 10 Percent Rule in Texas: Highly Questionable Results

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Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from the most recent issue of The Alcalde, the alumni publication of the University of Texas at Austin. The automatic admission of a student in the top 10 percent of  his or her high school class, in place since 1997, has had unintended consequences for minority students and non-minority students alike.

By 2008, more than 80 percent of incoming freshman at UT-Austin were admitted under the [10 percent] rule, leaving the university to choose less than 20 percent of its own incoming class. Then-chancellor Francisco Cigarroa and UT-Austin president Bill Powers appealed to the 2009 Texas Legislature to cap automatic admissions at 50 percent of each incoming class. Without action, they predicted, UT wouldn’t be able to admit any students from outside the U.S. or Texas by 2015.

Legislators intervened specifically for UT-Austin, but compromised on a 75 percent cap. Since then, the university has admitted the top one percent, two percent, and so on until it reached the cap, which means that for the incoming class of 2019, UT-Austin’s top 10 Percent Law is really a top eight percent rule.

As ProPublica notes, the competition for non-automatic admission to UT in 2008 was tougher than getting into Harvard.

While applications from minority students more than doubled in the first 10 years of the law, its success is still debatable. A 2012 Princeton study of UT and Texas A&M concluded that the law actually benefited white students more than Hispanic students. While test scores rose at smaller state universities, applicants at the flagships came from more affluent, less diverse high schools and graduates from poorer schools, particularly Hispanic graduates, were less likely to apply.

In a state-required report compiled in the fall of 2014, UT officials noted that between 2013-14, African-American and Hispanic representation actually decreased, as did the number of admitted and enrolled first-generation students and those from lower socioeconomic groups.

One of the barriers to coming to UT, presumably, is cost. If, for example, you come from San Perlita, at Texas’ southern tip, where more than half of residents under 18 live below the poverty line, heading more than 300 miles north just to pay tuition, rent, and buy books for at least four years is a daunting prospect. In response to the declining numbers from populations meant to be served by the law, UT has launched the Texas Advance scholarship program, which the university says could essentially offset tuition when paired with state and federal aid.

While a handful of bills relating to the rule have been filed during the 2015 legislative session, only one would fundamentally change it, even then only altering it to automatically admit students from the top eight percent. That rule wouldn’t change much at UT, which is already essentially a top eight percent institution. Despite questions of its effect and effectiveness, it seems the law will stick around, at least for a while.

 

Here Are 23 Reasons for College Choice–and a Note on the Honors Option

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Editor’s note: The following list comes from a post by college consultant Nancy Griesemer, who writes regular for the Washington Examiner. Read the full post, and consult the always fascinating UCLA Freshman Report for more information.

Griesemer notes in her post that while 73% of applicants are accepted by their first choice college, only 55% end up enrolling at that institution. Clearly, cost is a big factor behind these stats, and points to an issue of concern to us: finding a place for students smart enough to get into elite private colleges but cannot attend the private school of their choice for financial reasons.

In addition, with the current emphasis on selectivity as a major metric in the U.S. News rankings, highly talented students are being ever more widely recruited by elite universities and, at the same time, finding their odds of acceptance significantly reduced. For these students, the relatively high first choice acceptance cited above does not obtain.

So…insufficient merit aid to offset costly private tuition and expenses, plus capricious selectivity designed to make schools look better by  rejecting smart applicants, have helped boost public honors programs where students can find quality at a lower cost, along with a better overall mix of students.

The arrows below indicate whether the response percentage has increased or decreased since the previous year’s survey.

1. College has a very good academic reputation (65.4 percent)↑
2. This college’s graduates get good jobs (53.4 percent)↑
3. I was offered financial assistance (46.9 percent)↓
4. The cost of attending this college (44.9 percent)↓
5. College has a good reputation for social activities (42.8 percent)↓
6. A visit to the campus (42.4 percent)↓
7. Wanted to go to a college about this size (36.6 percent)↓
8. Grads get into good grad/professional schools (32.9 percent)↓
9. Percent of students that graduate from this college (31.1 percent)↑
10. Wanted to live near home (20.7 percent)↑
11. Information from a website (18.8 percent)↑
12. Rankings in national magazines (18 percent)↑
13. Parents wanted me to go to this school (17.2 percent)↓
14. Admitted early decision and/or early action (15.7 percent)↑
15. Could not afford first choice (14.1 percent)↓
16. Not offered aid by first choice (10.6 percent)↓
17. High school counselor advised me (10.4 percent)↑
18. Athletic department recruited me (9.1 percent)↓
19. My relatives wanted me to come here (8 percent)↑
20. Attracted by religious affiliation/orientation of college (7.3 percent)↓
21. My teacher advised me (7.2 percent)↑
22. Private college counselor advised me (4.6 percent)↑
23. Ability to take online courses (4.1 percent)↑

 

 

Times Higher Ed World Rankings 2014-2015: Top Engineering and Tech Universities

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The most recent Times Higher Ed World University Rankings list the best universities for science and technology, and 13 U.S. universities are among the top 20. An additional eight U.S. schools made the top 50. Public universities are very well represented in the rankings.

The Times rankings are based on the following criteria:

  • Teaching: the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
  • Research: volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
  • Citations: research influence (worth 30 per cent)
  • Industry income: innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
  • International outlook: staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

Here are the top 20 universities for engineering and technology:

1. MIT

2. Stanford

3. Caltech

4. Princeton

5. Cambridge

6. Imperial College London

7. Oxford

8. Swiss Federal Institute Zurich

9. UCLA

10. UC Berkeley

11. Georgia Tech

12. Ecole Polytechnique Lausanne

13. National University of Singapore

14. UT Austin

15. Michigan

16. Carnegie Mellon

17. Cornell

18. Illinois

19. Northwestern

19. Delft University of Technology

The following U.S. universities are among the top 50 in the world in engineering and technology:

22. UC Santa Barbara

27. UW Madison

32. Columbia

33. Washington

40. Rice

45. Purdue

49. Minnesota

50. UC San Diego

Goldwater Scholars 2015: Alabama, Clemson, Maryland, UMass, Minnesota, and Rutgers Lead the Way

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Each year, we provide an update of Goldwater scholarships won by public university students, and public universities did extraordinarily well in 2015, winning 152 out of 260  scholarships awarded this year.

We provide this update because Goldwater scholars are all still undergraduates, and their selection is an indication of the undergraduate research opportunities at their universities.

In 2014, only three public universities had four Goldwater Scholars, the maximum number any school can have in a year. But in 2015, six public universities had the maximum: Alabama, Clemson, Maryland, Massachusetts Amherst, Minnesota, and Rutgers. An additional ten public universities had three scholars: Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, University at Buffalo, UT Dallas, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, and Montana State.

Two of the regional universities we follow each had two Goldwater Scholars in 2015: UW Eau Claire and Western Kentucky. Since 2008, Western Kentucky students have won 20 Goldwater scholarships.

“The Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,166 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. One hundred seventy-two of the Scholars are men, 111 are women, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their degree objective. Twenty-two Scholars are mathematics majors, 191 are science and related majors, 63 are majoring in engineering, and 7 are computer science majors. Many of the Scholars have dual majors in a variety of mathematics, science, engineering, and computer disciplines.

“The one and two year scholarships will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

“Goldwater Scholars have very impressive academic qualifications that have garnered the attention of prestigious post-graduate fellowship programs. Recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 80 Rhodes Scholarships, 117 Marshall Awards, 112 Churchill Scholarships, and numerous other distinguished fellowships such as the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships.”

National Science Foundation Fellowships 2015: Publics vs. Private Elites

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Keeping up with the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program grants is an annual project we undertake because the grant stipend, valued currently at $32,000 a year for three years of graduate work plus a separate $12,000 a year paid directly to the university for costs, are so generous that prospective undergrads might want to know graduates of their college of choice perform in the NSF GRFP competition.

The grants go to students with very high college gpa’s (around 3.70 and above) along with outstanding GRE test scores. Grantees must submit proposals to do research in one of the STEM disciplines or social sciences. Most grants are for STEM students.

This year we will list the top 30 universities, both public and private, whose students were named as NSF GRFP fellows in 2015. It is true that many public universities have much larger overall undergraduate enrollments, so one might expect that those schools would have the most NSF fellows; on the other hand, the private elites are far more selective, and one would think that a far higher percentage of their undergraduates should be competitive for the awards. We write primarily for prospective honors students and their parents, so our perspective is that the best students in leading public universities can compete with those coming from private elites, and the NSF awards are one indication that this is the case.

One indication of a rough parity is that the top two universities are far and away the best this year–MIT and UC Berkeley–one private, the other public. Both are perennial leaders in this category.

Below are the leading universities for NSF fellowships in 2015. All the schools had at least 15 NSF fellows.

UNIVERSITY FELLOWS
MIT 63
UC Berkeley 60
Harvard 37
Florida 29
UT Austin 29
Washington 29
Cornell 28
UC San Diego 27
Columbia 26
Caltech 25
UCLA 24
Penn 23
Chicago 22
Brown 21
Princeton 21
Georgia Tech 20
Northwestern 20
Michigan 19
Wisconsin 19
Yale 19
Illinois 18
Maryland 18
Minnesota 18
UC Irvine 18
Stanford 18
Texas A&M 17
Rice 17
Arizona State 16
Penn State 16
Washington Univ 15

 

 

 

U.S. News Rankings at Odds with Quality of Academic Departments

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Comparing the departmental rankings of leading public research universities to the overall rankings of the same schools by U.S. News yields striking disparities, emphasizing the impact that selectivity, class size, and financial resources have on the U.S. News listings, to the detriment of other factors.

(See also Rankings, Academic Departments: Private Elites vs Publics.)

As we have pointed out elsewhere, honors students have fewer concerns about class size because honors classes in the first two years tend to be much smaller than regular classes; and while selectivity is a driver of graduation rates, honors students have a six-year rate average grad rate approaching 90 percent in major public honors programs, with many significantly higher than 90 percent.

We have also commented before that the strong faculties at leading public research universities are competitive with many private elite national universities.  Soon we will update our post that compares the most recent departmental rankings of both public and private research universities.   In the meantime, below are the public research universities with the highest overall departmental rankings, listed along with their U.S. News ranking to illustrate the disparities.

The fifteen disciplines surveyed are business (undergrad); engineering (undergrad); biological sciences; chemistry; computer science; earth sciences; economics; education; English; history; math; physics; political science; psychology; and sociology.

Please note that many universities with highly-ranked academic departments (e.g., Indiana, Minnesota) do not have correspondingly high rankings in U.S. News.  The converse is also true: some highly ranked universities (e.g., Virginia) don’t have the highest ranked academic departments.

One of the main reasons for this kind of discrepancy is that U.S. News emphasizes selectivity and small class sizes, and some public universities with extremely strong faculties are not highly selective (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington) or have larger classes than many other universities.  But many class sections over the first two years, normally large for non-honors students, are usually much smaller for honors students. The takeaway for prospective honors students: selectivity for the university as a whole and the size of all classes at the university are less important for you than for non-honors students.

We certainly recognize the excellent instruction that occurs at, for example, William & Mary, Wake Forest, Lehigh, Carlton, Swarthmore, Williams, etc., regardless of whether or how highly their academic departments are rated.  But for highly qualified students who are looking at large research universities, we do believe the rankings of departments matters quite a bit.

Not included below are universities that do not have ranked departments in at least 13 of the 15 academic disciplines.  Notable among these is Georgia Tech, with its nationally renowned engineering programs and a very strong business department.

UC Berkeley has an average national departmental ranking of 3.33 across the 15 disciplines mentioned above.  Please bear in mind that the rankings below include all national universities, public and private.  All of the top five universities below–UC Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, UCLA, and UT Austin–have no academic departments among the 15 disciplines surveyed that are ranked lower than 30.

University U.S. News Rank Avg Natl Dept Rank
UC Berkeley 20 3.33
Michigan 29 9.40
Wisconsin 47 12.40
UCLA 23 12.43
UT Austin 53 14.93
Illinois 42 19.47
Washington 48 21.33
Minnesota 71 23.13
Ohio State 54 26.27
Indiana 76 26.43
North Carolina 30 26.53
Penn State 48 26.53
Maryland 62 28.33
UC Davis 38 28.57
UC San Diego 37 28.80
Virginia 23 33.60
UC Irvine 42 34.33
Colorado 88 36.93
Arizona 121 37.53
UC Santa Barbara 40 37.86
Purdue 62 42.20
Texas A&M 68 44.00
Florida 48 44.47
Rutgers 70 45.60
Stony Brook 88 47.00

Once Again, The New Republic Weighs in on the Ivies, and Here’s our Response

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Once again, The New Republic  is featuring an article that discusses the pros and cons of an Ivy League education.  This time, the article comes in the form of a review of New York Times columnist Frank Bruni’s new book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be.

In the TNR review, called “It Doesn’t Matter if Your Kid Doesn’t Get into Harvard,” author Nick Romeo claims that Bruni is too focused on the ability of college grads from non-Ivy institutions to achieve material success on a par with Ivy grads.

“He’s not asking his readers to examine a cultural obsession with success, so much as assuring them that they can still impress others without attending highly selective undergraduate institutions,” Romeo writes. “Just look at all the people who run huge companies or work at prestigious consulting or law firms, he says. Not all of them went to Ivy League schools! There are ‘myriad routes to a corner office,’ as he puts it. He never seriously considers the possibility that college might shape students into adults who are not interested in a corner office.”

Romeo prefers the earlier challenge to Ivy education published in TNR: William Deresiewicz’s now famous article “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League,” which appeared on July 21, 2014, and has now been “shared” more than 200,000 times.  Deresiewwicz’s article argues that many less elite schools, such as public flagships, allow bright students more latitude to discover themselves in the midst of fellow students who are not all driven or overly-focused on channeling their lives toward one thing: an Ivy admission.

The fact is that college at its best is not an either/or proposition that pits learning for its own sake against training for a career.  In almost every college in the nation there are at least three broad types of students–those who are in alive with self-discovery and intellectual excitement, those who want to get out in a hurry and find a high-paying job, and many others who are open to intellectual expansion but are acutely aware that the “real world” awaits.

The subtitle of Bruni’s  book is “An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.”  But Nick Romeo argues that what Bruni describes “is not a bracing cure; it’s a soothing balm for upper-middle class parents whose children do not quite manage to scale the highest peaks of prestige.”

We see Bruni’s book as less an antidote than a balancing argument to the one proposed by Deresiewicz.  While many smart “kids” do and should value intellectual stimulation, they and their parents need to be practical as well.  If Bruni over-emphasizes the “antidote” of achieving career success equivalent to that of Ivy grads without attending an Ivy school, his message is one that parents and prospective students need to hear.

As we have noted many times, there are far more bright students than there are places at Ivy institutions, and these bright students should be able to find, and should know that they can find, both intellectual and career equivalence at colleges outside the Ivy League, including public honors colleges and programs.

It is well known that admission to any highly selective college can be capricious, subjective, and even approach the formulaic.  Ivy colleges are wonderful, in most cases, for students who are both brilliant and fortunate.   Students who are “merely” brilliant at one brief point of their lives need to know that the rest of their lives can be as fulfilling in all ways as the lives of their more fortunate counterparts.

 

UW-Eau Claire Rhodes Winner: Personal Attention for Honors Student Made the Difference

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By Judy Berthiaume, UW-Eau Claire

Tayo Sanders II was a talented high school student with a passion for science and an eye toward a career in medicine or engineering the first time he stepped onto the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus.

While bright and ambitious, at that time the word research didn’t mean a lot to Sanders, nanoscience sounded like a foreign language, he’d barely traveled outside of Wisconsin, and he’d never even heard of the Rhodes scholarship.

Tayo Sanders: "I can't imagine myself as a Rhodes Scholar if I had gone to school anywhere else."

But a friend’s father who was a physician and a UW-Eau Claire graduate convinced him that his alma mater, a regional public university with a nationally known chemistry program and highly accessible professors, would be a good fit for Sanders, a first-generation college student with limited financial resources.

Turns out, his friend’s dad could not have been more right.

In November 2014, Sanders was named one of 32 American students who will make up the 2015 Rhodes scholar class. In October — after graduating from UW-Eau Claire and then completing a summer internship at an investment firm in Washington, D.C. — he will begin his studies at Oxford University in England, where he will pursue his doctoral degree in materials while immersed in research alongside some of the world’s most respected scientists.

As a Rhodes scholar, Sanders joins an elite group that includes U.S. presidents, members of Congress, artists and others who are known internationally for their contributions to their chosen professions.

“In many ways, it still hasn’t fully sunk in,” says Sanders, who is one of just a handful of students from a public regional university to ever be selected as a Rhodes scholar, arguably the most prestigious scholarship program in the world. “When my professors suggested that I apply to be a Rhodes scholar, I didn’t even know what it was. And once I looked into it, I didn’t think I had a chance. But they convinced me to try and helped me believe it was possible.”

“I can’t imagine myself as a Rhodes scholar if I had gone to school anywhere else.”

UT Austin Plan II Honors Student Is Making Biomedical History

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Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared in a news update by the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin….

A UT Austin undergraduate’s research could help change the way doctors diagnose diseases with known protein biomarkers like multiple sclerosis and leukemia.

Courtney Koepke, a Plan II and biomedical engineering junior, is an undergraduate research assistant at UT Austin’s Laboratory of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Bionanotechnology.

“As a freshman entering college, I didn’t know much about research or understand the important role it plays in the continual advancement of society,” Koepke says.

That changed when Nicholas Peppas, a biomedical engineering researcher at UT Austin, was a guest lecturer in one of Koepke’s classes. Intrigued by his presentation, Koepke looked into the research he and his lab were doing.

UT Plan II student Courney Koepke--"the rest, as they say, is history."

“As I read some of the recent publications from the lab, I realized I wanted to be a part of the research that was being conducted and a part of the group of individuals truly aspiring to change the world,” she says. “The rest, as they say, is history.”

Koepke began working in Peppas’ lab at the beginning of her sophomore year. The experience has not only served as a vehicle for intellectual discovery, but also self-discovery.

“The motivating idea behind research is the discovery of new knowledge, which drives innovation and improvement in all areas of society,” Koepke says. “Being a part of that societal improvement and something bigger than oneself is something every undergraduate student can benefit from. Furthermore, research can allow undergraduates to uncover their strengths and weaknesses as well as likes and dislikes at an early age.”

The research Koepke is conducting is focused on molecularly imprinted polymers, or plastic antibodies, which are created in a lab to mimic naturally occurring antibodies.

“My research focuses on plastic antibodies as a recognition element for disease because over time naturally occurring antibodies become unstable and useless for recognition,” she says. “The goal of my research is to create a diagnostic tool to recognize protein biomarkers for disease. Using plastic antibodies as the recognition element in a diagnostic tool would allow for quicker and easier diagnosis of diseases such as multiple sclerosis, meningitis and leukemia.”

The liberal arts component to Koepke’s education has made a big impact on the way she approaches her work. As a Plan II student, she’s worked closely with students from a variety of backgrounds, who have exposed her to diverse opinions that challenge and expand her worldview.

“Taking classes such as world literature and philosophy has helped me mature intellectually in ways my science and engineering classes never could have,” Koepke says. “Liberal arts classes have forced me to question society and how it’s structured, as well as humanity and what our duty to it is as individuals.”

Koepke serves as president of Texas Engineering World Health, an organization that aims to create more equitable global health through innovation in medical technology.

Last year, Koepke and her teammates designed an app called Audiometry Made Easy, which provides a free audiometry test to assess hearing loss. It’s an important resource, especially in developing countries where a normal audiometer is an expensive and widely unavailable tool. The app is currently available in the Google Play store, and has received feedback from people using it around the world.

Koepke is also an active member in Women in Biomedical Engineering and she recently joined Texas 4000, through which she will bike from Austin to Anchorage in the summer of 2016 to raise money and awareness for cancer research.