“Here’s your college list, now go research these schools.” This is something you might hear from your parents, school counselor or even college counselor. At Campus Bound, we provide more direction than that in general, but in this blog we outline some of the ways students can research colleges and give our opinions on them.
There are many factors that go in to developing a balanced college list including a student’s preferred size, location, and intended major to study. One of the other factors we commonly hear at Campus Bound is that students would like a diverse campus. So what does diversity mean? How do we help students find colleges with strong diversity?
The college search and application process can be stressful to students and families. Despite everyone’s best efforts to keep a clear head and calm demeanor, the fact of the matter is that it’s a process with many questions, tasks and responsibilities. In this blog post, we outline four ways students can possibly reduce stress while searching for and applying to colleges.
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As juniors are being thrust into the college search and exploration process, some students feel overwhelmed and don’t quite know where to start. This blog post is for parents as they attempt to get their teenager to open up about what they want in a college setting and why. Take advantage of a quiet one-on-one moment… in the car, before bed. And really listen to the responses. Some students will have very clear and direct answers, some won’t know much at all yet. But we hope this helps to serve as a starting point for discussions.
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If you aren’t already aware, college admission counselors use the term “safety school” to mean a college where a student has a very good chance of being admitted, based on data from previous years. It typically refers to a student’s chance of acceptance, but did you know that there are other types of “safety schools” and it might make sense to consider adding them to your list for various reasons.
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Many juniors are well into the research phase of the college admission process. This is the time when students have to do some deep soul-searching, often with the help of parents and counselors, to determine the qualities of a college that are most important to them. Every student’s wishlist will be different. But oftentimes, students don’t know where to start. Of course, meeting with a Campus Bound counselor will help, but we also present in this blog the four big questions to ask yourself as you begin exploring different colleges.
Following up on last week’s blog, we decided it would be a good idea to make students and families aware of some “lesser known” colleges that are actually really great! Inspired by Loren Pope’s book, “Colleges That Change Lives,” college counselors are often trying to expand the minds of students and families by suggesting colleges they may not have heard of. With over 3,000 colleges in the United States alone, there are many more schools out there than you can name. And since we at Campus Bound know that it’s really all about the “fit” of a school, we urge you to consider schools that may be new to you. The schools that Loren Pope writes about in his book are places where students thrive. They are schools that have high graduation rates and that their graduates rave about. They are the schools with happy students, the schools you may not know about, but should.
One of the biggest mistakes parents and students can make in the college search and application process is listening to the advice of unqualified people. The title of this blog is meant to be humorous, but in reality, it happens quite a bit. Someone who went to a particular college years ago may have strong feelings about and memories of the school that just aren’t relevant now. Or, a family member may have heard something about a college once that left a bad taste in their mouth. But that information is completely unrelated to what your experience would be like there. The point of this blog is, take what others say with a huge grain of salt.
This is the time of year when juniors tend to kick off the college process. During their first meeting with us, we college counselors ask them, “have you thought about where you’d like to attend college?” We ask about the size of the school they would prefer, what they’d like to study, etc. And then we ask, “Do you know where you’d like to be located for college? What part of the country/ what state(s)? And, in my experience, around 75% of students say, “Someplace warm!”
Part of the college process in the winter/ spring of junior year is deciding what kinds of students you want to surround yourself with in college. Which types of students inspire you and enable you to do your best? Different schools attract different students, which influences the culture on campus.
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