Wise Like Us

Give us Ninety Minutes, and We'll Get You a Little Closer to College

Are you a senior (or a parent of a senior) who is applying to college this fall?

If you answered an enthusiastic "YES!" to that question and you live in Southern California or the Pacific Northwest, we'd like to invite you to attend one of our FREE college admissions seminars for seniors and their parents.

We'll be sharing some of the strategies we've perfected and used to help nearly 3,000 students in our Collegewise programs get accepted to college.  There is no cost and no catch--just good information for senior families.

Click on your location below for a list of available seminars.  Our free seminars tend to fill up quickly, but we'll save as many spaces as we can for our loyal newsletter subscribers.

Select your location: 

Irvine, CA    Los Angeles, CA   Bellevue, WA

We hope you'll join us!

PS:  Families already enrolled in the Collegewise programs do not need to attend these seminars.  We'll see you at your next meeting with us!

Collegewise Counselor Spotlight - Jessica DeDomenico

This week's spotlight is on Jessica DeDomenico, a counselor in our White Plains, NY office.  Read on to find out what famous people (besides Jessica, of course) graduated from the University of Virginia!

Essays from The Other Side - Jennifer's Essay

As promised, we're posting several of our own essays from Collegewise's Essay Training.  Each of us had an interesting experience writing essays "from the other side" of college admissions.

Click here to read LA office Director Jennifer Mandel's essay.

P.S. Shortly after Collegewise's training, this article came out in one of our favorite admissions blogs.  It definitely reinforced what we learned during our own essay training.

Collegewise Counselors Attend Essay Training

Six Collegewise counselors, one Collegewise president, and one part-time essay specialist gathered in Irvine, CA yesterday for College Essay training.  We reviewed some of our students' best essays, talked about trends in admission, and shared strategies for helping kids write their best college essays.

Before the training, we were asked to write our own college essays - a task that each of us, despite our chosen profession, found incredibly daunting.  (Check out our blog about college presidents answering their college's essay questions here.)  However, after applying some Collegewise strategies of essay writing, we all came up with some pretty great stories.

One counselor wrote about her search for a tall prom date.  One wrote about volunteering for College Summit.  One even wrote about growing up with the nickname "Goat Girl."  While the topics clearly varied, the common thread was that each essay was written in the counselor's unique voice.  Counselors followed Collegewise's #1 College Essay Writing Rule - "Own your story."

Keep checking Wise Like Us - next week we'll post some of the counselors' stories!

Staying Productive and Motivated

Graduating college seniors are facing a tough job search in a down economy.  But that doesn't mean you can't do something noteworthy while you're looking.  This blog post has some great ideas for ways to stay motivated and make yourself even more marketable for potential employers.  I'm posting it here for college grads, but also for high school students who might be looking for ways to spend a productive and fulfilling summer (in fact, it's reminiscent of our list of "50 Fantastic Summer Activities for High School Students").

Collegewise Counselor Spotlight - Margot Filstein

This is the first of several Counselor Spotlights, which we hope will give you a better idea of who our bloggers are and what they're all about.  This week's Spotlight is on Margot Filstein, pictured at right at her Alma Mater's 5-year reunion.

College Essay Workshop at Palos Verdes High School

This summer and fall, we're offering our College Essay Workshop on the campus of Palos Verdes High School in Palos Verdes Estates, CA.  Students will not only attend our essay seminar, but will also have the opportunity to submit their UC or Common Application essays to us for feedback.  We're pretty excited about it.  The workshop tuition is $295 and PVHS students can enroll through the link at the end of this post.  We hope to see your student in the class!

College Factoid

Rockstars go to college too!

Debbie Harry, lead singer of Blondie, a rock band that gained fame in the 70's, went to Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey. And you thought New Jersey wasn't hip...

Well played, Lewis & Clark

If you read our blog, you know we're really excited about colleges. And we're even more excited about lesser-known colleges--ones that most of our students here in California won't even investigate. 

Lewis & Clark is one of those colleges. And it's a pretty amazing place to live and learn and be a happy college kid. We've known that all along. Our favorite part is when one of our students figures that out, too. 

This year, one of our very own will be going to Portland, Oregon to join Lewis & Clark College's incoming freshman class. And he'll be the first Collegewise kid there. EVER.

If you're willing to be one of those students who looks outside the box (and at a cool college like Lewis & Clark), check our their amazing student blogs. Kids are writing and posting videos about life at L&C, the music scene, Portland's city life and even what life looks like from a study abroad program in Scotland. These students can give you a much different (and fuller!) picture of what life as a Pioneer is like, so start reading!

And if you DO fall in love, send us an e-card from the Lewis & Clark website and tell us about it!

Are summer college visits worth the trip?

Any counselor at Collegewise will tell you visiting colleges is wonderful any time, anywhere (I even visited colleges on a cross-country road trip when I was a sophomore in college!).  But now that summer is right around the corner, we’re getting a lot of questions from our families asking whether it’s still “worth it” to visit colleges over the summer, when most college students aren’t on campus.  It’s true that seeing and talking with current students on a college campus can be beneficial, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the trip when they’re not around, especially because summer is usually the time when our students and their parents have time to get away.  One of our favorite blogs, called The Choice, has posted a few entries about visiting colleges, and specifically, making the most of visits over the summer.  You can read a couple of entries here and here.  Happy visiting!

Anatomy of a Five-Year Reunion

I'm back from a splendid weekend at my five-year reunion at Colgate and wanted to share some pictures of the trip.  As mentioned in my post last week, I was incredibly excited at the thought of staying in a college dorm room, catching up with old friends, and eating at all of my favorite Hamilton, NY establishments.  Goal achieved!

 

 

Time to Buy a Broomstick!

Many kids come into the Collegewise offices looking for schools with soccer or football teams. Sometimes they're even looking for a badminton team! But for an avid Harry Potter fan like myself (judge me all you want, but those books are going to be on the list of CLASSICS someday soon!), I'm crossing my fingers that one day I'm going to meet a high school student looking for a Quidditch team.

Yep, you read it right. Quidditch. As in Howgart's Inter-House Quidditch teams.

There's only one real difference between Harry Potter's sport and the newest sport on college campuses: gravity. But these kids aren't letting a little thing like gravity get in their way. Colleges all over the country are starting up Quidditch teams for their own campuses, joining the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association and training to compete in the Quidditch World Cup. Schools like the University of Washington, Middlebury, Vassar Chestnut Hill College and McGill University from Canada all competed in the 2008 World Cup. Boston University and Northeastern organized a "Battle Over Boston" and there are 105 teams associated with the IQA, recruiting and training for the next World Cup.

If you think you're the next Quidditch star, check out the IQA at www.collegequidditch.com. Or if you're like me and absolutely positive you're not the next Quidditch star, you can live vicariously by watching this clip of the Middlebury and Princeton teams competing on CBS Sports.

It's not quite the Sweet Sixteen, but it's still pretty awesome.

Reunited and It Feels So Good

When I was a freshman in college, it took about two weeks for me to get tired of dorm room living and dining hall eating.  I remember lamenting the fact that I was stuck in a triple bedroom and dreaming about the days that I would live in a real house with an actual kitchen.

Today, I remember my dorm room days in a positive light.  Cereal for every meal?  Fun!  Staying up all night with friends writing papers?  Woohoo!!  So, as my Five-Year Reunion quickly approaches, I can't help but get excited about staying in a dorm room again and grabbing breakfast with my roomies!!

I head out to Colgate tonight.  My best college buddy is meeting me at the airport, and we're planning to stop immediately at Roger's Deli for egg salad sandwiches (with extra salt and pepper).  After that is check-in at the dorm rooms, coffee with Gary Ross (Colgate's Dean of Admissions), and undetermined shenanigans.  I'll be sure to check in Monday with a run-down of my fabulous reunion weekend.

-Katie Konrad, Director of Collegewise - Northwest

50 Fantastic Summer Activities for High School Students

The New York Times ran an article today about the National Young Leaders Conference--one of many organizations that offer high-priced summer programs for students, but that misleadingly market the programs as auspicious honors for which only a few outstanding students are selected.  It's a good reminder to be suspicious of any "honor" for which you have to pay (a lot) to receive.

You don't have to spend money on an expensive program to impress colleges.   Here are 50 fantastic summer activities you can do for free or almost free.  All of these are positive, productive and interesting to potential colleges.  Pick the one(s) you feel you could really get excited about, get going, and have fun. 

·         Take classes at your local community college.

·         Get a part-time job at the mall. 

·         See how many books you can read this summer.  

·         Work in your family business.  Consider doing so for free.

·         Think of ten people--teachers, coaches, family members, relatives--who deserve your thanks.  Write them a hand-written letter of at least one page expressing your appreciation and detailing how they've impacted you.  Tell them what you're going to do to make them proud and spend the summer doing it.

·         Take saxophone lessons. 

The New York Times ran an article today about the National Young Leaders Conference--one of many organizations that offer high-priced summer programs for students, but that misleadingly market the programs as auspicious honors for which only a few outstanding students are selected.  It's a good reminder to be suspicious of any "honor" for which you have to pay (a lot) to receive.

You don't have to spend money on an expensive program to impress colleges.   Here are 50 fantastic summer activities you can do for free or almost free.  All of these are positive, productive and interesting to potential colleges.  Pick the one(s) you feel you could really get excited about, get going, and have fun. 

·         Take classes at your local community college.

·         Get a part-time job at the mall. 

·         See how many books you can read this summer.  

·         Work in your family business.  Consider doing so for free.

·         Think of ten people--teachers, coaches, family members, relatives--who deserve your thanks.  Write them a hand-written letter of at least one page expressing your appreciation and detailing how they've impacted you.  Tell them what you're going to do to make them proud and spend the summer doing it.

·         Take saxophone lessons. 

The New York Times ran an article today about the National Young Leaders Conference--one of many organizations that offer high-priced summer programs for students, but that misleadingly market the programs as auspicious honors for which only a few outstanding students are selected.  It's a good reminder to be suspicious of any "honor" for which you have to pay (a lot) to receive.

You don't have to spend money on an expensive program to impress colleges.   Here are 50 fantastic summer activities you can do for free or almost free.  All of these are positive, productive and interesting to potential colleges.  Pick the one(s) you feel you could really get excited about, get going, and have fun. 

·         Take classes at your local community college.

·         Get a part-time job at the mall. 

·         See how many books you can read this summer.  

·         Work in your family business.  Consider doing so for free.

·         Think of ten people--teachers, coaches, family members, relatives--who deserve your thanks.  Write them a hand-written letter of at least one page expressing your appreciation and detailing how they've impacted you.  Tell them what you're going to do to make them proud and spend the summer doing it.

·         Take saxophone lessons. 

The Filsteins take over Ithaca...

Margot left town last week and headed to Ithaca, New York to see her sister receive her masters from Cornell University. She's busy running around with the family and pretending to be a Cornell student for the week, but she took a little time to give us an update. Enjoy!

"Hello from Ithaca, New York!  I just got back from my sister's graduation at Cornell, where she earned her master's degree in Management in Hospitality.  While my sister attended the School of Hotel Administration as a graduate student, students can also earn a bachelor's degree in Hotel Administration as an undergraduate.  Cornell even has its own hotel on campus called The Statler Hotel where students in the Hotel School get hands-on experience in the industry.  Pretty cool.