CommonApp


Prepping for the Personal Essay: Who Are We and How Did We Get This Way? Aka, Two Apples a Day…

[Originally posted 6/16/20, but still all true in 2023, and you can’t say that about MANY things.] There are many ways to understand who we are. We are, for example, in a literal sense, what we EAT and drink and breathe. When we digest things, we literally take the external world and make it part of ourselves (hence the magic of the pig, who, as Jim Gaffigan has noted, can take an apple—basically garbage—and miraculously turn it into bacon!). Less literally, we are the sum total of our THOUGHTS and FEELINGS, in that what we think about all day and […]


Writing College Applications in the Sweet Spot: June, July & August

Many college-bound students make one of two critical mistakes when it comes time to thinking through and writing college applications: they do it too soon, or they do it too late.  Too soon, you say? Clearly you haven’t met my mother. Is there really such a thing? Yes, there really is. Emphatically so. Many high school teachers and administrators, both public and private, do their juniors a disservice when they stress them out about writing college applications during the spring of junior year. It’s one thing to go through the personal essay prompts and even write a MOCK essay for the […]


Finishing STRONG! Tips to Maximize GRADES

It’s easy for juniors to forget during the standardized testing crunch of May and June that the most important thing you can do to get accepted to competitive colleges is to earn the best grades you can in whatever courses you’re taking. Period. Here’s some good advice to remember down the home stretch: Conventional wisdom is that the first impression we make is the most important, but when it comes to impressions grades make on teachers, the LAST impression is the most important, i.e., the most LASTing. Take it from a 20+ year classroom teacher: When teachers go to enter […]


Are You Helping or Hurting Your Kids’ Chances? Common Myths About How to Get into Selective Colleges in 2022 and Beyond!

The mythological “intel” below may SOUND reasonable enough, but applicants who heed such advice often find themselves disconsolate when admission decision postings and letters come out… Academic  Standardized Tests Activities Application Writing Miscellaneous Learn about these MYTHS in today’s admissions game and find out who advice DOES work in our Monthly College Admissions Zoom Talks for Parents & Teens…with Dr. Yo We’re here to help! 🤓


Don’t Make This Classic Mistake! Time-Management Tips for Fall Seniors

Year after year we see senior after senior making the same time management mistake as they play their last quarter in the college admissions game. It’s a mistake that has two negative consequences: first, it prevents them from doing their best work, and second, it inevitably leads to greater stress for them and their families. And their #1 accomplice in this crime? Their well-intentioned parents who simply want them to get their applications done… NOW! Most of the seniors with whom we work at CollegePrepExpress are busy during the fall getting the best grades they can, preparing for their last […]

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Application Packaging: FIVE Helpful Hints in Choosing a Personal Essay Topic

Most of the calls into CPE over the past few weeks have been from increasingly anxious parents and students seeking guidance on college applicants’ personal essays. Am I available to help brainstorm or critique or overhaul or edit or polish? Yes, I am, for all of the above, as are a number of junior tutors/consultants at CPE. 🙂 But to help students get started right here, right now, here are five helpful hints to choosing a topic. 1. Think about your essay topic in the context of the forms leading up to the Writing section of the CommonApp (or any […]


Using the Summer to Gain a Competitive Edge

What are the best three things about the school year?  Duh.  June, July and August of course!  Camp, summer jobs, new friends and relationships, and, most importantly, NO SCHOOL! The long summer break is a double-edged sword, however: very few use the summer to advance their learning or to advance their chances in the college admissions game.  Given the increasingly competitive nature of the game, summertime represents a phenomenal opportunity for ambitious students not only to enhance their education (not to mention keeping up with the international competition, who are in school 10 or 11 months out of the year), […]


2 KEYS to Answering to the Most Common Supplement Essay and College Interview Question: Why Do you Want to Attend?

By far the most commonly asked college supplement writing question and one of the most commonly asked college interview questions is, why do you want to attend this particular institution? Why are you interested in Central Connecticut State University? Why are you drawn to the area(s) of study you indicated earlier in this application? Why Tufts? How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? What is it about Yale that has led you to apply? Tell me, why do you want to go here? Whether in the form of a writing prompt or an […]


A Brief History of College Courtship: Interest –> Demonstrated Interest –> Informed Interest

College admissions committees have always been more interested in students who are interested in their schools than those who are simply throwing in another application just to see if they can get in or to use as a safety school. Back in the days before college admissions became more competitive than the Olympics, it was enough for candidates to say (and we were actually coached to say), during interviews for example, “You’re my first choice.” In today’s college admissions game, that no longer flies. You have to PROVE you’re interested (see Summer Goals and the College Admissions Game); you have […]


The College Admissions Process 101

1. Get the best grades in the most advanced classes you can. The first thing college admissions officers look for in evaluating any application is your curriculum and grades. The most effective way to become an attractive candidate is to impress them with your coursework and GPA. If you need help raising your grade in any particular subject(s), our outstanding tutors can help.  2. Learn as much as you can about the application process by reading blogs and listening to podcasts. There are many pieces to the puzzle, and they cannot be figured out overnight. Carve out time to investigate all the elements […]


‘Twas The Night Before Early Action… A Note to PARENTS

By Kate Cryan Let’s time-travel for a moment. Not into a time with hoverboards or flying cars, but just a few short days or weeks into the future, to the first application deadline. It’s the day before the application deadline of your teen’s first choice college, and time to click the “Submit” button on the CommonApp. If it had been up to you, this button would have been hit at least a couple of weeks ago, if not before, but, sadly, it *wasn’t* up to you. No; the task lay with your resident high-schooler who, for the last few months, has suffered from a […]


College Admissions Secrets for Parents and Teens: Listen to Mom’s Advice

By Kate Cryan, mom If you’re looking for an entertaining, informative, and inexpensive evening for you and your college-bound teens, head to Hall High School at 7pm on Wednesday March 12th, where Dr. Michael J. Youmans (aka Dr. “Yo”) of CollegePrepExpress will present a 90-minute “soup to nuts” overview of the college admissions process. College admission is a daunting process for both student and parents, and it makes no difference to the parents’ stress levels whether it’s the first or fifth child going to college.  (As a parent with one child nearly finished at college, I can vouch that starting […]


Working & Fighting With the CommonApp

(Please note there’s about 30 seconds of dead air before this episode begins….) Popular Education Internet Radio with CollegePrepExpress on BlogTalkRadio How frustrated have yo been trying to exercise patience while working with the NEW CommonApp? Are you ready to scream? Throw your computer out the window? Relax, Dr. Yo and his team of teen experts from Kingswood Oxford School and Conard High School and an experienced mom, Kate Cryan, will pass along tips and tricks to taming this beast and to answering as many questions as they can in 30 minutes on the air. Ok, and we might just […]


Winning the Battle of CommonApp ’13

If you’re a high school senior, the last few weeks might have been more fraught than you’d anticipated, even taking into account that college application season is never a relaxed time. Halloween party planning or watching the Red Sox’ march to victory in the World Series could have taken a back seat while, instead, you spent your evenings in front of the computer, watching the Spinning Beach Ball of Death on the screen and hoping that – this time, please, please, please – the CommonApp would cooperate and accept your college application before the deadline. Or before you hurled your […]


Getting Your CommonApp (Almost) Done Over the Summer

Jeez, school just freakin’ ended and you’re hitting me with THIS? Take a chill, Mr. Intense—er, Dr. Intense—would you? Actually, I was going to offer YOU that very advice, especially if you have the type of parents who want your whole application done the day after your last final exam (hey, try to keep in mind how much they love you :-)). Rising seniors absolutely should take a chill for a while after surviving the year-long educational torture chamber we call junior year. Having said that, we also STRONGLY suggest that you get as much work done on your CommonApp […]