Guide to Education Grants

Your chances for making it in college (graduating with a
degree), may be based upon where you grew up. This does not mean that if you have
prepared for the last 10 years but reside in the state that ranks dead last on
the list that you should give up your college education dreams. It simply means
that you may have more work to do than you think when it comes to getting that
cherished degree.

“A person’s chances of earning a college degree vary greatly
depending on the state in which he or she was raised.” This is according to the
article by Peter Schmidt, “States Vary Greatly in How Well They Prepare
Children for College, Report Says” found in the Jan. 4, 2007 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where
Schmidt reveals several interesting facts from the report “Quality Counts 2007:
From Cradle to Career: Connecting American Education From Birth to Adulthood”
released by Editorial Projects in Education on Jan. 3, 2007.  Copies of the report are available on the
internet, Schmidt comments.

The report “developed a Chance for Success Index that
evaluates how well young people in each state are faring at key points in their
development and education” Schmidt says. He sites one of the report’s central
points, which is that a majority of the states need to better equip high-school
students for college.

Most States Mediocre

Most states would barely receive passing marks, with a
little over half of the states having specifically targeted programs to help
students in their transition. The article states the following:

 “Only 11 states have adopted a
formal definition of ‘college readiness’ to help ensure that schools are
adequately preparing students for postsecondary education, the report says. Just
six states have aligned their high-school tests with some definition of the
work students should be able to do in college while nine other states report
that their public colleges use the results of high-school tests in admissions,
placement, or scholarship decisions.”

Those figures imply that 24 states do very little when it
comes to college-prep stuff. And that is a little disappointing when you
realize that the United
States is supposed to be one of the most
educated nations in the world.

Best and Worst States

The article reports that the highest ranking states include
(in order): Virginia, Connecticut,
Minnesota, New Jersey,
Maryland, Massachusetts
and New Hampshire.
States that ranked “near the bottom” included: Alabama,
Arizona, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Tennessee,
and Texas, with New Mexico being “dead last on the index”
the article says.

Are there any indicators for why states rank higher or lower
than others? For Virginia, Schmidt states that according to the report “the
average child ‘starts out ahead of the curve’ by being less likely than
children in most other states to be part of a low-income family and more likely
to have college-educated parents.” In New
Mexico, Schmidt again sites the report saying,
“children are more likely than average to come from poor families and to have
parents who never went to college and, in many cases, do not speak English
fluently.”

If you are from the higher or lower ranking states and you
have excelled or struggled in your college studies, perhaps it all makes better
sense now. Either way, I encourage you to keep doing what works and plan ahead
financially for the next school year.

The student loan advisors at NextStudent are helpful and
knowledgeable about student loans. They are a trusted source in getting you the
appropriate information about your student loan consolidation, student loan
options and helping students get the college financing they need. Go to www.nextstudent.com for more information.

Be
sure to tune in next Thursday for my next blog on student loan advice.

Student
Loan Girl

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Money for College, Student Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.