College Admission: From Application to Acceptance

Financial Aid Checklist for Decision Time!

Posted on Mon, 04/07/2014 - 13:05

It's decision time! Your financial aid award letters will usually arrive with your letters of acceptance, or soon thereafter. Even though you will be celebrating and contemplating your choices, you will also need to be focused and diligent about evaluating your financial aid offers. College advisor Alice Kleeman is back with advice and answers for your questions during this important time.

 

·        You will often receive financial aid offers (also called "financial aid packages" or "financial aid award letters") with your admit letter or shortly thereafter.  Review these offers carefully. Ask questions at your College and Career Center or Guidance Office if you don't understand your letters.

·        Colleges vary tremendously in their cost of attendance, present their costs in different ways, and offer different amounts of financial aid in different combinations. This can make it difficult to understand which combination of price and student aid award is best. Here are some tools for comparing financial aid awards:  

                      US Department of Education College Affordability and Transparency Center

                      College Board Big Future

Seniors: Have you requested your Letters of Recommendation?

Posted on Mon, 09/23/2013 - 11:22

Most private colleges -- and more and more public universities -- require letters of recommendation from one or two classroom teachers of academic subjects and the high school guidance or college counselor. Make the job easier for the teachers and counselor who will write your recommendations by providing them with a list of the colleges to which you are applying, deadlines for the recommendations and any required forms. In order to get the best result, it may also be helpful to provide the teachers who are writing your recommendations with an updated list of activities and any honors you have received, as well as a note telling them why you have chosen them to write for you.

If you have not requested these letters of recommendation, do so immediately by speaking in person with your teachers and counselor.  And don’t forget to check the policies and guidelines for recommendations of both your high school and the colleges to which you're applying to be sure all requirements are being met.

And don't forget to say thank you!

Rescue Lunches and Parents' Role in the College Admission Process

Posted on Tue, 09/10/2013 - 13:01

High school advisor Alice Kleeman joins us this month with a blog post sure to help parents envision their proper role in the college admission process. Cheerleading? Yes. Rescue lunches? No. Read on for more of her clear-eyed view of how parents can be most helpful to their sons and daughters during this time.

 

On my daily path between office and mail room, I always notice a long line of lunch bags, Sharpie-labeled with students’ names and often sporting the logo of one of the popular local delis. I walk past the lunch-bag display, conquering the urge to snitch a bag and munch on the potato chips therein, lost in thought about college admission once again.

 

What does the long line of lunch bags on the front counter each day have to do with applying to college? As I pass the festive bag spectacle, I can’t help but imagine an improbable scenario: Mom (or Dad) hopping on a plane to rescue Junior by delivering a forgotten item—granola bars? dental floss?—to the college residence hall!

 

Researching Colleges: Don't forget to Find out What Goes on in the Classroom

Posted on Mon, 05/06/2013 - 11:35

One of the mistakes we see students make in the college admissions process is failing to find out enough about the academic life of a school -- what actually goes on in the classrooms.  In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece, What We Don't Talk About on the Admissions Tour, James M. Lang, associate professor of English, director of the college honors program at Assumption College and parent to a member of the class of 2017, states the case for finding out as much about the teaching and learning as the food service on a college campus.

Like any parent of a prospective student at a residential college, we are preparing for our child to live on her own for the first time. What shape will that new life take? I want to be able to envision my daughter in her new room, and gain a sense of what her peers will be like, and know that she will have access to food and facilities that will allow her to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Seniors: Sound Bites for the Notification Noise

Posted on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 15:40

As you receive news from the colleges to which you've applied, there can be a lot of noise -- and interference. Inquiring minds want to know if you’ve heard from the colleges, what you heard from the colleges, where you will be going to college. Oh, and how about your friends, the class president, the quarterback, and the kid down the street? Some of this is genuine interest in you and some of it is nosiness and the rest is thinly veiled status competition.

When we wrote our book, we asked Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes— the inspiration for the hit movie Mean Girls— and an expert on teens and parenting, for her advice about talking the talk during this step in the college admission process. Here's here advice -- including some very useful sound bites:

Juniors: Questions to Ask on a College Visit

Posted on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 12:50

When visiting a college, admission officers are the best resources for answers to specific questions about the application process, a college’s mission and future plans, and most aspects of daily life on campus— academics, housing, special programs such as study- abroad opportunities, and athletics. But sometimes you get the most information with broader questions about the who, what, and why of the campus. Here are some questions that you may want to ask during an information session or group interview:

• What impresses you the most in a student’s application?

• What are you looking for when you read students’ essays?

• What are some of the things you hate to see in an application?

• Is demonstrated interest a factor in your admission decision?

• What kind of student does well here? What kind of student doesn’t do well here?

• Did you attend this college? What has changed since you’ve been here?

• What are recent alumni doing?

• What do you think your school is best known for?

• How would you describe the typical student here?

 

Juniors: Plan Your Senior-Year Coursework

Posted on Wed, 02/06/2013 - 10:37

Meet with your counselor to plan your senior-year coursework. A fourth year of math and a laboratory science as well as a fourth year of science are highly recommended. And if your school does not offer an AP, IB or other advanced curriculum, consider dual enrollment -- enrolling in a course at a local community college or university. You should be challenging yourself to signal to colleges that you are likely to succeed if admitted. "Academic ability is the ante to get into the game," says Katharine Harrington, Vice President of Admissions and Planning at University of Southern California.

For more information about a recommended course of study and the role of the academic record in admissions, see Chapter 5, "The Academic Record," and Appendix II, "A Recommended Course of Study," in College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step.

Juniors: More Resources for Your College Search

Posted on Fri, 09/28/2012 - 08:50

 

Last week, we posted the objective guidebooks that we recommend as you research the colleges for your initial list of schools. For this week, here are the subjective guidebooks we recommend. These books provide basic information about schools, including information on acceptance rates, cost and enrollment. But they also "review" colleges and universities the way critics review movies. Using feedback and input from students, faculty, alumni, high school college counselors and others, the information in these books weaves fact and opinion about the student body, athletics, academics, social life, physical setting, dorms and other aspects of campus life.

The books listed here are available in most bookstores, public libraries and the office of your high school college or guidance counselors.  Websites are available to everyone free of charge.

Books

The Best 371 Colleges, Princeton Review

Big Book of Colleges, College Prowler

More Resources…

Posted on Thu, 08/09/2012 - 13:07

Don't forget to regularly check Resources under the Book tab here on the site. We're constantly updating and adding books and websites for navigating the college application and admission process. What's more, these resources have been recommended by deans of admission and college counselors and vetted by us. We know there's lots of bad information out there, so we're very particular about who makes the list. Recent additions include information for students with learning differences -- http://www.ahead.org/ and http://www.ncld.org/; for athletes -- http://www.playnaia.org/; and for scholarships -- http://scholarshipedia.org/.

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