College Tours of America - College Camp

Students are frequently asking us for advice on classes to take before and during their first semester of senior year.  Many think that you should take as many AP classes as possible is the best route.

Paul Kita’s article “More Students Scoring College Credits Long Before the First Tuition Bill” explains that while taking a few AP classes is important, you should not necessarily load your entire schedule with them.

For more information on AP classes click here!

As our older CTA site users begin to hear back from colleges that they have applied to, we felt the need to remind them, as well as those who are looking forward to starting the college admissions process, that once you have been accepted at a school, your work as a student is not done.

Historically, students become more careless with school work during their senior year because they believe that their grades no longer matter, especially once they’ve gotten that oh-so-coveted acceptance letter. The problem is, school are starting to crack down on poor senior-year grades.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s article “Colleges Crack Down On Taking Freshmen With ‘Senioritis’” explains that if your grades slip, your acceptance may be next!

To read the article click here!

We have recently investigated the world of college rankings, so many people have been e-mailing us for advice on how to select the best college for them.

Yahoo! Education has a list of the “10 Things You Should Consider When Choosing a College” that we believe is great starting place for helping you discover what attributes are most important to you.

To read the article click here!

For part 3 of our series on college rankings, College Tours of America sought to help explain how these rankings can be used. The National Association for College Admission Counseling is an organization that, like us, is devoted to helping people with the college admissions process. Their article, “College Rankings: Helpful or Hurtful?” helps tie together our series on rankings and illustrate how these publications can still be helpful to students.

To read the article click here!

In part 2 of our series of articles to educate students and parents on published college rankings, College Tours of America recommends an article published by the Pope Center for Higher Education, entitled “Do College Rankings Mean Anything?” The article gives you an inside look at what is behind the ranking systems and what their numbers actually mean.

To read the article click here!

Many students simply use the multitude of publications with college rankings to guide their college search. While these lists are useful to gather information about different schools, they should not be any student’s primary guide.

College Tours of America investigates the world of college rankings with a series of articles from various sources.

The first installment is from the Atlantic monthly, entitled “Is There Life After Rankings?” The article, written by Colin Diver not only explains some of the flaws in college ranking system, but also describes the effects the system has on educational institutions through the story of one college that resists them.

To read the article, click here!