For most students, the second semester of junior year is when the college application process begins in earnest. So this month, we asked our high school counselors: What’s the most important task for juniors to tackle in second semester of junior year? Read on to get a jump start on your to do list!
Mai Lien Nguyen
College and Career Center Coordinator
Mountain View High School
Mountain View, California
Have you heard of "demonstrated interest"? It's one of those phrases that can cause some confusion for students -- and parents -- as they go through the college application process. Luckily, educational psychologist Jane McClure returns this month to demystify "demonstrated interest" and provide six action items for students to -- what else? -- demonstrate interest.
By now, your applications have been submitted. Whew! What a relief! So now you just wait, right? Well, no, not exactly. There are some actions you can take that will make a difference at many colleges, particularly independent colleges and universities. It’s called “demonstrated interest.” Students show demonstrated interest when they take various actions that signal to a school that they are seriously considering it. And it can possibly enhance your chances of admission.
Juniors, our advice for this week is to sleep in and eat pie. This is a time for relaxing with family and friends. We do have a couple of suggestions, though. If you're visiting family near a college in which you might be interested, consider taking a drive through the nearby campus. The admission office will likely be closed, but it's still a great time to walk through the grounds. And if you have a chance to visit with any of last year's seniors who are returning from their first few months at college, take the time to ask them about their application experience. What they wish they had known or had done differently or maybe what mattered most for them in selecting and choosing a college. Other than that, stick with the program of football, pie, family and sleeping in.
Educational psychologist Jane McClure, who is widely respected for her work with students with learning disabilities, returns this month with advice on the college application process for students with a learning difference or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. For students with such special circumstances, making the right match with a college is particularly important. Read on for her excellent recommendations on the college search, visits, testing and making the right match.
Applying to college can seem complicated for all students, but if you have a learning disability or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, it can appear to be downright daunting. However, with careful planning and an understanding of how the process works for LD and ADHD students, it is manageable and should lead to a successful transition from high school to college. Here are some tips for how to proceed:
October is the cruelest month for high school college counselors, besieged on all sides with seniors intent on applications and juniors beginning their college search and testing -- as well as issues with the Common App this year. So we give counselors a pass at this time of year. Instead of our Counselor of the Month feature, we bring you a round-up of best advice from the counselors who have graced our website with their guidance and wisdom in the past year. Read on to learn their best advice for students and parents, recommendations for financial aid, guidance on the college search and mistakes to avoid. One of our personal favorite sound bites? Niles West High School's Dan Gin who advises students, "Have fun… Everything will work out in the end." Next year at this time, you'll all see how true this is. In the meantime, take advantage of this advice from the experts on the college counseling side of the desk.
The College Search
Laura Stewart, Ensworth School, Nashville, Tennessee
How do you encourage your students to broaden their college search and look beyond the four or five schools that they know best?
We're delighted to welcome Mary Dell Harrington to the blog today! Mary Dell cofounded the wonderful blog, Grown and Flown, with Lisa Endlich Heffernan, which covers all things kids aged 15 to 25. (And we're so lucky to have both of them as regular guests here!) Today, we get to ride along with Mary Dell and her 17-year-old daughter as they travel through one of the wonderful rites of passage in the college admission journey -- the college visit. We personally found these visits to be peak parenting experiences and it sounds like Mary Dell and her daughter did, as well. You can, too -- especially with her excellent advice.
Our youngest child will soon finalize her college list and begin the process of uploading her heart and soul into the Common Application. By winter break, she will be liberated from thinking about SATs and self-reflective essays, never to dwell on them again! The only part of the college hunt that I hope she might recall, perhaps even fondly, are the college trips we took together. It is the singular aspect of the process that parents truly share with their child and the only one with the potential to both inform and entertain.
Based on my experience with our daughter and her older brother, here are ways we tried to make looking at colleges more like mini-vacations and less like drudgery:
1. Act like tourists
Psychologist and counselor Jeanette Spires joins us today as a monthly guest blogger to talk about geographic representatives in college admission offices and why it's a good idea to get to know them.
Who is your new best friend?
Let’s assume that applying to college is much like applying for a job. On the way to a position, you may be evaluated by everyone from the receptionist to the waiter in the company cafeteria. Overlooking this fact can sink your chances. In the same way, here is someone in your path to college who deserves your full attention -- your geographic representative in the admission office.
Colleges, especially private colleges, often organize admissions into geographic regions. The geographic representative is often a person who adored college and wants to help you do the same. This job has its ups and downs, up to and including carrying bags of pennants, mascots, pens and brochures down into the cafeteria, through the gym, or upstairs through the classroom hallways. In large cities just finding a place to park can start the day off rather frantically. Popular schools may draw a crowd, but the reps from some great places students have never heard of may go through all this to speak with no one and end up with the same squeezy stress balls they came in with. But these people MATTER.
If experience has taught me anything about these waning years of hands-on parenting it is that there is very much a time and a place for parents to help. The area where parents can do their kids the greatest service is in time management. Even the most mature teens would be hard pressed to recognize at the outset the huge demands on their time as the wind through the final years of high school. Our role, I believe is not to do things for them, but to help them envision the process, its demands and how they will squeeze it all into their busy lives.
Here are some suggestions to help them on their way:
1. Help your child plan out their academic life
Sit down with your 9th grader or 10th grader and their high school course catalogue and plan backward from 12th grade. Together, think about what they hope to accomplish academically over their high school years. Help them pick the most challenging classes they hope to take in the subject areas they enjoy. Have them look at the prerequisites for these classes and the paths they are going to take to reach their goals. Granted interests change and so do school schedules, but but kids with a plan have goals for themselves.
2. Ask your child to select one activity in which they will try to excel.
Independent college counselor Lee Bierer has some great advice for HS juniors on the college application process. You don't need to know which college you want to attend or what you want to study in order to prepare well -- from planning for testing to a first campus visit. Check out all her recommendations here.
As you head off into the summer, here's one last checklist. If you get some of these things done, you will be off to a good start when you return in the fall. And as a little added incentive, we've included links to prior posts with advice on each subject. Have a great vacation and make sure that in addition to researching colleges and writing your essays this summer, you rest, relax and recharge, as well.
