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.
Decision Rounds- huh?
When I took my first biology course in high school, way way back in the ‘90s, my (amazing!) teacher began the course by explaining that learning biology was a lot like learning a foreign language- lots of new vocabulary. At May First, we think this is also true when someone begins exploring colleges and learning about the application process (and it’s way less fun than learning biology!). There are so many terms, things we’ve written about like holistic admissions and LTE factor. Another set of terms that is critical to understand is the different types of applications: Early Decision, Early Action, and Regular Decision. We know, not super exciting… but super important. So let’s jump in.
Early Decision
Between 300-400 colleges in the US (out of nearly 4000 colleges) offer Early Decision (ED), a plan that is binding. Applications are generally due in November (November 1 or 15 depending on the school) and decisions are released a month later, with enrollment deposits usually due within two weeks. Students are only allowed to apply to one school ED and if accepted they are committed to that school and must withdraw applications to all other schools.
The upside of applying ED is that it elevates a student’s chances of admissions significantly-- a school that accepts 20% of its entire application pool might accept closer to 50% of those applying ED. And it can be really awesome to sail into winter break knowing that the entire college application process is done. But there’s a big downside to ED… money. In all cases, ED benefits two groups: colleges and families that don’t need any financial aid. Because the decision is binding, an accepted student isn’t able to compare financial aid offers from multiple schools and doesn’t have any leverage to negotiate for additional aid. Colleges get to meet a lot of their financial goals by accepting students who can pay, and families who can pay have a better shot at getting their students accepted by elite schools.
Early Action
Early Action (EA) follows a similar timeline as Early Decision, but it’s not binding and in most cases students are not restricted in the number of schools they can apply to EA. Applications are due in November anddecisions come out a month later in December, but enrollment deposits aren’t due until the general May 1 deadline. Students can also apply to as many schools as they want in the regular decision round, and can then compare financial aid offers and negotiate with financial aid offices.
With both ED and EA there are three potential outcomes: acceptance, rejection, and deferral. To be deferred simply means that the applicant is put into the regular decision pool and will receive a final decision during that time frame.
Regular Decision
Regular Decision (RD) is exactly what it sounds like, the regular process and timeline of college admissions. Applications are generally due between January 1 and February 1 (unless it’s a school that utilizes rolling admissions) and decisions are released by April 1, with enrollment deposits due by May 1. Some schools offer multiple rounds of regular decision, but the general mechanics and commitments of the process are the same.
There is so much to consider when deciding whether to apply ED, EA, or RD. At May First we’re here to help. Give us a call (617.447.0186) or drop a line to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.
Activities!
For many students, the Activities section of the Common App feels pretty high stakes. And it’s true, admissions officers do invest time in reviewing your activities to help give them a more clear sense of who you are outside the classroom and how you’ll contribute to the college community.
But as with most things we talk about in our blogs, the activities list shouldn’t be cause for stress. Instead, see it as an opportunity to introduce yourself in a cool way: by giving them a peek into your actual life.
Overview
The Common App allows you to list up to ten activities, ranked in order of their importance to you, from among the following categories:
Arts or music
Clubs
Community engagement
Family responsibilities
Hobbies
Sports
Work or volunteering
Other experiences that have been meaningful to you
In other words, whatever your interests are, the Common App has a place for them. And for each activity, there are 9 fields where you can provide some detail:
Activity type (this is a drop down menu, so easy enough);
Position/Leadership description (no more than 50 words);
Organization Name (no more than 100 words);
A description of the activity, including what you accomplished and any recognition you received (no more than 150 words);
Participation grade levels (check box: 9th grade, 10th grade, etc);
Timing of participation (during school year, all year, etc);
Hours spent per week;
Weeks spent per year;
8. Indication of whether you plan to continue the activity in college (yes/no).
If you’re like my own kids, this list can be anxiety producing. How should you rank them? What if the thing you care about most makes you look boring or selfish? Here are some ways to reframe some common worries:
I only do theater.
Maybe...but we bet there’s more to it than that. You may be involved in theater in your high school and in a summer program (2 different activities!). Maybe you mentor younger theater students (and, if you love theater and are a sophomore or junior, you might want to think about it). Maybe one of your hobbies is going to see one professional theater performance a year. These are all activities that tell a story about who you are. But don’t forget about the activities you engage in outside of theater. You may be an avid reader or work in a coffee shop or care for an elderly relative in your home. These help to round out an admissions counselor’s understanding of who you are.
I do too many activities to list.
There are worse problems to have! When you’re a person engaged in a lot of activities, you first want to write them all out in a separate document. Next, group them by type so that you can think about the relationships among your activities, then rank them within those smaller groups. You’ll begin to get a picture of which are the most meaningful to you, and you can narrow the list from there.
Who has time for activities?
If you’ve spent most of your high school years focused on academics or maybe an after school job, don’t worry. You still have room to develop a meaningful list. This is where the broader categories come into play: Family responsibilities, Hobbies, Work, and Other experiences that have been meaningful to you.
Students with family and work responsibilities have a great opportunity to demonstrate that they are able to balance school with other demands. Students with interesting hobbies (kayaking, video game playing, D&D, running, traveling) can use the activities list to show they will be unique members of the college community.
How am I supposed to rank my activities?
Ranking is probably the most tricky part of the activities list, but it’s manageable if you approach it intentionally and honestly. Of course, your volunteer work seems like it should come first, but if you spend 10 hours a week on a TikTok account devoted to cake-making, guess what? Cake-making comes first. And that account says something meaningful about you: that you’re creative, tech savvy, committed, and that you will definitely be good roommate material!
We’d love to help you with everything from your activities list to college list building. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s get started!
What is the Common App?
If your parents applied to college way back in the ‘80s or early ‘90s, they probably filled out a few paper-based applications and sent them through the actual mail, with a stamp and everything. They also applied to fewer colleges than you’ll be applying to. Even so, filling out three or four different paper applications was a pain.
Enter the Common App.
The Common App is a college application platform used by about 950 participating colleges and universities. It’s designed to make the application process more equitable and accessible to a wide range of applicants. It’s free and easy, you can use it on your laptop or your phone (the app is actually pretty good), and the Common App website offers great resources to help you get started.
If you’re a sophomore or junior in high school, you may not be familiar with the Common App, so here are the answers to some frequently asked questions:
Do I need a Common App account? Yes. Though there are some exceptions (Georgetown and MIT, for example), most, if not all, of the colleges you apply to will accept the Common App.
How do I register? You can create an account at any time, but you’ll want to think about registering by spring of junior year. Common App makes the process easy, and as soon as you enter your information, you’re ready to start.
What can I expect? Once you’ve created your account, you’ll see that it’s organized into five sections: Dashboard, My Colleges, Common App, College Search, and Financial Aid Resources. The Dashboard helps you to get from one place to the next; My Colleges helps you manage your college list; Common App is where you enter common application details; College Search helps you explore schools; Financial Aid Resources helps students and families understand the financial aid process and opportunities.
What does the application look like? The Common App is great because (unlike in your parents’ day!) you only fill out the information once. The application includes the following sections:
Profile (address, demographic information)
Family (parents/guardian/sibling information)
Education (high schools/other colleges you’ve attended, grades, GPA, class rank, courses, achievements)
Tests (SAT, ACT, TOEFL, IB, etc)
Activities (all the things you do outside of classes, ranked and including a 150 word explanation for each: clubs, jobs, hobbies, volunteer work, etc)
Writing (here is where you’ll write the important 650 word Personal Statement either in response to one of several prompts or on a subject of your choosing; many schools ask for supplemental essays as well)
What if my high school uses Naviance? Naviance is a third-party vendor that links right to the Common App, so if your school uses it, no problem. If it’s too much to manage two different platforms at once, you can always opt out of Naviance as long as you haven’t already begun synching up your applications.
The Common App will also help you manage your deadlines and recommendation letters, among many other things. The sooner you create your account the sooner you can familiarize yourself with how it works, and we promise, it’s organized and easy to use!
We’re ready for you, juniors! Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s get started building those application materials!
Common App: It’s Time
Hey Rising Seniors! The Common App updated over the weekend and is ready to go for the 2021-22 application cycle. (Juniors and junior parents-- if you’re wondering just exactly what the Common App is, sit tight. We’ve got a post coming for you next week.) There’s a new essay prompt (announced last February), and a new inclusive question about gender, but other than that it’s pretty much the same.
It’s only August, so why should you care? Because it would be awesome to start senior year ahead of the game and not have to panic in October when the reality of applying to college becomes really time sensitive.
So what should you do?
Gather all the materials you’ll need to create your account and begin filling in your demographic information:
High school transcript
List of extracurricular activities (school and community), work, volunteer experience (there is some strategy to how you write and order your descriptions)
Test scores from the SAT/ACT (more about this in a minute)
Parent/Guardian information
Academic honors and awards
As a senior, you’ll register for a “First Year Student” account
Add your demographic information
Name (make sure you enter your name as it appears on all your legal documents and transcripts so that everything matches up)
Home address
Date of birth
Phone number
Email address (make sure you enter an email address that you check regularly in case colleges need to get in touch with you; we often advise our students to create a gmail account just for college applications and check it daily)
Test Scores? Most of the colleges that went test-optional for last year’s cycle are staying that way for this year’s cycle. If you took the SAT or the ACT and did well, submit your scores (as we said in our earlier post it’s hard to know if this matters to merit aid- some schools stopped using test scores in their merit formulas, some didn’t and for the most part they’re not sharing that info).
What else should you be doing? Probably most important, you want to begin brainstorming ideas for your personal essay (who wants to be stressing over this in October?!), and looking through your college list to see if they require supplemental essays (more on that next week!). Lastly, you want to make a list of people whom you can ask for killer recommendations.
If you’d like help on building your list, writing your personal statement, and all of the other important pieces of your college application give us a call (617.447.0186) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat. We’d love to help.
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.
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.
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.