GPA, Personal Essay, SATs ... and Sabotage?

Elite universities profit from acting interested in unqualified students

(NEWSER) - Ivy League schools cram high school students' mailboxes full with glossy recruitment packages, only to greet them weeks later with far less appealing rejection letters. Critics say elite universities like Harvard and Columbia set up potential applicants for disappointment by wooing them with pamphlets, posters, and promise, pocketing hefty application fees of up to $90 from students who have little chance of actually getting accepted, Bloomberg reports. More»

If you didn't graduate from Harvard, good luck getting a top job

(NEWSER) - If you’re determined to get a great job, you might want to quit your course of study at Cornell or Dartmouth and transfer to one of the "top 5" schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Wharton. A new study shows that recruiters for the best law firms, investment banks, and consultancy firms are only looking at graduates of those schools, Business Insider reports. And even if you’re one of those elite grads, recruiters want to make sure you’re not—in their words—"boring," a "tool," or a "bookworm." More»

These schools offer a good return on investment

(NEWSER) - Which colleges pay off? PayScale crunched the numbers to compute the best returns on investment—by comparing the cost of a degree against what its students earn upon graduation—and Huffington Post rounds up the best of the bunch:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: annual ROI: 12.6%; 30-year ROI: $1.69 million
2. California Institute of Technology: 12.6%; $1.64 million
3. Harvard: 12.5%; $1.63 million
4. Harvey Mudd College: 12.5%; $1.63 million
5. Dartmouth: 12.4%; $1.59 million

Claremont schools in California fare well in survey

(NEWSER) - The Daily Beast follows up its list of the nation's most stressed-out colleges with a polar-opposite one on the happiest schools. Factors include housing, weather, nightlife, and tuition. Read the full list of 100 here . The consortium of Claremont colleges in California dominate the top 10:

1. Claremont (Calif.) McKenna College
2. Harvard
3. Pomona College (Claremont)
4. Rice University (Houston)
5. Harvey Mudd College (Claremont)

(NEWSER) - Harvard and Yale remain the richest schools in the US, but both are getting a lesson in economics. The endowments of the Ivy Leaguer shrank by about 30% over the last year thanks to risky investments, reports Bloomberg. Harvard's fell $11 billion to $26 billion and Yale's dropped $7 billion to $16 billion. Both had moved aggressively into private equity and hedge funds over the past decade, and are now retooling strategies. More»