For the first time this year, the ACT edged out the SAT as the most widely taken standardized test in the US:  1,666,017 seniors took the ACT as compared to 1,664,479 who took the SAT.  Here’s what a few of our College Coach admission experts had to say…

It’s October in the US, and all around the country many a high school senior is logging into the Common Application, reading the supplemental essay prompts required of their prospective universities, rubbing their exhausted eyes in disbelief, and collectively uttering a simple, yet disquieted,   “Wha…???”

Yes, we’ve all come across them:  those “nefariously” written college essay prompts, so challenging in nature even Einstein might not know what to make of them.  So to help prevent you from getting “lost in translation,” the expert college admissions consultants at College Coach have banded together to conduct an “exhaustive search” for The Most Challenging College Essay Prompts of 2013 and decrypt them for you—the writing’s up to you. 

“HANGING back and allowing children to make mistakes is one of the greatest challenges of parenting.” This is perhaps one of the best points made in a recent NY Times article, Raising Successful Children, and couldn’t be more poignant than in the fall of your child’s senior year.

There’s a lot more at stake (or so it feels) in today’s world of college admissions. This makes it all the easier for parents to want to step in, sometimes at the expense of allowing a child to learn from the process itself. So how do you avoid overstepping the bounds?  Read our Top 5 Parental Tips on Managing the Application Process for a start:

Applying for financial aid is tough for students who have parents married to one another. It’s even tougher for students whose parents are divorced, remarried, or were never married.

The central financial aid application that most colleges use, the FAFSA, will ask a student to provide information “about the parent you lived with more during the past 12 months (or the parent who provided more financial support during the past 12 months, or during the most recent year that you actually received support from a parent if the student did not live with one parent more than another parent in the prior twelve months).” It then adds “If this parent is remarried as of today, answer the questions about that parent and your stepparent.”

Applying to grad school these days entails much more than simply matching up one’s interests to a set of prospective schools.  It’s oftentimes done with an eye towards landing a job soon after graduation.  We decided to ask two graduate school alums, Priya Menon of Babson and Nadia Ibrahim of Suffolk University, what they wished they had known about graduate school before they applied.  Could they offer any advice to prospective grad school applicants about finding the right fit?  Here’s what they had to say:

If you follow The Insider blog, you may have read about Alex Bickford and Marj Southworth’s latest trip to the Light House maternity home for young mothers in Kansas City or the work of Mary Sue Youn, Lisa Albro, and Sally Ganga with Big Brothers Big Sisters at American Express in New York City.  While College Coach has always maintained a commitment to community outreach, we have recently formalized that commitment with the formation of our Community Support Committee.

The mission of the Community Support Committee is to deliver superior college counseling programs to non-profit organizations and community groups whose constituents could not otherwise afford these services.  Through the donated time of College Coach educators, the Community Support Committee is able to offer programming in the areas of college admissions and college finance.

The Common Application (“Common App,” for short) offers an easy way for students to apply to multiple institutions using one main application.  But just how “easy” is it, really?  Because I have worked with the Common App for over 15 years, I decided to ask two of my students, Sam and Megan, for their navigational “first impressions.”

Sam:  First things first.  Just go to the Common App and in the middle of the page, right under the Username and Password Login, click on the “Go Here” link right next to “Never Registered?”  You have to fill out your basic information (name, birthdate, year of graduation, etc.) and set up a username and password. [This is a document that will eventually be seen by admissions professionals, so everything needs to be correct!]

As a College Coach Finance Educator, I often speak with anxious parents willing to explore any means possible to pay for their child’s college education. How many more scholarships can we apply for? Should we refinance our house? Perhaps sell a vital organ? It surprises me, therefore, how many parents are surprisingly resistant to one financing option: student employment. Their concerns are legitimate — working students may have added stress and less time to study — but there are a myriad of benefits, financial and otherwise, that should be considered.

Can you believe it’s nearly August?  Because the Common Application goes “live” on August 1, some would argue the last week of July is the last week of summer.  While technically it’s still summer, time is passing!  So what’s your college application plan?  Your child’s future is nearly here.  Are you ready?  Do you have your timeline set for the next few months?  Know what’s coming?  You can learn how to have a stress free rest-of-summer with our “Ten pre-application steps.”  Download it now before the summer passes you by!

This past month, I drove down to White Plains, New York to give a presentation on “Beating the Admission Game” to the White Plains Football Association on behalf of College Coach.  The association was formed to help football players learn more about deadlines, standardized tests, financial aid, and other admission basics with respect to selective colleges and universities.  The association’s organizers determined that mentors who work with students and families are crucial in making sure everything gets done right in the application process.  I was brought in not only to inform families about the college admission process but to energize students, their families, and mentors, as to higher education possibilities.