Collegewise

Stay on Their Good Sides

All the admissions officers we've met are good people who would much rather admit than deny kids. But during the pressures of admissions season, some applicants' actions can drive the admissions folks crazy. Here are five tips to make sure you don't inadvertently hurt your case.

1. Follow directions.

You can avoid most common mistakes in college applications by reading and following the directions.  For example, if a college asks you to list your activities in the space provided, and you send them a resume instead, you just showed them that you couldn’t follow a pretty simple direction.  So read the directions and do exactly as they instruct you to do. No matter how much you think you might be helping your case by doing things your own way, you’re always better served following directions.

A Tip for Senior Families- Watch the (e)Mail

Developing a family mail system (paper and electronic) to account for the many envelopes and emails from your child’s colleges is a fantastic idea. After all, these types of correspondence are filled with important information and requests, like for mid-year reports and housing forms with deadlines. You don’t want anything to get lost or go unnoticed!

Maybe Mom and Dad are the only ones who can open snail mail, or all college emails get forwarded to a particular email address to keep everything organized. Whatever your system, make sure everyone understands the importance of paper and electronic correspondence from colleges.

Find us a great counselor, and we'll pay you $1,000

Collegewise is looking for the next college counselor to join our team in Irvine, CA.  Here is the job description. 

We wanted to give our blog readers and those in the Collegewise family a chance to chime in and refer people they think just might be the right fit for us.  So we're offering a $1,000 reward if you find us the right person, payable after the hire completes three months of successful work here. We'd also be happy to donate the fee to whomever you choose.  And if there is no referrer, we'll donate the money to College Summit.   

The job description link above has all the information.  Forward this, blog it, whatever you'd like.  Please send only the best people you know as we're fairly picky.  Thanks in advance for helping us with our search.   

Rank Them Yourself

"In the Pac-10 schools, where does USC stand, academically?"

That's the question my neighbor asked me today.  And he was surprised when I told him there was almost no way to answer it. 

He told me he thought that Stanford had to be "on top," followed by Berkeley and then UCLA.   But he wasn't naming those schools based on the quality of the education or the success of their graduates.  He did what lots of parents and students do; he deduced that the harder it is to get admitted, the better the school must be. 

I disagree.