Favorite Things: Scholarships

One past STES student's family insisted upon hiring a private consultant to search for scholarships. While this sounds like a good idea, the way this student used that resource actually may have hindered the search for scholarships. This student chose to ignore all other scholarship opportunities and notices save those the consultant provided, so the student ended up missing out on the scholarships I emailed about in my weekly emails. For example, there are a few scholarships out there that are by nomination only or allow only one applicant per school, so I will email all senior students and families and solicit nominations on a first-come, first-served basis. It was striking that every time that student came to me to request a transcript for a scholarship the consultant had suggested, the scholarship in hand was one that I had emailed about two weeks before, and for which I had already nominated another student. It turned out that the consultant and I were on all the same mailing lists--I just happened to get the information out sooner than she did.

As many of you know, I send out a weekly counseling newsletter to all seniors and their parents. This newsletter contains notes on upcoming college visits, upcoming workshops on campus, looming deadlines, and, most notably, information on new scholarships. I get a lot of scholarship fliers in the mail, and I always digitize them and email them to families in the weekly counseling newsletter. I also keep the hard copies in my office for students to peruse, if they are so inclined. I've found that this is a helpful way to get out information, and I'm always open to new suggestions if there's a better way to disseminate such information.

In general, I think it's a little sketchy to pay to receive a scholarship--the point is that you should be the one receiving money, right? The three best scholarship search sites that I know of are reputable and free: they are scholarships.com, fastweb.com, and zinch.com. Simply visit these sites, fill out a profile about yourself, and you'll get a list of scholarships for which you are eligible. Apply to those that interest you and can be done in reasonably short order; avoid the ones that will take an eon to fill out.Continue Reading...

Favorite Things: The Application Itself

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I plan to spend this week commenting on different services available to you as you move through the college admissions process, with a special focus on how to connect to the most useful tools out there that are either A) free, or B) already being paid for through your school tuition. I encourage you to post your own "favorite things" in the comments sections of these posts, both to share your own experiences and to ask questions of me and other families.

Today, I'll talk about the heart of the college admission process: the application itself.

APPLICATION MATERIALS
In the category of "things you already pay for", there's me. I'll be the one handling your transcript, counselor recommendation letter, teacher recommendation letter, mid-year report, and final report from the school. Your family already pays for this service, and I'm happy to do it.

For your information, all materials are tracked through a spreadsheet I back up online at the end of every day, through return receipt postcards I send with all materials, and with follow-up phone calls between me and the schools to which you'll apply. Please know that any time a college says that they don't have something and we're certain that they do have it, I'm glad to call and stay on hold for more than an hour until we get things sorted out. (There's a reason that I now know U of H's holding music by heart.) I keep redundant records of everything I send and a record of when it went and who signed for it on the college's end, so your materials and information are well tracked and well protected. If this sounds a little over-the-top, please know that it's indicative of how seriously I take this process. Each of you has worked hard in high school and you'll work hard on your applications, and it's important to me that all of your materials make it to their intended destinations in the best form possible. It's all part of my commitment to advocacy for each of you.

APPLICATION ADVICE

This is the real heart of the article I posted about yesterday. As many of you know, I have two and a half hours of office hours every day, and I'm glad to meet with you and your families at any time. I also do workshops on a nearly monthly basis, and I cover topics including financial aid, college visits, the application process, and issues and trends in college admissions. I'm open to doing more workshops if the demand is there, and I also do a big college night for ninth through eleventh grade parents in early October. There's a senior parents' night during the first week of school, and I have my annual senior application workshop coming up in August. I also do tons of work with seniors as they write and edit their essays, and I'm glad to have people submit their applications from my computer. My office is also a home base for students during the day when they need to call colleges regarding parts of their applications.

In addition to these services, I've built the College Counseling web portal in Edline, I've created this blog, and I'm always available via phone and email for your questions. As always, I encourage you to take advantage of my time and tools as much as possible. I'm here for you, and I'm glad to help.

While that's a lot of resources, some families might choose to get more information outside my resources. My favorite resources out there are from non-profits that give detailed, nuanced information about colleges and the college admissions process. My favorite website is http://www.collegeboard.com, because its search tools are powerful and can be customized via a connection to your past PSAT scores. I adore their college search tools and their information on choosing majors and careers. I also love big books that offer profiles of colleges. I think there's only one good way to list colleges: alphabetically. Books like these offer deep insights into what different colleges have to offer and what it takes to get in, so I find these books are great to have around and peruse.

I also have two favorite books that I've recommended to you. The first is Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope, which I've referred to elsewhere on the blog as a resource for learning about the landscape and priorities of a fit-centered college admissions process. CTCL is a book that spotlights forty outstanding schools around the United States that offer an outstanding undergraduate education. Many will be completely new to you, and there's a lesson in that: you may not have heard yet of the school that will be perfect for you, and there are a lot of great places out there beyond the schools you hear about frequently in the news or in the BCS standings.

The other is Less Stress, More Success, by Marilee Jones, the former director of admissions at MIT. It's a great book about how to construct a college search whose focus is all about fit. Yes, college admission is more competitive than ever, but that fact doesn't have to bog you down or guide you as you move through it. It's possible to focus on the more important things about college (size, campus culture, educational offerings, student life, career placement, graduate placement) rather than getting preoccupied with statistics and rankings.

The two sources I caution you against most are lists of colleges (like the US News and World Report) and college admission message boards. Lists are frustrating because they never tell the whole story. For example, in the 2009 rankings, UT is ranked 47th among "National Universities" [which isn't even a real thing, outside of the US News and World Report], while Texas A&M in College Station is ranked 64th. But what does that mean? What is it that makes UT 17 units "above" A&M? There are big differences between those schools that 17 units can't adequately describe; one is urban, the other more rural. One has a vet school, the other doesn't. One has an outstanding journalism school; the other is exceptionally strong in business and engineering. There's so much more to knowing about schools than some arbitrary ranking, so don't ever let a ranking be the only tool you use to measure a school. There's always more to the story.

Finally, I can't overstate how much I HATE college admissions message boards. There are a couple of particularly offensive ones out there, and I can't caution you enough against them. Remember, the internet is a large and anonymous place, so there's nothing to stop someone from going on to the Harvard Class of 2014 message board and posting that her fictional daughter has a 2400 on the SAT, 5's on 14 AP tests, and a Nobel Peace Prize. The other people on those message boards are NOT NECESSARILY TELLING THE TRUTH, so they're 1) not a reliable source of information, and 2) just a quick way to psych yourself out. Sadly, there are people out there who enjoy intimidating others, and my experience is that such characters tend to troll such message boards with alarming frequency. Just stay away from these people. They're no fun.

In the end, please know that no one source--not even me--is the final word on the landscape of applying to college. I encourage you to check out lots of sources as you search for information on college admissions. There's a lot to know about this process, and every source you find is going to give you just one of its many dimensions.

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Independent College Counselors: A Discussion

There was an interesting article in last week's New York Times (find it here, and find the blog post plus comments here) that has piqued a lot of interest online. It's about the independent college counseling industry and its impact on the college admissions process. The article seems to skew a little toward the extreme: it describes independent counselors who charge upwards of $20,000 and "guarantee" a student admission to his or her first-choice college. If this sounds too good to be true, you're right, and if it sounds over the top, you're right again.

In general, this high price--and the high demand for the service that price buys--speaks to the fact that college admissions is an extremely challenging and stressful process. However, it doesn't have to be that way. This process really can be about a fit-centered search that's all about you and your particular academic needs and career goals. It doesn't have to be a hyper-competitive, panic-inducing process.

Perhaps my favorite reply to that article came in the "Letters" section on NYTimes.com the following week. It came from a current undergraduate at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Re “Before College, Costly Advice Just on Getting In” (front page, July 19):

Reading this article made me extremely angry. I cannot believe that people have no shame in charging so much for college counseling. It’s too bad that we live in a society whose culture dictates such crazed behavior to get kids into certain schools.

The only necessary ingredients to get into a good school are passion, dedication and good old hard work. There is nothing magical about these counselors other than the spell they cast on bank accounts.

Students should find something, or several things, that they love and care about and work hard to become the best they can be. Kids have gotten into top colleges writing about buying milk, Barbies and, for me, my perseverance with piano. Study hard, maintain a healthy lifestyle and stay positive. That’s it.

S. Susan Zhu

Paris, July 19, 2009

The writer is a student at Harvard.

I don't want to diminish how difficult applying to college is; however, I do want to offer some advice about how to be a savvy consumer as you and your family journey toward college. And I want to do that in a way that doesn't break the bank.

As you know, I'm a big fan of free services and getting the most out of the things you're already paying for, so here's Mrs Kievlan's Guide to Savvy College Admissions Consumerism. Over the next few days, I'll be offering some posts on my "favorite things" out there in college admission advising and preparation. Please feel free to comment and discuss these options and add your own contributions. I'm glad to moderate and answer questions.

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"Test Optional": A Good Thing, or a Bad Thing?

As you've heard me say before, the SAT and ACT are important, but they are never the only factor in a student's admission to college. Back in May, I did a little social experiment to prove this point. I posted a flier I'd gotten from the Princeton Review outside my door. It listed a middle 50% of SAT scores for admitted students from the past year at about 150 colleges around the country, most of them in the northeast. As students from the class of 2010 gathered around the door, it was great to hear their conversation evolve:

"Are you kidding--the average scores at MIT are all above 700?!"

"These scores are so high! We're never going to get into any of these schools!"

"These must be the best schools in the country if they're on this list!"

[Pause.]

"Wait...where's UT? And where's A&M? They're not on the list?"

"Why aren't those schools on here? Why is some crummy place in Pennsylvania with an average scores of 540 on this list?"

"I know TCU is better than like half of the schools on here. It should totallly be on this list!"

"If TCU isn't on here, what other schools are missing? This list doesn't tell us anything."

"Wait, this is just some random list! It doesn't mean anything at all."

As I listened from my desk, I was proud to hear our students sort out two important points. First, SAT scores aren't the only important aspect of a college application. Second, random college lists generated by test-prep organizations based in the northeast are just that: random lists.

In any case, there are schools out there that are trying to move away from the SAT and ACT by becoming "test optional." That is, these schools do not require applicants to submit their SAT and ACT scores when applying. The argument goes that these tests aren't all that they're cracked up to be in terms of indicating college success, and so some colleges don't require them in the name of equity and fairness. While more and more schools join this movement each year, there are a lot of politics involved in that decision. You can read more about it here in the New York Times.

In general, the point is this: not requiring the SAT or ACT does not necessarily mean a college is being all warm and fuzzy toward its applicants. In the most cynical scenario, it raises the profile of a school based on incomplete and misleading information. For example, let's say that Example University has an average SAT math score of 550, and they then decide to go test-optional. The applicants who do well on the SAT and ACT are still going to submit their scores: they're proud of them, and they want to get credit for how well they did on these tests. The applicants who didn't do so well aren't going to submit their scores. This means that the only test scores Example U got are pretty high SAT scores--and in the worst cases, these are the only scores they'll report to ranking organizations like US News and World Report.

This means that a school that goes from test-required to test-optional might have its average SAT Math score shoot up from a 550 to a 650 in a single year, thus making it look like the school got a lot more selective or a lot more impressive. Once the SAT scores go up, their US News and World Report ranking goes up, which gets the school more visibility and which makes more people apply to the now-inexplicably-prestigious Example U. Then, Example U gets more applications, and since they still have only 2500 freshman spots they reject more students, making themselves look even more selective. Becoming more selective makes their ranking in the US News and World Report go up, thus whipping up additional frenzy and making things get more and more out of control.

This is the most cynical version of what can happen; schools like Muhlenberg College, Providence College, and Wake Forest University are test-optional but go to the trouble to report every freshman's SAT score. In any case, please use this information as one more indicator that there is no magic bullet in college admissions. There's a lot of information out there, and no one piece can paint the whole picture of what a college is all about.

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From The Choice Blog: More College Tours

There's a fun post on NYT's "The Choice" blog today about another high school counselor's summer college tour. This tour was unique for its vehicle: a touring bike à la the Tour de France. Suddenly the 1997 Chevy Blazer I borrowed from my aunt and uncle in New England seems a lot less stylish.

You can read the post on "The Choice" here. This is a pretty neat idea for a college tour, I think: like my long drives through the wilds of Vermont and Western Mass, taking a bike tour is a great way to get an intimate sense of a place. The counselors' tour in this post took counselors from across the country to several of the best schools in the Mid-Atlantic region, and it sounds like they covered a remarkable amount of ground. If you take anything from this article, I hope it's a quick laugh and a quick Google search for the schools he mentions. Several--especially Franklin and Marshall, Skidmore, and St John's College--are really special places, and I'd love to get them on your radar.Continue Reading...

Welcome to New England!

Greetings, STES families! I've completed my New England college tour adventure and I've brought back a ton of stories and photos for you to explore. Please use the links at right or the "older posts" link at the bottom of this page to access my posts on each school I visited during my trip.

Also, if you have any posts you'd like to share from your own college visits, feel free to send them along! You'll find more information about the process if you follow the "Continue reading" link below.

If you have any further questions about my trip, please feel free to email me! I'll be glad to go into greater detail about any of the schools I saw. For now, happy reading!

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To submit a college visit blog post, just send me the following:
**any photos you took during your visit, preferably as JPGs.
**a brief post telling us about your adventure, between 300 and 1000 words.
**your anonymity preference. If you would prefer to submit a post without me making your name public, I will be glad to do that. I'm happy to have any and all contributions, and I'm happy to keep your name confidential.

Thank you in advance for your submissions! Happy visiting!Continue Reading...