For some high-school students, getting good grades, taking AP courses, excelling in sports, and scoring well on the SAT is all that’s needed to get into a four-year university.

But many first-generation college students have an additional hurdle, and that’s in gaining confidence and assurance that they can pay for it. Unfortunately, many of them lack adequate information about how to pay for college and obtain financial aid. So, in turn, many perceive the tuition at a  four-year university to be too costly and instead opt for a less expensive community college, even though they might want to and have the qualifications to aim higher.

Cecilia Lopez knows this all too well. She is one of four first-generation college students featured in the new documentary First Generation, a film that follows the students for three years as they pursue their dreams of attaining a college…

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Arlington, Va.—Samuel Beckett told us that “words are all we have”—a strong statement about the power of language. The words we choose matter, which is why politicians and bureaucrats so often choose vague or empty ones.

The admissions world has its own language, full of poetic terms, such as “demonstrated interest,” “need-based aid,” and “holistic review.” Don’t forget the beauty of “binding early decision” and “single-choice early action.” But how do the words admissions officers and college counselors use affect the admissions process? What can they do to reform the ills of admissionsese?

On Monday afternoon, I listened to an intriguing discussion of these questions here at the joint conference of the Potomac and Chesapeake Association for College Admission Counseling and the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling. The consensus: some words in the “admissions …

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Arlington, Va. — Ken Kesey once gave us this thought: “To hell with facts! We need stories!”

He wasn’t talking about college admissions, but his message applies. When I go on campus tours, I often marvel at all the facts that flow from the mouths of student tour guides—names, numbers, statistics, and obligatory tallies of the library’s books. The personal stories I hear from students are often more memorable than all of that data, however. In other words, a good story can help those facts go down easier.

On Monday morning, I spoke on a panel here at a joint conference of the Potomac and Chesapeake Association for College Admission Counseling and the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling. I was joined by two admissions officers who’ve thought a lot about the importance of storytelling during the admissions process. Our message: Telling good stories can help…

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Ohio State University at Columbus and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville will start using the Common Application this August, the organization has announced. The two state flagships are among 37 new members, raising the total to 490.

The Common Application’s membership, once dominated by private colleges, continues to grow more diverse. New members include nine public institutions, five overseas colleges, and two historically black colleges. The full list is here.

A former admissions chief who falsified admissions statistics at Claremont McKenna College felt pressure to “maintain or increase” the SAT scores of freshman classes, but that pressure “did not exceed the norm” for senior-level administrators, according to findings of an external investigation released on Tuesday.

Richard C. Vos, the official who manipulated the data, acted alone, and none of the college’s other leaders knew of his actions, the report says. A disagreement over “admission priorities,” the report’s authors conclude, may explain his motivation for altering the numbers he presented to the college and the public. Mr. Vos could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

In late January, Mr. Vos, then the vice president and dean of admission and financial aid, resigned after admitting that he had reported inaccurate SAT statistics for each freshman class going back to 2005….

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