We get the question all the time: how should I spend my summer? While there’s no one answer, there is a direction in which we recommend our students head during their free time, and that is to spend time doing something in which they can learn and demonstrate their new knowledge on their applications. Granted internships are hard to come by for high schoolers, summer courses are not a bad way to go. If you are going to go the summer program route, keep in mind that the program should be rigorous and should also fall under an academic niche you’ve already been exploring. For kids who intend to study computer science in college, there are an increasing number of great programs each year.
Tips for Junior Year of High School
Junior year is a lot. There’s no way to sugar-coat it. However, there are myriad ways to make all of the ancillary college process items more manageable. So, before you dive-in head first, it’s really important to get organized, create a strategy, and stay on track. That way, when things feel chaotic, you have a plan to refer back to. In this post, we talk about ways in which you can forge a clear path for junior year.
Tips for Sophomore Year of High School
The Best Finance and Economics Summer Programs 2019
Earlier this week, we got an email. It read:
"I am a junior in high school interested in pursuing finance or economics and management in college. Do you know of any summer programs at decent/top tier colleges for high schoolers less than two weeks long in June or July that would help me show colleges my interest in these areas? Thank you very much for your help!"
Things Every High School Junior Should Know
How to Transfer to Cornell
We recently wrote a blog post on transferring into an Ivy League school and Cornell was a very clear outlier. When looking at the transfer acceptance rate chart from the post linked above, you might think “I want to go to a better school, Cornell is an Ivy, I’m going to apply there!” But in the grand scheme of things, an acceptance rate below 20% is not high. It’s only high when compared to the rest of the Ivy League schools. And it turns out there’s a reason for that figure, explained below:
How do I know when to Transfer Colleges?
It’s not always easy to trust your gut when it comes to decisions about college. For some, intuition might suggest that you’re not at the right school. But for the rest of those students looking for validation that you might be better off elsewhere, we’ve compiled a list of reasons for wanting to transfer. If you can check off five boxes or more, it might be time for you start looking into the transfer process.
B+/A- Students: What You Need to Know about Top Tier Admissions
The Ivy Leagues schools are the way they are for a reason. That is, they are extremely exclusive. There are a number of really strong students across the country, but only a handful are Ivy league applicant material. Colleges advertise to B+ and A- students. We advise that students who fall into that range be skeptical. You’re clearly smart and successful, but at the end of the day, the Ivies aren’t probably aren’t going to accept you.
Books Look Good on College Applications
Benefits of Touring Colleges in the Summer
Negatives of Touring Colleges in the Summer
Buying final-sale clothes without trying them on is ill-advised. So to is going through the application process without touring colleges. U.S. News & World, secondhand information from friends, and information packets can only tell you so much about a school. To give yourself, not only a three-dimensional experience of a university, but also a sense of what you want in a school in general, visiting is really the only way to go.
Which Colleges Require Community Service for Admission?
It’s a common misconception that you need community service hours to get into college. Even though your high school might require service hours, very few colleges actually mandate that incoming students log even a single one. In this post, we will talk about a few schools that do look for kids with a background in service.
When Do I Send My Deferral Package?
Getting a deferral is not ideal. But it’s also not game over. We’re sorry in advance for the corny sports analogy, but sometimes, you just need to take a Rudy approach to life and give it the old college try. If your coach benches you, the last thing you want to do is accept defeat. The moment you are sidelined is the moment to give it everything you’ve got. Train harder than you’ve ever trained, keep up the drills, and get back on that high-protein diet. In this post, we talk about what you can do to stay in the game and how to make sure your timing is on point.
Best Colleges for Nature Lovers
There are a lot of different ways to take advantage of nature. You might love the great outdoors so much that you want to go to a school with access to hiking and skiing, or maybe you’re looking for an environmental studies program with outdoor class offerings. This list has both, but it’s not exhaustive. We’ve listed ten schools we believe are good fits for outdoor enthusiasts, but of course there are more. It’s a mix between east and west coast schools with a short explanation as to why these campuses could be a good fit.
College Admissions Essays about Anxiety
The rise of flickering cell phone screens, social media, and the insane competition of college admissions will define this era in history. Alongside the innovations and competition of the 21st Century is a rise of anxiety amongst all age groups, including, and perhaps especially, teenagers. Your anxiety is totally valid. It’s real and it is something that you should communicate to colleges, but you need to know where to send the message.
Why Did I Get Rejected?
We have gotten hundreds—approaching thousands—of emails and calls in the past week. Early decision has come out and people don’t understand why they were deferred or rejected. Our students did phenomenally well, but it seems, as we predicted, that more people than ever are getting turned away. This makes sense. School’s haven’t increased the number of kids they accept while applicant pools have expanded exponentially. It’s incredibly hard to get in. And people don’t like that.
How to Prepare for a College Interview
By the time kids get to the interview, there are so many strenuous, variable parts of the operation, that they are usually just ready to assert control over what they can—namely, the essay and the interview. While we fully understand the desire to work hard at an area of the application where you can exert some effort with the objective of producing a result, unfortunately, no matter how much you put into the interview, it’s just not going to have much bearing on your admission. While essays can make or break an acceptance, interviews are also an exercise in you getting to learn about the school.
What Is the Best College for Me?
The Best College Essays about Art
The college application is holistic. What that means is each part of it should help to complete a picture of the applicant for the admissions committee. As such, no two parts should be the same. A lot of kids end up writing their essays about something that’s already represented elsewhere in the application, like an extra-curricular. While we typically advise against doing that, there is an exception.
Rejected Early Decision: Advice to Parents
Getting rejected from an early decision school can be gut-wrenching…for parents. Your kid has worked so hard, missed out on social activities in the name of extra-curricular ones, visited scores of colleges, and finally aligned their hopes on that perfect school only to be told that, well, this year isn’t their year, after all. Rejection is bad enough. What makes this time of year worse for kids who get the dreaded thin envelope is parents who are shaken, as well, and not doing a great job of hiding it.