Acing the College Application (eBook)

Michele Hernandez (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2002 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Random House Publishing Group (Verlag)
978-0-345-46202-2 (ISBN)

Infos

With so many qualified applicants, competition for college admissions is fiercer than ever. Now you can put yourself ahead of the pack by making your application flawless!

When applying for college, good grades and high standardized test scores are not always enough to guarantee admission. What sets you apart, argues Michele Hernndez, is the way you describe yourself in your application. But how do you present yourself with flair, and highlight all your talents, skills, and passions, in just a few pages?

A former assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth College, Dr. Hernndez takes you step-by-step through the entire application process, revealing the details that make or break an applicant. From the multitude of short and longer essays to the myriad of charts, lists, and personal data sections, she offers essential advice, useful anecdotes, and vivid examples. Included are:

• A line-by-line look at the common application
• The truth about the essays, with samples of those that made the grade
• The best way to ask for teacher and guidance counselor recommendations
• When to provide colleges with optional essays and peer evaluations
• The ten common myths and misconceptions of the on-campus interview
• The most meaningful academic subjects, work experience, and extracurricular activities to mention
• Early action versus early decision--the trade offs

With this helpful, savvy book, prospective college students--and their parents and counselors--can now vastly improve their chances of getting into the college of their choice.

'Want to scale the Ivy wall? Michele Hernndez gives you the tools to do it. This brisk, no-nonsense book is built on inside dope, and Hernndez's experience allows her to challenge conventional admissions thinking.'
--HARRY BAULD
Author of On Writing the College Application Essay

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With so many qualified applicants, competition for college admissions is fiercer than ever. Now you can put yourself ahead of the pack by making your application flawless!When applying for college, good grades and high standardized test scores are not always enough to guarantee admission. What sets you apart, argues Michele Hernández, is the way you describe yourself in your application. But how do you present yourself with flair, and highlight all your talents, skills, and passions, in just a few pages?A former assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth College, Dr. Hernández takes you step-by-step through the entire application process, revealing the details that make or break an applicant. From the multitude of short and longer essays to the myriad of charts, lists, and personal data sections, she offers essential advice, useful anecdotes, and vivid examples. Included are:• A line-by-line look at the common application• The truth about the essays, with samples of those that made the grade • The best way to ask for teacher and guidance counselor recommendations• When to provide colleges with optional essays and peer evaluations• The ten common myths and misconceptions of the on-campus interview• The most meaningful academic subjects, work experience, and extracurricular activities to mention• Early action versus early decision—the trade offsWith this helpful, savvy book, prospective college students—and their parents and counselors—can now vastly improve their chances of getting into the college of their choice. “Want to scale the Ivy wall? Michele Hernández gives you the tools to do it. This brisk, no-nonsense book is built on inside dope, and Hernández’s experience allows her to challenge conventional admissions thinking.”—HARRY BAULD Author of On Writing the College Application Essay

Textauszug

No matter what admissions officers tell you about the importance of leadership, keep in mind that academics are weighted more in the admissions process than extracurricular leadership. No matter how strong you are in leadership, you will still need at least a solid academic record for selective and highly selective schools. As a general rule, the less selective a college is, the more likely it is to give more weight to your extracurricular record. For the most selective schools, academics rule the day with extras a distant second. To put it another way, strong academics open the door while substantial talents may get you inside. Given the bias toward academics, why is the activity list so important? Basically, it helps to differentiate between the thousands of generally strong students who apply to the top colleges. Between two solid students of roughly equal academic merit, doesn€,™,t it make sense that a master oboe player would be accepted over someone who has only participated in a few clubs or activities? For students who have become highly involved with their high school (or outside of their high school as we will discuss shortly), the activity list is the place to showcase how their free time is spent. Colleges want high impact recruits. The college gets much more mileage out of a student who is either a sport€,™,s star, a great musician, a campus activist, or a published writer than it does out of someone who goes back to the dorm after class and channel surfs. You represent an investment for the college. Like any investor, colleges seek an aggressive return on their investment. Therefore, they look for students who are active, show leadership, have demonstrable skills in a specific area like sports or music€,'in short, those who will make a difference, those who will be remembered years later. That€,™,s why colleges also like a few celebrities if they can attract them since their mere presence brings positive press to the college. We all know that Chelsea Clinton chose Stanford and Amy Carter chose Brown and both schools have benefited tremendously from the association with presidents. Brooke Shields€,™,s tenure at Princeton probably did more for Princeton€,™,s endowment and academic ranking than all other efforts combined. Initiative and Passion Colleges look for students who show initiative and passion. These are the two mantras you should repeat to yourself over and over as you fill out your applications. Initiative in the context of the college application means going beyond basic requirements to achieve something of note. For example, let€,™,s take a student who loves studying languages. Unfortunately, his private school has very limited language courses, offering only Spanish, Latin, and French. After finishing the entire Latin curriculum, our student investigates his options at local schools and community colleges, finally finding a linguistics class and an advanced Latin class. In addition to his regular course work, this student drives himself to these classes five days a week. He€,™,s so good at what he studies and so interested in foreign languages that he takes language classes on the side for three of the four years of high school, plus two summer immersion programs, both in intensive Japanese. By the end of high school, he scores 5 on both the Latin literature advanced placement tests (out of a possible 5), is quite good at Japanese, and garners incredible recommendations from his community college professors, who say he€,™,s one of the most natural linguists they have ever...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.10.2002
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Bewerbung / Karriere
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Erwachsenenbildung
• ISBN-10: 0-345-46202-5 / 0345462025
• ISBN-13: 978-0-345-46202-2 / 9780345462022