The Best U College Admissions Consulting

 Students, and especially their parents, are often wondering – Do I have enough activities? Will they ‘look good’? These are actually the wrong questions to ask in building a strong resume or activities list for the college admissions process. Instead, these two words can change everything about how you present your involvements in your application: So what? Yes. Really. We want you to ask yourself, so what? Read on for how this simple question can change everything – First of all – what is an activities list? While parents are often thinking about their child’s resume, the admissions process tends to focus on a specific component of the application: the activities list. There are a few different formats for this, depending on the application you are submitting; however, the version almost every applicant is sure to complete is found in the Common Application. In the Common App, the activities list consists of up to 10 entries to capture a picture of all of the ways you’ve spent y...

If you are thinking about the costs of college, the FAFSA is probably already on your radar. But did you know there’s another financial aid form called the CSS Profile that about 400 colleges require? Read on for what you should know about this financial aid application, who should complete it, and how it could help you qualify for more college funding – What is the CSS Profile? The CSS Profile , which stands for the “College Scholarship Service” is a separate, additional financial aid application administered by the College Board. Yes, that’s right, the same College Board that administers SAT and AP testing. This form requests more information across several years of a family’s income and expenses to get a more complete picture of a family’s financial situation in determining the distribution of aid. It is used by colleges to calculate eligibility for both need and merit based scholarships, separate from the federal aid a student may receive through completing the FAFSA. Who has to...

 One question I’m hearing from a lot of parents lately is – when will the FAFSA open, and should we apply? The financial aid process has been full of uncertainty in the last year, and unfortunately, we are not quite out of the woods yet. Here’s what to know about this year’s FAFSA, whether it makes sense for your family to apply, and what you can do right now – It’s been a rocky year in financial aid While historically the Free Application For Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA, always reliably opened for the application season on October 1, this process changed for the first time in decades last year. Federal legislation requiring updates to the FAFSA form used to calculate financial aid and merit scholarship offers across the country led to a rushed process to change the form in 2023, a near three month delay in rolling out the application, and cascading tumult as errors, delays, revisions and recalculations prevented colleges from receiving the critical information they need t...

 California is a very popular college destination. Most often, the colleges students bring to the conversation are the ‘UCs’ or the University of California colleges. If places like Berkeley, UCLA, or UC San Diego are on your mind, here are three things you need to know about admission to the UCs – Know what’s expected & plan ahead The UCs have specific high school course requirements, aligned to the California state requirements. They refer to these as the “A-G” requirements and you’ll want to make sure that you are planning ahead throughout high school to meet these to be considered as an applicant. Most students who are taking a rigorous program in high school are on track to meet these. The one that we find most catches students off guard is the arts requirement. The UCs require that an applicant has completed two semesters in the same artistic discipline – dance, music, theater, visual or interdisciplinary arts. The courses can be taken in different years and on differe...

 We meet a lot of students who are eager to ‘make an impact’ in high school, motivated by both the desire to contribute meaningfully to issues that matter, and to strengthen their college applications with the kind of special project they believe will set them apart. We meet even more parents who are anxious to see their kids have this kind of tangible item to put on their activities list or resume. While parents and students alike are often hungry for direction from us, wondering what outcome to strive for and what will ‘look good,’ we take a different approach. Read on for how we recommend high school students think about doing something that matters– Our greatest advice is quite simple: just begin. Any project or objective you devise for the express purpose of impressing others is not likely to have the impact you hope for. The truth is, good projects come from good works, good questions, and good relationships. Here’s what that looks like: Take an issue that is important to yo...

 If we look closely at the common threads shared by the students we see thriving in the college process, there are a few pieces that often define them. Does it surprise you to know that these are not grades or test scores? Undoubtedly, a strong academic curriculum in high school, taking advantage of rigorous classes, earning good grades, and to a lesser extent, performing well on standardized tests are common features of the applications of students who are admitted to the most selective colleges. However, if you were to examine the admissions pools at these colleges, you would find that likely 6 in 10 applicants share these similar ‘academic profiles.’ And yet, the acceptance rates at the most selective colleges are far less than 60%. So what distinguishes the 1 in 10 or even 1 in 25 who get in? The factors that distinguish them are often things that not only set their application apart, but in our view, are ways of seeing and being that have given them a more fulfilling high scho...