Summer College Visits: The Quest to Find a School

If you’re lucky enough (and brave enough) to consider a school more than 10 miles from home (You are! You can do it!), you’re going to have to visit it at least once. If you haven’t decided on a school yet, this summer is a great opportunity to explore your options. If you’ve got the time this summer, use it! Wander campuses without a guide, and see as much as you can. One way of going about this quest is to make a family vacation out of it, like I did. The younger siblings and the parents will probably drive you crazy, but have everyone climb in the minivan (so dorky, I know, I lived it), and hit the road. If you’re curious about a state or city rather than a specific school, this is a great time to visit several schools. Larger, more popular schools tend to be fairly [...]

Has the College Application Process Evolved into an Arms Race?

With the college application season coming to a close, this is the question writer Jennifer Moses attempted to answer in a recent Wall Street Journal article. A video interview with Moses and the Journal’s Kelsey Hubbard can be found here. In the article, Moses outlines several expenses associated with her 17-year-old twins’ college application process: Total cost of her twins’ standardized test fees = $522 Total cost of travel, including air fare, gas, hotels, food and incidentals, for both twins accompanied by one parent each = $3,9908.23 Total cost for private college counselor = $701.25 (to date)

Orientation Mania Hits College Campuses Everywhere

No, universities aren’t faring a sudden outburst of a neurological disorders, but they’re definitely on high alert. As these warm, musky days of August roll forward, colleges and universities across the country are whipping out the pop-up tents, setting up check-in booths and passing out pre-stuffed folders to freshmen, new graduate students and other fresh faces on their respective college campus. Phew, what a long sentence. In short, it’s orientation week at tons of schools. Bring on the orientating! I have one more day of my journalism graduate student orientation at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, and I’m wiped! In a good way. My 40-or-so other new student cohorts and I have been wowed with dozens of multimedia presentations, lectures and discussions with faculty, program directors and current students. We’re getting a full dose of the opportunities available to us through our [...]

Accepted! Now what? Reacting to the advice of Yale Dean of Admissions

Jeff Brenzel recently posted on The Huffington Post his advice for students when they have been accepted to college. I thought that this was a great idea since even though it’s extremely important to discuss dealing with disappointment and roadblocks, it’s just as important to discuss what to do with those acceptance letters.

Worth a Return Visit

This is the first in a series of articles highlighting places you might have seen (and some you might have not seen) during the typical student-led college tour, that are all worthy of a second visit. The Library. A Shangra-Li for all things written, recorded, or documented, the typical prospective student should not discount the quality of a particular school’s library when deciding upon where to spend the next four years. Most tour guides will take their groups through the library’s entrance, guide them through one of the study lounge’s and then lead the group of out the library to ensure that there is time for the remaining sights on tour. What most prospective students do not realize is that they will be spending many weekday, and weekend evenings, and early morning hours in the library working through chemistry problem sets, writing final papers for the Philosophy 101, or simply [...]

Questioning the questions-on college tours

When I went on college tours, I asked a lot of questions—just not always the right ones. We spend so much time discussing majors and minors, perks and places that it’s easy to miss some crucial details of a college visit. Here are some aspects of college life that I hardly thought about but are really worth considering: Laundry facilitiesContrary to popular belief, college students actually do laundry (sometimes). And when they do, it’s helpful if the facilities are easily accessible, clean, in good working order, and do not require 17 quarters to do a single load of laundry. On-campus academic supportI only thought to ask about the professors, but they’re not the only ones doing the teaching on college campuses these days. Upperclassmen are frequently employed as tutors in their areas of strength and can be a real life-saver the night before an exam or while you’re struggling with [...]