Applying to College

In your search for online education, chances are that you’ve been in a situation like this. You just found a great-looking course, but before you enroll, you’ve got some questions to ask . . .

When does the course start?
What payment options are available?
What kind of computer equipment do you need?
Will you be able to ask [...]

Are you about to graduate from high school? Do you still have a year or two to go? In either case, here’s a suggestion for the months ahead . . .
Take a few college courses online this summer. 
Maybe you’re thinking that other priorities that come first, like taking an SAT prep class or attending a [...]

“Admission,” the new film that stars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, is cute, perky, and funny – just the way a romantic comedy should be. But the movie also teaches some important lessons about getting into college.
The movie casts Tina Fey as Portia, a college admissions officer at Princeton. Paul Rudd plays a private-school teacher [...]

“A young woman wrote that she took a summer course and she meant to say in 'organismic biology' but she wrote 'orgasmic biology' and went on to say it was the best course she'd ever taken. We didn't reject her for that outright, but it makes you look twice.”- An Ivy League admissions officer quoted [...]

All across America, tens of thousands of students are cooling their heels until April, when college acceptance letters will arrive in the mail.
If you’re one of them, you already know how it feels. After all those months – years, actually – of intense preparation to get into college, it’s a letdown. Until a few months [...]

Les Perelman, Ph.D., recently retired after spending 26 years teaching writing at MIT. He is still affiliated with that institution, where he is now researching ways to improve students’ writing skills.
Perelman is no fan of the SAT. He believes that the test’s writing section and essay are essentially useless – completely unable to help colleges [...]

In future posts, we’ll cover strategies for writing different kinds of essays – SAT essays, essays on tests, and more. Today, we’ll cover the college application essay.
There are actually two kinds of college application essays . . .
1)      The writing sample that you include in the common application online.
2)      An essay that is required as [...]

When my daughter was applying to college, she needed a checklist to keep track of her applications. College A required a supplemental essay in addition to the one that was on the Standard Application, for example, and College B wanted to see an actual term paper she had written. Without a checklist, who could keep [...]

If you got accepted to the college of your choice via early admission in December, congratulations! You are probably kicking back and smiling while your friends are waiting anxiously for their acceptance letters to arrive in April.
If you’re in that second category – sitting and waiting and waiting for your letters to arrive – I’d [...]

All the posts we publish on the StraighterLine Blog are masterpieces – of course! However, some are apparently more mastery than others.
These posts are the best of 2012 and a few from 2011 that continue to be some of our readers favorites.
CAREERS
Your resume is your landing page.  In our electronic age, your resume will work [...]

When you stop to break the process down, it becomes clear that the traditional way of getting into college is incredibly complicated. Most college applicants go through some or all of these steps . . .

They take AP classes and tests to increase their chances of getting into college.
They hire SAT and ACT tutors. Then [...]

On-campus college interviews are as scarce as dinosaurs in argyle sweaters these days. They’ve almost disappeared for a very simple reason: colleges are screening so many applications that they just don’t have the time to call you in for a traditional across-the-desk conversation. It’s more likely that any interviews you get will be with alumni [...]

There’s a very simple answer to the question that is posed in the title of today’s post.
The answer is no. No college coach anywhere can guarantee admission to an Ivy League school. Some of the best independent college counselors canimprove your chances of getting into an elite school. But guarantee it? It just doesn’t work that way.
There [...]

 Whether affirmative action is still needed is an important and complex issue to address. But let’s be fair. If affirmative action is under scrutiny, we should be looking at these admissions policies too.

Essay topic: You have fallen out of an airplane and are hurtling toward earth. But your cellphone still works. Would you use it to order a pizza, a bucket of chicken, or a submarine sandwich? Please explain your choice within the context of your life achievements and ambitions.