High School Strategies

The activities list. The section of the Common App where you tout your involvement in athletics, clubs, volunteering opportunities, and extracurricular activities. I'll admit that when I applied to college having a few things on the list was sufficient. Maybe it's because all of my friends had afterschool jobs that left only so much time for extracurricular activities (and if I'm honest most of those activities were sports), but my recollection is that my activity list had my

Letters of recommendation. I remember the ease with which high-school-me assumed a teacher could whip out a letter of recommendation. I never realized the sheer number of recommendations a teacher is asked to write for their students. This is especially true for high school teachers who teach juniors and seniors. And it wasn't until I became a college professor that I realized the effort and time that goes into writing a good letter of recommendation. Think about how many stu

Did you know that when you apply to college, the counseling center at your high school submits a school profile as part of your application? In a previous post, I explained that during holistic review, colleges look at the rigor of classes you took, as well as the context of your high school experience. The question is: how does the admissions committee know the context of your high school? This information comes from the school profile submitted by your high school counselor

It's an objective fact that in recent decades GPAs of high school graduates have trended upward. Currently, the most common grade in both high school and colleges classes is an A. The causes and effects of grade inflation are constantly the subjects of discussion. Therefore it should be no surprise that the average GPA for high school graduates is on the rise. "About half of American teenagers now graduate high school with an A average, compared with fewer than 40 percent in

I've mentioned in previous blogs that the mantra everyone my age heard when applying to college was that the best students are "well-rounded." Well-rounded? What does that mean? When trying to envision what I understand "well-rounded" to mean, I often picture a publicity photo that was used in advertising by my college. It captured a student (yes, I attended college with him and did know him personally) in a football uniform standing proudly on the football field while playin

The myriad of application deadline options can be dizzying and confusing. Many colleges have up to five different application dates. For students and families encountering the many options for the first time, it can be hard to know which application deadline to choose. This series of blogs describes the different types of application deadlines and the advantages, drawbacks, and important things to note for each type. This blog is the third in a series describing the different

Specialization seems to be trending right now, but recently questions have arisen regarding whether the drawbacks of early specialization outweigh the benefits.

Spiky student? I've known plenty of spiky people in life and most aren't people with whom I want to spend a lot of time. However, in recent years the term "spiky student" has emerged as something that some have advocated as giving a student an edge in admissions. When I first heard the term "spiky student" I assumed it was a negative thing. To me a spiky student was perhaps unfriendly or sharp, but it has emerged as a term, as it relates to college admissions, that refers to