Blog

  • Is College Really the Best Four Years of Your Life?

    You’ve heard it.  I’ve heard it. Maybe we’ve both even said it. “College is the best four years of your life!”  Lately, I’ve begun to question the validity of this statement, especially since it’s used in broad terms without much explanation.  Don’t get me wrong–I loved my college experience and I have very few regrets…

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  • Protecting the #Classof2015: Social Media Readiness

    As high school juniors enter the full swing of the college readiness season, counselors need to remind them to manage their social media presences. Last year, 31 percent of college admissions officers who participated in a Kaplan phone questionnaire claimed that they visited applicants’ social media pages, up five percent from the previous year. Combine…

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  • Potemkin Villages

    Another winter Olympics has come and gone. There was much talk about the preparation Russia went through on its way to hosting the games and in wanting to put its best foot forward as a world power.  I should qualify my comments by saying that I did not compete in the Olympics.  Many people mistakenly…

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  • Own the Decision!!

    I know that I promised a part two to my position against community colleges offering BA/BS degrees, but that will have to wait for my April blog post.  I prefer to discuss how I help students make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. I have a son who had a plethora of college choices back…

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  • Great (Mostly Free) Resources for Helping Juniors Develop Their College Lists

    This is the time of year to help high school juniors begin to develop their college lists. Research shows that many students, especially those who will be the first generation in their family to go to college, develop lists based on what they have heard from friends, where their teachers or counselors have attended, or…

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  • How to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn

    With the launch of WACAC’s LinkedIn group last month, you may have been wondering what this whole LinkedIn thing is all about. It’s a professional networking social media site. When I finally joined Facebook in 2007, after assuming all social media was mindless, it was because someone explained it to me as the “MySpace for…

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  • Stanford and Cal Admission Leaders Speak Out

    WACAC’s Government Relations Committee has long lobbied for increased access to high quality college counseling resources for all students in California and Nevada. This was, once again, a featured talking point at WACAC’s 11th Annual Legislative Conference in Sacramento, CA, which took place less than one month ago in February 2014. A recent Op Ed…

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  • 14 Key Factors in the Admission Decision

    When I first began working as a college counselor, comprehending the universe of schools available to students was mind numbing. There are 2,600 four-year colleges in the United States–a mish mash of public, private, religious, and secular schools–each with its own set of admission requirements. Consequently, when parents asked me to distill a list of…

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