Vassar named "College of the Year"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Susan Soriano (TIME), 212-522-2331
Diane Zucker (Vassar), 914-437-7404, [email protected]

VASSAR NAMED "COLLEGE OF THE YEAR" BY TIME MAGAZINE/PRINCETON REVIEW COLLEGE GUIDE

Elite College Honored for "Exploring Transfer" Program... Cited by Editors As "Valuable Model... as Opportunities for Low-Income and Minority Students Are Shrinking"

Poughkeepsie, New York... Vassar College has been named College of the Year by the editors of the 1999 edition of "The Best College for You," a co-publication of TIME Magazine and The Princeton Review. The annual college guide hits newsstands and bookstores, Monday, Aug. 17, 1998, nationwide ($6.95, on sale through Nov. 15, 1998).

The first College of the Year named by TIME and The Princeton Review was Florida A&M University in August 1997.

Vassar is honored by "The Best College for You" guidebook for its now more than decade old "Exploring Transfer" program, an extraordinary five-week annual program designed to identify and help gifted community college students make the leap from their two-year schools to some of the best four-year institution in the country. E.T. began in 1985 as a partnership between Vassar and LaGuardia Community College in Queens, NY and now draws students from seven two-year schools in New York State, introducing them - cost free - to college life, while subjecting them to the rigors of two full-credit liberal arts courses. The guidebook's editors and 11-member educational advisory board lauded Vassar's program as a "valuable model at a time when affirmative action is being rolled back and opportunities for low-income and minority students are shrinking."

All the students who participate are from low-income families, and nearly all are first in their clans to attend college. Columbia and Yale are just two of the schools that have benefited from the successes of E.T. Vassar itself has enrolled 85 of the 538 students who have been through the program since 1985. Seventy percent (70%) of E.T.'s participants since 1985 have made the leap to four-year schools, compared to a paltry 21 percent of all community college students. More than a hundred have graduated and dozens have gone on to graduate school, moving into careers in film, public service and academia. Two other colleges, Smith and Bucknell, have successfully copied Vassar's model, but with so many gifted, underprivileged students looking for a break in America, "we need 100 E.T.s around the country," says Norman Fainstein, Vassar's dean of faculty.

"This program is magical," says Cecilia Macheski, a LaGuardia English professor who has taught six E.T. sessions. "My kids at LaGuardia - they're poor; their lives are fragmented. They are the kind of kids who make decisions every day about am I going to buy a subway token or a sandwich? They are desperate for upward mobility, for social improvement, for personal growth. And when you give them this chance, that's where the magic comes in. Sometimes they don't even know until three or four years later what it did for them."

About College of the Year: In a tradition that began in 1928 with TIME's first Man of the Year, the TIME/Princeton Review guides started a new tradition in higher education by naming a College of the Year for the first time last year. Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, Florida) held that honor in August 1997, for their commitment to enrolling whites as well as African-American students in the face of the reversal of affirmative action laws.

"The purpose in naming a College of the Year is not to anoint any one institution as "the best" but rather to identify a school that is creatively and effectively advancing the cause of higher learning in general," states Barrett Seaman, Special Projects Editor, TIME, and Jillian Kasky, Senior Editor, the TIME/Princeton Review Guides. "There is...a best college for everyone, somewhere," they continue. But with the rising cost of college, a dramatically increasing population of high school graduates nationwide, more college aspirants coming from lower income families, and current trend away from affirmative action as a tool to promote diversity, "there is a real danger that the college experience will be limited to the very wealthy or the very smart."

The College of the Year selection process: The editors of the TIME/Princeton Review "The Best College for You," along with an 11-member panel of outside experts, have identified as one of the principal criteria for selection as College of the Year those programs and strategies that encourage, racial, ethnic and economic diversity on the nation's campuses. For the 1999 college guide, the editors identified a mechanism known in education circles as articulation - the means by which students at two-year schools, either junior or community colleges, can transfer to four-year colleges and go on to earn baccalaureate degrees. While four-year programs attract the privileged and the academically ambitious, two-year schools tend to draw from among those whose career sights are set lower, even if they are capable of achieving much more academically.

The College of the Year educational panel of experts include: Randy Behm, senior vice president, Key Education Resources; Rusty Haynes, independent educational consultant; Frederick S. Humphries, president, Florida A&M University; Jacqueline King, director of federal policy analysis, the American Council on Education; Mary Beth Kravets, co-author, K&W Guide for Learning Disabled, and counselor, Deerfield High School; Michael Lazerow, manager and founder, Uwire; Charles Ping, past president, Ohio University; Robert Reichley, retired executive vice president and secretary, Brown University, and past chairman, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education; Jaime Tackett, senior, Hamilton College; Israel Tribble, president and CEO of the Florida Education Fund; Sharon Yuan, president, U.C. Berkeley's student government.

About TIME Magazine and The Princeton Review: In the fall of 1996, the US-based newsweekly and educational services company joined forces to publish the first edition of "The Best College For You," a broad overview of college life for both parents and prospective college bound students. Finding the best match between a college and an individual student's interests, skills and personality is the unique overall theme of the consumer-friendly features in the guide. In August 1997, this partnership also published for the first time "The Best Graduate School for You" ($6.95, on sale through November 15, 1998).

The Princeton Review is the nation's fastest growing educational services company offering test preparation through courses and books. (The New York City based company is not affiliated with Princeton University.) It is also known for an extensive line of books published and distributed by Random House since 1986, including the annually updated The Best 311 Colleges, scheduled for publication in late August this year.

TIME magazine, launched in 1923, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Today, TIME is one of the world's best known and widely-read publications, distributed in more than 210 countries and territories around the globe.

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