Harvard and Princeton announced on Thursday that they will restore their early admission program for the Fall 2012 application cycle, despite criticism that early acceptance programs favor higher-income applicants, particularly those who do not need to worry about comparing financial-aid offers from different colleges.  The two schools suspended their early admission program in 2006, hoping that other highly selective programs would follow suit.  However, only University of Virginia, did — and UVa announced a return to early admissions late last year.  All three schools offer “early action” programs, meaning that acceptance is non-binding, and applicants may wait until April to assess other offers.  Here is the New York Times and Chronicle of Higher Education with more details.

In a recent blog posting to The Atlantic, John Tierney collects an assortment of confusing and often disheartening articles regarding the current state of higher education.  The articles concern topics such as the decline in number of  hours spending studying and preparing for class, the stress and depression faced by many college students, and the changing budgets for institutions of higher education, which increasingly shift funds away from instruction and toward administration and recreational facilities.  Tierney, a high school teacher at a prestigious private school in Boston, ends with some comments regarding the students he teaches:

Some of the students I teach work really hard.  They’re good, diligent students. I’m happy to teach them and am proud of their accomplishments.

But, my sense is that most of the students at this school spend enormous amounts of time watching television, checking out Facebook, and otherwise engaging in totally unproductive activity. They certainly don’t read anything!  In fact, I would say that the number one problem in contemporary American education is that students do not read enough.  Their reading comprehension is horrible.  Their vocabularies are impoverished.  They cannot talk about anything outside their own closed little worlds.

Our own personal observations certainly confirm the importance of an active reading life.  Reading can be hard work, particularly when you read the kind of complex articles and stories that truly build critical thinking skills.  These same articles, however, are also the ones that yield the greatest insight into the greater world beyond the narrow place we typically inhabit.  The students we know who read for pleasure outside of school have more advanced critical thinking abilities, find it easier to compose essays for their college applications, and face far less difficulty in preparing for standardized exams.  It can be hard to find the time, certainly, but consider it an investment that will yield educational dividends and enrich your intellectual life.

In “To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take Tests,” Pam Belluck of the New York Times discusses the results of a recent study which indicates that tests are not only useful to confirm how much we have learned, but are also useful in the learning process itself.  She writes:

The research, published online Thursday in the journal Science, found that students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods.

Participants in the study were divided into four groups, each of which used a different study method.  Those in the group that scored highest were asked to take a “retrieval practice” test, which involved studying a passage, writing a 10-minute “free-form essay” on what they recalled from the passage, rereading the passage, and taking the test again.

This study confirms two things we have always believed at Stylus.   First, it affirms the importance of “writing to learn,” the practice of short, low-stakes writing assignments to cement learning.  Second, it reinforces our recommended method of preparing for standardized tests, which involves repeated testing but, more importantly, thorough understanding of what makes an answer right or wrong.  It is not enough to merely take and score the practice section; we see much more improvement among those students who carefully review the mistakes they made, predict and confirm why the correct answer is right and their answer wrong, and then retake a similar (or even the same!) section.  This practice is particularly beneficial in studying for the SAT because College Board tends to use very similar questions from year to year–variations on a theme.

The Times article is worth reading in full to explore how it might apply to techniques of learning in general.

“With college application deadlines looming, and some early decision letters already in the mail, high school seniors are facing a lot of anxiety.

There’s enormous pressure on kids these days. But it turns out that getting schools, parents — and even kids — to ratchet it down is easier said than done.”

A recent report on NPR discusses the measures some high schools are taking to reduce stress for students, such as eliminating AP classes and instituting homework-free weekends.  On the other hand, might these measures hurt students’ chances of getting into the most elite schools?

In a recent New York Times article, Jacques Steinberg explores whether the benefits of attending a selective private college really outweigh the costs:

“The sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Do their graduates make more money? Get into better professional programs? Make better connections? And are they more satisfied with their lives, or at least with their work?”

The answer to most of these questions turns out to be “it depends.”  For more details, continue reading here.

U.S. News and World Report has a recent feature on several major changes to the college admissions process:

Colleges, swamped by applications from increasingly anxious high schoolers, are changing their admissions rules to weed out applicants who try to game the system by getting easy A’s or plagiarizing their essays.

Interviews with admissions officers at some of the nation’s most popular colleges reveal recent and important shifts in the weighting of traditional admission factors. Recommendations and high school class rank matter less to many colleges, especially big public universities, than they used to. Instead, a growing number of colleges of all types are putting more emphasis on students’ essays and the difficulty of applicants’ high school classes.

Read on here for the eight major changes in detail.

THE numbers keep rising, the superlatives keep glowing. Each year, selective colleges promote their application totals, along with the virtues of their applicants.

For this fall’s freshman class, the statistics reached remarkable levels. Stanford received a record 32,022 applications from students it called “simply amazing,” and accepted 7 percent of them. Brown saw an unprecedented 30,135 applicants, who left the admissions staff “deeply impressed and at times awed.” Nine percent were admitted.

The biggest boast came from the University of California, Los Angeles. In a news release, U.C.L.A. said its accepted students had “demonstrated excellence in all aspects of their lives.” Citing its record 57,670 applications, the university proclaimed itself “the most popular campus in the nation.”

Such announcements tell a story in which colleges get better — and students get more amazing — every year. In reality, the narrative is far more complex, and the implications far less sunny for students as well as colleges caught up in the cruel cycle of selectivity.

This New York Times article examines the methods colleges use to boost their selectivity ratings–and the consequences of these actions.

Marc Perry in The Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a new online program at a technical college in Kentucky, in which students can begin and end the semester whenever they want.

One student, desperate to graduate, knocked off 113 quizzes and six writing assignments for a humanities course in 46 sleepless hours.But there is a downside to this convenience, and it’s deeper than bleary eyes. The open format of Jefferson’s program, called Learn Anytime, means students don’t move through classes in groups. None of Mr. Smith’s 400 online students will have a discussion or do a group project with classmates.

There’s a lot to digest in this article.  Some criticize the model; after all, true learning takes immersion and time.  Students do receive individualized attention, but it is largely automated.   On the other hand, the model is cost effective–for both administration and the instructors themselves, who are compensated per student, rather than receiving a flat fee per class.  For adjuncts, this can add up to more than even tenured faculty make (although instructors are essentially expected to work  around the clock).   Nevertheless, nearly 1300 students at Jefferson Community & Technical College have signed up.  Is this the future of higher education?

““Please, please, please,” whispered the boy sitting to my left in the crowded auditorium, clenching his fists. Clearly too young for the sixth grade, he seemed to be praying for his brother, who sat nearby. If the brother’s name was called from the podium, he would begin sixth grade next year at Democracy Prep, a four-year-old Harlem charter school. The odds were against it: a few days earlier, the 205 names being announced had been randomly drawn from a pool of 1,250 applicants. But finally it happened. “Yes!” the boys’ mother yelped, smothering Democracy Prep’s newest student in a bear hug. The younger brother beamed.”

In this recent City Journal article, Marcus A. Winters argues in favor of charter schools and illustrates the ways in which lives are selectively changed by the charter school lottery system.

From U.S. News & World Report, here are eight rules for maximizing merit scholarships (as opposed to need-based aid).