As college students prepare for the new 2020-21 school year, the college experience during the time of COVID-19 will be fundamentally altered. Students, professors, parents and college adminstrators are in the midst of an adjustment period, transitioning to a new mode of learning. Perhaps, for those students attending in-person classes in the U.S., professors will arrive to lecture looking like…
Tag: Private universities
New COVID Related Questions on The Common App
In order for students to provide a complete and thorough summary of their achievements and qualifications for admissions, The Common Application added two new questions to the form. The Common Application is an online application utilized by almost 900 public and private universities across the US and internationally, which make applying to college more efficient for first year and transfer…
A Glimpse Into the Undergraduate Experience during COVID-19 Signals Declining Sentiment about the Value of a College Education
A student who attends a public flagship university in California characterizes distance learning as: Chaos is an apt description. Zoom is challenging to manage and pre-recorded lectures lack humor. It’s difficult to focus on lectures… Third year undergraduate The student, like many others, struggles to continue learning, conflicted about missing friends and her life in another city yet appreciative of…
Is COVID-19 Affecting Admissions Rates?
The chart above is a comparison of the admissions rates between Fall 2019 and 2020 at a sampling of the most selective universities, ranked from lowest difference to highest. Brown University and Princeton University both dropped their admit rates slightly in 2020, possibly indicating a confidence in their school’s brand that the COVID-19 health crisis with the subsequent economic and…
Opportunity amidst upheaval
The continued COVID-19 health crisis, and its impacts both economically and socially may have wide-ranging consequences for colleges throughout the United States. Families confronted by an array of changing circumstances are recalibrating their educational decision making processes, especially for high school seniors choosing between multiple colleges or deferring enrollment, as well as continuing college students choosing to re-enroll or take…
College Online = Digital Instruction + Childhood Redux
In a recent interview with Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicle, I shared what one one second year college student now attempting to continue his studies in Northern California not in Boston, called a “bizarre” situation. Tens of thousands of other college students who also returned home from their college campuses are now experiencing: a virtual college experience. Back…
Novel COLLEGE-2020
An online, distance learning college education is not what most four-year college students and their parents paid (or borrowed) to experience. With college closures, the holistic “college experience” has been truncated, as entire university communities have been dispersed, with no late-night dorm floor existential debates, no clubs, no socializing—stripped down to simply content delivery through a screen. Additionally, faculty are…
Expectation Canceled
On Monday, March 16, The College Board canceled the March 28 Makeup Test, the test all the March 14 canceled test takers were counting on, as well as the May 2 SAT test date. Additionally, the April 4th ACT was canceled. With the cancelations, tens of thousands of students’ test taking strategies for college admissions have been rendered ineffective. Now,…
The Early Admissions Arms Race
According to the Common Application, “around 860,000” applications were submitted on November 1, 2019 for Early Action, Early Decision and Regular Decision application deadlines, which for the first time, exceeded the “around 720,000” applications submitted last year on January 1 for traditional Regular Decision deadlines. The increasingly competitive nature of the college admissions process—evident in programs like Early Action/Decision that…
Senior Year Warnings
“When reward is at its pinnacle, risk is near at hand.” – John Bogle, legendary investor and founder of the Vanguard Group Although written for investors, John Bogle’s sage advice is apropos for the next stage of The College Admissions Process during the senior year. Being exhausted from drafting college essays in order to submit college applications, a desire…
Unleashed Brilliance AKA College Essays
It’s always an honor to help render the seemingly impossible–RAW, NAKED TRUTH.
The Parent Trap
A parent’s job is often unenviable. Thankless. Tiring. Trying. Tireless. Especially when the child is a teenager. Parents’ reasons for making decisions can vary from encouraging their children to “live their own lives, do what makes you happy” and worries that what makes their children happy won’t pay their bills, let alone save for retirement, nor eventually be able to…
ARGGHHH…#$%@^ Sickness
The days of Calvin-esque thinking are gone. Now, to miss school and recover from illness is more trouble than worthwhile. Missing assignments means hours of make-up work on top of already multi-hour nightly homework sessions, and missing tests is a complex, logistical hassle to coordinate already busy teacher’s, kid’s and parent’s carpool schedules to find time for a makeup exam. Thus,…
Move Along…Nothin’ To See Here
How most seniors & their parents feel when asked about college applications
Tricks of the Academic Trade
Online tools are useful homework management techniques for students. Yet, with the plethora of online tools available, knowing which tools are actually worthy can be tricky. So, here’s a couple tools that are student-tested and recommended: Wolfram|Alpha: a searchable database for all academic subjects, including solutions to exact math problems. For an additional fee, students can purchase greater access to the database…