When Siemens AG bought Westinghouse Electric Corporation’s power generation unit in 1997, Siemens lost out on the bidding war for its namesake science competition, the prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search. It was not part of the sale. The winner of that bidding war for the elite science competition was Intel …
What are your summer plans for college admission success? No more pencils, no more books. School’s out for summer at most high schools across America. And if it’s not, it will be soon. But what will you, a rising high school sophomore, junior, or senior, be doing to stand out …
The summer months are when we work with rising high school seniors on their college applications. Of course, it’s not all these rising high school seniors are doing over the summer — they’re also involved in compelling summer activities, activities that were likely vastly different from the activities they were involved …
The Regeneron Science Talent Search. We like the sound of it. A year ago, you may remember how we lamented the end of Intel’s sponsorship of the world’s most prestigious science competition for high schoolers — the Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS). It was a sad day for high school science …
Do community service in foreign countries to make the world better. But don’t do it in the hope that it’ll improve your chances of getting into a highly selective college. Because that’s rather shortsighted. Indeed a bunch of folks have written in with letters to “The New York Times” in …
Frank Bruni, the always opinionated editorialist for “The New York Times” (hey, he’s paid to be opinionated…we back it!) has a piece out entitled “To Get to Harvard, Go to Haiti?” that we figured we’d share with the readers of our college admissions blog. We’ve written extensively about Frank Bruni’s …
Work experience in college admissions can be a really good thing! It really can and it’s rather ridiculous that we have to say this. It’s quite rare these days when we encounter high school students who hold part-time jobs. Of course, they can’t hold full-time jobs (except over the summer …
A number of folks have been writing in to us of late inquiring about summer programs. Maybe they’re thinking of sending their children to the Stanford Summer Enrichment Program. Or a program like Stanford’s. But don’t these folks read our blog? Isn’t it on their computer next to their “New …
Henry David Thoreau taught his readers to “simplify, simplify.” We happen to agree. So many students when applying to highly selective college admissions overly complicate their stories. They overly complicate their experiences, their accomplishments, their interests. They don’t heed the advice of the great transcendental American philosopher. And that’s their mistake. …
We came across a radio segment on “Public Radio International” that we figured we’d share with our readers. The segment focuses on college summer programs. For those of you who read our blog regularly, you know where we stand on the topic of fancy summer programs. We think they’re a …
