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[MUSIC PLAYING] KERRI MILLER: Coming up on the first hour of Midmorning, many colleges used to have the pick of the crop of students, but as the recession deepens, they're worried about bringing in enough students. We'll talk about what that means for colleges and universities, what it means for you if you're headed off to college. Midmorning begins in a moment. Stay with us.

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First news.

CARL KASELL: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Carl Kasell. Italian officials say at least 50 people have died and perhaps 50,000 more made homeless by an earthquake that struck central Italy early today. Officials say the death toll is likely to rise as rescue crews dig through the debris. NPR'S Sylvia Poggioli has a report from Rome.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI: TV pictures showed the medieval town of L'Aquila covered with rubble and debris shortly after the major tremor struck at 3:30 AM. The US Geological Survey said the magnitude of the quake was 6.3. The epicenter is about 60 miles East of Rome, a highly seismic area.

Parts of L'aquila's damaged hospital were evacuated, forcing the wounded to be treated outdoors. Rescue crews were working to find people trapped in damaged buildings, including a student dormitory, where half a dozen university students are believed to be still inside.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency, freeing up funds to deal with the disaster. He canceled a scheduled trip to Russia and planned to visit the earthquake site. The tremor was felt as far South as Naples, whose region was struck by a devastating quake in 1980 that claimed nearly 3,000 lives. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR news, Rome.

CARL KASELL: President Barack Obama is in Turkey, where today, he addressed the Turkish parliament. The president told the assembly that they may be facing different enemies, but the United States and Turkey share a common threat from terrorism.

The president said that while the US and Turkey are the targets of Al-Qaeda terrorists, Turkey has been dealing with the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The PKK fights for self-rule in part of Turkey, launching attacks from hideouts in Iraq. Mr. Obama promised US support against those attacks. The president also said that both the US and Turkey have an interest in making sure Al-Qaeda doesn't have a safe haven in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Authorities in Dubai have accused a Russian member of parliament of masterminding the killing of a former Chechen military commander. He was shot in the parking garage of his Dubai home last week in the latest of a string of such murders. NPR'S Gregory Feifer reports.

GREGORY FEIFER: The man shot last week was Sulim Yamadayev, former commander of an elite Chechen military unit and a fierce rival of Chechnya's Moscow installed leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Yamadayev moved to Dubai last year after his older brother was shot dead in Central Moscow. Kadyrov has denied any involvement in both killings.

On Sunday, the police in Dubai arrested two men in connection with Yamadayev's killing. They say four more suspects fled to Russia, including a close friend of Chechen President Kadyrov, who's a member of Russia's parliament. The authorities have accused Adam Delimkhanov of ordering Yamadayev's murder.

The Dubai police say they'll seek help from Interpol in extraditing Delimkhanov and the other suspects from Russia. Gregory Feifer, NPR news, Moscow.

CARL KASELL: On wall street, the Dow is down by 76, the NASDAQ down by 28. This is NPR News.

SPEAKER 1: Support for news comes from the Ford Foundation, a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide on the web at fordfound.org.

PERRY FENELEY: From Minnesota Public Radio news, I'm Perry Feneley. Students in Fargo-Moorhead returned to class today after flooding closed their schools for eight days. MPR's Tim Post reports.

TIM POST: School leaders say they're ready to get students back in class with their friends and teachers after a week and a half away. Jeff Reznecheck, principal of Centennial Elementary in Fargo, hopes students open up and talk about what they've been through.

JEFF: We need to allow kids an opportunity to talk, to visit, to share their experiences through these past eight days. What they experienced is historic, but that they're safe.

TIM POST: Fargo school officials expect North Dakota Governor John Hoeven to approve a waiver so their students aren't required to make up their eight days out of school. The Moorhead school board will be asked to do the same at a special meeting tonight.

Both school districts say their students and teachers will have to cram in a lot of work in the next two months to make up for the time away. Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio news, Moorhead.

PERRY FENELEY: Minnesota lawmakers are putting in a short week before facing some big spending decisions. The legislature has cleared its calendars starting Wednesday for Passover and Easter. Lawmakers return a week from Tuesday.

A group of journalists at the bankrupt star tribune is launching a campaign to build public support for ensuring the Minneapolis newspaper continues to publish. The group is launching a website, which is scheduled to go live today. Employees will also be out in force at tonight's Minnesota Twins home opener, where they will pass out petitions, newspaper hats, and t-shirts.

Organizers say the campaign is not about revisiting the events that led the newspaper to bankruptcy. They say it's to convince the community the paper is a vital resource and soliciting ideas and possible new ownership and business models that will ensure its continued existence.

High temperatures around the state today, low to mid-30s. Right now in the Twin cities, it's mostly sunny. Temperature is 30 degrees. This is Minnesota Public Radio news.

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KERRI MILLER: This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Kerri Miller. This hour, why colleges are opening their doors a little wider.

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Once upon a time, it could be a one-way street. College's cherry picked the students they wanted and sent out those precious long-awaited letters that begin, congratulations, you've been accepted to-- but the recession is flipping that equation on its head. Here's the admissions director at Caltech.

RICHARD BISCHOFF: These are the days I wake up in the middle of the night, and I think, oh no.

KERRI MILLER: That's right. That's Richard Bischoff, the director of admissions at a top private school, laying awake nights, worried that they won't get enough of the people they accepted to actually enroll. That's one of the ways this economic crisis is changing things on college campuses, and we're going to talk about that today.

How are colleges and universities, both public and private, working harder to get students in the door once they've been accepted? How is that changing the admissions process itself? What are schools doing to compensate for eroding endowments? And what does all of that mean for you if you're headed to college or if you're the parent of a son or daughter who is college-bound this year?

We've invited several guests. We're going to get their perspective in a moment, but I want to hear from our listeners, as well. If you've been through the college search and application process recently, tell us how you think the recession has affected your experience.

Are you aiming higher because schools are worried about enrollment? Are you losing out because some colleges are limiting financial aid? Are you paying more because some colleges are hiking tuition? So if you've been through this experience, you recently applied to college, you're the parent of a son or daughter who has been through this, we want to hear from you.

Aiming higher because schools are concerned about how many students are actually enrolling? Are you losing out because some colleges are limiting their financial aid? 8-0-0-2-4-2-2-8-2-8. If you're listening in the metro area, 6-5-1-2-2-7-6-0-0-0. If you're online this morning, minnesotapublicradio.org and click on Send a question.

To our guests this hour, Marty O'Connell is with us. She's executive director of colleges that change lives, and she joins us from the Washington area. Marty, good to have you back on the program.

MARTY O'CONNELL: Thanks. I'm happy to be with you this morning.

KERRI MILLER: Jacques Steinberg is with us, as well. He's the education reporter for the New York times. He's editor of The Times blog called The Choice, and he's author of The Gatekeepers, and he's with us this morning from New York. Hi, Jacques. Good to have you here.

JACQUES STEINBERG: Hi. Thanks for having me, Kerri.

KERRI MILLER: A little later in the hour, Bill McClintick is going to join us. He's president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and director of college counseling at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. Marty, I was pretty startled to hear that admissions director at Caltech in that NPR story saying he's worried about getting enough of the students that they accepted to enroll. What's going on?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, I think mainly, everyone is coming off of these boom years that have been happening for the last five years. And anyone who's been in the business a long time, I was in admissions for 30 years before I stepped away to do the Colleges that Change Lives work, know that you go through these cycles.

So I think what is happening is after such flush years and being able to be on the side of not worrying about those enrollments, then this year is a tough one, and people don't know how the yield numbers will come out. So trying to decide how many spaces to offer without coming up short or without offering too many spots and then being over-enrolled in residence halls and also having that financial piece work out is a tough question this year.

But I know that people have faced this before. I remember the late '80s and what a struggle it was then.

KERRI MILLER: Jacques, I'm curious about how recession-connected this is. Is this, in some ways, about students who really can't afford to do anything but take the best deal and the most financial aid so they're waiting? What else is contributing to this, do you think?

JACQUES STEINBERG: I mean, you've sort of got a double whammy here. You've got families who are getting pinched financially. Even schools that they might have been able to afford on their own six, eight months ago suddenly are a struggle.

And then you've got the colleges themselves with their declining endowments and the fact that they may not be able to offer the increase in financial aid to a family like this that they might have in the past.

KERRI MILLER: So you are seeing signs that the colleges are what? Are they actually limiting the financial aid because they're feeling the effects of the recession?

JACQUES STEINBERG: Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, I have a colleague named Kate Zernike who wrote a front page piece last week, in which she showed that some colleges that need blind that agreed to admit you, regardless of your ability to pay, promised to meet your financial need, as they define it, are becoming more need-aware.

They can tell from the application by what your parents do, this looks like somebody who might be able to pay full freight. And perhaps they look a little more kindly on you while still being able to commit themselves to being need-blind.

KERRI MILLER: Yeah, Marty, I was reading in an article somewhere that colleges are openly looking for wealthier students, students that are not going to walk in the door needing financial aid. I mean, is that an experience you've been hearing about?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Certainly, that speaks to what Jacques says about pushing away from this need-blind position so that if a family has the ability to pay-- and actually some families are being very bold and are saying to colleges, I do not need financial aid, can you tell me how that will affect my admission status?

And that is a tough dilemma, really, to be faced with when you're trying to be fair and admit students on the basis of their ability to succeed and be fair in your whole applicant pool when your enrollment, when your endowments have declined and plunged in many cases.

KERRI MILLER: So, Marty, tell me how the conversation goes since you've had this experience with admissions inside an admissions office when you have a situation like, where the more wealthier students who don't need the financial aid are going to boost the bottom line.

MARTY O'CONNELL: I think that's still for the colleges that are need-blind and someone poses that question to them, their answer is, you will still go through the admissions process, and we won't be taking that into consideration. And for those, this year, that are turning away from that, then it's a tougher situation.

You don't want to be admitting someone who doesn't meet the standards that everyone else meets. But all things being equal and having one spot left and having two students and one can pay and the other can't, and they're equal academically, that's where you're going to see that nod go in the direction of those that have the ability to pay. So it does change the landscape slightly.

Now, what everybody has to remember is that there are 2,000 four-year colleges in this country and over 4,000 when we pull the two-year schools in. So it's a very big landscape of what is out there and how people are treating this. And there are some colleges who absolutely are staying with need-blind and who are looking at helping families and, in fact, increasing their financial aid packages in order to help families be able to attend.

KERRI MILLER: You know, Jacques--

JACQUES STEINBERG: And I think-- Kerri, I think that's important for your listeners to know, particularly parents who have students who are applying this year, that you have to be positive. You have to be aggressive. You have to go into these places and say, listen, this offer you've given me, we are seriously interested in coming, but it's just not there, and you have to do better.

KERRI MILLER: You're saying you push back on the colleges sometimes, huh?

JACQUES STEINBERG: I do not see the harm in pushing back and in-- first of all, to pick the top of the scale, I mean, Harvard university, their financial aid office is going to be open extra hours, 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM every day in April, just to hear these stories.

Bill Fitzsimmons, the Dean of admissions and financial aid, Harvard, told our website at The Times the choice that he would certainly listen and that he wasn't making any commitments beyond listening, but that if a family had a story to tell, Harvard wanted to hear it. And clearly, they're not alone.

And another secret of this process is that if these colleges want you, if the offer that you got from one school is better than the offer you got from another, there's no reason you can't take that letter into the school with the lower offer and say, can you match this? If these were equal or if you were a little higher, my son or daughter might be interested in coming here.

And they've-- one last thing. I want to make the point that the colleges have told us that they're trying to cut everything but financial aid. They're letting adjunct professors go. They're putting administrators on furloughs. Financial aid is the last thing they want to cut. And as Marty said, in many instances, including the ivies, they've increased their financial aid budgets this year.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, I really like the idea of what Jacques is talking about here, of bargaining with the colleges, of saying, look, we have a lot of choices in this day and age. Maybe you need us more than we need you this time around.

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, I would add a cautionary note to that because I think always, for the large majority of colleges in the country, they've always stayed open till late and helped with financial aid. So maybe there are some of the highly visible institutions. I don't call them highly selective. It's just the ones that everyone knows about.

KERRI MILLER: Right.

MARTY O'CONNELL: I think that it's important to know that for decades, other schools have always kept their doors open to help families and counsel them through the financial aid process. So suddenly, these other colleges are in a position of having to do this.

But I would not call it bargaining. I think what families need to do is be respectful and say, I don't understand this. How can I get this letter from this college and this one from another one? Can you help me understand this? That puts them in a position where they're having a conversation rather than a confrontation with the financial aid office.

KERRI MILLER: I want to note one thing that both of you have talked about, Jacques on his blog, and Marty, when you've been with us before, and that's this idea that there are a lot of colleges out there, more than 2,000. But the ones that always seem to get the attention are like the 50, the Ivies, or the top schools that we hear about.

And Marty, I think the last time you were with us, you were seeing parents and students themselves really have to think differently about what it is that they're going to the school for.

MARTY O'CONNELL: Right. I wish people would start with talking about what it is they're going to do when they get to college, instead of all of this angst and anxiety over the beginning part of the process, the application and the acceptance part of the process, because I am convinced that there would be less angst and that we would shift towards how they can do their best work once they get somewhere.

I'm still traveling the country trying to calm people down about the process of choice, but also about the financial aid part of it because I truly believe that there is a place s everyone, and an affordable place, if people are willing to spread out a little bit and really think about the variety of colleges and the aid that's available out there.

KERRI MILLER: Jacques talk to me about that before we have to let you go.

JACQUES STEINBERG: As a news organization, we couldn't avoid last week that all the Ivies pretty much had all-time low admission rates, the recession be damned. Kids were still applying to these schools. And we reported these figures, 7% admission rate at Harvard, 12% at Dartmouth.

And then I thought, we have to do a counter to this. So with Marty's help, I called a half dozen of the Colleges that Change Lives, Austin College in Sherman, Texas, Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, College of Wooster in Ohio. And these are schools that, for the most part, take more than half of the kids who apply.

They accept far more kids than they reject. And I think it's so important for families to know there is another way. We, as a society, focus on these four dozen or so highly selective private colleges. And as Marty says so eloquently, there's 2,000 four-year colleges out there. Why do we all have to go to the same place?

KERRI MILLER: Jacques, a pleasure to have you here. I hope you'll come back when you spend a little more time with us.

JACQUES STEINBERG: Thanks.

KERRI MILLER: All right. Jacques Steinberg with us this morning. He's the education reporter for the New York Times, editor of The Times blog called The Choice, and he's author of The Gatekeepers.

Marty O'Connell continues with us. She's executive director of Colleges that Change Lives. And we're talking, this morning-- we're talking actually about a lot of news that has come out over the last couple of weeks about what's going on college campuses, with admissions, with the recession, with their endowments and how that may be affecting the way your son or daughter is applying for college or you're applying for college.

And I'm asking you, our listeners here, to weigh in on this. If you've been through the college search and application process recently, I'd like to know how the recession is affecting your own experience, your son or daughter's experience. Are you aiming higher? Have you listened to a bit of this conversation and thought, well, maybe my son or daughter doesn't need financial aid, so maybe we go back to some of these schools we really want to get into, and we push this a little bit.

Just tell us how you think this is changing your own experience. 8-0-0-2-4-2-2-8-2-8, 6-5-1-2-2-7-6-0-0-0. If you're online this morning, weigh in that way, as well, minnesotapublicradio.org. Click on Send a question. To [? Kris ?] in Arden Hills. Hi, Kris.

SPEAKER 2: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

KERRI MILLER: Sure. What's your own experience with this?

SPEAKER 2: Well, our son has really been very aggressive at taking all his AP courses, and he's got a great ACT score. And he wants to go to Madison, but we get such a disparity in the offer we got from the U of M, which their total package is $22,000 over the course of his stay and just a loan of $5,500 from Madison.

And I just think-- I was so shocked. I thought with a great ACT score, he's got a 34, I thought Madison would give him something. And we called the aid office.

KERRI MILLER: This actually sounds-- well, what happened when you called?

SPEAKER 2: My husband called and said, we've received this email. Is there anything else coming down the pipeline? They said, no, we'll loan you $5,500.

KERRI MILLER: Marty-- what do they do, Marty?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, I think this is where the family discussion comes in because certainly, these are both places where a child can get a wonderful education. And it does come down to the fit for the young person and deciding between one or the other sounds like he likes both places.

And for the family, then, it is a matter of, could it really be worth this much more money and this much debt for this education? And I think that's what's changing as we hit these tough economic times. And families are saying, OK, let me really decide, what is the value in this?

Will I be able to pay this back? Should my child take on this kind of debt? And some are still saying yes and others are saying no, I think I'm going to stay with my state institution.

Now, where it's tougher is when there's not so much of a disparity in the offers, where there is a few thousand dollars and families are then trying to decide that way. Sometimes, when it's so drastic, like the one that has just been described, it becomes, in some ways, a choice that is easier for the family to make if they really are looking at the economic side of it.

KERRI MILLER: Do you have advice-- when the college says, we'll loan you $5,500, do you have advice about whether that's really the best option, or should you go elsewhere to look for financial loans for college?

MARTY O'CONNELL: I think that families really do need to be very careful about where they get their loans from. There's a wonderful website, finaid, finaid.org, and we have others listed on ctcl.org as far as financial resources. But I think that they need to start with the financial aid officers at the institutions because they really are very helpful and will get them through the process. But investigate all options for loans before making that decision.

And certainly, in the last month, there's been more written about financial aid and the loan part of the process than in the history of higher education.

KERRI MILLER: To Pauline in Roseville. Hi, Pauline, your question.

PAULINE: Hi. I teach at a community college, and I'm curious about whether the admissions offices pay attention to whether someone's parents and a child are trying to get admitted to the same school because the parents are having to retrain because they have to change careers.

MARTY O'CONNELL: That's part of the financial aid process. So if they're filling out a FAFSA form, then it takes into account everyone in the family who's going to be enrolled in higher education. So that certainly does play into it.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, I'd like to ask you, when students are assessing this idea of the bang for the buck of, again, looking at loans, looking at the financial aid packages or just overall what it's going to cost you to go to the college of your choice. Tell me how you specifically assess whether you think you're going to get your money's worth out of it.

MARTY O'CONNELL: I advise families to go to the National Survey of Student Engagement, NSSE website, N-S-S-E, because the questions that NSSE says everyone should be asking in order to determine what kind of an education they will get, what will the experience be, are really excellent questions to talk about the value of that education over a person's lifetime and not just in four years.

And that's really the long view that people should take. This is the basis, this undergraduate education, for the work that they will do throughout their life. And so being able to make sure that you're going to have an education that helps you to learn how to be a critical and a creative thinker, which will help in times of change when you have to look for a new job or apply to a new graduate or professional school, being able to speak well, being able to learn how to write well across disciplines and learning how to adapt.

I mean, this is really what a good undergraduate education should do. And so they are great questions to ask to be sure and not assume that that will happen. And that's what worries me about this name brand obsession that we have in this country. Lots of students I see assuming because they know the name of the school, that they will have that ability to have that an educational experience.

And sometimes, that's not the case, in spite of the name. And they need to ask the questions to make sure that will happen and that the fit is a good one for them.

KERRI MILLER: Do you find that most students-- or maybe I should ask it this way, do you find that many colleges, because of what's happening with endowments and what's happening with the recession, are hiking tuition again? Should students, who are maybe a couple years out from college and their parents, be expecting to pay more as they get closer to college?

MARTY O'CONNELL: I think what happened this year is there was actually many colleges who tried to hold the line and have small increases, given that they were getting ready to set the tuition prices just when the worst of the economic news was happening. And so I think that we're going to have to see what happens in the next cycle economically, see how the colleges were able to pull back and figure out what to do with some of the endowment losses that they had.

It is always good advice for any family starting this process, and especially the seniors who are about to-- or seniors in high school who are about to enroll to say, what have your increases been over the last four years? What percent increases have you seen? What are you thinking that your increases will be.

And no one is going to be able to tell them that unequivocally, but certainly, they should have that historical picture so that they won't be surprised.

KERRI MILLER: Here's Tim online in Minneapolis asks, my daughter was waitlisted at [? For ?] College. Is this a scam? Why do they waitlist hundreds when they will take almost nobody from the waitlist? First, is that right, that they often do not go back to their waitlist and accept these students?

MARTY O'CONNELL: There are some schools that don't go back to their waitlist. And the first thing that any family should be asking when they're on a waitlist is, how many people were admitted from the waitlist the year before? So that they know their odds to begin with.

And then this year, it may be very different because no one knows for sure when it comes to the 1st of May when deposits have to be paid and those students are choosing from all of their admissions offers. They can only go to one college. They may be admitted to five.

So May the 1st, they've got to choose that one. This is what is causing such a quandary this year because the admissions officers are just uncertain as to what will happen with families and if their money situations change even between now and the 1st of May. That suddenly, someone who thought they were going to be able to commit may not be able to.

So they're getting deeper waiting lists to be sure that they will have something to go back to should they not meet their enrollment goal in the 1st of May. Now, anyone on a waiting list and really still interested in the college should be contacting that institution, letting them know they indeed are interested, asking what else they can provide if there was something lacking in the application, updated midterm grades or another quarter of grades.

And that way, they are showing that they are interested, and if that waitlist does start to move, they will have a chance to be contacted by the college or university.

KERRI MILLER: Do they tell you what number you are on the waitlist or do they--

MARTY O'CONNELL: No, that doesn't happen. It's very rare that that happens. And generally, then, all that you can find out is what the movement has been in the past as far as the waitlist is concerned.

KERRI MILLER: And tell me this, do the colleges stack this waitlist with, number one is the person that they'd really like to have, they just don't have the room, and number 350 is the person's probably never going to get in?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, mainly, I think, certainly, it academically is how a waitlist is formed, but anyone on the waitlist should be able to be admissible. In other words, they should meet the standards. And for many of these schools, clearly, they have applicant pools where, as a Swarthmore professor has suggested, they could throw the applications up the steps and take the ones that landed on the first 10, and they would still have a great class.

And so, that waitlist is still packed with very, very capable students. So now, what families need to be cautioned about is that when they do move to that waitlist, the chance for financial aid is going to be slim to none. And so they have to be very careful if they're sitting on a waitlist about what that means as far as being admitted and then there being money available.

KERRI MILLER: Wait a minute, I want to be clear about what you just said. So if you're on the waitlist, you're probably not eligible for financial aid? Why not?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Often, the financial aid is going to be exhausted if they're going to the waitlist in the summertime, which often happens. This does sometimes happen right around the 1st of May. Often, waitlists, as the summer melt happens, somebody may get a call about being removed from the waitlist in the middle of June.

But at that point, the financial aid may not be available. There might be loans, but there may not be any grant aid available to them.

KERRI MILLER: If you're listening in this morning, we're talking about how the recession is affecting the college admissions process, how it's affecting the way colleges are running themselves, and what it means for you if you're in the process of the admissions process. If you've been looking at schools, maybe you've got a year or so to go, you're the parent of a son or daughter who is soon headed to college, we'd like to hear about your experience, how this has changed, maybe your college selection process, maybe your application process.

How is it changing the recession, and what's going on with colleges the way you're thinking about where to apply and which colleges to put at the top of your list? 8-0-0-2-4-2-2-8-2-8, 6-5-1-2-2-7-6-0-0-0. If you're online this morning, minnesotapublicradio.org. Click on Send a question. To John in Minneapolis. Hi, John.

JOHN: Hi. I'm just wondering if there's a difference in how grad schools are operating.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, what do you know about that?

MARTY O'CONNELL: I think what we hear is that in tough economic times, often, people will return to school. So I don't think-- at this point, I haven't seen the statistics be released about graduate applications. I think they are up in some cases, and I think-- and in others, students are thinking, maybe I don't have the money to go.

So I think there's not a direct answer across the board. It just depends on what area, whether or not these applications are up.

KERRI MILLER: And we're going to take a break for news. When we come back, continue our conversation, bring Bill McClintick in. He's the president of the National Association for college admission counseling. Be curious to hear about his ideas about some of the things that we've been talking about this morning.

On the other side of news, more of your calls and questions, as well, 8-0-0-2-4-2-2-8-2-8, 6-5-1-2-2-7-6-0-0-0. To the newsroom and Perry Feneley. Good morning, Perry.

PERRY FENELEY: Good morning, Kerri. Officials say more than 70 people are dead, 1,500 injured after a powerful earthquake struck in Central Italy. The early morning shaking was centered Northeast of Rome, near a medieval city. Officials say the death toll will likely rise as rescuers dig through the rubble of fallen buildings.

President Barack Obama is working to strengthen US relations with Muslim nations during his trip to predominantly Muslim Turkey. Obama called the country an important ally in many areas, including the fight against terrorism. He says US partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back extremism.

More than 30 people are dead and nearly 100 others hurt after a series of bombings in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Police say the single deadliest attack was a double car bombing in a market that killed 12 people and wounded 29 more.

Stocks are lower at the start of a new trading week as investors cautiously await the start of first-quarter earnings reports. Signs of trouble in talks between IBM and Sun Microsystems are also weighing on the market.

The receptionist badly hurt during the deadly rampage at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York, is said to be anxious and fearful in the aftermath of the ordeal, in which 13 died. Shirley DeLucia feigned death after being shot, then called police and stayed on the line.

A lawyer says the parents of an American journalist jailed in Iran have met with their daughter in prison. The Fargo couple met with Roxana Saberi for a half hour. The lawyer says Saberi is in good health.

A Sauk Rapids teenager is celebrating her life one year after she was severely burned in a fire pit accident. Taylor Strand gathered with friends and family yesterday on the anniversary of the accident. The 14-year-old is now looking ahead the next year of her recovery.

Mostly sunny skies, becoming partly cloudy in Eastern Minnesota today, windy with high temperatures in the low to mid-30s. Right now in the Twin Cities, the temperature is 31. Skies are mostly sunny. It's 9:31. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

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KERRI MILLER: We're back on Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Kerri Miller. Coming up at 10 o'clock, author TC Boyle is going to be with us. He's out with a new book about architect Frank Lloyd Wright, a novel called The Women.

Interesting story, TC Boyle actually lives in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Bought it in the early '90s. Never had a lot of interest in the architect until something sparked a little seed, I guess, to go out and read up on Frank Lloyd Wright, not just the contributions that he's made to architecture, but also the chaos of his personal life.

And that is what set TC Boyle on the path of writing this novel. So he'll talk to us at 10 o'clock.

Tomorrow, at 10:00, singer-songwriter Judy Collins in the studio with us. Should be a great show. We'll listen to a lot of music. We'll talk about the arc of her career. She has some wonderful things to say about the counseling that she now does and the conversations that she has with parents who have experienced a child suicide. Should be a terrific conversation. Judy Collins in the studio with us tomorrow at 10:00.

Back to our discussion this hour as we talk about colleges, the admissions process, what's happening with recession, enrollment. And Bill McClintick is joining us now, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and director of college counseling at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania.

Bill, good to have you on the show. And I know you've been listening in to some of this. Some early thoughts on what you've heard.

BILL MCCLINTICK: Thanks, Kerri. I'm happy to be on with you. It's interesting, and I think Marty and Jacques have done a great job in terms of addressing a lot of the questions. I do think people have to understand that there are so many layers to this story that it really is hard to generalize.

And as you look at the world of college admissions, what private colleges are going through is very different from what many of the state universities are going through right now because certainly, many of the state schools are seeing, again, huge increases in applications because people are being driven to them by price tag.

But I think about one of the first calls you took from the woman who was lamenting the difference in her aid offers between Minnesota and, I'm assuming, Wisconsin, Madison. And what people have to understand that, for example, as a Minnesota resident, she's going to be treated very differently at U of M than she would be at Madison.

KERRI MILLER: Why?

BILL MCCLINTICK: Because Minnesota's primary responsibility is to serve the students of Minnesota, and the same holds true for Madison. So in terms of allocating resources, Wisconsin residents don't want their tax dollars going to Minnesota residents, and vice versa.

So it's important for folks to realize that when it comes to funding students at the state universities, their first priority is to serve their in-state students. And then whatever the out-of-staters get is leftovers, and there's not a lot of leftovers in this current market.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, how do you think that ought to factor into calculations here as you're thinking about where to go to school, parents thinking about which school would be best for their kids?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, I'll tell you, I just finished doing a presentation in Virginia just a couple of weeks ago. And the families there are so stressed out and filled with angst because of how difficult it is to get into the University of Virginia, their home institution.

And families that banked on that as their children were growing up, and then they have kids who are very, very academically able, but they're still not able to get in because of the competitiveness with this bulge that we're in. First of all, we're just coming down off the largest number of high school graduates and the largest percent college-bound.

So couple that with the fact that people are looking to state institutions because of the economic times. It is really difficult. So there are families who planned on being able to attend their state institutions, and they can't. And then what they hear, not true, but they do hear this, is that families from out of state are getting admitted because they're bringing in more dollars since they're paying twice as much to go to an out-of-state institution.

So sometimes, they feel like that shouldn't happen at all. They shouldn't let anybody in from another state.

KERRI MILLER: But you're saying that's not true.

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, there's caps in most states on who they can take from out of state. And so that is certainly something they could take up with their state legislators if they wanted to find out what these-- how many people are, in fact, attending from out of state.

But it is a difficult situation, and it's difficult for the public institutions. And I started my career working at a state university, so I know what that is like. When the budget gets cut at the state level for higher education, and you still have to move forward and enroll a class and with limited dollars, it is very difficult.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, is it true that you yourself have gotten calls from admissions people wanting to know if the student at your academy is really going to come to the school that has accepted him or her.

BILL MCCLINTICK: Yes, it is true. Now, you don't see that coming from the state universities, but many of the private colleges will look at what we call in the business, level of interest, when making decisions, particularly in borderline cases. They want to know that a student is high on their institution because they're trying to be very protective of those offers of admission so that they aren't wasting an offer, on someone who has no intention of coming.

KERRI MILLER: What do you tell the student if the student has not really made up their mind? And let's face it, maybe it's-- maybe they have a lot of options. They don't want to make up their mind yet. What do you tell the student to say?

BILL MCCLINTICK: Well, what we tell the kids is always to be honest first. I think we all still know that we are dealing with teenagers. And what they tell us one month may be completely different than next in terms of their responses.

But we do say that it's important to know that this is a variable. And if you say, I'm really not sure what I'm going to do, that's just fine. But then that may increase the likelihood that they end up on that dreaded waiting list and are kind of twisting in the wind waiting to hear. Whereas if they had been able to make a little stronger statement, they may have been sitting on an acceptance.

KERRI MILLER: Let me take some calls here from Sandra in Minneapolis. Hi, Sandra. Thanks for waiting.

SANDRA: Thank you. Good morning.

KERRI MILLER: Good morning.

SANDRA: I actually work at a private college, and I work in the financial aid department. And I have so many thoughts swirling around right now, but I'm really enjoying the conversation, and I completely agree that there is a lot of hesitation on high school students coming into college.

However, I think, at least at the private college level, we're not having a problem getting students to come in and enroll. We're having a problem getting students funded. So what our school has actually decided to do is they implemented a program where the loan was through the school itself. It was through our parent company.

And I can see default rates going up in a number of years because of this. However, there are things that I think private colleges are trying to do to let students come to school because the problem isn't getting them into school. The problem is getting them funded right now.

KERRI MILLER: Sandra, I want to ask you one thing about this situation that we talked about at the beginning of the show, which is that I had read that colleges are turning more to wealthy students who may be able to come in the door and say, I don't need your financial aid. Does that give me an edge? What about at your school? Are you seeing that?

SANDRA: Absolutely not. Actually, at the school that I work at, we get a lot of students that will come in, and I see a lot of their taxes, and they're making under $20,000 a year.

The loan program that the school has implemented actually is for students that are not able to get a loan through lenders such as Sallie Mae or Wells Fargo, Bank of America. It is for students that are not able to get loans through those programs. So a majority of the students that we get are not wealthy, and they're not paying cash.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, some thoughts on what Sandra has said?

BILL MCCLINTICK: Well, again, I think this shows she's probably got a student body that looks very different socioeconomically than what you might see from someone who would be applying to maybe a Saint Olaf or Carleton. And this is where the institutional resources come into play, as well, because while some of the places on the higher end that probably still have strong endowments may be able to put together a competitive, strong aid package, still, the problem is, as Sandra was discussing, many institutions don't have those dollars.

And so they are trying to help kids through the loan program. But I think Sandra is right in that one of the big concerns is students may be stretching too far in terms of the debt and be walking out of school with unreasonable debt levels after two or four years. And those are the families, I think, that I worry about the most because sometimes, those are our least sophisticated families who don't really realize what kind of a burden they're placing on themselves.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, how closely tied is what a college can do in its financial aid department to what's happening with their endowments?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, I think there are many colleges that took a hit but still have very solid endowments, and they're able to still help students with merit and need-based financial aid. Someone mentioned Saint Olaf, and the fact is, even though it's a private institution that has a comprehensive tuition, room and board package that is close to $40,000, they still give 82% of their students need-based or merit aid, and last year's average was close to $24,000.

So people should be very careful about assuming that an expensive institution may not be able to help them, and with these endowment cuts, that maybe they won't be able to help. Many of the colleges have now reached out, and they have gone to their alumni to say, this is what we need money for immediately to help us because of the fall in endowment and help us with financial aid.

And some have been successful in having their alums step up to the plate and give just for the purpose of helping financial aid packaging this year.

KERRI MILLER: To the phones, to Suzanne in Saint Paul. Hi, Suzanne.

SUZANNE: Hi. Our son is in that same situation. He was accepted at RIT in New York for a Minnesota resident and have reciprocity at Stout, which he was also accepted at with no aid. He did get an $18,000 grant and then loans to cover $30,000 of $38,000 yearly tuition.

What our concern is this is a stretch for us to send him there. He's out of state if he gets in. Is this a first year woo to get you in the door, and then as second, and third year, fourth year happens, you don't see the grant?

KERRI MILLER: Marty, what would you say about that?

MARTY O'CONNELL: That's a question that you need to ask up front because every institution does it differently. So first of all, every year you reapply for aid. And so if your family situation changes, then the financial aid package will change.

But you still need to ask about how that package is composed. And through the years, will the percentage of grant be lowered? Will it stay the same? Based on tuition going up, what will happen with that financial aid package? And they're very basic questions, and those are ones that should be posed so that before you pay the deposit, you're aware of what the future might bring.

KERRI MILLER: So don't be afraid to ask all of these specifics about the financing on the way in. It's not going to hurt your child's chances or anything like that?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Absolutely not. And my son is also in financial aid, and I know what a good job he does counseling and how hard it is to have to listen to families who are in tough financial times. He has people in his office in tears every day.

And he takes his job, as do all financial aid professionals, very seriously. They want to help people. They want to try to help them figure it out. And obviously, they want to be able to help the students who they've offered admission to be able to attend their institutions.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, I wanted to ask you, I was reading that colleges, as they try to persuade students to actually enroll after they've been accepted, are doing everything from making personal phone calls to the students to flying them in on the college dime to visit the campus. There's a school here in Minnesota, the College of Saint Benedict, that's doing that.

Here's the question, I guess if a student is wooed like that to get in the door, is there also, then, an expectation that that's the kind of attention you get once you're enrolled, and is that's, in some ways, a false expectation?

BILL MCCLINTICK: Boy, that's a great question. There's no doubt that right now, going back to the initial quote that you gave us from the Dean at Caltech, I think the admissions folks are very nervous, and they're being very creative in terms of trying to put their best foot forward over the course of the month of April because kids have up until May 1 to make a decision.

So there are all sorts of open-house programs, receptions. Kids are going to be getting phone calls from alumni, telling them how wonderful their alma mater is. It'll be a full out blitz for the accepted kids from many places over the course of the next few weeks.

That being said, I think the undergraduate experience, again, is going to vary dramatically. I think it's safe to say for a student who goes to U of M, they're not going to be getting that kind of personal attention, but they probably aren't getting that on the front end either.

At a smaller place like a Saint Benedict's, you would like to think that they probably would, that that's one of their selling points, is that you can come here and get the personal attention, and you won't be a number. And you will have access to your faculty and the relationship is important to us as an institution.

So I do think that is one of the things that is sometimes directly related to the price tag is that there is a level of service at many of these smaller places and personal interaction that other larger places just can't do with their undergraduates.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, tell me the questions that you ask as perhaps a student with a number of options been accepted at a number of colleges as relates exactly to that point. How much attention can I expect not just coming in, but once I'm there?

MARTY O'CONNELL: I think the questions that they need to ask about the academic environment would be a fit question to make sure that the way they learn, the type of student learner they are, that they're going to fit with the academic community.

They can ask about what type of thinking exams and assignments require, and how often do students work together on projects, how often they will actually get to know a faculty member. Are they being taught by an adjunct professor who won't be part of the institution on a daily basis?

Or as a first-year student, will you have a chance to be taught by full time people who you will have a chance to also interact and get feedback on your assignments? So from an academic perspective, those certainly are the questions.

And then there are others about the extracurricular activities because we know that students do things outside of the classroom. So they need to be asking if they can get involved from the start. And if not, when can they do the things that they have in their mind will be important to them?

KERRI MILLER: Marty O'Connell is one of our guests this morning. She's executive director of Colleges that Change Lives. Bill McClintick with us, as well, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. To the phones, to Alex in Saint Francis. Hi, Alex. Thanks for waiting.

ALEX: Hi. Thanks.

KERRI MILLER: Question.

ALEX: In our family's situation, we are thinking about sending my son to a community college for his first two years and then transferring him to a university. I'm wondering about that idea. The main reason-- the two reasons is one, for financial reasons. The other being he will be taking a lot of the college-level classes, which don't always transfer to some of the universities.

I guess my question is, how are admissions looking when you want to transfer into a college not as an incoming freshman, but as a sophomore or junior already with your two-year degree? And is that a good idea, especially for a kid-- my son, in particular, is going to be a very high GPA kid.

He's not going to the community college because he's a poor student and needs to have that transition. It's merely a kind of financial reason. What are the thoughts about that and admissions later in the four-year degree?

KERRI MILLER: We'll ask both of our guests. Marty, why don't you tackle it first?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Transfer students are wonderful because they take the guesswork out of the process for an admissions officer because a student already can perform at a college level and be able to give evidence of that. Now, having said that, also, the main thing to keep in mind about community college attendance is the student fit with that.

Community colleges are wonderful places, and there are honors programs for students like the son that's just been described that is very bright so that they can be in an honors track and do their best work. And colleges know this and are aware of it.

Even so, the family needs to look ahead to find out how many transfer students are admitted every year and what are the requirements and whether there are specific grade point average requirements for certain programs. Instead of making any assumptions about the process, they certainly need to look.

There are some institutions that take a large number of transfers every year, both in September and at mid-year, and some of the highly visible colleges may only take a handful of transfer students every year. So doing the homework in advance is certainly the way to go.

But no one should think that a community college education is a lesser education than a four-year institution. I often share with families. I started my own higher education background at community college and had some of the most difficult professors throughout my graduate program because they were wonderful faculty members who cared deeply about teaching, and really, were just terrific people.

And so I always encourage students to consider community college, but to be thoughtful about the fit for them and not to feel like they are then feeling sorry for themselves because they're at a lesser institution. That simply isn't the case. They can do great work, and they can save a lot of money.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, advice for Alex on this.

BILL MCCLINTICK: Well, I think Alex is thinking about a path that a lot of other families are considering right now. And I want to echo what Marty said. I would add that one of the things to ask the community college on the front end is, what schools, what four-year schools do they have articulation agreements with?

And articulation agreements are usually a working relationship, which ensures that the credit hours from the community college will be accepted by that four-year college or university. So this is one of the concerns for students who go into the community college level is, will they be taking classes that are going to carry to the next institution? And they do have to pick carefully.

So it will be important for Alex and her son to sit down with the admissions folks at the community college, see who they have working relationships with, make sure that he's taking the appropriate classes. And in many cases, with the community colleges, they will quite often have, as I said, these articulation agreements, where if you hit a certain grade point average in a predetermined academic track, that you're guaranteed admission and that that four-year university will accept those credits.

KERRI MILLER: Here's an interesting note from Charlie in Minnetonka. He says, I believe students should look outside the United States. One can get a much better deal. American's enrollment is way up in the UK and Canada. Well, Marty, we haven't talked about that.

MARTY O'CONNELL: We hear that every year. And certainly, students have always been students who have been willing to look outside. And certainly, Canada is close and where a lot of students end up. But I think this year, there are families who are being creative about that.

I just heard recently from a family member of my own that ended up getting Italian citizenship. She went back and looked and found out-- and knew her grandmother was from Italy, got Italian citizenship, and is going to be studying in Italy as a resident. So it's interesting what people start to do as they face some of these daunting costs. And certainly, study abroad is one way to do it.

Now, it takes a special kind of student to be ready to do that. And so mainly, I think it adds another layer and level of investigation that has to happen and work with someone like Bill at their high school who can make sure that they are counseling them that it is an appropriate choice.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, online here from Sarah in Minneapolis says, I received many grants from my private college, nothing from the University of Minnesota. Families should know that some private schools have more money to give. Is that true?

BILL MCCLINTICK: Absolutely. Yeah. And there are many cases where working here in Pennsylvania, it has been cheaper for my kids to go to private institutions than their state flagship university, Penn State because Penn State simply does not have the resources to support kids beyond a certain level. Whereas private colleges, in many cases, can meet, as Jacques was saying earlier, the full need of a student.

So I think one of the mistakes that a lot of families make is they look at the price tag, and they don't realize that the price tag is not the bottom line. And it's really the bottom line that matters and not-- you have to get them past that sticker shock.

KERRI MILLER: Well, yeah. I was just going to say. So you're online. You're looking around at some of the different colleges your son or daughter wants to go to and then you see the $45,000 price tag for the year.

BILL MCCLINTICK: Right.

KERRI MILLER: Yeah. You're going to be set back.

BILL MCCLINTICK: And a lot of people just stop right there. But the issue isn't that every college is going to expect you to pay that $45,000. If you're paying-- if your family contribution-- if you sit down and do some of the financial aid calculators at the website Marty had mentioned, finaid.org, and your family contributions are only going to be $10,000, according to the financial aid formulas, in many cases, you can get a better deal at those more expensive privates than you can from the state universities who have such limited resources.

KERRI MILLER: Marty, tell me about some of the most common mistakes that the students themselves and their parents make when they're in the heat of the moment of the college search and application process. What do they do that they shouldn't?

MARTY O'CONNELL: Well, let me just take you back and finish up with what Bill was saying. I think with cost, they do not take total cost into account. And often, families are looking at tuition costs only, and they don't look at how variable the room and board costs are because that can be a huge difference.

And you'll find a student who will say, well, I don't want to live in that residence hall. I want to live in this one, and it can mean several thousand dollars of difference at each institution. So they need to be sure they're pulling in total cost, and that includes the cost of books, which can be very expensive.

The colleges will give you a total budget, so you need to be sure and ask for that instead of just going online and comparing tuition costs. And that is a huge mistake that families make because they're not comparing apples and oranges when they do that.

I think the other piece that families get hung up on in the middle of the process is this idea of the name brand. I know it, so it has to be good. And I'm worried because I've been admitted to this other college, and I just don't know enough about it. And I'm worried that if I go there, I won't have as many choices when I graduate as if I go to a name brand college or university.

That's a huge mistake. And what families need to realize is what those students do while they're enrolled at the institution that is going to make the difference in what happens next. And they can find out great outcomes data for every institution and see what their options will be once they graduate.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, what do you tell students precisely about what Marty has just said about the not getting so caught up in the idea that it's a name that everybody recognizes?

BILL MCCLINTICK: Well, and this is-- I agree with Marty completely. I think this is the biggest challenge in the profession. I think that we're dealing with a generation-- I like to refer to it, at least my teenage boys, as the ESPN generation.

They think that if they've seen the school on ESPN, it must be pretty good academically, and that's about the depth of their thinking. But the reality is that, yeah, you have to look at the total experience. You have to look at, for example, the term we'll use a lot, do you want to be a participant or a spectator during your college years?

KERRI MILLER: Yeah.

BILL MCCLINTICK: I think that's a good way to look at it. And some kids would prefer to be the spectator. And their idea of a great college experience is sitting with 100,000 of their best friends on Saturday afternoon six times a year, whereas other kids want to be out there on the field. They want to be on the stage. They want to be in the band.

And so they need to look for that fit piece. And that's the thing that we strive for as we counsel kids is, it is so much about the fit because if a student's not happy, they will not perform well academically, and they won't have the fulfilling experience that they really should be getting out of their college years.

KERRI MILLER: Bill, I hope you'll come back and join us. It's been a real pleasure to have you on the show.

BILL MCCLINTICK: Thank you, Kerri. My pleasure.

KERRI MILLER: And Marty, you're always welcome. Thank you so much. It's good to talk with you again.

MARTY O'CONNELL: It's great to be with you again. Take care.

KERRI MILLER: Marty O'Connell, executive director of Colleges that Change Lives, and Bill McClintick, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. We also talked with Jacques Steinberg, is an education reporter for the New York Times and writes a blog called The Choice.

And I want to let you know that we have linked that blog to the Midmorning page at minnesotapublicradio.org. Now, if you happen to be on the Midmorning page right now, and you look on the right-hand side, you'll see a link that says what Kerri is reading, click it, it'll take you to the Midmorning book page.

Well, you'll see that I'm reading a lot. And I finished a couple of weeks ago TC Boyle's new book about Frank Lloyd Wright called The Women. He's with us at 10 o'clock. Go back to that page, and you'll see that we have authors throughout the week.

We have authors on Wednesday. Walter Mosley is going to be here on Thursday. Details about talking volumes. Sandra Cisneros at Washburn High School. I'd love to see you there. That's on April 21. Lots of information about books and authors. Check it out. This is Midmorning.

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