The University of California (UC) will not require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores for first year admissions through the Fall of 2025, affecting students currently in grades 8-12 for the 2020-21 school year. Subjectivity in the admissions evaluations will likely increase, without the backstop of standardized test scores to compare other, less objective…
Since the University of California (UC) has suspended the requirement of SAT and ACT scores for all admissions cycles through Fall 2025, which affects current (2020-21) 8th graders, subjectivity in admissions evaluations will likely increase, as officers will lose a standardized metric as a comparison for the GPA, extracurricular resume and essays, utilizing the UC’s…
To effectively answer essay prompts, an integral component of applications for many US colleges as well as other countries scattered throughout the globe, requires understanding of the autobiographical writing process. According to the Oxford Dictionary, autobiography is “an account of a person’s life written by that person.” How does a teenager, or one of any…
University of California (UC) applicants are evaluated according to 14 different Comprehensive Review points, for which no one criteria is weighted more heavily than another. Thus, students’ talents and strengths can be more fairly identified when evaluating their admissions to the UC. Ten of the fourteen Comprehensive Review points concern academic performance, validating the importance…
Since UC admissions officers utilize 14 Comprehensive Review Points, no one single factor determines admissions or not, instead the totality of a student’s high school experience is considered. Additionally, with Comprehensive Review, a student’s entire experience can be considered on a campus by campus basis, according to campus-specific needs. Consequently, when applicants understand each of…
On September 1, 2020, a California Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction, to be finalized on September 29, 2020, barring the use of SAT and ACT scores in Fall 2021 University of California (UC) admissions evaluations. Essentially, the judge implemented a “test-blind” admissions policy, meaning SAT or ACT scores cannot be considered, even if…
Two-thirds of all US universities are expecting enrollment to decrease in Fall 2020, with obvious impacts to fiscal revenues. For universities already reporting growing fiscal deficits from the initial COVID-impact in the Spring 2020 academic term, the loss of revenues can further compound the sustainability of the modern American university. According to the latest statistics…
Attending college is not required for achieving economic prosperity nor lasting peace of mind. Success is defined by the individual’s interpretation of their net worth that they were born to discover throughout a lifetime of searching for value from the sum of their experiences. Yes, that may include attending college, and praise to those who…
According to the US Department of Labor statistics, the August 2020 College Tuition CPI dropped 0.7% from the month prior, the largest monthly drop since 1978. College tuition CPI includes: …annual consumer expenditures for undergraduate and post-graduate studies at 2-year colleges, 4-year colleges, universities, and professional schools (law, dental, medical, etc.)…throughout the United States [minus…
At some universities, SAT and ACT scores are used to award merit scholarships, in addition to being a metric for admissions. (Merit scholarships are awarded regardless of a student’s family’s financial status and based on an applicant’s qualifications, like GPA and SAT or ACT scores.) Many parents are concerned that their children will miss merit…
In the 2020-21 school year, students, teachers and parents are not learning in pre-COVID ways. Kids commute from bed to desk, parents are deputized teachers, and teachers are now broadcast news anchors without the production team. Educators are seemingly rewriting the rules on how to learn, yet trying to rely on the old rules at…
The costs of childcare and college have outpaced wage increases in the past 20 years. So, a growing percentage of a family’s budget is spent caring for children, including paying for educational opportunities, like extracurricular activities as well as college tuition, in hopes of propelling kids toward a sustainable economic prosperity. Yet, as more of…
As the number of newly reported COVID cases increases, university officials in an effort to protect the health of students, faculty, as well as the larger community are diminishing their capacity to educate effectively. According to The New York Times, as of September 3, 2020, over 81,000 college students have been infected with COVID-19 since…
For Fall 2021 first year applicants, earning the academic designation, Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) for University of California (UC) admissions, may be more difficult than in past years. Given the Spring 2020 implementation of Pass/No Pass grading systems, thus the loss of a semester’s worth of letter grades for GPA calculations, Class of…
Creative Marbles Consultancy is offering a new advising retainer to help families navigate the current COVID-induced disruption in education. We can assist in the sometimes complicated transition from a teacher centered (pre-COVID) to a now more student directed learning process, the new normal in the 2020-21 COVID-disrupted school year in order to ensure that long…
