It’s senior year, and you haven’t gotten started on your applications. You start to panic, thinking to yourself, “Oh no, oh man, how am I going to get all this work done?? I haven’t even started on my essays??!! I am going to go insane. I am going to become the teenage Joker.” Ok first of all, it’s going to be okay. Calm down. You’re not going to become the teenage Joker, because you’re here and we’re going to help.
Seniors: How to Build your College List
How to Balance Fun and Function the Summer Before Your Senior Year
Summers are for relaxing, right? That’s what just about every movie or book tells us. Summers are when young people get to relax, let loose, and forget about the stresses that follow them around the other nine months of the year. The problem is, this isn’t really the case anymore. As colleges have become more selective, what they expect of applicants has grown. Nine months isn’t enough time to squeeze it all it, so summer break has become less about letting loose and more about getting something to throw on your resume.
A Guide to Planning Summer 2021 for Rising Seniors
2020 has been no normal year. And while we’re all ready to be done with it, it’s proving challenging to plan a different future. A lot of kids might be wondering what their options are for summer 2021. We always encourage students to plan well in advance, to get a leg up on competitive summer programs, and secure good jobs and internships. Our advice for summer 2021 is as unusual as the year itself: while we do recommend getting a head start (more on that below) you’ve got to be a little flexible, too.
Senior Year of High School Advice
Senior year is go-time. It really is the final stretch in the college application process. Hopefully you’ve been ahead of the curve and have been pacing out all of the studying, exam-taking, application-prepping, and resume-building. (If you haven’t, this one might hurt a little.) The most important part about senior year—particularly first-semester—is to get everything done early and make sure it’s done well. You’re in the home stretch. We promise, there will be time to relax second semester, but for now, keep up the effort.
Senior Year of High School: Fall Checklist
The trees are yellow. Leaves are falling. Temperatures are dropping. Winter is coming…
Okay, okay, depending on where you live, none of this may be true––and even if this is supposed to be true, it might not actually be (shout out to the hottest October 1st on record in NYC!). Our general point remains, however: it’s October, ED/EA deadlines are approaching rapidly, and even the once-far off regular decision January deadlines which seem like they’ll never come are coming up, too.
Summer Checklist for Rising Seniors
It’s basically August, which means that summer is essentially over. Yikes! Sorry! College application deadlines are approaching whether or not you like it, so it’s in your best interest to start preparing now. You probably have more free time during the summer anyway, so we suggest trying to check as many boxes below as possible before the first day of your senior year.
2018 Junior (Rising Senior) Parent Checklist
If you’re the parent of a rising senior who is just finishing up their junior year, odds are that you’re starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the deadlines, to-dos, and applications that will surely be coming your kid’s way. Stress is undoubtedly transferable, and any stress that you or your kid might be feeling will inevitably make its way to your family and your home. We want to help prevent that as much as we possibly can by helping you stay organized.
A Letter to a Student Who Just Got Into College
Dear High School Senior,
CONGRATULATIONS! You recently got into college or will get into college soon, and that is totally awesome. You are probably feeling elated, but it’s also ok to be scared of what’s to come and confused about what to do next. All of high school can feel like a build-up to this moment, and now it’s here, and you still have to go to class. Weird, right?
How to Choose Your 12th Grade Science Class
What Do I Do If I Get Rejected from My Early Decision School?
We know. Just seeing this headline makes you want to slam your computer shut and call in sick from school. Take a deep breath. We’re not saying you’re going to get rejected or even deferred. While, every year, kids do get rejected from the ED schools, most of our students get in where they want to go. However, we always recommend a contingency plan because the only thing worse than not getting in is not getting in and having no backup plan. Let’s call this insurance.
How to Balance and Maintain a Healthy Stress Level During the College Process
Fall is the time in which the stress of the college application process typically starts to set in: The classic “I showed up to the first day of senior year without any of my stuff” nightmare, difficulty paying attention in class knowing an incomplete Common App still sits on your desk, dreading running into your parents’ friends, for fear they might ask you where you’re applying. We’ve been there. Stress can be pretty brutal. It can get in the way of your productivity during the application process, but a healthy dose of it can also be motivating. So, we’ve decided to highlight a few tips on how you can use a little bit of stress to your advantage without totally panicking.
Should I Schedule an On-Campus Interview?
How to Help Your Kid Through the College Application Process
For the last 18 or-so years, you have done it all. You were there for their first steps, their training wheels, even their car wheels, and now, you want to see them all the way through before they fly the nest. What is the best way for you to manage this next step in the process?
DON’T GET INVOLVED. Hire someone.
How to Manage Time During the College Application Process
For many a college-aspirer, the application process can seem like an impassable mountain of paperwork. In the face of juggling both college essays and schoolwork the urge to hide under the covers can be real. Sorry, but that digital stack of to-dos isn’t going anywhere. Fear not, though, applicants, there is an end in sight and just on the other side of it is a beautiful college welcome week waiting to greet you.
Advice for Parents Starting the College Process
If you’re a parent of a rising senior you might feel like the walls are closing in on you and your child. There is no right way to feel at this time, but feelings of helplessness and stress are pretty common as you enter college application season. That’s why many parents decide to get help in addition to what some schools may offer, in the form of a college advisor. We understand that not everyone has access to this kind of help, so we are making some of our wisdom and knowledge available to you here. We may not be parents ourselves, but since all of us at The Koppelman Group have gone through the college admissions process ourselves within the last ten years, we are closer to the process, which gives us added perspective. We have also been helping kids get into college for years now, so we have a better sense of what parents are going through as well. We remember what our junior year in high school was like, with all the stress and pressure, not just from our parents, but from our peers as well. It was awful, and this is why we can empathize so well with our student clients, and help them avoid the pitfalls that we experienced.
How Many AP Classes Do I Take Senior Year?
Senior year is an incredibly busy time, and there are a lot of considerations to take into account. Namely, classes. Students choose their classes for senior year during junior year and a question we get most often is: “How many AP classes should I take my senior year?” Here we offer one guiding statement about the AP class debacle:
Congratulations to the TKG Class of 2017!
Over the past month our seniors have been receiving their acceptance letters and we’re so excited to share that this year’s class was our most exceptional to date. If we learned one thing during this admission cycle, it’s that the creative and quirky essays work. Our students wrote incredibly dynamic stories that made admission committees laugh and cry. They wrote supplements in Haikus and rhymes, and relentlessly pushed the limits of what they thought was possible. And it paid off. 95%, and this is not an exaggeration, of our students got into one of their top two schools. Now, our students find themselves in the most ideal predicament: they have to choose which schools to attend. We’re so proud of our students and we can’t wait to see where they decide to go.
The Difference Between a Deferral and a Rejection
The Best Colleges with no Supplements
It excites our students to find out that a school they’re applying to doesn’t have a supplement. Although supplements serve a very important purpose, they can be tedious to write because of the time and research involved in making them unique. We went through the top 100+ schools on the US News and World ranking and found all the schools that don’t have supplements. If you’re on the fence about applying to a certain school on this list, then this might be the factor that makes you apply. However, we don’t recommend applying to a school simply because it is supplement-free.