Today we attended a college admissions workshop. We were given some handouts that would guide the admission directors talking to us. There was one that they emphasized more on and it was Tips For Making a Good Impression. Their advice was to always be on top of the deadlines for college admissions. They also told us to not bother teachers last minute, because they will stress out and the recommendation letters will not be a concise as they would be.
Another helpful handout was a list of websites that will help us in any way possible concerning getting into college, such as the http://www.collegeboard.com/ site. In the same page they also listed resources that are guides to colleges.
As we continued they also reviewed a third handout titled "What Cornell Looks For". The admission officers explained that there are various factors to a collge admission, but the first thing they look at t continue reviewing your application is your high school transcript. "They want to know about your ability, achievements, motivation, leadership, diligence, and integrity; your sense of fairness and compasion." They want to see if we have taken full advantage of the opportunities that have come our way.
They did comment on how much Cornell costs a year: approximately $52,000. Malcolm Carson asked if they offered full athletic scholarships to attend Cornell and they responded negatively. The Ivies all agreed to not do so.
To sum up, (because I have to go to bed) the advice was to stay on top of everything and start from now, because it will all go as fast as possible that we will not notice time passing by.
At the very end of the talk, they kindly asked us to fill out a survey in order to get our advice and make the workshop a lot better for next year!
Well see you next time on Ana Posting Her Blog! (P.s. I thought I could be funny! =])
Ana Garibo
Kennedy High School '09
The Individual in the Social World
The 2017 Vanderbilt Cohort Has Been Selected
7 years ago
1 comment:
Ana,
I used to administer a scholarship program for 18 years that I created through my union.
Many scholarship programs look at the same things college admissions people look at so my advice should apply to both.
Many times we would read letters of recommendation from teachers that were meaningless to us. Since many of these applications were turned in literally at the last minute, we guessed that they asked for these letters at the last minute as well.
Many of these letters looked like they were written more as a matter of obligation rather than a willing effort to help an applicant. In cases like that, we sometimes felt it might have better not to have included those letters.
Impersonal letters that indicated that the author really didn't know the applicant were equally worthless.
Also, those transcripts would tell us a lot--especially about an applicant's character.
We would review many transcripts from "straight A" students but when we looked at what they got those A's in we weren't as impressed. Someone that gets a B in Honors Theoretical Calculus would be looked at more favorably than someone who got an A in Underwater Basketweaving.
Likewise, when we would look at the outside activities, the person who listed the soccer camp he went to last summer might not be looked on in the same light as someone that wrote that they attended Cornell.
When applying for college, what you're really doing is selling yourself. You're putting yourself out on the market and hoping that the right buyer will come along and snatch you up.
In order to make you--as a product--a more desirable commodity, you have to ask yourself some tough questions: Does the buyer want someone who is an ace in one field or someone who's pretty darned good in a lot of fields? Do they want the applicant who spent his Christmas vacation at Lake Tahoe or the applicant who spent the same time in Honduras helping the earthquake victims? Do you think they might want the applicant who sits around after school or the one who volunteers at the AIDS hospice? I could go on but I'm sure you see the point.
When a buyer has a choice between a Cadillac and a Yugo for the same low price, chances are he's going for the Caddie.
Which do you want to be: the Caddie or the Yugo?
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