As no two families are the same, we offer a diverse range of advising options for parents and students to retain our counsel, which were first introduced in the Elite and Selective Tiers. The following offerings in the Preparatory Tier backstop a families’ efforts with strategic, poignant guidance at timely intervals, utilizing the totality of…
To be ready to choose a college, I liberally estimate that a 17 year old high school senior has: Spent approximately 12,760 hours attending school since Pre-K, Completed an estimated 2,376 hours of homework just during four years high school (assuming an average of three hours of homework on school days and six hours per…
To assist the diversity of high school seniors and their families as they seek the greatest value in higher education, we offer a variety of retainers which are a culmination of our nearly twenty years of practice as educational consultants, as well as our understanding of the current trends in education. Seeking higher education isn’t…
To serve the diverse needs of families, each with their own distinctive higher educational plans, we offer a suite of retainers. After each college application season, seeking to continuously improve our services concomitant with our experience, we reflect, study and adjust where needed. Over the next week, I will present our 2021 Educational Retainers, seeking as…
Many students (and their parents) believe that applying to college begins by choosing a career that will align with one of the many majors on the pull down list of most digital college applications, often wrongly assuming that college is little more than a sophisticated form of job training required in order to achieve lasting prosperity. …
Students who applied to colleges will now confront the need to grieve and celebrate simultaneously, as they receive admissions decisions. Acceptances eliciting an elation will be diminished by denials, which sometimes arrive on the same day, as well as by reactions to the success and failures of their peers. In their grief over a denied…
Parents routinely ask how many hours of community service their kids must complete in order to be competitive in the college admissions process, essentially commoditizing generosity for their personal gain, which is at odds with serving the needs of others. What, then, is community service and why can volunteerism be included in the college admissions…
Waitlist offers—the no man’s land of college admissions, an offer for the B Team, a “we’ll call you, don’t call us”—hope and doubt all wrapped up in a single “Maybe”. Students, although navigating through the emotion of wondering why one wasn’t quite “good enough”, can still lobby for an offer of admissions. But, should they? …
More K-12 school administrators are either preparing or have already reopen(ed) school campuses amidst subsiding COVID related health concerns, declining infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Of course, variants (viruses evolve) or declining vaccination rates leading to worsening infection, hospitalization and even death rates, would lead to a likely-swift reversal of school reopenings. Reopen, yes, but not…
Students and their parents worry, as is often the case in this springtime of year, about who will be admitted and/or rejected at what college, believing that the outcome of a meritocratic, formulaic decision making process that defines winners (those accepted) and losers (those denied) is the final arbiter of who succeeds in life and…
To learn effectively is to practice humility, to admit how little we know, and recognizing the cost of remaining ignorant is the antidote to pride and the beginning of the journey of discovery, fueled by curiosity which results in the acquisition of knowledge which applied in a continuous collaboration with others who are willing, results…
I recently zoom’d with Dr. Will Davenport for The Dr. Will Show podcast about how to find value in education. Take a listen and share with others who are seeking guidance as they help their children discover their life’s purpose. To learn more how Jill and other experts at Creative Marbles Consultancy, a full service…
In spring when high school juniors begin devising their lists of colleges in preparation for fall applications, panic can quickly arise, when asked the typical first question, “What do you want to study in college?” which to a teenager translates to: “I must choose a career, right now at seventeenish years old, sign my name…
A new 650 word Common Application (bolded in the list below) essay prompt is being added for Fall 2022 admissions, as a replacement for one prompt being “retired”. Regardless of any prompt chosen, I recommend to avoid approaching the college essay as yet another school assignment, where students try to write and edit simultaneously, crafting…
This spring, like every spring, after years of struggle, high school seniors will finally experience acceptance in the form of an electronic letter or alert in an applicant portal offering admissions to this or that college. Once the initial elation fades, families begin deliberations in earnest to make a final selection by the May 1…
