Tracing the baccalaureate origins of doctoral recipients reveals a complex landscape where massive public flagships, elite private universities, and tiny liberal arts colleges each play distinctive roles. Analysis of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2015–2024 Every year, roughly 33,000 to 35,000 people in the United...
Read MoreThe same forces reshaping admissions are pulling selective liberal arts colleges in two very different directions Colby College, a small liberal arts school in Waterville, Maine, received 7,593 applications in 2015. By 2024, that number had surged to 19,187—a 153 percent increase that outpaced Harvard, Stanford, and nearly every...
Read MoreIf you’re a current high school student who has been diagnosed with ADHD, another form of neurodivergence, or any kind of learning disability (such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, etc.), you might be wondering if or how that information will impact the college application process. Some common questions we receive from...
Read MoreFor many high schoolers, the approaching horizon of post-graduation has been forcibly stamped with one thing and one thing only: college. As students careen into the latter half of high school, that college noise only gets louder: from friends and classmates trading notes about dream schools, and from parents...
Read MoreThe question sounds simple enough: if I get straight A’s from here on out, what will my GPA be? But the math behind it catches a lot of students off guard. Your GPA is a weighted average of every course you’ve ever taken — and the more credits already...
Read MoreYour GPA is one of the first numbers a college admissions officer sees on your application — and one of the most misunderstood numbers in the entire process. Students confuse weighted and unweighted. They’re not sure whether AP classes count differently. They wonder how one bad semester affects their...
Read MoreThere is a persistent belief in American higher education that what you study matters more than where you study it. The logic is intuitive: a nursing degree is a nursing degree, an engineering degree is an engineering degree. The credential opens the door, and the labor market takes it...
Read MoreEvery fall, millions of families sit around kitchen tables with the same question: Is this degree actually worth the money? For affluent families, the answer is usually yes—the financial cushion absorbs most outcomes. But for families earning less than $30,000 a year, the stakes are existential. A degree from...
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