Each year, an increasing number of us high school graduates opt to take a year off between the end of high school and the start of college. Members of the high School class of 2020 did so in record numbers, spurred on by the likelihood of online learning and a greatly altered college experience due to the covid 19 pandemic.With the advent of effective vaccines and with colleges beginning to announce on campus programs for the fall of 2021,should you still consider a gap year?
Feb
02
Jan
06
Although this article is directed to students
just beginning their college search, it will
also be useful to seniors in making their
final choice of college to attend. This is
especially true this year since so many
applicants have been unable to make an
in-person campus visit.
Jan
06
Your applications have been submitted (or are nearly done) and for some, it’s now time for interviews. The first thing we need to do is to shake your image of the interviewer as the stereotypical older, tweed-jacketed, bespectacled, cranky admission person. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that college admission officers today are young, multicultural and far from cranky. For a student who loved their college experience, working in admission is often a way to stay on at their alma mater and share their enthusiasm with high school students. Admission entry level jobs involve lots of not-so-glamorous travel, visiting multiple high schools each day and then returning to campus to h...
Nov
03
Pandemic or no pandemic, researching colleges is an imperative for high school students. Typically, it involves many modes of research, including in-person campus visits and ours by students and families, and attending college representatives’ public information sessions and their visits to high schools. Gathering up all this information guides a student towards their short list of colleges, ranked in order of preference. Now, in the age of COVID, everything about college research has changed and teens must focus their efforts on online resources, the college website being the primary focus of that research. Fortunately, colleges have been enriching their websites and can provide stude...
Sep
30
There have been so many challenges and disruptions to our everyday lives since the COVID pandemic started its deadly march across the world – in-home quarantine, required social distancing, no visits with friends or distant family, no travel. and even a shortage of toilet paper. This article addresses the special circumstances for students who are engaged in their high school academics and extracurricular activities, college-bound juniors and seniors in particular. For this group of young people, it’s important to remain optimistic that the crisis will, in fact, bring about a sea change in the world of college admissions, leading to changes for the better in a system that for man...
Sep
02
In a March 2020 education paper printed in the Harvard Business Review, Vijay Govindarajan and Anup Srivastava, both renowned international business professors, stated the following: “Tectonic shifts in society and business occur when unexpected events force widespread experimentation around a new idea.” The Covid19 pandemic represents such a tectonic shift and has deeply impacted education from kindergarten to the highest levels of higher education. We are having to experiment with alternate ways of learning, we are questioning traditional teaching methods, and we are taking on the processes by which education is delivered. So, assuming that your fall semester will be either 100...
May
30
Apr
11
By Jan Kerchner, MBA CEO,
The College Blueprint, LLC
The Ivy League - In reality, the term began as a way to name a football league. Yes, that’s right. It was a football league composed of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth and Brown. These are some of the oldest and most competitive colleges in the United States, but let’s not lose sight of the other amazing colleges that are not included in this “league”, such as Stanford, Berkeley, William and Mary, and Vanderbilt, to name just a few.
Although many of us wish there was, there is no formula to gaining admission to the Ivy League or other very competitive colleges. The key to admission is to fi...
Mar
08
GPA is the most important factor in the college admissions process. One way to improve your grades is to know your preferred learning style. Each learning style has specific strategies which can be helpful to assist you in learning material. Take a look below and see if you can figure out YOUR learning style. Once you have done so, we encourage you to utilize some of these strategies while studying for your classes.
Visual Learning Style
Visual Language
These students learn language skills by sight, mainly by reading and watching. They tend to be fast thinkers, to gesture freely while talking, and to communicate very clearly and concisely. They learn well from demonstration process – they...
Feb
04
Several times each month we will be sending short informative articles addressing college planning topics. Our hope is that you will find them to be a quick way to stay current on timely admissions information. Feel free to pass them on to friends and family members. Additionally, if you have topics you would like to see us include in future issues of Expert Insights, please let us know. We would love to hear from you!
Summer Experiences & Programs
During the summer months, there are countless interesting and unique opportunities to pursue as a high school student. Going to the beach, hanging out with friends and sleeping-in are an appealing part of summer. But make sure you balance your free ...
