Do you have any teachers whose classes you particularly enjoyed this semester? What about any teachers who took time to give you extra help when you needed it, or were willing to talk with you after class about the material, or who just seemed especially dedicated to making your learning experience a great one? I’ll bet you did.
Before the school year ends, take a minute to thank those teachers. It doesn’t need to be a big gesture. A quick note or email expressing your appreciation will mean plenty.
What you can learn at college graduations
It's college graduation time, as nearly 1.2 million students are about to leave school and move on to the real world. If you visited just about any college campus at this time–including ones that aren't famous–and talked with the graduates, you'd find,
1. Most of them are sad to leave their schools (really, who wouldn't be?) because their experiences have been so good.
2. None of them are lamenting the rejections they received from other colleges four years ago.
3. All of their parents are proud of their graduates.
And you might also start to wonder what so many high school students and parents are worried about?
Can you graduate from a public university in four years?
Large public universities often get this criticism:
“The kids can’t get the classes they need and end up going to college for five or six years.”
What a bunch of bull.
This is an especially touchy subject for parents, as people who’ve heard this or experienced it with their own kids for some reason seem to want to believe that public universities are somehow denying kids the opportunity to get out in four years. But here’s a test.
If you dropped your college freshman off at a large state university and said, “Son, if you graduate on time four years from now, we’ll give you a million dollars,” what do you think would happen?
If he’s got any common sense at all, that kid would make sure he graduated in four years.
He’d visit his academic advisor regularly even though most other students don’t know advisors exist on his large campus. He’d register for five classes every semester expecting that 1-2 of them won’t be available, but thereby ensuring that he’s still carrying a full caseload. He might even go to summer school once just to stay on track if he needed to.
But four years later, that former college freshman would be skipping across the stage to collect his diploma (and his million dollar payday).
I went to a public university. We’ve sent hundreds of Collegewise students to public universities. Yes, public schools (especially our UCs and Cal States in California) have been hard hit by budget cuts. They’ve got large classes. They don’t have nearly as much mandated supervision and guidance as smaller private schools offer. Lots of students do end up going to school for more than four years. But is it because they absolutely had to? No. A lot of them just didn’t want to graduate on time badly enough.
Here’s a more realistic version of the million dollar test. Tell your student that you’ll pay for four years of college, no more. Set the expectation right away that college is a four year journey of learning and fun with a big fat expiration date at the end of four years. As my college roommate’s dad said to him the day they dropped him off at our dorm room and were saying their goodbyes…
“Son, you’ve got four years.” And he graduated on time.
How much time do you spend really focusing?
Here's a study experiment to try.
Next week, promise yourself that you'll spend one hour a day studying or doing homework with absolutely no interruptions, totally and completely focused on your work. When you do it, set a timer to go off in one hour. Then turn your phone off, turn your computer off, close the door and don't pick your head up from the work for an hour. Then reward yourselves with some email, text, music and Facebook time for 10-15 minutes.
When you turn everything else off and turn your focus on, I'll bet you spend less time studying, you'll be done with your homework earlier, and you'll remember more of what you learned. Wouldn't it be worth it?
How to write a college essay about a person who’s influenced you
A teacher at one of my recent college essay workshops asked,
“What are some good ways for kids to approach the Common Application essay prompt about a person who’s influenced them?"
Here a few tips.
1. Remember what “influence” means.
Influence is defined as, “the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another…” The fact that you admire someone doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve influenced you. There needs to be some action or change in your actions, behavior or opinions. That means you'll need to give specific examples of those things. Deciding to improve your behavior in school, visiting a particular college you previously refused to see, spending more time volunteering at the soup kitchen—if you did those things because of someone else, that’s influence.
2. Don’t choose this prompt to try to sound impressive.
The Common Application actually gives you five choices of essay prompts. A lot of students who choose this one write about a famous activist, politician, or someone else notable in an effort to sound impressive. Again, you have to remember what “influence” means. The admissions committee doesn’t need to be convinced that Martin Luther King or Gandhi are admirable. Unless you can point to specific examples of how someone famous really has affected your actions, behavior or opinions, choose someone else (or chose a different topic).
3. Focus on the influence, not the person.
The exact wording of the question is, “Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.” The subtext there is that you shouldn’t spend the entire essay describing why this person is so wonderful. Spend the essay talking about you—your behavior, actions and beliefs—and how those have changed or strengthened as a result of this person’s influence.
4. Write an essay nobody else could write.
An essay about how your mother has inspired you to work hard is a nice essay. But it will read exactly like hundreds of other students’ essays. Instead, be specific. Give details. Write an essay that no other student could write. And if it’s about your mom, give enough specific examples so that nobody else’s essay about their own mother will be quite like yours.
You can find even more advice in our video, “How to Write Great College Essays.” It’s $12.99 and available as a streaming download.
Don’t do test prep just to do it
Five years ago, the mother of one of our Collegewise juniors said this to me when discussing test prep for her son.
If he finds a school he really likes and you tell us it would be a good idea to raise his test scores, we'll have him do test prep. But I don't want to do it just to do it.
I've always remembered that as the perfect way to describe a sane approach to preparing for the SAT or ACT. There are plenty of colleges that will happily admit a good kid with mediocre SAT scores. There over 800 colleges that don't even require SAT or ACT scores. If you and your counselor decide that you've found some appropriate colleges for which you would benefit from having higher test scores, do some test prep. But don't do it just because everybody else is doing it.
That Collegewise student? Today, he's graduating from California Lutheran University after a successful four years as a scholar athlete on the cross country team and a stint as a representative on the NCAA Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Next up–he's going to get his teaching credential so he can teach high school and coach cross country. He's happy, successful and excited about life after college.
And he never did test prep.
Have to vs. want to
Arun is spending this weekend at a training in Miami with College Summit, a non-profit organization that helps under-resourced students get in to college. He’s been volunteering there for seven years, not because he has to, but because he loves the work.
Katie just finished training new counselors in our New York office. Then she hit the road to tour colleges like Princeton, Penn, Villanova, Duke and Sarah Lawrence (where she called us breathless because she was witnessing a student performing an interpretive dance on the lawn—gotta love Sarah Lawrence). She doesn’t have to do it, but she’s a college geek of the highest order. She loves learning about schools and seeing them first hand.
And today, I’m doing a workshop for teachers at Malibu High School about how to help kids with college essays. It’s not a paid workshop—I’m just sharing our college essay seminar that’s worked so well for us. I don’t have to be there. But I enjoy sharing it with teachers who can take it back to their classrooms.
We’re far from the only professionals who do things outside of our normal work responsibilities not because we have to, but because we want to. The doctor who’s been practicing for twenty years and still reads every issue of her monthly medical journals, the teacher who refines his lesson plans every year just to see how he can do a better job, and the lawyer who volunteers at a free legal aid center every other Saturday—they don’t do it because they have to. They do it because they like to learn, contribute, and get even better at what they love to do.
That’s a lot like how happy, fulfilled and successful college applicants approach life in high school. They take difficult classes because they want to learn alongside the hardest working students. They volunteer at the soup kitchen because they enjoy spending time helping other people. They play baseball, take photos for the yearbook, sing in the school musical, enroll in art classes on weekends, play the tuba in the marching band and bake authentic tamales for the Spanish Club meetings not because they have to (or just because they're hoping it will help them get into college), but because they love what they’re doing.
How could you spend more time doing things you want to, not because you have to?
The power of just being nice
There's no place to list "I'm a nice kid" on a college application. But that doesn't mean that nice kids don't get a lot of benefits.
Nice kids get extra help from teachers and counselors when they ask for it. They get more effusive letters of recommendation. They'll make a better impression on college interviewers and have a better chance of being taken off wait lists. They're more likely to have people in their corners, ready to work and lobby and fight on their behalf. They've earned those benefits by just being good to other people.
Being nice is free and easy. It puts you in line for karma points. And I have never once seen a nice kid who worked hard end up without colleges to choose from. You might not be able to list it on a college application, but don't underestimate the power of just being a nice kid.
How to make your next brainstorming meeting more productive
When we're in meetings with families at Collegewise, we spend as much time talking as we do listening. We have to listen carefully to know what advice to give, but if we tried to play amateur therapists and just kept asking, "How does that make you feel?" without saying anything in return, they'd start to wonder what they're getting out of this.
But when we brainstorm a college essay with a student, it's the student's time to talk (as it's the student's essay to write). So we have Collegewise kids write responses to 20 "Brainstorming questions" ahead of time and bring it with them to the meeting. This lets them take as much time as they'd like to think about the answers and to share the parts that are most important to them. During the meeting, we read the responses and ask them to tell us more. And we follow the 70/30 rule–they talk 70% of the time, we talk only 30%. That's why we can always spot a great story without hijacking the process. Every student–even a shy one–gets a chance to develop, share and write her own ideas.
Chip and Dan Heath sent this newsletter today and offered a similar tip to make your next meeting even more effective. Try it at your next meeting for the school newspaper, Spanish Club, PTA, etc. And if you're a counselor, try it when you help a student brainstorm college essays.
Change the way you brainstorm.
In most brainstorming session, the "talkers" in the group will share a few ideas, and then others will chime in with refinements of those initial ideas (rather than introducing a radically different point of departure). The effect is that, within 10 minutes, the group has shut down 99% of the potential conversation paths. One easy way to correct for this is to have every member of the team brainstorm privately and record their thoughts prior to the meeting. Then, start the meeting by asking people to share their ideas before the group discussion begins. That way, you can be more confident that you've charted more of the "landscape of ideas," rather than simply building on the (possibly misguided) ideas of the group's loudest members."
We’re hiring a patient, freakishly organized life of the party
Our Irvine, CA office is hiring 2-3 assistant college counselors to help us 1) take great care of the families who’ve hired us, and 2) keep our office running smoothly during our busy season.
Who is Collegewise?
We’re a college counseling company who helps high school students find, apply to attend the right colleges for each student. You’d be helping our college counselors as they prepare “A” students, “C” students and everyone in between with good advice, organization and a little cheerleading to make sure everything happens smoothly and thoughtfully.
What would you say ya’ do here?
This job is part office managing, part tutoring, and part customer service. Here are some examples of things you might do in a given day working with us.
- Make (and feel free to drink) coffee in the morning. Must…have…coffee.
- Work with a student and answer her questions while she completes the first draft of a college application (that’s the “patient” part of the job).
- Call students to remind them of their appointments with counselors.
- Check our office supply stock and reorder any if necessary.
- Print and copy materials for a seminar in the afternoon.
- Work on a research project to find updated audition requirements for performing arts schools.
- Answer phones. Make a good first impression. Don’t use phrases like “A counselor will hit you back later.”
- Meet with one of our counselors to review students’ progress. Then call any kids who have assignments due.
- Send out an email reminder to families registered for an upcoming seminar. No spelling or grammatical errors, please.
- Work at the front desk and enthusiastically greet families as they arrive for appointments (that’s the “life of the party” part of the job). Introduce yourself. Make them feel at home. Offer them a freshly baked cookie. Speaking of which…
- Bake a batch of cookies to hand out to students and parents who arrive for appointments.
- Take and print new students’ photos to add to our bulletin boards.
Who are we looking for?
We’d love to find people who are interested or already have experience working in education and helping students. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to apply. But fit is more important than experience for this position. We enjoy working hard and doing a great job. We’d rather be forced to drink lizard spit than be that worker who shows up late, does sloppy work, or otherwise phones it in. And we love working with a crew who feels the same way. We also like to have fun here (there’s a gong in our office—more on that later). If that resonates with you, you might really enjoy working with us.
What else should you know?
- Starting pay is $15 per hour.
- We’re looking for people to work 15-25 hours per week, Mondays-Fridays (depending on your availability) from June-November.
- We’ll provide all the necessary training about college admissions and the Collegewise way of doing things.
What’s the next step?
If your interest is piqued, we invite you get to know us a little better by looking around our website. Find out more about what we do, who you’d be working with and what we believe. If you like what you read and think you could find a professional home here, please send a resume and cover letter to Allison Cummings, Director, at ocjobs@collegewise.com. Like a great college essay, we think a great cover letter should help us get to know who you really are. Don’t be afraid to be yourself—smart, thoughtful, maybe even funny. Just don’t be generic. And here are a few totally unsolicited tips for job seekers.
We hope to hear from you. But if we don’t, we hope you find the gig you’re looking for someplace else.
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