CPE General

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

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[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 […]

Catch the Back-to-School Wave

 tagged academics / grades / school by

One of my favorite things to do is bodysurf.  I remember when my dad taught me how on a Florida vacation back in the early, gulp, 1970s.  He explained how good timing enables you to harness the full force of the swell just as the whitecaps begin to break at the crest of the wave.  If you jump too early or scramble to catch up, you’ll miss it: all the puny human exertion you can muster against the wave’s weighty power proves useless if you try to fight it.  The trick is to catch the wave just right and then LET […]

Summer Goals and the College Admissions Game

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(Quick note to Moms, Dads, and other primary care givers: I know you’ve said very similar things to your kids. But, of course, they won’t believe it coming from you. So print this out and leave it on their pillows. The third-party approach often works like a charm ;-)) The most important criterion—and the most frequently heard buzz word—in today’s college admissions game is passion. Demonstrable passion. Anyone can CLAIM passion about his or her interests, but picture admissions committee as one giant D.A. from Lily Tomlin and company’s awesome kids’ show The Magic School Bus, running around with a clipboard demanding […]

What is CollegePrepExpress?

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CollegePrepExpress, LLC, helps students get into their top choice colleges by focusing on the top three admissions criteria: grades, scores, and apps. That is, we help students earn the best grades they can in the most challenging courses available to them, achieve the highest scores on standardized tests—like the SAT, ACT, Subject Tests, TOEFL, and AP Exams—and prepare standout applications and admissions strategies to cast them in the best possible light before committee members. Like many other college prep companies, we do quite a bit of standardized test prep. But we are DECIDEDLY DIFFERENT from almost every other business in the industry in that we take […]

Catch the Back-to-School Wave

 tagged academics / grades / school by

One of my favorite things to do is to bodysurf.  I remember when my dad taught me how on a Florida vacation back in the early, gulp, 1970s. (This past weekend I had the privilege of teaching my daughter at East Beach in RI–hey, never mind that her first effort resulted in a complete heels over head 360). My father explained how good timing enables you to harness the full force of the swell just as the whitecaps begin to break at the crest of the wave.  If you jump too early or scramble to catch up, you’ll miss it: […]

2010 Annual Summer Gratitude Sale

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On May 29, 2009, the Hartford Courant ran the article “SAT: Unfair? Elitist? Overrated? All Of The Above” (click here to read the whole thing).  It’s a fascinating piece about the efficacy of standardized test prep, the rising cost of such prep, and social justice. The author draws several conclusions: 1) “New research suggests that colleges pay even more attention to the dreaded SAT than we thought”; 2) test prep, like college, is expensive; and 3) test prep, if you can afford it, actually works. The Courant’s findings have been corroborated innumerable times, including here: Are Test-Preparation Courses Worth the Cost?” This is good […]

Annual Summer Gratitude Sale

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On May 29, 2009 the Hartford Courant ran an article entitled, “SAT: Unfair? Elitist? Overrated? All Of The Above” (click here to read the whole thing).  It’s a fascinating piece about the efficacy of standardized test prep, the rising cost of such prep, and social justice. The author draws several conclusions: 1) “New research suggests that colleges pay even more attention to the dreaded SAT than we thought”; 2) test prep, like college, is expensive; and 3) test prep, if you can afford it, actually works. This is good news on all three counts at CollegePrepExpress.  While we don’t put much stock […]