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International Student

Spotlight on International Students Who Wish to Study in the U.S. (Part 1)

Universities in the U.S. welcome international students with pride and the knowledge that they will make each campus more compelling, interesting and vibrant. If you are an international student, you should know that your classroom participation will inform the perspectives of American students in essential ways—lending important and divergent voices to global issues. The Application …

Young Man Revising His Essay

Revise Your Ideas About Revision

I know, I know… the college essay process is stressful! However, learning to appreciate, surrender to, and respect the art of revision as a high school senior will be terrific experience for your future writing (which will also require respecting and surrendering to the art of revision). You will be revising resumes, activity sheets, personal …

Students At Desk Showing A+ Grades on Papers

Is It Always All About the Grades?

You know how we say that in college grades come first? Well, should that be the case? I mean, students attend college for any number of reasons: to become more empathic individuals, broader thinkers, deeper thinkers, more valuable citizens, more authentic human beings, better networkers, more career savvy, to learn how to reap the big …

Young Woman Holding Out Piece of Paper

The College Application Résumé

What goes on and what stays off? As the August application frenzy hits its stride, many of my students are asking about the value of creating a résumé for college. “Why should I do more work,” they ask, “when the Common Application is happy with an Activities List?” The answer to that is, YOU may …

Girl Student Waving Goodbye to Parents

What Does it Mean to Send your Teenager to College?

Sending your son or daughter to college means, in most cases, a shocking change in family dynamic. Perhaps you’ll walk by your child’s room for weeks wondering where he or she is, whether assignments are really getting done in a timely fashion, whether he or she is staying healthy and balancing the nightly social life …

Facebook regret word cloud: guilt, depression, remorse, etc.

Seniors, Clean up Your Facebook Act… Now!

Seniors, we understand that your sense of privacy is, shall we say, flexible, but admission officers have flexibility too. They can check your fluid high school privacy on Facebook and Google at their discretion-without warning to you, and with possibly devastating outcomes. According to a Kaplan survey of college admissions officers, more than one in …

Stressed-out high school student with face in hands

You Should Switch to Decaf If…

Know these warning signs of the stressed-out, over-caffeinated high school student. You Should Switch to Decaf If: You’ve been on Wikipedia for 23 hours and still can’t figure out why there was no Pope Sixtus VI in your AP Euro textbook. You’ve been studying calculus so long that the voices in your head have bodies. …