Yet another article is making the rounds aimed at amping up the pressure on students and their families. Headlined "Community Service Work Increasingly Important for College Applicants," it appeared in the US News and World Report Money section. Promoting the results of a "scientific report," it states that "admission officers place a high value on a student's long-term commitment to a cause or organization." Of course, that's true at face value. But the article goes on to imply that that "cause or organization" must be community service.

As these articles usually are, it's confusing and provocative, offering advice such as this: "Applicants need to take care in how they position their volunteer activities." The implicit message: You had better have community service on your list of extracurricular activities or you will suffer consequences.

Deans do place a high value on consistent commitment to a cause or organization -- or activity, pursuit or involvement -- but that does not translate to community service specifically being necessary to add to the list of everything else students are doing. It is one of the many ways students' lists of activities can reflect their commitments and passions and is not, for most colleges, a stand-alone by itself.

Marcia Hunt, Director of College Counseling at Florida's Pine Crest School, joins us this month to share her advice and insight on everything from her favorite resources for students and parents to some do's and don'ts that will help them get the most from the relationship with their counselors.

Hunt has been counseling students for twenty-nine years at Pine Crest School, which has about 2,600 students, pre-K through 12th grade, on campuses in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. A graduate of Syracuse University, where she was a political science major, she also holds a masters in counseling from Canisius College.

Married to an attorney and mother to two children, now grown, at one point, Ms. Hunt was also ranked in women's doubles tennis in Florida. We think she should write a book on time management!

This month, we have turned the interview tables on Jennifer Delahunty of Kenyon College to ask her our 5 Questions for the Dean. In addition to her work as the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the 1600-student Gambier, Ohio, campus, Delahunty is a well-known writer on all things admissions. (Full disclosure: we have been lucky enough to participate in one of her editorial projects!) In 2006, an op-ed she penned for the New York Times on gender issues in admissions, To All the Girls I've Rejected, went viral. It's just one example of the honesty and transparency that she brings to the admission process in all that she does.  Join her here to gain some of her trademark insight into Kenyon -- the classroom, the campus, and the admission office -- and some of her sage advice for parenting through the process.

Some of the girls we know are using a new "tool" to power through their college applications -- Written? Kitten!  For every 100 words you write, you are rewarded with a new picture of -- you guessed it -- a kitten. As the creators describe it: "We like positive reinforcement, so we decided to make something a bit like writeordie but cuter and fuzzier." We are suckers for motivational tools and  internet kittens. It's a win-win! Hat tip: Catherine and Amy Rosch, future members of the Class of 2016.