Thunder Looks Ahead to College Horizons

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charlie githler, staff writer
January 20, 2012
Filed under Staff, Student Life, Top Stories

Have you ever wondered what it takes to attend the college of your dreams? How does ODA stack up in this highly competitive environment? What can you do to prepare yourself and get every advantage you can to be accepted to your choice of colleges?

Thanks to Mr. Joseph Runge, ODA’s Director of College Counseling, your questions about this important next step in your academic life are found here. Mr. Runge and I sat down for a brief Q&A to discuss issues related to both current and future ODA college applicants, and this is what I found.

How is the class of 2012 doing in the college application process?

This may be the best class so far in terms of where they are getting into college. They are doing a great job with scholarships. The have exceeded my expectations thus far. We still have a long way to go. The stage of the process where they are either accepted, deferred, or denied is only about 50% through.

We had about 400 applications submitted by 56 students and as of today January 11^th, We have about 175 acceptances vs. only about 15 denials. Which is an inordinately high ratio.

Most colleges don’t admit students until on or around April 1^st, but every student in the class has been accepted to at least one school so far.

As of today We have 34 of the seniors have already been offered unsolicited scholarships,

Some of the schools that the students have been accepted to are: Boston College, Columbia University, NYU, SMU (Dallas), University of Miami, Emory University, Villanova University, Amherst College, Mt. Holyoke, Furman College, Carlton College, Hamilton College, Colgate University

What can kids do at ODA to prepare for college?

The first thing they can do is always take four years of credit in the five core academic disciplines: Math, English, Science, Foreign Language, and History.

Colleges don’t like to see kids gap themselves in any particular year.  For example there may be a minimum requirement at public high school for two years of a foreign language and most students will do that, however they won’t take it any further.  Colleges want to see a consistent progression. Always staying sequential from 9^th grade to 12^th grade, so that they don’t exhibit any academic gaps. That lends itself to a seamless academic transition from secondary to college level schooling.

Most students are in a little bit of trouble in terms of admissibility. You have to realize that 9^th grade counts towards college. You only have three years, 9^th through 11^th grade, to calculate your GPA. Each one of those years represents as one-third of your cumulative total of your total of your GPA. At the end of your junior year that is the GPA we put on your application. One year is no more important than the other. They all count as one-third in terms of contributing towards your final GPA.

How do SATs affect admissions?

The SATs are still important to the application process. They are the only equal barometer measurement that all schools can use unilaterally to assess the strength of the student based off the SAT test.  However there is a large growing number of schools in the United States who have eliminated the SAT from the college admission process because they don’t believe in the accuracy or the construct of the exam. You have some very prominent schools:

However, there is a large number of schools who have eliminated the SAT from the college admissions process : Wake Forest, Bates, Union College, and more.

In Florida one of the schools that is SAT optional is Rollins College.

What would you say is required to get into some of the more prominent colleges such as Yale, Harvard, USC, NYU, and others?

Everybody is different in the application process and brings strengths and weaknesses. Essentially you will have to be an A- to an A student and take the most challenging and rigorous Honors and AP classes available and get A’s in those classes.  And then have a congruent SAT score which would probably be a critical reading and math score combined over 1450. Then you are going to have to be someone outside the classroom that they would be interested in, something unique and dynamic that is part of your application portfolio. The colleges want to add someone to their community that is contributing to their community and worthwhile.

Students who want to achieve their goal of attending the four year university of their choice would be wise to note the guidance of Mr. Runge. Those who want to learn more should schedule a visit with Mr. Runge during the school week to see what they can work on and where they can make improvements to achieve admission success.