Truth

The Truth About College Rankings

January 18, 2019

The official e-newsletter of The Equestrian College Advisor.

From the blog:

I have a friend who trains reining horses and, if you ask, he will proudly tell you that he owns upwards of 300 different bits. My mentor and longtime dressage instructor travels by car to most of the places where she teaches and never leaves home without her famous “Bag O’ Bits,” a canvas tote containing somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 different versions of snaffles. And in the short time I’ve been riding some project horses and re-schooling them into dressage careers, I’ve changed the bit on one mare twice, the other mare three times, and the gelding once.  Read More

Women in business

Five prominent female entrepreneurs in the equine industry spoke at the US Equestrian Annual Meeting on Wednesday, January 9, for the panel Building a Successful Equestrian Business, presented in partnership with the 

(EQBW) Summit. Jennifer Wood of EQBW led the panel discussion with Lisa Roskens from 

,

 

Lisa Lourie from 

, Alexandra Cherubini from 

,

 Noel Asmar from 

,

 and dressage Olympian Ashley Holzer.

Rankings

"The 

U.S. News

 rankings are run by Robert Morse, whose six-person team operates out of a small red brick office building in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Morse is a middle-aged man with gray hair who looks like the prototypical Beltway wonk: rumpled, self-effacing, mildly preppy and sensibly shoed. His office is piled high with the statistical detritus of more than two decades of data collection."

The Birth of a College ListIf there’s one thing that college counselors around the world agree on, it’s that theformation of a student’s final college list tends to be slightly more art than science.There’s no algorithm or magic formula that allows students and counselors to plug in a host of variables and arrive at a list of six schools that fulfill each and every parameter and will be sure to grant not only admission but also generous scholarships and financial aid.So how does a student assemble a great list of possible colleges?

  • Assess. Ask yourself what types of academic and extracurricular programs are of most interest to you. Determine what type of cultural and social environment you most enjoy being a part of. Talk about the college budget with your family. These factors are all going to serve as tools to help you assess potential colleges once you begin to search in earnest.

  • Prioritize. Once you’ve constructed a list of considerations, list them in order of their priority to you. Is it most important that you find a school close to home or are you willing to go anywhere as long as you like the engineering program? Does your family budget require that you limit your search in your home state or will you be eligible for merit scholarships at private colleges far from home that will keep costs low? Knowing which items are most important to you (your needs versus your wants) will help you narrow the list as you go.

  • Research. Build a big list of ten to twenty schools that all meet your initial, basic requirements and begin to examine them in-depth. Follow their social media feeds, read the course catalog to see what classes are offered in specific departments and if they appeal to you, see what social events are held on campus at various times of year, and make arrangements to visit in person. As you learn more about each school, you’ll know if you want to continue to learn more or if you’re no longer interested.

  • Narrow. Schools will inevitably come off your list for a variety of reasons, but the best way to assess whether a particular college can stay or must go is to hold it up against the list of priorities you initially formed when you set out on the search. You might also disqualify a school if you don’t find that it offers classes that interest you or you determine you don’t want to travel so far from home during the school year.

Creating the final list of colleges and universities to which you will apply as a senior is a time-consuming process but one that will determine the course of your entire future after high school, so it isn’t something to be glossed over or completed in haste. Put in the effort and you’ll be sure to find your right fit school!