Category Archives: College visits

College Admissions Simplified: A Guide for the College-Bound.

“The college process today is marked by dramatically lower acceptance rates, obscure bases for those getting in over others with similar records, and tuition that rivals the cost of the average American home,” writes Mark Sklarow, Chief Executive Officer of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, in the Forward of my new book, “College Admissions Simplified: A Guide for the College-Bound.”

It really does bother me that today’s students and parents have such angst over college admissions. Independent Educational Consultants like me, also called college consultants, can provide invaluable knowledge and experience in guiding students through admissions (although students must always own the process and do the actual work). But let’s face it – not everyone chooses to or can afford those services.

That’s why I wrote this book – to provide a step-by-step roadmap to walk students through every aspect of college admissions. I also provide important tips to help parents support their teens, but without taking over. It’s crucial that the whole process, from high school classes to grades, testing, researching and visiting colleges, filling out college applications, writing essays, and getting letters of recommendation, belongs to the STUDENTS.

My book also helps students think about aspects of today’s overall admissions process that are very important, but which that they may not be familiar with, such as creating a cohesive application so colleges will see them as a well-rounded person. Another purpose of the book is to help students realize that there is a college that’s a good fit for everyone, and that success means succeeding and thriving wherever you go. College is not about trophy-hunting. It’s about you, the student, and meeting your goals for this life-changing experience.

Here’s what “College Admissions Simplified” will teach you:

• How to Begin – Explore your goals, your character, your strengths, what kind of future life you want and more.

• Affording College – In-depth information on FAFSA and the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2020 and how it affects your situation. Plus, lots of information and resources on scholarships, grants, student loans and figuring out what your family can actually afford.

• Your Academic Record – an in-depth look at how college admissions officers look at your courses, your grades, your ranking and more. That process is a lot more complicated than you might think!

• Extracurricular Activities – It used to be the more the better. That’s no longer true; colleges are looking for more depth and activities that reflect who you are as a person.

• Your Personal Preferences – there are many subjective, non-academic factors that affect which colleges fit you best. These include geographic location, campus setting, student body size and profile, extracurricular opportunities, average class size, faculty involvement and much more.

• Campus Visits – a successful college visit requires planning, so this chapter gives you a guide to make your visits much more beneficial. By consistently following this guide, you’ll be better able to compare colleges, apples-to-apples.

• Your College List – the previous chapters cover topics that are fundamental to building your College List. Given this foundation, this chapter will teach you how to create a three-tiered College List of about 15 colleges that best fit you.

• Your Application—Strategy – because admission is competitive, most colleges have adopted a holistic approach to analyzing applicants. Admissions decisions rely not only on your academic record but on non-quantifiable factors as well. These may include interviews, essays, letters of recommendation, and extracurricular activities, among others. this chapter guides you in developing an effective admissions strategy to present your best possible self to colleges.

• Your Application—Theme and Hooks – the way you communicate your strategy to colleges is through your theme. This is a brief statement of the reasons why you’ll make an outstanding addition to a college’s freshman class. To make it more effective, your story should be subtly woven into your essays, college interviews and letters of recommendation. Ideally, an admissions officer will like your application so much that s/he will use it to advocate for you in committee!

Hooks are when you have a truly outstanding talent, aptitude, or skill. A strong hook may help you get admitted to colleges that might otherwise be just out of reach; it may also result in scholarship offers from colleges that highly value what you have to offer.

• Your Application—Letters of Recommendation – these present firsthand information about you that’s not available elsewhere in your application. They will have a positive effect on admissions if you treat them seriously rather than just items to be checked off your list of things to do. This book shows you how.

• Special Populations – This chapter is a guide for applicants who qualify for special considerations in selecting and applying to colleges, such as minority students, those with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students and more.

• Resources for Your Research – this final chapter gives you comprehensive and accurate information about colleges and universities.

A final note from Dr. Klaar:

If I’ve introduced some concepts in this books that you’re unfamiliar with, such as themes and hooks, this whole college admissions process may sound intimidating. But rest easy! The reason I named my book “College Admissions Simplified: A Guide for the College-Bound,” is that I break it all down for you in digestible-sized chunks that you can actually follow. Get it here today, and start your journey!

Read About Why Every Year in H.S. Counts!

Have a plan for every year

By high school, have a plan and let your child stretch academically. If a student is talented in math, let her take an AP math class. If it doesn’t work out, then she can step back.

Our conversation emphasized that every year in high school it important. College Admissions officers are looking for trends. They want to see that a kid is improving each year, and that they are challenging themselves with increasingly difficult courses.

I also gave advice on PSAT tests – they should be a guide for students to identify areas where they need more help and work. Although about 2,000 colleges are test-optional (including Wake Forest), students should take both the ACT and SAT tests. Some students do better on one or the other, and that’s the one they should submit.

We also discussed finding a college that’s a good fit, and how kids views of college size, how far they want to be from home, etc. change as they go through high school.

If you have questions, contact me at [email protected]!

Learn How to Conquer College in the Coronavirus Era

Waitlisted? Here’s how to handle that

Waiting for something that you intensely want and then being disappointed, is an experience that people would prefer to avoid. So why would a student set himself or herself up for disappointment by accepting a college’s offer to be waitlisted knowing that the odds of being admitted are often slim? The reason is that they’ll recover faster from disappointment than from regret. You’ll never know if you would have been admitted at your dream school unless you wait.

The Rationale for Waitlists

Colleges wouldn’t maintain waitlists if they never had the occasion to use them. They use them because well-qualified students apply to multiple schools and are often admitted to several of them. If fewer students accept a college’s offer of admission than have in prior years, the college will need to rely on their waitlist. Since waitlisted students nearly made the initial cut for admission, a college can confidently admit a sufficient number of them to bring their freshman class up to the desired size.

Application Outcomes

Students aspiring to attend top colleges are advised to submit about 10 applications. This spreads the risk of rejection by one or more schools, especially those in the “reach” category. There are three possible outcomes for an application submitted in the Regular Admission cycle: rejection, acceptance, or an invitation to join the waitlist. The first outcome may hurt, but, in terms of follow-up action, it’s simple… do nothing. You’ll be aware of the second outcome when a thick envelope arrives in the mail, bringing cheer and jubilation with it.

The third outcome is the one that can cause anxiety… you’ve been offered a position on the waitlist. If this outcome is from one of several desirable colleges and one or more of the others have accepted you, it’s no big deal. But if this college was your first choice and you would still prefer to attend it above all others, you should follow your heart and join the waitlist even though getting admitted may be a long shot.

Odds of Admission

In 2019, pre-pandemic, more than 600 institutions used a waitlist, including many selective and highly selective institutions. Nationally, about 150,000 students accepted a spot on one of the lists. Over a recent pre-pandemic four-year period, colleges admitted about 33 percent of waitlisted students, according to the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.

They noted, however, that among those institutions with admission rates of less than 50 percent, the waitlist admission rate was only 17 percent. The 30 most highly selective institutions admitted an even lower percentage — an average of less than 10 percent of waitlisted students. Every year, a few colleges admit none of their waitlisted students, depending upon how strong their yield was that year (yield is the percentage of applicants who accept offers of admission and go on to attend that college).

Below is a list of well-known institutions that admit a low average percentage of students from their waitlists:

Michigan – 2%
Baylor – 3%
UC Davis – 1%
Vanderbilt – 5%
University of Virginia – 1%
UMass-Amherst – 2%
Rensselaer – 3%
Carnegie-Mellon – 5%
UC San Diego – 2%
Cornell – 4%
Georgetown – 12%
MIT – 9%
Northwestern – 3%
Princeton – 5%

Among the institutions with the highest rates of waitlisted students admitted are:

Ohio State – 100%
Clemson – 99%
Penn State – 93%
Arkansas – 85%
UC Davis – 74%
UC Riverside – 74%
University of Maryland Baltimore County – 69%
Saint Louis University – 65%
University of San Diego – 64%

College Waitlist Action Plan

If you elect to join a college’s waitlist, we advise you to be proactive. Below are steps that we recommend you take to boost your chances of admission from a waitlist.

1. Probability: Get a sense of your chances of admission. Contact the admissions office to find out if the college ranks waitlisted students. If so, most of them will let you know your rank. Next, research the yield rate for the college over the past few years. If they have been experiencing a lower than average yield rate this year and you have a high rank on the waitlist, your chances of admission improve. You can research the yearly waitlist outcomes of a college on the College Board website and the Common Data Set.

2. Email: Write a brief email to the admission office soon after accepting waitlist status. The email shouldn’t reiterate the main points that you made in your application. You should briefly update the admissions office on recent significant academic and nonacademic achievements that occurred too late to be included on your application. Emphasize your continued strong desire to attend the college and make the case for why you’re a good fit. Tell them that you’ll enroll if they admit you.

3. Grades: Don’t slack off academically. If you’re waitlisted, you may be re-assessed based on your third and fourth quarter senior year grades.

4. Letter of Recommendation: Check to see if the college will accept another letter of recommendation. If so, consider asking a senior year teacher who can provide new positive information about you.

5. Contact: Stay in touch with the admissions office. Don’t overdo it! They want to see that you’re genuinely interested in their institution, but they don’t want to be pestered. Occasional, well-chosen contacts are acceptable.

After you’ve accepted a spot on a waitlist, the best thing you can do is to carefully consider the colleges that have admitted you. If you would be happy attending one of them, send in your deposit by the deadline and plan to attend that college in the fall. If you’re later admitted to your dream college from their waitlist, confer with your guidance counselor or independent educational consultant to consider your options.

Make Your College Visits Count!

There’s no substitute for being there. Well-planned college visits will reveal more useful information than its website, course catalog, statistical profile, and magazine rankings all put together.

College Visits Before and After

There are two stages in your college admissions campaign when you should do your college visits. The first is when you create your college list — the schools to which you’ll apply in senior year. Ideally, your visits should begin in your junior year and continue until fall of your senior year, when you need to prepare your applications. It’s this Before stage that we’ll focus on in this post.

The After stage comes late in senior year. It’s brief but important, if you’ve been accepted to more than one school and are unsure which school to choose. Try to re-visit the contending colleges before May 1 to make a final comparison and decision. Stay overnight if possible.

**Planning for Before Visits**

Successful college visits require careful planning, so we recommend that you use the same criteria in comparing colleges.

First, do your homework and research each college that interests you. Review the school’s website, especially the course catalogue and, within it, the requirements for the majors that you’re considering. Second, although magazine rankings can’t assess the qualitative factors that matter most to you in selecting a college, they compare peer institutions in quantifiable terms. That may come in handy as a quick reference source for such metrics. In addition, search the

web for recent articles in the news media about colleges of interest.

In addition to enabling you to add or delete schools from your College List, the knowledge that you gain in this process will make a positive impression on admissions officers in college interviews. They’ll know that you’re genuinely interested in their school.

What to do During Your Visits

Make the time that you spend on campus as productive as possible. Wear comfortable shoes. Take notes and photos because you’ll usually be touring several colleges in one trip and they’ll tend to blur together. You’ll need to make arrangements for the activities below in advance.

1. Schedule an Interview: Your first task is to schedule an interview with the admissions office. This requires the most lead-time, so make the interview appointment well in advance.

2. Go on the Guided Tour: A student-led tour of the campus is a great way to begin a college visit. Schedule it with the admissions office and let them know if others will be accompanying you. Campus tours usually involve an Information session led by an administrator or faculty member after the tour.

3. Assess the Classroom Environment: During the school year, sit in on a class (with permission of the admissions office) that you would be taking as a freshman. Even in summer, there’s likely to be classes that you can attend to get a feel for the classroom environment.

4. Experience Campus Life: Nothing you do will tell you more about a college than staying in a dormitory and eating in a dining hall. If you have a choice, stay with sophomores. They know more than the current freshmen do about the school and they’re not yet as jaded as upperclassmen. If the admissions office won’t arrange a stay for you, try to make arrangements yourself if you know students at the school.

5. Learn More About Your Major: If you can do so through the admissions office, schedule meetings with a faculty member and a student in your probable major. You can use the meetings to ask questions about the curriculum and any special programs within the major.

6. View College Activities: For those students with sufficient time on campus, try to attend a campus event such as a student concert, stage performance, or sporting event to get a sense of the community.

7. Follow Your Interests: Seek permission to take your own tour of facilities that are of particular interest to you, such as concert halls, athletic facilities, science labs, art studios, and rehearsal spaces.

Also keep in mind if you visit a campus in summer when the weather is pleasant, it may be much different in winter. Consider whether the campus will appeal to you under winter conditions.

At Klaar College Consulting, we get to know you very well so that we can integrate your interests, talents, experiences, skills, preferences, and goals into your profile. This affects the advice we give you throughout your college admissions campaign, including your college road trips.