The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

64 DECEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT doctorates awarded, number of publica- tions from faculty, etc. Interestingly, while Princeton often gets the sought-after number one spot on the U.S. rankings list, Harvard came out on top in this index, followed by three more U.S. institutions: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Berkeley and Stanford. Oxford and Cambridge are also in the top 10, as well as Caltech, UCLA, the Univer- sity of Chicago and Columbia University. Because research and publications are heavily weighted, small American liberal arts colleges don’t stand much of a chance of getting ranked here. Perusing this list may be of value to the Foreign Service dependent who wants to expand his or her educational opportuni- ties beyond the United States. It also spot- lights those American universities that may have a better reputation worldwide. Although the media are making a fuss over the new U.S. News global rankings, London-based Times Higher Education has also been ranking global universities for years. Seven out of the top 10 schools on their list are American universities. Sound familiar? Note that its reliance on omson-Reuters for data means that the U.S. News ’ new global list is more or less identical to the THE list. Other lesser- known lists of global universities can be found online, as well. Putting Rankings in Perspective So you live overseas, and you’ve got to narrow down your choices for col- lege without a whole lot of knowledge. Wouldn’t college ranking indexes be a good place to start? e answer is a very quali ed yes, as long as you understand that rankings are only a small part of a much bigger picture. Mona Molarsky, an education and arts writer who also counsels students as the online “College Strategist” explains: “Col- lege rankings are mostly used by people who aren’t very familiar with the edu- cational landscape in the United States. If you consult these rankings with the understanding that the numbers are really just crude, ballpark estimates, you can get a general idea of a school’s reputation.” Molarsky admits that using the rank- ings as a basis for comparison between schools might encourage a student to “dig further,” but cautions against taking the From the FSJ Education Supplement December 2013 The Revised Common App BY FRANCESCA KE L LY T he Common Application, or “Common App” (www.common app.org ), was designed 35 years ago by a group of 15 col- leges as a way to streamline the American college application process. Since then, it has grown steadily in popularity each year, and more than 520 member institutions now utilize the application. A tool like the Common App makes sense: appli- cations to colleges have increased exponentially in the past decade; today most high school seniors apply to seven or more schools. The new Common App includes the following sections, each of which can be filled out online and saved until the application is complete: ■ Profile (contacts, demographics, geography) ■ Family (household, parent/guardian, siblings) ■ Education (current school, history, academics) ■ Testing (results of college entrance and other exams) ■ Activities (10 slots maximum, a new limitation) ■ Essay (250-650 words in answer to one of five questions, or “prompts”) ■ Explanations (a way to explain disciplinary actions, crimi- nal activity or interruption of education) ■ Additional Information (optional, where you can provide information not covered in the rest of the application) ■ College Page One (general information needed by the col- leges you are applying to. There will be one of these pages for each of your colleges.) ■ College Page Two (an additional writing supplement if required by your selected colleges) Although the Common App has been oered online since 1996, until this year it was also available in paper form for those who eschewed the online process. But the current (2013–2014) application season marks the start of a paperless, completely Web-based process. With this change have come a number of other changes to the application. Of these, the most important are in the new Writing section, including revised prompts and a more generous essay word length. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, the new Common App is also full of glitches—some merely inconvenient, others more serious. More about those later. … Francesca Kelly, a Foreign Service spouse, is a writer and col- lege essay application tutor who writes frequently on education issues. She is a former editor of AFSANews. To see the complete article, with detailed pointers for FS students in particular, go to www.afsa.org/education