In annual surveys, college admissions officers consistently rank the college essay to be the most important factor in admissions decisions after grades, course rigor, and test scores. It’s no surprise, then, that students find college essays to be just as stressful as SAT or ACT prep. Let’s take a little bit of fear out of the essay and look at how to write a college essay that stands out.
Step One: Brainstorming
No matter the prompt, the goal is to learn more about you. This is the one part of the application where you get to showcase yourself as a three-dimensional person rather than data on a page. One New York Times writer put it this way:
The college essay is about the true things students want the colleges to know about them that can’t be seen via grades and standardized tests. Are you kind? Resilient? Curious? Creative? Are you any fun? And contrary to popular belief, it’s not about unattainable standards or curing cancer. In fact, a good test of a college essay is: Can the writer convince the reader that she would make a great roommate?
Since a college essay is a personal essay, you’ll need to get into the right mindset. Check out this post on getting into the college essay mindset for help jump-starting your essay process.
Once you’ve got the right mindset, it’s time to figure out your college essay topic. Your essay should tell a story – one singular story – about something that is meaningful to you. Your story doesn’t have to be about the biggest moment in your life. Sometimes the best essays are about the most mundane events. It’s not the event that matters as much as your perspective on the event.
Create a list of possible story ideas, and then brainstorm the kinds of lessons that you can draw from each story. For example, maybe you ride the public bus to school each day, and this is the time you spend simply observing the world around you – you’ve learned the importance of stopping to smell the roses (or…the bus stop…) while everyone else is glued to a screen or hurrying to get somewhere. No matter your story, there’s almost always a message hidden inside.
Step Two: Outlining
A well-written essay needs to be clearly organized. The story should flow naturally from one idea to the next, creating a seamless narrative that’s compelling and easy to follow. The secret to a well-organized essay is an outline. An outline provides a plan to follow while you write so that each paragraph has a clear main idea and each idea logically links to the next.
Step Three: Drafting
The blinking cursor on the screen can be hard to overcome. The best way to deal with it is to just start writing. Know that your first draft is just that – a FIRST draft. You’re going to revise it several times before you even begin to approach a final product, so there’s no pressure to create a perfect essay right out of the gate. Follow your outline and let your ideas flow. You can always fix it later.
Step Four: Editing and Revising
Read your first draft with a critical eye. Make lots of changes. Go beyond fixing grammar or spelling errors to really tackle the content and style of the essay. Move ideas around, rearrange entire paragraphs, cross things out, rewrite pieces of it, and when you just can’t find anything else to improve, have a trusted reader look it over to get a fresh take. Your English teacher or a writing tutor would be ideal, but anyone who you consider to be a good writer may have helpful feedback.
Step Five: Draft, Revise, and Repeat
Go back to the drafting board. Consider any changes that you or another reader recommended and make the improvements you think will result in a stronger essay. Then revise again, and repeat. The best essays go through multiple drafts before they near the final version.
Step Six: Final Polish
Let your finished essay marinate for a few days before you read it again. When you revisit the essay, place yourself in the shoes of an admissions officer: You’ve read literally hundreds of essays today, and you know practically nothing about the author of this essay other than what’s in the application itself. From that perspective, what does this essay tell you about the author? Is that the message you hope to send?
Make your final tweaks, give the essay one final read, and then…submit it. The worst is over.
Check out these other resources for tips and tricks for stronger college essays:
And if you need one-on-one help on how to write a college essay or support as you work on your college applications, 宝博体育’s college admissions counseling can help!
College Admissions Timeline: What to Do Your Senior Year of High School
COLLEGE ADMISSIONSThe end is in sight! This spring, you’ll go to senior prom and graduation parties before you don your cap and gown to collect your hard-earned diploma. But before you do, there are a lot of things you’ll still need to take care of your senior year of high school!
Essays and Applications
The first few months of senior year are dominated by the race to submit college applications in time. The best advice for a successful application process: Do not wait until the last minute. Procrastination is not your friend when it comes to college essays and applications.
Your first step should be to figure out whether you’re going to apply early. Research the colleges you intend to apply to so you know what kinds of early application programs they offer and when the deadlines are.
Figure out if it’s worth it for you to apply early.
Learn about different early application options.
Next, you’ll need to find out which application platforms your chosen colleges use so that you know how many applications you need to complete. When you know how many applications you need to complete and the deadlines by which you need to submit them, you can create a plan for the whole application process.
Learn about college applications here.
Get tips and tricks for the Common App.
The most time-consuming part of applying to college is the college application essay. When done write (see what we did there?), the college essay should take weeks—even months—to perfect. This is not a writing assignment that you can successfully complete in an afternoon.
Check out our college application essay resource hub for advice.
When you think you’re ready to click submit, wait. Look the whole application over again. Double and triple check to make sure everything is perfect. Then, and only then, submit the application.
Take a look at this checklist of last-minute tasks to boost your applications.
Keep Your Grades Up
Thus begins the agonizing waiting game. While you wait for your college acceptance letters (or emails) to roll in, make sure you keep your grades up. If you have to apply to a few more colleges in the spring or if you need to apply for scholarships, those first semester grades will count, so you need to keep them high. And although it’s rare, colleges have been known to rescind offers of admission over low grades, so don’t let senioritis drag your GPA down.
When Admissions Decisions Arrive
With luck, acceptance letters will rain down like confetti. You’ll have some important decisions to make in the coming weeks. Even if you think you know where you want to go, take the time to carefully consider your options. After all, the college you choose is going to be your home for the next few years.
Find out what to do if you didn’t get into your dream college.
Get tips on comparing colleges before National College Decision Day.
Prep for AP Exams
Another reason not to let senioritis take over: AP exams. Your AP exam scores will earn you just as much college credit this year as they did in previous years—you should be just as dedicated to AP exam prep as a senior as you were as a junior.
Check out our 5 AP Exam Tips for a 5.
Get detailed advice for AP exam prep.
Tackle Financial Aid
Just when you thought you were done with forms and applications, here comes financial aid season. Be sure to complete your financial aid forms as early as possible because many forms of aid are dispersed on a first-come, first-served basis.
Learn the basics of financial aid here.
Get some tips for completing the FAFSA.
You’ll be moving into your dorm room before you know it!
What to Do for a Successful Junior Year of High School
COLLEGE ADMISSIONSA successful junior year of high school is scary for three big reasons:
There’s a lot to get done this year to position yourself for a successful college application season, so buckle up and let’s get going!
Junior Year Grades and Course Rigor
Colleges want to see what you’re capable of. As the last full school year before college applications are due, a successful junior year will show colleges your current academic skills. No pressure of anything, but getting really good grades in challenging classes is even more important now than it was during your sophomore or freshman years.
Keep a close eye on your grades. It’s a lot easier to fix a problem if you’re proactive about it than to try to dig yourself out of a deep hole at the end of the semester.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help.
If you haven’t already considered which classes you want to take as a senior, now’s the time. You’ll need to make sure that you’re on track to meet all graduation requirements.
Learn more about how college admissions officers look at grades.
Find out what college admissions officers learn from your class choices.
Take the PSAT/NMSQT
In October, you’ll have the opportunity to take the PSAT/NMSQT, a preliminary SAT that acts as the qualifying test for the coveted National Merit Scholarship. It certainly doesn’t hurt for you to prepare for and take the PSAT—the test is nearly identical to the SAT, so it’s great practice! And although only 1% of test-takers will ultimately win the National Merit Scholarship, many more will be identified as Semifinalists or Commended Students, and such distinction is a great honor to put on college applications.
Check out our Complete PSAT Guide.
College Research
You probably already have a dream school in mind—and that’s great!—but you need to look into a variety of other schools and generate a solid list of safety schools, target schools, and reach schools. The sooner you finalize the list of colleges you want to apply to, the sooner you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get in. How much do you need to boost your SAT or ACT scores by? Which, if any, Subject Tests do you need to take? How many essays will you have to right? How many recommendation letters will you need to ask for?
Learn more about why EVERY student needs to apply to safety schools.
Find out how to choose safety, target, and reach schools.
AP Exams
If you’re taking any AP classes junior year, you’ll need to pencil in time to prep for the end of course AP exams. Good scores on AP exams give you the opportunity to earn college credit for your high school coursework, so it’s definitely worth the time and effort to prep for these rigorous exams.
Get AP exam prep tips.
Time for SAT or ACT Prep
If you haven’t already, it’s time to start prepping for the SAT and/or ACT. Depending on your college application deadlines, you’ll have a limited number of chances to reach your score goals. The sooner you start SAT or ACT prep, the more opportunities you have to meet your goal and the higher your ultimate score will be.
Find out the key to good test scores.
Learn how to get a 30 (or higher!) on the ACT.
Check out our top 10 SAT and ACT prep tips.
Figure out whether you should take the ACT or the SAT.
Look for Leadership Opportunities
If freshman year was about exploring your extracurricular options and sophomore year was about narrowing down your focus, a successful junior year is about diving headlong into the extracurricular activities you’re most passionate about. Colleges look for students who follow through on the things that interest them, and one of the best ways to demonstrate that is to strive for leadership roles in your extracurricular activities. If these roles aren’t available to you as a junior, work toward leadership positions for next year (it’ll still go on your applications!) by staying active in the clubs, teams, or groups you’re involved in.
Summer: Stay Busy
Senior year is just around the corner—the end is in sight. Don’t let up during the summer because there’s still plenty to do:
You’ll be filling out those applications before you know it! Get started on a successful junior year of high school and reach out to 宝博体育 Education today!
What to Do Your Sophomore Year of High School
COLLEGE ADMISSIONSIt may be hard to believe, but you’re already almost halfway through high school. By the end of your sophomore year of high school, you’ll be just over a year away from the college application process. It’s time to really buckle down.
Sophomore Year Grades and Course Rigor
The biggest thing that colleges look for in applicants is good grades in tough courses. Hopefully, with freshman year under your belt, you’ve got a good idea of just how much of an academic challenge you can reasonably handle your sophomore year.
Keep a close eye on your grades. It’s a lot easier to fix a problem if you’re proactive about it than to try to dig yourself out of a deep hole at the end of the semester.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help
If you haven’t already considered which classes you want to take as a junior and senior, now’s the time. Create a plan so that you can make sure you cover any prerequisites for Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses.
Learn more about how college admissions officers look at grades.
Find out what college admissions officers learn from your class choices.
AP Exams
If you’re taking any AP classes this year, you’ll need to pencil in time to prep for the end of course AP exams. Good scores on AP exams give you the opportunity to earn college credit for your high school coursework, so it’s definitely worth the time and effort to prep for these rigorous exams.
Get AP exam prep tips.
PSAT Prep Starts Sophomore Year
Juniors who take the PSAT/NMSQT in October are automatically considered for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship. Only about 1 percent of test-takers earn this scholarship, so it’s a big deal in the world of college admissions. In fact, the scholarship is so prestigious that colleges like to collect National Merit Commended Scorers and Semifinalists (you don’t find out whether you actually won the scholarship until after college admissions decisions are made).
From both a financial aid standpoint and a college admissions standpoint, it’s worth your while to reach for a top score on the PSAT.
Bonus: The PSAT is really just a slightly shorter, slightly easier version of the SAT, so starting PSAT prep now gives you a head start on SAT prep later.
Check out our Complete PSAT Guide.
Narrow Down Your Interests
Colleges generally prefer to see students who develop deep interests than those who dabble shallowly in a lot of different extracurricular activities. Sophomore year of high school is a good time to start winnowing down your activities to focus more intensely on just a small handful of things that you’re truly passionate about.
Visit Some College Campuses
You don’t have to travel to your dream college for a campus visit to be worthwhile. You can learn a lot about what you do and don’t want on a college campus by visiting local schools that you might not be particularly interested in attending. Maybe the flagship state university campus seems overwhelmingly huge and crowded—you’ve learned that you probably won’t feel comfortable at a really big school. Maybe the little private college one town over has a dining hall that makes your mouth water—good dining options might be something to look out for as you explore other schools.
Learn about the five things you should do on every college visit.
Set yourself up for success on get started on preparing for your sophomore year of high school today!
What to Do Your Freshman Year of High School
COLLEGE ADMISSIONSIt might seem a bit early to start thinking about applying to college when you’ve barely started high school, but remember: everything you do, even in your freshman year of high school, becomes part of your college application, so it’s important to make every year count.
Freshman Grades Are Important
The grades you earn freshman year count just as heavily toward your final high school GPA as the grades you earn senior year. One bad grade isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but every disappointing grade will make it harder for you to achieve the overall GPA you’ll need to get into your dream college.
Learn more about the role of grades in college admissions.
Find out how to handle a bad grade.
Be sure to pay attention to how you’re doing throughout each semester to make sure you keep your grades up. It’s much easier to fix a problem by being proactive than waiting until you’ve dug your course grade into a deep hole.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help
Find the Right Class Difficulty
Colleges value course rigor—how hard your classes are—almost as much as they value grades. This puts you in a tough spot: you need to be able to strike a balance between taking hard classes and getting top grades.
Learn more about why colleges look at your class difficulty when making admission decisions.
Although grades in your freshman year of high school will impact your overall GPA, colleges will scrutinize your junior and senior year grades much more closely and will be somewhat more forgiving of slightly lower grades early in your high school career. This means that freshman year is the best year for you to really challenge yourself to discover the right balance between hard classes and good grades.
Take the hardest classes you think you can handle. You won’t know for sure whether you can cut it unless you try. If those classes prove to be too much, you can always scale back next semester or next year. You’ll have a better idea of which classes will be right for you in the future when your grades will be examined more closely by colleges.
Make a Long-Term Plan
Look ahead to junior and senior year. What kinds of classes do you think you’ll want to take?
If you have a specific career in mind, you might want to explore electives in that particular area. If you’re hoping for admission to a selective college, you’ll want to look into the Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) options at your school.
Once you have an idea of what courses you might want to take, you can look into the prerequisites for those classes. This way, you can plan out which classes to take each semester in order to ensure that you balance grades and class difficulty, meet all graduation requirements, cover any prerequisites, and still get to take the classes you want to take as a junior and senior.
Planning ahead pays off!
Experiment with Extracurricular Activities
Colleges want to see students who explore their interests and pursue their passions. Freshman year is the best time to tackle that first part—exploring your interests. This is the year when you should attend meetings for any team, group, or organization that interests you. Hop from activity to activity until you find the ones that spark your passion, offer a good fit, and suit your schedule. Throughout the year, you can pick up and discard activities until you find the right mix.
Get Ready to Buckle Down
The closer you get to college applications, the more high-stakes things get. Make sure you’re ready for the college admissions race by maintaining good grades and staying involved during the summer. Consider visiting your local 宝博体育 Education center to create a college roadmap that will help you set goals to get into your dream college.
ACT® Science Section Tips for a High Score
TEST PREPOn the Enhanced ACT® that premiers in 2025, the science section is optional. As of now, many colleges are still undecided or unclear about whether they will require or recommend the science section. However, when it comes to college admissions, optional isn’t really optional: when you have the chance to give schools another positive data point that builds your case for admission, you should take advantage of the opportunity!
So what is the ACT science section? At its core, it’s a test of scientific analysis. It assesses your ability to synthesize scientific data and information in order to draw logical conclusions. But more than anything else, it’s a timed test. The ACT science section is one of the most challenging sections in terms of time, so managing your time well is the key to success. Read on for some ACT science section tips to help you maximize your score- be sure to experiment with different strategies when you take practice sections so that you can find the best approach for test day!
#1: Spend about 2 minutes reading the passage and analyzing the charts and graphs
#2: Glance over the questions and underline key terms or references to the passage and graphs
#3: Tackle the questions one by one starting with the ones you can answer most easily
#4: After about 5 minutes total, move on to the next passage
#5: Use remaining time to answer questions you skipped
ACT science section myths
Next, let’s talk about what the science section is not: a test of scientific knowledge. If you are prepping based on any of these notions, you may not be helping your cause for a maximum score and may even have a negative impact on your efforts. Here are some myths to keep remember.
For more tips on general ACT prep, read our Top 10 ACT prep tips blog post. If you’re interested in a free consultation for a personalized ACT prep program, contact your local 宝博体育 center.
How to Write a College Essay that Stands Out
COLLEGE ADMISSIONSIn annual surveys, college admissions officers consistently rank the college essay to be the most important factor in admissions decisions after grades, course rigor, and test scores. It’s no surprise, then, that students find college essays to be just as stressful as SAT or ACT prep. Let’s take a little bit of fear out of the essay and look at how to write a college essay that stands out.
Step One: Brainstorming
No matter the prompt, the goal is to learn more about you. This is the one part of the application where you get to showcase yourself as a three-dimensional person rather than data on a page. One New York Times writer put it this way:
The college essay is about the true things students want the colleges to know about them that can’t be seen via grades and standardized tests. Are you kind? Resilient? Curious? Creative? Are you any fun? And contrary to popular belief, it’s not about unattainable standards or curing cancer. In fact, a good test of a college essay is: Can the writer convince the reader that she would make a great roommate?
Since a college essay is a personal essay, you’ll need to get into the right mindset. Check out this post on getting into the college essay mindset for help jump-starting your essay process.
Once you’ve got the right mindset, it’s time to figure out your college essay topic. Your essay should tell a story – one singular story – about something that is meaningful to you. Your story doesn’t have to be about the biggest moment in your life. Sometimes the best essays are about the most mundane events. It’s not the event that matters as much as your perspective on the event.
Create a list of possible story ideas, and then brainstorm the kinds of lessons that you can draw from each story. For example, maybe you ride the public bus to school each day, and this is the time you spend simply observing the world around you – you’ve learned the importance of stopping to smell the roses (or…the bus stop…) while everyone else is glued to a screen or hurrying to get somewhere. No matter your story, there’s almost always a message hidden inside.
Step Two: Outlining
A well-written essay needs to be clearly organized. The story should flow naturally from one idea to the next, creating a seamless narrative that’s compelling and easy to follow. The secret to a well-organized essay is an outline. An outline provides a plan to follow while you write so that each paragraph has a clear main idea and each idea logically links to the next.
Step Three: Drafting
The blinking cursor on the screen can be hard to overcome. The best way to deal with it is to just start writing. Know that your first draft is just that – a FIRST draft. You’re going to revise it several times before you even begin to approach a final product, so there’s no pressure to create a perfect essay right out of the gate. Follow your outline and let your ideas flow. You can always fix it later.
Step Four: Editing and Revising
Read your first draft with a critical eye. Make lots of changes. Go beyond fixing grammar or spelling errors to really tackle the content and style of the essay. Move ideas around, rearrange entire paragraphs, cross things out, rewrite pieces of it, and when you just can’t find anything else to improve, have a trusted reader look it over to get a fresh take. Your English teacher or a writing tutor would be ideal, but anyone who you consider to be a good writer may have helpful feedback.
Step Five: Draft, Revise, and Repeat
Go back to the drafting board. Consider any changes that you or another reader recommended and make the improvements you think will result in a stronger essay. Then revise again, and repeat. The best essays go through multiple drafts before they near the final version.
Step Six: Final Polish
Let your finished essay marinate for a few days before you read it again. When you revisit the essay, place yourself in the shoes of an admissions officer: You’ve read literally hundreds of essays today, and you know practically nothing about the author of this essay other than what’s in the application itself. From that perspective, what does this essay tell you about the author? Is that the message you hope to send?
Make your final tweaks, give the essay one final read, and then…submit it. The worst is over.
Check out these other resources for tips and tricks for stronger college essays:
And if you need one-on-one help on how to write a college essay or support as you work on your college applications, 宝博体育’s college admissions counseling can help!
Common App Tips and Tricks
COLLEGE ADMISSIONSIf you’re applying to college soon, odds are good that you’ll use the Common Application. After all, more than 800 colleges accept the Common App, and you’re probably applying to a few of them.
Since the Common App is such a big part of the college application process, it can help to have some tricks up your sleeve. Read on for tips and tricks to make your Common Application experience go as smoothly as possible.
Plan ahead.
Check out the application requirements for the schools you’ll apply to. (The Common App has a helpful requirements grid, but be sure to double check all information with the individual school websites.) Make a list of everything you need, from the application itself to essays, supplements, test scores, and recommendation letters. Don’t let pieces of your application slip through the cracks!
Start early.
The sooner you start, the less stressful the application process will be, and the more time you will have to revise your application. The application platform opens August 1!
Review the application before you begin.
Get a feel for each section of the application so that you know what information you’ll need to be ready to provide. Here’s a quick overview of the Common App:
Take your time.
Silly mistakes reflect poorly on you as an applicant, so don’t rush through seemingly simple application components. You don’t want to be the person who misspells their own name on the application!
Do your writing in advance.
Don’t try to write things in the Common App platform. For one thing, it doesn’t have spellcheck. You also risk losing your work if a glitch happens, and it’s harder to see the bigger picture when each piece of writing is in a different part of the application than when all written components are put together.
This advice isn’t limited to essays and supplements: your activities descriptions count as written responses, too! The Common App allows 50 characters for your position description and organization name and 150 characters for details and accomplishments—use them to your advantage! Include plenty of action verbs and vivid descriptions to make the most of this part of the application.
Print the PDF.
The Common App allows you to view your entire application as a PDF. Don’t just pull the document up on your screen—print it out and carefully review each and every field. Look out for typos, formatting issues in the essay, cut-off descriptions in activities, or anything else that doesn’t seem right. After you give it a first pass, fix any mistakes, print it again, and ask someone else to review the application, too; a second pair of eyes can catch things you might have overlooked.
Submit ahead of the deadline.
It’s not unheard of for the Common App to experience widespread technical difficulties on high-traffic days. Don’t get caught off-guard by possible problems—submit your applications several days ahead of deadlines so that you have time to troubleshoot any last minute problems.
宝博体育 Education Doylestown now serving the community
CENTERS宝博体育 Education Doylestown is now open! Our newest center in Doylestown, PA, is now open and ready to provide students with the expert help they need to succeed! For over 20 years, we’ve been working with students on their journey towards attending the school of their dreams. We’re bringing our test prep, tutoring, and college admissions counseling services to Doylestown and the surrounding community to produce the great results tens of thousands of our students see across the country.
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What’s On the ISEE? Everything You Need to Know
TEST PREPThe ISEE is the Independent School Entrance Examination, and it’s used for admission to private middle and high schools. Read on to learn more about the ISEE.
Does my child need to take the ISEE?
If you’re planning to apply to a private school, chances are that your child will need to take an entrance exam. Which exam your child needs to take is dictated by the schools to which you will apply: some schools require the ISEE while others require the SSAT, HSPT, or a different test altogether.
Always be sure to check with your goal schools to learn about their particular admission requirements.
What are the different levels?
The ISEE has several different levels. The level your child will take depends on the grade the student will be in upon entering the target private school. Check out this chart to learn more about different levels of the ISEE:
What’s covered on the ISEE? How long is the test?
Each of the three main levels of the ISEE includes these sections:
This table shows the number of questions and time limits for each section of each level of the ISEE:
The ISEE also includes an essay portion. The essay is not graded, but a copy of the essay is provided to schools along with the student’s score report. Schools often use these essays as writing samples when making admission decisions.
What’s a good ISEE score?
ISEE scaled scores range from 760 to 940. It’s nearly impossible to give a simple answer regarding a good score because different schools have different expectations from their students.
Most competitive schools examine an applicant’s percentile or stanine more closely than the student’s scaled score. The percentile represents how well a student scored compared to other test-takers, and the stanine is an abbreviated version of the percentile:
While it’s impossible to give a simple definition of a “good” ISEE score, it’s worth noting that ISEE test takers tend to be among the brightest and most talented students, which means a higher percentile/stanine is difficult to achieve because of the high bar of comparison. Students preparing for the ISEE should work towards the highest score possible in order to bolster their private school applications. Contact your local 宝博体育 is you’d like a free consultation for personalized ISEE test prep.