Sunday, February 21st, 2010

An Alternative Spring Break

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 […]

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

For What it's Worth: The Value of College

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 question […]

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

A decision you can sleep on

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 […]

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

College 101 Panels in the SF Bay Area in January 2010

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.

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Comparison-shopping for Colleges

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 […]

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

COLLEGE IS HOGWARTS!?

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.

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

BetterGrads Week(s) in Review #2

With many excit­ing recent devel­op­ments to share, includ­ing the first (inter)national Bet­ter­Grads team meet­ing, a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Rotary Club of Pleasan­ton North, upcom­ing pre­sen­ta­tions at Oak­land Tech, ini­tial feed­back from GHS, it’s time for another update on BetterGrads!

Monday, October 26th, 2009

BetterGrads Week(s) in Review #1 + Video

Bet­ter­Grads week in review #1: Com­mu­nity Ini­tia­tives meet­ing and Granada High School Col­lege 101 Pre­sen­ta­tions to over 600 stu­dents and parents.

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Academic Support

When strug­gling with a sub­ject in high school, you might have looked for a local tutor to help clear up the con­fu­sion. And it was safe to say that the tutor was either a local col­lege stu­dent, or recent col­lege grad­u­ate.
So, what hap­pens in col­lege when you are strug­gling with your course­work? Who tutors the […]

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Big Week for BetterGrads: 800 Students, 7 "College 101" Presentations, 2 Days

This week, mem­bers of our national team and local col­lege stu­dent peer advi­sors will deliver our first series of "Col­lege 101" presentations.