This blog has moved

To those of you who have enjoyed this blog over the years, I just want to let you know that my college blog has moved from this site to my website https://slosbergcollegesolutions.com/.

Buyers and Sellers

In Jeff Selingo’s book, Who Gets In and Why A Year Inside College Admissions, he introduces the concept of “college buyers” and “college sellers.” In this blog post, I will focus on whether a private college is a college buyer or a seller. 

College sellers are the colleges that receive tons of applications and have a high yield (i.e., a large percent of accepted students choose to attend). Because of the high demand for these colleges they don’t need to “buy” students by offering merit aid or tuition discounts. College sellers typically offer financial aid to students who have financial need and a very small percent (if any) of really exceptional students.

College buyers on the other hand, are not in such high demand. They often provide as good or better an education than the sellers, but they discount tuition and/or provide significant merit aid to many students in order to make sure that they have a full freshman class.

Whether a college is a “buyer” or a “seller” does NOT reflect whether students get a great education there.

If you don’t have financial need, but you want your student to get a good price for college, be sure your student includes buyers on their college list.

Jeff Selingo provides these rules of thumb to differentiate buyers and sellers:     

1. Sellers typically admit less than 20% of applicants on average. Colleges as a whole accept 67%. 
2. The yield at most seller colleges is nearly 45%, as compared to about 25% at most buyer colleges.
3. On average, 7% of financial aid that sellers give is a merit-based discount vs. nearly 33% of financial aid that buyers give is a merit-based discount.

Selecting High School Classes

This time of year, many students are selecting their high school classes for the Fall. Here are three things to consider when picking classes. 

1.    Be aware that the preferred high school curriculum for applicants of selective colleges include:

·        4 years English

·        3 or 4 years Math

·        3 or 4 years of a lab science including chemistry or physics

·        3 or 4 years Social Studies

·        3 or 4 years Foreign Language. 

2.     Take the most challenging classes (e.g., honors, AP, IB) your high school offers that you can handle without harming your grades, extracurricular involvement or your health. I believe a “B” in an AP class is better than an “A” in a standard class. If you don’t think you can get more than a “C” in the more challenging class, I would advise against it. Look at the difficulty of your entire schedule and be sure to consider how many challenging classes you can handle at one time. 

3.    Different classes expose you to possible college majors and careers. Think about whether you enjoy the class material, whether you excel in the subject and whether you want to learn more about the subject in high school and beyond. For those students who have an idea of their future college major or career, let that impact the classes you choose.  For example, if you are planning to study math, science or engineering, I would recommend that you take at least four years of Math and Science, including Calculus if your school offers it.