September 3, 2009 – 4:20 AM
Fall is here whether the calendar admits it or not, and that means seniors better start reflecting on their lives and jotting down some insightful stuff right now if they plan to get these college essays done. I can empathize with the task at hand. Who wants to sound like a narcissistic Socrates, pontificating on revelations you had after winning a tournament or traveling to Europe? Well, some people do. But most people cringe at the thought of turning a fond memory into a bite-sized after-school special with a tag line moral to top it off (e.g. “And that’s when I knew I could accomplish anything.”) For this very reason, I encourage all of you to get it through your heads that this is not the endgame. No, not at all. The point of these essays is not to convince some college administrator that you had an experience and you learned from it. The point is to divulge your personality by dint of an anecdote.
August 24, 2009 – 10:02 PM
Not that we ever doubted our Academic Approach philosophy – that honest, intellectual enrichment will outperform test “gaming” techniques any day of the week – but still, it’s nice to find that our opinion is shared by such good company.
Taking the SAT multiple times has widely been regarded as risky business. Since every score is recorded on the student’s College Board transcript, then surely it is best practice for students to be conservative, keep blemishes off their records, and avoid testing too much. Therefore, it’s no surprise that only 15% of students who take the SAT will presently sit for it three or more times.
February 21, 2008 – 12:23 PM
Over the past decade or so, a journalistic genre has emerged that seasonally represents the nation-wide anxiety that bleeds into upper-middle-class concerns about the college admissions process. Every fall and spring, articles represent the anxious hand-wringing of families that have marshaled considerable resources ($25,000+ private school tuition,$250+ per hour for private tutors, test-prep sessions, and independent college counselors, home-office equipment to organize application materials, and who knows how much for oboe lessons, squash lessons, summer work adventures in remote, developing-world villages…) to gain advantage for their children as applicants to prestige colleges. These gloomy narratives of ivy dreams rarely have happy endings even for the seemingly perfect kids with the stellar admissions portfolios.