~ From Your Guidance and College 

Counseling Team

Class of 2015, Happy (almost) New Year = Time for FAFSA!

The holidays are here! The first of the month is approaching which can mean a few things, a new year to celebrate, making (and breaking) those New Year’s Resolutions, and FAFSA time!

The 2014-2015 FAFSA, Free Application for Federal Student Aid, becomes available on January 1^st, 2015. All seniors should be in the process of exploring, reviewing and completing his FAFSA. In order to begin your application in the New Year you must have an identification PIN - which you must apply for. You can apply today for this PIN (which we recommend as it can take up to 2 week to receive your PIN).

Each student and his parent need a PIN. Apply for a PIN at https://pin.ed.gov/PINWebApp/pinindex.jsp. Deadlines to complete the FAFAS vary by state, for New Jersey the deadline is June. However the sooner you complete the FAFSA, the sooner you can receive your maximum financial aid package from each college you have been accepted to.  

There are many helpful resources to support the student and his family through this process – two of my favorites being http://studentaid.ed.gov/ andhttp://www.fafsa.ed.gov/index.htm. Be sure when filing your FAFSA to use the .gov website and not an imposture!

Happy Holidays and Happy Filings!

Mrs. Sarah Morissette, M. Ed.

Junior Spotlight

Juniors, Your time is coming up as well - so let's take the spotlight off of the seniors for a moment and checkout the to-do list below. Are you on track?

December College Checklist for the class of 2016

By JEFFREY NEILL

With Thanksgiving behind us and our next vacation just weeks away, it is easy to let the college process slip our minds temporarily. However, there is plenty that can be done now, particularly planning. Taking advantage of these winter months can make an enormous difference come summer and next fall.

Be Committed to the Process

The college application process, from research through to submission, takes about 40 hours of work by the student. You do not need to wait until the summer or the fall of your senior year to do much of this work. Just 15 minutes per day — a study break, really — will have you through 40 hours by the middle of August, happy and satisfied with the knowledge that you are well-situated for the senior fall. Be diligent and committed, and the process will take care of itself.

Communicate With Your Parents

This is your process, but you should make sure that your parents are informed and contributing to your college search. Take time to talk with your parents about the ways in which you want to involve them. Have this conversation early and often, even weekly.

Set up a schedule for visits, even though you may not yet have a list. Follow up with your parents after meetings with your college or guidance counselor. Work to understand your family’s financial situation. Explore costs as well as financial aid and loans. These all are essential conversations; now is the time to set up a plan for how you will communicate.

Plan Your Summer Now

December is the ideal time to make plans for the summer so that you don’t scramble at the last minute to pull something together. Have you considered an academic program to pursue advanced work in a field of interest, to bolster or supplement shaky areas of your transcript, or to explore new disciplines not available during the regular academic year?

What about a job? Can you make and save money for college? Have you considered an internship? Community service or volunteer work? Travel? Are there sports or arts camps that would assist in your plans? Discuss with your parents and college or guidance counselor a plan for the summer. Be deliberate and intentional in your planning, and reserve some down time, too.

Research, Research, Research

Begin to construct that college list. There is no substitute for visiting a college for a tour and interview or information session, but there is much to be said about getting online and exploring. Individual college Web sites can be enormously helpful in providing a sense of what your experience could be. What courses could you take? What courses must you take? How difficult is it to double-major or to switch majors? If you are undecided on a major, how might the college’s curriculum assist you in selecting one? What drives social life? How many students live on campus? What are the application requirements? Are SAT Subject Tests required? Keep note of these items that you deem to be important. The more of this information you can obtain and process, the more informed your search will be. 

Make a Standardized Testing and Test Prep Plan

Many juniors will receive PSAT results shortly. Take time to review them (and/or any other results that you have, including actual SAT and ACT results or any state exams) and put together a plan for future tests.

You should also carefully consider if and how you will go about preparing for those tests. Results from previous tests should figure prominently into any plan. To prepare, some students will opt to take courses or to work with tutors. You may also self-study by using free resources from the College Board or ACT Web sites. Regardless, now is the time to plan.

Be Genuine and Explore

This time of year, you will hear much about “what colleges want to see.” Of course, the danger here is in pursuing any end exclusively because colleges want to see it.

Be genuine. If you are going to commit your time to anything, be sure that you are doing so because it is of significance to you. Ultimately, this is what colleges want to see, and they are exceptionally talented at sniffing out students who do things exclusively because they are trying to impress.

Keep in mind that we are all lumps of clay, still being formed. Remain committed to those things that are important to you, exploring positions and experiences of leadership, but do not close the door on new opportunities that might help you learn more about that unknowable enigma: you.

Happy Thanksgiving - Your College Counseling Team

What IS the perfect number of colleges to apply to?

hmmmm...

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/student-opinion-what-is-the-perfect-number-of-college-applications-to-send/?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A8%22%7D

Check Out this Great Read 

 Toning Down the Tweets Just in Case Colleges Pry

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/technology/college-applicants-sanitize-online-profiles-as-college-pry.html?ref=technology

Dear Seniors – Your November To-Do List

·      Regular registration for the December SAT and ACT are closed. See websites for late registration...

·      Have test scores sent by College Board or ACT to the colleges to which you are sending applications.

·      Don't let your grades slide. It's easy to be distracted from school work when working on applications. Senior slump can be disastrous for your admissions chances. Remembering that many colleges pay close attention to first semester, sometimes even quarter grades, keep your grades as high as you can.

·      Make sure you've submitted all components of your applications if you are applying to colleges with November deadlines for early decision or preferred application.

·      Put the final touches on your application essays, and get feedback on your essays from counselors and/or teachers.

·      Continue to research scholarships.

·      Keep track of all application components and deadlines: applications, test scores, letters of recommendation, and financial aid materials. An incomplete application will ruin your chances for admission.

·      Continue to keep close contact with your counselor’s – especially if questions or concerns arise.

~ Your College Counseling Team

In the world of social media, tweets, Facebook, Vine... it’s easy to forget that colleges often keep track of their schools’ social media mentions. Check out this interesting article, posted by the New York Times regarding your college applications...

Your College Counseling Team

They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets.

John-Patrick Thomas

By NATASHA SINGER

At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., admissions officers are still talking about the high school senior who attended a campus information session last year for prospective students. Throughout the presentation, she apparently posted disparaging comments on Twitter about her fellow attendees, repeatedly using a common expletive.

Perhaps she hadn’t realized that colleges keep track of their social media mentions. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The Importance of College Visits!

The Importance of College Visits!

Visiting colleges and universities is one of the most important parts of the college search process. Obviously academics, majors selection, internship opportunities, and reputation are important factors to selecting the right school, but the overall “feel” one gets at a college should be near the top of the list of deciding factors. With advances in technology, most colleges have elaborate websites where there are hundreds of pictures of the school and even virtual tours one can take. Although this is better than nothing, it does not have the same effect as actually walking the campus, watching students interact, sitting in on a class, talking with school faculty, and just listening to your gut reaction to the overall collegiate environment. Every school will be a little different, and the absolute best way to truly know if you will be happy at a certain college is by physically being there and soaking everything in. Also, although it is not always possible, try and visit the school while the college is in session full-time. For most colleges this will be from late August to early May. While visiting a college, you can only gain a true gut feeling and perspective of the school life when students are there and the campus is vibrant with the personality of its students.

The following list contains a few helpful hints and strategies when planning on visiting different colleges on your list:

--As mentioned earlier, try to visit college when school is in session, as that is when you will get the true feeling of the environment.

--Call the undergraduate admissions office at the college you will be visiting to set up a guided tour. This way you will have someone with extended knowledge of the college explain the school’s layout and will be able to answer any questions you may have about the school.

--Think of questions to ask while visiting the college! You will most likely be living at the college you choose for 4-5 years, so it makes sense to do your research on everything about the school and its surroundings. Questions ranging from activities available for students, housing availability, food services, the amount of students that stick around on the weekend, internship opportunities, service opportunities, intramurals, community surroundings, and much more should all be on your list to ask admission representatives at each school.

--If you are traveling far to visit a college, plan ahead and see if there are any other schools that you may be interested in and can stop at on the way. You won’t have that many opportunities to visit colleges, so make the most out of each trip!

--Try to schedule a time to sit in on a college class, and if you know what you want to major in, try to sit in on a class in that field.

--Again, if you know your major, try to schedule a meeting with a professor in that field. This will give you a better idea of what to expect in that major and overall field.

--Take pictures and notes! Hopefully, you will be visiting multiple college campuses. In order to avoid getting schools mixed up, snap some photos and jot down a few notes to keep everything fresh in your mind!

--Soak it all in and have fun! There is no getting around the fact that the college search process in an important part of your life, but most of you will only be doing this once in your life (unless you go to graduate school), so try to live in the moment and enjoy visiting some very beautiful and exciting college campuses, which very well could be your next home!

Your College Counseling Team!

Who's reading your essay, and what do they want?

1) Does anyone even read it? The answer is YES. Colleges that require an essay do so for a reason. If they weren't going to read it, they wouldn't bother asking for it.

2) The essay is only one part of the whole application, but it is the most personal part. Courses, grades and test scores are important but lack personality. School recommendations are written by other people. The essay is all about what you choose to convey to the admissions committee about yourself.

3) What do you have to say? Is the essay reflective and personal? Does it get at the heart of what you are trying to convey? A page packed with text doesn't necessarily mean you have more to say than someone of fewer words. Sometimes, less is more. One student might convey why they love music more convincingly in a short essay than the student who writes about it in a long but superficial piece. On the other hand, sometimes you do need more words to tell your story.

4) Does the voice in the essay sound genuine? The best college essays will have the voice of the person who wrote them—usually, a 17(ish)-year-old high school student who comes to life on paper through their words. An essay that has been overly-edited by the adults in your life will lose that voice. (Lesson: write it yourself.)

Adapted from Margit Dahl, Yale University

Dealing with the Stress of College Applications

Stressed about choosing the right college and getting in? You're not alone. Anyone who's been through this process knows how much stress and anxiety comes with it.

What stresses me most about college is the decision. I want to apply to so many schools-I'm really undecided.
--Senior
Monticello High School

This process is inherently stressful and you probably won't be able to avoid all of it, but here are a few tips to help you get through it as smoothly as possible:

·         Become a maniac for organization. It sounds like an overused clich�, but if you're organized about what you have to do, when you have to do it, and what you need to do to get it done, you're halfway to success.

·         Trust your gut. Advice from your parents. Suggestions from books. Your friends' opinions. The amount of information you absorb while choosing and applying to college is overwhelming and sometimes conflicting. Keep an open mind, listen to feedback, but remember to trust your own gut feelings and reactions to everything from where you should apply to what you write your essays about.

·         Be flexible. Rarely do things turn out exactly as you planned, and if you're unprepared for change you'll be more stressed than if you expect some of it from the start. Your first choice school may turn out not to have a great major in a field that's caught your interest halfway through the application process and you might need to find another number-one choice. Don't beat yourself up for being "wrong." Instead, give yourself credit for learning more about your interests.

·         Take breaks. Day after day of college stuff can get overbearing. Give yourself a break once in a while, do something you really enjoy and that has nothing to do with college, and air out your mind. You'll feel better and work more effectively afterwards.

·         Know when to stop. You should do your best on everything from researching schools to working on your essays, but there is such a thing as doing too much. If you're researching the hundredth school or working on your fiftieth draft of revisions, stop and think about whether you're going too far and whether what you have isn't good enough already.

Read more on FamilyEducation:http://school.familyeducation.com/college-prep/stress/39320.html#ixzz2j8lstWhu

Tips for Writing a Great College Essay

Tip 1. College essays are fourth in importance behind grades, test scores, and the rigor of completed coursework in many admissions office decisions (NACAC, 2012). Don't waste this powerful opportunity to share your voice and express who you really are to colleges. Great life stories make you jump off the page and into your match colleges.

Tip 2. Develop an overall strategic essay writing plan. College essays should work together to help you communicate key qualities and stories not available anywhere else in your application.

Tip 3. Read the prompts all the way through. Each prompt may have different questions or probes. Make sure you are prepared to answer all parts of the prompts. Some answers may be implied, but must be clearly evident to a reader.

Tip 4. Plan to share positive messages and powerful outcomes. You can start with life or family challenges. You can describe obstacles or failures you have overcome. You can reflect on your growth and development, including accomplishments and service. College admissions officers do not read minds, so tell them your powerful life stories and demonstrate the personal qualities you hope to bring to their campus communities.

Tip 6. Follow Dr. Joseph's Into, Through, and Beyond approach. Lead the reader INTO your story with a powerful beginning—a story, an experience. Take them THROUGH your story with the context and keys parts of your story. Make sure the reader understands your initiative, leadership, development, and continuity. End with the BEYOND message about how this story has affected who you are now and who you want to be in college and potentially after college.The beyond can be implied in many pieces that are so strong that

moralizing at the end is not necessary.

Tip 7. Use active writing: avoid passive sentences and incorporate power verbs. Show when possible; tell when summarizing.

Tip 8. Most importantly, make yourself come alive throughout this process. Write about yourself as passionately and powerfully as possible. Be proud of your life and accomplishments. Sell yourself!!!

Take from Communicating Your Story:

Writing Powerful College Application Essays

                                                    Rebecca Joseph

Bye-Bye Birdies: Sending The Kids Away to College

July 28, 2014, 1:06 pm

By Claire Potter

They grow up so fast if you let them

All over the United States, slowly but surely, families are preparing for the ritual of Sending the Kid to College. Some will be living at home and going to a local four-year or community college; other young people will be taking the big leap to living away from home for the first time.

By September, one of the biggest topics for discussion — and one of the biggest gripes — among many college faculty will be how emotionally, and practically, underprepared many of your kids are for their freshman year. Although I now teach the non-traditional, adult students who are becoming the majority of undergraduates, for years I welcomed fresh-faced 18 year olds whose academic preparation often far exceeded their ability to navigate school independently of their parents.

The major changes I observed over those two decades were: an increasing lack of emotional separation between parents and children (with an accompanying rise in students having difficulty making their own decisions); and an increasing tendency, on the part of first year students, to presume that college was more or less similar to high school in its expectations and practices.

These two things result in a third phenomenon which parents ought to know about: that many faculty see behavior in students (particularly absenteeism, lateness, disorganization and requests for special arrangements) as irresponsible, lazy, dishonest and immature, when in fact students are living, and making decisions, in ways that make complete sense to them and to their parents.

So without further ado, here are things you can do as a parent to make your kid a strong and independent college student.

Reduce casual contact while still being available for a good talk; offer less help and advice, but always be ready to give it when your child asks. If your kid is going away to college, let him go away. This means not texting and talking every day, or even every other day, or every other other day. The contemporary undergraduate is completely tethered to parents through smartphones. Half the time when a cell phone goes off in class, it is not a friend or lover making contact, but a parent. Students leave class to return calls to parents because, over time, they have been trained to do that. If they do not, their parents become anxious that “something has happened” and they keep texting or calling until the kid answers. Instead of being in touch three or four times a day while your frosh kid is selecting classes, let your kid know that you are available to talk things through but that you are basically excited to know more about the choices she ultimately makes when the process is done. You might even want to know your student’s class schedule so you don’t try to contact her while she is in class.

Never insist on speaking to a faculty member, administrator or dean unless you believe your child is in mortal danger. Mortal danger does not include: inexplicable course selection or a choice of major; a bad roommate situation; not being chosen as a starter on whatever team; telling faculty advisors and professors about past learning problems; letting the people in charge know that you and your husband are taking the opportunity of launching the kids to get a divorce (parents often separate when the kids leave, actually); or a grave illness in the family. I do not diminish these things as problems. They are problems, but they are up to your kid to deal with, perhaps with some support from you. Because of federal privacy laws, we are not permitted to speak to you about your child or his work, but many of you then pressure the kid to give permission. Please don’t do that: it is infantilizing. It is part of the transition to adulthood for young people to learn to navigate these difficulties themselves.

What counts as mortal danger? Seeing signs of suicidal impulses, a stalker, florid psychosis, eating disorders and anything — anything– that has to do with guns, bombs or knives.

Have a conversation with your kid about the differences between high school and college as academic environments. This may require you learning new language yourself, and familiarizing yourself with contemporary college practices. For example:

§  We don’t assign “homework” in college. We assign “work.” It has an entirely different function than most high school homework, and we do not repeat that work in class. We usually spend class time on something else, so not preparing assigned work is a huge mistake on the part of the student.

§  A practice that seems to be common in high school (especially in the top tracks) of allowing students to rewrite work, retake tests or hand in extra credit for a higher grade does not exist at the college level, unless a course is explicitly designed that way. There are no do-overs in college, except at the professor’s discretion. High school students also seem to have their deadlines extended ad infinitum (at least the kids I have known have had this experience) and this simply will not happen in college without some kind of penalty attached.

§  Sending a paper home to parents for a final edit and handing it in as the student’s own work is usually a violation of college honor codes, unless the student acknowledges that help. However, let me emphasize my larger point: even if you have been doing your kid’s homework helping your kid with homework since the first grade, students are supposed to manage their own work and complete their own assignments in college, unsupervised by their parents or anybody else. If they need help, that is what professors, TA’s, writing and math workshops are for.

§  If you are on a team, unless it is an NCAA Division I team with a squad of tutors, students are not automatically excused from class, nor do they have tests and papers rescheduled, to accommodate practice and competition. Any student-athlete needs to find out what the regulations are for such conflicts and make the practice and competition schedule accommodate her academics, not the reverse. This often requires higher-level planning skills, something to work on this summer whether your kid is an athlete or not.

§  High school teachers are geared to helping students perform well. In contrast, college faculty have a very defined sense of what they are, and are not, responsible for, and it varies from professor to professor. Hence, the most frequent complaint I hear from colleagues is that students who have been given a syllabus never read it or refer to it to answer their own questions. Hence, they are perpetually blindsided by the requirements, readings and deadlines that are outlined in the syllabus, and they reveal this shortcoming when they ask questions that have already been answered. Some faculty will have the habit of reminding students about assignments that are due; others do not, and that doesn’t make them bad teachers. READ THE SYLLABUS. OFTEN.

§  Staying up all night to write papers, beginning your study for a test at the last minute, doing your class prep in another class, and reading Cliff’s Notes instead of the book may have worked in high school: it will produce mediocre to inferior results in college. One reason I think many students complain when they receive bad grades is that they are doing exactly what they have always done. In addition, they often fail to understand that the quality of their work is expected to rise in college, not remain the same.

§  Being sick is not always a good excuse, and the professor is not responsible for helping a student catch up after a common cold. In fact, one reason for a student to be caught up in her work for classes, is that she might get sick. Temporarily falling behind is one thing: having deferred deadlines on top of deferred deadlines is a recipe for disaster.

But here is something you can do as a parent in the next two weeks: get your kid set up on Evernote or Zotero, so that when she has syllabi in hand she can put all of her work and study obligations into a management system that will send alerts a few days before things are due, keep assignments straight, and allow her to keep track of class notes, office hours and fun things that she wants to participate in. These systems will recognize conflicts as well (say, between an away game and a midterm.)

Address alcohol and drug use concretely, and not as a moral, legal or family discipline issue. Most colleges have regulations about drinking and drugs that students flout regularly, and very few of them are actually disciplined for it. And yet sometimes they are. I have heard, through my grapevines, of recent incidents in which students were suspended, expelled or heavily fined for drinking, for rowdy behavior and fighting while drinking, for destroying college property and for dealing drugs. It can happen, and your kid should know that breaking the rules may have very serious consequences. College feels like, and is, a highly unsupervised space. That can have the effect of students being increasingly incautious, and excessive, about normal kid behaviors that are against the law. I suspect that, if higher ed begins to grapple with questions of sexual violence on campus, universities will not blame their own policies: they will crack down on intoxication and drug possession, make the penalties harsher, and develop a greater police presence on campus. It is worth your while to have a conversation with your kid about this before, not after, something happens.

Furthermore, students often do poorly in school because they drink too much, sleep too little, and are hungover two or three days a week. It is very rare, in my experience, that a student links poor  achievement to excessive partying.

Urge cleanliness: make sure your kid knows how to do laundry, and how to clean her environment properly. Student houses and dormitories at Zenith that I was exposed to were, almost uniformly, pigsties, and I doubt that Zenith is exceptional. Here’s the news: no one cleans or inspects your kid’s room. No one reminds him to do his laundry. Maybe, if you are lucky, the college cleans the halls and bathroom, but en suite style living with little kitchenettes and private bathrooms have probably eliminated that on many campuses.  One of the greatest causes of friction between first-year roommates is cleanliness, BO and other personal hygiene issues, problems that then escalate during crunch times in the semester.

Be respectful of your student’s calendar. Having just suggested that you stay out of your student’s biz, I am going to make a contradictory suggestion: create a family Google Calendar that allows your student to enter all of his real obligations. If you need to buy a plane ticket, you will know when final exams are scheduled; if you want to drop by for dinner on the way to somewhere else, you will know before you ask whether it is a good time. More important: don’t shave days out of your student’s semester for family events unless they are unavoidable. Unavoidable family obligations include: funerals, deathbed visits, and emergency surgery that could result in death. You will note that death is the theme here. Avoidable family obligations include: weddings, vacations, airline fare sales, 50th anniversary parties, anyone’s birthday, grandma’s 85th birthday in Miami, family reunions, childbirth, minor hospitalizations and surgeries.

Here’s the news: your kids will more or less do what you ask them to do, they will ask their professors to accommodate them, and their professors will stick to their guns about deadlines and attendance. They will also think your kid does not have her priorities straight, when in fact, it is you who have misplaced priorities. You need to know that professors are neither required to accommodate the list of avoidable events, nor is there any reason for them to. Don’t schedule things that force students to choose between family and school, and when those choices are taken out of your hand, do not pressure your student to participate in non-essential family events. Faculty miss all of these things in their own families. Why? Because they are meeting an obligation to your children to be in class when they said they would be.

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2014/07/bye-bye-birdies-sending-the-kids-away-to-college/