2016 December College Readiness Tips

Happy holidays. December goes by so quickly, so please help kids with their college and scholarship applications. There is still so much we can do to help these amazing kids.

Here are ten college access tips to get you through the rest of 2016. Here is a new free powerpoint presentation, I did on Ten Tips to Strengthening Your College Applications before 2016 on http://www.slideshare.net/getmetocollege/college-week-live-10-tips-for-strengthening-your-college-application

More applications. Private colleges are desperate for interested under-represented minority and first generation students. Students need the encouragement to find schools that are looking for students with their profiles. I recommend students apply to 4 to 8 private colleges. Students with low test scores should add some test optional colleges. Fair Test lists 850 colleges with test optional possibilities. http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional
Essays. Kids need to keep writing powerful college and scholarship application essays. Remind them, they can use essays more than once. They need to push themselves to write specific, empowering essays for private colleges. They can keep on revising and adapting for other schools and write powerful supplemental essays targeted to specific colleges.
Recommendations. Please, please write as many great, specific letters as you can. Students need these letters and often ask you rather late. But they need these to get into college and EOP and to receive scholarships. Short letters don’t work. Give specific examples from their assignments, so you may need students to give you their former graded work to remind you. If you don’t have something nice to say, then perhaps refer them to someone else. For schools with overwhelmed counselors, the Common Application is allowing others to write counselor letters. Please help students with getting great counselor letters as well.
Free applications. Did you know that there are multiple ways for students to apply for free to private and many public colleges? Students who took the SAT or ACT get four free apps on the Common Application. They can apply for free to lots of out of state public colleges as well for free. NACAC provides fee waivers that most colleges accept. If a student needs another waiver, he or she can contact the college directly and ask.
Educational Opportunity Programs. Please assist and encourage students to complete their EOP applications and applications for other support programs at colleges. Each college, including CSU, has a separate deadline. Call colleges to see if deadlines have been extended. http://www.csumentor.edu/admissionapp/eop_apply.asp
Scholarships. Scholarships. Scholarships. There are multiple ways for first generation and under-represented students to pay for college. The Hispanic Scholarship Fund is due December 15. http://www.hsf.net/Scholarship-Programs.aspx
. Many colleges have specific scholarships. Encourage students to find national, state, local, and college specific scholarships. USC for example has the USC Norman Topping Fund that provides scholarships. It is due February 10. http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/ntsaf/ Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard maintains a spectacular list of scholarships that includes ones for undocumented students: https://roybal-allard.house.gov/uploadedfiles/student_resource_guide.pdf
Alumni. Remember, your alumni are back in town and eager to help. Ask them to wear their college sweatshirts and to be able to describe how they manage their workloads, social lives, and more. College sophomores are ideal as they have already navigated freshmen year and are not so embedded in upper-level experiences yet.
Preparing for financial aid. Remind families, they can apply for financial aid now. They will use 2015 taxes, so if they need to update colleges, they will have to submit an update later.
Test scores. Students need to send their test scores directly to colleges. Make sure they send them as soon as they can. Students with free or reduced lunch get to send scores for free to eight colleges. If they can’t afford to do this, you can contact a college and see if you can fax the scores to the college for the students.
Enjoy your holidays. Have a college door-decorating contest. Please, please help students with any last minute college application questions. Perhaps hold an application party during the break.