Usacollegechat Podcast

Well, we are just about done. We are on Step 14, the final step in researching colleges on your son or daughter’s LLCO (that is, one last time, the Long List of College Options). And, one last reminder: Feel free to rush online and get our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available at Amazon). It’s a steal at $9.95!  Step 14 is, to many people, the most important step and even the only step. I find it ironic that we would end our podcast--for now--on this note and that we would give our last piece of advice about college cost. Why? Because cost is the thing I care about least in helping your kid find a great college. Perhaps it is because I do believe that where there is a will, there is a way. Perhaps it is because borrowing money for college is not something that I find offensive--since I can’t think of a better reason to borrow some. Perhaps it is because I know that college can be a once-in-a-lifetime chance--one chance to do it exactly right. Of course, y

Well, this is where it gets serious. Researching Step 13 will give you and your son or daughter an idea about how likely it is that he or she will be accepted by a college. Of course, no one can say for sure whether your kid’s grades or admission test scores or extracurricular and community service activities or letters of recommendation will be appealing enough to get him or her admitted to a particular college. But several academic hurdles might turn out to be what stands between your kid and one or more colleges on his or her LLCO (that famous Long List of College Options). Your kid will need to use both each college’s website and College Navigator to research this crucial topic and to answer Questions 40 through 49 on admission practices.   Just to remind you, these steps are based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (for further information, get one at Amazon). While we could talk for days about admissions practices and while many consultants and their

Well, listeners, the end is in sight. Today is Step 12 out of the 14 steps we want your son or daughter to take this summer to make his or her search for colleges more effective. Just to repeat, these steps are based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (there is one with your name on it waiting at Amazon). Step 12 asks your son or daughter to investigate what the colleges on his or her LLCO (that’s his or her Long List of College Options) have to offer outside of the classroom--extracurricular activities, community service activities, fraternities and sororities, and intercollegiate and intramural sports. These activities that help enrich students’ lives outside of the classroom can make the difference between a great college experience and a just-okay college experience for lots of kids. Tell your son or daughter to go to each college’s website to answer Questions 35 through 39 on activities and sports. 1. Extracurricular Activities Let’s start with extrac

Today is Step 11 out of the 14 steps we want your son or daughter to take this summer to make his or her search for colleges more effective. As you know by now, these steps are based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (get one at Amazon ASAP). Step 11 brings us to the safety of students on campus and the security measures that a college takes to keep its students safe. Parents: Getting information about security measures on campus is one way to help alleviate your concerns about letting your son or daughter go away to college and live on campus. Information can be found on each college’s website and from College Navigator for answering Questions 32, 33, and 34 on our College Profile Worksheet. You will also notice and definitely hear about security measures if you visit a college and take a campus tour. Before we go on, let’s say a word to those of you who plan to have your son or daughter commute to campus from home. Safety is an issue for your family, to

Well, we are up to Step 10 out of the 14 steps of your kid’s summer homework. So far, so good. Keep checking our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students for further detail and more examples (it’s still available at Amazon). Step 10 calls for your son or daughter to investigate on-campus housing options, which could make some difference in where to apply and where to enroll if you are planning for him or her to live in college housing. Some students, of course, will be commuting to campus, so these questions might seem less important; however, plans change, so housing is still worth a look--both freshman housing and upperclassman housing. By the way, there are some colleges where the majority of students live in campus housing well past the freshman year, including colleges that actually have a multiple-year housing requirement. What are all those colleges--and their students--thinking? So, send your son or daughter to each college’s website to answer Questions 28 thro

Today’s episode is about Step 9 of your kid’s summer homework. All 14 steps are being explained in our series of episodes this summer and have been explained, with more examples and details, in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Workbooks are still available from Amazon if you want one for your son or daughter. Step 9 looks at the components that make up the college schedule. For many colleges, these questions will produce a rather traditional response, something like this: a fall semester and a spring semester, each running about 15 weeks. There will also be a summer term or two, and there might even be a super-short winter term between the regular terms. But there are also innovative scheduling options that your son or daughter has probably never heard of and might find attractive. Tell your kid to go to each college’s website to answer the three questions on this topic.  1. Term Length and Course Length First, let’s talk about the length of academic terms

Today’s episode is about Step 8 of your kid’s summer homework. That’s 8 out of 14 steps, all of which are explained in our series of episodes this summer and also, with more examples and details, in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Workbooks are still available from Amazon if you want one for your son or daughter. Step 8 is about the topic that most people think is most critical to choosing a college--that is, academics. Most people would say that it is what college is all about--or, at least, mainly about; or, at least, hopefully mainly about. Our College Profile Worksheet from the workbook has six questions in this section, which can be answered by reviewing each college’s website. 1. Schools and Colleges First, let’s talk about the divisions that make up universities, in case your son or daughter has any on his or her Long List of College Options (that’s LLCO, for short). And, by the way, we hope that there are at least two or three. Here is what we exp

Well, we are up to Step 7 of your kid’s summer homework, and we are officially halfway there. All 14 steps (7 down, 7 more to go) are explained in our episodes this summer and also at greater length with more examples and details in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. Remember to order a workbook from Amazon for your son or daughter if you want more explanation and the actual worksheets. Step 7 asks your son or daughter to consider class size as one indication of what his or her academic experience would be like at each college on the LLCO. In other words, we want students to think about how undergraduate enrollment is distributed into the actual classrooms and seminar rooms and labs that they will be sitting in on campus and how that might affect their relationships with their professors. The College Profile Worksheet has just two questions in this section. You will need to use both College Navigator and each college’s website to find the answers to Question

Today we are going to talk about Step 6 of your kid’s summer homework, as explained in our episodes throughout the summer and also more elaborately in our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  So, order a workbook from Amazon for your son or daughter if you want the longer version and the actual worksheets. We are up to Questions 8 through 16 on the College Profile Worksheet this week as your kid answers nine questions about student enrollment at each college on his or her Long List of College Options (or LLCO, for short).  The questions are about how many students are enrolled and what their personal characteristics are. By the way, it occurs to me that your kid could be following along with us and doing the “questions of the week” for each college on the LLCO, but that means that he or she is going back to each college website or College Navigator profile every week as new questions are posed.  That seems a bit inefficient.  On the other hand, when your son or d

Today we are going to talk about Step 5 of your kid’s summer homework.  If you have forgotten, this summer homework is based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students.  Get one from Amazon for your son or daughter before they are all gone! In the last episode, we asked your kid to do some research about the history and mission of each college on his or her Long List of College Options (or LLCO, for short) and to answer the first four questions on our College Profile Worksheet.  Well, there are only 48 questions to go, so let’s knock a few off in this week’s episode.  1. College Location and Type of Community  All three of today’s questions on the College Profile Worksheet can be answered easily by looking at a college’s website.  The first one, Question 5, is really simple:  It’s the location (that is, the city/town and state) where the college is located.  I am just going to say that your son or daughter should have already known this, but maybe didn’t.  We have

Today we are going to talk about the Step 4 of your kid’s summer homework. Regular listeners know that this summer homework is based on our workbook How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students. It’s not too late to get one from Amazon for your son or daughter. In the last two episodes, you and your kid have been getting ready to start the real work. You have hopefully completed Step 1 by creating the all-important Long List of College Options (or LLCO, as we like to call it). And you have hopefully completed Step 2 by reviewing our College Profile Worksheet and Step 3 by browsing both a variety of college websites and College Navigator, the excellent online tool provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. So, here we go with Step 4: Research the College’s History and Mission. From now on, your son or daughter (and/or you) will need to answer every one of our questions about every college on the LLCO. So, get a copy of the College Profile Worksheet out of the workbook

Today we are going to talk about Steps 2 and 3 of your kid’s summer homework. If you haven’t gotten our workbook for your son or daughter, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, then you haven’t done your summer homework. So, get one from Amazon, or listen very carefully to this episode and the next 11 like it. In the last episode, you and your kid hopefully completed Step 1 of your summer homework by creating the all-important Long List of College Options (or LLCO, as we like to call it). And it should be long--perhaps 20 to 25 colleges, all of which your kid will start researching seriously very soon. You might think you already know a lot about some of the colleges on the list. In fact, you might have visited some of the colleges on the list. But I bet neither you nor your soon-to-be senior can answer all of the questions we have in mind. 1. Step 2: Reviewing the College Profile Worksheet So, here’s the work in Step 2. It is really quite easy. We simply want your kid to p

Today we are going to talk about the first step of your kid’s summer homework. As we said last week, we know that summer vacation is still a couple of weeks away for some of you, but I have to believe that no real work is still being done in most high schools, especially not for seniors. So, let’s get busy! If you haven’t gotten our workbook for your son or daughter, How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students, there is still time.  1. What You Are About To Do Wrong Your kid’s first summer homework assignment is what we call Step 1 (from our workbook): Expand Your College List. We opened the chapter by speaking very unpleasantly to your about-to-be senior: This chapter focuses on something that you are just about to do totally wrong. Really, totally wrong. In fact, our advice in this chapter is probably the opposite of what many school counselors and college consultants are telling you as you start a serious consideration of where to apply . . . . We bet they are telling you to s

Before we start today’s episode about the most important step in the college application and admissions process, we want to let you know that we are headed into our final season of USACollegeChat.  Well, I wouldn’t rule out coming back on Netflix or something by popular demand from our listening audience, but we are at least going to need to go on hiatus for a while.  Maybe we will be like Game of Thrones (which I have never seen) where there can be a year between seasons.  I am headed out to Phoenix and leaving my beloved New York City for a work-related commitment for a year or so, and Marie and I will have to figure out when it makes sense to bring back USACollegeChat, given our other commitments.  But don’t be sad.  We have a blockbuster set of summer episodes coming up for you, starting with today’s episode. This episode is going to describe your upcoming summer homework.  We know it is summer vacation for only some of you, with others of you (like our fellow New Yorkers) still having to wait almost a mo

Welcome back to our new series entitled Looking to Next Year.  Today, we want to look at a well-known college recruitment practice and its ramifications.  That practice is the visiting of high schools by college admissions staff.  Maybe our discussion today won’t come as a surprise to you; but, whether it does or doesn’t, it’s a sad commentary on the U.S. in 2018.    1. A New Study Just a few episodes ago, we quoted from an article in Inside Higher Ed by Scott Jaschik, and today we find ourselves doing that again.  This article is forebodingly titled “Where Colleges Recruit . . . and Where They Don’t."  Here is the story: [F]or many colleges, reaching out to students in person at high school events is a key part of the recruitment process. And even for the [elite colleges], this is an important part of outreach and regularly results in applications from those who might not have otherwise applied. But where do the [colleges] go to recruit? A new study being presented at the annual meeting of the American Educ

We are starting a new series today because we think that the college ship has sailed for almost all of our listening families with seniors.  Of course, some of you are still looking at a few options; some of you have even put down deposits at more than one college, or so we hear; and, some of you might be frantically searching for a new choice that offers rolling admissions or very late deadlines in the next couple of months.  As always, if any of you are in the still-undecided group, give me a call if you want some personalized advice.  I am happy to help, and the advice is free, of course.  We are going to assume that the rest of you out there have juniors (or even sophomores) and that you are relatively early in the college admissions process.  It is amazing to me, as I look at posts in a number of online groups for parents of prospective college applicants, how many of you with younger kids are already well into the college search.  So, this series, entitled Looking to Next Year, is going to offer a few r

As we said last week, most of you have made a decision about what college your kid is going to by now.  You all have compared and contrasted the colleges that accepted your son or daughter and made the best decision you thought you could.  However, there might be one or two of you still holding out some hope for coming off the wait list of your kid’s favorite college choice.  I know that some of you have even put a deposit down on a sure thing while not entirely giving up hope on the long shot that is the wait list.  This episode is not so much about giving you advice, but rather about making you feel not so bad.  While we are not experts in the practice of wait listing, I can tell you anecdotally that I have seen kids this year and last year not get into colleges from the wait list when those kids were absolutely qualified to attend those colleges.  I imagine we all have stories like that. 1. Are Wait Lists a Waste of Time? Let me read you some excerpts from a short piece that was heard recently on National

Well, most of you have made a decision about what college your kid is going to by now.  You all have sifted through the acceptances (hopefully, there was more than one), weighing all manner of things while making the decision.  However, I know there are still a few of you out there who have not quite decided yet.  I know because I talked to a mother just a few days ago who was in the throes of helping her daughter make her decision.  Our meeting was quite accidental; she was the physician’s assistant in the surgeon’s office where my daughter and I were contemplating my daughter’s emergency knee surgery.  As soon as the physician’s assistant found out what I did, after I had volunteered some unsolicited advice, she engaged me in a longer discussion of her daughter’s options.  I was happy for the distraction.     1. Here We Go Again  Her daughter had an array of options:  several okay acceptances, but not from truly selective colleges; an acceptance from Fordham University; and wait list spots at Wake Forest Un

This is the third episode in our series, Decision Time Again, because, of course, it is actually decision time for lots of parents and kids out there.  Although USACollegeChat is headquartered on the East Coast, we have some loyal listeners in California, and California colleges, including its public universities, are increasingly popular among students back here in the East.  So, with that in mind, we have today’s episode.  It is designed to make some of you feel better if your senior applied to a California college or two and did not get in.  It is also designed to help those of you just starting on the application process with your juniors in case you want to consider California public universities--or not. 1. The California System Although we have described California’s elaborate system of public higher education in many previous episodes and in our books, let me do it quickly one more time now.  California’s public higher education system has three tiers:  the University of California (abbreviated as UC)

This is the second episode in our new series, Decision Time Again.  It’s “again” for us because, as we said last week, we always do some episodes about college decision making in April, for obvious reasons.     1. Isn’t This Counterintuitive? Every year at this time, pundits and educators write articles and op-ed pieces about how it doesn’t matter if your kid didn’t get into an Ivy League school, how admissions at top schools is an insane process that turns down thousands of perfectly qualified students, and how, in the end, he or she will still turn out fine.  Of course, that is basically true, and everyone knows it.  For a great take on this issue, go back and listen to Episode 121 from last year, which quotes extensively from an article by writer Michael Winerip, entitled “Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard,” published in The New York Times on April 29, 2007!  It could have been written yesterday and is probably more true today than it was when it was written 11 years ago. But does the choice of w