Your friends are lovely. Please ignore them.
If you’re a junior, and especially if you’re a senior, it’s hard to get away from discussions about the college application process. This can be reassuring, right? You’re all in it together: you, your friends, your parents, your friends’ parents, your grandparents, your parents’ friends, friends of friends…
You get it. Everyone has something to say about the process, and each one of those very well-intentioned people has the potential to stress you out. But remember, this time is about you. It’s about exploring and applying to colleges that are the right fit for you and that make sense for your family. So guess what? You have permission to tune those voices out.
Here’s how to identify and manage your reactions to the voices that aren’t helping you to stay calm and focused:
The Deadline Announcer. You know this person. She is your friend. She’s smart and keeps a paper calendar and is always on top of things. So unsurprisingly, every time you see her in the cafeteria, she’s listing deadlines like a walking, talking Common App. “SAT registration is September 10...Early Decision is November 1st...Regular decision for Boston College is January 1st…” And it can send you into a tailspin of worry if you’re not careful.
How to deal: Set reminders on your calendar for important due dates, but keep in mind that there are really only a few important ones: early decision, early action, and regular decision. If you’re planning on taking the SAT, the College Board has all the information you need about when to take it and where. So when the Deadline Announcer gets going, just let her go. It’s making her feel better. The dates don’t change, and you already know what they are.
The Snooper. The Snooper has two motivations: to find out where everyone is applying to college and to announce the top schools that he is applying to. “I’m applying early decision to Brown, but if I don’t get in, I’m applying to Bowdoin and Middlebury. William and Mary is my safety school. Where are you applying?”
How to deal: remember, students can apply anywhere they choose, and even the best high school students in the country will get rejected from some schools. The Snooper might get rejected from William and Mary and get into Brown. But here’s the other thing: he may not be applying to any of these schools. He might just be feeling pressure from his parents, or he may not have done much research on great schools that aren’t those brand names we’ve all heard of. Give him a “that’s great for you” followed by, “I’m still deciding.” Because even if he’s your best friend, you don’t have to tell him or anyone where you apply to college. Part of becoming an adult is learning what you should share and what’s just for you. The college decision? That’s all yours.
The Personal Essay Expert: This friend is trying to help. Truly. They’ve worked with a tutor or obsessively Googled successful college essays (don’t do this!). “It shouldn’t be about your dog, your sports career, or your grandmother… It can’t mention Covid...It can’t be about personal trauma....It has to be about personal hardship...It has to have a metaphor...It cannot have any grammar mistakes…”
How to deal: This is a hard one. Everyone has something to say about the personal essay, including parents, coaches, and other people who know you well and want you to get into the college of your dreams. But keep this in mind: the personal essay is called “personal” for a reason. It’s supposed to reveal who you are to admissions readers. You, the person with a good sense of humor. You, who drove your little brother to school every day this year. You, who raises chickens in your yard. You, who taught yourself to knit. You, who will be an amazing member of the college community.
Your personal essay is personal to you. Keep it that way.
The Enthusiastic Alumni: this might be a cousin, parent, or family friend. This person loved their college so much they cannot even conceive of why you’d want to go anywhere else. “Northeastern was the best four years of my life. You really should apply. No place can give you that kind of career prep, and in the middle of Boston! You can’t beat it!”
How to deal: Nod. Smile. Say, “I haven’t checked it out (even if you have) but I will.” The best thing you can do is appreciate that kind of enthusiasm and try to find a school that makes you feel that same way.
The Freelance College Counselor: This final one is difficult because everyone wants to help you find a college once they find out you’re in the search process. And these people can sometimes be helpful early on when you’re exploring potential schools. But once you’ve narrowed your list down, these are the voices that can make you second guess yourself, leaving you to wonder if there’s some stone you forgot to turn over, some perfect school you haven’t explored.
How to deal: Take a deep breath and have some confidence in yourself. If you began the process of exploring colleges during junior year, have been working with your guidance counselor or professional counselor, and have narrowed down your list according to region, size, culture, and likelihood to be accepted, your list is just right. For each of the 4,000 colleges in the U.S, there is someone who knows someone who had a good experience there. You cannot climb down every rabbit hole. By the time you reach September of senior year, you need the confidence to say, “I’ve done the research and I have the right list.”
At May First, we’re not just here to help you build your list and write your personal essay. We’re here to give you the confidence to say, “I’ve got this!” Send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com or call (617.851.9975) and let’s get started.
College Rankings
I love to rank things. Favorite books (#1 Their Eyes Were Watching God). Favorite movies (#1 Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood). Best concerts (#1Michael Jackson). Worst concerts (#1 Death Cab for Cutie). Best sports to watch (#1-10 Basketball). Best sports to play (#1-10 Basketball).
Ranking is fun. It orders information, choices, and possibilities and makes them more digestible. If I want to learn about the golden age of rap and hip hop, I’m not just going to dive in -- I’m going to find myself a ranked list of the best songs and artists.
When it comes to colleges, you’re probably most familiar with U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges rankings. Best Colleges ranks the best colleges overall; the best regional universities; the best regional colleges; the best colleges for veterans; the best HBCUs; the best undergraduate business programs; the best value schools -- you name it, it ranks it. It’s the place to which prospective college students and their families turn to help guide their college decisions.
Ultimately, though, ranking colleges is a lot like ranking your favorite songs. It’s subjective and it’s influenced by a host of factors, both seen and unseen. In a recent Forbes Magazine article, Susan Paterno explains that U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges is “an advertising and marketing powerhouse” that “manufactures competition to peddle products. Selling pseudoscience as an objective measure of academic quality, it leads worried and confused families to about 100 schools with the nation’s highest academic hurdles and lowest acceptance rates.”
This pseudoscience is the belief that there is an objective set of criteria against which to evaluate the overall quality of a college or university, or its suitability for a given student.
So how does the magazine arrive at these rankings? It’s complicated. And it’s a secret. Malcolm Gladwell’s recent podcasts, “Lord of the Rankings” and “Project Dillard,” attempt to get to the bottom of things, but ultimately, all he reveals is that they rely on colleges’ self-reported data and on the subjective opinions of college presidents and provosts.
In Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, Jeffrey Selingo explains a bit more about how the rankings have “signaled to students and parents what to emphasize when looking for a college--mostly the quality of incoming students rather than what undergraduates actually learned or what they did after graduation. Over decades, the rankings narrowed the view of seniors to focus on just a handful of schools.”
Scrolling through the U.S. News and World Report rankings is going to lead you to the same set of selective schools over and over again. But consider this:
The top 10 best value schools have an average acceptance rate of 11%.
The schools with the top 10 best 4-year graduation rates have an acceptance rate of 14%.
Top 10 colleges that offer the best return on investment (ROI) have an average acceptance rate of 14.8%.
There are 4,000 colleges in the United States. If U.S. News and World Report is focused on the same 100 mostly elite and difficult to get into colleges over and over again, then what about the other 3900? The truth is, many are doing some really interesting things, offering innovative academic opportunities, and one of them might just be the right price and fit for you.
Just as Esquire’s list of the 100 best movies of all time should be taken with a grain of salt (I mean, Paddington 2 is on it), so too should college rankings. And just like the movies, the right fit will be determined by your own interests, values, and budget.
We’d love to help you sort through and narrow the list of colleges that are best for you. Email us at info@yourmayfirst.com or give us a call (617.851.9975) and let’s chat.
You’re kind of a big deal.
As we’ve noted in past blog posts, the current test-optional trend means that college admissions officers are spending more time evaluating the whole student-- including high school grades, course selection , and extracurriculars. The Common App Personal Statement helps tie them all together and give some insight into who you are not just as a student, but as a person, so it's an important piece of the application puzzle.
If you’re a rising senior, it’s hard not to have the personal statement on your radar. You’ve seen examples of students’ successful personal statements on YouTube and TikTok. Your parents probably know that The New York Times publishes the best college essays each year. And a quick Google search will turn up hundreds of insider tips, do’s and don’ts, secrets, and pointers for how to write a successful essay.
So you can be forgiven if sitting at a laptop to start this thing feels completely overwhelming -- but it doesn’t have to be.
You + the right list = a successful essay.
Here’s the thing: if you’ve narrowed and selected your college application list in a thoughtful way, taking into account who you are and who you hope to become, you’re one step closer to writing an essay that demonstrates why you’re a great candidate for admission.
Applying to a school because it’s close to your house? Because it has an impressive brand name? Because your cousin went there? Because the basketball team is on TV? These aren’t great reasons. Think deeper.
Is the school supportive of first generation students? Does it offer opportunities for community engagement? Does it have a robust coop program or study abroad? Does it support undergraduate research?
Why is it a good fit for you?
What you want from your college experience says a lot about you. Approach the personal statement as an opportunity to show college admissions officers how your values and expectations align with the character and mission of those colleges. You -- and they -- are looking for a good fit.
“I'm not that interesting.”
“Nothing’s ever happened to me.”
“My life is pretty good. I have nothing to write about.”
Sound familiar? We hear this all the time from rising seniors. This is why it can be so hard to begin writing.
Start by giving yourself a break. You’ve spent the last 17 years figuring out who you want to be, and you’re not close to done. Whether you’ve had a defining life experience or not, you are still a set of amazing qualities. You might be a great team leader or someone who loves working with kids. You might be an experienced outdoors-person or a supportive sibling and friend.
Don’t short change yourself. These qualities matter. They tell an admissions officer what kind of roommate, student, and community member you will be. Remember, that final list of schools will be lucky to have you. You just need to develop a concise, clear statement that communicates what makes you, you.
We’re excited to get to know you and find out what makes you a big deal. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s get started.
Should I visit over the summer?
Back in pre-pandemic days, most college counselors and consultants had a pretty firm rule: don’t visit campuses when classes aren’t in session. The thinking went that a prospective student wouldn’t get a sense of what the school was actually like -- she needed to see real students, observe real time classes, and smell real food in the dining hall.
A few consultants and parents took a different approach, believing that seeing a campus in person mattered most and that sometimes summer travel was the only option. But for the majority of prospective students, the recommendation was to visit as many campuses as possible during the spring of junior year of high school. And if that wasn’t possible, to visit after admissions decisions were released.
Then the pandemic hit and everything we thought we knew flew out the window. Students waiting to visit colleges until accepted could no longer travel. How could they commit to a school 2500 miles from home when they’d never seen its campus? In most cases they didn’t, choosing the schools they’d been able to see in person whether those schools were their best fits… or not.
Virtual Visits
In the year since, colleges have invested a lot in creating virtual visits. High school students in Massachusetts can join campus tours in Minnesota-- seeing inside dorms, classrooms, gyms, and dining halls-- narrated by entertaining students giving the inside scoop about life at their schools.
In our post-pandemic world, sometimes the only thing missing is the actual smell of food in the dining hall.
Boots on the ground
Our advice is pretty simple— start by exploring the great online content schools created: go on a virtual tour of a campus, watch a few student videos, attend a virtual information session, and use those tools to take some schools off your list that don’t seem like a great fit, and maybe add some unexpected ones that check a lot of your boxes. Then, think about the reality of travel and what’s possible.
Does your family have the time and financial ability to visit some schools (we’re big fans of incorporating campus visits into regular vacations!)? Are you considering schools that involve at least one flight every time you go back and forth to school? Will visiting that school, and maybe taking a flight to get there, help you decide how comfortable you’d be making that trek for four years? Will seeing the campus help you decide if it’s the best fit?
In many cases, the answer is yes.
While we agree that visiting a campus over the summer isn’t an ideal way to see a school, we also think that the reality of busy family life (not to mention the last year plus of not being able to travel) makes it necessary. You’ll still get to walk around the campus, take a tour, and see the dining hall. You’ll see a typical dorm room and be able to imagine if you can fit your vintage t-shirt collection in the dresser.
Another reason we encourage visits whenever families can make them work is simple exposure and motivation. High school is hard. There’s a lot being asked of our kids these days. Getting to see some beautiful and exciting campuses can be great inspiration during that all important junior year and when it’s time to sit down and put those killer applications together in the fall of senior year.
In the end, we believe in flexibility. If visiting campuses is easiest for your family over the summer, we think that’s great and encourage you to make it happen. If you’d like to talk about putting together a list of potential schools to visit virtually or in person, send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com or give us a call (617.447.0186) and let’s chat.
Why Visit Campuses?
As a kid, my summer vacations included big family reunions held in rented houses often on big lakes. We kayaked and canoed, roasted marshmallows, and hiked up mountains that felt like they took days when it was probably a few hours.
Unlike most kids, I always spent some part of those summer vacations wandering around the nearest college campus. When we rented a house in New York’s Finger Lakes, it was Cornell University. During our reunion at Lake Winnipesaukee, we spent an afternoon at Dartmouth. My grandfather was a professor of education at Cornell College in Iowa (interestingly, the first Cornell), and trips there included lots of rounds of frisbee golf across its golden campus. Later, reunions in North Carolina and South Carolina included afternoons at UNC and College of Charleston. By the time I started high school, I’d probably seen two dozen schools.
In November 2013, my husband and I took our two young daughters for their first trip to our alma mater, Bates College. Walking across its beautiful quad, we told them stories of the Ice Storm of 1998 (it was definitely a capitalized Ice Storm) and omelets in the dining hall by candlelight until power was restored. My husband showed them the music department in Ladd Library where he had his work study job, I pointed out the Office of College Relations where I had mine. It was fun and silly and special. And they listened raptly, trying to imagine this other existence of their parents.
Just before the pandemic took hold, I took a close friend and her daughter for a tour of Bates and nearby Bowdoin. We explored both campuses talking about being a student at a small liberal arts college-- developing close relationships with professors and mentors, exploring classes in different disciplines to broaden minds and try out different futures, having so many campus events and activities to choose from that a weekend spent away felt like a hard choice, and being part of a devoted Alumni community with access to amazing internships and networks in cities across the globe.
Centered in all of these visits was always the idea of exploration. It was never about selling a particular college or an experience. As a kid, I loved visiting colleges because my parents and my grandfathers and my aunts and uncles loved visiting colleges. When I started to look for my own school, it was with that spirit of seeing what’s out there and finding my best-fit.
Exposure and exploration are the fun parts of the college search, a chance to see what feels right. Maybe it’s that small liberal arts college where the community and the campus are thriving and where most students study abroad. Maybe it’s that large urban university where the campus is the entire city and no two weekends are alike. Maybe it’s an honors program at a big state school where classes are small and personal, but social events include football games with tens of thousands of cheering fans.
I still love visiting campuses. And now that we’ve begun to emerge from the pandemic, it’s likely that colleges will once again throw open their doors and their classrooms to visits from prospective students, whether those prospective students are 7 or 17.
If you’d like help building a list of schools to visit, give us a call (617.447.0186) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat. We would love to help you find your place.
I haven’t started yet! Should I freak out?
Generally, we recommend not freaking out.
The college search process does have stages, though, and the earlier you begin, the less stressful and more productive each will be. Hiring a college admissions consultant (like us!) in the early stages can make the process a little less intimidating and a lot more fun.
Where do I start?
Start with you. What do you know about what a college campus looks and feels like?
By the time she was in high school, my oldest daughter had visited the university where I was a professor dozens of times, so that was her model for college--medium-sized, private, and in the middle of downtown Boston.
In the summer after 9th grade, she went to soccer camp at Williams College, a small college in a charming New England town. Later that summer, on a trip to Washington DC, we toured American University, a college on the larger-size just outside the heart of the city.
She didn’t end up applying to any of these schools, but each gave her an opportunity to imagine herself in a particular environment. She learned she didn’t want an urban campus, but she didn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere either. She didn’t want to be at a school as big as American, but also not as small as Williams.
Thinking about the basics early -- close to home or farther afield? Cold or hot? Northeast or Southwest? -- will make building your college list easier later.
Building a resumé.
In each year of high school, you are building a resumé for college admissions officers. This can sound like a lot of pressure, but it doesn’t have to be. Your classes, grades, activities, hobbies, and interests are beginning to tell a story about who you are that will catch the attention of admissions readers.
A college admissions consultant (us again!) can help you thread the pieces of that story together in a way that best reflects who you are as a student and community member. We might challenge you to join a club you’d be perfect for or to take that additional AP class you’re hesitant about.
Throughout our work together, we’ll help you to think about the connections between your academic and extracurricular activities, and guide you toward a best-fit college list that reflects your interests and potential.
As I wrote in our May 10th blog post, preparing to apply for college is largely about getting to know yourself -- what you love, what you’re good at, what challenges you -- and then telling a coherent story about who that is. The earlier you begin to think about the story, the more compelling it will be.
Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.
Asking the right questions.
Who am I and where do I belong?!
If you’re a high school student and questions like these are keeping you up at night, take a long, deep breath. These are big ones. In fact, you’ll be asking them your whole life, so they’re not prerequisites for selecting the right college.
We get it, though. When you’re beginning the college search process, it’s hard not to consider the big questions. But whether you’re a person who’s wanted to be a marine biologist since your first trip to an aquarium or one who hasn’t quite nailed down your passion yet, we believe you should swap out the overwhelming existential questions for ones you really can answer:
What do I love, what am I good at, and what’s out there for me?
These questions can help you begin building a list of best-fit colleges, ones that are ready to support the amazing person you already are, and that will help you realize the person you want to be.
What do I love?
The best way for you to begin thinking about your best-fit college is to consider your interests. These can often lead you to fields of study or careers you hadn’t thought of. Do you love sports? Love the idea of being a member of a school community that rallies around its athletic teams? You don’t have to be a college athlete for this to be part of your college selection criteria or to pursue a career related to athletics.
The same goes for music, film, hiking, reading, singing, video games, skateboarding, and so much more. The things you love can hold the key to a successful college experience as well as a future career.
What am I good at?
Math? Field hockey? Drums?
Sometimes this can be a hard question to answer and so we sell ourselves short. At May First, our students fill out several surveys from which we begin to build a complex student profile. We want to know if actively contributing in the classroom is your thing, or if you’re the kind of learner who prefers to absorb and reflect before speaking. We want to know if you’re a great team leader or a steady, reliable team member. If you work well under pressure, or if you prefer to start early and work slowly.
The skills you’ve developed in the classroom, at work, at practice, in your community, and in your home can be the foundation for life-long success and help you to build that best-fit college list.
What’s out there for me?
Identifying what you love and the sometimes subtle ways in which you excel both in and out of the classroom can be just as important as your GPA in determining the right college for you. It can mean the difference between applying to schools with 80 students to a class or 15, or to schools focused on coop or study abroad. It might be as mundane as applying to schools in a big city or a rural town.
We think the best part -- the most fun part -- is finding the answer to what’s out there for me? Because the answer is, something great. Something that is your best-fit.
Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.
Hey, high school juniors!
Congratulations! You’re nearing the end of the most important and challenging year of your high school career. And you did it all during a pandemic.
Once you’ve had some time to appreciate all of your accomplishments (even if the major one was just getting through it), you will need to begin thinking about the college selection process. Here are some things to consider as you get started:
Things have changed.
College and university admissions practices looked a lot different in 2021. Applications at many elite colleges were up over 50% from the previous year. As a result, some college acceptance rates dropped considerably. Conversely, applications at colleges with less name recognition were down. Both scenarios provide challenges and opportunities that might seem daunting for the class of 2022; we’ve even heard the current college admissions landscape referred to as “the wild west.” But what does this mean for you?
We think it means opportunity.
Test Optional...for real.
Some of the pivots college admissions offices made during the pandemic are likely to stick. Most significantly, colleges suspended standardized testing requirements for the class of 2021. Although some will inevitably return to required ACT or SAT scores, research conducted by Fair Test, the National Center For Fair and Open Testing, reveals that at least 1,360 four-year institutions "have already announced that they will not require fall 2022 applicants to submit standardized exam results before admissions decisions are made.”
We believe this shift gives the class of 2022 a broad palette of options. If that Ivy League reach feels even more remote now that it’s posting a 4% acceptance rate, you have an opportunity to explore colleges and universities you might not have otherwise considered. This is the perfect time to find that hidden gem or the just-right fit you didn’t know you were looking for.
The Personal Essay takes center stage.
As colleges and universities are increasingly adopting test-optional processes, admissions counselors are taking a more comprehensive and holistic approach to assessing applicants. This means truly considering the whole student, from extracurricular activities to course-building. In this new landscape, colleges and universities are looking to get to know potential students on a personal level. What kind of community member will they be? How do their interests align with our university’s mission and identity? Will they succeed intellectually and personally?
To get the answers, admissions counselors are looking more carefully than ever at students’ personal essays. As a member of the class of 2022, you have an exciting opportunity to craft an essay that reflects your unique personality and experiences, and that convinces that best-fit school that you are exactly who they’re looking for.
https://fairtest.org/university/optional