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

Congratulations! The month of May is here and your senior has weighed their options and decided on a college to attend this fall. You can check that box, sit back and relax. All the hard work is behind you. Not so fast…I wish you could ride off into the college admissions sunset with a job

The final stage of the college admissions season is here! By April 1 colleges have released their application decisions. Accepted, rejected or waitlisted, students have thirty days to finalize their plans. They must submit a deposit by May 1 to the college where they plan to attend. If you have a senior, here are some

Are you a senior? Are you the parent of a senior? You are now within sixty days of having to submit a deposit to attend college in the fall. Yep, this is starting to get real! You are no longer in the hypothetical world of “Maybe this college would be  a good fit” or “I

It is the middle of February. Applications are submitted and seniors are left to patiently wait for decisions to be mailed by April 1. So what is happening behind the closed doors of admissions offices around the country? One of my favorite clips gives a peak behind the scenes at Amherst College, in Amherst, MA.