The College Connection is your guide to all things college.  It will provide parents and kids with useful tips, helpful insights and up-to-the-minute information about preparing for college, surviving the admissions process, as well as trends and life on campus.  Stick with me, and the transition from high school to college will be a breeze.

This may go down in the history books as the Great Recession, but you can make your precious college funds go a little bit further.  We’ve all watched out 529 College Savings plans go down, down, down, but here’s an idea to get some practical mileage out of the funds that remain. Graduate degrees are continuing to become either a requirement or a desirable credential to many employers in a wide variety of fields, e.g. education, business, accounting and psychology, to name a few.  As you and your child begin the college search, add this to your checklist: a five-year masters program in your chosen field of study.  Depending upon the degree and the college you’re attending, this may be a smart and economical way for your child to achieve his/her career goals, while saving time (most graduate degrees require two or more years of study) and a whole lot of money.

Changes to SAT Subject Tests & APs

According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, there are no longer any American colleges that require applicants to take more than two SAT Subject Tests.  Harvard and Georgetown were the last holdouts and they are changing their policies this year. Formerly called Achievement Tests or SAT IIs, colleges considered them the single best predictor of first-year college grades. Although students may still take and submit more subject tests, those who submit the required two will get equal consideration.  Hopefully, this is the beginning of a trend that will reverse the testing frenzy that envelops our children’s lives.
           
More changes are coming with AP classes and exams.  As Advanced Placement courses have spread to 30 subjects, with 1.8 million students taking 3.2 million tests, providing more challenging work to high school students, there has also been criticism of them for overwhelming students with facts to memorize and then rushing through important topics.  Now, change is on the way, beginning with AP Biology and A P United States History.  The College Board will revamp these courses by slashing the amount of material that students need to know for the tests and create a curriculum that focuses student’s minds on bigger concepts and stimulates more analytic thinking. These changes will take effect in the 2012-‘13 school year. This is just the start of a sweeping redesign of the entire AP program. The reason for the new approach?  The College Board claims that it will allow students to develop their critical thinking skills, which are essential for success in college and in today’s information-based economy.