Admissions, Penn Style

Ever wonder how admission officers at the most selective universities read applications? In the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, host Elizabeth Heaton launched the second installment in the series looking at how admissions decisions are made at a variety of institutions. To help her discuss admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, Beth welcomed her former Penn colleague, College Coach expert Sai Somboon. Together they discussed how applications are read at Penn, helping listeners understand the process a bit better.

It’s that time of year again: people wearing green and raving about the luck of the Irish, as the celebration of St. Patrick makes everyone nostalgic for the leprechaun and his pot of gold.

The latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation focused on following a day in the life of a college admissions officer and financial planning for all four years of college.

On the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, guest host Sally Ganga turned her attention to California, with a double segment on the University of California system. She finished the show with a finance segment on the ever-popular topic of negotiating scholarship offers from colleges.

On the latest episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, long lost Beth Heaton was back in the host seat and began by helping parents strike the right level of involvement in their student’s college search process. The second half of the show was a double segment on all things National Merit Scholarship Competition.

I can vividly remember sitting at my desk in the fall of my senior year of high school and being so nervous I could barely breathe. I’d been on dozens of college tours, spoken with countless students, and interviewed endlessly. But I still hadn’t found “the one.” I hadn’t experienced that “eureka” moment. You know, the one where you’re walking around a campus and just know it’s where you’re going to spend your college years. Some of my friends had described it as a sunbeam of light falling straight down onto their head while listening to angels sing and birds chirp.

I’ve often been asked how US colleges go about admitting international students. The questions are usually centered upon quotas—limits to how many students can be admitted from a particular region of the world. Because certain countries often send such “incredible” students to US colleges, and only a few of them are admitted year to year to a given school, there must be a predetermined number of admission slots per country goes the thinking. Right? Wrong.

Co-authored by Ian Fisher

With the passing of many admission deadlines, a whole class of students can put the college application process behind them. But due to the cyclical nature of college admission, a whole new class of juniors is also beginning to think about their college applications. If you’re in eleventh grade, you’ll be applying to college before 2017 is out! To help you understand everything that will be thrown at you over the next few months, we’ve prepared a glossary of common terms below. Study hard!

In admissions, there are rarely any in-the-know summer programs that, in and of themselves, will get an admissions officer to shout “Admit!” in committee. A summer program’s admissions impact is often more organic in nature: it might provide the foundation or connections for more challenging experiences down the road.

In our last blog post, Using Naviance: How to Get Organized, we discussed how to get started with Naviance. This installment focuses on how to best utilize the program.