Insider Tips
Summer Stuff
Colleges care a LOT about how a student does in the fall of senior year. They’re looking for consistently strong students to maintain their grades, and they’ll be looking for up-and-down students to begin their year on an upswing. Plus, usually students are taking a very rigorous course load senior fall (and if not, you should be), and they want to see how well you perform in your AP level classes. But, if you save all the applications until fall, you’ll find they take up all your time and you won’t have energy to do well in your classes—and THAT is shooting yourself in the foot!
For 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th graders, summer should be a time of 1) READING; 2) keeping a vocab notebook; 3) doing SAT prep, especially if you’re a rising junior since this will be the last time you have time to really prep before the PSAT and SAT will follow! 4) pursuing one of your passions in depth.
Summers are strategically important—they are really the only time most students can get anything done since school often takes up all of their time during the school year. Do not squander your summers. By all means have some rest and relaxation, but make sure you have a good book with you.
Don’t Forget to Say WHY
You’ll notice that few colleges (and none that use the Common Application, unless they have a supplement) ask anywhere on their application WHY you’re interested in their college in the first place. That’s too bad because they really do want to know. Between two kids with similar scores and profiles, they will always pick the student who offers specific reasons behind his choice. They figure that the enthusiastic student will be more likely to accept an offer of admission, and colleges care very much about their yield.
You’ll want to add a paragraph to your main essay (or just append a short WHY paragraph) about why you are applying, but don’t fall into the trap that many students make in which they offer only generic reasons for liking the school’s location or campus or, even worse, simply recount the school’s virtues from their brochure. Focus instead on specific programs or academic opportunities rather than simply saying you like the campus or the outdoors. Show them that you’ve done your homework and that you know what makes their school unique and different—and about how those differences relate to your interests, personality, and goals.
When you visit each campus, try to connect with a professor in your area of interest so you can then leverage that info in your WHY paragraph. Again, feel free to add a short paragraph in one of your essays that details why you are applying and why that school is one of your top choices. If you’ve had a chance to visit, mention what impressed you the most. Again, be specific. You’ll find yourself with many more options come decision time.
Establish a Common Bond With Your Interviewer
We spend so much time helping our students with interviewing techniques that we have a brief list of tips to help those who face interviews this summer or next fall for an alumni interview:
1. Don’t be afraid to focus in and expand upon a subject that interests you. You do not have to cover EVERYTHING as the admissions office will also have your complete file when they read your application. That’s why it’s OK to spend 20 minutes talking about your love of Greek and Latin, especially if your interviewer happens to share that love. If you find a common bond, follow up! There are no rules to what must be covered.
2. Look the interviewer in the eye — it’s off-putting to stare down at your feet.
3. Make sure you have substantive questions, not just typical questions you could find the answers to in the view book or web site. If the interviewer attended the school, ask pointed questions about what he or she liked or didn’t like about the school.
4. After the interview, write a brief thank you note (hand written is best) and try to mention something specific that you talked about so they remember who you are.
5. Make sure you do your research about the school BEFORE the interview so you’re not caught asking embarrassing questions about a program that doesn’t exist or a major that is no longer a real program.
Students tend to overcompensate for how they think they should dress for an on-campus or alumni interview and end up looking like they are going to the prom. Others who don’t want to look concerned about how to dress end up looking like hobos. Part of how to dress of course depends on who you are and how you normally dress. If we had to make the most general suggestion, we’d suggest dressing only a standard deviation or so up or down from how you normally dress unless you are very far from the “normal” spectrum. If you are too dressed up (dresses for girls, suits and ties for boys) it looks like you went way out of your way and that draws unnecessary attention to yourself. Unless you go to school dressed that way, avoid it. On the other hand, you don’t want to wear ripped jeans, a tongue ring, dyed hair and tattoos unless you really want your dress to make a statement for you. Either extreme ends up detracting from what you actually have to say. You don’t have to be a boring conservative, but you shouldn’t be ultra casual either. For boys, usually khaki-type pants and a neat shirt (polos are fine or collared shirts if you feel more comfortable) with some clean shoes are appropriate for any interview. Some sneakers might pass, but hey, try shoes which look better with pants! Boys can also wear clean and neat jeans instead of chino-style pants if that’s closer to their normal style of dress (but keep the shoes). Girls have a wider variety of options. You do not have to look “dressed up.” Any slacks and shirt works, or a skirt and blouse if you like that type of clothing. When in doubt, go for neat and aim to fly under the radar. In the interview, your words should speak for you without your clothing interfering too much in any one direction!
If you are meeting someone for an alumni interview at an office, however, dress accordingly. So, if you are going to a fancy law firm, a jacket and tie might be appropriate. If, however, you are meeting the person at Starbucks, ditch the jacket and tie.
Year By Year – There’s Lots You Can Do
SAMPLE Questions:
I have just finished junior year and am stressed about the whole application process and selecting schools. Do you have any services that might help me?
What should I do this summer that would help me get into a better college? I’m going to be a junior in the fall?
●The Ultimate Guide to Top High School Summer Programs
My son is a smart kid and did well his freshman year in high school, but he doesn’t have any of the high level awards other kids in his school who have gone to the Ivies received. Can you guide us?
●The Ultimate Guide to Top Contests and Awards
How can I push up my SAT scores? I have time this summer, but I’ve heard that the big company SAT prep courses in a class room aren’t customized enough and sort of waste time? Any ideas?
●SAT Tutoring with Rogue Tutor Mike Barrett
My son took the ACT with Writing and followed your newsletter advice and compared it to his SAT scores and we’ve determined the ACT is his stronger test. Now how can he take it again and do better? Can you give us more info on your tutors?
●ACT Tutoring with Steve and Amy Dulan
Campus Visits
Many students are heading off to visit colleges this summer. Before you actually travel, do some research on each school before you arrive on campus – spend time on each school’s web site, read about schools on College Prowler’s web site, look into research opportunities, strong departments, well known professors, etc…
Here are some things to do during your college visits to make the most of your time: visit a class, talk to students, visit the library and see if you feel comfortable there. See a dorm, talk to a professor about your interests and find out about specific departments, visit any special places that correspond to your interests (music studios, art museums, etc…) and take notes! This will help you later when you write why you are choosing a particular school
Make these visits work for you! Don’t just take the tour/info session route — venture out! Talk to students, stop by your favorite academic department and speak to a professor, observe a class, see a dorm, do an overnight visit. Besides giving you a better feel for the school so you can figure out where to apply, doing targeted visits like this will also be useful in your application when you take time to describe WHY you are applying and why you consider yourself a good match for the school. The moral of the story is, don’t just be led down the boring propaganda road of info sessions — target your visits to get more mileage out them and to make an informed decision about which school is best for you!
We also urge students who have overnight college visits to be very careful and stay safe and for parents to discuss the SADD study below with their sons and daughters. Not only will their decisions impact their health and well-being, but colleges will not be excited to admit a student who was drunk and disorderly when visiting.
Study results below are from SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) and Liberty Mutual Group.
Almost four in ten teens (39.1 percent) who have stayed overnight on a college campus report engaging in drinking, other drug use or sex during those visits. The study also indicates these dangerous behaviors are far more prevalent among boys than among girls.
The study, conducted for SADD and Liberty Mutual by RoperASW, found the following behaviors among the high school teens who have visited a college campus for an overnight visit.
Sex – More than one in four teens (28 percent) report ‘having sex,’ and an additional 4.2 percent report engaging in ‘other types of sexual activity.’ Drinking – One in four teens (25.5 percent) reports drinking alcohol. Drugs (other than alcohol) – More than one in five teens (21.5 percent) report using drugs. All risky behaviors – One in eight teens (12.4 percent) reports engaging in all of the dangerous behaviors: drinking, drug use, and sexual activity.
Additionally, the research indicates boys’ behaviors on these overnight campus visits tend to be riskier than girls’ behaviors. For example, boys are two to three times more likely than girls to report having sex (41.5 percent vs. 14.6 percent), drinking (36.3 percent vs. 14.8 percent) or using drugs (29.7 percent vs. 11.6 percent).
Athletic Recruiting
At every high school there are casual athletes, serious athletes, and elite athletes. Almost all selective colleges value athletic experience, and most top high schools have extensive enough athletic programs that almost any student can make their way onto a team. If you’re not immersed in the arts or sciences, there’s no reason not to go out for a team and, if you like it, get serious about it. If you’re an elite athlete, however, you know who you are.
Elite athletes aren’t just starters or team captains. They are league MVPs. They make all-section or all-district teams. They play on high level club teams year round including summers. Some small Division III liberal arts colleges are happy to welcome merely serious athletes on to their teams, but to get recruited at a Division I school, you must be elite. (This is true of every school from USC and Penn State to Columbia and Brown.) For better or worse, these athletes have special avenues to get into college. (Keep in mind, the rationale is that many athletes with lower grades have lower grades specifically because they’ve spent so much time on sports!)
If you are a top-level high school athlete and considering being recruited, there are a number of things you need to do junior year. First of all, sign up on the NCAA website so you are official. Next, identify the names and address of college coaches at the schools which are of interest to you – they are high level in your sport, etc. Then, you will want to contact each coach with a letter and a resume so he/she knows you are interested. It pays to put together a stat sheet that has all the particulars (your height, weight, athletic awards, level of competition) along with your GPA, test scores and any other academic distinctions so coaches can see if you are going to be strong enough to pursue as an official recruit.
Read 10 Classics Before College
Whether you’re about to take SAT’s or have already taken them and are waiting to hear from colleges, it will always be a benefit to make a reading list of 10 “classics” that you have never had the time to read in high school. How about Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil’s Aeneid, or any Charles Dickens novel? Not only will you build your vocabulary, you will be better prepared to discuss literature with your college interviewers or college professors. Michele just read Jay Parini’s excellent book on Herman Melville,The Passages of HM, and then plowed through almost all of Melville’s works including Moby Dick which is an amazing read. Mimi is deep into Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life.
Most students arrive to even the top colleges with little knowledge of the classics. There are many fine versions available nowadays to help students understand tough literature — try the Norton Critical Editions or the Twayne’s Masterwork series, both offer in-depth historical information, essays about the book and other helpful information. College students should invest in these as well as they will provide many tips for strong papers and background information.
Do check out the Adult Great Book’s program’s Fifth Series 3 Volumes (Fifth 1, Fifth 2, and Fifth 3 Series): The Great Books Reading & Discussion Program with “Reader Aid” (Paperback) by The Great Books Foundation. You can buy the entire set at the Great Books website or call 800-222-5870 to order. You can also find just the Fifth series on Amazon.
The more high level books you read over summer AND do vocab, the higher your critical reading SAT score will be. Also, note this amazing list of summer reads…we are drooling at the idea of being able to read, read, read, this summer! Also, remember that June 16th is Bloomsday. For all you James Joyce scholars – get your Joyce on and read about tweeting Ulysses in Salon.com below.
10 Essential Books for Thought-Provoking Summer Reading—The Atlantic
Books to Bury Yourself In—The New York Times
Indie Booksellers Target Summer’s Best Reads—NPR
Summer reading: The big list—Los Angeles Times
10 Must-Read Summer Books—Newsweek
11 excellent novels for summer reading—Christian Science Monitor
The Ten Hottest Prospects From This Year’s Book Expo—New York Magazine
Top 10 Short Stories of All Time—Hotwire
Tweeting Joyce—Salon
Pick Your SAT Subject Tests Carefully!
This week we would like to focus on the all important SAT Subject Tests (formally called SAT II’s and longer ago, achievement tests). Many students aren’t even aware that they should take these tests after completing the corresponding course work. We want to bust some Subject Test myths.
Why are Subject Tests so important for top colleges? Sure, they are yet another quantitative way to evaluate a student. They help colleges interpret your grades and equalize grading scales from high school to high school. How does an A at school X compare to an A in school Y? Well, if one student scored a 770 on the Bio SAT Subject Test and the other scored a 580, colleges would assume that the first school had a much “truer” grading scale and that the competition was simply not as strong at school Y. In effect, these scores either show that a student deserved the high grades he received, or that the school simply hands out many A’s. Many competitive colleges require 2 Subject Tests. But read on because with many things in admissions it is not what it appears. While schools “require” 2 tests, top candidates often submit 4, 5, 6 Subject Tests.
Students should consider very carefully WHICH tests they sign up for – most students don’t even realize that the average test scores are different on every SAT Subject Test! Most assume that the mean score is 500, but that is NOT the case. See the College Board’s chart for the Class of 2010:
Take the Math Level I and the Math Level II as an example. Many students take the I thinking it’s “easier,” but the average score on that test is a 605. If you miss a handful of questions, you will not even score in the 700′s! Compare that to the Math II — the AVERAGE score is 649! That means you can get a bunch wrong and still be in the 700′s (on a recent test, you could get 7 wrong and still score a perfect 800). In other words, every test has a different group of test takers — the kids who take the II are a smaller group, but a stronger group.
Then there are the tests such as the Chinese with Listening — since almost all the kids who take it actually speak Chinese, the average is very high: 761!
Here’s another fact to keep in mind: the percentile scores do NOT get reported to colleges, only the grade. Most admissions officers don’t differentiate or even worry about if your 760 was high or low for your test. So those who get a 764 on the Korean with Listening test (the highest average of all the SAT Subject Tests) score only 50%, but the score still looks strong.
The message is, it pays to study the average scores and pick tests based on your ability and the scoring curve. The average information is available on the College Board’s web site, as noted above, and is actually printed on the score reports you receive back after taking SAT Subject Tests. Use them to your advantage!
Good luck with Subject Tests if you are taking them this Saturday and one final tip: TAKE PRACTICE TESTS. The practice tests available in the College Boards book: The Official Study Guide for all Subject Tests are only an hour long (the length of the test) and the results are quite true to actual results so will help you study.
Applying Online
Students often are falsely flattered when they receive “marketing” materials from colleges and assume that they will be accepted if they apply. Colleges and universities are marketing and simply buy their names as this article so clearly states.
Things become even more complicated when students are required to apply online given the Hobsons/Naviance role in controlling document flow to colleges. We’ve written about this issue in the past and have reached out to folks at the Common Application organization to no avail.
Essentially it goes like this:
The Common Application requires that supporting documents (secondary school reports, transcripts, and recommendations) submitted electronically to Common App member colleges go through the Naviance/Family Connection system.
With us so far…Okay what’s slightly disturbing is that both Naviance and the Common App have a VERY strong connection through Hobsons, a company that specializes in higher education marketing including enrollment marketing!!
About 90% of our students last year in Application Boot Camp and our private clients were required by their high schools to apply online AND if they didn’t it was a mess in that the schools REQUIRED teachers to submit their recs online. Colleges, therefore, wanted everything online.
Still with us?
Electronic files were lost last year as Naviance noted their “usage” was up over 400%. Well, yes it was because schools were almost forced to use the technology.
We believe the option to submit one’s college application electronically should be the student’s CHOICE not a mandate by corporate connections that leave us scratching our heads.
More About Interviews
After our newsletter of April 7th “Is the Interview Obsolete?” we received an enormous amount of email with the same question: “Do interviews really matter?” Of course the answer is, it depends. And really, it depends on which college you are talking about. Only a few of the Ivies for example do offer on-campus interviews, so at those schools they are added to your file should you apply later on (and in more cases than not, they do help a bit). Yale and Harvard still give interviews although at Harvard the interview is NOT added to a student’s file. UPenn used to grant interviews to legacies, but they’ve changed that policy to something they call “Legacy Advising Sessions”.
In general, smaller schools tend to be more dependent on the interview to really get to know the candidate and, sometimes, to sell the applicant on the college. Colleges like Wellesley, Connecticut College, Haverford, not only offer on-campus interviews, they “strongly suggest” them. In other words, many smaller colleges use the interview process to distinguish between who is really interested in attending their school, and who isn’t. Word to the wise: if you are very interested in a particular college, check their website and/or call and ask to see if they suggest an interview or require one.
This is the time of year for juniors to arrange on-campus interviews for summer. The trick is to call or email each admissions office NOW to find out the earliest date they accept appointments and then you have to be sure to call THAT DAY to make sure you get an appointment. Middlebury, for instance, only offers interviews from June-December, so these spots go quickly. Again, most schools no longer give on-campus interviews, but go to each school’s website to find out their interview policies. We’ve written about alumni interviews in past newsletters, but you want to know for every school if they also give you this option. Remember, you don’t have to interview at EVERY school — it makes sense to pick the 5-7 schools at the top of your list. For the others, you can always have an alumni interview in the fall/winter.
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