Tough Choices? UK Versus US for Higher Education

Tough Choices? UK Versus the US for Higher Education

Confused about whether to go to a UK or a US university? Doing your own research and hearing from other senior students' experiences to determine whether to go to a British or American university, often leaves students overwhelmed and unsure about which country and education system caters to their needs better. In making such a decision it is important to be aware of the difference between UK and USA higher education. As consultants we encourage students to keep their options open and apply to two or more jurisdictions (USA and UK or USA and Canada and vice versa) to keep their options open and mitigates risks associated with political uncertainty and global terrorism.

                           

                                           Figure 1: USA versus UK Higher Education?

The most significant point to note is the time it takes to finish your degree. While an Undergraduate degree in the UK takes 3 years to complete, the US takes 4 years. The reason for this being that the UK offers more focused programs/ courses in comparison to the US where students are allowed to chose an array of subjects to study before declaring their major. Thus the US system offers students the opportunity to experiment and try out various courses thereby offering more breadth in terms of higher education whereas the UK offers more depth within the course students select to study- these courses are very difficult to change once a student begins their studies.

Both systems allow students to explore masters degrees options following the completion of their degree. Additionally the cost of education in the US tends to be higher than the UK, though the overall cost of education varies according to the state the university is located in and whether the university is private or public. In the US, governance of a university subdivisions is more centralized , whereas UK universities tends to be subdivided into colleges that are fairly independent. Further the US system of education requires student's to maintain their performance throughout the marking period by giving students continuous assignments and tests, in contrast to the UK, where general assignments are given and the grade is determined mainly by the final exam.

                      

   

                                   Figure 2; Picking the right study abroad destination

Having highlighted some of the key differences between the US and UK higher education system, it is essential to note that both systems have a distinct way of approaching education. The applicant’s choice of university will most likely to take into account factors such cost, the length of the degree, preference for breadth versus focus and the degree of academic flexibility desired.

Daniya Sardar 

(BSc. U Of Warwick, MSc Imperial College London)

Chief Operating Officer and UK Admissions Head - The Edvisory

Barnard College- A Welcome Anomaly in US Higher Education

Barnard College- A Welcome Anomaly in US Higher Education

Source: https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2014/08/school-profile-you-can-be-the-next- wonder-woman-at-barnard-college/

Barnard University announced its regular decision results last night- one of our students got the nod and we are thrilled for her.  Soon thereafter, a number of questions ensued- “Is Barnard a part of Columbia?” “Is it an ivy league school?” “Is it easier to get into than Columbia?” The relationship between Columbia and Barnard is an anomaly in the US university landscape and the confusion is completely justified. 

Before I attempt to shed light on the Columbia-Barnard relationship, however, let me just say that I do not regard Barnard College to be inferior in any way to Columbia University. With a regular decision acceptance rate that hovers between 12-15%, it is as selective as most of its ivy league and ivy plus counterparts. Many of our female students- Barnard is a women’s college- prefer the more intimate setting of a liberal arts college and readily choose to apply to Barnard over Columbia. Barnard is rarity amongst liberal arts colleges in that it offers a close-knit, campus-based community experience, whilst being smack dab in the middle of the country’s largest metropolis, New York City. As all of our students know, we’re huge fans of liberal arts colleges, but feel that too many of them are not appropriate choices for our student base of international applicants given their remote locations and general inaccessibility. Barnard is a no compromise choice that offers students the best of both worlds. Simmons, Sarah Lawrence, Occidental, and the Claremont Consortium are other colleges that are able to offer this balance.

Now, with regards to Barnard’s relationship with its big brother Columbia, one needs to first understand the educational history of the United States. At the time Barnard was founded in 1889, there was a dearth of higher education intuitions for women that provided the same level of academic rigor found that was found at the all-male colleges that were prevalent in the nation. Barnard was named after Frederick Barnard, the tenth president of Columbia College, who was a well-known proponent of allowing women to study at the College.   

In 1900, Barnard became a part of Columbia University and became known as “Barnard College of Columbia University.” Its graduates all received Columbia degrees, but Barnard maintained its own faculty and facilities. Barnard students could take undergraduate classes at all of Columbia University’s undergraduate colleges and vice versa. It thus became the women’s college of Columbia University, much like Radcliffe College was the women’s college of Harvard University.   

So yes, Barnard is a part of Columbia, which is an ivy league school and its slightly easier to get into than Columbia, but its applicants are looking for an altogether different experience than applicants to Columbia University. Hence, since 1900, Columbia has three undergraduate schools or colleges- Columbia College, Barnard, and the The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Barnard is the only one with it’s own campus, facilities, faculty and admissions department. It is also the only one that men cannot apply to:)

So far everything things makes sense, right? In 1983, things start to get a little wonky. This was the year Columbia finally decided to go co-ed.  Unlike its ivy league counterparts who simply integrated their women’s colleges into their undergraduate colleges, Barnard’s president, Ellen Futter fought hard to keep Barnard independent so as to give female applicants who wanted to study at Columbia a real choice between studying in a smaller, liberal arts college or studying in a larger university setting.  

Hence, to this day, Barnard retains a separate campus, faculty, and facilities. Students at Barnard College are essentially dual citizens of Barnard and Columbia and they can choose to take classes at both facilities. Also, Barnard has a separate set of core curriculum requirements and its core courses are taught at the Barnard’s own, picturesque Morningside Heights campus.  

So Barnard is its own animal- an ivy league, all-girls, liberal arts college that is located in the heart of New York.  Most Barnard grads wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Common App’s New Essay Prompts Are Out: Why You Shouldn’t Care!

The Common App’s New Essay Prompts Are Out: Why You Shouldn’t Care!

As a college admissions consultant, I pretty much make my living off teaching students how to write. While The Edvisory operates in a highly competitive landscape and we often find ourselves having to pitch to prospective students and their families, we’re lucky to have a set of secret weapons that often seal the deal for us- our two black binders, both of which are full of successful Common App and UCAS personal statements from years past.  

Source: https://meghanarcuri.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/shutterstock_88937638.jpg

I was a writing tutor at Harvard and our Head of UK Advising, Daniya is a former journalist with a bevy of experience in academic writing.  Writing really matters to us.  Not surprisingly, our signature College Application Boot Camps are largely essay writing workshops.

You may then be wondering what the CEO of a consultancy that hangs its hat on the quality of its student essays is doing telling people that they really “shouldn’t care” about the Common App’s new 2017-18 Essay Prompts (which by the way, we’ll be covering in detail during this year’s Boot Camps)?

Nonetheless, I unabashedly subscribe to an admittedly unconventional mantra- the prompts (or essay questions, themselves) don’t really matter.  The whole point of these essays is to make an applicant come alive to an admissions reader in a way that can’t be done with other application components such as activity lists and transcripts. They are meant to reveal facets of your personality- such as what makes your tick, what grinds your gears, what inspires you- that enable you to make connections with admissions officers, connections that will hopefully make these officers push to make you a part of next year’s freshman class.

Hence, we treat prompts as goal posts or points of inspiration.  When we present them to our students, we simply take a cursory look at what they are, and use them to organize our brainstorming activities.  However, if that’s not working and if we feel a student is obsessing over what prompt to choose or not focusing on the right themes, we toss them out the door and concentrate on simply letting our students tell their story.  We worry about adapting these stories to fit the prompts, most of which are highly open-ended, at a later stage. We actually have an extensive Adapting and Tailoring presentation during our Boot Camps which shows our students exactly how to do this.  What’s more important is that we’re focusing on extracting the juiciest, most compelling stories that our students can serve up given their particular set of life experiences.  

That being said, the new Common App prompts can be found here:  

http://www.commonapp.org/whats-appening/application-updates/common-application-announces-2017-2018-essay-prompts

Obsess at your own risk!

A Head Start for UK Applicants – UCAS's New Offer Rate Calculator (NORC)

A Head Start for UK Applicants – UCAS's New Offer Rate Calculator (NORC)

The last year of high school is challenging and overwhelming for most students with consistent uncertainty prevailing about their chances at securing a place at a preferred university. With regards to UK universities, UCAS has now enabled students to tame their anxiety levels with the New Offer Calculator (NORC) tool.

                                                   

Figure 1: 3 Steps for the New UCAS Offer Calculator

                                           

Figure 2: Example of Step 2 for students

This new inventive tool offers students a chance to gage the likelihood of whether they will receive an offer from a specific university or for a course they are interested in. Students can achieve this through 3 simple steps that are listed on the UCAS New Offer Calculators' site. As this tool has recently been launched, it only covers students chances of getting into those universities or courses for which UCAS has sufficient data. Also it is specifically useful for students doing A-Levels, which are the grades the tool uses to determine a students chance for an offer, and no other international qualifications as yet.

Now you may be wondering how the tool works to determine results for the student. While the NORC cannot give a specific answer it will give a range displaying the likelihood of the applicant getting an offer from the university (ie. Either less than 10% chance or more than 90% / <10% or >90%) after they complete the 3 steps required and provide their grades. Students can also request a results summary, which can be emailed to them.

                                       

                                        Figure 3: Email summary sample 

The NORC is a useful tool for all students applying to UK universities, as it is essential for students to make choices that cover a range of scenarios- with only five universities to apply to via UCAS, they have to ensure that they have enough "insurance" options (likely admit) to balance out any "reach" universities (universities at which the student has a less than 50% chance of admission). Thus it is significant to raise awareness about the consequences of only choosing universities or courses that students may face difficulty getting into. The NORC tool will thereby help student's come up with a balanced list of universities to apply to.

Daniya Sardar
(BSc. U of Warwick, MSc Imperial College London)

Chief Operating Officer and UK Admissions Head- The Edvisory

Innovations in the University Admissions Process – Kira Talent

Innovations in the University Admissions Process – Kira Talent

Imagine if applying to university was actually fun and admissions were based on more than your A-Level, final AP exam grades and written essays. What if there was an interactive platform that allowed you to share your unique student story with universities?  How helpful would it be?     
                

Figure 1: Where is your identity? (Social Tahelka, 2015)

From University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management to Yale University, both undergraduate and graduate schools across the world are increasingly integrating the Kira Talent platform into their admissions process as a means to offer students a chance to present more than just their grades, transcripts and written essays. 

So what is Kira Talent?           

Figure 2: Kira – Let talent speak for itself (Thomas, 2014)

Kira Talent is a holistic assessment platform for admissions teams designed to uncover their best and brightest applicants. Through a recorded video response and timed written response portal this new platform is expected to make the admissions process more, ‘fair, effective, and engaging for both admissions teams and their applicants’ (Kira Talent, 2016). The benefits of this new innovation in the admissions process are yet to be assessed, however it has been implemented to enable universities to get to know the student behind each application and their essays on a more personal level. 

How does Kira Talent effect current and future students applying to university? 

While Kira Talent is a supplemental application component for most students applying to university and an addition to their essays and application forms, it allows applicants to be themselves and respond to questions with their personal and honest views as compared to relying on formatted textbooks or online advice for answers. Universities want to gain a deeper understanding of the applicants personality and potential by eradicating the fear of giving a right or wrong answer during the assessment, thus the student is encouraged to ‘relax and be yourself’ (Rotman Commerce, 2016) during the Kira Talent recorded video and written assessment. This addition to the admissions process has not been adopted by all universities but nearly 130 universities have integrated it into their admissions processes, hence adding a layer of personalization to the extensive admissions process.                                   

Figure 3: Be Yourself (Lovethispic, n.d.)

The extent to which Kira Talent will enable students to reveal their full personality to universities and whether this is possible in a limited time frame is still unknown. However Kira Talent is certainly a game changer in the admissions process leaving students with the hope that universities will finally assess every applicant’s potential through a more holistic perspective rather than just evaluating traditional application criterion such as grades and test scores.
  


Daniya Sardar
(BSc. U of Warwick, MSc Imperial College London)
Chief Operating Officer and UK Admissions Head- The Edvisory