Teens on Online Route to College
Fiddling around on his computer, Jordan Teplitz applied to the university of his choice Nov. 1, the first day applications were accepted. So did 2,400 other high school seniors applying to a California State University campus.
Since then, tens of thousands of other techno-savvy teenagers have hit the “send” button, e-mailing applications to colleges and universities around the country. And the annual application period is just getting underway for 1.5 million students preparing college applications.
Teenagers say it just seems natural to apply online with the same keyboard that they use to e-mail gossip to their friends, play games and, oh yes, occasionally tap out homework. It sure beats dragging Dad’s old typewriter out of the attic, or worse, as Teplitz pointed out, letting some admissions officer see his “very sloppy handwriting.”
All of this online activity is encouraging news to colleges and universities that have invested millions of dollars in new technology.
The University of California expects that as many as 20% of its 85,000 undergraduate applications will stream in via computer by the Nov. 30 deadline. (Other universities have later deadlines.) The early signs are promising. So far, about 12,000 have started to fill out the applications using UC’s World Wide Web site (https://www.ucop.edu/pathways).
“Students really like it, and we do too,” said Carla Ferri, UC’s director of undergraduate admissions. She notes that applications submitted online help ease the university’s costly annual project of typing every eight-page application into university computers. But UC, like other institutions, gives online applications no more weight than the traditional kind.
The California State University system also expects a higher percentage of online applications than the 25% received last year. But university officials don’t know how much higher.
Besides 2,400 who submitted applications the first day using the Web site (https://www.csumentor.edu), 5,000 had filed applications by the first week--more than a threefold increase from last year.
“We thought CSU Mentor would be popular, but this is truly remarkable,” said Allison Jones, Cal State’s senior director of access and retention.
Cal State’s Mentor system tries to be much more than a pathway for filing applications online. It allows high school students as early as the eighth grade to start typing in information about themselves and their classwork. The computer stores the information in each student’s password-protected file over the years and offers guidance to keep each student on track for Cal State admission--such as taking all of the prerequisite courses.
This year, Cal State won permission from the federal government to transfer data from its applicants’ Mentor files onto the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. That will give students a head start in filling out the program’s lengthy form.
This is an area where Internet start-up companies seem to be helping students avoid the hassle of filling out myriad forms.
Allen Firstenberg, who designed Cal State’s Mentor system, became interested in online college applications when his daughter had a dozen applications in piles stacked around her bedroom floor.
“Don’t step on my piles,” she scolded him.
He bent over and noticed that each application asked her to write her name, birth date and other similar information on lengthy forms.
“It was so silly that all of the universities ask kids for the same thing,” Firstenberg said. “I thought there was a better way.”
So Firstenberg, an electronics engineer who worked on the Voyager and Viking spacecrafts, decided to shift careers from probing outer space to cyberspace. He left his job at Rockwell and set up XAP Corp. in Los Angeles, which runs Cal State’s Mentor and which recently won a $2.4-million contract to develop and operate the Student Friendly Services project.
The Web site, when it opens next year, will provide California students with one-stop shopping for any college or university in the state, including all UC and Cal State campuses, the 107 community colleges, and 72 private colleges and universities such as Stanford, USC and Pomona.
Modeled after Cal State’s Mentor, the site allows students to type in their personal data, completed college-prep courses, grades etc., into a personal file in the central database. When the student is ready to apply, the appropriate information can be transferred with the push of a button onto applications for all colleges or universities selected by the student.
“The beauty is that student will never have to enter their information more than once,” said Firstenberg, who has similar Web sites in New York, Texas, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Furthermore, high school guidance counselors could have access to students’ databases, with students’ permission, so the counselor could help students reach their goals. And UC hopes to tap into the common database to help with its recruiting of minority students.
But Student Friendly Services will not be up and running until Feb. 15, 2000, after the cutoff date for fall applications at most colleges and universities.
Meanwhile, there are at least half a dozen companies claiming to be either the biggest or the best way to make paperless applications to campuses across the nation.
The College Board, which plans to join the “dot com” trend with its own private spinoff company, has linked up with two ventures that offer online applications.
Through the College Board’s Web site (https://www.collegeboard.org), students can send online applications to 280 colleges for free using a service called Next Stop College. The College Board has also hooked up with College Link (https://www .collegelink.com), which permits students to enter the information once and have it formatted to applications for more than 1,000 colleges and universities. There’s no charge for filling out the questionnaire or submitting the first application. Additional applications cost $5 apiece.
The Princeton Review, the SAT prep firm and college guidebook publisher, has also begun offering applications through its Web site (https://www.review.com).
Basically, the Review bought Apply, a service that has provided a popular CD-ROM, chock-full of 600 applications, to high school counselors who hand it over to interested high school seniors. Students fill in the blanks and print out a clean application for any selected college or university and then send the neatly printed document by mail.
The online version allows students the same options as the CD-ROM, except often they can submit the application electronically, said Evan Schnittman, Princeton Review vice president and publisher.
But Schnittman said most students still prefer the control of printing out an application and sending it off to the appropriate school. So the company shipped CD-ROMs again this year.
There was, however, a glitch this year, Schnittman said. The problem was limited to people with Macintosh computers who attempted to install the Apply software along with promotional software on the CD-ROM for America Online.
“We shipped 500,000 discs, and a total of 70 people called and complained,” he said. “Nothing was lost and nothing was damaged.” But he offered this advice in dealing with the Apply CD-ROM: “Don’t install the AOL if you have a Mac.”
Online applications have become big business, given that the average university-bound senior applies to at least three institutions and some ambitious seniors apply to a dozen or more.
Peterson’s, the publisher of many college guidebooks, has joined others offering online applications (https://www.collegequest.com). Its site allows students to cross-reference Peterson’s database on college facts and programs.
Other commercial services can be found at:
https://www.embark.com
https://www.commonapp.org
https://www.collegenet.com
https://www.collegeview.com.
Many of the sites offering online applications also steer students to universities’ own Web sites for a virtual tour. They often have links to help with financial aid, and some assist students in keeping track of the confusing range of deadlines.
Plugging into Cal State’s Mentor system, Teplitz was able to use his mother’s credit card to pay his application fee Nov. 1. Teplitz, a senior at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, picked Cal State Monterey Bay because of its marine biology program.
Quianna Stokes-Washington, a classmate of Teplitz, is midway through her online application for Cal State Northridge and Cal State L.A. With a couple of mouse clicks, she can send the application to both campuses.
“I’m going to apply to Mount Saint Mary’s, Loyola Marymount University and Hampton University--if they have Web sites,” she said. “I’ve decided I’m going to do it all online.”
