The Common Application (Common App) is quite a useful tool in your college admission process. It allows you to apply to 315 colleges with the use of only 1 application. That means instead of writing 315+ different essays, its 1 or 2.

In my opinion, all colleges should adopt to one universal application such as the Common App. If each school would like one separate, unique, and short answer essay, I would classify that as ok also. However, the current college application system is crazy! If it wasn’t so nuts, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog anyway!

The list of the 315 colleges that accept the Common App can be found here. In order for a college to be accepted into the Common App group of schools, they must give equal treatment to those using the Common App, as opposed to the “standard” application process. Hopefully these schools are actually doing so…

Some schools are actually using the Common Application as their ONLY form of application. The list of these schools can be found here. Included in this list is Northwestern, Yale, and Rice University. Hopefully colleges continue to follow the path being trail blazed by these powerhouse schools.

College Finances

Next post I will start my section on financing the rising cost of college. I will offer real-life experiences from someone who has (very) recently been there!

If you are simply wondering how important your admissions essays are in regards to the holistic application process, please read my last post.

Also as stated in my last post, I will not be going into minute detail about writing your essays. However, I will offer personalized assistance if contacted.

Topic

From my knowledge and previous experience, a topic or general prompt will be provided. It is much more difficult for college admissions staff to compare and judge completely dissimilar essays than it is similar essays.

If a prompt is not specific, write about something you feel comfortable and knowledgeable about. Also, think of what admissions personnel is looking for. This often includes leadership demonstration, work or volunteer experience, and/or an activity relating to your field of study. I would not recommend writing on the subject of academia, as your GPA, class rank, and test scores fill that area.

Where Do I Start?

Anywhere! The most difficult portions of essays is often the introduction and conclusion. Once you have your ideas on paper (or your screen), it is much easier to manipulate your existing ideas to form a solid, logical paper.

I often have 10 to 20 “mini” paragraphs, which I then form into larger portions and, finally, a cohesive essay.

Writing Tips

• Don’t Be Boring!
  • The college admissions staff reads thousands of papers per day. Your admissions essay is not the place to be mundane and typical. Especially if you are on the border (GPA, class rank, and test score wise), your essay must be extremely effective and exciting.
  • If you can write about an emotional experience, may it be saddening, frightening, or action-packed, please do so! It will capture the readers attention and give your paper longer than the average minute or two.
  • Convey your feelings to the reader! If you were crying tears of joy, your goal should be to have the admissions reader excited and jumping out of their chair!
• Style
  • As stated in my previous post, have your own style. You have been writing for about 10 years now, and you should have a definitive, catchy style to your writing. Vary sentence structure and word choice.
  • On the note of word choice: Your essay should not be the annual gathering of large words! Don’t hear me wrong, whenever I am writing an essay, I always have thesaurus up. They are great to find the word on the tip of your tongue or just to add some variety.
    • On a side note, my favorite are MSN Thesaurus and Thesaurus.com. They both offer a different variety of word choices.
  • More is not always better. Be concise and to the point. Wordiness can cause boredom and lose attention of your reader.
• Follow The Prompt
  • Answer the darn question! Don’t ramble on and write an autobiography if the question is “How will ___ College help fulfill your dreams?”
• Get Assistance
  • It is highly encouraged that you ask for a read over from, at minimum, your parents and siblings. Having a teacher or other mentor give their input can also be quite helpful.
  • Although I have not personally used an essay service, many applicants are using them to receive (what some argue) is an unfair advantage. Personally, I had three high school teachers and my mother read my essays. I was accepted to the University of Illinois, so I must have done something right…
    • If you insist on having a professional opinion, or want that extra advantage. I have heard EssayEdge.com
      does a bang-up job. The founder, Geoffrey Cook, also wrote Yahoo’s article on admissions essays.
  • You can never have too many opinions! If you don’t agree with what someone suggests, even after an explanation, just smile, nod, and ditch their suggestion!
• Don’t Panic
  • Take your time, and get ideas on paper. Like I stated earlier, it does not matter what order or way the information is lied out. Just get it on paper, and your life will become much easier!
  • Walk away from your essay and come back in a couple hours or a couple days, depending on your time constraint.
  • Don’t wait till the last minute! Get a jump start and work on your essays longer than your competition (other applicants!).
• Be an AppliCAN, Not an AppliCAN’T!
  • As cheesy as this sounds, I know many peers of mine didn’t apply themselves, get good grades, apply to top schools, and write solid essays. All because they where not confidant and saw themselves as appliCAN’Ts! You are reading this blog, and by doing so, you are becoming an appliCAN!

The End of Admissions (Kind Of)

This is my final post on “how to” admissions for quite a while. My next post will be on the Common Application, which will officially conclude the admissions series.

As the name suggests, admissions essays are one of many criteria that colleges use to accept or deny applicants.

Many colleges require a “personal statement” and a “professional statement.”

Personal Statement

The personal admissions essay often includes your interests, hobbies, and non-vocational goals. This often includes experiences and activities such as clubs and community service.

Professional Statement

Professional essays are usually based off the question, “What are your career goals?” or, “Where do you see yourself in 10, 15, or 20 years?” The specific institution will often also ask, “How do you see ___ College fitting into your professional goals?”

Do Admissions Essays Matter?

I am quite torn what it comes to answering this question. I would have to say, yes and no.

If you write complete bogus or use terrible grammar, your admissions essays will hurt you!

However, if you write solid, factual, and grammatically correct essays, I do believe that these essays cannot hurt you. Although I say that they cannot hurt you, I do not necessarily believe they will greatly strengthen your chances of acceptance. Colleges would much rather see a 4.0, 30 ACT with mediocre essays, than a 3.65, 26 ACT and exceptional essays.

Advice & Tips

As one who has undergone the tedious essay writing process, I will throw up a post on the most effective, productive, and influential way to write admissions essays. No, I will NOT be going into exquisite detail on how to write your essay. If you are reading this, you are already quite intelligent and probably have your own writing style.

That said, if anyone would like to send me their essay or like some assistance above and beyond my posts, I would be more than happy to help in any way I can.

The SAT is becoming more and more like the ACT in regards to style and question variety. In 2005, the University of California’s president stated that the SAT should be abolished as an admissions requirement. This threat sent the CollegeBoard into panic mode, which ultimately led to the complete restructuring of the SAT. I will not go in depth as to what these changes entailed, as it is now irrelevant to the current and future administerings of the exam.

SAT vs ACT

For those of you who did not read my last post, More Testing - ACT & SAT I suggest you do if you have an interest in the ACT or how the ACT and SAT geographically match-up.

SAT Test Sections

The SAT is divided into three sections, critical reading, math, and writing. Unlike the ACT, it does not contain a natural science portion.

Critical Reading

Consisting of two 25 minute sections and one 20 minute section, the critical reading portion covers topics such as sentence completion and rhetorical analysis of short and long reading passages.

With this variety of questions, the SAT hopes to test vocabulary, analytical and grammatical skills.

Mathematics

The math section has the same number and length of tests as the critical reading, two 25 and one 20 minute section.

After the SAT’s reform, the math section now only contains straightforward symbolic and numerical answers so that students no longer are “tricked” by the test.

Although I have never taken the SAT, I would expect it to have a very similar math section to that of the ACT. In that it would include pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.

Writing

Essay

The SAT always begins with the writing’s essay section of the test. During the 25 minutes that test takers are allowed, they are expected to write a solid, analytical piece on a provided general topic.

Each essay is graded by two graders, and their scores are summed to yield a number out of 12 possible points. This essay section is 30% of the Writing portion. The multiple choice accounts for the other 70%.

Multiple Choice

The majority of the Writing section drills test taker’s grammatical knowledge. They are asked to identify errors, improve sentences and paragraphs, and use logic to determine the order and relevance of sentences.

SAT Scoring

Each section is worth 800 points, with a total possible score of 2400. The average SAT score, when averaging the past couple years, is 1518 of 2400.

SAT to ACT Conversion

Provided by the CollegeBoard, the following is the unofficial conversion chat between the two tests. Many colleges have their own conversion chats, although they will only vary slightly from the one below.

Admission’s Essays

In the next few posts, I will be covering the ins and outs of college admission’s essays. I will start with general info about these essays, such as “Do College’s Really Give Weight To These?” and move onto essay improvement and dos/don’ts!

Thank you for following in the admissions series. If you have any topic which you would like me to cover, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I loathe standardized testing. In reflection on my experiences as a test taker, I reaffirmed the notion that standardized testing is nearly worthless.

Standardized testing such as the ACT and SAT are becoming continually less valued by institutions in their admissions process. Amen; schools are finally waking up and noticing that the tests, in general, do not gauge intelligence and practical usage of abilities. /rant off

The ACT

The “grand-daddy” of them all (tests that is). The ACT is, hands down, the number one most used and accepted test in the college admissions process.

My apologies for the small text. The legend writes that students in the states in blue generally ACT takers. In contrast, students in orange states generally take the SAT.

I will not go into extreme depth on the ACT, as I will eventually form a whole category on standardized testing in the future.

The four subject areas are always in the same order in the test, every year.

Scoring

The ACT test scores range from 1 to 36, with 36 being a “perfect” score. I say perfect in quotes because a test taker can get a question or two wrong and still achieve a 36. This all depends on the deviation of scores. If the scores form an irregular bell curve, such a possibility exists.

The “composite score,” or final score, is an average of all for subscores from the four subject areas.

English

The English portion of the test covers writing mechanics and rhetorical skills. The test is 45 minutes and totals 75 questions.

The English test has questions regarding grammatical errors, sentence order within a short article, and author’s tone comprehension skills.

Mathematics

Math (my favorite); for an hour you must wrangle 60 pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry questions. You are allowed to use a calculator, although mine ran out of batteries (be sure to replace yours the day before…). I didn’t find a calculator to be a necessity anyway.

Reading

Reading comprehension is the name of the game. For 35 minutes, you read passages and answer 40 questions. The questions consist of four previously published passages, one prose fiction, one social science, one humanity, and one natural science.

Science

A scientific reasoning test that tests more of finding useless trends than possessing any actual scientific knowledge. 35 minutes, 40 questions. Topics include data representation, “research” summary, and conflicting viewpoints.

Writing

The writing section is optional, and is not even offered on some testing days. Some colleges require it to be done, most don’t.

This is the one part of the test that is becoming more widely used and looked at.

In truth, this rushed writing process is the bane of college writing. Writing is supposed to be a work of art, requiring endless revisions and enormous amounts of time to think and reason.

Facts & Scores

In 2007, the average ACT score was a 21.1. You will need to add, at minimum, five points onto that score in order to have a change at ivy or “public ivy” schools. The bell curve for 2005 scoring is shown below.

The SAT

In the next post I will cover the SAT as I did the ACT. I will also be covering some tips and tricks that I learned at the “test prep” courses, as well as my opinion on such courses.

As always, drop me a comment or email if you have a question or concern.

My apologies for the two week posting gap. I have been extremely busy with final projects, essays, and exams! I will again be posting on a frequent basis in order to provide you with the most important and practical college information!

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me!

General Standardized Testing Information

As I mentioned in my previous post, the college admissions journey, AP and IB tests are looked highly upon in the college community. If you score well on these tests, you have the ability to gain college credit and credibility.

Advanced Placement (AP) Test

The stated goal of the CollegeBoard regarding the AP tests is that the program is designed for students to earn college-level course credit. The scale of all AP tests is 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. The CollegeBoard offers 37 exams over 22 subject areas.

If you score a 4 or a 5, you will most likely be given college credit for the subject of the test. Some less prestigious school’s will accept a 3 and still provide you with pre-college credit.

By earning college credit, you may be able to avoid some pesky courses such as analytic writing or an advanced calculus. However, having pre-college credit is not a requirement for college admissions. You will have plenty of time and available course hours during your college stay to complete all your required courses.

The tests are also quite expensive, with a price tag of $84.00 a piece. If you are taking three AP courses and wish to earn credit with all of them, that is $252.00 in tests!

As a side note, you can take AP courses and not take the test! By doing this you can still acquire that ever-so-necessary weighted GPA and student prestige; however, you will not earn college credit.

International Baccalaureate (IB) Program

I won’t spend too much time describing IB. Its relatively small when compared to the AP program and also quite a bit more complicated. The scale of the IB tests is 1 to 7, 7 being the best.

The IB program is more directed at “evening the playing field” and creating an educational standard internationally. Nonetheless, if you school offers IB courses and tests, you can expect it to work much the same at the AP process I described above. Most schools will accept a 5-7, with some giving credit for as low as a 4. Other schools require a strict score of a 6 or 7 in order for college credit to be given.

IB offers three different programs at different educational levels starting at as young as age 3. If you wish to learn more, I suggest browsing through that web page.

If you are reading this blog, you are probably already aware if IB is right for you. If you still have no clue what IB is, don’t worry, its probably not pertinent to your education.

ACT and SAT

In the next post I will cover the ACT and SAT in depth. Depending on your geographic location, you will most likely be very familiar with one and not know too much about the other. Also, you will probably only take one of the tests, as many colleges accept both tests or you are applying to a relatively local college which uses the test you will be taking.

The admissions factors I list are the real criteria that applicants are based on in their admission process. You may be surprised by or disagree with some of the factors I explain. If so, I encourage you to contact me or leave a comment with your opinion and rationale.

In these first few posts of the College Admissions Series, I will provide information about the common admissions factors listed on every university website.

Grades, GPA, and Class Rank

Your grades are undoubtedly the most influential factor in regards to college admissions. If you plan on attending an ivy league or “public ivy” school, you must have your GPA very near to or above the maximum (4.0 or 5.0).

Some high schools (like mine did) use a 5.0 scale for GPA instead of the standard 4.0. I don’t understand the rationale behind this besides for artificial inflation.

Eg. When Jimmy from the town over asks Susie what her GPA is and she says a 3.8, Jimmy is impressed! However, Susie fails to mention that her scale is a 5.0 instead of a 4.0 like Jimmy’s…

If you have a backwards school like mine was, the simple way to convert this over to a 4.0 scale is to simply take:

(Your GPA) divided by (5). Take (that answer) and multiply it by (4).

That will leave you with your GPA on a 4.0 scale. This is important when you do looking at the average GPA for a college, you must compare apples to apples.

Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB)

AP and IB courses are important and very helpful to take. Colleges absolutely love to see you challenging yourself, especially throughout senior year.

These courses are given a weight in determining your GPA. On your report card, you probably have your GPA and Class Rank listed for both “weighted” and “non-weighted.” In the college world, “non-weighted” doesn’t matter. Colleges will be taking into account any and all advanced and challenging courses you take.

AP and IB courses are also fantastic college preparation. They assist in your development of study habits and give a taste of the college work load.

In a post later in this series, I will explain how standardized tests work, including the AP test. This is yet another advantage of taking AP courses, as you have the ability to earn college credits.

Class Rank

Class rank will help some of you reading this post and will hurt others. Let me explain.

Lets say that Bobby of Forest Lake H.S. has a 4.0 on a 4 scale. Due to the extremely competitive nature of his school, only ranks in the top 75% of his class of 800.

Cheryl of Small Village H.S. has a 3.7. However, she ranks in the top 90% of her class of 325.

Without looking at class rank, it would be an obvious decision that with all other factors equal, Bobby would be accepted before Cheryl. However, class rank is used to level the playing field. Perhaps Cheryl’s GPA is lower only because she attends a prestigious private school with a very difficult program. By factoring in class rank, possibilities such as the hypothetical situation above are taken into account, and the best qualified applicant is admitted.

Standardized Tests, Your Experiences, and More to Come!

In my next posts of the College Admissions Series, I will be explaining the topics mentioned above and much, much more!

To all you fellow StumbleUpon users, welcome! I am also a Stumbler (who somehow found the time to write this rather lengthy post and break from Stumbling around!) under the alias of generals10. Feel free to add me to your friends network!

What Major is Right For Me?

This question is the absolute number one most asked question so far in your life. You may recognize it more easily in its cliché form; What do you want to do when you “grow up?”

You’re probably now imagining the answers that you have heard a million times, a fire fighter, a lawyer, a police woman, or even “what mommy or daddy is.”

You need not fret if you do not have the slightest clue of what you plan to major in. I am not even 100% sure of what I wish to major in! Although, I am currently leaning toward economics or finance.

On average, 80% of college students change their major at least once! Of these 80%, the average student changes their major 3 times!

Be sure to take a look at my previous post, Narrowing Your Focus, if you truly have no idea what you may wish to pursue. It outlines some tips that may be useful to you in brainstorming possible fields of interest.

I Have One or Two Majors In Mind, Now What?

Now that you have generated some areas that interest you, do your homework and find out some detailed information.

For a brief three to four paragraph summary of majors, I suggest heading over to the CollegeBoard’s Major & Career Profiles or The Princeton Review’s Majors Search. Both are intuitive sites that allows you to browse by interest and find out more information on specific majors.

You can also do some Google or Wikipedia searching regarding your topic.

I would discourage searching for a salary for your major of interest. Most of what you find is unreliable and, in my opinion, not all that important. Prospective salaries are not worth worrying about. If you are great at what you do, no matter what it is, you will be prosperous.

Schools Relating To Your Major

Unless you have impressive, in-depth personal knowledge of schools you may already be interested in, you will need some help in deciding what institution excels in the area of major.

I will also not claim to have expansive knowledge in this area, I would much rather prefer to refer you to reliable sources.

I found a couple sources to be the most helpful and easy in my college search. Unfortunately, some of the best materials available on college majors are not free.

Free:

USNews’ College Search by Major

CollegeBoard’s Comprehensive College Search

Paid:

*I have no financial interest in the sale of anything listed below. These are simply personal recommendations.*

Princeton Review’s Complete Book of Colleges, 2009 Edition

I highly recommend this book, it is the Bible of college searching and I used it throughout every step of my college searching process. The book as every detail you could ever want to know, including everything from demographics to the average buildings flammability!

USNews’ College Mini-Bible

Gives the highest ranked colleges in reference to major or category.

Admissions

Can I get in?

Next post I will be doing a brief introduction to college admissions to answer that very question!

Due to the nature of the college admissions process, I will also be doing an entire College Admissions Series to give you the edge to stay one step ahead!

As always, please leave me a comment or send me an email if you would like to discuss something or would like further elaboration. I will answer any non-personal questions in my actual posts, as I am sure many people have the exact same question!

When reviewing prospective colleges, always research how many undergraduate students attend the institution.

A smaller enrollment often equates to more one on one attention with professors and teaching assistants (TAs). Also, a smaller institution (under about 10,000 undergrads) usually means that less TAs will be used in the education process. Many colleges pride themselves on very low student to faculty ratio. This simply means that there are not as many graduate students teaching you.

However, do not be afraid of larger universities because you feel that you will never get to see a professor! In every one of my classes (even the ones of 600+ students), the professor always holds office hours and is almost always available for a brief chat after lectures.

My experiences with graduate student teaching assistants has also been very pleasant and enjoyable. All of my TAs have been extremely good communicators who know their material inside and out.

I have also heard horror stories from peers who tell me that their TA does not speak understandable English. I find this to be especially apparent in the math, computer science, and more technical fields.

Location, Location, Location

How far from home do you wish to be?

If you are planning on a community college, you are, most likely, planning to commute from your present home to school and back.

If you are planning on attending a four-year school, chances are you will be living on campus in a dorm (at least for your first year).

I suggest being “far enough” from home so that your parents don’t pull a surprise visit on you every other weekend. On the other hand, you probably do not want to commute over five to six hours to visit home and head back to school. Most students cannot or do not wish to pay for expensive flights as transportation.

Other students may be extremely adventurous and wish to study out of the country. Most students who study abroad simply use a university provided/recommended program for a semester.

Setting

Do you prefer an urban, suburban, or rural town?

Have you always wanted to live in a large urban city such as Chicago or New York? If so, you will want to narrow your college search to urban areas.

I would classify a stereotypical “college town” as both suburban and rural. To be more specific, the college itself is located within one or two averagely sized cities (50,000 to 100,000 residents), while those town(s) are commonly in a rural setting.

Corn and soybeans quickly become your only friend as you head out of my “college town” of Urbana - Champaign.

There’s More!?

Majors and minors will be up to bat in the next post of the College Selection Series.

As always, please drop me a comment or shoot me over an email. I thoroughly enjoy communicating with my readers!

Your goals, personality, and tastes will ultimately determine what type of college is right for you!

Now that you have dug deep and have your talents, likes, dislikes, and influences laid out, it is time to put them to work!

Your College Goals

Are you planning to attend a two-year school to earn your associate’s degree before you hop into a four-year institution?

Perhaps you are simply going to go for the big time (a four-year program)?

I see no harm in going to a two-year school, which is usually a community college, to get a less expensive jump-start to your higher education.

However, BEWARE! Many four-year institutions are not accepting transfer course credits from many two-year schools. This is especially true for the highly selective universities.

When I speak with many of my peers who attend two-year schools, they assume that their “good grades” from a community college is going to guarantee them admission to almost any college they please. Do not believe this! Most (if not all) of the selective schools look down upon students who do not have the majority of their tenure at their university.

That said, do not feel that going to a community college guarantees academic or career failure! I just felt is necessary and helpful to post that warning.

Public or Private?

The question of whether you wish to attend a public rather than a private school, or visa versa, is completely up to personal preference.

I have met many students who were privately or home schooled for at least part of their education and couldn’t wait for it to end! For them, their answer was an immediate “public please!”

I have also conversed with many students who attended private schools who loved the more 1 on 1 attention and the (generally) smaller classes and environment. They most certainly want a private or very small public school.

For the rest of the students continuing their education, the determining factor was mostly price. Private schools are generally much more costly than public institutions (especially for in-state students).

That said, private schools also offer more grants, low rate loans, and discounts for students in need.

Do not rule out any school that you feel interests you because of cost! As I will discuss later, you may be surprised by the government grants and institutional aid you receive!

Other College Filtering Qualifiers

In my upcoming posts of the College Selection Series, I will address other factors to take into account, including school size, geographic location, and setting.

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