New Year’s Resolutions for High School Juniors
January 10, 2012
It’s 2012 – have you made your New Year’s Resolutions yet? In this series of posts, we’re offering some resolutions for students in each year of high school. Feel free to adopt one or two!
Junior year in high school is when college applications start to creep into your life. Well-organized students will take advantage of this year to get the college entrance exams out of the way and work on applications. Here are some New Year’s Resolutions for high school Juniors to consider:
- Take the SAT and/or ACT. We recommend that Juniors take each of the SAT and ACT once, and then re-take the one exam in which they scored higher. For example, you can take the SAT in March, ACT in April, and then retake whichever one you prefer again in either May or June. Don’t waste time or money, though. Make sure you register by the regular registration deadline, thereby avoiding late fees. And, prepare for each exam either with private tutoring, online, in-school or simply buy a study guide. There’s no reason for you to waste a morning taking an exam “blind” – be prepared and be successful!
- Create your college list and visit the campuses. Now is the time for you to refine your college list. Using your grades and GPA, plus an estimate of your SAT or ACT scores, start narrowing down the 4000+ institutions into a more manageable list. If possible, set up appointments for you to visit the campuses during your spring break. Keep notes for every campus so that you don’t get confused (it happens!). Check out this podcast for additional pointers for creating a college list. And if you feel you need more help than your guidance counselor is able to offer, don’t be afraid to reach out to independent college counselors.
- Get to know your guidance counselor and teachers with an eye toward recommendations. Your guidance counselor will be writing one of your letters of recommendation for your college applications, so if you don’t know him or her yet, now is the time to do so. Also, your other letters of recommendation will come from your teachers, so start thinking about whom you would like to ask. Work on your Academic Resume so that when the time comes at the beginning of the next school year, you’ll be able to hand them some information about yourself. For information about this type of resume, listen to our podcast.
- Work on your college applications over the summer. Once the summer starts, you should take advantage of the time without papers and tests to get your college applications in order. You’ll need to refine your college list to the 8-12 schools to which you’ll apply, and see if they participate in the Common Application. Work on your personal statement, or college application essay, early. The Common App has a 500 word maximum, and believe it or not, it takes quite a long time to write an effective essay under such restrictions! The Common App goes online in the beginning of August, but they post a preview of the application before the end of the school year, so check it out. Your goal should be to have all of your college applications DONE, with the exception of your recommendations and information needed from your guidance counselor, by the beginning of your Senior year.
To read our New Year’s Resolutions for high school freshmen, click here. For Resolutions for high school sophomores, click here. All you High School juniors, what are your resolutions? How are you doing with them? We’d love to hear from you! Stay tuned for more suggested New Year’s Resolutions for high school seniors!
What the Pre-Halloween Blizzard Taught Us
November 8, 2011
Here in West Orange, New Jersey, we are shocked to see a snowflake fall before Thanksgiving. Any accumulating snow before Christmas is considered highly implausible. After all, this is New Jersey – home of the Jersey Shore – and not Maine or Colorado!
Too bad no one told Mother Nature. On October 29, 2011, the Saturday before Halloween, we were clobbered with at least 8 inches of heavy, wet snow. Mind you, the week before, it was nearly 70 degrees outside, and the trees were just starting to turn. This
Photo courtesy of Robert Allen
“perfect storm” set the stage for an unprecedented Nor’easter in our “neck of the woods” (as Al Roker likes to say).
In West Orange and surrounding communities, thousands were without power for days. Trees and tree limbs lined all of the streets, and even went through some roofs and cars. Schools were closed through Wednesday. Even Trick-or-Treat night was rescheduled!
Thankfully, while people were displaced, discomforted and/or delayed, no one was hurt here (that I’m aware of). Residents relocated to area hotels with generators to keep warm, moved food from their refrigerators to neighbors’ with power, and relied on area Wi-Fi hotspots to connect to the internet.
Now that we are getting back to normal finally, what did we learn about this highly unanticipated and unwelcome snowfall in October? Mind you, this all occurred right before the Early Action/Early Decision deadlines for most colleges! Here is some of what we learned:
- Give yourself some time with the deadlines. Try to be finished at least 1 week ahead – after all, you never know when a freak snowstorm will hit!
- Be organized. In case you need to leave your home in a hurry, or just need to pack up to go to the library, it’s always easier to have all of your materials in one designated place. If you’re preparing for the SAT or ACT, keep your registration ticket, pencils, calculator and study guides in one pile. Creating your college list? Another pile!
- Have back-ups! Your personal essay should be on at least two different computers, or the cloud. If something should happen to your laptop, like your little sister spilling water on it, you don’t want to lose all of your hard work.
- Be flexible. If a natural disaster happens, realize that it’s most important to make sure your family is safe. As soon as you are able, contact the “powers that be” to see if anything can be rescheduled. For example, last spring when New Jersey was suffering with flooding, the ACT was postponed for a couple of weeks. Remember, if Mother Nature has impacted your ability to travel, many others are probably in the same boat and accommodations may be made.
What other tricks have you used to handle bad weather? We’d love to hear from you!
Common App Preview Now Available
July 18, 2011
The Common Application (“Common App”) will go online on August 1st. Until that time, you can check out the application in “preview” mode by clicking here.
The Common App is an undergraduate college admission application that students utilize to apply to any of the member institutions located within the United States. It serves to promote college admissions through the use of both subjective criteria (e.g., essays and recommendations) and objective criteria ( e.g., GPA and standardized exam scores). Simply put, the Common App streamlines the college application process for students choosing to apply to its member colleges.
In addition to the main essay (see our post, Common Application Essay Limits Word Count, for information about the new 500 word limitation), member colleges may require additional supplements for items not already requested on the Common App. These typically represent questions that would not be considered “common” for all institutions, such as “Did your parent attend our university?” and the like. Additional essays and questions may also be required by member colleges, with the following caveats:
- Supplement questions may not re-ask questions already asked on the Common App (except identifying information like name, address, date of birth, etc.), and
- Supplement questions may not ask questions that violate the National Association for College Admission Couseling’s Statement of Principles and Good Practice (such as “please rank order your college choices”).
As of August 1, 2011, the Common Application website will list 463 colleges and universities as members, including 62 public institutions. You can go online and sign up, returning to fill in information as often as you like until you are ready to submit it to any of the member colleges.
Have a question for us about the Common App? Contact us at info@top-tiertutoring.com, or call us at 973.243.1212.
Common Application Essay Limits Word Count
June 5, 2011
The College Board (“the Board”) has determined to reinstate a prior word limit on the Common Application (“Common App”) essay, after several years of experimenting with having no upper limit. Beginning on August 1st of 2011 (the opening of the Common App window), the maximum word count will be changed to 500. The 250 word minimum remains unchanged.
The impetus for this change appears to have arisen as a result of complaints coming from college admissions officers. As a consequence of lengthy, rambling and unfocussed essays that were submitted, Common App member colleges and universities have repeatedly pressed the Board to reconsider capping the length of the Common App essay. Therefore, as if the college application process is not already stressful enough, students must now face the added challenge of having to distinguish themselves from their peers through a more restricted platform with which to express their thoughts.
Undoubtedly, many students will hail this decision as lightening their college application burden. However, such a view is imprudent in that it stems from a dearth of guidance and a regrettably common lack of aptitude in developing composition creatively, coherently and concisely among high school students. High schoolers cheering the limitation are, perhaps, the very ones requiring the most flexibility. Without the cap, those students maintaining written competency would generally be capable of communicating effectively and succinctly, making a maximum word count irrelevant. On the other hand, applicants whose areas of strength reside more within the realms of math, science or the arts, might be hard-pressed to adequately convey a flavor of who they are by using the medium of writing.
This change to the Common App essay is notable, given that our society is moving toward shorter forms of communication. For example, microblogging sites such as Twitter only allow 140 characters per tweet, or approximately 28 words. To put this new requirement in common parlance, college applicants may be able to include the equivalent of 23 tweets in their Common App essay.
Ultimately, this discussion is an academic one, as a decision has been made that appears unopen for debate. All 2011 applicants must prepare to submit thoughtful essays, where every word is carefully weighed and considered, owing to the constraint of brevity that is now being imposed upon them. One cannot help but wonder what outcome may have ensued, had the Board submitted this anticipated adjustment directly to the public (e.g., counselors, teachers, parents, students, etc.), as a proposal for consideration, even a mere 2 or 3 years prior to actually instituting the change. At the risk of sounding naïve, is it too farfetched to believe that an announced, upcoming reduction in word count might possibly have prompted at least some faculties to increase their emphases on writing skills preemptively? Alas, we’ll never know.
Working closely with a college applicant on his or her Common App essay, college counselors must ensure that it pithily provides a snapshot of the student’s individuality to admissions officers. This blog post comprises 500 words.
Top-Tier’s Campus Visit to the University of Miami
December 10, 2010
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In this enhanced podcast, Rhonda Rivera, co-founder of Top-Tier Tutoring, offers an overview of the campus visit recently taken at the University of Miami, located in Coral Gables, Florida.
During the podcast, Rhonda discusses what we learned both during the student-led tour and in the information session led by an admissions officer. Some quick points:
- U of M is a medium-sized private school with approximately 10,000 undergraduate students and about 5,000 graduate students
- The president is Donna Shalalah, who served in the Clinton White House
- In 2009, the school received 25,800 applications for just 2,000 spots for the freshman class
- The average student to teacher ration is about 1:15
- U of M is in Division I sports
- The majority of students come from Florida, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, but all 50 states and 115 countries are represented in the student body
- Nearly all freshmen live on campus
Listen as Rhonda discusses what the University of Miami looks for in candidates, straight from the admissions officer’s mouth! She lets you know how important the SAT and ACT scores are, as well as whether college interviews are offered, how may recommendations are requested, how heavily activities are weighted, and if you should include an academic resume with your application. By viewing the photos and listening to the podcast, you will learn about the campus itself, majors/internships offered and the many diverse offerings, including the “Launch Pad,” which aids the student entrepreneur to start a business.
At Top-Tier, we have decided to offer enhanced podcasts of our campus visits to help you in your decision-making process. We are not funded by the college, nor is this podcast any sort of advertisement for it. We highly recommend that you make an appointment and visit the campus yourself, if at all possible, in order to formulate your own, first-hand impression.
As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas. Please submit a comment below, send us an email or give us a call at 973-243-1212.
Common App Online TODAY!
August 1, 2010
Attention all high school Seniors “to be” – the Common Application (a/k/a the Common App) is now online and ready for you! Anyone who is going to be applying to college for admission in the Fall or Spring 2011 should go to the Common App site and start working on the forms.
While application deadlines are months away, now is the time to get a head start on the forms. After all, high school hasn’t started up yet, so there’s no time like the present!
If you need help creating a school list, finding a topic for your college essay, drafting your academic resume, preparing for college interviews or anything else related to the college application process, feel free to contact us. We offer college counseling to students in our West Orange, NJ center — or to anyone over the internet via Skype. We’d love to help you achieve your dreams!
Don’t procrastinate – start working on the Common App today!
Common Application Goes Online August 1, 2010
July 1, 2010
The Common Application (commonly called the “Common App”) is going to be available to students applying to colleges starting on August 1, 2010. This is one full month later than usual so that secondary schools that close in June can use the Online School Forms System to submit their Final Reports through mid-July, according to the Common App’s website.
We highly recommend that students go to the Common App website and use the “preview” tool to review all that the Common App entails. Starting this year, the Common App has (1) a combined Activities and Work section, (2) a new Academics section with revised self-reporting testing instructions, and (3) online submission of NACAC fee waiver for students with limited financial resources and who also meet the National Association for College Admissions Counseling’s requirements for application waivers.
The Common Application membership association provides common, standardized first-year and transfer application forms for use at any member institution. Today, nearly 400 institutions are members in the association, which represents the full range of higher education institutions in the United States, including public and private institutions of every size and selectivity. With the press of a single button, you can submit your application to many colleges and universities. To see a list of all the member institutions, click here.
Many of our clients use a combination of the Common App and individual schools’ applications when applying to college. In addition, specific schools may have their own supplements that are required to be submitted in order for your application to be complete. You must pay special attention to all of the application requirements for each of your schools.
We welcome your feedback and ideas. Please submit a comment below, send us an email or give us a call at 973-243-1212.
What Is College Counseling?
June 2, 2010
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In this podcast, Mike Rivera, co-founder, college counselor and tutor with Top-Tier Tutoring, discusses what is, exactly, college counseling – and what it is not.
Mike Rivera, college counselor, with student
You probably have heard the term “college counseling” bandied about in several different contexts. During this podcast, Mike discusses what is encompassed by this term – guiding high school students through the college application process, understanding the student’s interests, goals and ambitions, recommending classes, extracurricular activities and volunteer work, crafting a college list, counseling about the required essays, obtaining recommendations, coordinating college visits, preparing for the college interview – the list goes on and on! College counseling also includes managing expectations and setting reasonable goals, both for the student and the parents. The best part of college counseling, Mike admits, is celebrating acceptances.
During the podcast, Mike does offer a word of caution. No college counselor can offer a guarantee of admission to a particular college or university. Please keep this fact in mind when looking for a qualified college counselor!
New Service: College Counseling Over The Internet
May 13, 2010
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In this
podcast, Mike Rivera, co-founder, college counselor and tutor with Top-Tier Tutoring, introduces our listeners to a new service being offered: College Counseling over the internet! Now, students who are not geographically located near our center in West Orange, NJ, will have access to the same outstanding college counseling as those living nearby!
Listen as Mike explains the logistics of how the service will work. Using Skype, the popular web-telecommunication free software made popular by Oprah Winfrey, Top-Tier Tutoring’s college counselors will be able to work directly with your son or daughter. Students will receive the same guidance, only instead of being across the table, your child will be looking at his or her counselor live via webcam. Of course, you can feel free to sit in on the session as well!
Guidance Counselor Realities
February 24, 2010
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Is 38 Minutes Enough?
In this podcast, Mike Rivera poses the question: “Is 38 minutes enough?” This question derives from a study by Dr. Patricia McDonough that found that an average student will spend only 38 minutes per year with his or her high school guidance counselor discussing college counseling and/or career counseling.
Now, this fact is through no fault of the high school guidance counselors themselves. It is based upon the realities of numbers. While the American School Counselor Association recommends 1 guidance counselor per 100 students, the national average is 1:315 (or much more) in public high schools and 1:241 in private schools.
During the podcast, Mike offers questions for parents to ask the high school office regarding this issue. He also recommends seeking external college counseling to best position the high school student for success in college and beyond.
Source: Sanders, B. (2008, January 18). Parents – Guidance at School May Not be Enough. Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Parents---Guidance-at-School-May-Not-be-Enough&id=935539
As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas. Please submit a comment below, send us an email or give us a call at 973-243-1212.
Tips on Writing an Effective College Application Essay
October 7, 2009
So, you’re sitting down before a blank computer screen, trying to figure out what to write for your college application essay. You’ve already written what seems to be hundreds of essays for your high school teachers, but this one is different. You’re not summarizing a book, or commenting on a news event – you’re trying to write the most persuasive essay about yourself possible; one that will make you stand out, get noticed and hopefully accepted by the college of your choice!
In an effort to try to help you write an effective college application essay, we’ve compiled the following tips: Read more
Common Application Goes Online July 1st
June 26, 2009
The window for the Common Application (the “Common App”) will be opening on July 1st. What is the Common App, you ask? It is an undergraduate college admission application that students utilize to apply to any of the member institutions located within the United States. It serves to promote college admissions through the use of both subjective criteria (e.g., essays and recommendations) and objective criteria ( e.g., GPA and standardized exam scores). Simply put, the Common App streamlines the college application process for students choosing to apply to its member colleges.
