Chapter 10 Postsecondary Education Admissions

In this lecture, I’m going to talk to you about postsecondary education in the United States. Today I’ll give you some facts and figures about colleges and universities in the United States and some general information about admission policies. I will also make a few remarks about community colleges and finish up by giving you an idea of what kinds of students make up the student body on a typical U.S. campus.

Let’s begin with some facts and figures. The most recent figures I have reveal there are 4,182 public and private four-year and two-year colleges in the United States. These range from full universities with diverse programs to smaller four-year colleges to two-year community colleges. Most of them are accredited, which means the schools meet certain standards set by institutional and private evaluators. When applying to a school, you would probably want to make sure it was accredited. Even though there are more private colleges than public ones, over three-quarters of students, precisely 78 percent, are enrolled at public colleges and universities. Some of the small private schools may have fewer than 100 students, whereas some of the large state university systems may have 50,000 or more students. Most of these schools are coeducational although some of them are primarily for women and others are primarily for men. Some schools may offer only one program of study and others have a great variety of programs. The total cost for attending one of these schools may be less than $5,000 a year or as much as 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year for one of the prestigious private schools. These schools are located all over—in industrial areas, agricultural areas, large cities, and small towns in a wide variety of climates.

With such a wide variety of sizes, kinds, and locations of schools, it probably won’t surprise you to find out that admissions requirements at these colleges and universities vary greatly also. Some are relatively easy to be admitted to whereas others are highly competitive. However, most schools will ask undergraduate applicants to submit their high school transcripts with a record of their grades and test results from one of the standardized tests regularly offered to high school students. The most common of these standardized exams is the Scholastic Aptitude Test, commonly known as the SAT. Students who are applying to graduate school are usually asked to take other, more specific standardized exams depending on which college they are applying to. For example, some students are required to take the Graduate Record Exam, or the GRE. Students applying to a business college will probably have to take the GMAT, and students applying to law college will have to take the LSAT. You probably know about the TOEFL exam, which most foreign students have to take before being admitted to American colleges or universities. These exams, including the TOEFL, are all prepared by a company that is independent of the school

system. These exams have come under a lot of criticism lately, but they are still widely used as one way to determine who will be admitted to various schools. However, most schools try to look at the whole student and consider factors other than simply grades and test scores. Some of these factors may be extracurricular activities in school, ethnic background, work experience, and so on. Some schools will have personal interviews with students they are considering for admission. Many schools, private as well as public, try very hard to have a student population with a wide variety of backgrounds and ages. Even the most prestigious and most highly competitive colleges and universities will not take only those students with the highest grades and standardized test scores but will consider these other factors. Nevertheless, schools of this type, such as Stanford and Harvard, have so many more people applying than they can possibly accept that students who want to get into such schools take grades and SAT exams very seriously. In general, medical and law colleges, both private and public, are very difficult to get into, and, once again, test scores on standardized exams can be extremely important to those applying to these schools.

However, for students who want to attend a state college or university in their own state, it may be enough to graduate from high school in the upper third or even upper half of their high school class. This may surprise those of you who come from an educational system that is highly competitive, a system in which only a small percentage of students who pass a very difficult nationwide standardized high school examination can enter a university. You may be even more surprised by what I have to tell you about community colleges.

An interesting feature of education in the United States is the two-year community college. Community colleges that are publicly supported offer somewhat different educational opportunities than those offered by a senior college or a university. First, admissions requirements at public community colleges are usually much more lenient than those at a four-year college or university. It’s usually enough to have graduated from an American high school to be admitted. Second, it is also cheaper to attend a community college. The tuition and fees are usually quite a bit lower. Students often live at home because this type of school does not have dormitories. For these two reasons, many people who are unable to go to a four-year college or university can have an opportunity to take classes for college credit. Finally, community colleges offer two-year programs that can lead to an Associate of Arts degree. Many of these programs, but not all of them, are vocational in nature. People attend community colleges for many different purposes. Some people may be taking on a course or two in some field that particularly interests them and may not be planning on getting a degree. Other people may be going to

community college full-time and planning to transfer to a four-year college or university upon successful completion of two years at a community college. Well, so much for community colleges.

I promised to tell you a little about the actual student body on a typical U.S. campus. Let’s start with some statistics, and then we’ll discuss two items that surprise many foreign students. Among the 2.8 million high school graduates in 2002, 65.2 percent were enrolled in college the following October. More than 90 percent of those attended full time. Young men represented half of the high school graduates, but more women than men went on to college. The exact statistics are:68.4 percent of female high school graduates and 62.1 percent of male high school graduates. If we break down the statistics racially, we find that white students enrolled in college in greater proportions than black or Hispanic students. The figures are 66.7 percent for white graduates, 58.7 percent of black graduates, and 53.5 percent of Hispanic students. My next statistic may be surprising. 42.6 percent of full-time students in 2002 were either employed or looking for work. That number jumps to 75.7 percent for part-time students. That last statistic makes more sense when we consider that besides the students who are from eighteen to twenty-two years old that one expects to find on a college campus, there are also many older married students. They may be people who attend part-time to upgrade their skills, people who are changing careers, or retired people who still have a desire to learn. Also, foreign students are often surprised at how poorly prepare American students are when they enter a university. Actually, at very select schools the students are usually very well prepared, but at less selective schools, they may not be as well prepared as students in your country are. If you will remember the educational philosophy we discussed in the last lecture, you will understand why. Schools in the States simply admit a lot more students than is usual in most other countries. Also, most young American university students have not traveled in other countries and are not very well versed in international matters and do not know a lot about people from other countries. Foreign students usually find them friendly but not very well informed about their countries or cultures.

In brief, you can see that educational opportunities and admissions standards vary greatly in the United States. While it may be quite difficult to gain admission to some colleges and universities because of the very large number of applicants, probably any student graduating from high school with reasonable grades can find some accredited university or college to attend. Those students hoping to enter graduate school will often face very stiff competition, whether at private or public schools. Many students who start at a college or university will not finish in four years. Some will drop out to work or travel a

nd may never finish. Others will return to school a few months or a few years later. Some will go to school full-time and others part-time. Some will not work while going to school, but most will work at some time or other during their school years.

We’re out of time, I see. In my next lecture, I’ll talk to you about a relatively new development in education, distance learning. It should be of interest to those of you who want to attend college but can’t because of living far from a college, busy schedules, or for other reasons.