The piece focuses on a study by a Stanford economist who found that high-achieving, low-income high school students are less likely to apply to selective colleges, despite having the qualifications to be accepted. These students do attend college, but usually at institutions that are below their abilities.

Ms. [Caroline M.] Hoxby and Christopher N. Avery, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, obtained a huge cache of data from the College Board, which allowed them to analyze the entire population of students who took the SAT in five recent years. The data included test scores, high-school grades, and the names of the colleges where the students asked the College Board to send their scores (which is a close proxy for where the students actually applied).

The two scholars used a variety of methods, including block-level census data, to estimate each student’s household income. In their paper they define a family as “low income” if its income is below the 30th percentile, which is around $28,000. They define a student as high-achieving if the student had combined SAT scores above 1200, a high-school grade point average of B-plus or better, and at least one Advanced Placement score of 4 or 5 (or an equivalently high score on an SAT subject-area test).

In one typical recent year, Ms. Hoxby said, there were roughly 21,000 high-achieving students from low-income families. But more than 60 percent of those students did not make any “ambitious applications,” the study found.

Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery regarded an application as ambitious if the college’s median combined SAT score was no more than five percentiles below the student’s own score. “Notice that that’s a very broad definition,” Ms. Hoxby said. “I’m not saying that you’re applying to a school where you would be below the median.”

But even under that generous definition, Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Avery found that a large majority of those students did not make any ambitious applications. Instead, they typically applied to nonselective (or only slightly selective) public institutions close to their homes.

One of the crucial factors the study found was geography: low-income students from rural areas are less likely to apply to ambitious schools. Students in these areas lack guidance from teachers, counselors, and parents in determining what schools to consider.

This isn’t an audience that’s plugged in to traditional college marketing–they require a targeted and sustained communication effort that educates them (and their families) about financial aid and about the possibilities that are out there.  But it’s a sizable group of smart, highly motivated, hard working students who just need someone to help them recognize their options.

Colleges in eastern Canada report mounting interest this fall among high school seniors from the Northeast, with a recently stronger US dollar making already low tuition costs even more of a bargain for Americans.

Although applications for next academic year are not due for at least a month, schools from Toronto to Halifax say many students in the Boston area and throughout the region are drawn by the allure of an international college experience relatively close to home.

…

The number of Americans studying abroad has more than doubled in the past decade, and high school counselors say the influx to Canada reflects a broader trend of students attending foreign universities full time.

Since 2001, the number of American attending college in Canada has risen by 50 percent to about 9,000, according to Canadian Embassy in Washington.

Now, 9,000 students isn’t a huge number, and the recruiting efforts appear to be confined to New England, but it’s a trend worth watching. US schools appear to be behind the 8-ball on this one: Canadian colleges are heavily subsidized, making them less expensive than private schools in the US and in some cases comparable to public institutions. Add to that a simplified admissions process, schools with outstanding reputations, and (at least in the case of Toronto) fabulous urban experiences. Oh, and while they don’t qualify for financial aid, US students can receive loans from the federal government (that is, our federal government) to study in Canada.

I’m curious, though: Does anyone know the number of Canadian students studying in the US?

The full story is here.

Youth consume local news online, too.

…They want news that impacts them, which is why I think more young people tune in or search for local stories. Sites other than MySpace and Facebook mentioned by our panel as favorites were: Colbert Nation, College Board, New York Times, CNN, MSN, Veoh, Hulu, Twitter, Wired, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Lifehacker and Gizmodo. The college students were much more like “early adopters” in their tastes than the high school students (some big socio-economic differences as well).

There are still “Tech Nots”
With all of our talk about Totally Wired youth, we forget that there are some teens who choose to not participate or unplug. We had one of these high school students on our panel. She barely used the internet for anything outside of school work. She also was one of the teens who spent the most time reading books for pleasure. She’s not on MySpace or Facebook and did not text. We also had another high school student who did not own a cell phone. I wasn’t sure if that was her preference or for financial reasons. My guess was the latter.

Communication Tools Are About Efficiency
Youth are in developmental phase in their lives where socializing with peers is what’s most important. They are also incredibly busy. When I asked the young people on our panel how they stay in touch with each other, what I heard were the usual response (IM, textbook, Facebook and some email, mostly to communicate with adults), but I also heard the repeated need to blast or communicate with “all my friends at once.” Phones are still being primarily used for voice and text, though some of these teens text more than talk (200+ text messages a day). That said, two of our college students had iPhones with data plans and one student had a music phone. As PDAs become more widespread among youth and if the price of data plans drops, I think we’ll see more young people surfing, gaming and even watching video via phone.

[...]

HBO a hit…with youth?
When I asked how they watch TV – some still watched the old fashioned way, but I also heard HBO on demand, YouTube, Colbert Nation, SNL videos (online), and “Lost” on ABC.com.

[...]

Still downloading…
Most of our panel downloads free music or movies from sites like Bit Torrent and Limewire, except for one of the college students who was busted by the RIAA (ouch). The other college students download from home (not school) for that very reason.

Ypulse is a great resource for teen and tween culture. For more highlights on their mashup, click here.

For those who do not work in admissions, the approach of autumn conjures up images of crisp, cool mornings spent raking leaves or tailgating before a college football game and the scents of apple cider and pumpkin pie. For admissions officers, however, fall means only one thing — travel season, the six to eight weeks between mid-September and mid-November that we each spend visiting high schools and attending college fairs around the country. We associate fall with endless hours spent in our inevitably large, white rental cars, with arriving back at the Hampton Inn after a full day only to forget which room is ours, with eyes straining for signs of a flagpole or football stadium to indicate we’ve located the high school we’re seeking, and, most of all, with the excitement of getting to know next year’s freshmen.

Many prospective students have already visited campus over the spring or summer, so some of the myriad faces we encounter each fall are familiar, but encountering students on their home turf is particularly rewarding and often much more memorable. When I first met Courtney, now a sophomore at Vanderbilt, she looked like an extra from Footloose, complete with side ponytail, legwarmers, and fingerless gloves. “It’s 80’s Day and I’m the class president, so I have to go all out,” she explained. My first interaction with Caleb was when he and the rest of the Testostertones (my all-time favorite name for a male a capella group) serenaded me in front of an entire college fair to demonstrate his love for Vanderbilt. Our visits often coincide with Homecoming week at many high schools, so I’ve also discovered the power of the rivalry between the women’s lacrosse teams at Charlotte Country Day and Durham Academy, the existence of the Coffee Pot trophy to honor the victor of the football game between Coffee County High and Tullahoma High, and the fact that St. Paul’s students are taunted for their supposedly wimpy pelican mascot.

Not only did these encounters permanently imprint the students involved in my memory, but, more importantly, they gave me invaluable insight into the culture, community, and values of each of their schools. What even admissions officers frequently fail to recognize is that fall travel is an educational opportunity for us as well as the students we are visiting. Understanding the school environments from which our applicants emerge is essential to the admissions evaluation process. Fall travel provides us the opportunity to talk with college and guidance counselors about what’s new at their schools, to tour high school campuses to get a feel for the resources available to students, and to spend time observing the culture of the schools we represent in the admissions process.

When I finally read Courtney’s application three months after meeting her on 80’s Day, I realized that she had been modest; she had actually been class president all four years of high school and 80’s Day was part of her idea for a theme week to raise school spirit. I remembered seeing posters advertising the various themes all over the school and that over half the students I saw in the halls wore 80’s attire, so I knew her counselor’s claims about her lasting contribution to the Dover-Sherborn community were true. My visit to St. Paul’s last fall came the day before Cricket Day, a surprise school holiday enacted one day each term. Only the heads of the school’s Missionary Society (a community service organization) know in advance when Cricket Day will be held, so when Megan whispered to me during the college fair that she wasn’t worried about getting her homework done that night since classes would be cancelled the next day, I understood the depth and significance of her involvement in the Missionary Society when she later mentioned it in her application. Talking with a faculty member at Phillips Exeter about their unique textbook-less math curriculum helped me to understand fully how a student might progress through the math sequence at his or her own pace and that only having one term of Geometry or Algebra II would not be unusual for a student able to accelerate through the sequence.

Having this firsthand insight gleaned from visiting high school campuses is invaluable in the application review process. As I read each application, I determine if each student’s coursework is among the most challenging offered at his or her school, what the school’s grading scale is like and where the student’s grades place him or her relative to his or her peers, and what involvement and contribution the student has had in the school community. Visualizing the school environment — the classrooms, the hallways, the student body, the physical plant — fleshes out the picture provided by the applicant, counselor, and teachers and provides the context for understanding his or her high school career. Earning frequent flyer miles, enjoying the fall foliage in New England, learning regional slang (though I’m still too Southern to pull off using “wicked” as an adjective), and discovering the small joy of hotels that give you warm cookies upon check-in are added benefits of fall travel season, but the real reason we pack up and hit the road again each fall is the chance to meet students in their everyday environments and to understand how those environments have shaped them into the people we get to know throughout the application process.

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Heather O’Neill is entering her sixth year with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Vanderbilt University where she serves as Associate Director. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt, she received her master’s degree in education from the University of Iowa where she also worked in admissions, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.