Collegewise

Keep your proof

It’s only happened a few times, but there have been occasions when a college told one of our Collegewise students,

“We're sorry, but we never received an application from you.”

And there has rarely been a time when it felt better to say,

“Yes, you did—I’ve got the proof right here.”

Admissions offices are processing thousands of pieces of paper this time of year and they do a pretty great job considering the volume.  But mistakes happen.  And when they do, the burden of proof will be on you.

Seniors, as you submit your applications to colleges, please print your confirmations and keep them in a safe place.  Don’t just rely on saving the confirmation that’s emailed to you.  It could get accidentally deleted or your computer could spontaneously combust.  Save both an electronic and a hard copy.

Probably a good idea to do the same thing when you send your required test scores, too. 

An easy way to get an advantage

1.    Show up on time. 
2.    Arrive with a smile on your face.

College interviews, job interviews, meetings with your counselor to discuss your classes for next year, dates, volleyball practice, auditions for the school play—it works everywhere.  It positively influences everything that happens next.  It’s free.  It’s easy.  It’s available to students with any GPA or test score. 

And yet even some of the world’s smartest people just won't do it.

Product highlight: Our college essay seminar on video

We just released streaming videos of our three most popular seminars—college essays, financial aid and college interviews. All three are now available in our online store.  Today, I wanted to give a little background on our college essay video, why we made it, and what’s included.  

Why we made it
We learned early on at Collegewise that college essay advice does a lot more good when given at the beginning—before a student writes a draft—than it does at the end.  Before we started doing our seminar, if a student brought us an essay that was 600 words of full-blown cliché about how his time on the wrestling team taught him the importance of committing to his goals, it was  a difficult position for us and for the student.  We wanted to give the good advice we’d been hired to give.  And that's what the student expected from us.  But we also didn’t want to take over the process and veto a student’s story idea—that would be helping too much.  We knew we could have prevented those mistakes and done more good if we’d given our advice at the beginning rather than at the end. 

Our college essay seminar solved that problem for us.  Today, our Collegewise students learn everything they need to know to choose and write good stories before they ever start writing.  When students get it right the first time, we don’t have to give them as much feedback on their drafts, which helps us make sure we don’t help too much.  This video was shot at one of those essays seminars we gave to our families.  Now any student—whether or not you’re in the Collegewise program—can write better college essays by just spending one hour watching our seminar on video.

How we’re using it

I do the college essay seminar for students in our Irvine, California office.  But now we’re giving Collegewise families who work with us in all any of our offices free access to the video.  We’ll also use the video to supplement our trainings of new counselors and essay specialists.  And any family in our Irvine location who can’t attend one of our scheduled essay seminars can now watch it on video. 

How to use the video

The advice in the video applies to any type of college essay.  It doesn’t matter whether the required essay is long or short, a general topic or something more specific.  You can even apply the advice to questions about why you want to attend a particular school.

So there are a few ways you could use this:

1. Applicants can watch the video before you start writing your college essays.  You’ll pick better stories, you’ll tell them in a compelling way, and you’ll be a lot closer to a strong finished product when you take your first draft to your counselor or English teacher for feedback.

2. You could even view our video a you’ve already written the essays and are still looking to make revisions.  The advice on our video will help you evaluate your choice of story, how well you’ve written it, and whether or not the essay is going to be a positive factor in your admissions decision. 

3. A teacher, counselor, parent, or anyone else who is asked to critique college essays will know exactly what to look for after watching this video. 

Results

We’ve done this college essay workshop for thousands of Collegewise students and their parents.  We’ve done it at high school events, at conferences for counselors, and even for English teachers who were looking for advice about how to help their kids with essays.  We’re really excited to make this available to a much wider audience now and would love to hear what you think of it. 

You can buy your copy here and view it right away online for $12.99.

Likeable work vs. likeable kids

It doesn’t matter if a college likes you.  It matters if they like what you’ve done in high school.

Of course, the reverse is also true.  It’s hard for a college to admit a kid they don’t like.

Some students are too focused on one when they should be spending more time on the other.  If you do great work but you don’t treat people well, you’re missing just as much as the kid everybody likes, but who also just can’t seem to buckle down and work when he needs to.

Reasons to work hard in high school

1. To get into a prestigious college
2. To challenge yourself and learn as much as you can
3. To get more out of activities you enjoy
4. To discover what you’re good at
5. To learn from things you’re not so good at
6. To work with smart, motivated people
7. To prepare yourself for life during and after college
8. To enjoy and benefit from the four years you spend in high school

Too many high school students focus only on the first, and it’s the only one that may not pay off.  The rest are guaranteed to give you something back, something with staying power that will keep paying off long after your dream college sends you a decision letter.

Is there any additional information you'd like to share?

Imagine you had a great job interview, one where everything just clicked, your answers flowed easily, and you were able to share all of your most important successes.  Then your interviewer asks you at the end,

“This has been great—is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

Would you mention a success that wasn’t as important?  Would you fill the space with something you didn’t care so much about?  Probably not.  You’d want to end on a high note rather than share something else that might be less important or less impressive than what you’d already discussed.

That’s exactly how you should treat college application questions that ask, “Is there any other information you’d like to share?”

Thanks

High school students who want to go to college have plenty to be thankful for. 

• The United States has the best, most coveted, and most accessible system of higher education in the world.
• There are over 2,000 four-year colleges here, and only about a hundred of them actually reject significant portions of their applicants.
• Except for about 50 schools where the competition is staggering, colleges have more space available and more need for students than ever before.
• There are billions of dollars in financial aid available.
• If you want to go to college, you almost certainly can go.  The only question is where.
• Any college you attend will have virtually unlimited opportunities for you to learn, grow, discover your talents, find mentors, meet people, make memories and have more fun than you’ve ever had. 
• What you do in college matters much more than the name or prestige of the college you attend does.

I’m thankful to live in a country where I can start a business I want to start, write whatever I want to write on this blog every day, work with people who want to do work that matters, and help good kids find and get accepted to the right colleges. 

Thanks for reading my blog and for all your support of Collegewise.

What seniors should really give thanks for this weekend

Give thanks this weekend for all the good things in your life.  But if you’re a senior still working on college applications, also give thanks for the next four days of time…to finish them.

Working on—and finishing—your remaining college applications over Thanksgiving is a lot less stressful than rushing to do it over your winter holiday.  You’ll do a better job without the pressure of a looming deadline that’s so close you’re not sure you can meet it.  And when you get to your holiday this winter, you’ll really have something to give thanks for.

Pretend your college application deadline is this Sunday.  Then work to finish them like your college future depended on it.  Bring a laptop to Grandma and Grandpa’s if you have to so you can work after you get stuffed.  I'm not saying you should rush them and do a bad job.  But a self-imposed deadline works better than one you don't have any control over.  

It won’t be as fun as taking a little time off, but you’ll buy yourself a few weeks of application-free fun when school lets out in December.

Top-tier this

Nobody will ever accuse David Heinemeier Hansson of being subtle.  He’s brash and often profane.  But like him or not, you can’t argue with his success.  He’s a partner in 37signals, a New York Times best-selling author, the creator of the web-application framework Ruby on Rails, and the 2005 winner of Google and O’Reilly’s “Best Hacker of the Year.” 

Here's his post from their company blog yesterday.

If I hear one more Silicon Valley type gush over a computer science graduate from CMU, MIT, or Stanford, I’m going to puke. Yes, yes, I’m sure these are mighty dandy nice schools, but you’re letting the stench of superiority and shallow whiff of superficial judgement pollute my airways.

The fantastic thing about programmers is that we don’t have to give a f*ck about where they were trained because we have something much better available: We can look at what they actually do! We don’t need the indirection of pedigree to guess at their skills, we can look at their code and know it.

Here’s a list of the top tier schools that helped shape the fine band of programmers we employ at 37signals: 

Lawrence University
Rochester Institute of Technology
Brock University
Washtenaw Community College
California Institute of Technology
Copenhagen Business School
Brigham Young University”

There’s truth to what he says no matter what career you may want after college.  Just going to college—famous or not—and getting a degree isn’t what’s going to get you a job.  Employers want to know, “What can you actually do?”  If you attend the right college for you, you’ll have four years of virtually unlimited opportunity to find an answer to that question.  See my June 2011 post for more on that if you're interested.  

Should you file a FAFSA if you don’t think you’ll qualify?

Every student should file the Fafsa every year, even if they do not expect to qualify for need-based financial aid. The formula is complicated enough that subtle changes from one year to the next can have a big impact on aid eligibility. Also, the Fafsa is a prerequisite for the unsubsidized Stafford and PLUS loans, which may be the least expensive option for students who need to borrow.”

Mark Kantrowitz
Founder of FinAid.org
Answered on The Choice