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College Admissions: Top Ways to Explore Majors and Careers           Monday, April 24, 2017 Cristiana Quinn, GoLocalProv College Admissions Expert As the end of the school year draws near, many families forget that summer is the perfect time for students to explore career options. Parents want to know that a six-figure college investment will result in their child being able to launch a career when they graduate. The trouble is that high schools rarely provide students with an in-depth opportunity to learn about different professions. And without that insight, few students are able to select the right college and major based on a long-term plan. Here are some suggestions to help students explore different fields. Career testing for teens Career testing has been around for decades. However, many adult-oriented tests ask a lot of questions based on real world experience that teens just don’t have.  This career test from the University of Mi...

3 ways high school juniors (and sophomores!) should be preparing for the college essay By  Stacey Brook, College Essay Advisors   12:45 pm EDT April 25, 2017 Yes, there is such a thing as writing your college essay too early. For over a decade, my students (and their parents) have heard me deliver this refrain, and it remains true as it ever was. At the sprightly age of 16 or 17, students are pulling from a limited set of life experiences for their college application essays; and every month of life lived offers new experiences and paths to maturity that could help them write more thoughtful and effective personal statements. Ideally, students should begin writing their essays at the tail end of their junior year or the summer before their senior year, but not before. That said, there is no such thing as preparing to write your essay too early. Just because you shouldn’t pen your personal missive in full before the end of junior year doesn’t mean you can’t start ge...

College Connection: How many times should a student take the SAT exam? Courier News and Home Tribune 11:01 a.m. ET April 13, 2017 0:00 0:00   MyCentralJersey.com: Your source for local... CLOSE Every day, we share news from communities around Central Jersey.  Wochit (Photo: ~File) STORY HIGHLIGHTS The SAT is marked on a curve – placing college bound students in competition with each other. Many colleges, popular with NJ students, expect SAT scores exceeding 1,200 points. By carefully preparing for the SAT, students can often increase their score by hundreds of points. Improved scores can have a positive impact on substantially reducing cost of a college education.  11 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN COMMENT EMAIL MORE By the time students reach high school, they are tired of taking standardized tests. But this is just the time when students need to be most diligent. Stan...

A former Ivy League admissions officer explains how students can stand out in a sea of excellent grades and test scores Nelson Ureña ,  Contributor   Apr. 15, 2017, 10:19 AM 22,659 FACEBOOK LINKEDIN TWITTER Nelson Ureña advises students to turn their dreams into passion projects that make an impact.   Nelson Ureña During my time in the undergraduate admissions office at Cornell — and even more so as a college application adviser — I've come across stellar academic students whose applications didn't get the type of results they felt their hard work merited. I often tell the story of an applicant to the atmospheric sciences program at Cornell whose application I remember reading. This particular student wrote his essay about his passion for understanding weather patterns. That is certainly a trait expected in an earth and atmospheric sciences student, but this student's fit with the program really came to life as he described the wea...

A College Application Guide for Gap Year Students By  KYLE DeNUCCIO APRIL 6, 2017 Continue reading the main story Share This Page Share Tweet Email More Save Photo Credit Andrew Watson/Getty Images​ Applying to college is onerous enough. Asking to defer enrollment for a year can be even more intimidating. Here’s how to navigate the gap-year process. When to Apply to College Delay freshman year, not your application. Students interested in a year off should still apply to college their senior year of high school, advises Michele Hernández, co-president of Top Tier Admissions and a former admissions officer at Dartmouth. It ensures that you’ll have access to your school’s resources and won’t be bogged down with applications and standardized testing during a year that may include travel abroad. “You’d be surprised how quickly your high school forgets you,” Dr. Hernández said. “It’s really hard to go back and ask for teacher recommendations and the...

How to get into an Ivy League school — by someone who got into 6 of them Published:  Apr 10, 2017 10:49 a.m. ET   16 Noam Shapiro was accepted to six Ivy League colleges — now he advises applicants to look beyond name-brand schools Noam Shapiro Noam Shapiro. By JILLIAN BERMAN REPORTER We’re in the midst of college admissions season, which means a flood of news coverage about how tough it is to get into the nation’s  most selective schools  and  profiles of students  who managed to  score spots  at the most prestigious colleges. Six years ago, Noam Shapiro was one of those students. An 18-year-old at the time, Shapiro’s ability to net acceptance letters from six out of the eight Ivy League colleges (he only applied to seven of them), in addition to other prestigious schools, like Duke, caught the eye of the  New York Daily News . It also helped to establish the trajectory for his post-col...