admissions process

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

 tagged admission / admissions / admissions process / COllege / selective by

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! 🤓

Using the Summer to Gain a Competitive Edge

 tagged admissions process / freshmen / junior year / senior year / sophomores / vacation studying by

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), […]

4 Reasons Why It’s Important to Tell the Truth and How It Can Get You Into College

 tagged admissions process / applications / college essay by

Let’s face an unpalatable truth together, shall we? We ALL lie. Yup, when occasion suits our needs, even those of us who are honest almost all the time and pride ourselves on our integrity are still prone to exaggerate, understate, omit, prevaricate (go ahead, look it up), or explicitly speak what we know not to be true. Human beings have emotions, and to paint in broad stokes, we prefer the good ones to the bad ones; so sometimes we delude ourselves that telling a white, or sometimes black, lie will feel better than suffering the short-term pain that telling the […]

The Scoop on Interviews: Distinguishing Yourself from the Crowd

 tagged admissions process / college interviews by

by Liz Deakin Why Prepare For Interviews?  It’s been widely reported that we’re in the midst of the most competitive year ever for college admissions.  While grades, test scores, and impressive applications remain the mainstay of admissions committees’ criteria, any minor edge can make the difference between landing in the “no thanks” pile and the coveted “acceptance” pile. So given that you’ve invested so much time studying, taking tests, writing essays, researching schools and touring campuses, why not seal the deal with a fabulous interview? Most colleges offer interviews to prospective students. Some offer “campus” and “alumni” interviews, while some […]

SATs or ACTs?

 tagged ACT / admissions process / SAT / scores by

SATs or ACTs, that is the question?  No brainer: BOTH! In the most competitive era of college admissions ever, high school juniors and seniors are looking for any competitive edge they can get.  Historically, students from the northeast and the west coast primarily took the SAT as the standard college admissions test, while students from the mid-west and south took the ACT.  In the past several years, however, perhaps as a response to the increasing competitiveness of college admissions, more and more students are taking BOTH, but then only releasing one or the other to colleges. There are several compelling reasons […]

Reducing Stress is Part of Our Mission

 tagged admissions process / junior year / senior year / stress management by

Did you catch the FRONT PAGE of last week’s Wall Street Journal? (click here for full article).  The press has made it clear that 2008 has been the most competitive year ever for college admissions, with 2009 promising to be even worse. Junior year has always been a notorious rite of passage: the hardest classes, most demanding teachers, grades counting the most, and, oh yeah, standardized tests.  In September everyone’s talking about how college admissions committees look most closely at junior year grades, PSATs come up fast in October, and the work and pressure keep mounting through SATs, ACTs, Subject Tests […]