Dear High School Matt, You are about to make the biggest jump of your young life, try not to worry about it so much. It is a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion, but you will soon find that you can han­dle it, so embrace it as soon as pos­si­ble. And I know that you stum­bled on UC Davis […]

Even though it’s been five years, I remem­ber what you’re going through all too well. Let’s see…you’re freak­ing out about pass­ing pre­cal­cu­lus, wait­ing on pins and nee­dles to hear back from col­leges, and won­der­ing why senior year has been the com­plete oppo­site of the idyl­lic year promised by year­books and teen movies. Am I right? Thought so.

I remem­ber you at sev­en­teen, about to start your senior year of high school as the new stu­dent at a pri­vate, Catholic school in the Los Ange­les. The ear­lier years of high school were a chal­lenge for you – your mother being diag­nosed with breast can­cer and con­stantly feel­ing out of place within the LAUSD school sys­tem. You had too many pas­sions and too lit­tle out­lets for them. Would col­lege be the solu­tion to your feel­ing out of place? Would col­lege allow you to make up for the social and extracur­ric­u­lar expe­ri­ences you missed out on, when you came home early to pro­vide sup­port to your mother because you could not bear to be out when some­one you loved so dearly was in such tremen­dous pain?

Write a let­ter to your high school self. Share the things you ques­tioned about col­lege that even­tu­ally were answered. Share your wis­dom and advice. Give some guid­ance to the next gen­er­a­tion of col­lege potentials.

If you're a high school junior, chances are your inbox and mail­box have been filled with let­ters from the mar­ket­ing depart­ments of col­leges across the coun­try. I also received those one page let­ters. And if you do not feel like wait­ing until the sum­mer before your senior year to fig­ure out whether you should apply […]

As Eliz­a­beth men­tioned, Feb­ru­ary is a month filled with oppor­tu­ni­ties for bud­ding rela­tion­ships (col­lege accep­tance let­ters) and heart­break. (sigh…rejection let­ters). In some cases, these same let­ters may force some soon-to-be grad­u­at­ing high schools seniors to revisit a ques­tion they once con­fi­dently answered months before pen­ning rough draft per­sonal state­ments. What's more, the answer to this […]

On Thurs­day, the New York Times ran an arti­cle describ­ing a grow­ing trend among senior cit­i­zens: sleep overs! After spend­ing the day­time acquaint­ing them­selves with the facil­i­ties, retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties are offer­ing prospec­tive senior res­i­dents the oppor­tu­nity to take in evening social events and the oppor­tu­nity to spend the night. For senior cit­i­zens, this is a […]

Bet­ter­Grads will be offer­ing four Col­lege 101 pan­els in Jan­u­ary 2010 at San Fran­cisco Bay Area High Schools, includ­ing Rich­mond High School and Oak­land Tech­ni­cal High School.

With Hanukkah wind­ing down and Christ­mas right around the cor­ner, news­pa­pers across the coun­try this week have high­lighted some cool web­sites and mobile phone appli­ca­tions that can make com­par­i­son shop­ping a lot eas­ier. One prod­uct that caught my eye, was the mobile appli­ca­tion, Shop­Savvy, cre­ated by Big in Japan, a devel­op­ment com­pany based out of […]

Col­lege rep­u­ta­tions are never a real­ity — or never a com­plete real­ity, at least. Prospec­tive col­lege stu­dents would be very well advised to spend less time "drink[ing] in the tour guide's every word" — on claims of Hog­warts or oth­er­wise — and more time ask­ing tough ques­tions, doing exten­sive research and intro­spec­tion, and, most impor­tantly, engag­ing as many cur­rent col­lege stu­dents and young pro­fes­sion­als for their insights and actual expe­ri­ences as they can.