The Claremont Port Side has revealed more information about the inflated SAT scores at Claremont McKenna College. An analysis of old and corrected reports “shows that the reported score changes entailed systematic manipulation of the vast majority of the data points that CMC had reported,” according to the Port Side.

You can read all about it (and study some colorful charts) here.

In the Wild West of college admissions, there is no Data Sheriff.

The latest reminder arrived on Monday when Claremont McKenna College announced that a senior administrator had resigned after admitting to falsely reporting SAT statistics since 2005. In an e-mail to the campus, Pamela B. Gann, the college’s president, said an internal review found that scores for each fall’s freshman class had been “generally inflated by an average of 10-20 points each.” The apparent perpetrator was Richard C. Vos, long the college’s dean of admissions and financial aid, who has resigned from the college.

The announcement has shaken those who work on both sides of the admissions process. In the span of 24 hours, Mr. Vos, described by several colleagues as an engaging and thoughtful dean, has become a symbol of the pressures that come with top-level admissions jobs. As one mid-career dean said on…

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A senior administrator at Claremont McKenna College has resigned after admitting to falsely reporting SAT statistics since 2005, the college announced on Monday. In an e-mail to the campus (reproduced here), Pamela B. Gann, the college’s president, said the scores for each fall’s freshman class “were generally inflated by an average of 10-20 points each.”

Although Ms. Gann did not identify the administrator in her e-mail, Richard C. Vos, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid, is no longer listed as a member of the college’s admission staff. Max Benavidez, a spokesman for the college, said he could not name the official who had resigned, but he confirmed that Mr. Vos is no longer employed by the college.

Ms. Gann wrote that the administrator had been “solely responsible” for the misreported numbers. “At this time, we have no reason to believe that other…

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In a guest post today, Patrick J. O’Connor, director of college counseling at the Roeper School, in Birmingham, Mich., shares some thoughts about counselor training. Mr. O’Connor is a past president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

The recent wave of college admissions decisions shows more high school seniors applying to more colleges than ever before. This puts top-tier colleges in the position of rejecting more applicants than ever before, inevitably leaving disappointed students and parents to ask “What else could I have done?”, “Did I miss something along the way?”, and, often, “Was my school counselor really in a position to give me the best possible college advice?”

Two recent reports from respected voices in the education community indicate school counselors themselves would answer that last question with a resounding “No.” The College Board’s…

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This past fall, Occupy Wall Street protesters announced a “student-debt refusal” campaign, in which participants would stop paying their loans once a million people had signed up to do so. Meanwhile, a petition, which calls on the government to forgive Americans’ student-loan debt, has some 660,000 signatures.

Neither of those approaches is particularly practical, according to Mark Kantrowitz, the student-aid expert behind the Web sites FinAid and Fastweb. In a column for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators’s Web site, Mr. Kantrowitz writes that refusing to repay loans will hurt borrowers more than the government or other lenders, and that mass loan forgiveness is not the best way to stimulate the economy.

Still, Mr. Kantrowitz writes, the protesters and petition signatories have a point:

“Many of the protesters claim high levels of education debt…

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Recently an admissions officer I know invited me to read through a pile of application essays and letters of recommendation. After an hour, I was exhausted: There were just too many superlatives. Bright, sparkling, polysyllabic superlatives. Surely some of those students were great in one or more important ways. But all of them couldn’t be totally super-awesome in every way, could they?

I recalled this experience today while reading Janice D’Arcy’s On Parenting blog, which she writes for The Washington Post. Ms. D’Arcy linked to a January 15 article, written by the Post’s Michael Alison Chandler, about how more K-12 teachers are ditching “empty praise” in favor of more-precise language that helps students overcome mistakes and seek out new challenges.

“A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with…

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Although I’ve enjoyed writing about higher education for many years, a press release I received this morning has persuaded me to make a career change. Life is funny like that.

The press release came from SeekingArrangement.com, a Web site that matches prospective sugar daddies (and sugar mommies) with, um, “sugar babies.” That is, men and women who seek “mutually beneficial relationships” can find each other there to “buy and sell first dates.” The New York Times, employing an especially touching metaphor, called the Web site “the best sugar daddy fishing hole.” (Yes, there’s more than one.)

What does this have to do with college admissions? Well, as you might have heard, paying for college isn’t easy, and students everywhere are finding creative ways to finance their educations. And some of them are taking the sugar-daddy route. (Now, now, don’t judge.)

How many students are …

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In the Internet Age, it’s been said, high-school students can search for colleges in their pajamas. Now they can have a face-to-face talk with a college counselor while sitting in their living rooms.

A company called Unigo has started an online service that allows students to participate in one-one-one video chats with counselors from public and private secondary schools. The charge: $100 for 60 minutes.

Jordan Goldman, Unigo’s founder and chief executive, describes the venture as a cost-effective way of leveling the precollege playing field. “College counseling in America, despite the best efforts of many amazing counselors, is broken,” he says. “There are too many students who don’t get enough college counseling.”

Students can browse a directory that lists each counselor’s professional background, years of experience, and areas of expertise (“Where to Start: Considering the…

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Federal disability laws require testing companies to provide extra time or other accommodations to students with disabilities. But documenting a test taker’s needs and determining appropriate accommodations is often difficult, as a new report from the Government Accountability Office describes.

The report examines the types of accommodations requested, how testing companies evaluate requests, and how federal agencies enforce compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The report also urges the Justice Department to adopt a “strategic and coordinated approach necessary to ensure compliance.”

In the realm of high-stress admissions and licensing exams, the accommodation question is as controversial—and complex—as ever. In the most recent testing cycle covered by the report, half the test takers who received accommodations had learning disabilities. Some students who…

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