Page 6
The Behrend Beacon
Students love the bottom line
in personal finance course
Joey Bayard, left, Brian Schoen and Erin Healy work on a project in a personal
finance course at Florida State University.
by Juana Jordan
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Tonya Jackson wants to do away
with old family habits mishandling
money and talking about it only when
there's a problem.
Brian Schoen wants to better under
stand his 401(k) and how to manage
money he plans to earn after college.
Erika Bedoya wants to be better
versed on financial terms. That way,
she'll know what her financial plan
ner is saying when talking about her
portfolio.
It's for those reasons that Jackson,
Schoen and Bedoya enrolled in a per
sonal-finance course at Florida State
University. Now, say the students,
they are on their way to becoming fi
nancially literate.
"It's given me more insight," said
Jackson, 21, a junior majoring in mer
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chandising. "I can now go back and
look at my (mutual fund) prospectus
and I know what it says." A prospec
tus gives detailed information about
a stock issue or mutual fund.
In the last 10 years, more and more
students have begun to show an inter
est in the class, which is taken as an
elective. The class roster used to have
only 30 to 40 names, said Professor
Elizabeth Goldsmith. Now it has more
than 100 students, and there is a wait
ing list to get in.
The class, say money experts, may
be representative of a trend showing
more young people becoming inter
ested in learning about money man
agement.
"They see the poor economy and
know the labor market is down," said
Goldsmith, who served on the Debtor
Education Task Force for the U.S. De
partment of Justice. "They are eager
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ered include understanding
employee benefits, including the
401(k) and health insurance. There is
even a topic on the cost of marriage,
as well as how to read the stock mar
ket and understand bonds and other
investments.
Two years ago, youth membership
in the National Association of Invest
ment Clubs peaked at 3,500 members,
before changes in the market led to
membership drop-off. Now, youth
membership is about 2,000. But Bob
O'Hare, vice president of development
for NAIC, believes the numbers could
be on the rise again as more people
gain confidence in the economy and
stock market.
"We got going with the youth com
ponent at the request of parents,"
O'Hare said. "If we can get them
started at the age of 18, it makes a
huge difference."
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Street
ices In Erie
to succeed. There is a lot of
interest in practical knowl-
edge."
That's exactly what Schoen,
23, says he has been gaining.
The senior merchandising ma
jor works as a department
manager at New Leaf Market
& Deli and already has a
401(k) to which he is contrib
uting.
"It teaches how important it
is to take care of yourself and
not rely on big government,"
said Schoen, referring to the
fear that Social Security might
not be around once he be
comes eligible for it.
"There are a lot of
big terms out there, and pro
fessor Goldsmith teaches us to
not be afraid of them. Every
topic we go over affects us."
Subjects the class has cov-
UC explains process
for consideration of
freshman applications
by Comte Sturrock
Knight Ridder Newspapers
UC Berkeley will begin separately re
viewing new freshman applications that re
ceive high overall scores during the admis
sions process but contain low SAT scores.
The change comes in the wake of UC
Regent John Moores' critical report last
month of Cal admissions, which found the
campus had admitted hundreds of freshmen
with low SAT scores and turned away sev
eral thousand with high scores.
Admissions officials took pains Wednes
day to describe the additional step as a mi
nor change in a complex, detailed process
of reviewing the nearly 37,000 applications
the campus receives each year.
Admissions officials and faculty involved
in the process spent much of the day ex
plaining their admissions procedure in hope
of giving the public a better understanding
of a process many view as increasingly
opaque and confusing.
"People keep looking for the number:
What is the number that's going to get me
into Berkeley?" said Richard Black, assis
tant vice chancellor for admissions and en
rollment. "That's not what it's about. It's
about looking at every student as an indi
vidual."
In 2001, the UC regents approved an ad
missions change for fall 2002 known as
"comprehensive review." Under it, all as
pects of an application are considered in
cluding any personal hardships a student
may have endured. Before, the system's
eight undergraduate campuses admitted 50
to 75 percent of their new students on grades
and test scores alone.
Applications already are pouring into
Berkeley to meet the Nov. 30 deadline. Last
year, the campus accepted just 24 percent
of the 36,445 received. It expects even more
applications this time around and plans to
increase the number of application readers
to 90, up from 78 last year.
Of the readers, roughly a third are staff
and the rest include paid retired faculty, high
school counselors and community college
instructors. Readers must undergo 30 hours
of training, which involves reading 60 ap
plications to get a sense of scoring norms
before they officially begin reviewing ap
plications in January.
Two people read each application and
score it on a scale of 1 to 5. If the scores
they choose differ by more than one point.
a third person reads and scores the applica
tion. Roughly 3 percent of applications un
dergo a third read.
Each reader is expected to review eight
applications an hour, averaging 7.5 minutes
each. Two years ago, readers did only six
an hour, but budget constraints and an in
creasing number of applicants have neces
sitated readers do more, said Pamela
Burnett. director of Cal's Office of Under
graduate Admissions.
A half-dozen admissions officials dem
onstrated the reading process using appli
cations from last year with the students'
names erased
They quickly assessed the front-page syn
opsis of factors like grades (only the sopho
more and junior year of high school count),
SAT scores, parents' income and average
income of the parents at the student's school.
In one example, the student had a 4.54
weighted GPA and a 1590 SAT I score out
of a possible 1600. His parents made
$300,000 annually. The student took seven
advanced placement courses his junior year
and scored high on the AP tests. He founded
a magic club. His fellow classmates also
were high-achieving. So he wasn't in the
very highest percentile at his high school
for grades, test scores and the number of
UC required courses taken but it didn't hurt
him.
He received a I the highest score pos
sible.