How’s that college essay coming? Not well? Then check out this insight from former Reed College admissions officer Ian Fisher on how to approach your personal statement in this installment of the College Coach video series, Ask the College Admissions Expert. Ian lets you know what college admissions officers are looking for in an application essay, how to choose a good college essay topic, and how to get started.

The college admission process may have recently wrapped up for high school seniors, but, for underclassmen, the fun is just beginning. With nearly 4,000 colleges to choose from in the United States, how can a high school student even begin narrowing down their options?

by Ian Fisher, former admissions officer at Reed College

Last week, the Common App announced it will add a short COVID-19-themed essay question for students applying to college this fall. This came as little surprise to those of us at Bright Horizons College Coach, where one of our more prescient educators even had a dream about this addition, way back on April 10. We have long anticipated that colleges would offer a way for students to express how this global pandemic has upended the ordinary parts of their lives, and the question below will give them an opportunity to do exactly that:

How many AP classes should you take? The answer, like many in the college admissions world is, “It depends.” In this installment of the College Coach video series, Ask the College Admissions Expert, former Reed College admissions officer, Ian Fisher, guides students and parents through how to answer this question for themselves.

Many high schoolers are in the midst of planning their class schedule for the upcoming school year, and this course selection can come with a lot of anxiety. Students and the parents wonder if it is better to take more challenging courses, with the risk of earning lower grades, or to play it safe with the classes they know they can do well in. From a college’s perspective, is it better to get an A in College Prep or a B in Honors?

Part of our job here at Bright Horizons College Coach is to keep an eye on all the news in college admissions and college finance so you don’t have to. We recently came across a terrific piece by our good friends over at Fortuna Admissions centered on the growing concern about the coronavirus and the opportunity to connect with business schools through remote interviews:

A lot of families of high schoolers take advantage of spring vacation weeks to visit college campuses. For high school juniors and their parents, this may be the last opportunity they have to visit campuses while school is actually in session before applying to colleges in the fall. So, what’s a student to do with the limited time they have to be on campus to help them decide if this college is a place where they’d like to spend four years of their life?

Standardized tests play an important role in the application process at many colleges, and those colleges will generally accept submission of either SAT or ACT scores. So which test should your child take?

Some years ago on a soccer sideline somewhere, or maybe in the chatty pre-show moments of a high school theatre performance, a mom or dad started the dreadful rumor that one must complete hundreds of hours of community service in order to even be considered for admission to the top colleges and universities in the country. Since that day, this misinformation has been taken as gospel by college-bound high school students and their parents. But they’re wrong.

Let’s all pause for a moment and say this together: there is nothing extra special about community service.

The Bowdoin supplement asks applicants to first identify which of the lines from “The Offer of the College,” a poem written in 1906 by Bowdoin president William DeWitt Hyde, most resonate with them. Applicants are then invited to provide an optional short essay of 250 words to reflect on their chosen line and how it has meaning for them.