25 Best Tips for High Schoolers from College Admissions Counselors

These are some of the things you can do to ensure acceptance while you’re still in high school.

1. Challenge yourself: Be sure you take challenging courses your last year of high school.
2. Attend a quality high school: If you want to make it into an Ivy League school, go to a feeder high school that sends many students to Ivy League schools every year.
3. Take AP or honors courses: Get prepared for college and show that you can work hard by taking advanced courses.
4. Have a strong GPA: It seems like a no brainer, but having a good GPA will help you get in to your chosen school.
5. Don’t join clubs to fill your resume: Although quality clubs and activities are important, avoid taking on too much in your final year just for your resume.
6. Be well rounded: Be a good student, but also participate in a handful of clubs and activities, and have an officer position so you can really stand out.
7. Get help with classes: If you’re having trouble achieving the GPA you want, get help from your parents, tutors, or study groups.
8. Don’t slack off: Your colleges will see your final grades even after you’re accepted.
9. Get into an organized competition: Become a part of a national academic quiz bowl, international science fair, or other events that can show how you stack up against students outside of your community.
10. Test more than once: If you don’t get the score you’re looking for in the beginning, test over again until you get it.
11. Take the PSAT: Prepare for the SAT by taking the SAT as a sophomore.

Choosing a School

These are some tips for finding the right school for you.

1. Look for a college with a wide variety of offerings: You may have plans for art school, but it’s best to stick with a college that has options just in case you change majors down the road.
2. Find out the student/faculty ratio: If you want a more engaging college experience, find a school with a smaller ratio of students to faculty.
3. Attend college fairs: Get a feel for colleges by attending college fairs.
4. Consider whether the Ivy League is right for you: Don’t automatically shoot for the stars and try to get into an Ivy League school if it’s not the right fit for you.
5. Start thinking about schools by the end of your junior year: Consider what kind of school you want in your junior year so you’ll have plenty of time to get ready.
6. Check out college guides: The US News and World Report, Princeton Review, College Board and other sites can help you find the school for you.
7. Check out the alcohol policy: Find out if your college is a party school or not by researching its alcohol policy.
8. Consider the level of academic challenge: Think about whether you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond.
9. Research the freshman retention rate: Find out how many people enjoyed their college experience enough to come back.
10. Look up safety statistics: You can find out how safe your potential college campus is by looking up statistics for safety and security.
11. Make your choice as an individual: Don’t make your decision based on your parents, or where your best friend is going-make the right choice for you.
12. Find extracurricular activities: Find out what the most popular activities are on campus.

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SAT Scores and Family Income

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Much has been written about the relationship between SAT scores and test-takers’ family income. Generally speaking, the wealthier a student’s family is, the higher the SAT score.

Let’s take a look at how income correlated with scores this year. About two-thirds of test-takers voluntarily report their family incomes when they sit down to take the SAT. Using this information, the College Board breaks down the average scores for 10 income groups, each in a $20,000 range.

First, here are the individual test sections:

Source: College Board

Source: College Board

Source: College Board

Here are all three test sections next to each other (zoomed in on the vertical axis, so you can see the variation among income groups a little more clearly):

Source: College Board

A few observations:

• There’s a very strong positive correlation between income and test scores. (For the math geeks out there, the R² for each test average/income range chart is about 0.95.)
• On every test section, moving up an income category was associated with an average score boost of over 12 points.
• Moving from the second-highest income group and the highest income group seemed to show the biggest score boost. However, keep in mind the top income category is uncapped, so it includes a much broader spectrum of families by wealth.

Are My SAT Scores Good Enough?

What are good SAT scores? Do you have the SAT scores you need to get into your top choice schools? This article explains the relationship between college admissions and SAT scores. You can also check out these SAT links (or ACT links):

• SAT Comparison Charts: the Ivy League | top private universities (non-Ivy) | top liberal arts colleges | more top liberal arts colleges | top public universities | top public liberal arts colleges | University of California campuses | Cal State campuses | SUNY campuses
• 20 Great Colleges for Not-So-Great Scores
• Test-Optional Colleges
• Practice sentence completion questions

Answer: SAT scores are just one of many criteria used by colleges to make admissions decisions. Nevertheless, their importance shouldn’t be underestimated. As much as admissions officers say they take an open-minded and holistic approach to their decisions, SAT scores can make or break an application. And let’s face it -- it’s easier to compare numerical data than it is to decide whether a semester in France should be ranked higher than a state soccer championship.

Also, schools usually make their SAT data public, and they know that their reputations depend upon high numbers. A college won’t be considered “highly selective” or “elite” if its students have an average SAT math score of 470.

So what is a good SAT score? The exam consists of three parts: Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing. The scores from each section can range from 200 to 800, so the best possible total score is 2400. The average score for each section is roughly 500, so the average total score is about 1500.

Very few students get a perfect SAT score, even those at the country’s top colleges. The list below shows the middle range of SAT scores for different schools. The middle 50% of admitted students fell within these numbers. Keep in mind that 25% of students who were admitted scored below the lower numbers listed here.

Finally, you'll see that some of the school profiles include the critical reading and math scores, but not the writing scores. This is because the writing part of the exam is still new, and many schools do not yet use it in their admissions decisions. We're likely to see that change in the next couple years as colleges figure out the relationship between the writing score and academic success.

Click on the school names to see the full profiles.

Auburn (Main Campus)

• Critical Reading: 520 - 620
• Mathematics: 550 - 650
• Writing: 520 - 620

Carleton

• Critical Reading: 670 - 750
• Mathematics: 660 - 740
• Writing: 640 - 740

Duke

• Critical Reading: 690 - 770
• Mathematics: 690 - 790
• Writing: 680 - 780

Harvard

• Critical Reading: 690 - 800
• Mathematics: 700 - 790
• Writing: 690 - 780

MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Critical Reading: 660 - 760
• Mathematics: 720 - 800
• Writing: 660 - 750

Middlebury

• Critical Reading: 630 - 740
• Mathematics: 640 - 740
• Writing: 630 - 740

Pomona

• Critical Reading: 690 - 760
• Mathematics: 680 - 760
• Writing: 680 - 760

Stanford

• Critical Reading: 660 - 760
• Mathematics: 680 - 780
• Writing: 670 - 770

UCLA

• Critical Reading: 570 - 680
• Mathematics: 610 - 720
• Writing: 580 - 690

By Allen Grove, About.com

College Admissions Negative 101

Here's some news that will help ease the guilt of all you parents who desperately want to give your children a leg up on the stiff competition that faces them on their journey to institutes of higher education.

So you occasionally help out with your student's science projects or you maybe drafted a few of his research papers and had him pass it off as his own. Not good. But, definitely not as bad as what Caroline Maria McNeal did to help increase her daughter's chance of getting into the college of her choice.

The overzealous mom, who used to be employed as a high school secretary, recently admitted to changing her daughter's SAT scores--on more than one occasion.

McNeal reportedly confessed that she used the school's computer to tamper with students' tests scores. In one case she allegedly changed her daughter's SAT scores from 1370 to 1730. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Police, who arrested the score-tampering mom, claim that McNeal spent the last two years consistently changing other students' grades as well, in an effort to improve her daughter's class ranking. All tolled school officials estimate that McNeal changed more than 200 test scores or grades.

The tech savvy mom is now facing criminal charges, including 29 felony counts of unlawful use of a computer and tampering with pubic records. McNeal was also fired from her job. In addition, her daughter, who graduated from high school in 2008, says she has become the target of outraged former classmates, and is completely humiliated by her mom's poor decisions.

Meanwhile, McNeal maintains that she was only trying to help her daughter "get ahead."

Oh, her daughter has gotten ahead all right; she's way out there... far, far away from the embarrassment she once called "mom."

What do you make of McNeal's decision to make her daughter look smart? Pretty dumb, huh?

Michele Cheplic

The New SAT Explained

For parents who took the SAT 30 years ago, the new “perfect score” of 2400 may seem confusing. The SAT used to be comprised of two sections: critical reading, commonly called the verbal section, and mathematics. Each section yielded a range of scores from 200 to 800. This meant a “perfect score” on the SAT was a 1600 for many decades.

In 2005, a new section was added to the test. Taken from what was once the SAT II exam, the writing section is divided into short answer and essay portions. The section is additionally now worth anywhere from 200 to 800 points.

Today, the SAT is longer than it used to be. The critical reading portion is broken into sections totaling 70 minutes. Mathematics also totals 70 minutes. The writing portion of the exam is only allotted 60 minutes.

Once common area of confusion is how this portion of the exam is scored. It is hand-graded by a board of graders who compare the answers to others given that day. The answers are compared in areas such as logic, organization and strength of thesis. Smaller errors such as grammar and spelling are not graded, although usage and vocabulary should be appropriate. The graders will compare all the essays submitted and give the best essays highest scores. This means the same essay may be assessed at a different level on two different days.

While this may seem unfair, the SAT score has always been a comparative score. Depending on the average score received in a particular day, you may generate a different score for the same number of right answers. This is because the test questions vary tremendously. To protect a student from losing points because a particular test was harder than another, all students are graded on a scale compared to individuals taking the same test.

Some Colleges Opting Out of the SAT ‘Score Choice’ Option

I recently answered the question "should I cancel my SAT score?" with information regarding the upcoming Score Choice option on the SAT. To refresh, the SAT used to require that all scores from every test administration be sent to colleges. With Score Choice, students are permitted to send only the scores of their choosing to colleges. In other words, they may choose to send only their top combined score, and the university would never see the lower scores.

However, this idealism seems to have changed.

It has now become clear that colleges can opt out of Score Choice, and require that applicants report every SAT score. Newsweek has indicated that Stanford, Cornell, Pomona, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California will demand all scores. Other schools, including Harvard and the University of Chicago, say they will honor Score Choice. Many more, such as Yale and Princeton, say they have yet to decide.

http://acceptedtocollege.com/blog/

This may be disappointing news for several students who believed Score Choice to be the cure of test taking anxiety. However, remember that the playing field has not really changed. Just because certain schools are requiring all reports does not mean that having lower scores will necessarily preclude you from admission; colleges still view the entire application -- scores included -- in totality. All this means is that when you decide to take the SAT, you should be ready for it.

Reader Question: Will One Bad Semester Kill Me?

Reader and high school senior Gigi has submitted a college admissions question likely shared by many students in her position:

during my senior year in high school (last year), my parents decided that they wanna move to bakersfield, [California]... and that decision pretty much just ruined my senior year in high school... my grades dropped... my GPA was, i think, about 2.0... or even lower... not sure...

i was a complete stranger in a new school, with no friends whatsoever... it really affected my life and grades...

i'm wondering if i'm even eligible for college...

Terrific question, Gigi.

Remember that college admissions committees are not full of robots. They are real people who genuinely want to work with you to help you succeed. Since you had a tough senior year in high school, that is something you will want to address in your personal statement. Talk about the difficulties associated with moving to a new place, and then explain that you feel that you are ready to return to your academics and excel again. If you discuss your situation exactly as you have in your letter, the admissions officers will understand.

Remember that it's not about making excuses or casting blame, but rather persuading the admissions officers to believe that one semester or one year of grades does not accurately reflect your abilities as a student. Then, tell your story and why you believe you're ready to overcome the difficulties you had.

If you are not able to get accepted by any of your preferred California state colleges, remember that community college is always a viable option. If you finish two years, and do reasonably well, you could transfer to a California State University without having to take the SAT or ACT. You could also look into some of the admissions programs offered by the Universities of California (UCs) including the Transfer Admissions Guarantees of UCs Davis, Irvine, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, or the similar Transfer Alliance Program of UCLA. Each offer either guaranteed admission or priority consideration if you transfer from a participating community college. Many other states have similar transfer programs as well.

Best of all, you'll save money (community colleges are way cheaper than universities) and in the end, it won't be any different than if you had gotten into your college of choice in the first place. Your diploma will say only the school you transferred to.

The most important thing is to stay calm and keep perspective. Just because you had one less-than-stellar year does not mean your opportunities are lost forever. I would recommend calling a few local community colleges to ask about their transfer programs. They will be able to make some recommendations for what you should look into initially.

Good luck!

http://acceptedtocollege.com/blog/