College Deadlines You Can’t Miss
In a nutshell: No matter how perfect your essays, how impressive your activities list, or how brilliant your grades, if you miss the regular admission application deadline you’re out of luck. Nothing is more important than meeting the deadline, Admissions deadlines vary from school to school, and you would be…
Read More
What to do if you’re waitlisted
When you apply to a college, you may not be accepted or rejected. Instead, you might get waitlisted. This probably means that you met the admissions criteria (those who did not were rejected), but there were not enough slots to go around. Because a college can’t know for sure how…
Read More
Which are the Best Extracurriculars?
To begin to consider which extracurricular activities will most impress selective colleges and universities, we should enumerate the qualities the admissions committees at these schools are looking for. Are they looking for intelligence, a long list of varied activities from sports to band, and letters from teachers praising a student’s…
Read More
The College Search: How To Choose a College
When I went on a college tour with my parents, we tried to see eight colleges in seven states in six days. We were from California, and we were driving in heavy snow most of the time. By the time we got to the school I was most interested in,…
Read More
What does Liberal Arts mean?
The concept of the liberal arts descends from Plato, who believed that any wise, compassionate, and trustworthy citizen would have mastered what he called the “seven arts” (logic, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music). Although a great many more subjects are now covered in the liberal arts, the assumption…
Read More
What is a Good College?
Many students and parents looking for a college don’t really know where to start. “What is a good college” or “good colleges” are frequently used search terms. There are colleges out there that aren’t so good, so it’s a question worth asking. Aside from distinguishing what is a less-than-desirable college,…
Read More
What to do if you’re deferred
When you apply early decision or early action, you may not be accepted or rejected. Instead, you might get deferred, which means your application joins the regular admissions process and you won’t get a decision until the spring. This probably means that you met the admissions criteria (those who did…
Read More
Why Apply to Colleges Early?
Early Decision, Early Action, and why you should be the early bird The question is, why not start early? The applicant who starts late, and by that I mean what the applicant considers to be “on time”, four weeks before the deadline, will always bitterly wish they had started the…
Read More
Recommendations about Recommendations
Before we make recommendations about your teacher recommendations, let’s review the mistakes students commonly make when it comes to securing this crucial element of your application. Do Not – Think of the recommendation as just another hoop to crawl through, or another box to be checked. Do – Consider the…
Read More
How should an applicant use the summer?
Parents usually look at summer in one of two ways. Either they want their high school student to get a well-deserved break after all the pressures of the year, or they worry that there is a particular program or internship that the parent of a college-bound student should be attending…
Read More