Off to College: Student-Parent Agreements

I am now a weekly columnist for www.GoLocalPDX.com. In my first column I talk about Student-Parent Agreements. It covers the topics of communication, money, grades, health and coming home for the holidays and summer. Most importantly, it explains why parents with college students need a signed FERPA Release, HIPPA Authorization Form, and Advance Care Directive for Health Care. Read the full story here.

How to Request and Get Fabulous Recommendation Letters

This article first appeared in GoLocalPDX.com on September 10, 2014.

Yikes! Colleges will see a letter about you that you didn’t get to see. You won’t know what it says and you have to trust the writer to help you put your best self forward. How can you increase the odds that your recommender will write a detail-rich letter that reinforces the characteristics you want colleges to know about you. 

Follow this step-by-step process

Many colleges and scholarships require or allow letters of recommendation. They help the application reader paint a mental picture of you beyond your grades and test scores. Since they are an important component of the college application process, help your recommenders write the best possible letter by making it easy for them.

You may request up to five letters. One will definitely be from your high school counselor. Two will be from academic subject teachers. Ideally one academic letter will come from a humanities teacher (English or social studies) and one from a math or science teacher.

These need to be teachers from high school, and preferably they will have had you in multiple classes. You may additionally request letters from two outside recommenders such as your art, drama, or Spanish teacher, a sports coach, your boss at work, a mentor under whom you did research, your Scoutmaster, your church/synagogue youth group leader or a college professor from whom you took a class.

Each person should know you well and have specific examples/stories they can tell about you.

Only school counselors are required as part of their job description to write you a letter. Everyone else is doing you a favor.

Step 1:

Decide whom to ask. A class in which you got an A but did not have much teacher interaction might not be as strong a choice as a class in which you struggled, went for before or after-school tutoring, and really got to know the teacher.

Remember, you are looking for someone who can tell detailed stories about you. Verbally ask the person if he/she feels comfortable writing a letter for you. If the answer is no, do not press. This is an indication that the person doesn't feel they have enough to say and you will be better off with an alternate choice. If the person does say yes, you will give him/her your prepared letter.

Step 2:

Compose a letter to each teacher and outside recommender that contains the following components:

• A request for a college admission letter of recommendation
• Three extremely specific examples that you remember from your time in that teacher's classes, or your time with that adult. For example, you might describe the carton you built for your physics egg drop, the Lincoln/Douglas debate in which you came in costume and argued against slavery, or the class talk you gave explaining that some infinities were larger than others. If you are sports team captain you could remind the coach about the creative team warm-ups you led or the time you had a heart-to-heart with a team member who was rude to a competitor in the locker room.
• Tell the recommender what characteristics you are hoping to highlight in your essays. These are the three words or phrases you landed on such as "creative problem-solver, analytical and reliable."
• Find out if your recommendations are sent electronically by your school counselor or if they have to be snail-mailed. If they are going via the US Postal Service provide a list of schools, due dates, address labels and stamps.
• Ask the person to save the completed letter electronically in case you have additional places (such as scholarship opportunities) that come up later.
• Thank the person for his/her time and effort.

Step 3:

Without being obnoxious or pushy, check in with your recommenders at least two weeks before the earliest due date to be sure your letters will be sent on time.

University of Cambridge--colleges versus departments

I’m currently a graduate student at the University of Cambridge. Recently, my mother Jodi came to visit me, and she wanted to tour the school and take pictures. She asked me the classic question: ‘Where is the University?’ It’s not that simple. Buildings belonging to the University of Cambridge are scattered throughout the town of Cambridge, and while some belong to a University-wide network of infrastructure, many are the property of individual colleges. This all can be rather confusing, so my mom asked me to explain the university/colleges/departments system.

Pembroke, one of the 'old colleges'

Every student at the University of Cambridge belongs to a residential college. The University includes 31 colleges. 16 are the so-called ‘old colleges’ (founded before 1596), and the remaining 15 are ‘new colleges’ (founded after 1800). (My college is Corpus Christi; the most famous are King’s, Trinity, and St. John’s. These are all ‘old colleges.’) Your college provides housing, a dining hall, and lots of social events. They can also offer funding for travel or lessons, and many colleges have their own scholarships to help fund students’ studies. However, your college does not determine your subject. Because in some subjects, the college provides tutors for first- and second-year undergrads, a very few subjects are not offered by some colleges. However, you can study most any subject at most any college. What matters more than subject in choosing a college are history, culture, reputation, and funding. Some colleges are richer and more prestigious than others, and therefore have more money to finance student endeavors. These colleges tend to be more competitive than the less wealthy colleges. Students applying to the University indicate first- and second-choice colleges, but it is possible to get into the University but not one of the colleges you chose. In that case, you are ‘pooled’ and assigned to a college that needs more incoming students that year. A few colleges have special restrictions: three are all-female, and six are restricted to post-graduates or mature (i.e., older) students.

Corpus Christi, my college

Students tend to have a lot of pride in their college, and colleges compete against each other in all the usual sports (above all, rowing). Some colleges also have counterparts at Oxford (for instance, there’s a Corpus Christi Oxford as well as a Corpus Christi Cambridge), and annual ‘swaps’ including friendly competitions in many events are common. At the University level, the Cambridge colleges are united by a sense of superiority to Oxford, with one exception: a popular saying goes, ‘I’d rather be at Oxford than St. John’s.’ (St. John’s College has a reputation for snobbish elitism and has thereby earned the dubious honor of being Cambridge’s most-hated college.)

A sign in front of the Sidgwick site, which houses my academic department

Almost entirely separate from your college is your academic department. This is where you attend lectures and other events related to the subject you study. The departments are dispersed around Cambridge in ‘sites’—the Sidgwick site, for instance, includes English, languages, history, theology, philosophy, law and criminology. Some sites are quite far from the center of town, so colleges near those sites often contain a high proportion of people studying those subjects. Physicists, for instance, are unusually common at Churchill College, which is relatively close to the West Cambridge site (the far-from-everything-else home of the physics department).

I think that pretty much explains the university/college/department system. It’s far from the most confusing thing about Cambridge (that would probably be the slang), but it’s definitely an important structural aspect of the University to understand if you’re considering applying.

Academic Rigor and Choosing Classes

March and April are the months when high school students are most commonly asked to select their courses for the next year.

When a college evaluates your application the admissions officers read your school profile first. This document (which is provided by your school counselor) gives them context so they understand the educational philosophy of your school and what options are available to you. Admissions officers want to know the rigor of your coursework—did you take the most challenging courses available at your school in your areas of interest? You are never judged poorly for not taking something that wasn’t offered; for example, if your school does not offer AP or IB classes, the college won’t hold it against you for not taking them outside of high school. A selective college does expect you take advantage of what is offered at your high school and wants you to push your intellectual boundaries all the way through the end of your senior year.

My advice continues to be that you should not make choices just to “impress” a college. Instead, you should take the most advanced courses possible in the subjects you love. Are you crazy about languages? If you have mastered both the Spanish and French offered at your high school then sign up for Arabic or Russian at the local community or state college. Have you finished the highest level of math your school offers? Then challenge yourself with a college math class at a local school or online. Pursue your passions, and don’t get caught in the trap of taking advanced classes you don’t care about.

Explaining Research and Internships on Your College Application

I have spent this month reading applications for a highly selective college, and many students have done research at a university or internships with a company. That’s terrific and impressive!

Unfortunately, these great experiences are often poorly explained in the application.

 I want to know what you did and what your role was. For example, I might see an entry that says “Intern, Dr. Ko’s neuroscience lab at UCLA”. I am interested, but I don’t know how to consider this without more information. Is Dr Ko your uncle? Does he have 20 high school interns or are you the only one amidst seven undergrads and three grad students? Did you find this internship on your own or was it an advertised opportunity and you competed for a spot through an application and interview process? What is Dr. Ko’s lab researching? (Sure, I can look that up on the internet, but if I only have 20-30 minutes to spend on your application do you want me to use some of my time on internet research?) What was your specific task? Did you review hundreds of journal articles and decide which ones his research group actually needs to read? Did you code recorded life narratives that were compared with MRI brain activity? Did you learn to use some specialized equipment or software?

I realize that there are limited characters allowed in the activities list. Use the “additional information” space to give me a few sentences that help me understand how you spent your research/internship time. Leaving the reader confused or wondering doesn’t work in your favor.

College 3 by 5: Three Things about Five Colleges

International Relations Programs

Compiled by Emily Standish

As the world becomes smaller and smaller, with immediate internet access to global culture and political developments, teenagers are keenly aware of interconnected world events. The number of colleges and universities that have majors in International Relations continues to grow. Programs in International Relations are multidisciplinary curricula that encompass history, economics, and political science combined with languages, anthropology, geography, law, and human rights. Here are five colleges with well-respected majors in International Relations:

American University, Washington, DC, www.american.edu

·         AU students have the opportunity to choose internships from forty countries and 900 private, nonprofit or governmental institutions

·         The Global Scholars Program is an accelerated program within the School of International Service that awards the BA degree in three years and the MA degree during the fourth year at AU

·         By the numbers: 44% acceptance rate, ACT mid-range: 26-30, 37% of students receive merit aid

Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, www.bucknell.edu .

·         Nearly all International Relations majors study abroad in their area of concentration and most IR majors become fluent in at least one foreign language

·         Students can choose to live in Residential Colleges such as Global College, Languages and Cultures College, Social Justice College, Humanities College, and more

·         By the numbers: 27% acceptance rate, ACT mid-range 27-31, 10% of students receive merit aid

Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, www.claremontmckenna.edu

·         Beyond required courses in government and economics, CMC students may take elective courses within a thematic or geographic focus.

·         Summer internship opportunities abound, at world-wide locations such as the United Nations, The Carter Center, Doctors Without Borders, and the CIA

·         By the numbers: 14% acceptance rate, ACT mid-range 30-33, 7% of students receive merit aid

George Washington University, Washington, DC, www.gwu.edu

·         At the Elliot School of International Affairs at GW, students begin with a core curriculum in the humanities, social sciences, sciences and foreign languages, then focus on an internationally oriented major

·         The summer seminar “US Foreign Policy in a Global Era” allows undergraduates to participate in discussions with graduate students and professionals from around the world

·         By the numbers: 33% acceptance rate, ACT mid-range 27-31, 43% of students receive merit aid

Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, www.macalester.edu

·         Macalester offers many majors with an international focus, including Human Rights and Humanitarianism, International Development, International Studies, and Community and Global Health

·         Macalester’s Model United Nations delegation routinely wins awards at National MUN

·         By the numbers: 35% acceptance rate, ACT mid-range 28-32, 10% of students receive merit aid

There are dozens of other colleges and universities in the US with strong undergraduate programs in International Relations. Check out Earlham College (IN), Davidson College (NC), Dickinson College (PA), Georgetown University (DC), Johns Hopkins University (MD), Lewis & Clark College, and Tufts University (MA), or search “international relations” at www.collegenavigator.gov.

The Supreme Court Ruling (or Non-Ruling) on Race and Admissions

Since the decision by the Supreme Court a week ago to remand the case of Fisher vs University of Texas at Austin back to the Fifth Circuit Court, many of us involved in college admissions have been trying to figure out what that means and how it will effect the students we work with.

Here, in a New Yorker article by Louis Menand, is the best analysis I have read. It's really worth reading the whole article, but if you won't, here's my favorite part:

"People often talk about affirmative action as strictly a benefit to the minority student. But it is equally a benefit to the majority student. It puts that student in intellectual contact with people who come to college with very different experiences and viewpoints and expectations from life. Dealing with that contact is one of the ways people learn how to think. Discussing “Huckleberry Finn” in an all-white or all-non-white classroom is completely different from discussing it in a mixed-race classroom. So is discussing race-conscious admissions policies."