College Admissions Counseling

I was recently provided a copy of the book “Getting to the Quad: Your Guide for the College Experience” by the creator, Michael Bergman.  The book is designed to help high school graduates manage the transition from high school into college. The book is a collaboration of college and high school faculty, staff and alumni [...]

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This time of year many families are trying to figure out how to pay for the cost of college. One of the most common options are loans but not all loans are created equal. The Federal Trade Commission has a new fact sheet out called “Student Loans: Avoiding Deceptive Offers“.  This fact sheet reviews the [...]

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The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about how 529 plans can be used to reduce the cost of some colleges. 529 plans, for those unfamiliar with them, are savings plans which provide certain benefits for families saving for the cost of higher education. For more information on 529 plans go to savingforcollege.
With the [...]

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The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the College Board, the administrator of the SAT, will once again allow students to decide which SAT scores to submit to colleges.  This new policy will go into effect for the class of 2010. This policy previously existed under the name of score choice and was eliminated by [...]

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There are a variety of resources available to help students in the search for the right college. One of the resources I have not talked about before are the blogs of students who have just been through the college admissions process. Although there are limits to any resource, the student blogs provides a different [...]

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Yale College has officially announced that they are increasing the enrollment by 15% by creating two new residential colleges.  The new colleges are expected in open in 2013.  I first reported on the possibility of Yale expanding back in September 2007.
For those students for whom Yale would be a good option, this is great news. [...]

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Community colleges are a great choice for many students who either are interested in a technical type program or who want to save some money the first two years of college. But there are some little known problems that can occur with those students wishing to transfer to a four year college after a community [...]

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A new study out of Chicago reinforces what I have suggested in the past and that is that spending too much time preparing to take the ACT is not beneficial. The study found, in part, that studying to much was not beneficial because it took time away from studying the broad content knowledge that [...]

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Wake Forest University has announced that they are going test optional beginning with the freshman class of 2009. While I have reported on a number of liberal arts colleges that have recently gone test optional, this news is important because Wake Forest is the highest ranked national university to adopt a test optional admissions standard. [...]

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I am sometimes asked if students need to take both the SAT and ACT and the quick answer is no. A student only needs to take one standardized test for college admissions. The question then becomes, which test.
All students should take at least one practice test of the SAT and ACT. The College Board and [...]

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