January of junior year in high school is where the admissions cycle starts to accelerate. Many families contact me after the holidays. They get through December, enter the New Year and realize that it is time to address college admissions planning with their junior. So what should an 11th grade student be doing at this […]

I follow many college admissions blogs but two of my favorites are from Rick Clark of Georgia Tech and Brennan Barnard, the Director of College Counseling and Outreach at The Derryfield School in New Hampshire. What I love about their writing is the way they cut through the chatter and share meaningful perspectives on the

We are about to enter a stressful week in the admissions cycle. Colleges will begin to release decisions to applicants that applied in the Early Decision round. These schools tend to be quite selective and the applications are binding. I find that anxiety levels rise in high school this time of year. It can be

This is an exciting time in the college admissions cycle! I love this phase of the application process. For most of my seniors, their Common App was done over the summer. Right now we are putting the final touches on the last supplemental writing pieces. I find this stage so satisfying because it is the

One of the goals of my consulting practice is to help families alleviate stress on the road to college. The process of applying and getting accepted to a school is littered with anxiety. One of the best ways to combat stress is to receive an acceptance letter from a college in the fall of senior

“The skiing cosmos is difficult to explain to anyone not immersed in it. The act of skiing differs from traditional sports in that…it requires specific orographic and meteorological phenomena. Because skiers depend on planetary forces much larger than themselves —and, like surfers, must work in harmony with them—a kind of otherworldly euphoria overtakes them when

Last week I was on the phone with my college bestie, discussing our college-bound children. My oldest is matriculating at the university where her oldest will be a junior. The tuition for this school was due and we were commiserating on the cost and comparing notes on getting our payments in. I described how I

I recently met with a rising senior to continue work on their Common Application. We started in early July and we have shoehorned work sessions into this student’s schedule, which is not an easy feat. Between paid work, academic work, volunteer work, athletics and test prep classes, trying to find an hour with this kid

I received positive feedback from my recent post ¿A Spanish Lesson For College Admissions?, so I decided to continue in the same vein and talk about ways to get out ahead of this process so that the dog wags the tail and not al revés. I am a faculty member at a school where every student is

I have been fielding phone calls from stressed parents over the past few weeks about the results from the spring ACT and SAT. When families saw that their students did not receive the scores that would put them in the 50% quartile for THE school of their dreams, panic ensued. Each conversation had me saying