Collegewise

Unsolicited Life Advice for Teens

We're not in the life-coaching business here at Collegewise.  But every now and then, we find ourselves passing along some life lessons to the teenagers whose college applications we're reviewing.  And like so many adults, we're life-qualified only because we've had the luxury of just being on the planet a little longer with more time to learn from those in-the-know.  So here are five totally unsolicited pieces of life advice for today's teens. 

1.  Learn how to shake hands well.

It's surprising how many people offer a handshake that resembles a lifeless salmon.  Those who do so might as well just go ahead and announce, "Hi. I have the personality of a lifeless salmon." 

July News for Friends and Family

Never to be sold on Ebay
I always wonder if the celebrities actually visited the stores where I see their signed photos; I mean, did Jerry Seinfeld really bring his clothes to my dry cleaner in Irvine, CA? 

But you don't have to wonder if the signature on the front of this Collegewise brochure is legit.  Kim Burnell is something of a legend at Collegewise.  As a high school student, she single-handedly referred about a dozen of her friends to us.  After high school, she worked for us during the summers as our Collegewise Intern Extraordinaire.  Now a junior at UCLA, Kim is training our new interns how to do the job Kim-style.  She still appears in a few places on our website, and she just landed on the cover of our brand new brochure. 

Download Newbrochure.pdf

So to anyone who wonders if this UCLA-clad student on our brochure actually came through the Collegewise program (or if she actually goes to UCLA), she did...and she does!

5 Things Colleges Would Like You To Be

Good grades.  High test scores.  A rocket arm that can throw a football to a receiver who's running a fly pattern in a different zip code.  All of those things are appealing to colleges.  But there are some qualities colleges would like you to have that don't necessarily involve superior intelligence) or the ability to pick up the blitz).  Here are a few of them.

1. Be nice to the kids other students aren’t nice to.
Once they get out of high school, most students realize that those kids who made fun of the socially less fortunate were actually gigantic losers themselves. So be nice. Say “hi” to the kid nobody else says “hi” to. Don’t join in when everyone else starts to make fun of the easy target. Your teachers and counselors will notice, the kid you’re nice to will appreciate it, and you’ll be in line for karma points later in life.

 

Seniors: Get Ahead While Relaxing This Summer

Seniors deserve some downtime during the summer. Relax. Soak up some sun. Eat potato chips. But if you follow these five tips this summer, you’ll be the envy of your fellow seniors later this fall when they’re running to meet deadlines and the only running you're doing is to work off all those potato chips (we’re speaking from unfortunate personal potato chip experience here).

Life Lessons From...Google?

Kevin and Arun get 100% of the credit for introducing me to the business blogs I read on a daily basis.  I'm now a blog junkie and proud of it.  My Google Reader contains no fewer than 12 blogs all about business.  Those of you who know me may be asking yourselves, "what? Seriously?"  I was a theater major in college and can recite every musical ever written by Stephen Sondheim.  In reverse alphabetical order.  So what the heck am I doing reading blogs by Seth Godin, Google, Mark Cuban and the Freakonomics guys from the University of Chicago?  On the outside it would appear that these blogs have nothing to do with college admissions or even Collegewise for that matter.  But the more I started to read them each day the more I realized that a lot of what was talked about on these blogs had a lot to do with what we do here at Collegewise.