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College Counseling Advice - Apply to a Variety of Colleges so that You Increase Your Chances for Acceptance
If you have decided to pursue a college degree but you are secretly worried that you will not be accepted into a college, you are like many high school students experiencing pre-college nerves. After all, acceptance into college is marketed to high school students as the goal they have been working their entire lives to achieve. For most students, however, getting into a college is not something to obsess over. If you apply to colleges strategically, you'll almost certainly be accepted into a school that is a good fit for you.
Of course, there are some students who perhaps do not have what it takes to succeed in college and therefore should examine other educational options. If you, your parents, your teachers, and your guidance counselor have all come to the conclusion that a college degree is the right path for you, however, there is no reason why you should not get into a great school if you diversify your applications to include three types of colleges: your match school, your safety school, and your reach school.
Categorizing the schools that you are interested in requires some research on your part. When deciding whether a school is a match school, reach school, or safety school, you should look into that institution's required class rank or GPA and standardized test scores. How do your own grades and scores measure up? Also, look into just how selective a school is by finding out last year's acceptance rate, or what percentage of applicants were admitted to the college during the last admissions period.
Of course, it helps to know the definition of the three types of schools you should be applying to. your match school or schools will be one or more colleges where your GPA and standardized test scores, such as the SAT, are right around the middle of the school's required range. Since many factors influence a student's acceptance to a college, you cannot 100% guarantee that you will be accepted into a school even if seems like a good match for you.
Your safety school is a college where you will almost certainly be accepted. Select this back-up school or schools based on whether your grades and test scores are well above the college's requirement. A safety school is also likely to have a higher acceptance rate, meaning that it is easier to get into this college.
Finally, since it is always good to aim high in everything that you do, you may want to apply to one or more reach schools. A reach school is just that: a school that is a bit of a reach for you because your grades and test scores on the lower end of what is accepted. These schools will tend to have lower acceptance rates. A reach school may be a long-shot, but it is worth applying to.
A stellar student with near-perfect SAT scores might consider one of the nation's top colleges to be a match school, when in reality, these high-tier colleges are a reach for anyone.
There is a college or university out there for every qualified student. By applying to a range of schools, you are covering all bases to ensure that you'll be accepted into a college that is a good fit for you.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Guy_Montag
A College Counseling Video Worth Watching and Articles to Read
College Counseling - How to Suggest a College that is Right for Your Teenager
Everyone, admissions counselors, experts and parents are always hot to trot with advice on how to choose a college. Most of it is good advice, but we adults tend to steer teenagers away from our own mistakes. At seventeen or eighteen (or sixteen now as college interventions are trending younger) teenagers fail, sometimes impressively, to see the bigger picture.
And that's why, instead of bogging them down with a lot of self-reflection and soul searching, it is a better tactic to get your teenager thinking about the practical side of college and beyond. As a place to start, you can suggest these steps:
1. Do your homework
The internet is too robust and accessible these days to not encourage your teen to find a computer (even at the library) and start looking at college websites. You can find out a lot about a college just by reading the student newspaper online and going to the clubs and activities page. It's hard to imagine life in college before you get there, but at least your teen can get a sense of whether the activities and events listed on the college's website have some general appeal. And teens who are particularly informed and opinionated must read the student newspaper's editorial section to get an idea of how students think on that campus.
Visiting a college can be helpful, but only in comparison to other colleges. Otherwise, what's your teen's basis of evaluation? Schedule a couple of trips to campuses high on your teen's list, with or without your teen's explicit consent. Force the issue and as much as possible, give your teen an idea of the different kinds of college and university experiences out there.
2. Don't listen to the experts
It never fails to get mentioned in any article about choosing a college; the importance of the size of the student population and whether the college is considered a brand name. The experts have the right idea, but you can put a practical spin on it.
Just remember, as far as size of the school goes, only the on-campus population matters for teens planning on living on campus. Their interactions with other students is going to center around other kids living on campus, especially during their first year, and commuter populations rarely add a significant social factor outside of the classroom. Which is even more important to remember if your teen is living at home during college.
National universities can offer a wonderful college experience but for most teenagers, the national recognition on its own doesn't matter. There is a subset of teens who care very much about the national recognition of their school (or they think you do. Do you know the difference?) But those teens are also the ones who already know they have a better than average chance of getting into a national university as one of their top three choices.
Even teens who are dead-set on a "brand name" college need to think about what campus living will be like. Of the two considerations, size of the on-campus population is a more significant indicator of your teen's first-year experience.
3. Cost of attendance should not be a reason to choose or to not choose a college.
As a parent, it might be hard to swallow this line, but do not let cost rule how your teen picks a college. After they have selected a list of schools to apply to, that is the time to talk about cost of attendance, financial aid, and applying for other aid.
The conversation needs to happen, and it should be early in the application process to make sure your teen is eligible for any priority deadlines. But this diligence is not the same thing as making a decision based on the sticker price of attendance. A lot of schools will offer financial aid with the acceptance package, only then making the real cost of attendance evident. And it can also depend on whether the schools your teen is applying to offer academic merit scholarships, athletic scholarships, or other forms of financial aid besides loans.
It is nice to tell your teen that college is all about fit, but the truth of that is you cannot judge fit as well as you would like until your teen is on campus, living the life of a college student. No admissions counselor, education expert, or parent is going to be able to represent that experience accurately; all of the self-reflection you encourage them to do can only reward them with approximate measures. For that reason, when your teen is looking at choosing a college, steer them towards practical considerations first. Plenty of time for soul searching when the acceptance letters reach your mailbox.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Marx
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