As many English teachers are assigning the college essay as a classwork grade, students can maintain two separate drafts: one for their class assignment and another for their college application. Writing for a grade can constrain a teenager from writing with the candor characteristic of a personal narrative. While class assignments are a valuable opportunity…
Prior to the senior year of high school or transfer admissions, students simply matriculate in a pack, taking the same classes, striving for the same grades, clustering in similar out-of-school enrichment activities. Yet, at the moment of applying to college, students need to make their own decision—relate the process, to what Mr. Kipling shares the…
A college acceptance isn’t a cure-all, get-out-of-jail-free card, where untold riches and lifelong prosperity are as plentiful and readily flowing as red cups filled from a college party keg. Instead: To avoid such pitfalls, effectively reducing the risk of educational malinvestment, prudent families can use the quiet lull of summer to reflect, reassess, and regroup…
Transferring from one college to another is disruptive: moving to a new city, leaving the family home for possibly the first time, establishing new friend networks in a new place. Being 19-20 years old and taking more specialized, upper division courses, typically, transfer students are seeking other older students, but often worry about breaking into…
On Monday, March 14, California State legislators along with Governor Gavin Newsom, ratified legislation amending the California Environmental Quality Act, so UC Berkeley (Cal) admissions officials will not need to reduce Fall 2022 enrollment for first year, transfer, or graduate students, as previously predicted. As a result, UC Berkeley officials will no longer encourage 1000…
In the academic meritocratic realm of teenage braggadocio, everyone’s been done with their college essays, except you. At least, that’s what nearly every college applicant believes about their friends, peers, frenemies, academic archrivals—only adding stress to an already complicated self-reflective, autobiographical writing process. Yet, The Common Application’s own statistics about the daily record applicant submissions…
As college enrollments continue sliding, current college students, both those at four year colleges and those aspiring to transfer from a community college, as well as high school students seeking admissions in Fall 2022 and beyond will likely benefit. Spring 2021 total undergraduate enrollment decreased by 5.9% at two and four year colleges in the…
The National Association of College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) published their annual “College Openings Update”, a database of four year US universities which are still accepting applications for the upcoming school year. Thus, for students interested in attending a four year college in the fall, there’s still admissions opportunities for Fall 2021. Keep in mind that…
Dear Common Application CEO Jenny Rickard: In advising transfer students, I discovered several incongruencies which, although did not prevent a student from submitting his applications on time, created undue stress and confusion in the hours before the deadline expired. I offer the following feedback for you and your colleagues to consider, as a means of…
The criminally fraudulent actions of Rick Singer and 50 parents and college administrators indicted in the college admissions scandal in 2019, highlighted the disparities and weaknesses in the college admissions system, as well as the cultural bias that a college degree is a salve for life’s uncertainties. As Washington Post journalist, Jeff Selingo writes: These…
Although college applications are technically due at 11:59 pm on the deadline day, “11:59 pm” might be hours earlier or later than the time zone where the applicant lives, depending on the admissions policies of the college. Thus, applicants should pay attention to the local time zone where a college is located. Although The Common…
Typically, in the few days before a college application deadline, both applicants and their parents are wondering: Adding to their stress, students wildly speculate that their efforts to complete their applications will merit them the following response: Anticipating the worst case scenario of a denied admissions, in the midst of crafting their quintessential life’s story,…
In a 2015 seminar, Reflection on Your Life, Harvard Professor Richard Light asked a group of first year students: Would you rather understand one idea fully or many ideas at a reasonable surface understanding? Seems like a reasonable question to ask 18 year olds so they can more likely live purposefully during their limited college…
Soon-to-be Class of 2021 college applicants are delayed in engaging the college admissions process as it was defined pre-March 2020. With cancelled SAT and ACT tests this past spring, closed high schools and college campuses, no sports games sidelines or Science Olympiad stands where parents can congregate and share notes about college admissions, fewer high…
We are grateful for having the opportunity to advise students who were accepted to 90 universities and medical schools throughout the United States for Fall 2020 admissions during our seventeenth college application season. Each year, students trust us to generously share their life’s stories with us as they articulate their vision and define their purpose…
