Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
Admissions officers spend a lot of time sorting through raffs of transcripts, standardized test scores, essays, recommendations, interview summaries, portfolios, and lists of extracurricular activities in search of clues of leadership, that prized trait sought by hundreds of American college campuses.
Trying to figure out where you might get the best postsecondary value for your educational dollar just became easier. On October 7th, 2010, the website CollegeMeasure.org went live. It’s a free, publicly available, not-for-profit site that has no advertising clutter or strange distractions: just cold hard numbers to compare which colleges do a good job at delivering value for the educational dollar, and which don’t. The organizations behind the site are the Matrix Knowledge Group (an international consulting company) and the American Institute of Research (which specializes in educational research) who both share grave concerns about the American college system which, currently, graduates less than 60% of its students in 6-years, who are attempting to gain degrees from 4-year colleges.
