I’m on the record as being fine with Legacy. I ran a blog post two years ago called “What’s wrong with Legacy admissions?” and I still stand by it. In fact, I’d like to reiterate why I’m not as bothered by Legacy as the New York Times editorial board. It’s not that I think it’s a perfect policy that needs to be defended at all costs; I’m just not nearly as bothered by it as the Times.
Meet the Class is back for a third year! It’s an opportunity for parents, educators, and admissions professionals to get a look at individual seniors and what they go through to find their school. Below you’ll meet Diana. Diana is stressed and feels like she’s at the very beginning of the process. Read her full first interview below.
Meet the Class is back for a third year! It’s an opportunity for parents, educators, and admissions professionals to get a look at individual seniors and what they go through to find their school. Below you’ll meet Jenna. Like a lot of seniors, she has some strong ideas about what she wants, but isn’t as sure about how to get it. Read her full first interview below.
Meet the Class is back for a third year! It’s an opportunity for parents, educators, and admissions professionals to get a look at individual seniors and what they go through to find their school. Below you’ll meet Katie, who is quite ambitious—she plans to apply to around 25 schools. Read her full first interview below.
High school students have to study. (I’m using “study” to mean all the academic work that has to be done outside of class: reading, homework, working on a project, preparing for a test…all the stuff.) There’s lots of advice out there about different techniques of studying. How to take notes. How to read quickly but effectively. How to review before a test. But I don’t like to recommend certain study techniques. Different techniques work for different people; what works great for me may be disastrous for you. It takes trial and error.
What I’m more concerned with are the routines and habits behind those techniques, the background. I’m much more interested in recommending the culture of studying. And the more I think about the culture of studying, the more I realize students should think about studying the same way they think about bathing.
Studying, it turns out, is a lot like showering.
This has an academic side—take the most rigorous classes you can, get the best grades you can, be involved in your education. But just as important at this point are the social and emotional sides. You’re easing your way into a new and exciting (and challenging) place. You’re going to have missteps, and you’re going to change your mind about things. That’s normal, and that’s fine.
This is a tough line to walk senior year. On one hand, you really ought to be shifting your focus to next year. You have a lot of big decisions to make, and you need to allocate time and resources to working on strong applications and making informed decisions. Your daily high school homework isn’t quite as compelling as it was a year ago. On the other hand, you also need to be preparing yourself to be a good college student, and the best way to prepare for college is to be a good high school student.
It’s a question I hear all the time: “I got _____ on the SAT. Is that good?” Everyone would like to know that their test scores are good. That they’re valuable, that they’re going to help a student get what she wants, like admission to a top-choice college or a scholarship. The problem, of course, is that none of us are quite sure what makes a test score “good.”
What I’d like to do today is go over all the ways I can think to answer that question, from the fairly objective to the completely dysfunctional. There are a lot of ways to think about your test scores.
As the new school year looms closer, it's time to think about your goals for the upcoming year. One mistake many students make is waiting until later in the year, often when something is going wrong, to think about their goals and aspirations. Of course you think about your goals and aspirations, but I mean thinking in a deliberate and analytical way. To do this, you're going to need to write your goals down. Let's take three typical goals for smart, ambitious high school students: make good grades, get a leadership position, and have less stress.
I was an AP Lit teacher for nine years, so I have fond memories of summer reading. I always read everything I assigned to my students, every year. So I did the summer reading along with them (or at least a few of them. I'm not naive, most of them didn't do the summer reading).
You've got, more or less, a month left of summer. If you haven't completed your assigned summer reading yet, now is the time. You must read your summer reading assignments.
Last week I was inspired and energized, though. I was invited to be one of the instructors at a week-long college admissions essay writing workshop. Even though I was brought on as an admissions coach and gave talks about things like test scores and how to understand holistic admissions, the organizers still let me lead a workshop group of six students as they took a college application essay from planning to a third draft. It was exciting to see people get real help from peer review, and all week I kept thinking to myself “people can do this at home.”
So today I’d like to share what made the workshop successful, and how a small group of students could set up their own workshop of peers.
Every year from September to May, Apply with Sanity follows several seniors as they make it through their college application journey. It’s called Meet the Class, and you can read all the posts from the last two years here.
I’m looking for a few seniors who would like to participate this year.
The middle of the summer is the absolute worst time to think about productive morning routines. It's a time meant for staying up late and sleeping even later. Which means, of course, that now is the absolute best time to begin thinking about morning routines! You need to start planning the routine before you need it.
Last weekend I was fortunate to be one of the presenters at a college access workshop presented by Wonderworks, an enrichment program sponsored by Rice and the University of Houston. The pre-written text of my talk, called “Temporary Insanity: College Admission, American Style” is below. I welcome your comments and questions!
A few years ago The Atlantic published this article by Joe Pinsker titled "Rich Kids Study English." It's a really fascinating piece that I hope you'll take the time to read, but here's the main idea: "the amount of money a college student’s parents make does correlate with what that person studies. Kids from lower-income families tend toward 'useful' majors, such as computer science, math, and physics. Those whose parents make more money flock to history, English, and performing arts." Hence the title. Pinsker looks at several explanations and unanswered questions about this connection with having wealthier parents and choosing lower-paying career paths. "It’s speculative," he says, "but richer students might be going on to take lower-paying jobs because they have the knowledge that their parents’ money will arrive eventually."
While the premise makes sense--if your family has more money and support then you can afford not to worry about paychecks as much when choosing your college classes--it's not the full picture.
We’ve all got those words, phrases, and sentences that we use all the time. I over-use the word “apparently,” and some quick searches through this blog make me realize I apparently also over-use the phrase “all the time.” But behind the words and sentences that we repeat often are the ideas and worldviews that drive us. So this week I thought I’d explain the thoughts and motives behind some of the sentences I use most in my job as someone who writes about college admissions and advises students on their own admissions paths.
One of my Five Foundations of Applying with Sanity is to “be a person, not a résumé.” By that I mean to remember to think of yourself as an authentic person with complexity and contradictions, not just a list of achievements and statistics. That’s really important as a metaphor. But often you need a literal résumé. Scholarship applications may ask for a résumé. College applications sometimes (but not too often) ask for a résumé. Teachers and counselors may want a résumé to help them compose a recommendation letter. Potential employers very often ask for a résumé—that’s what résumés were created for. On top of that, it can be a useful exercise to go through and organize your thoughts about yourself and what you want to say about yourself. So with all that in mind, here are some things to consider when putting together, or revising, your résumé.
It’s summer time, and for a lot of people—especially rising seniors—that means college campus visits. Some people take time to visit colleges near them. Some incorporate campus tours into their summer family vacations. Some make campus tours the whole point of the vacation. Some…never tour a campus and do just fine. So let’s talk about visiting campuses in the summer.
