Guest Post By Steven Tolman, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education Administration, Georgia Southern University

As a college professor, I have had the privilege of teaching undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. Through these experiences, I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I would like to tell you that I was an exemplary freshman in college. To the contrary, I was on academic probation and my advisor encouraged me to consider career paths that did not require a college degree. Like many freshmen, my failures were not due to a lack of academic ability, but rather to my inability to navigate the transition from high school to college. Based on my own experiences and those of my students, here are my suggestions for how to avoid the common mistakes of freshmen.

Using College Admissions Statistics to Your Advantage

There are a dozen websites I regularly recommend to college-bound students and their parents, including the College Board’s BigFuture for college searches, FairTest.org for a list of colleges that don’t require the SAT/ACT, and the Princeton Review for student descriptions of campus life. But there’s another source of information for families to learn about the fascinating world of college admissions. It’s called the Common Data Set (CDS). And although this collection of data requires a bit more digging to unearth, once inside CDS, you will find a veritable treasure trove of information, chock full of minute details and big picture data you never knew existed.

Sure, you’ve got the grades and test scores, but so do lots of other students—and most of them get rejected from Ivy League universities. What, then, is the secret recipe to gain Ivy League acceptance? College Coach consultant, and former Babson and Holy Cross admissions officer, Kimberly Asselta explains in this installment of the video series, Ask the College Admissions Expert.

Back in February, Sarah Vowell penned an ode to her alma mater for the New York Times. The best-selling author, voice actor, and This American Life mainstay didn’t write about an Ivy League university or an elite liberal arts college with a 12% admission rate. She wrote, instead, over 1300 loving words about Montana State, the public university that had happened to be in her backyard. The article resonated with me because I, too, attended my home states’ public universities for both my Bachelor of Arts and Master of Education degrees.

On last week’s episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, Ian shifts the focus of our attention to the juniors and what goes into building the college list. But before we completely close the book on our current seniors, the opening segment explains a bit more about what goes on behind the waitlist process.

If you will be applying to college next year, you will very shortly be in the market for teacher recommendations, and you may be wondering what teachers you should ask for these recommendations. Should you always ask the teacher who gave you the best grade?

We all know the names: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. The most selective colleges in the country are a challenge for even straight-A students to get into. If you’re aiming for admission to an Ivy League college, or college of similar selectivity, earning good grades is no longer enough. What, then, are the top colleges looking for? College Coach consultant and former University of Pennsylvania admissions officer, Elizabeth Heaton, tells us in this free webinar offered by our test prep partner, Revolution Prep. This program offers a sneak peek behind the curtain of an Ivy League admissions office, explains what’s important in the highly selective college admissions process, and offers tips for you to improve your chances of acceptance to a top school.

Watch Elizabeth’s webinar, “Insider’s Guide to Admissions at the Top 2% of Schools,” here.

As we make our way through the admission decision season, there is so much happy news to celebrate. Dreams are fulfilled, goals are achieved, all the hard work has finally paid off! But with this happy news there may also come some tough conversations about costs, debt, and compromise.

Many College Coach admissions advisors are also parents who have made it through the college selection process with their own teens. How did they survive? Through open communication and transparency with their children, not just in senior year, but early on. We hope their advice and insight is helpful to you, whether you’re currently debating financial aid offers for the fall, or just beginning the college conversation with your younger children.

If your child is headed off to college in the fall, you are probably worrying about a lot of things: What if he has a medical emergency while at school? What if he runs out of money? How will I know he is passing if I don’t see any of his school work?

There are documents pertaining to health, money, and college records that your child can sign to give you some peace of mind. Not all of these are required, but you may want to consider if you need them or not.

In the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, host Elizabeth Heaton and her guests offer up some valuable insight on choosing a college and answer both college admissions and finance questions from our listeners.