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Archives for January 2016

Visit colleges – without leaving home!

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You’ve got homework, clubs, newspaper deadlines and soccer matches, not to mention a fairly limited budget. Your parents work at fulltime jobs and you have several younger siblings. It’s almost impossible to line up reasonable travel arrangements in order to visit schools in which you are somewhat interested. Is there any way to “travel” to schools without spending the first year’s tuition on airfare and hotels?

Your fingers can do the walking through guidebooks and your eyes can peruse hundreds of campuses via the school’s websites. However, there is another way to “visit” schools, and that is through the national college fairs offered everywhere in the nation. The place to go is NACAC (the National Association for College Admission Counseling). It’s a wonderful resource for visiting colleges and talking to admissions officers in your own home town! Starting in Pittsburgh in early February and finishing up in Boston in late May, these fairs are free and open to the public. You can meet admissions officers, collect all kinds of reading material, and get a really good idea of what schools you actually might want to visit before applying.

So whether you live in Houston, Hartford or Honolulu, there is a college fair coming to your neighborhood!

PlaybillEDU is a must for arts majors!

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When you go to a Broadway show, an usher shows you to your seat and hands you a Playbill. You’ve probably leafed through the pages for the synopsis of the play and the biographies of the cast members. But you may not have noticed that Playbill offers something exceptional for college applicants: a free website called PlaybillEDU!

PlaybillEDU.com is a comprehensive searchable database of more than two thousand undergraduate theatre, dance and music programs at more than a thousand colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada.

Designed to help college-bound and potential transfer students find and compare programs that suit their individual career plans, PlaybillEDU.com allows young people interested in the performing arts to learn about a greater variety of education opportunities than can be found through traditional college search websites that lack the detailed information tailored to the specific needs of performing arts students.

If you are planning to major in music, theatre or dance, this website is a must! It has a huge database of general information about schools as well as a plethora of information about majors and minors, programs, faculty, arts life and scholarship opportunities! For instance, I decided to look up Wellesley and found links to ten recent student performances as well as eight musical groups. I had no idea that Wellesley had a ballroom dance team or a combined orchestra with Brandeis.

Advertised as the internet’s largest searchable database of college performing arts, this is a real find. So if you are thinking of majoring in the arts, make sure to check them out!

Applications are done, but scholarship opportunities await!

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Now that most high school seniors are finished with their applications, there is another search that might yield great results. There are hundreds of scholarship opportunities just waiting for you: Some offer $100 and others might yield over $10,000. The qualifications are often quite specific, ranging from the city in which you live to your sexuality. Some require simple forms to fill out, and others will ask for an essay. Here is a sample list of some scholarships with February 2016 deadlines:

  • The NEWH Symmons Scholarship: A $4,000 award sponsored by the Hospitality Industry Network. Candidates must be pursuing a career in the hospitality field, with emphasis toward interior design or architecture.  Deadline:  February 4.
  • Random House, Inc., Creative Writing Competition: $500-$10,000 awards for high school seniors who will graduate from a New York City public high school. The application and essay deadline is February 6.
  • Courageous Persuaders Competition: $250 – $3,000 will go to applicants who create a TV commercial targeted to middle school students to warn them about the dangers of underage drinking or the dangers of texting while driving. Deadline: February 11.
  • Queer Foundation High School Seniors English Essay Contest: $1,000 will go to high school seniors who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Application and essay deadline:  February 14.
  • P.L.A.Y. Scholarship: $1000 scholarship sponsored by Pet Lifestyle and You is for high school juniors and seniors who are passionate about helping animals in need. Deadline is February 15.
  • Spirit of Anne Frank Scholarship Awards: $5,000 to $10,000 scholarship is for college-bound high school seniors who have proven themselves as exceptional leaders in their communities, exhibited in their desire and drive to combat intolerance, prejudice, and injustice. Sponsored by the Anne Frank Center USA, this award’s deadline is February 19.

For more information, check out these 90 scholarships with February deadlines!

Plan your summer experience now!

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I am often asked if a pre-college summer program abroad or an internship will improve an applicant’s chances of admission.

On the surface, the answer is obvious. Sure! Any opportunity to learn, to explore, and to meet new and different people is worth doing and sharing. However, if you love your summer sleep-away camp and you are going to have an opportunity to engage in a leadership position, you don’t have to go build houses in Costa Rica or take art classes in Florence. If you have already arranged for a summer job that will earn you money and give you experience in the world of work, there is no reason to borrow thousands of dollars to spend your summer traveling in Australia. On the other hand, if you are itching to experience college life on a short-term scale, learn a new language in an immersion program or study a completely different culture abroad, the summers after sophomore and junior years are the perfect times to do so.

Many colleges and universities sponsor excellent academic programs, like:

This is the time of year to look into your options! It’s never too soon to plan.

Choosing a Major

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When you are a high school student, you take the required courses in order to graduate.  You have to choose some sequences and if your school offers electives, maybe you have time and space to squeeze in a few.  But for the most part, you do not have the opportunity to explore a career direction.  So what will you enter on your college applications when you are asked to list first and second choices for your major?

If you clearly want to major in English or neuroscience, that’s great! Although many students switch majors in college, that gives you a comfortable answer and also helps you to choose a college that actually offers the courses you hope to take!  Not every school has every major.

There is always the option to apply “Undecided.”  Many students do that. However, some colleges have supplementary essays that essentially require you to make a choice because the question is based on your interest in a particular school or field.  In that case, you need to think ahead even as early as freshman year.  What interests you? What courses, internships, volunteer work, jobs, or reading will help you to decide?

The College Board is very helpful in these areas.  Read their post on The College Major: What It Is and How to Choose One, and think about investing in the College Board Book of Majors 2015.

Visiting colleges in the comfort of your own school

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As an independent educational consultant, I have many opportunities to visit colleges and universities. As a matter of fact, a requirement of professional membership in the IECA (Independent Educational Consultants Association) is to visit dozens of schools, which I have done eagerly coast-to-coast and even in London!  However, your school counselors rarely have a similar opportunity during the school year.  That does not mean that your counselors are unfamiliar with the colleges and universities in which you might be interested.  Many counseling departments work with the college admissions officers and arrange for them to visit your school.

Although it is essential for you to visit schools, especially those to which you may apply Early Decision, you can’t expect your family to go to the expense of jetting around the country on holidays and weekends to do dozens of college visits.  Therefore, students (and even parents) should take advantage of scheduled visits from admissions officers. Sometimes these visits are open only to seniors although often juniors are invited.

What are the benefits of these visits?

  • You meet face-to-face with representatives on your own comfortable turf.
  • You receive a great deal of information from a reliable source which can help you decide if a particular college is for you.
  • You can show the officer “demonstrated” interest in his or her school.
  • You have a name of this contact person to whom you can ask questions later by email or phone
  • You may be speaking directly with the admissions officer who will later read and evaluate your application.
  • According to the College Board, sometimes the reps, especially ones from state universities, will do any early evaluation of your profile and help you to assess your fit at that institution and will suggest ways to improve your chances of admissions.

So rather than spend your first semester’s tuition on literal visits, this method is a great starting point.