vacation studying

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), […]

Getting Your CommonApp (Almost) Done Over the Summer

 tagged applications / CommonApp / junior year / senior year / vacation studying by

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 […]

Summer Reading

 tagged reading / vacation studying by

Now that summer is well under way and most of you have wound down from the rigors of the past academic year, it’s a great time to start executing a summer reading plan.  Whether or not your school requires summer reading, it’s a great, relatively painless, and highly productive way to keep your intellectual wheels oiled and to position yourself to have a great start to the next academic year. If you have a choice of some or all of your summer reading books, I recommend choosing classics.  That is, pick books that you want to have read, even if […]

Painless Ways to Get Ahead this Summer

 tagged ACT / reading / SAT / vacation studying / writing by

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how most students lose academic ground during the summer and, consequently, why summertime presents a great opportunity for ambitious students to get ahead.  But short of signing up for summer school classes, what specifically can you do to improve your grades and better position yourself for college admissions? One easy thing to do, whether you’re an incoming freshman or senior, is to read a few good books.  Dickens, Hawthorne, Salinger, Dotoyevsky, Steinbeck, Hesse.  Classic books that you know you won’t regret having read.  The trick is not just to read them, but […]