Category: College Admissions

There may be some child somewhere for whom higher SAT scores will be important in the college admissions process. For your child, the chances are that higher SAT scores won’t matter at all in determining where she is admitted. Bold statements, I know. But after 30-something years of counseling students

A buddy of mine is a world class distance runner. If I mentioned some of his accomplishments–running across Costa Rica, for example–you would just shake your head in wonder. He is a complete and utter beast. Never having run more than 50 miles in a day myself, I’m in awe

When a slot machine pays out ten thousand dollars, sirens blare, lights flash, and young women in bathing suits crowd around to help pick up the explosion of spewing quarters. The joyful winner bathes in admiration and coins up to his ankles as joyful music plays and the crowd cheers.

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. That’s as may be, but the issue of who gets educated where remains unresolved 200 years after Jefferson wrote about our fledgling democracy. It is not news that those

Of all the gloriously exuberant excesses of the “Idiot-athon”, surely the shuttle run was the silliest and the most fun. After running 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 yards out picking up and putting down blocks of wood, competitors were required to remove a plastic bone-the femur if memory serves-in

Before Matthew Broderick was Ferris Bueller and Ally Sheedy was the weird girl in “Breakfast Club,” the kids starred in “War Games,” an uplifting film about global thermonuclear war and the end of all life on the planet, that sort of thing. Spoiler alert: the world does not come to

“How has the college admissions process changed in the 30-something years that I have been helping students choose and apply to college?” When I give talks or appear on radio shows, I typically point out how students are filling in more applications and that therefore it’s harder to predict who

Competent, ethical college admissions counselors wear any number of hats including but not limited to the following: Coach Chapeau: “C’mon, you! Three more essays! You can DO this! Let’s go!” Mortician Millinery: “I’m sorry your dream of attending North Cornstalk State has passed away…” Balloon Popper Bowler: “No, that your

Whether or not Isaac Newton ever met your Aunt Millie from Topeka is an open question to be debated by historical scholars with more sophisticated research tools than those available to this poor author. Newton was born in 1643. Wasn’t that the year in which your mom’s sister was graduated