兒子申請大學的體會 (舊文)

Junior Summer
College application process is a very exciting, complicated, inspiring, painful, and joyful process for both students and their parents. This summer will be very important for junior students in high school. Here are things that they might want to consider to do in the summer:

Read one good book about how to write good college essay. Start to think about your own essay. If you want, I can send you things that I learned from my son college application process. I have summarized some strategies too.

Come up with a list of schools that you plan to apply.

Research information on college websites, learn programs that you are interested. You can also gain useful information like admission requirements and statistic numbers. The better you know about the school that you will apply, the easier you can make decisions about college visit and about your emphasis in your college admission essays.

Choosing Schools
Nowadays many kids apply for 10+ schools, which I think that it is not necessary. Plus if you get into many similar level schools, it will only make difficult for yourself and your parents to decide which school for you to choose. The reasonable number is about 6. Two reach schools, three possible school, one safety school. From our experience, campus interview and visit do help you to get the first hand feeling about your dream school. It may not boost your acceptance chance whole a lot, but it does help in many cases. If you plan to visit a school, you should call the admission office and make an arrangement for a campus interview and campus tour. If you have an interview with admission staff or alumni, you should send a postcard or send an email afterward to thank them and let them know your progress on your college application (I am an old fashion person, like thing written in ink better than electronically). Make sure to state what you are impressed with their school. If you can describe a particular program that you are interested, it is even better. All schools like kids who show strong interest in their schools because the yield rate is important for the school ranking.

Visiting Schools
When you visit school, you should also fill out the form at the admission offices. The forms usually ask you about GPA, all SATI/ACT or SAT II test scores, award and honors, and extracurricular activities. The best way to prepare all these information ahead is to draft a resume. You will find that it will be very helpful when you start to fill the application forms and other applications for scholarships from other private sources. Keep updating your resume. Make sure that your resume looks very professional. The layout, font, appearance are important too. When you go to an alumni interview, make sure that you give the interviewer your resume. He or she may interview more than one student. Your resume will help the interview to remember you when she or he writes a letter to the admission office. It will not hurt if you put a small and nice photo on your resume.

Senior Year
In the fall, you will start application process especially if you want to apply for early action. The process can be overwhelming because it will take a lot of effort to keep grades in all your classes (especially if you will take many challenging classes: IB and AP classes) and also keep up with your extracurricular activities. That’s why it is not wise to apply too many schools. You want to deliver excellent application packages to impress your selected schools, which requires you to concentrate on a reasonable number of schools and still to have time to enjoy your last year of high school.

There will be a lot of brochures, regular application forms, honor program applications, recommendation forms, and other packages. Organization is the key. When my son started his college application, we designated a box for college stuff. Each school had its own folder. We also created a file for essay. It listed all essay topic, requirement, and deadlines. You also need to keep track with recommendation letters. You need to give the teachers the forms at least 3 weeks before the deadline. You need to remember that they have heavy teaching load and they are doing your favor in their personal time. You also need to remember that they may write for several other students. You don’t want to add pressure on them by give them the forms at the last minute. Make sure to ask them if they can write a good and strong letter for you. You really don’t want a weak letter sent to your dream school. My son’s counselor is really great. She has seen the recommendation letters from various teachers. She knows which teacher is a good writer and also writes great recommendation letters. It is also important to write down which teacher writes for which school. You may need it if you get deferred and want to strengthen your application in regular admission. You may want to ask another teacher to write an additional recommendation letter. You need to know if you want to ask social science teacher or science or math teacher.