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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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For generations, the image associated with admissions officers has been the folder -- with admissions professionals carrying the folders they must review. Even as the folders have been viewed online, the image has persisted. When Tina Fey played an admission officer in the 2013 film Admission, she was always carrying around (and falling behind on) her piles of folders of applicants. But what if the folders (even the digital variety), and the style of admissions review they represent, are going away?

The University of Pennsylvania started using a new approach to the first review of applications in 2013. It's called the "committee-based" system and it is designed to make it possible to review in a new way the massive numbers of applications that competitive colleges receive (at Penn the total is about 40,000).

The new system replaces the first solo review (for which all those folders were carried around) with a joint review by two admissions officers. Even having two admissions officers involved instead of one, the new system saves considerable time, in that it takes less than half of the time of a one-person review, and Penn officials believe it is assuring equally reliable decisions.

In the last two years, Bucknell, Case Western Reserve and Emory Universities and Swarthmore College have all gone to committee-based admissions, and all report that they are pleased with the system. At Bucknell, the process of reviewing applications finished a week earlier this year than in past years.

Rick Bischoff, vice president of enrollment management at Case Western, said that after two cycles using the new system, "I can't imagine going back."
How It Works
Yvonne Romero DaSilva, vice dean and director of admissions at Penn, has not only helped with the transition to the system at Penn but has studied its use at other colleges.

In the traditional system, the first review was done solo by an admissions officer, typically taking 25-30 minutes, followed by another five minutes writing a brief report for colleagues to review the recommendation.

In committee-based admissions, the first review is done in teams of two, DaSilva explained. In a private room with computer screens, all of the materials are displayed. One admissions officer focuses on academic materials (transcripts, test scores, etc.) while the other focuses on non-academic factors. The two discuss the candidate as they do their reviews and are able to make a recommendation typically within 4-10 minutes. You could have two people reviewing five applications or more in committee-based admissions in the time it would take two people to review two applications if working solo.

Context is important to colleges. DaSilva said that Penn wants to be sure it is evaluating both academic and non-academic accomplishments based on what opportunities were available to an applicant. So Penn wants to know if the high school offers every Advanced Placement or honors course possible, or none -- and all information about the applicant's high school is displayed during the review. A team will handle all of the applicants from a given high school at the same time, so that the context is clear throughout.

As in the old system, a full committee or supervisor still will review the recommendations. Also, DaSilva stressed that -- under the old system and the new one -- there are cases that have complications or difficult issues and that require more time and consideration than the typical candidate.

DaSilva said the shift is only possible because of the move to digital folders. "The restriction of having one person being able to handle the document at the time has been removed," she said.

That fact led Penn officials to think about the downside of the solo first review. It means the first impression comes from one person. Now it comes from two, with benefits from "the idea of having two people look at different components simultaneously." She added that "there are real synergies" that come from two simultaneous reviews. Typically the person who has a geographic territory does the academic review, while another one does the non-academic review, but the roles are reversed in reviewing other groups of applicants.

The new system is also ideal for training new admissions officers, she said, because a junior person can be part of a team with a senior colleague.

Clearly one benefit of the new system is time saved. When working in teams, the admissions officers do the reviews in the office (admittedly sometimes with long hours) but not with long hours at home every night and all through the weekend, which was the norm in the past.

But DaSilva said that changing the way admissions officers spend their time is also about making sure that they do all parts of their jobs, even in during the height of admissions season. She's thinking about things like building relationships with new high schools, reaching out to community groups that can identify new talent for Penn and so forth.

That work used to cease for almost half the year (considering the pressure to review applications both for early decision and regular decision). Now -- even at the busiest time for reviewing applications -- admissions officers have one day a week to do the important work that doesn't involve reviewing applications.

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Some colleges adopt new 'committee-based' system of doing first review of applications

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For generations, the image associated with admissions officers has been the folder -- with admissions professionals carrying the folders they must review. Even as the folders have been viewed online, the image has persisted. When Tina Fey played an admission officer in the 2013 film Admission, she was always carrying around (and falling behind on) her piles of folders of applicants.

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The College Wellness Guide by Casey Rowley Barneson*

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The College Wellness Guide by Casey Rowley Barneson*

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The College Wellness Guide: A Student's Guide to Managing Mental, Physical, and Social Health on Campus (College Admissions Guides)

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The College Wellness Guide: A Student's Guide to Managing Mental, Physical, and Social Health on Campus (College Admissions Guides) [Barneson, Casey Rowley, The Princeton Review, Franek, Robert] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.

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IECA member consultants can be a welcome resource for students and families who are looking for knowledgeable professionals with experience… Read More

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Enter your information to find matches from over 6,000 programs, totaling over $4 billion scholarship dollars yearly.

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Beth Akers, an economist specializing in labor economics and the economics of higher education, has written a book about whether college is worth the cost. Her book, Making College Pay, is readable and provides practical advice for families on how to reduce the risks associated with investing in a college education.

Dr. Beth Akers, an economist with expertise in labor economics and the economics of higher education
Gillian Hunter

Dr. Akers argues that a college education is still worth it, but she also identifies several situations in which college sometimes doesn't pay.

According to Dr. Akers, a college degree is financially worthwhile if the increase in lifetime earnings exceeds the cost, after adjustments for inflation, interest payments on student loans and the opportunity cost of forgone earnings while enrolled. She writes, "most people aren't overpaying for college ... because, despite the high price tags, the extra earnings afforded by a college degree tend to far outweigh the up-front cost."

College graduates not only have higher income, but also lower unemployment rates. She says that concerns about the cost of college and the cost of borrowing are misplaced. If families are careful to consider the risks associated with obtaining a higher education, the payback period is about a decade, the equivalent of a 14% annualized return on investment.

Dr. Akers has worked for think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and Brookings Institution. She's also worked as a staff economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers and a visiting research scholar at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. She has a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.

When College Doesn't Pay

There are several circumstances in which college is not worth the cost.

The student does not graduate from college. They have the debt, but not the degree that can help them repay the debt.

The student takes too long to graduate from college. This increases the cost of college as well as the opportunity cost associated with college enrollment.

The student picks the wrong college. Some colleges have inferior outcomes, such as lower graduation rates and lower income after graduation.

The student chooses the wrong academic major. Some majors earn less than other majors. If you pick a major that doesn't pay very well, you might not earn more than the typical high school graduate.

The student graduated, but bad timing affected the value of the degree. This can include graduating into a recession or pandemic.

Some of these factors are under the student's control and some are not.

How to Reduce the Risk

There are several ways to mitigate risk. Some of these approaches are specific to the college and the major.

First, do your research before choosing a college. Use the U.S. Department of Education's College Navigator and College Scorecard, as well as the college's net price calculator, to get information you can use to evaluate the tradeoffs between cost and outcomes, including graduation rates, job placement rates and average income after graduation. Each college's net price calculator can provide a personalized estimate of the real cost of college, after subtracting grants and scholarships from the total cost of attendance.

Majors matter. A degree in STEM or healthcare has a higher lifetime income than a degree in arts, social work and education. College Scorecard provides income data that is specific to a particular college and academic major. The book also includes an appendix with average earnings by academic major.

Dr. Akers argues that student loans can reduce the financial risk of a college education. Paying for college with student loans reduces the need to work a part-time job while in school. This yields higher grades and graduation rates. Federal student loans also provide several safety nets, such as deferments, forbearances, income-driven repayment, and options for loan forgiveness and discharge.

Income-share agreements also base the loan payments on income, shifting the risk of failure from the borrower to the lender. But, income-share agreements may be more expensive than federal student loans.

A handful of colleges provide their graduates with an income guarantee.

You can also reduce the risk of an all-or-nothing degree by unbundling your education through coding boot camps, competency-based education and getting your employer to pay for your education.

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Dr. Beth Akers, an economist, has written a book, Making College Pay, about whether college is worth the cost. The book also provides practical advice for families on how to reduce the risks associated with investing in a college education.

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Need help completing your CSS Profile? Watch our quick overview to navigate the process and check out our other resources, like the Frequently Asked Questions, to find more information.

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Need help completing your CSS Profile? Watch our quick overview to navigate the process and check out our other resources, like the Frequently Asked Questions, to find more information.

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Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania- Frank Bruni

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Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania- Frank Bruni

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Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania

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Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania [Bruni, Frank] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania

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With nine amazing campuses, you can't go wrong.

From the program, to the setting, to the vibe: each of our nine campuses has something different to offer. But no matter which campus you choose, you'll find a culture of academic excellence, and fellow students and faculty who'll inspire you every day.

Explore our campuses

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From the program, to the setting, to the vibe: each of our nine campuses has something different to offer. But no matter which campus you choose, you'll find a culture of academic excellence, and fellow students and faculty who'll inspire you every day. Explore our campuses

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With nine amazing campuses, you can't go wrong.

From the program, to the setting, to the vibe: each of our nine campuses has something different to offer. But no matter which campus you choose, you'll find a culture of academic excellence, and fellow students and faculty who'll inspire you every day.

Explore our campuses

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From the program, to the setting, to the vibe: each of our nine campuses has something different to offer. But no matter which campus you choose, you'll find a culture of academic excellence, and fellow students and faculty who'll inspire you every day. Explore our campuses

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apply to college with common app | your future starts here

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Apply to college with Common App | Your future starts here

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Each year, the Common App goes offline to prepare for the launch of the new application. The 2021-2022 application will launch on August 1, 2021.

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Competitive Colleges Have A Great Admissions Year

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Competitive Colleges Have A Great Admissions Year

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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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The weeks before May 1 can create lots of anxiety for admissions leaders.

But for private colleges at the top of the prestige hierarchy, 2023 is shaping up to be another excellent year. There are some signs that the cheering may extend beyond the institutions at the very top, but for those institutions where yield-the percentage of admitted applicants who enroll-is not assured, 2023 still isn't certain (and we'll report on what happens after May 1).

New York University received nearly 120,000 applications this year and offered admission to 8 percent of applicants. Three of NYU's undergraduate colleges offered admission to fewer than 5 percent of applicants.

Total applications were up 13 percent and set a new record for NYU.

The class that will be produced by the acceptance is expected not to have any racial or ethnic majority.

"These students represent the best of us," Jonathan Williams, associate vice president of undergraduate admissions, access and pipeline programs, said in a press release. "As we look towards a future under new legal directives around diversity in higher education, NYU continues to demonstrate that selectivity and an exceptionally talented student body are not mutually exclusive to upholding values of diversity and access which so deeply enrich a university education."

NYU has been competitive in admissions for years, but it has only been during the pandemic years that it began admitting fewer than 10 percent of applicants.

Harvard University admitted only 3.4 percent of the 56,937 would-be students who applied (counting early action and regular decision).

Beginning with the class admitted this week, the cost to attend Harvard College, which includes tuition, housing, food and fees, will be free for families with annual incomes below $85,000. This is an increase from the $75,000 annual income threshold announced last year. Nearly 25 percent of college students come from families with incomes under $85,000.

All first-year students at Harvard from families with incomes of less than $85,000 with typical assets will also receive a $2,000 start-up grant to help with move-in costs and other expenses incurred in the transition to college. This grant was launched in 2016.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States was $70,784 in 2021.

The University of Pennsylvania also reported a record number of applicants: more than 59,000.

This year, Penn instituted a new requirement on its application: every applicant wrote a thank-you note to someone.

"The applicants shared moments when someone else influenced them in a positive way. We read thank-you notes to family members-biological, step, adoptive, and foster. To the teachers out there, you've meant a lot to those in your classrooms! Strangers, you've left impressions that young people still remember strongly enough to share with us in their writing. The thank-you notes helped us see the students' openness, receptivity, and generosity," said a blog post by E. Whitney Soule, vice provost and dean of admissions.

Barnard College received 11,803 applications for acceptance into the Class of 2027 and offered admission to 6.5 percent of those eager to secure a spot. Barnard says the class is the most competitive ever, with 94 percent of the applicants who reported a high school ranking in the top 10 percent of their classes.

Over half (58 percent) of the newly admitted students identify as women of color.

"This was an exceptional group of applicants," said Jennifer Fondiller, vice president for enrollment and communications. "We were so impressed with their academic records and with the energy and purpose they display in pursuing their passions, especially during these challenging past few years. We can't wait to welcome them to campus."

Bowdoin College is another institution that broke its application record: 10,966 applicants, up from last year's record of 9,446.

The college admitted 850 students and expects to enroll about 500.

Duke University admitted 2,148 students via regular decision-from among 44,589 regular decision applicants, an admission rate of 4.8 percent.

For early decision, the acceptance rate was 16.4 percent. The overall admission rate of 6 percent was the second lowest in Duke's history.

"Everyone reading applications this year was struck by the academic quality of the applicant pool, but even more so by the students' commitment to their classmates and their communities," said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions.

Dartmouth College also had a record applicant total of 28,841 applicants.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the application process for the Class of 2027 was the first since 2019 in which Dartmouth admissions officers offered a full complement of on-campus tours and information sessions, as well as fanned out to visit high schools across the country and around the world.

"As we reopened, people could once again experience the Dartmouth story in person, and that makes a big difference," said Lee Coffin, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid. "The applicant pool included a remarkable number of students whose academic interests were terrifically aligned with our liberal arts program and its points of excellence."

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Competitive colleges have a great admissions year

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Private colleges are boasting about a record year, but most of them will have to wait until May 1. The weeks before May 1 can create lots of anxiety for admissions leaders. But for private colleges at the top of the prestige hierarchy, 2023 is shaping up to be another excellent year.

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A leading economist makes the case that college is still a smart investment, and reveals how to increase the odds of your degree paying off.

"Full of easy-to-understand advice grounded in deep expertise and research." (Martin West, William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Education, Harvard University)

The cost of college makes for frightening headlines. The outstanding balance of student loans is more than $1.5 trillion nationally, while tuitions continue to rise. And on the heels of a pandemic that nearly dismantled the traditional college experience, we have to wonder: Is college really worth it?

From a financial perspective, says economist Beth Akers, the answer is yes. It's true that college is expensive, but once we see higher education for what it is - an investment in future opportunities, job security, and earnings - a different picture emerges: The average college graduate earns an additional million dollars over their career (compared to those who stopped their education after high school), and on average, two- and four-year schools deliver a 15 percent return on investment - double that of the stock market.

Yet these outcomes are not guaranteed. Rather, they hinge upon where and how you opt to invest your tuition dollars. Simply put, the real problem with college isn't the cost - it's the risk that your investment might not pay off.

In Making College Pay, Akers shows how to improve your odds by making smart choices about where to enroll, what to study, and how to pay for it. You'll learn

why choosing the right major can matter more than where you enroll

the best criteria for picking a school (hint: not price, selectivity or ranking)

why working part-time while enrolled might set you back financially

why it's often best to borrow, even if you don't have to

the pros and cons of innovative alternatives to traditional college

how to take advantage of new, low-risk financing tools

Full of practical advice for students and parents, Making College Pay reminds us that higher education remains an engine for opportunity, upward mobility, and prosperity.

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Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education

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Amazon.com: Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education (Audible Audio Edition): Beth Akers, Melinda Wade, Random House Audio: Books

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What College Rankings Really Tell Us- Malcolm Gladwell

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What College Rankings Really Tell Us- Malcolm Gladwell

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Last summer, the editors of Car and Driver conducted a comparison test of three sports cars, the Lotus Evora, the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, and the Porsche Cayman S. The cars were taken on an extended run through mountain passes in Southern California, and from there to a race track north of Los Angeles, for precise measurements of performance and handling. The results of the road tests were then tabulated according to a twenty-one-variable, two-hundred-and-thirty-five-point rating system, based on four categories: vehicle (driver comfort, styling, fit and finish, etc.); power train (transmission, engine, and fuel economy); chassis (steering, brakes, ride, and handling); and "fun to drive." The magazine concluded, "The range of these three cars' driving personalities is as various as the pajama sizes of Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear, but a clear winner emerged nonetheless." This was the final tally:

1. Porsche Cayman 193

2. Chevrolet Corvette 186

3. Lotus Evora 182

Car and Driver is one of the most influential editorial voices in the automotive world. When it says that it likes one car better than another, consumers and carmakers take notice. Yet when you inspect the magazine's tabulations it is hard to figure out why Car and Driver was so sure that the Cayman is better than the Corvette and the Evora. The trouble starts with the fact that the ranking methodology Car and Driver used was essentially the same one it uses for all the vehicles it tests-from S.U.V.s to economy sedans. It's not set up for sports cars. Exterior styling, for example, counts for four per cent of the total score. Has anyone buying a sports car ever placed so little value on how it looks? Similarly, the categories of "fun to drive" and "chassis"-which cover the subjective experience of driving the car-count for only eighty-five points out of the total of two hundred and thirty-five. That may make sense for S.U.V. buyers. But, for people interested in Porsches and Corvettes and Lotuses, the subjective experience of driving is surely what matters most. In other words, in trying to come up with a ranking that is heterogeneous-a methodology that is broad enough to cover all vehicles- Car and Driver ended up with a system that is absurdly ill-suited to some vehicles. Suppose that Car and Driver decided to tailor its grading system just to sports cars. Clearly, styling and the driving experience ought to count for much more. So let's make exterior styling worth twenty-five per cent, the driving experience worth fifty per cent, and the balance of the criteria worth twenty-five per cent. The final tally now looks like this:

1. Lotus Evora 205

2. Porsche Cayman 198

3. Chevrolet Corvette 192There's another thing funny about the Car and Driver system. Price counts only for twenty points, less than ten per cent of the total. There's no secret why: Car and Driver is edited by auto enthusiasts. To them, the choice of a car is as important as the choice of a home or a spouse, and only a philistine would let a few dollars stand between him and the car he wants. (They leave penny-pinching to their frumpy counterparts at Consumer Reports.) But for most of us price matters, especially in a case like this, where the Corvette, as tested, costs $67,565-thirteen thousand dollars less than the Porsche, and eighteen thousand dollars less than the Lotus. Even to a car nut, that's a lot of money. So let's imagine that Car and Driver revised its ranking system again, giving a third of the weight to price, a third to the driving experience, and a third split equally between exterior styling and vehicle characteristics. The tally would now be:

4. Chevrolet Corvette 205

5. Lotus Evora 195

6. Porsche Cayman 195

So which is the best car?

Car and Driver's ambition to grade every car in the world according to the same methodology would be fine if it limited itself to a single dimension. A heterogeneous ranking system works if it focusses just on, say, how much fun a car is to drive, or how good-looking it is, or how beautifully it handles. The magazine's ambition to create a comprehensive ranking system-one that considered cars along twenty-one variables, each weighted according to a secret sauce cooked up by the editors-would also be fine, as long as the cars being compared were truly similar. It's only when one car is thirteen thousand dollars more than another that juggling twenty-one variables starts to break down, because you're faced with the impossible task of deciding how much a difference of that degree ought to matter. A ranking can be heterogeneous, in other words, as long as it doesn't try to be too comprehensive. And it can be comprehensive as long as it doesn't try to measure things that are heterogeneous. But it's an act of real audacity when a ranking system tries to be comprehensive and heterogeneous-which is the first thing to keep in mind in any consideration of U.S. News & World Report' s annual "Best Colleges" guide.

The U.S. News rankings are run by Robert Morse, whose six-person team operates out of a small red brick office building in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Morse is a middle-aged man with gray hair who looks like the prototypical Beltway wonk: rumpled, self-effacing, mildly preppy and sensibly shoed. His office is piled high with the statistical detritus of more than two decades of data collection. When he took on his current job, in the mid-nineteen-eighties, the college guide was little more than an item of service journalism tucked away inside U.S. News magazine. Now the weekly print magazine is defunct, but the rankings have taken on a life of their own. In the month that the 2011 rankings came out, the U.S. News Web site recorded more than ten million visitors. U.S. News has added rankings of graduate programs, law schools, business schools, medical schools, and hospitals-and Morse has become the dean of a burgeoning international rankings industry.

"In the early years, the thing that's happening now would not have been imaginable," Morse says. "This idea of using the rankings as a benchmark, college presidents setting a goal of 'We're going to rise in the U.S. News ranking,' as proof of their management, or as proof that they're a better school, that they're a good president. That wasn't on anybody's radar. It was just for consumers."Over the years, Morse's methodology has steadily evolved. In its current form, it relies on seven weighted variables:

This ranking system looks a great deal like the Car and Driver methodology. It is heterogeneous. It doesn't just compare U.C. Irvine, the University of Washington, the University of Texas-Austin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Penn State, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign-all public institutions of roughly the same size. It aims to compare Penn State-a very large, public, land-grant university with a low tuition and an economically diverse student body, set in a rural valley in central Pennsylvania and famous for its football team-with Yeshiva University, a small, expensive, private Jewish university whose undergraduate program is set on two campuses in Manhattan (one in midtown, for the women, and one far uptown, for the men) and is definitely not famous for its football team.

The system is also comprehensive. It doesn't simply compare schools along one dimension-the test scores of incoming freshmen, say, or academic reputation. An algorithm takes a slate of statistics on each college and transforms them into a single score: it tells us that Penn State is a better school than Yeshiva by one point. It is easy to see why the U.S. News rankings are so popular. A single score allows us to judge between entities (like Yeshiva and Penn State) that otherwise would be impossible to compare. At no point, however, do the college guides acknowledge the extraordinary difficulty of the task they have set themselves. A comprehensive, heterogeneous ranking system was a stretch for Car and Driver -and all it did was rank inanimate objects operated by a single person. The Penn State campus at University Park is a complex institution with dozens of schools and departments, four thousand faculty members, and forty-five thousand students. How on earth does anyone propose to assign a number to something like that?The first difficulty with rankings is that it can be surprisingly hard to measure the variable you want to rank-even in cases where that variable seems perfectly objective. Consider an extreme example: suicide. Here is a ranking of suicides per hundred thousand people, by country:

This list looks straightforward. Yet no self-respecting epidemiologist would look at it and conclude that Belarus has the worst suicide rate in the world, and that Hungary belongs in the top ten. Measuring suicide is just too tricky. It requires someone to make a surmise about the intentions of the deceased at the time of death. In some cases, that's easy. Maybe the victim jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, or left a note. In most cases, though, there's ambiguity, and different coroners and different cultures vary widely in the way they choose to interpret that ambiguity. In certain places, cause of death is determined by the police, who some believe are more likely to call an ambiguous suicide an accident. In other places, the decision is made by a physician, who may be less likely to do so. In some cultures, suicide is considered so shameful that coroners shy away from that determination, even when it's obvious. A suicide might be called a suicide, a homicide, an accident, or left undetermined. David Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California-San Diego, has argued persuasively that a significant percentage of single-car crashes are probably suicides, and criminologists suggest that a good percentage of civilians killed by police officers are actually cases of "suicide by cop"-instances where someone deliberately provoked deadly force. The reported suicide rate, then, is almost certainly less than the actual suicide rate. But no one knows whether the relationship between those two numbers is the same in every country. And no one knows whether the proxies that we use to estimate the real suicide rate are any good.

"Many, many people who commit suicide by poison have something else wrong with them-let's say the person has cancer-and the death of this person might be listed as primarily associated with cancer, rather than with deliberate poisoning," Phillips says. "Any suicides in that category would be undetectable. Or it is frequently noted that Orthodox Jews have a low recorded suicide rate, as do Catholics. Well, it could be because they have this very solid community and proscriptions against suicide, or because they are unusually embarrassed by suicide and more willing to hide it. The simple answer is nobody knows whether suicide rankings are real."

The U.S. News rankings suffer from a serious case of the suicide problem. There's no direct way to measure the quality of an institution-how well a college manages to inform, inspire, and challenge its students. So the U.S. News algorithm relies instead on proxies for quality-and the proxies for educational quality turn out to be flimsy at best.Take the category of "faculty resources," which counts for twenty per cent of an institution's score. "Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors," the College Guide's explanation of the category begins, "the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate." That's true. According to educational researchers, arguably the most important variable in a successful college education is a vague but crucial concept called student "engagement"-that is, the extent to which students immerse themselves in the intellectual and social life of their college-and a major component of engagement is the quality of a student's contacts with faculty. As with suicide, the disagreement isn't about what we want to measure. So what proxies does U.S. News use to measure this elusive dimension of engagement? The explanation goes on:

We use six factors from the 2009-10 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size has two components, the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score). Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2008-09 and 2009-10 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living. . . . We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent). This is a puzzling list. Do professors who get paid more money really take their teaching roles more seriously? And why does it matter whether a professor has the highest degree in his or her field? Salaries and degree attainment are known to be predictors of research productivity. But studies show that being oriented toward research has very little to do with being good at teaching. Almost none of the U.S. News variables, in fact, seem to be particularly effective proxies for engagement. As the educational researchers Patrick Terenzini and Ernest Pascarella concluded after analyzing twenty-six hundred reports on the effects of college on students:
After taking into account the characteristics, abilities, and backgrounds students bring with them to college, we found that how much students grow or change has only inconsistent and, perhaps in a practical sense, trivial relationships with such traditional measures of institutional "quality" as educational expenditures per student, student/faculty ratios, faculty salaries, percentage of faculty with the highest degree in their field, faculty research productivity, size of the library, [or] admissions selectivity.

The reputation score that serves as the most important variable in the U.S. News methodology-accounting for 22.5 per cent of a college's final score-isn't any better. Every year, the magazine sends a survey to the country's university and college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans (along with a sampling of high-school guidance counsellors) asking them to grade all the schools in their category on a scale of one to five. Those at national universities, for example, are asked to rank all two hundred and sixty-one other national universities-and Morse says that the typical respondent grades about half of the schools in his or her category. But it's far from clear how any one individual could have insight into that many institutions. In an article published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Ashwini Sehgal analyzed U.S. News's "Best Hospitals" rankings, which also rely heavily on reputation ratings generated by professional peers. Sehgal put together a list of objective criteria of performance-such as a hospital's mortality rates for various surgical procedures, patient-safety rates, nursing-staffing levels, and key technologies. Then he checked to see how well those measures of performance matched each hospital's reputation rating. The answer, he discovered, was that they didn't. Having good outcomes doesn't translate into being admired by other doctors. Why, after all, should a gastroenterologist at the Ochsner Medical Center, in New Orleans, have any specific insight into the performance of the gastroenterology department at Mass General, in Boston, or even, for that matter, have anything more than an anecdotal impression of the gastroenterology department down the road at some hospital in Baton Rouge?

Some years ago, similarly, a former chief justice of the Michigan supreme court, Thomas Brennan, sent a questionnaire to a hundred or so of his fellow-lawyers, asking them to rank a list of ten law schools in order of quality. "They included a good sample of the big names. Harvard. Yale. University of Michigan. And some lesser-known schools. John Marshall. Thomas Cooley," Brennan wrote. "As I recall, they ranked Penn State's law school right about in the middle of the pack. Maybe fifth among the ten schools listed. Of course, Penn State doesn't have a law school."

Those lawyers put Penn State in the middle of the pack, even though every fact they thought they knew about Penn State's law school was an illusion, because in their minds Penn State is a middle-of-the-pack brand. (Penn State does have a law school today, by the way.) Sound judgments of educational quality have to be based on specific, hard-to-observe features. But reputational ratings are simply inferences from broad, readily observable features of an institution's identity, such as its history, its prominence in the media, or the elegance of its architecture. They are prejudices.

And where do these kinds of reputational prejudices come from? According to Michael Bastedo, an educational sociologist at the University of Michigan who has published widely on the U.S. News methodology, "rankings drive reputation." In other words, when U.S. News asks a university president to perform the impossible task of assessing the relative merits of dozens of institutions he knows nothing about, he relies on the only source of detailed information at his disposal that assesses the relative merits of dozens of institutions he knows nothing about: U.S. News. A school like Penn State, then, can do little to improve its position. To go higher than forty-seventh, it needs a better reputation score, and to get a better reputation score it needs to be higher than forty-seventh. The U.S. News ratings are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Bastedo, incidentally, says that reputation ratings can sometimes work very well. It makes sense, for example, to ask professors within a field to rate others in their field: they read one another's work, attend the same conferences, and hire one another's graduate students, so they have real knowledge on which to base an opinion. Reputation scores can work for one-dimensional rankings, created by people with specialized knowledge. For instance, the Wall Street Journal has ranked colleges according to the opinions of corporate recruiters. Those opinions are more than a proxy. To the extent that people chose one college over another to enhance their prospects in the corporate job markets, the reputation rankings of corporate recruiters are of direct relevance. The No. 1 school in the Wall Street Journal' s corporate recruiter's ranking, by the way, is Penn State.

For several years, Jeffrey Stake, a professor at the Indiana University law school, has run a Web site called the Ranking Game. It contains a spreadsheet loaded with statistics on every law school in the country, and allows users to pick their own criteria, assign their own weights, and construct any ranking system they want.

Stake's intention is to demonstrate just how subjective rankings are, to show how determinations of "quality" turn on relatively arbitrary judgments about how much different variables should be weighted. For example, his site makes it easy to mimic the U.S. News rankings. All you have to do is give equal weight to "academic reputation," "LSAT scores at the 75th percentile," "student-faculty ratio," and "faculty law-review publishing," and you get a list of élite schools which looks similar to the U.S News law-school rankings:

There's something missing from that list of variables, of course: it doesn't include price. That is one of the most distinctive features of the U.S. News methodology. Both its college rankings and its law-school rankings reward schools for devoting lots of financial resources to educating their students, but not for being affordable. Why? Morse admitted that there was no formal reason for that position. It was just a feeling. "We're not saying that we're measuring educational outcomes," he explained. "We're not saying we're social scientists, or we're subjecting our rankings to some peer-review process. We're just saying we've made this judgment. We're saying we've interviewed a lot of experts, we've developed these academic indicators, and we think these measures measure quality schools."

As answers go, that's up there with the parental "Because I said so." But Morse is simply being honest. If we don't understand what the right proxies for college quality are, let alone how to represent those proxies in a comprehensive, heterogeneous grading system, then our rankings are inherently arbitrary. All Morse was saying was that, on the question of price, he comes down on the Car and Driver side of things, not on the Consumer Reports side. U.S. News thinks that schools that spend a lot of money on their students are nicer than those that don't, and that this niceness ought to be factored into the equation of desirability. Plenty of Americans agree: the campus of Vanderbilt University or Williams College is filled with students whose families are largely indifferent to the price their school charges but keenly interested in the flower beds and the spacious suites and the architecturally distinguished lecture halls those high prices make possible. Of course, given that the rising cost of college has become a significant social problem in the United States in recent years, you can make a strong case that a school ought to be rewarded for being affordable. So suppose we go back to Stake's ranking game, and re-rank law schools based on student-faculty ratio, L.S.A.T. scores at the seventy-fifth percentile, faculty publishing, and price, all weighted equally. The list now looks like this:

Welcome to the big time, Alabama!

The U.S. News rankings turn out to be full of these kinds of implicit ideological choices. One common statistic used to evaluate colleges, for example, is called "graduation rate performance," which compares a school's actual graduation rate with its predicted graduation rate given the socioeconomic status and the test scores of its incoming freshman class. It is a measure of the school's efficacy: it quantifies the impact of a school's culture and teachers and institutional support mechanisms. Tulane, given the qualifications of the students that it admits, ought to have a graduation rate of eighty-seven per cent; its actual 2009 graduation rate was seventy-three per cent. That shortfall suggests that something is amiss at Tulane.

Another common statistic for measuring college quality is "student selectivity." This reflects variables such as how many of a college's freshmen were in the top ten per cent of their high-school class, how high their S.A.T. scores were, and what percentage of applicants a college admits. Selectivity quantifies how accomplished students are when they first arrive on campus.

Each of these statistics matters, but for very different reasons. As a society, we probably care more about efficacy: America's future depends on colleges that make sure the students they admit leave with an education and a degree. If you are a bright high-school senior and you're thinking about your own future, though, you may well care more about selectivity, because that relates to the prestige of your degree.

But no institution can excel at both. The national university that ranks No. 1 in selectivity is Yale. A crucial part of what it considers its educational function is to assemble the most gifted group of freshmen it can. Because it maximizes selectivity, though, Yale will never do well on an efficacy scale. Its freshmen are so accomplished that they have a predicted graduation rate of ninety-six per cent: the highest Yale's efficacy score could be is plus four. (It's actually plus two.) Of the top fifty national universities in the "Best Colleges" ranking, the least selective school is Penn State. Penn State sees its educational function as serving a wide range of students. That gives it the opportunity to excel at efficacy-and it does so brilliantly. Penn State's freshmen have an expected graduation rate of seventy-three per cent and an actual graduation rate of eighty-five per cent, for a score of plus twelve: no other school in the U.S. News top fifty comes close.

There is no right answer to how much weight a ranking system should give to these two competing values. It's a matter of which educational model you value more-and here, once again, U.S. News makes its position clear. It gives twice as much weight to selectivity as it does to efficacy. It favors the Yale model over the Penn State model, which means that the Yales of the world will always succeed at the U.S. News rankings because the U.S. News system is designed to reward Yale-ness. By contrast, to the extent that Penn State succeeds at doing a better job of being Penn State-of attracting a diverse group of students and educating them capably-it will only do worse. Rankings are not benign. They enshrine very particular ideologies, and, at a time when American higher education is facing a crisis of accessibility and affordability, we have adopted a de-facto standard of college quality that is uninterested in both of those factors. And why? Because a group of magazine analysts in an office building in Washington, D.C., decided twenty years ago to value selectivity over efficacy, to use proxies that scarcely relate to what they're meant to be proxies for, and to pretend that they can compare a large, diverse, low-cost land-grant university in rural Pennsylvania with a small, expensive, private Jewish university on two campuses in Manhattan.

"If you look at the top twenty schools every year, forever, they are all wealthy private universities," Graham Spanier, the president of Penn State, told me. "Do you mean that even the most prestigious public universities in the United States, and you can take your pick of what you think they are-Berkeley, U.C.L.A., University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Illinois, Penn State, U.N.C.-do you mean to say that not one of those is in the top tier of institutions? It doesn't really make sense, until you drill down into the rankings, and what do you find? What I find more than anything else is a measure of wealth: institutional wealth, how big is your endowment, what percentage of alumni are donating each year, what are your faculty salaries, how much are you spending per student. Penn State may very well be the most popular university in America-we get a hundred and fifteen thousand applications a year for admission. We serve a lot of people. Nearly a third of them are the first people in their entire family network to come to college. We have seventy-six per cent of our students receiving financial aid. There is no possibility that we could do anything here at this university to get ourselves into the top ten or twenty or thirty-except if some donor gave us billions of dollars."In the fall of 1913, the prominent American geographer Ellsworth Huntington sent a letter to two hundred and thirteen scholars from twenty-seven countries. "May I ask your cooperation in the preparation of a map showing the distribution of the higher elements of civilization throughout the world?" Huntington began, and he continued:

My purpose is to prepare a map which shall show the distribution of those characteristics which are generally recognized as of the highest value. I mean by this the power of initiative, the capacity for formulating new ideas and for carrying them into effect, the power of self-control, high standards of honesty and morality, the power to lead and to control other races, the capacity for disseminating ideas, and other similar qualities which will readily suggest themselves.

Each contributor was given a list of a hundred and eighty-five of the world's regions-ranging from the Amur district of Siberia to the Kalahari Desert-with instructions to give each region a score of one to ten. The scores would then be summed and converted to a scale of one to a hundred. The rules were strict. The past could not be considered: Greece could not be given credit for its ancient glories. "If two races inhabit a given region," Huntington specified further, "both must be considered, and the rank of the region must depend upon the average of the two." The reputation of immigrants could be used toward the score of their country of origin, but only those of the first generation. And size and commercial significance should be held constant: the Scots should not suffer relative to, say, the English, just because they were less populous. Huntington's respondents took on the task with the utmost seriousness. "One appreciates what a big world this is and how little one knows about it when he attempts such a task as you have set," a respondent wrote back to Huntington. "It is a most excellent means of taking the conceit out of one." England and Wales and the North Atlantic states of America scored a perfect hundred, with central and northwestern Germany and New England coming in at ninety-nine.

Huntington then requested from the twenty-five of his correspondents who were Americans an in-depth ranking of the constituent regions of the United States. This time, he proposed a six-point scale. Southern Alaska, in this second reckoning, was last, at 1.5, followed by Arizona and New Mexico, at 1.6. The winners: Massachusetts, at 6.0, followed by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York, at 5.8. The citadel of American civilization was New England and New York, Huntington concluded, in his magisterial 1915 work "Civilization and Climate." In case you are wondering, Ellsworth Huntington was a professor of geography at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut. "Civilization and Climate" was published by Yale University Press, and the book's appendix contains a list of Huntington's American correspondents, of which the following bear special mention:

J. Barrell, geologist, New Haven, Conn.

P. Bigelow, traveler and author, Malden, N.Y.

I. Bowman, geographer, New York City

W. M. Brown, geographer, Providence, R.I.

A. C. Coolidge, historian, Cambridge, Mass.

S. W. Cushing, geographer, Salem, Mass.

L. Farrand, anthropologist, New York City

C. W. Furlong, traveler and author, Boston, Mass.

E. W. Griffis, traveler and author, Ithaca, N.Y.

A. G. Keller, anthropologist, New Haven, Conn.

E. F. Merriam, editor, Boston, Mass.

J. R. Smith, economic geographer, Philadelphia, Pa.

Anonymous, New York City

"In spite of several attempts I was unable to obtain any contributor in the states west of Minnesota or south of the Ohio River," Huntington explains, as if it were a side issue. It isn't, of course-not then and not now. Who comes out on top, in any ranking system, is really about who is doing the ranking. ♦

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Last summer, the editors of Car and Driver conducted a comparison test of three sports cars, the Lotus Evora, the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, and the Porsche Cayman S. The cars were taken on an extended run through mountain passes in Southern California, and from there to a race track north of Los Angeles, for precise measurements of performance and handling.

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Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions

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The Price You Pay for College- Ron Lieber*

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The Price You Pay for College- Ron Lieber*

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The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make

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The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make [Lieber, Ron] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.

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Free to Roam Adventures embraces a student-driven approach to gap year planning by offering personalized support and mentoring for students to explore their own unique interests and future pathways during their gap year. Together with students, Susan researches a combination of experiences, international and domestic, that equip students with the skills to succeed in college and the confidence and motivation to become true owners of their own lives. Founding Director, Susan Staley has firsthand experience as a gap year student, gap year program leader, and director of study abroad in 25+ countries throughout Asia, Europe, Latin America & Australia and Oceania. Packages range from $775 - $2,075, scholarships available.

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Free to Roam Adventures embraces a student-driven approach to gap year planning by offering personalized support and mentoring for students to explore their own unique interests and future pathways during their gap year.

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We've been there. We're here to help. Get Started Start Your Roadmap Whether you're exploring new career paths or looking for inspiration, find the guidance you need from the stories of others. For 20 years, we've been traveling the country in a green RV to talk to people who love their jobs.

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Should You Make Enrollment Deposits at More Than One College?

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Should You Make Enrollment Deposits at More Than One College?

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As college acceptance letters roll out, high school seniors must decide which university they will attend in the fall, and place an enrollment deposit to secure their spot.

The moment represents a power shift for students, says Chris Bell, founder of Bell College Consulting. Students wait for months for an answer from college admissions offices, but "the minute a college offers a student admission, the power dynamic changes."

Bell says a student's decision can depend on factors such as whether they were admitted to the college of their choice, if they were invited to an honors program and how much merit aid or need-based financial aid they received.

With several acceptances in hand, a decision can be tough. But before putting down money, students should know a few things about college enrollment deposits.

What an Enrollment Deposit Is For

Once students decide on the college or university they plan to attend, they will need to put down a certain amount of money to confirm their acceptance. This is usually referred to as an enrollment or seat deposit. This deposit is applied to tuition for the first year.

"Historically, colleges have required students to submit an enrollment deposit in order to reserve their seat in the freshman class," says Sara Harberson, founder of Application Nation, a subscription-based Facebook group for college admissions advice. Harberson was formerly associate dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania and dean of admissions at Franklin & Marshall College.

Harberson says students typically submit a form, usually through a college portal, indicating their intention to enroll and an actual deposit. This is usually due by National College Decision Day, May 1, but could vary if the student was admitted under an early decision plan or rolling admissions, or got an extension from the college for financial aid reasons. Check with your college admissions office to confirm the deposit deadline.

"From the college's perspective, the purpose of the deposit is to put some weight behind the acceptance of admission," Bell says. "Colleges want to know that when students accept admission, they mean it."

No Deposit Can Mean Losing Your Seat

An enrollment deposit will secure your place, but not depositing by the deadline could have consequences.

"If a student does not make a deposit, they will likely lose their seat to study at the college," says Ferah Aziz, a certified educational planner and founder of the college admissions coaching firm launchphase2.

Harberson says it's at the college's discretion whether a late enrollment deposit will be accepted. She says a college that wants to increase the percentage of admitted students who enroll may be more generous with a late enrollment deposit.

"However, for most of the nationally known colleges and universities with highly desirable yield rates, a late enrollment deposit, even if it is a few days late, will not be accepted," says Harberson.

Bell says schools that do not receive the commitment form and deposit by May 1 "will assume that the student has chosen to go to another college and they will consider the student's admission withdrawn."

Deposits Are Nonrefundable

Once students make an enrollment deposit, they should know that it is usually nonrefundable. In its " Guide to Ethical Practice in College Admission," the National Association for College Admission Counseling states that offers of admission should specify whether the enrollment deposit is refundable or nonrefundable.

Aziz says deposits are typically not refundable, but exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis.

Students can expect to pay an enrollment deposit ranging from $100 to $400, experts say, with some much higher. For example, Arizona State University's deposit is $300, and Villanova University 's is $700, according to the schools' websites. However, some universities will allow a student to waive the deposit or request a reduced deposit if the amount is a financial burden, says Harberson.

"The higher the deposit, the less likely a student is to back out and enroll elsewhere," says Harberson. "The vast majority of colleges have a nonrefundable deposit."

However, there may be cases where a deposit is refundable. For example, at Kent State University and the University of New Hampshire, enrollment deposits are refundable up until May 1, and UNH offers a partial refund until July 1, according to the schools' websites.

"If a student does not show up for matriculation, the first day of class, without clearly communicating with the admissions office, the student will forfeit their deposit," says Bell.

Beware of Double Depositing

Double depositing is when a student places an enrollment deposit at more than one school. Reasons can include indecision about which college to attend or being waitlisted at a more desirable college.

"Since a student can enroll and study at only one college, it is unethical to deposit at two colleges," says Aziz.

She says other students who want to enroll at the school may not have the opportunity because space is unavailable due to students who double deposit.

"Students don't realize that they sign affirmations on the Common App when they submit their applications that state they are not permitted to deposit at more than one college," says Harberson.

The only exception is when a student finds out they have been admitted from a college's waitlist and they plan to enroll at that college instead. This is the only scenario deemed acceptable by the NACAC.

Aziz says once students are taken off a waitlist, they should plan to send a note to the second-choice college to explain the situation "to enable that college to give their seat to another student."

Students should also know that double depositing is taken very seriously by schools.

"In fact, a student's offers of admission may be rescinded if they double deposit," says Harberson.

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As college acceptance letters roll out, high school seniors must decide which university they will attend in the fall, and place an enrollment deposit to secure their spot. The moment represents a power shift for students, says Chris Bell, founder of Bell College Consulting.

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The Education Department said Tuesday it will launch the redesign of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in December, missing the annual Oct. 1 release of the form that millions of students rely on to determine their eligibility for grants and federal loans to pay for college.

In an announcement to higher education professionals, the department confirmed what many had suspected after a senior official told members of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in February the agency could not commit to the form'straditionallaunch date.

The department's Federal Student Aid Office has been working to carry out a bipartisan law simplifyingand easing requirements for the FAFSA, but it said the unprecedented complexity of the new form demanded more time and effort than anticipated.

"FSA has been working - and will continue to work - to launch a 2024-2025 FAFSA form as early as possible and will provide updates if and when there are any timing developments," the department wrote Tuesday citing a "launch of the FAFSA form in December."

Filling out the FAFSA is critical for students seeking federal and state aid, as many states use the form to provide education grants. Advocates have cautioned that some state grant programs have priority deadlines as early as January, so the later the FAFSA opens, the less time students will have to apply on time. Plus, the later colleges get students' financial aid information, the less time there is to finalize award notices.

Still, NASFAA President Justin Draeger said he was pleased that the department is providing a road map for implementing the new FAFSA.

On Tuesday, the department published a guide, dubbed the Better FAFSA Better Future Roadmap, offering resources, guidance and training materials for students, parents, schools, counselors and financial aid officers. The agency will host Q&A sessions with financial aid administrators and field FAFSA-related questions through a single portal.

Later this spring, the department will release Pell Grant tables to help students prepare for changes to the calculation of the formula for the need-based federal grant. It will also provide a tool in the summer for students to estimate their financial aid eligibility.

"While this is later than usual, knowing when the FAFSA will be released will help institutions, states and college-access organizations prepare and plan appropriately," Draeger said. "Along with the department, our top priority is to have the FAFSA released securely, stably and accurately."

In 2020, a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed a bill to reduce the number of questions on the aid application from 108 to 36 and limit therequirements for students experiencing homelessness and those formerly in foster care. They alsodecided to shield more of the money that working students earn from the formula used to determine aid.

Lawmakers said the revisions could enable an additional 1.7 million students to qualify for the maximum award each year and make an additional 555,000 newly eligible for aid.

At the same time,the department is also implementing another law that Congress passed in 2019, dubbed the Future Act, that would make it easier for the agency and the Internal Revenue Service to share taxpayer data so students can speed through the aid application and reduce the need for verification of income.

Initially, the Education Department was supposed to wrap upchanges to the FAFSA in time for the 2023-2024 application cycle, but the agency said in June 2021 thatit needed to push the rollout back by a year. It moved toward a phased implementation of the changes and said some overhauls would arrive earlier than scheduled.

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FAFSA redesign delayed by two months, says Education Dept.

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The Education Department said Tuesday it will launch the redesign of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in December, missing the annual Oct. 1 release of the form that millions of students rely on to determine their eligibility for grants and federal loans to pay for college.

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To inspire more Coloradans to continue their education, all 32 public colleges and universities in Colorado and several private institutions allow students to apply for free on Tuesday, Oct. 18 - Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022 as part of the fifth annual Colorado Free Application Day$.

Colorado Free Application Day$ caps off Colorado Applies Month, a five-week campaign that guides 11th- and 12-grade students and adult job seekers along the application process.

The statewide push is designed to increase Colorado's college-going and FAFSA completion rates. Despite being one of the most educated states in the country, Colorado sent just 50.5% of 2020 high school graduates to a college, university or certificate program, and less than 50% of students submit a FAFSA application-a key indicator of students' likelihood to continue their education.

By removing barriers for students to achieve a credential, Colorado can increase the number of students who complete their programs and enter the workforce with a degree or competitive skills. Nearly 75% of Colorado jobs require a postsecondary credential. Colorado Free Application Day encourages residents to live up to their fullest potential.

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2023 Colorado Free Application Days (Oct. 17-19, 2023)

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To inspire more Coloradans to continue their education, all 32 public colleges and universities in Colorado and several private institutions allow students to apply for free on Tuesday, Oct. 18 - Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022 as part of the fifth annual Colorado Free Application Day$.