Special Guests

Today's column is from John Carpenter, author of  Going Geek: What Every Smart Kid (and Every Smart Parent) Should Know About College Admissions. Read on to learn what mustachioed caterpillars can teach you about finding a great college.

Many people know that I’ve been living in Costa Rica for the last year, and that I work at an amazing school with people from 65 different countries.  Sometimes I can’t believe how cool things are here.

The campus is home to some incredible bio-diversity.  There are more trees, flowers, and plants than I’ve ever seen.  Most days I just walk right by them and don’t really pay much attention to the huge variety of growing things around me.  But I’m beginning to learn that there’s more to a bunch of leaves than I thought.

About a month ago, our new teachers arrived on campus, and one of them is this very cool guy called Isaac.  He’s a Wesleyan grad, and he’s really smart--a geek who loves biology.  What sets him apart is that he will stop to look at any random plant on campus and instantly find very cool stuff living on it.  He caught a giant moth, for example, just to see how long its tongue was.

Today, Alice Kleeman continues her excellent blog post about the "small stuff" that can trip up a college application process. Here are more of the frequently glossed-over college-related tasks that can make a difference:

• Your name

        Seems like a simple question, right?  But maybe you are Maria Juana Ortiz on your birth certificate, and Maria J. Ortiz at school, MJ to your friends, and Maria Juana Ortiz-Santos to your extended family.  Maybe you think that doesn’t matter.  But when a college is trying to join your SAT or ACT scores to your file; when a financial-aid office is trying to figure out whether the aid application it received belongs to you or someone else; when your diploma and final transcript carry different names -- under those circumstances, the name you provide can cause serious delays in processing important paperwork.  Choose one name for the college process and use it every time. 

        Since the Free Application for Federal Student AID (FAFSA) requires you to use the name on your Social Security card, you might as well use that one across the board.

        •     Application “extras”

Today, we welcome guest blogger Irena Smith, a writer, teacher, and independent college consultant, on how to find the story you will tell in your college essay. Spoiler alert: it might be as simple as knowing the right brick to push to enter Diagon Alley or having a reputation for eating like a defensive lineman. 

There is an old saw, beloved of debate teachers and public speaking coaches, that goes something like this: at any given funeral, given the choice between lying in the coffin or delivering the eulogy, most people would rather be in the coffin. The point is not a subtle one: not many people love public speaking.

Today we are joined by Myrtle Potter, one of America's foremost healthcare leaders and former president of Genentech, for a third installment in our series on the subject of diversity, featuring the personal “aha” moments of deans of admission, educators, and public figures.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s agreement to hear a case challenging the University of Texas’ admission policy, we wanted to examine the role diversity plays in college admission.  Why do colleges value diversity? Is it a worthwhile goal? What are its implications – pro and con? It is a subject that is complex, sometimes divisive, and often not well understood by students and parents.

Myrtle Potter, with her considerable experience in the world of corporate strategy, product development, and consulting, continues the discussion here:

My “aha” diversity moment may have begun in college but the lesson I was to learn didn't fully develop until years later.

I grew up in a small town in southern New Mexico.  My friends and I still refer to our wonderful upbringing as a “bubble existence."  We attended an incredibly diverse high school -- all races, religious backgrounds, sexual orientations and levels of income.  Yet, there was no divide that separated us.  The lines between lunch tables, friendships and opportunities were a colorful blur of acceptance.