If you’re in high school, there are certain things you can do this summer to utilize the summer months in the best possible way.
You work your way through the grind of early high school. You take your required math, english, science, and history courses. A foreign language course may be required, may not be. Finally, it’s junior year or senior year, and you have fulfilled the graduation requirements and can just sit back and take electives now, right?! Not so fast. In this blog post we explain why all the “fun” options for junior and senior year courses are really an easy trap to fall into if you’re looking at selective colleges and can hurt your chances of being admitted.
Easier said than done, we know! The college process, for those entering it, can feel overwhelming and scary. But if there is one thing we’ve learned over the years of working in admissions, helping families as college counselors, and as parents going through the process ourselves (many of us additionally have kids who have recently applied to college!) is that trust is the key.
You’re walking through the hall when you overhear a group of seniors talking about where they’re going next year. And at soccer practice, your junior friends are talking about the colleges they are visiting next month. It reminds us of a fun quote: “college is the reward for surviving high school.” Yes, you too will be researching and visiting colleges, but you’ve been told it’s not your time yet. There’s good reason for that, as we will explain below. However, there ARE things you can do now to make the college process easier later, and increase your chances of being accepted. Read on!
We may be biased, okay we are definitely biased, but Campus Bound students are the best. We are so lucky to have worked with some pretty amazing students over the years. For this week’s blog, we decided to tap into the experience and knowledge of our former Campus Bound clients to see what advice they have for students currently going through the process, or who are about to go through it.
Taking a gap year before college is something every high school student should at least consider. Even if it’s quickly dismissed as not the right path for you, it makes sense to have a discussion with your Campus Bound counselor about what it is as well as the pros and cons. We have explained more previously in this blog post. In this blog, we will go over the different types of gap year programs, and if you are considering it, how to decide which might be best for you.
Many eager juniors are kicking off the college process by taking an official SAT or ACT. Before you do, however, we offer some important and practical advice to consider.
The college process can bring up some complicated feelings for both students and parents, and there are different ways students express themselves. In this blog, we outline three “typical” difficult students and tell you what is really going on. We also tell you how you can have these conversations with your kids, and how Campus Bound can help.
You’ve worked hard on your college list and applications. You researched schools, visited as many as possible and have even written your essays and submitted all, if not most, of your applications. But this time of year, the inevitable “What if?” can set in. Parents can succumb to it just as easily as students. “What if the ideal college is out there and we just haven’t found it?” “What if I don’t get accepted anywhere?” “What if we don’t get any financial aid?”
It truly seems unfair that many colleges have January 1 application deadlines. In fact, many schools have pushed these deadlines to January 5 or January 15 in order to give students a break from having applications due on New Years Day. But even so, for students with deadlines in December, January, or even February, the holidays can be a challenging time of juggling family obligations, schoolwork, and college applications. The good news is that there are things you can do to make this time a little bit easier and less stressful.
- 1
- 2