How to Prepare a Standout College Application

Expert Advice that Takes You from LMO* (*Like Many Others) to Admit

Alison Cooper Chisolm, Anna Ivey

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118702062
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Aides à l'étude
• Subtopic: Guides d'étude

Demystifying the process of completing a college application

Written by two former admissions officers at top universities and current admissions coaches, this book is a must-have for preparing a winning college application. The authors reveal the mystery behind what college admissions officers are looking for and show applicants how to leverage their credentials, stand out in the over-crowded applicants' pool, and make a genuine, memorable impression. This is the book that will help the college-bound get off the "like many others" pile and onto the acceptance list.

• Includes instructions and examples for every component of the college application, from writing the essay to answering questions like "Why do you want to go to College X?"
• Shows how to avoid underestimating the importance of critical features on any application
• Includes the latest information on the Common Application 4.0 and corrects outdated, holdover advice still stressed in many other books

This book is filled with step-by-step advice that students and parents can use immediately and will refer to again and again.

PART 1

Getting Started

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CHAPTER 1 Big Decisions

CHAPTER 2 Your Plan

CHAPTER 3 Your Story

CHAPTER 4 Your Résumé

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CHAPTER 1

Big Decisions

Before you start working on your applications, there are two big decisions you should make in advance: (1) where you'll be applying and (2) where, if anywhere, you'll be applying early. We call them the big decisions because they are decisions that can have a big effect on your admissions outcomes.

These big decisions can also require some trade-offs, and that's why many people procrastinate in making them. (Nobody likes trade-offs!) But those trade-offs don't go away if you procrastinate; by putting them off, you just end up forcing yourself to make them when you're rushed and trying to get applications out the door, and by then you may have missed some very beneficial opportunities along the way. You'll maximize your options down the road—and your admissions success—if you make those big decisions before you start working on your applications rather than trying to muddle through and make them as you go along.

Big Decision #1: Where to Apply

A sensible list of colleges is often a work in progress, and that's entirely appropriate. It will morph over time as you get more information about yourself (new grades, new test scores, new classes you're excited about), about your goals (what kinds of majors you might be interested in, what kinds of careers you imagine for yourself), and about your college options (selectivity, academic and nonacademic offerings, location, your reactions after visiting, and so on).

At some point, though, you need to treat your list as final so that you can commit with your whole heart (and your whole brain) to the task of producing standout applications for the colleges on your list. In the next chapter we'll go into much more detail about your ideal timeline, but for now, the most important thing to realize about timing is that you should have a final list of schools in front of you in the July before you apply.

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Parent Tip: Helping with the Final List

You can make it easier or harder for your child to finalize his or her college list. Obviously, we encourage you to make it easier (and we assume that's what you want, too!), so here are our tips for how to do that:

• Do your best to call on your rational self when you have conversations with your child about the college list. Your rational self knows that your child's college choices should reflect your child's preferences, not yours, so your rational self would never insist that your child keep a particular college on the list when it really isn't the right fit for your child just because you fell in love with it on the tour and would have loved to go to college there yourself. And your rational self would allow your child to apply to colleges out of state, even though you hoped that your child would attend college within driving distance from home.
• Recognize that everything you say about any college, even in an offhand or joking manner, reverberates for your child as a personal commentary on your child or his or her choices. Your child is exquisitely tuned to all things college right now and has no capacity for objective distance. Imagine you are all at a family reunion and you teasingly say, “Hey, why is College X a reach on your list? It should be a safety because if Uncle Jerry could get in there, it can't be very selective.” What do you think your child hears? Your child hears that you don't think much of College X or your child's credentials.
• Educate yourself about the colleges that your child is considering before offering an opinion about whether they should be on the list or not. Just because you have never heard of a college doesn't mean it wouldn't be an excellent choice for your child. Just because the college had a reputation for being a party school when you were in college doesn't mean it is a party school now. Just because you've heard from several people that a particular college is great doesn't mean it would be great for your child. You owe it to your child to educate yourself before you speak up.
• Engage with your child in researching the likelihood for admission to the colleges on the list. Set aside a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon and work on it together. You both need to be realistic about your child's chances for admission, and the best way to form a realistic opinion is to look at the data. The numbers don't lie. An additional benefit of tackling this task together is that it makes you and your child allies in the enterprise rather than pitting you against each other. For example, rather than having a painful and tortured conversation in which you try to extract information from your child about why a particular college is not a realistic safety, you discover the information together, and the information speaks for itself. Tortured conversation averted!
• Have a full and frank discussion with your child about the affordability of the various colleges on the list. You'll have to do some preparatory work for this conversation including determining what financial support you can provide to your child during college and what the financial aid options are. Financial aid is a complicated subject, and it will take you some time and effort to research the options on each college's website, but it is important you do it now. You don't want your child to apply to colleges that he or she couldn't attend, even if admitted, because they simply aren't affordable.

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How many schools should make it onto your final list? There are more than two thousand four-year colleges in the United States, and even though it is easier than ever to apply to multiple colleges, you aren't going to want to spend your time applying to every college out there. You want to limit yourself to a reasonable number of colleges; in our experience, that means your final list should have no more than fifteen colleges on it.

If you have more than fifteen colleges on your list, you need to revisit it and make some hard decisions about which colleges to cut, because your list is too long. Otherwise, you'll learn the hard way that nothing wastes more of your time, energy, and money than applying to too many colleges, especially if some of the colleges on your list aren't even really right for you.

How you go about selecting the right colleges for yourself is the subject for a whole book unto itself, but in a nutshell, a sensible college list is a list of eight to fifteen colleges that offer a range in terms of your likelihood of admission:

• Two to three colleges should be ones where you have a high likelihood of admission (usually called safeties)
• Four to eight should be colleges where you have a good likelihood of admission (usually called targets)
• Two to four colleges should be ones where you have a low likelihood of admission (usually called reaches)

There are a few classic mistakes to avoid when compiling your college list. First, be realistic when you assess your chances for admission and distinguish between low-likelihood and no-likelihood colleges. When it comes to getting a basic handle on your chances for admission, it is all about your academic credentials. Even if you have other standout credentials and a standout application, you have to have competitive academic credentials if you are going to have a chance. A low-likelihood college is a college where your academic credentials fall into the bottom 25 percent of those admitted, and a no-likelihood college is one where no one with your academic credentials was admitted. Take all no-likelihood schools off your list. (Okay, if you really have to apply to Stanford because you've always dreamed of going there, then leave that one no-likelihood college on your list, but let go of Caltech and Princeton.)

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GPA and Test Score Statistics for Specific Colleges

You can look up statistics about the test scores and grades of applicants who have been previously admitted to a particular college. They are available on a variety of websites and in multiple books. However, you'll know you're getting the most current information if you go to each college's website and search for a link or tab called something like “profile of the incoming class.” You can also find this kind of information on the College Board's website (www.collegeboard.org) or the Department of Education's College Navigator website (www.nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator). These two sources are completely reliable, but the data you find there may not be as current due to a time lag between when the college reports it and when it is posted.

You will find different formats for reporting the information, but the most common format reports it in terms of percentages. So, for example, you will find that test scores are generally reported in terms of the “mid-50.” The mid-50 range shows the scores distributed by quartiles, and those scores in the mid-50 range are those that range from the 25th to 75th percentiles. From that mid-50 you can easily deduce how you stack up: are you in the mid-50 or in the bottom 25 (below the lower score of the mid-50) or in the top 25 (above the top score of the mid-50)?

For grades, the format is less standardized, with colleges reporting percentages in terms of class rank and GPA. For example, you might find that the college reports what percentage of admitted students were ranked in the top 10 percent, the top quarter, or the top half of their classes. Or you might find that the college reports what percentage of students had GPAs of 3.75 or better, 3.5–3.74, 3.25–3.49, and so on. (Note these GPAs are unweighted, and you can learn more about weighted versus unweighted GPAs in chapter 18. The College Board has a tool on its website that allows you to calculate your unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale.) Once you know the percentages regarding grades, you can easily deduce how you stack up.

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It is pretty easy to figure out whether your academic credentials are competitive. All you have to do is compare your grades and test scores to those of applicants that the college has admitted in recent years. You can find that information on many websites or directories, but the best place to get the most current and accurate information is on the colleges' own websites. Usually the college makes it easy to find by collecting it into a set of “fast facts” or a “profile of the incoming class.”

Also, understand that you will not increase your chances of admission to a particular college simply by applying to more colleges. College admissions isn't a lottery. Your chances of admission to a particular college have nothing to do with the number of applications you submit overall. You are far better off using your time and energy to submit twelve standout applications than you are firing off twenty so-so applications.

Big Decision #2: Where (if Anywhere) to Apply Early

One of the major changes in college admissions in the last twenty-fi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• PART 1: Getting Started
• PART 2: Completing the Application
• PART 3: Crossing the Finish Line
• Closing: You're Done, Now What?
• About the Authors
• Index