ACT and SAT Blog

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 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 […]

5 Ways to Build a Great High School Résumé

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again—colleges like to see their applicants do more than just excel in academics. They like to see involvement in extracurriculars, participation in the community, an active volunteering streak…maybe even a combination of all three! It can get exhausting to try to get all of these bases covered, […]

5 Ways to Not Start Your College Application Essays

When it comes to applying to college, perhaps one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the whole process is writing those darn essays. No one likes to talk about themselves, and people like talking about themselves even less when what they say could possibly cost them acceptance into their dream school. However, writing those pesky […]

9 Essential Resources for College Applicants

Whether you’re currently applying to college, or are just starting to think about the process, having resources available is something that all students can benefit from. I know that I constantly rely on information and guidance from multiple sources (both online and off) to help me as I counsel students–and, often, the information I get […]

Who Should Write Your College Recommendation Letters?

This week’s College Admissions Tip of the Week comes from Lauren Rudick, one of our SAT instructors and college admissions counselors. Letters of recommendation are the one part of your college applications that you don’t do yourself and don’t have direct control over. But you can still influence this part of your applications by choosing […]

What Should you Write on Your College Application Essays?

Ah, the dreaded essays. They cause sleepless nights, endless fretting, and constant stress. And that’s before you start writing them! Once you begin, it’s an endless stream of worries–are you writing about the right thing? Is this sentence structure correct? Did you say something that might keep you out of your dream school? Is someone […]