Cultivate skills and interests to demonstrate a unique talent.LEARN MORE

College Match

Achieve your Dreams

The Common App: Everything You Need to Know

by

The Common App: Everything You Need to Know (Source: USNews)

Applying to college is a tedious and often stressful process for students and their parents. In addition to finishing their last year of high school, teens are also juggling the SAT or ACT, college tours and applications for numerous schools.

The Common Application, which is accepted by more than 750 schools, including some located outside the U.S., helps to streamline one part of the admissions process for students.

When Can I Start Working on My College Application Through the Common App?

The new edition of the Common App opens on Aug. 1 every year. However, students can create an account at any time and transfer their information into the new app when it opens.

To start, applicants can go to commonapp.org and click on the “Get Started” button to get details about how to create an account and log in to work on an application through the platform. Students can download the Common App’s mobile app to keep track of deadlines, invite recommenders and set reminders.

The summer before senior year is a great time for students to start on their applications, experts say.

Students don’t have to submit their applications during the summer. But starting in August gives them the opportunity to review the requirements for schools they’re considering, draft essays and get some of the tedious background information completed before they get bogged down with homework and activities, Warren says.

Starting early also allows students to get the help they need at the beginning of the school year, she says.

How Long Does it Take to Fill Out an Application?

The time it takes to fill out an application will vary based on a school’s requirements, experts say.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Applying to College

  • Start the College Application Process
  • Complete the FAFSA
  • Write a Standout College Essay
  • Ask for Recommendation Letters
  • Learn the Ins and Outs of Financial Aid
  • Decipher College Tuition Costs
  • Find Scholarships to Pay for College

In addition to any parental information that’s needed – such as employer details and educational background – many schools also require first-year applicants to submit recommendation letters and transcripts. Students need to give teachers and counselors enough time to submit those materials to the Common App before deadlines.

High school counselors encourage students to ask their teachers for recommendation letters before the end of their junior year so educators can work on them during the summer. Seniors who need recommendation letters should ask for letters early in the school year, experts say.

What Are the Common App Essay Prompts and Where Can I Find Them?

The Common App essay prompts for the 2018-2019 school year will be the same as the seven prompts used this year. Applicants have a 650-word limit for essays.

There is some variation among the topics. A few require students to reflect on their experiences and share examples of learning or personal growth. But students also have the option to share an essay on any topic of their choice or simply describe a topic that captivates them.

With seven options, it doesn’t matter which prompt is chosen, as long as it’s one that allows an applicant to provide insight into his or her identity in ways that aren’t reflected in other parts of the application, experts say.

Not all schools require students to submit an essay. Some institutions may require students to submit additional essays or information. Applicants can see the requirements for all schools on the Common App when they log in to their student accounts or download a PDF from the Common App’s website.

Students can also preview supplemental questions for schools before they start their applications through the platform’s Applicant Solutions Center.

What Should I Do if I Run Into Problems With the Common App?

Students who have questions about filling out the application can ask their high school counselor and the colleges they’re applying to for help, experts say.

The Common App also has a variety of resources to help make the application process easier.

In addition to video tutorials throughout the application, the platform has year-round technical support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Students can find answers to frequently asked questions or submit a question in the Applicant Solutions Center. Response times will vary, but the average wait time for a response is 20 minutes, according to Common App representatives.

Can I Get Fee Waivers for the Common App?

The Common App is free to use and about 45 percent of the member schools don’t charge application fees. Students who are applying to colleges that have an application fee will have to pay that cost when submitting their applications.

Applicants who qualify for fee waivers – those who meet the standards set by the National Association for College Admission Counseling – will be able to make that known through the application.

Students who have questions about whether they qualify for fee waivers can reach out to their high school counselors or directly to the colleges that they are applying to, experts say.

What Tips Can Make Filling Out the Common App Easier?

Don’t wait until 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 1 to finish applications, experts say. In 2018, 1,270 students submitted applications during that final minute through the Common App. Schools will still accept applications that are a few minutes late, according to Common App representatives, but the stress that comes with fighting against the clock isn’t worth it.

Besides starting early, experts encourage students to take advantage of the Common App preview that allows students to review their application prior to submission.

Students can also assign advisers who can see parts of an application and the progress they’ve made.

Do I Have to Use the Common App to Apply to College?

Students are not required to use the Common App. While the platform is popular, it isn’t the only one for college applications.

Many schools allow students to apply online through their websites. Some states have application systems that students can or must use in order to apply to schools. For example, Texas has a statewide system for submitting applications, though some Texas schools also accept the Common App.

Some well-known private institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgetown University in the District of Columbia only accept applications through their school websites. Many competitive colleges and universities, such as Harvard University and Amherst College, accept applications through the Common App.

Other platforms accepted by some schools include the Coalition Application and the Universal College Application. And while there are some exceptions, many schools that use those platforms also use the Common App.

Do Colleges Care if I Use the Common App or a Different Platform?

Colleges that allow students to submit applications through multiple platforms don’t have a preference on which one is used, but high school counselors might. The Common App’s integration with Naviance, a college and career readiness software provider, makes it easy for counselors to submit documentation for colleges, experts say.

But students should submit one application using the platform that works best for them.

What Really Goes on in a College Admissions Office?

by

Source: Time.com Money

A former admissions officer debunks some common misconceptions and explains what applicants need to do to get into their dream schools.

In addition to the obvious “our luggage is strong” message, there is the in-your-face contrast between how passengers expect their belongings to be treated and the reality.

If you have ever been to a college admissions presentation and heard phrases such as: “Each application gets a holistic review,” “Share, don’t tell,” and ” You should apply,” you may envision the dedicated airline professional from the TV ad calmly shepherding your luggage/student’s application on its way. But perhaps you should be thinking instead about the gorilla.

How applications are read

The image: A bespectacled director of admissions, graying at the temples, sits in a leather chair at his impressive desk in his walnut-paneled office. He leisurely reads your student’s application. He laughs, cries, and then immediately stamps ADMIT on the folder.

The reality: A harried admissions officer sits in her car, sipping coffee, balancing her laptop precariously on the center console. She rushes to read applications between appointments. Your son or daughter’s material probably gets seven minutes of her time—tops.

What you can do: Make sure academic and extracurricular activities are displayed in an easy-to-understand manner. If your student changes schools, has a noticeable drop in GPA, or stops participating in extracurricular activities…if there is any gray area anywhere on the application, use the extra information section to explain it so there is no lingering question to be filled in by the admissions officer’s imagination.

The importance of activities

Essays are everything to admissions officers. So you don’t need to spend a lot of time on the activities section of the application.

The reality: The activities section can be just as important in its way as the essays.

What you can do: Whether the student has participated in many activities or just a few, take the time to think about how best to present them. Have your student describe not only what position he or she held, but also what he or she did in each activity and the milestones reached. Fit that description into the limited number of words/characters that the application allows. (Think of filling the space on the activity page as posting a long Tweet.) For example:

Instead of: Photography Club President, 11, 12

Consider: Elected President of Photo Club (11, 12). Grew membership from 3 to 27. Founded online photography journal. Created monthly exhibit opportunities in schools, libraries, coffee shops, and malls.

Or…

Instead of: Debate Team, 10, 11, 12

Consider: Qualified for state finals as 3rd of 200 debaters. Reviewed junior members’ debate performances. Recruited fellow students and mentored team members.

When majors make a difference

It doesn’t really matter what major you pick, but pick one if you’re asked to.

The reality: Some colleges and universities require applicants to indicate their majors when they apply, and whether your student chooses engineering or English, admissions officers will evaluate his or her file differently based on that choice. The engineering student, for example, is typically expected to take the Math II and Physics SAT Subject Tests and show particularly strong grades in his or her quantitative courses.

What you can do: Admissions officers are looking for proof of students’ intellectual curiosity with respect to their stated majors. So, to continue with our engineering example, they want to know how students have gotten to know engineering through work, volunteering, clubs, and other venues. Engineering applicants may have additional essays to write where they can highlight their interest in the subject. Recommendations should be from teachers who can speak to the student’s interest in engineering. While engineering students may have more hoops to jump through, no matter what major your student declares, admissions officers will look for proof of the student’s interest in that field.

Elite Colleges Review an Application in 8 Minutes (or Less)

by

Article by By Melissa Korn – WSJ

8 minute admissions
The Georgia Institute of Technology is among the colleges to adopt two-person committees to review student applications. Applications to Georgia Tech jumped by 13% for the next academic year, to 35,600. PHOTO: DUSTIN CHAMBERS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

With so many applying, fewer schools have one person read a whole application; plowing through 500 files in a day

As application numbers surge, admissions officers at some elite colleges say they don’t have time to read an entire file.

Instead, staffers from more schools—including the Georgia Institute of Technology, Rice University and Bucknell University in Pennsylvania—now divvy up individual applications. One person might review transcripts, test scores and counselor recommendations, while the other handles extracurricular activities and essays.

They read through their portions simultaneously, discuss their impressions about a candidate’s qualifications, flag some for admission or rejection, and move on. While their decision isn’t always final, in many cases theirs are the last eyes to look at the application itself.

The entire process can take less than eight minutes.
 ____________________________________

HOT TIP:  HOW TO STAND OUT IN 8 MINUTES                                                                         
Admissions officials and high-school counselors                                                             
give tips on getting a close look during quick application reviews:

Do:

• Keep essays focused and personal

• Highlight extracurricular activities that really mattered to you

• Tell a coherent story across essays, transcript and activities

Don’t: 

• Use acronyms that only people familiar with your school would understand

• Assume the reader knows nothing about where you grew up
____________________________________

The new approach puts students at a disadvantage because an admission officer doesn’t get a comprehensive view of the candidate, some high-school guidance counselors say.

“If they’re splitting it up, it’s not holistic. Nobody has a full feeling” of the applicant, said Chris Reeves, a school counselor at Beechwood High School in Fort Mitchell, Ky., and a director at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

“I put in four years of super hard work. To know that it’s all over in 10 minutes is just mind-blowing,” said Caleb Richmond, an 18-year-old senior at the Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H., who says he wrote about seven drafts of his main college admission essay.

Georgia Tech
Mary Tipton Woolley and Xan Roseberry look over prospective students’ applications in the admissions office at Georgia Tech. PHOTO: DUSTIN CHAMBERS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Committee-based evaluation, which involves a committee of two people, is the admission industry’s answer to ballooning application volume. Admissions directors say it is better for staffers than spending solitary months reading essays, transcripts and recommendation letters. They also say it helps train new readers and minimizes bias by forcing readers to defend why they think a candidate is qualified or not, and as a result they’re more confident in the decisions the new committees are making.

Admissions officers estimate that upward of 30 elite schools have embraced the method, championed early by the University of Pennsylvania. Colorado College, Case Western Reserve University, Swarthmore College and the California Institute of Technology use variations as well.

Schools say they are making the shift in part to stem staff turnover, as many now quit at the end of the reading season. “It’s a more humane way of reviewing applications,” said Marylyn Scott, senior associate dean of admissions at Bucknell. The school adopted the approach during the last admission cycle.

Readers at Bucknell, which gets more than 10,000 applications, used to take 12 to 15 minutes to review each application. Now a team of two is done in six to eight minutes.

Caleb Richmond, an 18-year-old senior in Manchester, N.H
‘I put in four years of super hard work. To know that it’s all over in 10 minutes is just mind-blowing,’ says Caleb Richmond, an 18-year-old senior in Manchester, N.H. PHOTO: ELIZABETH BELLOTT-MICHAUD

Combined, Ms. Scott noted, that is still up to 16 “person minutes.”

Last year, the school admitted about 3,200 students and enrolled just shy of 1,000.

A three-person committee reviews the team’s notes before making a final call.

Efficiency is crucial, since more students are using the Common Application, which allows them to submit material to multiple schools. Nearly 902,000 students used it last year. As of Jan. 15 this year, the number was already 898,000 students submitting to an average of 4.8 schools.

Applications to Georgia Tech jumped by 13% for the coming academic year, to 35,600. The current freshman class has roughly 2,800 students.

“There’s just no way we could have gotten things done” without significant strain, said Rick Clark, director of undergraduate admissions.

That school introduced committee-based reading in the fall, and the staff, in up to 12 teams of two, now plows through about 500 applications a day.

The officer in charge of a particular region, referred to as the driver in the process, opens a file online and describes the applicant’s school to his or her partner, the passenger. The driver looks over an applicant’s academic transcript and test scores, while the passenger takes on counselor recommendations, essays and extracurricular activities.

They make a decision after eight to 10 minutes: admit, deny, waitlist. In about 85% of the cases, the application isn’t reviewed again.

“I’ve legitimately read—not skimmed, but read—more counselor recommendations in the last round than I have in the last three years,” Mr. Clark said. “I have time to read them.”

Critics say a fragmented reading provides little insight into candidates’ nuanced applications, and rather than reducing bias the team-based process can lead readers to reinforce one another’s assumptions.

Jim Conroy, chairman of the post high school counseling department at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill., says he spends years teaching colleges’ territory managers about his high school. Now, though, “There’s no context to their reading.”

Colleges say the committee would likely include the regional representative who knows about a school’s academic rigor and extracurricular offerings.

Still, some schools want to do things even faster.

Yvonne Romero da Silva, formerly at Penn and now vice president for enrollment at Rice, is focused on shaving a few more seconds off the process by reducing the number of text boxes into which readers can add notes and streamlining drop-down menus.

“Little things like that, after 40 files, really add up into concrete minutes,” she said, adding that the main goal is to spend that time on reading more closely.

Mr. Richmond, the senior from New Hampshire, agonized over his essay, about coming to terms with being gay.

“I can’t even tell you how many hours I stared at the page, just thinking about word choice, what I wanted the sentence to sound like,” said Mr. Richmond, who was accepted early to Swarthmore.

Then again, he said, “The process worked for me.”

Corrections & Amplifications
A photo above shows Mary Tipton Woolley and Xan Roseberry in the admissions office at Georgia Tech. An earlier version of the caption incorrectly gave their names as Mary-Tipton Woolley and Xan Rosenberry, and it incorrectly said the office is in the Georgia Tech Admissions Building. Separately, an earlier version of another photo caption incorrectly gave Rick Clark’s first name as Rich. (Jan. 31)

Appeared in the February 1, 2018, print edition as ‘Top Colleges Speed Read Applications How To Stand Out In Eight Minutes.’

…

Elite Colleges Spend 8 Minutes on Applications. What Can I Do About It?

by

Think Like A College Admissions Officer

Develop Uniqueness

You’re an admissions officer at a major university. For three very intense months, you spend somewhere between six and twelve hours each day reading applications — hundreds of them — from nice, well-meaning kids, and you have somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes to decide their fate.

In that time, you have to figure out who the student is, what makes her special, and what unique value she can offer the university. Unfortunately, as you flip through the files, you find the same molds repeating themselves, an endless succession of honors students and varsity athletes, math club members and science team leaders, all with good track records, but with little to help you distinguish what’s special.

Your vision blurs. You yawn, stretch, and toss another file into the 50/50 pile. You reach for another, wondering how much more you can take, when suddenly, you wake from your stupor, reading about a student with unique promise—an unusual combination of passion and talent who has constructed a rock-solid picture of who she is, what she loves, and what she wants out of life. Her unique experience will add value to your university in ways that no other student can, and her knowledge about your school proves how vested she is in creating her future. You feel a tingling, a thrill of pride as you place her in the acceptance pile, giving her a springboard into a promising future.

It’s moments like these that make the job worthwhile.

To learn the never before revealed 12 steps that will make your application unique, download both of David Montesano’s Brand U books, 4 Steps, and Stand Out to Get In.

David Montesano – ”Embrace a GROWTH MINDSET in Order to Gain a BETTER COLLEGE MATCH.”

by

It is important for students and parents of college-bound students to embrace a growth mindset in order to gain a better college match, win admission and merit awards, and get set up to thrive in college and their chosen careers.

Decisions about where to go are not always wise: 1 in 3 students transfer, only half finish in 4 years. University counselor/student ratios are 300:1 at public schools and 200:1 at private schools.

Among the roughly 1.7 million students applying to four-year universities, the top 20% apply to roughly the same 50 to 60 universities, overcrowding these admission pools.

The right university affects:

  • A student’s choices and path in life
  • The quality of their social network, career connections and graduate school placement

Along with university choice, paying for tuition and making sure students find meaningful work are also concerns that parents share.

My book, BRAND U – 4 Steps to the College of Your Dreams, helps parents and students like those at your school set up a strategy to understand their personal journey through life and how college can be a tool to help them get where they are going.

Download your free copy here >  BRAND U – 4 Steps to the College of Your Dreams.

The book presents my unique method in 4 steps that parents and students can easily follow:

  • SPARKS (9th Grade): We identify the most critical element for your university application, your spark.
  • FIRE (10th Grade): With your spark, now you build your fire, finding and developing your abilities and experiences that make you exceptional. This process isn’t just about college, but life.
  • VISION (11th Grade): What kind of undergraduate experience is right for you? We avoid superficial criteria like magazine rankings and instead guide you to the best undergrad fit for you.
  • BRAND (12th Grade): Here, by positioning how you’re different and what you bring to each university, we turn the admissions game around so that you’re in control and colleges are pursuing you.

In today’s highly competitive admissions environment, the normal admissions approach just isn’t enough. David takes a open mindset approach, putting students and their families—not the colleges!—in control of their personal growth as a part of the admissions process. By attending David’s presentation, you will learn everything you need to know about 1) selecting the right school; 2), getting admitted; and 3), paying for college the smart way.

About David Montesano
David Montesano is a leading global educational consultant and the founder of College Match U.S. The first admissions strategist in the United States, David has 20 years of experience helping students select and get in to the college of their dreams.

PBrand U - 4 steps to the college of your dreamsrior to launching College Match in 2001, David worked with noted admissions expert Loren Pope. David has recently discussed an open mindset for college admissions as a panelist with Open Mindset author and Stanford University Professor Carol Dweck.
David is the author of two books—“Brand U: 4 Steps to the College of Your Dreams” and “Stand Out to Get In!”—in which he details his Montesano Method for college admissions. The Montesano Method is also available in a six-part video course available at Unifluence.com.
For more information about David’s admissions strategies, and to work with David, please visit www.collegematchus.com.
http://www.collegematchus.com/success.shtml College Match is the leading provider of strategic advising for college and graduate school bound students.