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.

Getting Organized

This is the first in a series of blog posts in which Jan Combs, college finance consultant and mother of a high school senior, will walk us through her son’s college application process. Along the way, Jan will share tips and tricks to help your family manage, and even enjoy, this nerve-wracking journey for you and your child.

Ian Fisher guest hosted this week’s episode of “Getting In: A College Coach Conversation”. This week’s uniquely-styled episode focused on just one topic—college access—bringing in three diverse guests to present three different perspectives.

It’s almost summer, but rather than heading to the beach, host Elizabeth Heaton was back at the microphone at Getting In: A College Coach Conversation. In this week’s episode, Beth gave listeners a closer look at Connecticut College, helped them to understand the pros and cons of using retirement savings toward college, and answered a number of listener questions.

A recent report published by leading colleges and universities is calling for concrete changes to the college admissions process. Here, two of our expert educational consultants discuss their opinions and ideas about the report.

Ian Fisher: Last month, I wrote an opinion piece for our blog on Turning the Tide, a report compiled by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and endorsed by college admissions professionals nationwide. In the month or so since that report has been released, I’ve seen a mix of skepticism, usually from admissions professionals and school counselors, and optimism, usually from those on the outside of the field looking in. At the heart of this tension is a big question: is this something new? And will it change how colleges approach admissions? I’m interested in getting your (Elyse Krantz’s) take on those two questions, but I’m also interested in continuing the conversation for our readers.

On last week’s episode of Getting In: A College Coach Conversation, guest host Ian Fisher shared some insight on the college process from the perspective of a large, public university, helped listeners better understand the process of financial aid verification, and shed some light on how colleges evaluate the high school that your child attends.

College Admissions, Georgia Style

Wondering about how large, public universities make their admissions decisions? Kelly Bird, Senior Assistant Director of Admission at the University of Georgia, joined the show to explain how UGA evaluated the 23,000 applications they received this year.