School’s out – it’s time to start your college essays! Can’t figure out where to start? Here are a few quick links to resources to help you brainstorm as you begin writing your college essays! Here are the Common Application essay prompts for the Class of 2019 (write one of the 7 prompts; max word count … Read more
One of our clients’ parents recently forwarded an email from his alumni association – he attended an Ivy League university. The message was sent to alumni who are involved in interviewing students for this particular university, and it noted that of the about 35,000 applications this university received last fall from the Class of 2018, … Read more
A few months ago, in an effort to help you understand why you shouldn’t start with college rankings as you begin building your college list, we published this blog post with a detailed breakdown of the US News & World Report college ranking methodology. We also did a webinar on this topic; during the first … Read more
Want to get a head start on your college essays and applications? Magellan College Counseling will offer six college application workshops for local students in June and August. For current Magellan clients, these college application workshops are FREE! Dates and locations are below; all workshops will run from 10 am to 1 pm. For everyone … Read more
If you’ve received a college wait list offer, you may be wondering how this will impact your decision-making process. Here is a bit of information that may help you make some decisions! If I get a college wait list offer, should I take it? Most colleges require you to opt-in to accept a place on … Read more
Here’s a quick tip for California families traveling east for college visits: don’t rent a car! Public transit and the train system on the east coast are great…take advantage! If you’re going to any combination of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington, D.C., there’s really no need to rent a car. You can get … Read more
We run our kids to band practice, soccer practice, tennis lessons and dance class. We spend our weekends pacing along the sidelines of a game, or a match, or watching a dress rehearsal. Why do we do all this? Why do colleges care so much about students’ extra-curricular activities? I went to a friend’s son’s … Read more
Quick note: this is a long post; if you’d rather absorb this information via video, Evelyn’s webinar based on this post is here. Have you ever gone onto Yelp to look at a restaurant’s reviews? Ever run into this weird situation where the same restaurant has some people who LOVE it, give it 5 stars … Read more
Contribute to a Club This comment typically results in a giant eye roll from high schoolers, but hear us out! It is a small investment on time that could potentially reap great rewards. If you haven’t participated in a club thus far, now’s the time to do some investigating and commit to participating in something … Read more
When a parent first calls us, they invariably report to us their child’s most recent semester GPA – in weighted format. We usually have to break the bad news that the GPA for college admissions purposes is a student’s unweighted, academic, 9th grade through 11th grade GPA. And it’s almost always lower than you think … Read more