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Many high school counselors mean well but…

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Craig Meister Leave a Comment

It’s bad enough that most public high school counselors are overworked by insanely high student caseloads and underpaid by salary scales that don’t reward those counselors of exceptional quality. What’s even worse is that these high school counselors – the individuals who students most often turn to for college admissions guidance – are rarely required by the public school systems that employ them to have much (if any) expertise in college admissions counseling.

Instead, the major prerequisite to be a high school counselor in most public school systems in the United States is simply having an MA or MS in School Counseling. Most MA and MS programs in school counseling require at most one course (during a two-year program) in career counseling and these programs rarely include any course wholly devoted to college admissions counseling. So, it’s no wonder that many public school-based counselors are not giving students the best college admissions advice.

For a culture that so encourages students to go to four-year colleges isn’t it odd that the institutions (high schools) leading up to college haven’t prioritized giving students the best advice possible about how to navigate the process of transitioning from high school to college?

Another Reason Why Your Common Application Essay is So Bad

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Craig Meister Leave a Comment

If your attempt at writing a strong Common Application essay is failing, you very well could be making this major mistake in the drafting process. Fix it and you will give yourself a fighting chance to write an essay that is actually decent.

But, guess what? This is only the #2 reason your Common App essay stinks! Learn about the the #1 reason your essay is bad here.

Write an essay worthy of getting you into your dream college! Expert college application essay review and editing are just a click away!

Avoid Tuition Anxiety: Put Strong Merit Aid Colleges on Your List

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Neeta Vallab 4 Comments

Already mostly unaffordable for middle-class families, college costs have gone up by about twenty-five percent in just the last ten years. For the past two decades, sticker prices for public and private colleges have increased more than the rate of inflation almost every year. The average cost of attending a public four-year college is $22,000/per year and $50,000/per year for a private four-year college. Yet, there are ways for families that aren’t loaded to afford college in the United States.

Stay away from the ‘student loan trap’

Student loan debt is the second-highest household debt category ($1.6 trillion with 45 million borrowers!); only mortgage debt exceeds student loan debt.

Still, college graduates annually make about $32,000 more than high school graduates on average, and on average over $1 million more in a lifetime. There can be a huge payoff for going to college, but how can students avoid taking out outsized student loans for their education? The key to avoiding the student loan trap is to make your “out-of-pocket” expenses as low as possible and take out as small of a loan as possible (ideally one with a very low and subsidized interest rate as well). This is particularly important if you don’t qualify for some, any, or enough need-based financial aid, yet can’t afford to comfortably pay the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) of the college you want to attend.

Assess your financial situation

For many colleges, the Federal government methodology determines if you qualify for need-based aid and how much. Expected Family Contribution (EFC) calculations are based on information parents/guardians are asked to disclose regarding their financial history on the FAFSA form for financial aid. A family earning $130K per year would generally be considered ‘rich’ enough to pay 20% of their annual salary toward college costs.

Find scholarship money at the source

There’s a better strategy to help you reduce your out-of-pocket college expenses and that’s by finding and comparing merit aid offers. The largest pool of non-loan money is available directly from colleges in the form of merit aid scholarships. Understanding how colleges award these scholarships requires a thoughtful strategy. Having one can help you reduce tuition costs by thousands, and even tens of thousand of dollars. Colleges award over $8 to $10 billion dollars in merit scholarships annually, which is the largest pool of money available to families who don’t qualify for need-based grants.

What is merit aid and how does it work?

While mostly awarded to students who show academic excellence, merit aid is also awarded for other talents in music, art, or athletics. Merit Aid scholarships are used by colleges to attract students who can boost the applicant stats of a school. They’re usually offered to students in the top 25% of a college’s most recently admitted first-year class.

Because many colleges offer merit scholarships, you don’t need to have straight A’s or a 1600 SAT score to be awarded merit aid. Each school has its own top quartile stats.

Merit aid grants, unlike loans, don’t need to be repaid. In most cases, there’s no separate application process and colleges share award amounts in their acceptance letters. Most are renewable and you’re eligible to receive them for four years, but it’s important to check requirements and renewability. Often, you must maintain a certain GPA in order to continue to be eligible each year for the award.

How do you find merit aid?

Make a list of all the colleges you are interested in and find their common data set. Once found, you can apply top quartile data for your standardized test scores, but not for your GPA. You can go to the website of each college to find common data information or you can use the Common Data Set Initiative to find the information. A search engine called MeritMore allows you to search across schools to find and compare merit aid offers using your standardized tests scores and GPA.

What can you do with merit aid information?

First, check to see if your top schools may offer you merit aid. Second, compare aid offers from your top schools against each other. Third, explore other financial-fit schools that match your criteria, but may not have been on your radar. Finally, use merit aid comparison data to make informed decisions about colleges you can afford, the true cost of attending each college, and the total loan you may need to borrow.

How to get into the Ivy League – Ethically

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Craig Meister

So much of what you read, watch, or hear in the media is there to make you feel like it’s impossible to get into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale without cheating your way in or using some unsavory connection to worm your way in.

Yet, a successful – and ethical – formula for getting into Ivy League colleges does exist and is pretty straightforward.

Below, I share the simple four-step formula for getting into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, or Yale, which has helped 100% of my students who have followed it get into one or more Ivy.

Step 1: Take Rigorous High School Courses and Get As in Them

Notice how it didn’t say “be smart” or “pursue your academic passions.” Such entreaties sound lovely, but they’re beside the point. The foundation of your campaign to get into an Ivy League college depends on you willingness and ability to consistently take the most rigorous courses at your high school and then earn A grades in all such courses as well as whatever other courses you are also taking. If your school reports A grades via a range (such as A-, A, A+ or 90-100), work your hardest to get the highest As possible (A+ or 97+). If your school grades on a different scale than those mentioned so far, simply aim for the top of it.

Every high school is different, but in many cases, taking the most rigorous courses at your high school is synonymous with one of the below three scenarios (or some combination or permutation thereof):

A. Running the table with as many Advanced Placement courses as you can take each academic year and taking all of your other academic courses at the highest levels on offer

B. Taking the most challenging courses offered to students in your high school during your first two years in high school, then becoming a full-fledged International Baccalaureate® (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) student at the start of your junior year, and finally completing the full IBDP with both predictions and final cumulative scores aligned in the 40-45 range

C. Taking as many Honors, High Honors, Gifted, and/or Dual Enrollment courses as possible throughout your four years in high school

In no grade in high school should you take fewer than five academic courses (though I prefer six if you can swing it), and if you are being strategic about things, no matter the exact curriculum on offer at your school or official names of courses available at your school, at minimum, your four-year academic course load in high school should include the following:

Freshman Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit

Sophomore Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 10th Grade Students (Same Language as Last Year) – 1 Credit

Junior Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 11th Grade Students (Same Language as Last Year) – 1 Credit

*Or, if an IBDP student:

-Three HLs in areas you are most passionate about and that are likely to align with your potential college major(s)
-Three SLs in areas you are also deeply passionate about
-Of your six IB courses, only one (max) should be arts-related unless you plan to major in one or more art in college
-If your school offers Mathematics: analysis and approaches HL, you should take it and get an A (or Predicted 5+ minimum) in it

Senior Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 12th Grade Students (Same Language as Last Year) or Double Up on English, Math, History, or Science, but only with an Advanced/AP/IB/Honors+ Course – 1 Credit

Or, if an IBDP student, continuation of * detailed above.

Notice how I didn’t mention elective/arts courses. They are nice to take too, especially if you need to or want to pursue your passions through them and have the horsepower to do so, but to be completely honest, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale are focused on your academic courses, not PE, Health, Arts (except for AP or IB), Personal Finance, etc. courses.

Remember, the above academic course progression is only a minimum goal; you can always do more, and that would be great – just keep earning As if you take on more rigor/courses than the progression outlined above.

Step 2: Score Very Well on the SAT and/or ACT

To be blunt – aim for 1450 on the SAT or 33 on the ACT minimum. For most people this requires a great deal of studying and a history of actually being a serious student in school. Do students get into Ivy League colleges with lower scores than those stated above? Yes. You should assume that you are not going to be one of them.

– Time Out –

Before we move on to Step 3 and Step 4, I should note that many students around the world are able to beautifully accomplish the aforementioned Step 1 and Step 2; yet, the majority of such students will not get into Ivy League colleges even if they try. This is for the same reason that most professional baseball players have no problem hitting a double but very few will ever hit an inside-the-park home run: they are unable or unwilling to go past second base. Below you will learn how to go beyond second base and return to home plate without being called out.

FUN FACT: the majority of students, parents, talking-heads/influencers complaining about how hard it is to get into an Ivy League college are doing so because they don’t want to or don’t know how to put in the effort necessary to complete Step 3 and Step 4 below.

Step 3: Strategically Differentiate Your Life

Everyone wants to win the lotto these days (hit the jackpot without the effort). But, again, if we are being real, very few billionaires just fell into their money. They or their predecessors developed a plan and executed on it in order to make it big.

The same idea applies to getting into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, or Yale. You need to sit down like a young adult, think critically, develop a plan, and execute on it if you are going to give yourself the best shot of getting into an Ivy League college.

What should the plan look like? It should not look like any other student’s plan, that’s for sure. That’s why sitting down like a young adult and attempting to think critically all alone is often not enough for many teens with Ivy League dreams. Most teenagers with big goals really do need to sit down with at least one older and wiser strategic thinker in order to game plan out a strategy that can be tactically and earnestly implemented.

Sadly, many students only turn to a mom, dad, sibling, friend, or teacher who means well but doesn’t know much about what Ivy League colleges are really attracted to in students. Other students go to their high school’s college counselor hoping he or she will be the “older and wiser strategic thinker” that they are so desperately looking for in order to give themselves the best shot of Ivy League college admission. Pretty soon most students figure out (if they do at all) that even if their college counselor is well-meaning and knowledgeable (the student would actually be very lucky to find these characteristics in his or her college counselor), very few high school-based college counselors have the time, interest, and/or ability to provide the personalized and highly strategic college admissions coaching students with Ivy League goals need.

For example, so many students go to their high school counselors looking for advice on how to get into Ivy League colleges and their counselors summarily advise them to consider other colleges all together because, “fit matters more than rank, Johnny” or, if the students are lucky, maybe the counselors will advise the students to become extracurricular leaders! Woopdidoo!

Both scenarios make my blood pressure rise, though at least in the latter case the counselors are respecting students’ questions and goals. Yet, as attractive as student leaders are to Ivy League colleges, there is a very important characteristic that trumps leadership in the eyes of Ivy League college admissions officers:

The earlier in high school you can sit down with someone who actually knows what he or she is talking about and has the time and interest to get to know you and your goals well the more likely you will be able to strategically differentiate your life choices over the course of your high school career while also aligning your life choices to your unique value system. This in turn will allow you to stand out for all the right reasons to Ivy League admissions committees and ultimately reach your full college admissions potential.

Step 4: Communicate Like a Teenager from a Bygone Era

There has been a complete implosion of English instruction in K-12 education. As I have alluded to before: most students capable of getting straight As in high school English classes can’t write well or speak well. This is because most students capable of getting straight As in high school English classes have never learned how to think critically, which is a prerequisite for eloquent writing and speaking. Many students get As in English – even AP-level English – without actually being able to think, write, or speak that well.

Layer on top of that travesty the advent of smart phones and other forms of electronic communication, which have corrupted teenage minds and writing skills over the past twenty years, and you have a nightmare scenario for the future of humanity.

Yet, in this living nightmare there is an opportunity for those high school students who have actually – miraculously – been taught how to think, write, and speak clearly – like mere peasants, high school dropouts, and ragamuffins could in 1938. I mean this seriously. I was looking through an English test that my grandmother had to take in eighth grade in a Baltimore public school, and it was far harder than any English test I EVER took in high school or college. As a point of reference: in the last twenty years I’ve earned an MA in Education Administration and a BA in History (the latter from Penn no less). Maybe I would have been better off being born in 1922 and simply graduating high school in 1940 (as long as I survived the war)? I digress.

If you are in high school and open to actually learning how to think clearly and write and speak articulately, the world is your oyster. Frankly, the Ivy League would be luck to have you – and their admissions officers know it. Thus, if you pull off high level thinking and communicating in your application to an Ivy League college, you are going to set yourself apart from the average Ivy League applicant.

Many students (and their parents) realize that they need help in the communication portion of their college applications. That’s why every year in late spring I start getting calls from rising high school seniors and their parents begging me to help edit college applications – specifically extracurricular resumes and college application essays.

Frankly, I find providing developmental editing, substantive editing, copy editing, proofreading, and constructive critiquing for rising seniors increasingly tedious and often painful because it’s pretty time-consuming and emotionally draining for me to fix over a several-week period what took twelve years to do to you, namely, destroy your ability to communicate effectively. That’s why I much prefer meeting with students early in high school in order to start the important process of teaching them how to think deeply and write and speak well. This is also a reason why I developed the How to Build and Extraordinary Extracurricular Resume short course; creating a good resume is pretty much a science, but it’s a repetitive one.

To meet your full potential on college application essays, only personalized coaching can get you there – especially if you have not benefited from the rare instances of proper English instruction that still remain in this anti-intellectual age. As such, I do still take on a limited number of clients each year for college admissions coaching services (college list development, extracurricular resumes, essays, interview prep, total college application review, etc.) even though such work becomes harder each year because of the daily devolution of institutionalized K-12 education.

Long story short, the earlier you become a master communicator the more likely you will actually be able to share both your own voice and a voice worth listening to on your college applications and in college admissions interviews.

Conclusion

It’s really that simple. If you can tackle the four steps above with grace and gusto (and dare I suggest, gravitas), you are extremely likely to get into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, or Yale. Yet, even more important than getting into any Ivy League college, if you can accomplish all of the above, you will have learned a lot and grown a lot as a person and remained ethical in so doing.

Princeton University

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