The "Ready To Go To School" Checklist

When preparing for school, teens and their parents are rightfully worried about getting the right grades, finding sufficient funding, and of course getting into the perfect school.

But while your child will be as ready as they'll ever be for studying, are they ready for the other things that come with going away to college?  Now, in their junior or senior year, is the time to make sure they know how to:

1. Have a nutritious bite.  Does your child cook for themselves or the family, or given their druthers will they eat Big Macs every night?  Nutrition tends to nosedive at college – and with bad eating comes illness, lethargy, and a less rewarding experience.  Make sure your teen knows how to eat well.

2. Pack light.  It may be a long way away, but now is the time to start deciding what's going away to school and what isn't. Dorm rooms are cozy, to say the least, and your child won't be able to take all their possessions with them.  Where are you planning to put the stuff they don't bring, and are they prepared to know what they should bring?

3. Do laundry.  Nobody's going to do your child's laundry for them while they're away, so they might as well learn now unless they want to smell really awful.  And it might lighten your load in the meantime!

4. Keep money tight.  Your child will be responsible for a lot of budgeting they didn't have to worry about, and will likely be accosted by credit card companies plying their easy-to-spend borrowed money from the moment they arrive at school.  Make sure your child has a budget and knows the ramifications of borrowed money.

5. Lock your stuff at night.  It's an unfortunate fact, but colleges are a haven for thieves, and most students have sad stories of stolen stuff.  Ensure your child knows to, and has the tools to, secure their room, their laptop, their phone, and other possessions.

6. Do things on-site.  Take nothing for granted.  If your child will be using a car at school, do they know how to change a tire, check the pressure in the tires, and when to have the oil changed?  If they are relying on a computer do they know where support can be had on campus?  Is their cell phone plan and provider suitable for the location they're moving to?    

7. Study right.  A good college is vastly harder than high school. If your child's getting through high school with ease, they need to learn study skills (which can be found elsewhere in this blog.)

Help your child make a great start in college by helping them with these simple tips before next fall!

Choosing a College: Big City or Small Town?

Choosing a perfect school is about more than programs and classrooms; it's also about the kind of environment the school resides in.  Deciding on a school is not just about what lies on campus; it's equally about what lies outside of campus.

Schools like Columbia, Georgetown or UCLA that sit in and around huge cities offer the prospective student an amazing number of opportunities – but don't dismiss the small town university like Dartmouth or Cornell.  When deciding on your ideal school, consider the strengths of big and small:

1. There's more to do in big cities and more to be distracted by.  A place like Boston or Chicago offers the student more chances for entertainment, experience and employment than could possibly be sampled in four years.  On the other hand, such things can distract you from your studies.
2. The financial implications are different.  Generally speaking, the bigger the city, the higher the costs, and rent in a downtown metropolis can be stratospheric.  On the other hand, if you want to fly home for a holidays, it's a lot easier to find cheap flights out of New York City than it is out of Ann Arbor.  Your plans for residence and travel could have a lot to do with which is more affordable.
3. Do you want to be a big fish or swim in a big pond?  In a metropolitan campus there are an endless number of things to do, resources to draw from, and people to meet – but you're also a small part of it.  If you want the opportunity to really get to know your fellow students and the faculty, a small town school might offer more chances to get yourself known on campus.
4. What do you like to do?  If you're the outdoorsy type it's a lot easier to get into nature from a place like Penn State – literally a bike ride away from several protected forests – than it is at Temple, which, in the middle of Philadelphia, is a bike ride away from a lot more of Philadelphia.
5. What are you going to do after your undergraduate degree?  For some careers, getting close to the action as soon as possible can pay dividends later, whether it's big finance in New York, public service in Washington, or high tech in San Jose.  However, some fields are more geographically diverse, and if you're planning on graduate school you might well want to switch schools after your undergraduate degree anyway.

Whether you end up in the Big Apple or Appleton, make no mistake that the city a school is located in shapes the school and the experience you'll have there.

School is a Full-Time Job

When you ask parents what their memories are of high school, they are often quick to remember high school dances, awards they won for outstanding achievements, or simply the fun of being a ‘care-free’ teenager in a whirl of extra curricular activities.

Rarely do parents remember the sinking feeling of walking into class on a test day, or the late night frenzy that came before a big assignment that had been postponed too long.

It’s important for both parents and high school students who are bound for college to recognize that school is a full time job.

Imagine that you’ve just been hired for the following job – you’ll spend long periods of time sitting in a stationary position, absorbing information, and then demonstrating knowledge by performing a series of writing exercises and projects. You’ll be critiqued and judged continuously by a whole team of bosses, and have little-to-no say in due dates and project timelines for your work. You’ll be randomly assigned extra work to take home, and often expected to work with partners that can’t or won’t carry their weight.

Most people would look at this description and think “What a terrible job!”

Parents and students both need to shift their thinking from “school is just a fact of life” to “school is a full-time job.” That job is learning, and the work is demonstrating knowledge. Students are paid for their work with grades. The better the work, the better the grades.

If you or your high school student is struggling with viewing work as a full time job, download our FREE article on Time Management for College Bound Students, available here.

Extra-Curricular Activities That College Admission Offices Like

It's hard enough to get good grades and high scores on SATs, but your dream college might also have a very keen interest in extra-curricular activities as well.  As you prepare your application letters, consider what universities are looking for.

Quality is better than quantity. 

Anyone can join a club or volunteer for a day or two. Stuffing your application with a hundred extra-curricular activities simply looks like you lack focus in your non-school activities, or worse yet, you’ve just tried to pad your application. The college admissions officer is no fool and has seen it before. 

What impresses colleges is commitment to something; sticking with a team, club, or cause for a year or more shows that you have the kind of focus and perseverance needed to succeed in a high-quality academic program.

Demonstrate leadership. 

Leadership roles still have a lot of pull in college admissions.  Not everyone can be class president, but any experience with team leadership or mentoring skills should  be highlighted.

Tie extra curricular activities to your chosen college program.

Ideally will be at least some correlation between your extra-curricular activities and the program you're applying to.  Applying to a leading engineering school with an application full of theatre and music credits is not a winning endorsement. Similarly, applying to theater school with nothing but tech extra-curricular activities will seem equally strange. 

This isn't to say that you can't do some things just for fun – after all, balance in life is important – but if you don't have something connected to your program of choice, the admissions department might question how committed you'll be to the program.

Give yourself credit! An amazing number of students leave extra-curricular activities off their applications because their personal interests are so much a part of them that it doesn't occur to them that those activities might impress a school.  All your jobs, all your clubs, all your sports, everything you've volunteered for... make sure the college knows!

Stress Management for Students

Getting into college will be one of the most rewarding and exciting parts of your life.  It'll also be the hardest. The process is generally long, complex, and can be difficult. Anything difficult will cause stress – and unless you learn to manage stress, it will manage you.  Don't allow stress to build up and negatively affect your scholastic endeavors or your health.

 To fight stress, do these things:

1. Stay healthy.  Poor eating, exercise and health habits will do more to you than just make you gain weight; they sap energy, worsen your mood, and add to stress.  Stress is not just a mental state; it's a physical state, and if your body is not well equipped to handle it, you'll be less able to deal with stress.  Eat healthy food, get a good night's sleep, and exercise. 

2. Budget study time.  Ignoring an exam and then cramming the night before will add to your stress (and it doesn't work anyway.)  Having a study plan will not only pace your brain, but just knowing that you have a plan will relax you. For more tips and tricks, read our blog post “Managing Your Study Time”. 

3. Stay social.  You don't want to party your scholarship away, but it's important to stay social. Make friends.  Find clubs.  Play games and sports. Keep in mind that the students you meet today are the co-workers of tomorrow, so it pays to get out and meet new people. Take the time to get to know your colleagues and the time to relax. The mind is well rested by new activities, and socializing will cut down on your stress. 

4. Engage support.  It’s very common for both high school students and college students to feel overwhelmed by it all. If concerns are eating away at you, tell someone - confide in a friend, call your parents, or talk to a professor. Find groups that provide support. Hard though it is to believe when you’re awash in a sea of stress, someone's always ready to help if you just ask. 

Stress management is critically important to any long term effort that requires a lot of time and effort, and your college-bound journey is exactly that. The skills you learn today to manage stress can carry through the rest of your life!

6 Tips for Writing College-Level Essays

College admission essays are one of the most stressful points in the admission process for high school students. A proper essay will tell your professors everything about you as a student; your command of the topic, your work ethic, your ability to research, and your logical thinking.  When you start tackling college essays, keep these six points in mind:

1. Assemble your research first.  Don't get halfway through your essay only to stumble across facts that contradict the last thousand words you just wrote.  Its okay to keep researching as you write an essay – for upper years it's almost necessary – but you should start your essay having already done enough research to know where it's going.

2. Understand the structure of an essay.  Unless your college gives you a different or limited sort of assignment, an academic essay is a piece of writing that makes a claim and provides evidence to support the claim.  Your essays should present a thesis – an assertion that something is true - provide evidence that the assertion is true, and then conclude by summarizing the major points of evidence.  You can't go too wrong by sticking to that structure.

3. Plan your essay.  An essay plan can be as short as a hundred words.  State your thesis in ten words, each of three major points in twelve words; a few notes for each of the three major points, and you have an essay plan.

4. Use multiple resources.  Don't just parrot one book.  If you're at a good school, your professor very likely knows all the best books.  He or she might have written the best books!  The purpose of an essay is to show you are learning how to think, not that you know how to read. 

5. Learn the rules of attribution.  In other words... don't plagiarize.  Plagiarism can end your trip to college or make it much more unpleasant than you've planned.  Any quote you use, any passage you borrow, or any fact you cite should be in a footnote or an endnote.  If you don't understand the basics of academic attribution, ask your instructor.  Your college's bookstore will have writing guides as well.

6. Get someone to proofread it.  No matter how good you think your writing is, no matter how carefully you proofread it yourself, get someone who has a sharp eye for language to proofread your essay.  You will be amazed how many errors they'll find and suggestions they'll have.

Most of all don't be afraid to ask your teachers for help.  They keep office hours for a reason and they'd much rather help you understand academic writing than mark a bad essay.  When in doubt, ask the expert!

Saving for College

College is expensive. We just stumbled on a report from the The Chronicle of Higher Education, which says there are now are 100 colleges which cost more than $50,000 per year!

In an economy when foreclosures are high and money is low, how can students and parents save for college?

Save Early, Save Often

Virtually every state now offers a 529 plan, allowing parents a tax-free or tax-deferred plan to save for their child’s higher education. The plans offer parents tax-based incentives to save early and save often for their children’s college tuition and expenses. 529 plans can be set up at your local financial institution.

The key is to get started early and contribute often. It’s become quite common for parents to start a college savings plan when a child is born (16 years of savings growth!), or when they graduate into high school (still 4 years of savings growth!)

Tip: Consider asking friends and family members to give donations to the child’s college fund at birthdays, holidays, and Christmas.

Find the Right Schools…

Is your child thinking of going to Berkeley? You’d better know that the average cost for new admissions in 2010 is over $49’000 for non-residents. If that price just gave you some sticker shock, you need to consider looking at what colleges your child can afford, and narrowing down your list of admission-worthy colleges from there.  

Rather than commit yourself to a particular college “brand”, consider what program your student is interested in going into, and then find the best schools in that field. Your goal isn’t to find the best all-round college; it’s to find the best college for your kid.

If money is tight, seriously consider in-state colleges, where tuition is typically half of out-of-state schools, and local colleges where your student may be able to live at home free. While finishing his/her undergrad, your student may then be able to save for a 1-2 year post-graduate program at a higher-end school.

… and the Right Scholarships

In the A2Z College Planning Guide “Time Management for College-Bound Students” we talk about how students should carefully choose extra curricular activities, to not only match their skills and interest, but also give them opportunities for scholarships and grants.

Each college has its own criteria for scholarships, based on a need for diversity and excellence in particular programs. Students are often automatically enrolled in college-specific scholarships and grants, but have to apply separately for private and state-based scholarships and grants.

Uncovering scholarship and grant opportunities can be a full-time job. If you’re serious about sending your high school student to a top college, it’s worth the time and