From Application to Acceptance: The Journey of College Admissions, Part Two
[This is part two of a two-part series on college applications.]
In the first part of this series, we discussed how you can help your student pick which colleges or universities to apply to. By now your student has considered carefully their scope of possibilities based on their grades, test scores, and field of study. They have decided between public and private universities, two- and four-year colleges, and liberal arts versus research schools. (Or they have decided to apply to a mixed group of these.) Finally, they have selected a range of about ten to twelve schools including safe options, target schools, and dream universities, and stand ready to move on to the next stage.
Part Two: Actually Apply for College
While the process of applying may resemble a Byzantine, even Kafkaesque, ordeal from time to time, one should resist the urge to feel overwhelmed by remembering that these school want – nay, need – students in order to exist. Your student can and will navigate these systems. If they struggle to complete a task related to a particular institution, do not hesitate to call the school’s admissions or bursar’s office for guidance, or seek out assistance from friends who may have completed this process recently. You can also contact us here at iLearn Academy for advice. You need not go through this process alone.
Step 3: Gather all the required information.
Armed with their list of target schools, your student should begin to gather the documents necessary. Individual schools’ application systems (as well as the Common Application) will give specific instructions, but here we highlight several common requirements.

• High School Transcripts. Schools want to know what courses your student completed in high school, including their labs, languages, and electives. They may ask your student to enter this information manually, but most will require a formal copy from your student’s high school.
  
• AP and Dual Credit. Your student will also need documentation on hand for any high school work that counts as college credit, such as Advanced Placement test results or transcripts from college courses taken for high school credit. You can have the College Board send AP test scores to colleges online or via mail – just make sure your student has their login information handy.
  
• Test Scores. You will need to both enter this information into the application manually and have official scores sent to the institutions. Make sure you talk with your student’s school and the College Board in order to make sure they send your grades and test scores early. Note that your student can have four ACT scores reports sent out for free if they notify the College Board which schools to send them to within five days of completing the exam, so it pays to have some target schools in mind by the time your student takes the test.Your application is not complete until the college receives the test scores.
  
• Letters of Recommendation. Not all colleges your student applies to will require letters of recommendation, but likely at least a few will. These schools will most often request letters from your student’s school counselor,a teacher or two, and sometimes from an adult community member in your student’s life such as an employer or religious leader.Remind your student that letters of recommendation represent personal favors from the writers, so they should make requests for letters politely and as early as possible. Asking with only a few days before the deadline comes off as quite inconsiderate and reduces the chance of receiving the letter in time, if at all. It also never hurts for the student to provide the letter writer with a resume or something similar so recommenders can accurately write about them.
  
• College Essays. We will post another blog soon detailing how to write a good college application essay, but your student should begin brainstorming now. Between the Common Application, schools with their own application systems, and any honors programs your student may try for, your young scholar may need to write a dozen or more short essays. Students must not overlook this crucial aspect of their application. Everything else – the grades, test scores, letters of recommendation – are, in the end, just numbers and other’s descriptions, with perhaps little difference from those of other applicants. In the essays, however, your student gets the opportunity to make themselves stand out and show colleges the face behind the application. Solid responses to the essays prompts may be the factor that lifts your student’s cause above those of other applicants with similar GPA and test scores.
  
• Personal identification. Depending on the institution, your student may need to provide proof of residence, proof of citizenship, and even medical information, so they should locate their Social Security card, birth certificate, passport, and vaccination records. Even if the schools they apply for do not require all such documents, your student may still need them if they have to move to a new city, apply for a dormitory, or travel for study abroad, so they might as well find these documents now.

Step 4: If Needed, Prepare for Interviews.
Not all colleges will interview, and even those that do may only interview for special programs or scholarships. Find out early on if your student will need to interview for your selected colleges. If they find themselves scheduled for a meeting, have them consider these tips on how to successfully navigate these conversations.

• Known commonly asked questions. While every college will prepare its own form, most use common themes your student can prepare for. What do you want to study? What activities do you seek outside of class? What challenges in your life have you overcome? Try to have an answer in mind for these types of questions using personal examples. Follow this link to some common college interview questions.
  
• Practice. Practice. Practice. Few strategies fare worse in interviews that that of “winging it.” While your student should avoid rehearsed, cookie-cutter answers, encourage them to spend a fair amount of time with a friend or family member practicing answering likely questions in a meaningful way. (This practice will also prepare them for job interviews down the road.)
  
• Be the best version of yourself. Your student should resist the urge to simply tell admissions officers what they think they want to hear. Your student should provide original answers, unique to their personal situation. The point of the interview is to familiarize the school with your student as a person. However, take care to trim off some of the excess description in anecdotes. Never lie or try to channel someone else. In every way display professionalism and maturity.
  
• Bring questions. A good interview allows both sides to ask questions. Your student should have a few on hand entering the conversation. Not only will asking questions give students a better idea of the school, but it will show the interviewers that your student has done some independent research into the college and that they possess an inquisitive mind, eager to learn. Creative questions with answers not easily found on the college’s website stand out best.

For other tips and interview questions see the following links:
https://www.princetonreview.com/college-advice/college-interview-tips
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/get-in/interviews/college-interviews-practice-questions-and-strategies
 
Step 5: Scholarships
Scholarships not only help pay for tuition or living expenses, but they also reward students for effort and focus, providing motivation and a sense of accomplishment and belonging at college. Most schools offer many scholarship opportunities and the more your students applies for the more they can potentially earn. Research scholarship in two places:

• The colleges themselves. Most if not all colleges offer scholarships. Although competitive, school scholarships offer the most money and apply most directly towards your college experience. Once your student has finalized their list of target schools, do some research on their websites to determine what scholarships they provide. Applications for school scholarship often require essays which your student should approach with the same mentality as they tackle college admissions essays.
  
• Outside scholarship websites. Numerous websites act as databases for hundreds if not thousands of scholarships offered by smaller, independent programs. Most of these award less money than larger, college-based scholarship, but fewer students apply for these meaning reduced competition for awards and funds. Application requirements can include almost anything, from reading a book and writing an essay to just being of a certain religion or ethnicity. Nothing limits the number of external scholarships your student can apply to, so urge them to take some time to really increase their chances of winning some college funding. Many websites can help you find scholarships:
  
  • Cappex features a great scholarship search engine.
    
  • The College Board
    
  • Scholarship.com
    
  • The federal government

Has your student started applying to colleges yet? What other questions do they have? Please feel free to visit our website at www.ilearnacademy.net, call us at 847-834-0791, or post on our Facebook page. We hope everyone has had a great summer, and we look forward to helping all our students safely and effectively adjust to the new school year.

​However, the logic behind these tests is not arbitrary or capricious. The questions and answers on the PSAT, SAT, ACT, and other standardized tests favor conventions of written communication that objectively promote understanding, empathy, fair-mindedness, and discretion, characteristics sorely missing in the depths of many social media chatrooms, political cliques, and the anxiety-ridden hearts of people confused and afraid in our increasingly uncontrollable and alienating modern world. As we watch in sorrow as these fears and suspicions ignite into the violent destruction of lives, property, and democratic norms on the nightly news, I am more convinced than ever of the necessity of basic composition, logic, and reading comprehension skills covered in our nation’s standardized tests. 

​1. Tone. Most of the passages in the English sections of the ACT and Writing sections of the SAT favor measured language, avoiding extremism or exaggeration. I tell my students often, “If you see answers with words like ‘all’, ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘only’, ‘most’, ‘best’, or ‘worst’, you have a pretty good tip that those are wrong answer choices.” Very few things in life are absolute. (Almost) nothing is a perfect example of anything. This does not mean that one should not exhibit passion when speaking or writing. Most of the grammar test passages include varied vocabulary and demonstrate the writer’s deep interest in their subject. However, adopting a moderate tone, with allowance for exceptions and avoidance of inflammatory rhetoric, will not only improve a student’s test scores and college application essays, but it will also set them apart from a toxic political environment where many choose bombastic volume over empathy and reason and the immediate gratification of reaction over the hard, prolonged work of promoting justice.

2. The Scientific Method. I regularly advise my students – especially those fearful of the hard sciences – that the ACT Science passage and scientific passages in the PSAT and SAT mostly work as glorified reading comprehension problems. If one reads carefully for key terms, analyses graphs with care, and methodically applies logic, one can achieve a remarkably high score even without a firm grasp of the basic content knowledge of biology, chemistry, or physics (although that certainly helps!) On the first day of ACT Science instruction, I teach them the basics of the scientific method and experiment design, particularly the idea of variables, constants, and controls. By learning this, they achieve some grasp of what counts as proof and how we can actually know something. They understand the importance of repeatability, controls, and peer review. Naturally, this will serve them well going into their Freshman and Sophomore college science classes, particularly those with lab requirements. But such principles will also protect them from the junk science and poorly-sourced rumors that flood social media from all directions on a daily basis. Charlatans and alarmists sadly populate our world, seeking whom they may devour, and by teaching your student the difference between fact, fiction, opinion, and nonsense you give them the best defense possible in these troubled times – the defense of sound, stable mental processing.

3. Certainty versus Possibility. One of the thorniest types of reading problem these tests present offers an almost-correct answer choice that is just slightly too specific to be supported by the evidence provided, while the correct answer is supported by the evidence but feels too hedged or careful for a right answer, so students rarely pick it. I have to convince them that just because we know one thing is true does not automatically mean we have proven similar or related things. By studying for these tests, students learn what many adults have forgotten: we speak truly by making careful and measured – even if often less satisfying – statements rather than asserting absolute and overly-specific claims. The latter category of declaration often feels more comforting, as dogmatism offers the illusion of certainty, a tempting balm amidst the cacophony of complex discourse we face every time we check our phones, open an internet browser, or turn on the television. We must teach our students – and always remember ourselves – that true confidence comes from deliberate study and a willingness to be proven wrong if the evidence does so.

4. Empathy without Gullibility. In the reading comprehension sections, most of the informative essays use moderate tone and measured language, but some of the persuasive essays, particularly older ones, require students to analyze the negative rhetoric and charged vocabulary of people most modern readers would strongly disagree with. Sometimes these tests feature selections from 19th century writers or speakers who defended chattel slavery or opposed recognizing women’s right to vote. The test writers do not, of course, present these passages as legitimate moral views. Rather, they test whether students can understand an argument and the logic behind it (including logical flaws) without adopting the argument itself. Students, indeed everyone, must develop the capacity to understand without agreeing, empathize without conceding, and listen without blindly following. In so doing, they will build intellectual and moral armor against regressive and authoritarian ideology without discounting the humanity, however flawed, of those caught up in the traps of paranoia or hate.

​During my earliest years of tutoring, much closer to the dates of my own standardized tests, I regarded standardized tests merely as a necessary evil. They seemed rarefied and almost arbitrary, useful only by gaming the process to get a score that would allow entrance – little better than a magic word – into college where the “real learning” would take place. I now see how profoundly wrong I was. I use the skills of measured language, moderate claims, and the scientific approach to knowledge every day. I also recognize the level of suffering caused by those who have forgotten – or perhaps never learned – those skills, who are led or lead others astray both morally and intellectually by choosing extremism over discretion, ideology over empathy, and false certainty over the real confidence that comes from logic, patience, and care.