College Bound

The Earthquake/Hurricane Edition!

That’s right – in one week we’ve experienced an earthquake and are about to be clobbered by a hurricane here in Northern NJ!

How can that be?   Can this be prophetic?  Hope not…

Does anyone know the words to one of my favorite songs?

“That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -Lenny Bruce is not afraid.  Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn…” Michael Stipe, REM

Oh, and here it is right below…why not listen as you peruse the rest of the post?

Hahaha!  Isn’t that a great song…nothing like a little stream of consciousness to get one going in the morning!

I’ve found two articles this week of particular interest to students and parents right smack in the middle of the college admissions process!

The first article, in US News Education, “7 Tips to Jump-start the College Application Process“, by Peter Van Buskirk, is a great primer for those that really need to get going on applying to colleges!  Sure, summer’s been great, but if you’re serious about getting into a great college, NOW is the time to get organized and get together a plan if you haven’t done so already.  Mr. Van Buskirk give you that plan in this article – a must read to get yourself jump-started!

Our second article, at MyCollegeGuide.org‘s blog “Five Steps To Getting Great College Recommendation Letters“, by Ellen Bremen, gives you another plan of action.  Ms. Bremen give a step by step road map to getting those all-important letters of recommendation from your favorite teachers.  This article will get you organized to make it easy for your teachers and mentors to get the letter out to the colleges of your choice.  Get started early, popular teachers are inundated with requests early on in the school year!

We’re battening down the hatches here in New Jersey for our second bout with Mother Nature this week!  The little Roundup guy is corralling the livestock and tying everything else down!  Hope all our readers are safe and sound – feel free to share your earthquake and hurricane stories in the comments section below – how did you feel when the earth shook underfoot?

Yes, the green tea is having it’s dual energizing and yet mellowing effect already!  I’m so much better off the coffee, but to each his/her own, and enjoy the java if it moves you!

This week I’ve come across several good articles and blog posts in the college admissions realm, and I’m thinking that perhaps we are all waking up from our dream-like summer siesta – and getting on with the writing!

We are getting close to the start of classes for high schoolers – those in the warmer climates may have already started!  And as such we are all so busy!  Just wanted to remind you, though, not to forget to register for the standardized test of your choice in the fall!  The deadline for the September ACT has passed, but you can still pay a late fee and register up until August 26 – next Friday!  Also, you have until Sept 9th to register for the October SAT and SAT Subject tests…

The first article this week appears in The Daily Beast, “The Out-of-State Admissions Edge“, by Steve Cohen (author of Getting In!) gives a great description of the landscape for admissions at State Colleges outside your own state.  Because of budget crunches, many state colleges and universities are accepting more out-of-state applicants than ever before!  Read this article to get the full scoop…

Our next article appears in the StudentAdvisor blog(blog.StudentAdvisor.com. “The Best College Admissions Twitter Accounts You Aren’t Following,”  by Sam Coren,  brings some very detailed info on the Twitter accounts of individual colleges you may want to follow.  University of Florida, Drexel, Tufts, WPI and LSU are just some of them.  Even if you’re not interested in the specific schools, following the Twitter accounts can give you real insight into the world of college admissions, and what is on the minds of admissions officers!  Don’t miss the article – and if you’re a high school student (or parent thereof) preparing for the college admissions process – Twitter is a place you’ll find an abundance of college admissions and applications information, get on it!

Our last item of interest isn’t an article at all, but a series of letters published on the NY Times Opinion Page, in response to an article we’d mentioned a couple of weeks ago, “For a Standout College Essay, Applicants Fill Their Summers“.  Many of the responses to the original article were visceral, and I think you’ll find it interesting to note that although the author of the original piece surely mentions that overseas trips are not necessary for college applications – many readers did not interpret the article this way!  Many college admissions counselors will tell you that impressive trips to exotic locations will be awesome on your resume.  AND they will also tell you that in the absence of such, SO WILL a part time job where you’d learned something, volunteering at a food pantry (where you presumably also learned something!), or even following the Florida Highwaymen for a day (where there is MUCH to be learned!), as mentioned in the original Times article.

So fret not, parents and students, because we’ve found  it is your passions, persistence and learning experiences which college admissions officers are looking at!

Until next week!  The little Roundup Man bids you Happy Trails (Don’t forget to click play below!).

via Soundcloud

We couldn’t ask for nicer weather for August, here in Northern New Jersey!  So get your cup of java (or green  tea!) ready – this week’s roundup is heading your way!

With the college application season practically upon us and the Common Application now open, students are busy writing essays and visiting colleges – the hustle and bustle of the season is invigorating!

Here are a couple of articles published over the last week we hope will help in your college admissions quest…

The first article this week, in US News Education, by the College Admissions Insider – Peter VanBuskirk – “How to Tackle College Applcation Questions,” answers several student/parent questions about the application process.  In the article, Mr. VanBuskirk gives a detailed look at how to write a college essay for the Common App, worth the reading just for this alone!

The other article we’ve found, “College admissions officer shares secrets,” is really a video – and appears on ABC15.com – Arizona’s local ABC affiliate.  The station interviewed an ASU sophomore, Kat VanKlompenberg, on how she tackled her high school years – and how it helped her get into college.  Ms. VanKlompenberg describes the types of classes she had taken and the activities she involved herself in which all helped when she arrived at the college admissions process!   David Burge, the Executive Director of Admissions at ASU, is brought into the interview to give some admissions secrets to viewers…as often is the case – very few secrets are shared, and the title of the piece is surely a teaser to get viewers to watch on TV!  Overall I think this piece is great to watch simply for the young perspective of the ASU sophomore who clearly took her college admissions seriously!  Give it a look!

Hope your college admissions quest is going well – don’t forget to share the roundup with your friends and relatives – and leave a comment below, always looking for your great input!

News Flash:  I’ve traded in the java bean for the green leaf!  Green tea leaf that is!

While still enough caffeine to get jump started, I’ve been reading about the benefits of drinking 4 – 5 cups of green tea per day (this is neither an endorsement nor advice!) and so I started on this mission just a couple of days ago…so far, so good – reader mail and comments are always appreciated!

As we head into the dog days of August,  we’re seeing many more college admissions related news and articles!  I find that students and parents are often scrambling to add some sort of organization to the college admissions process at this critical juncture – so I have some articles to share that will help do just that…

Our first article this week (authored by yours truly!) appeared in the StudentAdvisor.com blog, “7 Apps to Use on Your College Vists,”  just this past July.  This was my second guest blog post for StudentAdvisor – and the article was well received.  In it, you will find tips on using some of the most advanced yet simplest to use technology to organize your college visits.  Evernote, Springpad, Foursquare and Google Maps are among them.  Give it a read and let me know what you think of the article in the comment section below!

The next article, “4 Ways to Use to Use Social Media to Get Into College,”  in the MainStreet.com blog (part of  TheStreet.com – Jim Kramer’s original website), by Brian O’Connell, relates several ways colleges are using social media – and what students can do to use social media in the college admissions process.  Of course, biased as we are – we think Mr. O’Connell may have missed our favorite way to use social media to help get into a great college!  Be that as it may :) this is a great intro to some of the ways social media is starting to change the game!

The final article we’re sharing this week, “7 Tools to Aid the College Admissions Process,” in the US News Education blog by Ryan Lytle,  shares another list of web apps, tools and social media networks for students and parents to use for college admissions assistance.  It’s another great list with very good tips on how to use the tools, give it a read!

I’ m a big fan using the technology we all have in our homes, and in our hands, to help get our children into great colleges.  I try to practice what I preach, and so over the last week our family headed out to visit 6 colleges in four days with our high school junior daughter.  We are far from done – we visited Northern/Northeastern schools, and next we’ll take a long weekend to visit some  schools south of us – and finally we’ll visit our own home New Jersey schools.  I’ll be blogging more about our visits in the coming week, as I get all our notes and photos sorted (I even have some video of the Carrier Dome at Syracuse!).

I’m currently using Evernote to keep a notebook on each of the schools – with admissions info, deadlines,  visit notes, photos and video included for each.  This is a great app to use,  each notebook can be shared with others (and so I’m sharing the notebooks with my wife and daughter).  Of course, I have NO affiliation with Evernote – and I often use other apps in the process as well.  We did use Google Maps to plot our the various visits – and we always knew how far we were from the next school!

Feel free to drop me an email if you’d like specific tips on how to use these tools, and others, in the college admissions process, john.incantalupo@bragtagmedia.com is where you’ll find me…