Do Your Research « Application Boot Camp – College Admissions, Admissions Counseling, College Acceptance Help

Do Your Research

Once you’ve finished doing your taxes, you can turn your
attention to more important matters…like your children’s
education! For those of you with current juniors, this means
encouraging a strong finish this year, pushing grades up,
planning for a testing schedule that allows for all tests to be
completed before leaving for summer vacation, and doing
research on appropriate colleges.

Sign up NOW for our Application Boot Camp® 2010 as we
have a few spots left in each session to help with ALL of the
aspects of the application process!

DO YOUR RESEARCH

We can’t tell you how many times kids report to us that they want
to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc… but when we
ask them why, they have no good reason. Now that you have to give
up the early round to “wait” for Harvard or Princeton, it’s key
to have a specific reason. Colleges want to know why you are
applying—are you impressed by their world-famous chemistry
program? The well-known English department? The art history
department with a specialty in Renaissance art?

Oftentimes students with particular interests do themselves a
great disservice by not bothering to check if the schools on their list
match their own academic interest. For example, if you like
ancient languages, you’d want to apply to a school that at least
offered classes in Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Sanskrit and the like.
You may find that schools that you’d barely considered before end
up being top in the country in particular areas. How can you
check? First, it’s often helpful to consult the graduate rankings
in a publication like US News and World Report, although keep in
mind that sometimes graduate programs and faculty are separate
from the undergraduate, sometimes shared. Once you have that list,
comb the web sites, course guides and published information from
colleges to see if they are strong in your area(s) of interest.
You should also pick up a copy of Rugg’s Recommendations On the
Colleges. Finally, call the school or visit and speak to professors, visit
the library, check out the holdings—in short, make an informed
decision about where you are applying and why.

Also, bear in mind that if you state a reason for applying to a
school, it should be an academic reason. Unless a particular
school has an extracurricular program that is truly unique (and,
ideally, ties in to an academic interest), the school is going to
care far more about what you want to study than about the
backpacking trips you want to lead and the underprivileged
children you want to tutor. Those are all great things, but
clubs, community service programs, and intramural sports are
available at almost every college these days.

COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY GUIDANCE

After you have done your research and have compiled a list of schools,
begin working on your applications. Focus your main essay
on an area of academic interest, and end your essay for each
application differently with a specific “why” paragraph
pertaining to what you learned in your research and why that
school would be the best fit for you academically. Enter our Lead
Editor, Josh Stephens. Josh has worked with Application Boot
Camp® for six years, helping students craft the perfect essays to
complement their applications and really show why you belong at
your top choice school.

Click here to sign up for Josh’s five hour essay package!

Don’t wait as Josh’s packages fill up quickly!
“Thank you for recommending Josh. He is absolutely outstanding
and a terrific asset to your team. I would recommend him to anyone
without reservation. I was somewhat skeptical at first since the
communication between Josh and Jake has been entirely via the
Internet. However, Josh exceeded any of my expectations for
responsiveness, creativity and providing practical recommendations.
One of more significant results is that with Josh’s advice Jake has
become more confident and the quality of his essays have improved
considerably.”
— Peter S. (Father)

TESTING TIPS

Top tips for maximizing your efforts on the upcoming spring AP tests.

1. Create your own marking system in order to pace yourself. You
should spend, at most, 30 seconds examining each question. After
the much time, you should either select the correct answer, or
mark the question with a “Y” or an “N” – questions marked with a
Y are questions that you know how to solve, but that you need
more time to work on. Questions marked with a N are questions
that you do not know how to solve, and should only be revisited
if you have time later on. Doing this will make sure that you
stay on pace and get a much better feel for the entire test.

2. Points are deducted for incorrect answers – therefore, never
guess unless you can eliminate at least 2 choices. However, once
you have eliminated two choices, it’s always statistically
correct to guess. If you can ever manage to eliminate a few
wrong answers, always play the odds and take a crack at the
answer.

3. Relax the night before the exam. The AP isn’t something you
can cram for – it tests knowledge that you’ve accumulated over
the course of an entire year (or longer). The night before the
exam, turn your brain off – watch TV with your buddies, get a big
meal, and go to sleep really early. Nothing will hurt your
performance more than staying up late the night before the exam
studying material. Conversely, no amount of studying can make up
for a great night’s sleep.

4. On the essay portion, only write as much as you have to say.
The essays on AP exams are graded only for their structure and
content – there are no bonuses for length. Make sure to write a
concise, well-crafted argument with an introduction, a supporting
body, and a conclusion. If you ever find yourself writing for
writing’s sake, stop – a short, clear essay is much better than a
long, rambling treatise on your topic.

5. Make sure to submit your scores to your college! Assuming
that you do well, you want to make sure that you get your results
to your future school so that you can get credit for taking the
exam. Find the submission deadlines for your particular school
and make sure to meet them – the credits you gain from your AP
exams might allow you to take more electives when you get to
college.

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