Making the call before May 1

Making the call before May 1

I'm assuming by this point you've already checked all the major information you might want to know about the schools you're considering, things like "can I afford it?", "what's the graduation rate?", and "what's the student-faculty ratio?". You may also be going back for on-campus visits at some of the schools who have accepted you.

I'd like to throw out a few other things you should research before choosing a school. I seriously doubt any of these factors are going to be The Deciding Factor. However, if you end up just "going with your gut feeling" on April 30, these are some things that may end up affecting your gut feeling.

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Jack is ready to make decisions

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Jack is ready to make decisions

I didn't hear back from Jack's March questions until April 1, when I was about to send April questions. So this will count as a March/April installation, and we'll hear back from him after he makes his final decision by May 1. It looks like he's going to be choosing between Pitzer and Brandeis, although you never know how last-minute decisions work out. Read the full interview below, and check back in May to see how things wrap up!

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What if you get a full ride?

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What if you get a full ride?

Let's be clear: getting a full scholarship is very rare. Fewer than one percent of college applicants end up getting to go for free. It takes more than just being a good student who wrote a good application essay. But still, one percent is still thousands of students a year, so you may want to do some thinking and planning, just in case.

Here's a simple rule to help you know how to think about full scholarships: you should not pass up a full ride. If you apply to a school and they offer you a full scholarship, go to that school.

Some book recommendations

Some book recommendations

Last week I gave a talk at a local P.T.O. meeting, explaining to a room of parents why the phrase "it looks good to colleges" is a red flag, what the "Am I worthy?" mindset is, and why it's a better idea to treat college admissions like a relationship. After the talk, a woman asked if I had any books I could recommend. Of course I do! Here are four, in no particular order.

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The Glossary: holistic admissions

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The Glossary: holistic admissions

Most American universities use some form of holistic admissions to determine who they will invite to enroll at their school. "Holistic" means that they look at the whole applicant and the whole application, and it usually means they look at the whole application together. There are no cut-off test scores; there is no formula for how to score and weight each portion of the application; there is no "magic bullet" that will earn you admission or get you rejected. This means that you can't necessarily make sense of the results by only looking at a part, because they take the whole into consideration. So a person may get accepted while someone with lower test scores does not. A person who writes a really crappy essay may still get accepted if the other parts of the application look great. 

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Making the most of a campus tour

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Making the most of a campus tour

My main piece of advice for college campus visits, whether it's a multi-day event or a one-hour walkthrough, is to remember to be an active investigator while you're there. Unless it's just an early practice tour, you're not there to just be led around. Ok, you're literally there to be led around, but not in the big picture.

Dealing with anxiety about leaving your family

Dealing with anxiety about leaving your family

Whether or not you're the first in your family to go to college, whether or not you feel a strong family achievement guilt, you're probably experiencing some level of anxiety about leaving home and your family for college. Even if you live at home, you're still entering a new world and new ways of interacting with your family. There are some strategies that anyone can use to help ease the transition.

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Go on practice college visits

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Go on practice college visits

For many high school students, especially those in the 11th grade, Spring Break is the designated time for college campus visits. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is "normal." Lots of students do this, yes. But lots of students don't do many--or any--visits until they're seniors and visit only schools they've been admitted to. And plenty of students don't visit a college at all until they show up in the fall of their first year as college students. What's "normal" is up to you and what you think is really best for you. While I don't recommend skipping college visits altogether, neither do I recommend going on big multi-campus trips just for the heck of it. 

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Jack has good news!

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Jack has good news!

Jack is beginning to get word back from schools, and most of it so far is good news! But one thing we've learned about Jack over the past six months is that he's always trying to do more. He says that, even though he's been accepted a few places and is still setting up interviews, he kind of wishes he could still apply to more schools. Here's the full interview below.

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Asking for more money

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Asking for more money

Now is the season when acceptance letters begin to arrive for a lot of seniors, and with those come financial aid packages. The bad news is that very few students receive "full ride" scholarship or aid packages that cover everything....When you get your aid offer, you're very likely to want it to be more. You're also pretty likely to need it to be more, though wanting and needing are different. How do you ask for more money?

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The Glossary: demonstrated interest

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The Glossary: demonstrated interest

Demonstrated interest is a term you'll hear often when people talk about college admissions. It means, well, exactly what it says: you've demonstrated that you're interested in a college you've applied to.

It seems like it should be obvious that you're interested if you've applied, but that's not necessarily the case. University admissions staff know that you may have applied because you really want to be there. They know that you may have applied because it's your safety school and not actually someplace you want to be if you can help it. They know that you may have applied because your boyfriend, girlfriend, or best friend applied, and you're actually kind of secretly hoping that you don't get in. They know that your family may have pressured you to apply. They know that you may actually have no idea why you applied--that happens all the time.

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Will a Humanities degree make you poor?

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Will a Humanities degree make you poor?

"I'm an English major. Would you like fries with that?" That was the joke back when I was an English major, and I imagine it's still the joke among English majors today, that four to six years of intense study is only going to put you in a minimum wage job. There's a pretty strong idea in our culture that people earning degrees in the Humanities are going to have difficulty finding good jobs. What exactly do I mean by Humanities? Each school defines its majors and departments a little differently, but as a rule of thumb think of degrees that require almost no math or science but lots of reading, and aren't geared toward a specific career. English, History, Philosophy, Religion, Languages. Things like that. 

But does this stereotype hold up?

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Getting good advice from your family

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Getting good advice from your family

I was a little surprised to read last week that the people who have the most influence on high school students' college decisions is their parents. (You can read the full Department of Education report here.) For an example of why I found that surprising, consider that a friend told me that the number one question his high schooler son asks him about college is "why do you keep talking to me about college?" But it also makes sense, because your parents have been talking to you about college, directly or indirectly, like it or not, a lot longer than anyone else has. Unless you're going to completely ignore your family and go straight to the second-largest influence, "myself," you can get the most wisdom from what your family says to you.

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Two approaches to getting waitlisted

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Two approaches to getting waitlisted

You finally heard back from the school you really want to attend, and they put you on the waitlist. First, let me acknowledge that getting waitlisted sucks. In some ways a straight-up No would feel better than a Maybe, because then you could just start accepting the No and move on. But a Maybe? It both gives you hope that there might be a Yes, but also makes you act as though it's a No. It stinks.

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The Glossary: Ivy

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The Glossary: Ivy

So what makes the Ivy League schools so special? A few things. One is that they're old, so they've had a lot more time than many universities to differentiate themselves. Harvard is the oldest college in the U.S., founded in 1636. Cornell is the young one of the league, founded in 1865. The other six were all founded in the 18th century.

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The Glossary: merit aid and need-based aid

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The Glossary: merit aid and need-based aid

College is expensive. Very expensive. Which is why most students receive some form of financial aid to help them pay for it. There's all kinds of terminology for all kinds of different financial aid, but let's first look at two broad categories.

Merit aid. This type of aid isn't based on financial need. It's a school's way of trying to entice you to enroll by lowering the cost for you.