Questions You Should Ask Your College Counselor
Your college counselor at school can be a powerful advocate for you through the application process. He or she is responsible for submitting school reports of your grades as well as a letter of recommendation. Should colleges have questions about your profile or school context, they are likely to reach out to your counselor, and some high school counselors have built long-term relationships with admissions officers of particular universities, giving them extra ammo to fight for your case.
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Which is Better: Getting an “A” or Taking the Harder Class?
Around this time in the semester, high school students begin to plot their course schedule for next year. And as they weigh their options, they’ll be confronted by the age-old dilemma: should I protect my GPA and earn the highest grade possible, or should I take a risk and challenge myself in a more difficult class that might result in a B or lower?
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Making the Most of Admitted Student Visits
In many ways, admitted student visits are the fruit of your months of hard labor. Now that you have heard back from colleges, it is time to choose where you want to commit the next four years of your life. It’s an exciting and important decision for sure.
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How to Decide Between Different College Acceptances
As admissions decisions roll in, high school seniors across the nation breathe a collective sigh of relief. Finally, the wait is over; you can begin to seriously plan where you will study in the fall.
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Does It Really Matter Where I Go to College?
As admissions decisions continue to pour in for high school students across the world, the balance of power in the process shifts. It is time for students to make difficult choices about where they will take their next academic step.
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Coronavirus and the College Process: How You Can Keep Moving Forward During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We are in the midst of an unprecedented time of worldwide uncertainty. Measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic have led to calls for social distancing, including the cancellation of virtually every sporting event, concert, and public gathering throughout the country and much of the world.
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How to Make the Most Out of Spring Break College Tours
No matter whether you are a freshman, sophomore or junior, visiting college campuses during spring break will be well worth your time. You can gain insight on what types of schools fit you best and develop (or deepen) relationships with the admissions office at your top choice colleges.
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Noteworthy Alternative Spring Break Ideas
If your spring break is coming up soon and you have no plans yet, then do we have good news for you! Below you can find some noteworthy ideas for having an impactful spring break that will allow you to enjoy your community, explore intellectual interests, and/or get to know others better.
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What You Should Know About Financial Aid and Scholarships
As you hear back from colleges this March, acceptances may come with financial aid and scholarship award letters that sweeten the deal. While your family’s income determines the amount of need-based aid for which you may qualify, students from more affluent backgrounds can earn merit aid or athletic scholarships. Yet, even if a top-choice school does not give you the aid you need, there are still independent organizations that provide scholarships for students from all backgrounds.
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Truth Behind the Numbers: How Colleges View Class Rank and GPA
It can be a cold reality: high school students spend years developing skills and accomplishing signature achievements and months crafting thoughtful, meticulous applications only for an admissions officer to spend a few brief minutes deciding their future. One can often feel reduced to a series of statistics as he or she navigates this process.
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How Theater Students Can Grab the Spotlight
On any given fall or spring weekend across high school campuses in America there’s a strong probability the theater department is staging a production (most likely of one of these popular plays). Students are honing their crafts as actors, pit crew, orchestra members, and sound technicians.
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Application Advice for Third Culture Kids
Third culture kids, called TCKs, are children who grew up in a nation that is different than their parents’ homeland. Their parents are often expatriates working as diplomats, military personnel, missionaries, business executives, or other positions that require relocating to new places.
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Are Pre-College Programs Worth Your Time?
Imagine spending your summer at Columbia or Stanford as a high school student, taking a college course on a topic that fascinates you while being immersed in the student life of your dream school.
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The Intangibles that Move Admissions Officers
Success is as much built on character as it is on intellect. We see this in the stories of the world’s most successful people. Bill Gates, principal founder of Microsoft, started The Giving Fund with Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet to inspire fellow billionaires to donate at least 50% of their wealth to charity; so far, they’ve gathered 190 pledges.
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What You Need to Know About Holistic College Admissions
You may already be familiar with the concept of holistic review processes for admissions in the United States. It’s the idea that college applicants should not be evaluated only by factors like grades and test scores, but by the whole context of their story, personality, goals, interests, and academic history.
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Surviving the Wait for News: How to Make the Most of the Time Between Applying and Attending
Whether you applied early action, early decision, or regular admission, the relief students feel after finally submitting their applications is palpable but short-lived. Quickly, it is replaced by anticipation, nervousness, and a waiting game that can feel endless even if it only lasts a couple weeks in some cases.
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4 Important Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Admissions Committee
There is a lot of mystery surrounding what happens to your application after you submit it. You put in weeks of hard work to perfect each component and tell your story as clearly as possible. Then, you hit the submit button on the Common App, stare at the confirmation screen, and wait for a committee of admissions officers (AOs) on the other end to make a decision about your future.
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How Can I Boost My Chances of Admissions Even After Applying?
The uncertainty of waiting for admissions results to be released can be both waning and distracting as you continue everyday life. Some students obsessively check their emails to see whether they’ll receive even a small clue about how they’re applications are being read by colleges. Conversations with friends and family could easily revolve around admissions results; and it can be tempting to spend many hours on sites like College Confidential, where students survey users about their chances of getting in.
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Tips on Updating Colleges: What Do Admissions Officers Want to Hear?
You might be surprised by how many factors outside of your actual application determine whether you will receive acceptance to a college.The state you live in, if you have visited the campus, and whether your application was among the first or last read by your admissions officer—called AO for short—could significantly move the needle in your favor.
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When is the Right Time to Start the College Application Process?
One primary worry that families typically share when beginning the application process (no matter how early they start it) is that they are already behind the game. With admissions to highly-selective schools becoming increasingly competitive every year, students begin thinking about the impact of their choices on their future applications at a younger and younger age.
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