I recently wrote a piece for the Century City Patch about community service. Can it help you get into college? The answer is this – it can’t hurt. Community service is one of the many ways you can show colleges that you are a real person, with real interests (sometimes referred to as “passion” – … Read more
When I tell people that I received my undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, they usually ask if I am a doctor, or a nurse, or involved in medicine in some way. It’s a question I’ll answer for the rest of my life. I was a political science major. Many people don’t know Hopkins has … Read more
I wrote a short article for the Westwood-Century City Patch recently about how students can keep summer cobwebs away by continuing to work on math and reading throughout their time away from school. I just learned about author James Patterson’s READKIDDOREAD program, which is a collaboration with Patch and wanted to share this resource with … Read more
Sometimes we get so caught up in the college admissions frenzy we forget that 70% of colleges accept 70% or more of the students who apply. In fact, the news that generally surrounds the May 1 national response deadline is about what highly selective colleges have “yielded,” that is, what percentage of the students they … Read more
We all remember the first week of school in the fall – from fifth grade to high school – that first week of school always involved clearing out the cobwebs that grew all summer long. A dormant mind grows cobwebs on top of the math and chemistry formulas we used to know, the literary devices … Read more
The TODAY Show got a rare peek inside a college admissions committee (Grinnell College – Iowa) as they made student acceptance decisions. Notice a few key points: Each applicant gets 10-15 minutes of the committee’s time, after files have been read by two different committee members; Committee members place different levels of importance on transcript, … Read more
I visited two small Southern California private colleges today – both within an hour of Los Angeles. First, I visited Chapman University, and then Whittier College. There is no better way to learn about college campuses than to visit! While the two schools I visited today may look on paper, and online, to be similar, … Read more
It’s April, and that means it’s college decision time. The national deadline for students to submit a deposit and commit to their college of choice is May 1st. So what factors go into making your decision? Just as every student’s search is different, every student will weigh different things before making his/her choice. For a … Read more
On the heels of an SAT cheating scandal uncovered on New York’s Long Island, the College Board, which administers the SAT, will now require students to upload a photograph of themselves when registering for the test, and then provide a photo ID when they take the test. Students had been caught paying other students to … Read more
Below is a short video with some advice on how to select an independent college counselor. I am happy to share that I am a member of both the professional organizations mentioned here: the Independent Educational Consultants’ Association (IECA) and the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). For more information about the membership organizations … Read more