David Altshuler, M.S.
(305) 978-8917 | [email protected]

Category: College Admissions

What are the Odds?

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.

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Jefferson on Education

“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

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The Idiot-athon

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

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Wargames

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

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Admissions Ethics

“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

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Best Game

When you are scheduled to meet a client, you take a shower and make sure your shirt is ironed. When both you and the client speak at once, you make sure you are the one to say, “I beg your pardon; go ahead” or “I’m sorry to interrupt. What were

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Attitude of Gratitude

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

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Objects at Rest

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

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I Just Don’t Get It

Maybe you can help, gentle readers, with the following folks and their very real problems: 1) Why can’t my wife be more understanding? Sure, I have extra-marital affairs. I travel a lot. I have a few different women I see in each city I visit. What does that have to

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Could It Be This Simple?

One of my running buddies has had the unmitigated temerity to suggest that my parenting philosophy can be summed up in the simplistic phrase, “Take your kids camping.” So I feel it is high time to amend my advice-honed over 30 years of counseling families-by adding another phrase: “Take your kids

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Copyright © David Altshuler 1980 – 2024    |    Miami, FL • Charlotte, NC     |    (305) 978-8917    |    [email protected]