It’s Not Too Late to Apply to College

At this time of year, many students who do not yet know where they will attend college begin panicking. Take a note from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC.

Whether you’ve already applied to your top choice schools and haven’t yet received that coveted acceptance letter or you dropped the ball and haven’t yet submitted college applications, fear not. Although the application deadlines for most top ranked schools have already passed, there are many good four-year colleges still accepting applications.

Let’s start with some important resources:

Big Future: The College Board’s college search tool allows you to arrange results by application deadline so that you can find colleges that are still accepting applications.

The Common App: The Common App’s search tool allows you to narrow your choices by application deadline so that the search will only return results for schools with deadlines after a certain date.

Here is a sampling of schools that are still accepting applications:

February 15:

College of the Ozarks
Washington University in St. Louis
Pace University
University of North Carolina, Asheville

April 1:

SUNY New Paltz
University of Massachusetts, Boston

April 15:

Louisiana State University

May 1:

University of Arizona
Clemson University

In addition to schools with late application deadlines, there are schools that utilize a rolling admission process. Rolling admission is like first come, first serve – the school will continue to review applications until the freshman class is full. Colleges that use a rolling admission process include:

Bradley University
Citadel Military College of South Carolina
Michigan State University
Pennsylvania State University
Arizona State University
Marymount University
Hofstra University
Purdue University
Stony Brook University

Don’t wait until the last minute to start these applications! Remember that getting transcripts, test score reports, and other documentation can take some time.

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Brains and Brawn: Education in the NFL

In honor of American’s unofficial holiday, the Super Bowl, we thought it would be interesting to explore a few NFL stars that have placed education on an equal footing with their athletic prowess. The list below is a small sampling of current NFL players, showing that they are not all about the brawn.

Tom Brady, Quarterback – New England Patriots (2000 – present)

  • University of Michigan, Bachelor Degree in General Studies, with an emphasis on Business and Psychology
  • Academic Achievement Honors for 1996 and 1998
  • Academic All-Big Ten for 1998

Russell Wilson, Quarterback – Seattle Seahawks (2012 – present)

  • North Carolina State University, Bachelor Degree Political Science and Master Degree in Broadcast Communications
  • University of Wisconsin, Master Degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis

Robert Griffin III, Quarterback – Washington Redskins (2015 – present)

  • Baylor University, Bachelor Degree in Master Degree, Communications
  • Earned Bachelor Degree in three years with a 3.67 GPA
  • Made dean’s list twice

Calais Campbell, Defensive End – Arizona Cardinals (2008 – present)

  • University of Miami (FL), Bachelor Degree in Advertising and Marketing
  • Earned Bachelor Degree in less than four years
  • Donated 1.6 million to University of Miami to establish an endowed scholarship for student athletes

Ryan Fitzpatrick, Quarterback – Houston Texans (2014 – present)

  • Harvard University, Bachelor Degree in Economics
  • Named the 2010 5th smartest athlete in sports by Sporting News
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Top Tips When You’re Waitlisted

By now, most students who applied to college through early admission programs have learned their fates. Some are celebrating their good fortune; others are mourning the loss of their dream schools; and many, many others are likely stuck in waitlist limbo.

If you’re among the many who have been waitlisted, here are our top tips – the do’s and don’ts of college waitlists.

DO:

Express your continued interest. It may seem odd, but you should treat your waitlist letter as an invitation to be considered (again) for admission. As such, you should RSVP by responding to the offer of remaining on the waitlist. The sooner you do this, the better – many colleges look at your response time as an indicator of how passionate you are about attending.

Make contact. Contact the admissions office to find out the name and contact info for the regional representative dedicated to your area. Write a letter to that specific person so that you can express your dedication to attending the school and provide any additional information that might be helpful (recent grades, test scores, or awards).

Create good news. After expressing your interest in a letter, you should ONLY contact the admission office to share noteworthy news. It’s in your best interest to generate news by seeking awards and honors, taking (and excelling on) additional tests, or getting involved in additional activities.

DON’T:

Proceed without a backup plan. Historically speaking, only about 1 in 3 students who are waitlisted receive offers of admission. While being waitlisted doesn’t mean that all hope is lost, you shouldn’t count on ultimately being accepted. You should submit additional applications (to schools you actually wouldn’t mind attending if you needed to) so that you have a Plan B – and perhaps Plans C and D as well.

Nag the admission office. No one likes to be annoyed, and admission officers are no exception. If you are in routine contact with the admission officer, you’re probably being annoying. Remember that these are very busy people who have hundreds upon hundreds of students under their purview. Adding to their stress-loads won’t make them view you in a positive light.

Say inappropriate things online. Yes, admission officers often internet stalk potential students. Be circumspect about the things you say online, and whatever you do, DON’T badmouth any colleges regarding their decisions.

Good luck!

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The Best Way to Study

Every student wants to know the secret to acing the big test, whether that test is next week’s history quiz or the SAT.

Let’s start with some bad news: There is no fast, simple, effort-free way to learn.

Now for some good news: There are proven ways to make studying more efficient and effective.

First things first – just for the sake of argument, let’s all agree that the point of studying isn’t just to get a good grade (although that helps!) but to actually learn things.

If our goal is to actually learn things, then we need to have a basic understanding of how our brains learn new information. Think of the brain as an enormous room full of hundreds upon hundreds of filing cabinets, each filled with thousands upon thousands of files. Each file is a piece of information that you’ve learned and filed away, but having the file isn’t very helpful if you can’t access the file, right?

The trick to learning isn’t just a matter of putting information in your brain – it’s a matter of being able to access that information quickly and on command. How often have you stared at a test paper, frustrated because you know you know the answer, but you just can’t remember it?

No matter how well organized and clearly labelled your files might be, when there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of files locating a single file on command is difficult. What you need is a map. When you study – if you’re studying effectively – you’re building yourself a map that helps you to locate and retrieve a piece of information. And the best way to do this is to test yourself.

It might seem somewhat counterintuitive to study for a test by taking a test, but it’s really an ideal way of learning new information. When you test yourself, you force your brain to locate and retrieve necessary information. The more often you locate and retrieve a piece of information, the easier it is to find it again later on – you build yourself a map.

Want to learn more? The New York Times recently published a piece discussing research into this very topic. Check out the original article here.

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Top Tips for Completing the FAFSA

As of January 1, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is now available for the 2015-2016 school year. All students who will be attending college in the fall should complete the FAFSA. Yes — all students. Each year, more than 40% of undergraduate students choose not to apply for federal financial aid, but more than 1/4 of them would likely qualify for aid. You never know what you might qualify for unless you apply!

Here are our top tips for filling out the FAFSA:

1. Do it now. The federal deadline for the FAFSA isn’t until April, but this is one area where it definitely doesn’t pay to procrastinate. Waiting until April might mean missing state or school deadlines. In addition, a lot of schools use the FAFSA as their primary tool for determining school-based aid; procrastinating might mean missing out on valuable aid!

2. Have your documents ready. Make the process simpler by having all of your supporting documents ready before you begin completing the FAFSA. This includes W-2s, documentation for any additional income, the student and parents’ social security numbers, and bank account statements.

3. Guesstimate. Haven’t filed taxes yet? Not to fear! The FAFSA allows you to estimate household income if taxes haven’t yet been filed. As soon as the taxes are done, you can log into your FAFSA account and update the numbers.

4. Report the right assets. A lot of families unnecessarily report assets like retirement funds (401(k), IRA, etc.) or equity in the primary home. These assets are not intended to be included in the financial aid calculations. If you report them, they will reduce your financial aid offers.

5. Fill out the WHOLE form. Any mistakes or blank questions can delay the processing of your application, which can result in decreased aid packages.

6. Fix your mistakes. Clicked submit before realizing you made a mistake? No worries. The FAFSA has a “Make FAFSA Corrections” page that will allow you to submit corrections to your completed form. Corrections are processed within three to five business days.

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College Costs: When Money IS an Object

If ever there were a realm in which we might wish that money were no object, paying for college would be it. But in a time when student debt outnumbers all other consumer debt, money most certainly is an object. How can families ensure that they get the most college education bang for the buck?

Several outfits have created tools to help families make smart comparisons between colleges and financial aid packages. One such organization is College Abacus, a web tool that uses your financial data to estimate what you might actually pay after colleges offer financial aid. Its estimates are based on the financial calculators on individual colleges’ websites, providing a simple side-by-side comparison.

It turns out that a lot of colleges don’t like being compared.

A recent New York Times article profiles colleges’ resistance to tools like College Abacus. According to the article, just over a year ago, a large number of schools blocked College Abacus from pinging their websites. Why institutions that ought to be in the business of disseminating information might block information from families focusing a major financial decision is not a simple question.

College Abacus was founded by Abigail Seldin and her husband, Whitney Haring-Smith. Haring-Smith’s mother was the president of Washington & Jefferson College. In 2011, she described the situation that many families face: Going from one college website to another, entering the same information into net price calculator after net price calculator, again and again and again. The couple knew they could solve the problem, so they hired a team of coders to build an aggregation engine that would take the prospective applicant’s data, enter it into the calculators hosted on the schools’ websites, and present the results for up to three schools at a time in an easy side-by-side comparison. Thus College Abacus was born.

The pushback came not from the schools themselves but from the vendors who had supplied the net price calculators to schools. Some vendors simply provided the option to schools to allow them to block College Abacus from accessing their calculators, but others unilaterally decided to block access, generally citing inaccuracies of up to a few thousand dollars. While such inaccuracies are certainly flaws in the system, it’s important to remember that both the numbers provided by College Abacus and those provided by schools’ net price calculators are merely estimates, so even if there are inaccuracies, both estimates will usually prove incorrect once the actual financial aid package is calculated.

More than a year later, several schools who had initially blocked College Abacus are reconsidering the decision. After all, most colleges – particularly private colleges – have an interest in making the financial aid process more transparent. These schools often lose applicants due to sticker shock – a reluctance to apply to a particular school because the posted tuition rate is too high. In reality, few students actually pay the amount listed; most receive relatively large financial aid packages that can reduce costs considerably. By providing a glimpse of the real cost of attendance, colleges can encourage larger numbers of applicants.

While College Abacus may not be available for some colleges, it remains a good tool for families to consider when weighing financial aid packages. As early application results come in, many students are beginning to consider their financial options.

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The Benefits of Low-Tech Parenting

Surprisingly, Steve Jobs — a man pretty much universally considered to be a modern tech genius — was a low-tech parent. According to a recent New York Times article (see the original piece here), the Jobs children had strict limits on their technology use. And Jobs was not alone — the Times’s Nick Bilton reports that many tech giants have also told him that they severely limit the time their children spend with gadgets. Among the rules that these high-tech parents set for their low-tech children are:

No gadgets during the week
Time limits on weekends
Weekday computer use limited to homework
No social media use
No screens in the bedroom — ever

To most of the world’s tweens and teens, these rules probably seem draconian — dictates handed down from a Medieval era before high speed internet and data plans. To parents who work in the tech industry, they often seem like perfectly reasonable preventative measures to avoid the many pitfalls of screen time.

According to the National Institutes of Health, most American children spend around 3 hours per day watching TV, and an additional 2-4 hours per day on other devices. Interestingly, in 2001, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended that children have no more than 2 hours of non-school-related screen time per day, well under half the amount that the average child currently watches.

What’s the big concern about screen time? According to AAP, screen time overload can contribute to poor cardiovascular fitness, increased risk of obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. And that’s just the purely physical side. The Mayo Clinic goes further to point out that excess screen time can result in poor sleep, behavioral problems, and poor academic performance.

Perhaps Steve Jobs was onto something.

To be fair to our beloved screens, there are some benefits to moderate screen time. A 2013 Forbes article examined the potential benefits of screen time and found that, as with most things in life, the good and bad of screen time depends on how, how often, and why screens are used. For instance, researchers in the 1980s found that children learned more from Sesame street when they viewed the show alongside their parents. Additionally, many computer and video games can teach valuable skills, from the physical (such as hand-eye coordination) to the mental (such as problem solving).

Plenty of research points to the dangers of over-indulging in screen time — but then, there are dangers in over-indulging in just about anything. The key is moderation.

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Why Is Math So Hard?

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, Elizabeth Green, author of Building a Better Teacher, explores the question, “Why do Americans stink at math?” Another way we could look at this question is, “Why is math so hard?”

That American students — and, by extension, American adults — stink at math is fairly well established. Among the evidence that Green provides is the tale of the third-pounder hamburger:

“One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.

Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray.”

The reason for our lack of math skills, according to Green, is not that we lack the capacity to do complex math in our heads; instead, the problem is the ways in which we teach math in schools. Despite many reform attempts, most math classes still focus on the procedures of completing math problems rather than on the deeper meanings of those procedures. The result is that math seems like an arbitrary system of numbers, symbols, and letters with no real meaning in our day to day lives. Is it any wonder that students not only fail to deeply understand mathematical concepts, but also dislike the very idea of studying math?

This issue — the problem of teaching students how to do math without bothering to teach them why math works the way it does — is at the heart of the new Common Core State Standards. The math standards are intended to encourage teachers to unlearn old approaches, largely based on rote memorization, and learn an entirely new approach that shows students what each mathematical principle really means. Unfortunately, as with past reforms, teachers are essentially on their own. Training in the new standards is weak and infrequent, and school boards and administrators remain unprepared or unwilling to offer adequate professional development and support.

It turns out that math is hard because we make it harder than it has to be. But we can help! Learn more about math tutoring at 宝博体育 today.

Read the original article here: Why Do Americans Stink at Math?

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How To Get Into Harvard

Every student wants to know the magical formula that will get them accepted at Harvard – or Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, or any of several other highly selective colleges.

If I could just create a detailed checklist that would ensure your acceptance at one of these schools, I would. But I can’t. Such a checklist simply doesn’t exist (even if WikiHow has given you fourteen simple steps to a Harvard admission letter).

A typical Harvard admission checklist correctly notes the importance of grades, course rigor, SAT/ACT scores, supplementary test scores like AP exams, and extracurricular activities. But if these were the only ingredients to college admission, wouldn’t every student with a 4.0 GPA in AP courses and a 1590 on the SAT get into Harvard?

Of course your grades and test scores have to be stellar just to get past the first round of cuts. When you’re applying at a school that only accepts about 1 in 15 students, your grades, test scores, and course choices have to be the best of the best. But – and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news – a 4.0 and high SAT scores probably won’t be enough.

The Atlantic recently published a piece called “How to Get Into Harvard,” in which Harvard President Drew Gilpin is quoted as saying, “We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians.” At a college like that – a school that is free to choose from among the best and brightest students in the world – the difference between a hefty admissions packet and a slim rejection letter is a lot less tangible: Personality.

When you’re applying to a school where almost all of the other 30,000 applicants have equally good grades and test scores, it’s the intangible factors – your essay, your recommendations, and what you’ve done with your time – that are going to make the biggest difference.

The bad news is that it’s a lot easier to check off items on a list – no matter how challenging the list may be – than it is to achieve some intangible goal like “Be Interesting” (although WikiHow offers 8 simple steps to be more interesting, too). The good news is that this advice should be a call for students to focus on developing their passions and interests rather than just creating a resume.

So, since everyone loves a checklist, here is a list of tips to add personality to your college applications:

Discover Your Bliss: Colleges — Harvard or not — want to see that you have passion and that you pursue your interests. So it’s probably important to, well, have passions and interests. Stop worrying about whether college admission officers will be impressed by the things you’re interested in and just go for it. You like video games? Great. Nothing gets you more excited than the new spring fashion line? Okay. Your voice enters ranges not audible by humans when you see puppies? Cool. It doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about, as long as you’re passionate about something.

Follow Your Bliss: Okay, now you’ve got a passion. That’s still not enough — you have to do something with your passion. You’re a gamer? Blog about it, start a gamer club, develop your own video games. You love fashion? Maybe your school needs a fashion magazine. You <3 puppies? Find a local animal rights charity or dog rescue and start volunteering (but do it passionately, don’t treat it like a chore). No matter what your passions are, if you’re creative enough, you can find a way of pursuing those passions.

Don’t Spread Yourself Out: We’re not saying that you should ONLY do things related to your narrow range of interests. You should focus on being involved in your school and your community (and not just to get into college, but because it’s good for you). But don’t take the all-you-can-eat-buffet approach to extracurriculars. Lots of students sample a little bit of everything — their resumes list positions in 16 different clubs each year, to the point where you have to wonder if maybe they have a time traveling device to get to all those meetings. Colleges can see that, and they know that you did this to pad your resume to impress them (and so, of course, they aren’t impressed). Find a few clubs, organizations, charities, teams, or groups to join and stick with those activities throughout high school.

Develop: The reason you shouldn’t spread yourself out is so that you can spend time developing your interests and skills. How can you delve into the process of publishing if you’re only on the literary magazine staff for one semester? How dedicated to quiz bowl can you be if you only participated for a year? Find the activities that truly interest you and pursue those activities for multiple years. For one thing, that’s the only way to earn the leadership positions that colleges like to see. For another, it’s the only way you’re going to develop your interests.

Write an Awesome Essay: Other than your list of extracurricular activities, your essay is the best place for you to put your totally awesome, unique, interesting personality on display. Especially at a school like Harvard, the essay can wind up being the tie-breaker between you and another equally impressive student. For help in crafting that perfectly unique essay, check out these resources:

Top 10 College Essay Do’s and Don’ts: A video of one of our recent webinars (hosted by yours truly) that delves into some of the best and worst college essay practices.

Top 5 College Essay Cliches: If your goal is to be unique, avoid overdone topics.

Last Minute Tips for Writing a Better College Essay: To be fair, the biggest tip I can offer is DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE. But if you do, this post is for you.

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