ATTENTION SENIORS - MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

University Cap & Gown will be in the upper cafeteria on Thursday, February 2nd during all four lunches and in the main gym on Friday, February 3rd during Advisory to measure seniors for their graduation gown and to take orders for seniors to purchase their cap, gown and tassel.  Caps are $5, gowns are $11, and tassels are $2.00 ($18.00 total for all three.)  Please make checks payable to UNIVERSITY CAP & GOWN.

Information Session about Canadian Universities

A record number of American students have submitted applications and inquiries to Canadian Universities this fall semester.  Schools in Canada offer a high quality education while being very affordable. Would you like to know more?

You and your students are invited to join representatives from four Canadian universities for a free information session to learn more about the benefits of studying in Canada, the admissions process, funding opportunities, and what your students can expect if they choose to #LookNorth for their post-secondary education. We are coming to a location near you and we'd enjoy sharing what can be an outstanding opportunity for your students with you.

When: Tuesday 17 January 2017

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST

Where: Canadian Consulate - 3 Copley Place, Suite 400, Boston, MA 02116

Maverick Technical Institute Information Session

Maverick Technical Institute will be having an Information Session Saturday January 14th, 2017 at 10am.

We are located at 589 West Hollis Street ( 2nd Floor), Nashua, NH 03062.

Come and learn what it takes to earn a certificate as a Low Voltage Technician!

If you are unable to make this session, please contact us at 603-577-1730 or [ mailto:info@mti.school ]info@mti.school to set up a tour

Summer Program and College Visit Opportunities

 College Opportunities


Anderson University - Anderson, SC + South Carolina School of the Arts
Scholarship Auditions - schoolofthearts.com
First Glance Events
Find more information at www.andersonuniversity.edu/first-glance or call 800-542-3594

Merrimack Special Admissions Events for Juniors
February 20-24 - Winter Warrior Days
April 17-21 - Junior Discovery Days
For more information and to register go to merrimack.edu/visit

Ongoing List of Open Houses for Mid-Atlantic States:
 
New Jersey College Open Houses link:
   http://njsca.org/college-open-houses

Pennsylvania College Open Houses link:
     http://njsca.org/pa-open-houses

Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New York and Virginia College Open Houses link:
     http://njsca.org/de-dc-md-ny-va-open-houses

Summer Programs

Summer Discovery Internships
Many different programs offered in different disciplines at colleges/universities across the country.
Go to www.summerdiscovery.com, www.discoveryinternships.com or www.jrdiscovery.com for up-to-date program details, dates, and tuition.
Find even more information on Naviance - deadlines are April 1, 2017

Discover Wall Street 101 at Bentley University
Session 1: June 26-30
Session 2: July 10-14
Session 3: July 24-28
Registration is open from February 15-May 15
To apply, please visit bentley.edu/wallstreet101

Future Leader Camp at Norwich University
www.norwich.edu/admissions/summerprograms

Maryland Institute College of Art Pre-College 2017
Find more information at www.mica.edu/precollege

Stevens Institute of Technology
Pre-College Programs - Intro to Coding, Cybersecurity, Business Explorer, and many more!
For more information call 201.216.3683 or visit stevents.edu/summer

Class of 2018 Information

Here are some tips and tricks to help you begin the college research and admissions process, as well as information about upcoming events:

Communication: 

BLOG:

REMIND: Text @wa18 to 81010

NAVIANCE: Please edit profiles to ensure that email addresses for both parents and students are accurate.

February 3, 2017 - Junior Advisory

• Presentation regarding the college research and admissions process

February 13, 2017 - Junior Parent Night

• Presentation regarding the college research and admissions process

After February vacation - we begin to meet with students and/or their parents/guardians re: their individual post secondary plans. There will be specific tasks to complete in Naviance before we arrange this meeting.

College Visits

• Really important to visit schools – some smaller schools track interest based on visits and communication

• February and April vacations are IDEAL times because students are on campus
• Register for official tours and information sessions through Undergraduate Admissions (found on individual college websites)
  
  

SAT: March/May/June

• College entrance exam
• Register using www.collegeboard.org
• Most common dates for Juniors: March, May, June - Deadline to register for March SAT is February 10 (before Jr Parent Night/Jr Advisory)
• Scored 200 – 800
• Sections include: Math and Evidence Based Reading and Writing (formerly Critical Reading) – optional Writing section
• Prepare using PSAT results (available online on 12/12) and practice questions on www.collegeboard.org
• Free practice using Khan Academy through the College Board website
  
  

ACT: April/June

• College entrance exam
• Register at www.actstudent.org
• Most common dates for Juniors: April and June
• Comparable test to the SAT (both are accepted by all colleges)
• Scored 1 – 36: each section scored individually, then there is also a composite score (average of all sections)
• Sections: Reading, Math, Science, English, Writing (optional)
  
  

SAT Subject Tests: March/May/June

• These are specific tests based on subjects that you have taken
• See www.collegeboard.org for information on specific tests including sample questions
• Offered on same dates as SAT: you CANNOT take both SAT Reasoning Test and the Subject Tests on the same test date
• You can take at most THREE (3) subject tests on one test date
• Look at requirements of colleges - Only highly selective colleges require these tests – check their websites prior to registering.  Discuss with your counselor at Junior Meeting.
• Scored 200 – 800
  
  

Naviance - start investigating colleges

• See your counselor if you need to update email address or reset password
• Career Inventories (Do What You Are and Career Interest Profiler)
• College Search
• Add schools to Colleges I am Thinking About

Job Shadow Day – May 16, 2017 (deadline mid-March)

 Goals:

• Gain information about possible future career interests
• Observe the daily routine of their site mentor
• Observe the system of the mentor’s company or business
• Gain insight on the academic, technical, and personal skills required by a particular occupation
• Gain an understanding of the connection between school and work
• Gain information to assist students in goal setting and education planning.

You are responsible for contacting a potential job shadow site and arranging your job shadow experience. There may be family events coming up that will give you a chance to network!

Summer: Meaningful plans (summer job, internship, etc)

• Work on drafts of college essays
• Continue college visits
• Prepare for the SAT in the fall (if necessary)
  
  

**If you qualify for free or reduced lunch, please see your counselor about getting fee waivers for SAT, AP, ACT and college applications

**If you have an IEP or 504 plan, please see your counselor about SAT/ACT accommodations soon. There is a process to apply for accommodations that can take several weeks.

Boston University Winter Visit Day

We will be hosting a special Winter Visit Day for sophomores and juniors and their families to learn more about Boston University.

This event will include an in-depth information session, covering everything from student life to study abroad opportunities to what makes an application competitive for admission. Guests will also have the opportunity to tour BU's residential community and visit our schools and colleges to learn about specific academic programs. Lunch will be provided in one of our dining halls.

Winter Visit Day: Friday, February 24, 2017
Boston University George Sherman Union
775 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts
Registration: 8:30 a.m.
Program: 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

For more information about Winter Visit Day, please visit our website: http://www.bu.edu/admissions/visit-us/winter-visit-day/

Please note that all students who plan to attend should RSVP on our website.

The Plague of ‘Early Decision’

Frank Bruni DEC. 21, 2016

As the moment of judgment neared, they barely slept, convinced that their very futures were on the line. Dread consumed them. Panic overwhelmed them.

I don’t mean Americans awaiting the Electoral College’s validation of Donald Trump.

I mean students (and their parents) awaiting actual colleges’ verdicts on early-decision and early-action applications.

One friend of mine canceled our dinner plan because he hadn’t realized that it fell around the time when his daughter expected word from her top Ivy League choice. He and his wife couldn’t leave her home alone in such a tremulous state, at such a terrifying juncture.

Another friend’s daughter, also vying to get into a highly selective school, repeatedly burst into tears as she berated herself for a 3.9 grade point average instead of a 4.0. What if the difference spelled her doom?

As I’ve written before, the college admissions process has become a dignity-ravaging frenzy, illustrated by the plot of a recent episode of the TV drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” It asked whether a man assuming a fake identity to seduce women could be prosecuted for rape.

What identity do you suppose he chose as the most potent and irresistible? Not a Hollywood director who could make the women stars. Not a Wall Street titan who could drape them in jewels. He impersonated a dean of admissions who could give their kids slots at an elite university. And one after another, these helicopter moms whirled into the boudoir.

Early decision and early action, which are offered by some 450 colleges, are a special and especially disturbing part of the frenzy. They refer to a process by which, broadly speaking, a student applies in November to just one, most-desired school, which answers in December. If the school practices early decision and says yes, the student is obliged to go. Early action isn’t binding.

At least since 2001, when The Atlantic published a definitive article by James Fallows titled “The Early-Decision Racket,” there’s been fervent discussion of the downsides of the process. But it’s more prevalent than ever, with some selective schools using it to fill upward of 40 percent of their incoming freshman class.

The biggest problem by far: It significantly disadvantages students from low-income and middle-income families, who are already underrepresented at such schools. There’s plenty of evidence that applying early improves odds of admission and that the students who do so — largely to gain a competitive edge — come disproportionately from privileged backgrounds with parents and counselors who know how to game the system and can assemble the necessary test scores and references by the November deadline.

These students also aren’t concerned about weighing disparate financial-aid offers from different schools and can commit themselves to one through early decision. Less privileged students need to shop around, so early decision doesn’t really work for them.

“That’s just unfair in a profound way,” said Harold Levy, the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which has pushed to make elite colleges more socioeconomically diverse.

Early decision moves the admissions process forward on the calendar, so that high school students start obsessing sooner. They press themselves to single out a college at the start of senior year, when they may not understand themselves as well as they will toward the end of it.

“How many 17-year-olds know what they really want to do in life?” said Micheal McKinnon, an independent educational consultant in the Chicago area. The more time they have to figure it out, the better.

He added that students who win early admission often feel that “they can slack off for the rest of senior year,” rendering the last semester pointless.

But what worries me more is how the early-application process intensifies much of what’s perverse about college admissions today: the anxiety-fueling, disappointment-seeding sense that one school above all others glimmers in the distance as the perfect prize; the assessment of the most exclusive environments as, ipso facto, the superior ones.

That’s hooey, but it’s stubborn hooey, as the early-application vogue demonstrates. Marla Schay, the head of guidance at Weston High School, in an affluent suburb outside Boston, told me that while 60 percent of the seniors there submitted early applications seven years ago, it’s above 86 percent now.

And Williams College just admitted nearly 47 percent of next fall’s freshmen through early decision. That benefits the college, which has locked in much of the Class of 2021. Maybe it also benefits the students who were admitted and can now calm down, though I wonder how many felt rushed to identify Williams (or Duke or Vanderbilt or Colgate) as their truest love.

I wonder, too, how many came to regard higher education as one big board game that’s about attaining prestige rather than acquiring knowledge.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/frankbruni (@FrankBruni) and join me on Facebook.

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