Asking a favor

Hello smart and ambitious Apply with Sanity readers,

Will you please take a few minutes to do me a quick favor?

Please find one of your favorite recent posts and share it with someone who would like to read it. Sending it directly to a person is good; sharing widely on social media is good; both is great.

I don’t run annoying ads, throw pop-ups at your screen, or ask for money. But a quick share would mean a lot to Apply with Sanity’s mission to provide useful and free advice to college-bound high school students.

Thank you so much! The next update will be this Thursday.

Photo by David Leggett

Photo by David Leggett

Stop doing that

Stop doing that

With that story in mind, I want to encourage you to stop doing the things that aren’t making you a better student or happier person, even if those things are generally considered good. You already know you should stop giving in to your “bad” habits; we all know that. But if a “good” habit, like my student’s thorough re-reading of dictionary definitions, isn’t helping you, then please let it go.

What should 9th graders be doing this spring?

What should 9th graders be doing this spring?

You're half way through your first year of high school, and there's so much to deal with. There are often a lot of positive things associated with this time: establishing new friendships and networks, trying out interesting electives, learning practical skills. But there's also plenty of negative things to deal with: disappointment, feeling overwhelmed, feeling disorganized, having difficulty figuring out where you belong. Take time--not just once but at least once a week--to identify what's going well and what isn't.

What should sophomores be doing this spring?

What should sophomores be doing this spring?

Everyone’s experience is different, I get that. But there’s a really good chance that this semester is going to be your Golden Age. For one, you’re almost half way through high school and have got the hang of it. You’re not a clueless and picked-on Freshman any more. You’ve cultivated relationships with fellow students and, hopefully, a teacher or two. And also, the big jump to more rigorous courses and more college pressure usually doesn't begin in full until the 11th grade. 

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Faulkner had some setbacks

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Faulkner had some setbacks

Faulkner had a good Thanksgiving, and she’s got support from her family. However, she had a clerical setback in early December and didn’t get some of her applications finished in time—including a top-choice school. Read the entire December interview below, and look forward to better news in January!

What should seniors be doing this spring?

What should seniors be doing this spring?

It may seem silly to talk about being a good high school student in the spring semester of your senior year, but the fact remains that you're still in high school and there's still more to be done. And yes, I'm very aware of "senioritis." Your parents and teachers may not want me to say it, but slowing down your last semester is completely normal and fine.

Dealing with bad news

Dealing with bad news

It’s mid-December, so acceptance letters (or emails, or notifications on portals) are coming in for early applicants. That means, of course, that denials are also coming in for early applicants. All denials—colleges use “denial” instead of the harsher and more emotional “rejection”—feel bad, but the first one feels the worst. It especially feels worse if it’s from an Early Decision or Early Action application and you were hoping to be done with the whole process by now. I spent an entire morning reading through web pages on “how to deal with rejection,” and most of them deal with being rejected by someone you ask out or being fired from a job. So here is my college admissions-specific advice about working through your first—or second, or twelfth—skinny envelope.

Don't submit that Mission Trip essay!

Don't submit that Mission Trip essay!

If you’re finishing up your college application essay and it has to do with a mission trip you were part of, I’m going to ask you not to submit it. At least not yet.

Some of the most common complaints against the Mission Trip essay is that it is cliché and therefore admissions officers are really tired of reading it because all the mission trip essays sound the same. To be clear: both these things are true. But I really don’t like that as a reason to avoid the Mission Trip essay. It reinforces the idea that your job is to write something the admissions officers will like, so they’ll like you and admit you—if you know they don’t like that essay topic, then you shouldn’t write about.

But your job isn’t to be a product that you’re “selling” to the colleges, and you shouldn’t change what you write about based on the idea that your meaningful experience isn’t valuable because colleges are tired of hearing about it.

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Faulkner is chugging along

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Faulkner is chugging along

Faulkner had been working toward a lot of the same goals and deadlines as most other high school seniors. She’s taking the SAT one more time, finishing up her first college application, looking ahead to sending out a big batch of applications through the Common Application. On top of all that, she’s taking actual college courses at an actual college for her high school. Read all about her progress below!

What should you do over the winter break?

What should you do over the winter break?

I know that late November is a little early to start suggesting things to do over the winter break. But a) admit it: now that Thanksgiving is over, you’re already thinking about your winter break, and b) since “don’t do any more college stuff than you absolutely have to” is one of my suggestions, you may want to plan ahead a little. Read all my advice below. Do you have any other good advice I left out? Leave it in a comment, we’d all love to hear it.

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Kati has an acceptance!

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Kati has an acceptance!

For many people, there’s something special that happens when they get their first college acceptance. College gets a bit more concrete and a lot less abstract. Possibility becomes more clear. Reality feels more real. This seems to be the case for Kati, who got her acceptance to the University of Texas at Austin. She knew she had automatic acceptance coming, but making it official has still allowed her to cut down her to-do list a little bit. Read the whole interview below.

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The State of College Admissions

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The State of College Admissions

The National Association for College Admissions Counseling, or NACAC, released its annual “State of College Admissions” report. The report is based on a survey of over 2,200 high school counselors and almost 500 college admissions officers. You can read the full report here. It’s worth at least browsing and checking out the charts. Here are my top take-aways for smart, ambitious college-bound high school students.

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Grace sent out all her applications

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Grace sent out all her applications

Grace surprised me this month. I knew she planned to apply Early Action to a few of her top choice schools, but I also knew that she had a lot of extracurricular expectations with the school play. So I was not expecting to hear that she took the extra time to go ahead and just send out all 10 of her applications early. But that’s what she did, and she says it feels great. Read the full interview below, and catch up on Grace’s past interviews here.

More about recommendation letters

More about recommendation letters

joined a Facebook group of college counselors and consultants recently, and this week there was an interesting conversation. Basically, a counselor had realized that some of the teachers at their school were writing student recommendation letters that were badly written, form letters, or both. Lots of others commented that the counselor should do something immediately, perhaps instigate refresher training for teachers on the campus, or maybe even district-wide. And it hit me that I was a high school teacher for 17 years who wrote dozens of rec letters, and I’d never had any sort of training or guidance. Unlike at some other districts, we just had to figure it out. Or not.

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What's important about the Harvard trial

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What's important about the Harvard trial

Arguments in the Harvard trial wrapped up last week, and the judge is expected to make a ruling some time in the next few months. If you haven’t been following the case, here’s a pretty good summary of what you’d need to know.

Before I talk about the Harvard trial, I want to explain why I wasn’t going to talk about the Harvard trial.

Yes, you can write about that

Yes, you can write about that

One of the most common questions I got from students working on their college application essays when I was a high school teacher was "Is it okay to write about...?"

Is it okay to write about my depression? Is it okay to write about coming out as homosexual? Is it okay to write about how I used to be a really bad student? Is it okay to write about being an abuse survivor? Is it okay to talk about being bullied? Is it okay to talk about the time I was a bully?

Yes, it is okay.