Oh, man, the flu has hit my family. As a result, I didn’t get to bed last night until 4 am. I missed work today. But I couldn’t miss out on this. I am so tired, though, that I didn’t even have the energy to put commas in the dollar figures for each of these […]
NCAA Basketball Bracket: Largest Number of Undergrads
After my Spartans were forced yesterday to recognize Duke as national champion once again (in a bracket of head-to-head ACT and SAT scores), I wondered if there was a way to compare colleges and have MSU come out on top–or at least advance farther than Duke. Surely Michigan State has more undergraduate students than Duke, […]
College Admission Tips: Educational Options After High School
You’re on the last leg of your high school education, about to head out on your own and take on the world. Understandably, you feel powerful. You’re finally going to live life the way you want it, and start forging your own path. Wwith great power, however, also comes great responsibility: You must now choose […]
Letter Grades, Percentages, and GPAs
If you’re applying to college, you’ll hear a lot of talk about your GPA, and how much it matters in the college admissions process. Many students find the topic confusing: How come it’s a number from 0.0 to 4.0? What if my school gives out grades as percentages from 0 to 100? What if my school […]
Admission Tips: Four Pointers for Your College Application Résumé
There are a lot of items you will need to procure or create when putting together your college applications: transcripts, teacher recommendations, and essays, to name a few. You may also have to put together and submit a résumé. Given that most high schoolers have never had to put together a résumé for anything other […]
Admissions Tips: Letters of Recommendation from Non-Teachers
The first person everyone thinks about when they’re looking to get a letter of recommendation is a teacher. This makes perfect sense, of course–letters of recommendation for college are almost always required to address academic performance, and who better to do that than someone who has taught you in an academic subject? However, if a college […]
Admission Tips: Letters of Recommendation From Teachers
College applicants often consider the teacher recommendation letter to be a bothersome and relatively useless part of the application and thus don’t worry about it until the absolute last possible moment. This is a mistake. Recommendations can not only sway college admissions officers in your favor, but also sway them against it. It’s important to […]
Volunteering is Good for Others AND Yourself… and Your College Applications
Everyone knows that helping others gives you good karma…but did you know it can give you career guidance, too? It can! Helping out with service organizations and volunteering your time and expertise to different causes not only helps out your community, it also lets you “try on” different jobs and see which ones fit the […]
How to Make the Most of the Summer Before Senior Year
It’s easy to treat your junior year–rather than your senior year–as the culmination of your high school career. Junior year is the last full year of grades that colleges see when you apply, after all, and many high school students take on leadership positions in their extracurriculars during their junior year. Senior year, however, is […]
How a Common Myth Can Hurt Your College Application
There’s a very strong feeling among college applicants that you “have to do everything and do it well” in order to be accepted into college–and this goes doubly strong if you’re aiming for one of the nation’s elite universities. Invariably, this leads to high school students joining as many clubs as possible, participating in as […]