College App Essays & the End of Net Neutrality

This blog is dedicated to information about college admissions, often with a focus on college and grad school application essays. I don't blog about political issues here, but I'm breaking the rule because the issue under discussion will directly affect your ability to read this blog, to look at my website, and to have access to thousands of blogs and websites that all of us use every day to navigate the complicated world we live in, whether we're applying to college, looking for information, or shopping for hand-made gifts. 

You've probably heard the term "net neutrality." It means, essentially, that you can click on my website and on google.com, and you can access both sites with equal speed and ease. The end of the net neutrality - which major corporations desperately want and are close to getting - will be the end of your being able to access all but the biggest companies online - the end of it without paying huge fees for that access. Please read an excerpt from this latest article, and if you are moved to sign a White House petition asking the President to "Maintain Net Neutrality," you can read the petition and sign it here. As I write this, the petition has 34,800 signatures. 

For the news and the background, an excerpt from "The Internet is About to Become Worse Than Television" by Annalee Newitz:

"Last week, an obscure but potentially internet-transforming document was leaked from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It revealed that government regulators are considering rules that would give big companies a chance to make their online services run faster than smaller ones.

"The proposed rules were revealed in the New York Times, and they would overturn the principle of "network neutrality" on the internet. Put simply, network neutrality allows you to use services from rich companies like Google and small startups with equal speed through your ISP. You can read a blog hosted on somebody's home server, and it loads just as quickly as a blog on Tumblr.

"Without network neutrality, Tumblr could cut a deal with your ISP — let's say it's Comcast — and its blogs would load really quickly while that home server blog might take minutes to load pictures. It might not even load at all. You can see why people in the freedom-of-speech obsessed United States might not be happy with chucking network neutrality. It privileges some speech over others, based on financial resources." READ MORE   SIGN THE PETITION

Yes, #Ivy Admissions Are Tighter For Some Than Before

No, you are not hallucinating. It is harder to get into the Ivies for certain groups of people that would have gotten into them a few decades ago - that is, high achieving, largely affluent American kids. The reasons for this are not news to everyone, but the article in today's Times, "Getting Into the Ivies," analyzing why these numbers have changed, will help all of us understand what kids in the U.S. are up against when they apply to elite colleges and universities. The answer? Follow the money. Ivies are now admitting large numbers of foreign students in large part because they don't need financial aid.

What does this mean to U.S. kids and their families with Ivy hopes and dreams? I could say what people in my field expect me to say: "The right essay will make all the difference." Of course I believe in the essays, but I also believe that it's time for students and parents to look beyond the Ivies in their college searches, and try to come to terms with the fact that the landscape has changed.

Just yesterday, I was talking to a mother in Massachusetts whose daughter is a rising senior. When I mentioned some schools to think about, including an outstanding school in the Midwest, the mother blanched. "I couldn't send her that far away." I sputtered and tried to explain that this wasn't really so far, but before I could finish my sentence, she said, "She has her heart set on Stanford. I would let her go that far if it was to Stanford." Teenagers want to separate from their parents, but they also care what they think, and they pick up their parents' energy and attitudes. Keeping an open mind in this process is a great place to start.

And there's this: Times change. Climates change. Kids change. Even landscapes sometimes change. A great quality to cultivate is adaptability. Have a look at the Times piece and let me know what you think. Here's an excerpt:

"For American teenagers, it really is harder to get into Harvard — or Yale, Stanford, Brown, Boston College or many other elite colleges — than it was when today’s 40-year-olds or 50-year-olds were applying. The number of spots filled by American students at Harvard, after adjusting for the size of the teenage population nationwide, has dropped 27 percent since 1994. At Yale and Dartmouth, the decline has been 24 percent. At Carleton, it’s 22 percent. At Notre Dame and Princeton, it is 14 percent." READ MORE
To visit my website, click here: 
To email me: liz@DontSweatTheEssay.com
To call me 1-855-99-ESSAY

Finish Your College Application Essay in July on Martha's Vineyard

I'm back on the Vineyard this summer - 2016 - and will be working with students and giving a free talk at the Edgartown Library. Read about it here.

Last summer, I worked privately with a good number of rising high school seniors on Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod, making occasional day trips to the island from Boston, and working by Skype otherwise. This summer, I'll be on the island for 3 weeks, and I'll offer 2 workshops (running concurrently) over a 2-week period, and I'll also do private sessions on and off the island during that time, in person, if possible, or via Skype. (This past year, I worked by Skype with students in Seattle, Hong Kong, Cairo, Alaska and Trinidad.)

If you want to get a head start on the Common Application Essay and you'll be on the Vineyard, consider signing up for one the workshops. If you sign up before June 1, the cost is lower than after June 1. The workshops are Mon/Thurs and Tues/Friday, and each one meets 4 times. By the end of 4 meetings you'll have either a finished essay or a very good draft that I will continue to work on with you - on or off the island - until it's ready to send off. I will also be available to work on supplementary essays.

The workshops will be small, personal, and productive, and you'll come away with a few new writing skills too. Just bring your laptop.

For details about dates, times, and prices, click here and then click through to the SUMMER ESSAY WORKSHOP page. Please contact me with questions and concerns.
To visit my website, click here: 
To email me: liz@DontSweatTheEssay.com
To call me 1-855-99-ESSAY

Meet in Hong Kong May 15-23 for Help w/ College Application Essay

I will be visiting Hong Kong for a week - May 15 to May 23 - and meeting with students and parents of rising high school seniors who are interested in applying to college in the U.S. in the fall. My focus is is helping students find their college application essay material and their voices, and helping them craft successful, persuasive essays and personal statements that will show their best selves to college admissions offices.

For those who need test prep, I partner with the folks at Arborbridge, and Josh Stephens, their Director of International Development, and I recently wrote this Huffington Post piece, "International Students: Top 10 Tips for U.S. College Applications."

If you or your son or daughter wants to talk about how we can work on college essays and applications via Skype this summer or fall, please let me know. This past year, I worked with college applicants around the world - including Alaska, Trinidad, Cairo, and Hong Kong. This testimonial is from the student I worked with a Hong Kong. It was usually 8am in NYC, where I am usually am, and 8pm in Hong Kong. P.S.: She got into her first-choice school!

"It was an absolutely wonderful experience to work with Liz. Being a nervous international student desperately looking for help and advice to compose essays for a system I knew nothing about, I'm so glad that I found Liz. I was quite skeptical about this whole process at first, to work with someone from the States while I'm in Hong Kong. I never thought this whole thing could work over internet with her being 8000 miles away from me! But here we are. We worked the whole thing out through Skype and Google Docs. She was very helpful, inspiring, and patient, and she encouraged me to dig up stories within myself that I wouldn't have considered as writing materials otherwise. She helped me to see a bigger picture of where my words were heading, while correcting minor but essential grammar mistakes. She also helped me organize my stories. Liz is an amazing tutor, and I'll always be grateful for her guidance and understanding."

Send me an email: Liz@DontSweatTheEssay.com. I look forward to hearing from you. 

10 Tips for International College Applicants

Because of the wonders of Skype and Google Docs, I was able to work with students around the country and throughout the world this past year on their college essays and applications. My far-flung students, all applying to colleges and universities in the U.S., were living in Alaska, Hong Kong, Cairo, Warsaw, and Trinidad, and quite a few in the lower 48. (Even when I work with students in my living room, we are usually on our own laptops, looking over essays on Google Docs - but my love affair with Google Docs is another story.)

I recently had the good fortune to meet Josh Stephens, the Director of International Development at ArborBridge, an innovative test prep service that works with students in the U.S. and around the world. We just teamed up to put together an article on Huffington Post - an annotated list of 10 tips international students should consider as they approach college application season. They range from the practicalities of when you can take SATs abroad to cultivating a good attitude about the complex process to what books you can read to get your essay writing up to speed. TAKE A LOOK 




If you enjoyed this article, please share it using one of the buttons below. Thanks. 

Backstage at Stanford's Admissions Office

As everyone and her mother tries to crack the admissions codes of highly selective schools, this article from the Stanford Alumni magazine might be good reading. The short answer to the question: "It's complicated." Another way of putting it: "It's not entirely 'fair.'" But you probably already know that. 

Hat tip to Josh Stephens at Arborbridge (international standardized test prep/tutoring) for calling it to my attention. 

It's call "What it Takes" by Ivan Maisel. Here's a excerpt and the link to the full article: 

"THE GOAL OF THIS PIECE is to demystify college admissions at Stanford, because explaining nuclear physics is just too simple. Clarifying Middle East politics, solving the Riemann hypothesis, defining love—anyone can do that. Let's tackle a subject with some heft to it.

"As my late grandmother would say, "Oy."

Few topics invite more analysis, envy, code-breaking, speculation and hope than college admissions. Across the "United States, applications to elite universities have mushroomed. More than 35,000 students applied to Harvard last academic year, vying for 1,664 spots. Princeton handled 26,498 applications to fill a class of 1,291. At Stanford, applicants totaled 38,828, an all-time high; 2,210 were accepted, or slightly less than 1 in 17. In the coming years, the odds, like afternoon shadows on the Quad, will only lengthen.

"A generation ago, college admissions boiled down to a teenager, a pen-on-paper application and a 13-cent stamp. Oh, for the soothing presence of Dean Fred Hargadon, Stanford's own Lincoln, the towering presence who dispensed cracker-barrel wisdom and fat envelopes to the parents of the current legacy applicants." READ MORE 

To visit my website, click here: 
To email me: liz@DontSweatTheEssay.com
To call me 1-855-99-ESSAY

College Decisions Are In-But What About Financial Aid??

For many families, the hardest parts are over: students know where they've been admitted to college, and those without Early Decision commitments are now making up their minds. For many, that will be a challenge. But a more daunting challenge for many others will be financial. How will these bills be paid? What do financial aid packages look like? And ... why is each of them so different? The New York Times has an important article, accompanied now by many hundreds of reader comments, filled with even more information.  

The situation for many is confusing, expensive, and illogical. I'm afraid there are no easy answers and no sunny takeaways to share with you. Perhaps the most important is that financial aid packages include outright grants as well as loans. And you want to do the math here over four years, not just one. Taking out $10,000 in loans for each year leaves you with $40,000 in loans when you finish college. 

Information is power, and the more you have, the better decisions you and your family can make. If you're not sure what to make of it all, you have plenty of company. 

Here is a guide just put out by US News and World Reports about how to decipher an aid package. And here is an excerpt from the Times pieces. I encourage you to read both, and the Times' reader comments.  

"An array of policy analysts from think tanks to the White House say things should change. “It’s a ridiculously complicated system, if you can even call it a system, and a lot of people don’t get it,” said Sandy Baum, a research professor at George Washington University’s graduate education school, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a leading expert on college pricing. “If you put five aid offers from different colleges together, they’re all different, and it’s very, very difficult to compare. That problem could be solved.”

"In fact, consumers have more tools than ever to decipher college prices and financial aid. College websites are required by law to have net-price calculators, to help people estimate what they would really pay, rather than relying on inflated sticker prices. The government’s own College Navigator provides a range of information on each institution, including costs. And the Obama administration’s financial aid “shopping sheet” aims to let people make apples-to-apples comparisons among colleges, just by using consistent definitions.

"But the price calculators, potentially powerful instruments, vary in thoroughness, ease of use and even accuracy, and most colleges do not use the shopping sheet, which is voluntary. Not only could the tools be better, but many students and parents are unaware of them." READ MORE