Over the past 10+ years, my interest in college essays has led me through courses for counselors, teachers, and writers as I work to hone my skills and insight to help students one-on-one and in workshops. But frankly, I hadn’t planned or thought about workshops a while. The idea of writing workshops takes me back to teaching writing to college students as well as running college essay workshops years ago. Then, this past week, a fellow consultant contacted me to run spring e

Test-optional admissions have created a huge influx of applications at many colleges. Admissions counselors confirm that making decisions is more complicated than ever. That’s why counselor and teacher letters of recommendation are getting extra attention, whether students apply test-optionally or not. These surveys are the primary source that high school guidance counselors use to write letters of recommendation. While they would welcome the opportunity to know every student

While there is never a guarantee that any student will be admitted to any school, the class of 2021 is experiencing even less predictability. The situation begs insight beyond what we already know about yield protection, test-optional admissions, and college’s financial fears. That’s why I was excited to share stories with 30+ colleagues on Friday afternoon. Here’s what I discovered: Several consultants’ students applied to many more colleges because of test-optional admissio

This weekend, I completed a Character Collaborative course and am eager to use what I learned as a new tool to help my students craft more focused essays and applications. In 2016, the above colleges committed to a new organization called the Character Collaborative. Its mission was to go beyond simple numbers in college admissions and to emphasize applicants’ character traits, including ethically-based attributes such as empathy, honesty, humility, open-mindedness and unself

The surprising deferrals began two or three years ago. Why would the student with a weighted 3.7 GPA and a 25 ACT gain acceptance to a competitive college while one from the same high school with a GPA of 4.2 and ACT score of 32 be denied? This year, students with 4.5 GPAs and 1500 SAT scores are being deferred by many colleges. What’s driving this trend? A long term issue: the declining birth rate: Even before the pandemic rocked the economy, college enrollment managers worr