Career Planning Workshop for Parents of College Students

Career Planning Workshop for Parents of College Students: Today's Job Market for College Graduates

Join Career Treking to learn where the jobs are for college grads and how you can help.

All’s Well That Begins Well

The hallways are beginning to fill with the buzz of seniors talking about their college choices. It’s hard to believe that just a year has passed since they started their college search – so many campuses have been visited, so many interviews have been had, and so many essays have been written! As the junior class embarks on their own college process, we offer these tips to get their college search off to a strong start: • The process of finding and applying to the colleges that are the best fits for you takes a considerable amount of time, thought, and energy. In the months ahead your ideas about the “right” college will evolve, your selection criteria will change, and what you most value in your college experience will shift. Give yourself the time and space to consider what is best for you. • Commit yourself to working on your college search as if it were an additional class. Set aside time each week for your “college process homework”. • Finding the right college involves many steps and even more details. To keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed, set up organizational systems early. Designate a place to store all your college materials. Set up folders in your email account specifically for college related correspondence. Create file folders to store hard copies of materials and ask for help from a parent or a friend if organization does not come easily or naturally to you. There is so much to do, you won’t want to waste time looking for materials. • Go into this process with an open mind. Don’t put too much weight on your preconceptions about a particular college or rely too much on what your peers tell you. Your unique impressions are what matter most. • Understand that this year-long process is about more than just “getting in”. It’s a process of self-discovery, values clarification, and taking responsibility for yourself. Be sure that you are at the center of the process, not your parents, or you will deny yourself the opportunity to learn these valuable lessons. • For most, going away to college marks the beginning of your real independence from your family. Just as leaving home is a big step in your life, so to is it for your parents. Understand that they are going through their own version of the college process and will need time to process just as you will.

Although the road ahead is a long one, getting off to a strong start can set the tone for a successful and rewarding college search experience. Get organized, set aside time to work on your college process, and take advantage of the opportunities to show your emerging independence and self-sufficiency that this process allows and your efforts will be well rewarded.

The Envelope, Please....

Over the next few weeks, seniors will be anxiously attending their mailboxes, eagerly awaiting the delivery of the proverbial “thick envelope” as colleges begin sending out their first round of early admissions decisions. However, for many students, applying early isn’t in their best interests for a variety of reasons. The college process, when done well with care and thought, can be quite a time consuming process and many seniors simply haven’t had the time to do research and to visit campuses in order to make a well-informed decision by the early deadlines. For those who are just reaching their academic stride, the opportunity to include an additional term of higher grades will make their application all that much stronger. Not all students who rush to meet the early deadlines are doing so for the right reasons and those students feel compelled to apply early “just to get the process over with” often rue their hasty decision.

Why all this pressure on students to apply early? From the college’s perspective, early application options are useful tools to increase their selectivity as well as to manage their applicant pool. Many students’ inboxes are being flooded with pleas from colleges to apply, often with enticements that make this process as straightforward as possible. The math is simple – the more applications they receive, the lower their percentage of accepted students. If they can target students with high SAT scores, so much the better – that will raise the average standardized test scores of their applicants. In these ways, schools begin to appear more competitive.

The selectivity of a college is based on their yield – that is the number of admitted students who actually matriculate at their school. The higher the yield, the more selective the school’s ranking. While Early Decision applicants are committed to attending, even Early Action candidates are more likely to accept an offer of admission. Thus, a college can improve its yield numbers by offering early application opportunities.

Although some of the most talented students are in the early pools, some colleges use early applications for other strategic reasons. Often recruited athletes are asked to apply early decision to demonstrate their sincere interest in playing. Early decision also meets other institutional needs, such as legacies who might not be as competitive in the regular pool, but are accepted early because they are more likely to yield.

Without question, early applications can work to the college’s advantage and for the student who applies with care and thought, this is a tremendous opportunity. However, it is important to remember that of the 2,000 four year colleges in the country, only about 350 reject more students than they accept. The frenzy around submitting early applications is driven by only the most selective schools and it’s important that students use this opportunity to their advantage, not the college’s.

Behind the Doors of the College Admissions Office

With applications sent off, the college application moves from the student’s desk to the college admissions office where, for the next two months hundreds of thousands of applications will be reviewed while students across the country anxiously await a decision. What goes on behind the closed doors of the admissions office is a mystery to most and decisions can seem to reflect more “artistry” than science. In fact, the process varies from school to school and depends on the size and type of institution, its selectivity, and the school’s own “flavor. However, every college and university assesses the strength of each application relative to the applicant pool as well as the school’s enrollment objectives. While each student is considered on his or her own merits, schools work to “socially engineer” a class that reflects the demographics of society as a whole and each student is valued for how they contribute to that mix.

While larger universities typically use a formula based on standardized test scores, GPA, and other pertinent information to calculate a student’s admissibility, most schools review each and every application personally and thoroughly. Students can be assured that their application will be reviewed by a committee comprised of admissions counselors, faculty members, current students, part-time hired staff, or any combination of the above. By being viewed by several different people representing a variety of perspectives and interests the goal is to make the process as fair as possible.

After reviewing the file, students are assigned a ranking, either numeric or alphabetical, and those given the highest scores are typically admitted and those with the lowest ranking are usually denied. It is the applications that fall in the middle that receive the greatest attention. At this point the colleges are looking to fine-tune the composition of the incoming class and each applicant is evaluated for the ways in which they might uniquely contribute to the school based on their particular strengths and talents.

Admissions offices are always interested in increasing their “yield”, or the number of admitted students who actually matriculate at their school. A student’s “demonstrated interest” can be a good indicator of their likelihood of yielding, so admissions committees note if the applicant visited their campus, met with them at a college fair, interviewed, or joined the group when the college visited the student’s high school. Typically, the more often the student demonstrated their interest in a school, the better.

Admissions officers are also interested in letters of recommendation and look specifically to see if what others have to say about the applicant supports the information the student has provided in his application. Is the student the passionate scholar he claims to be? Is she really a leader in a meaningful way or are her positions merely titular?

Finally, some students may be “on the bubble” because of their academic standing. If their grades are close, but not quite, what the admissions office would like to see, they may wait until the third quarter grades are released to make their decision. As at this point no applicant really knows where they stand in the admission pool, it is important to continue to strive to get the best grades possible. It is not too late to make a good impression!

So, the waiting game continues. Know that admissions counselors are doing their best to weigh every piece of an application to make the best and fairest decision possible. In the meantime, keep working hard, and keep your fingers crossed.

Fine Tuning the College List

After months and months of research, visiting schools, and interviewing, many seniors are faced with a new dilemma: how to cull what has become an impressively long college list into something more manageable and realistic. With more than 3,000 colleges from which to choose, the challenge is to develop a list of schools that both matches the student’s abilities, interests, and character and that also represents an appropriate range of selectivity. Generally, a college list of 8 - 10 schools is appropriate for most students. Even though the Common Application facilitates the application process, interviewing, campus visits, and completing supplemental materials can take a tremendous amount of time. Working on too many applications can compromise both the caliber of each individual application as well as detract from time and effort better focused on school work and extracurricular activities.

To hone the list, consider carefully why each school was put on the list in the first place. Likely, through the college process, search criteria became increasingly refined and those schools chosen early in the process may no longer be appropriate. Review the list carefully, and keep only those colleges that remain the best matches.

The next step in refining the college list is to check it for balance, making sure that there are “Reach”, “Eye-Level”, and “Likely” schools represented. Typically, the most selective, or Reach schools, are the easiest to add and lists quickly become “top heavy.” Because these schools typically have lengthy supplements, applying to many of them can actually backfire as it’s hard to put forth one’s best effort on each and every application. A better strategy is to submit thoughtful and well-polished applications to the top 2 – 3 Reach schools.

At the other end of the spectrum, “Likely” schools play a critical role and should not be just “thrown on” as afterthoughts. Like every other school on the final list, these schools should be places where the applicant would thrive academically and socially. If a Likely school is not a college the applicant would attend, then it shouldn’t be on the list at all. These 2 – 3 schools are the most difficult to find because they involve a compromise of some kind and they don’t have the same cache as the more selective schools.

The middle tier of schools that appear on a balanced college list are the “Eye-Level” or “Moderate” Schools – those institutions where the applicant stands an even chance of being admitted. These 3 or 4 schools are the backbone of the college list and should be chosen with tremendous thought and care. Chances are, it is one of the schools in this category that the student will end up attending.

Developing a balanced list of appropriate schools takes time but should reflect a range of schools at which the applicant will be a happy, successful student. While there can be compelling reasons to have lists that are longer or shorter than the recommended 8 - 10 schools, the most important thing is that the list is balanced between Reach, Moderate, and Likely schools and that the applicant puts his best effort into his applications at each and every school.

10 Steps to Writing a Winning Personal Statement

I have yet to meet the student who finds writing their Personal Statement for the Common Application to be the most exciting part of their college process. They whine, they procrastinate, they beg me to write it for them – and I am sympathetic. It’s hard to capture the “essence of who you are” in 500 words. But just as each essay should be as unique as the person writing it, there are some qualities that successful personal statements share: 1. They give a unique insight into the applicant. Begin by writing one sentence about what you want to convey about yourself to the reader. After the first draft, ask yourself if your essay conveys what you wanted it to. If it doesn’t, refocus.

2. They are well edited. Don’t let your mom or dad be your only editor. Chances are they love you too much to bring any kind of objectivity to their assignment. Beyond identifying grammatical errors, ask your editor what impressions of you your essay sent. Does that message match the one you intended to send?

3. The personal statement doesn’t rehash information that can be gleaned from other pieces of the application. If you’re a B+ student taking Honors classes at a competitive high school, there’s no need to tell the admissions office about how challenging your classes are - they already know. DO talk about an assignment or a moment in class when you felt particularly challenged or successful.

4. 3,000 words were written to get to the final 500. One page doesn’t leave any room for digressions or unimportant details. Make every word count, because it does.

5. They focus on describing moments, feeling and insights, not scenery. If your essay tells little more than what the reader could see on the front of a postcard, send the postcard instead.

6. They view the moment through a microscope, not a telescope. You can’t tell the reader everything you want to, so focus in tightly on the most significant details.

7. They are not cliché. Did you score the winning goal for an important game? Did you travel to far-off lands to do community service? Do you have an uncle who has overcome a serious physical handicap to accomplish incredible things? That’s wonderful. But, unfortunately, not original. If you are going to write on a theme that has been worn to death, there is a special onus on you to show how these moments have specifically shaped YOU.

8. Great personal statements are not about anyone else but the writer. If you are telling the story about a person who had an influence on you, be sure to keep the spotlight on you.

9. It’s not just about the story you tell, it’s also about how you tell that story. The deft use of alliteration, allusion, metaphor and other literary devises separates the good essays from the great.

10. They are more personal then they are statements. Great essays give the admissions officer information about what make you uniquely you.

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No One Said Applying to College Was Easy: 7 Tips for Parents

Time and time again parents sit in our office and reflect, “I don’t remember it being like this when I applied to college” and, indeed, the process has changed in some important ways. More colleges are making standardized testing optional, schools are becoming increasingly competitive, students are sending out more applications and parents are more involved in the process than ever before. For parents of rising seniors, we offer these words of advice: 1. Help your child remember that college is first and foremost about the academic experience. Colleges are offering some very enticing options including gourmet food service, dorm suites with full kitchens, athletic centers with state-of-the-art equipment, and cyber cafes at every turn. All this is very appealing, but students can lose focus on what should be at the center of their college experience – the academic program. Enjoy all the amenities colleges have to offer, but help your child assess the breadth and depth of courses offered and the level of academic rigor. While these intangibles can be hard to evaluate, it is important to help your child to keep the rightness of the academic fit at the center of the decision making process.

2. If your child has been a procrastinator for 17 years, going through the college process isn’t going to draw out Type A qualities. Know your child’s strengths and weaknesses, and proceed accordingly. If he is disorganized, set up organizational systems. If he needs to read about colleges to really understand them, buy him guide books. Tech savvy kids can gather a lot of information from YouTube videos, podcasts, and school websites. Learning and behavioral styles are hard to change, so play to your child’s strengths.

3. Remember, this is not your turn to apply to college. While you’re college years may have been the best of your life, that doesn’t mean that your alma mater is perfect for your child. Let your child decide what is the best place for him/her to spend his/her undergraduate years.

4. It’s hard to be objective and supportive at the same time. If you start more sentences with “Tell me more about what you think about …” and fewer with “I think that…”, you’re well on your way.

5. Applying to college is probably the longest, most involved, and most difficult decision your child has ever had to make. Give him plenty of time and space to process all the information and don’t undervalue the emotional component. This is important practice for making even the even bigger decisions which the lie ahead.

6. View the process of applying to college as just that – a process. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end and each child will go through the process in his own way, in his own time, hopefully taking on increasing responsibility and ownership. Ultimately, this is not just about “getting in”, but about developing self-awareness, clarifying values and becoming self-sufficient and self-directed. When parents become too involved, the student is denied the chance to go through this very maturing, self-actualizing process.

7. First row seats don’t always provide the best view. Sometimes the best place to watch this process is from the bleacher seats.

Is the Liberal Arts Degree Passe?

The cost of college coupled with the bleak employment outlook for college graduates has caused many a high school student to feel the pressure of declaring a major that will be “useful” at graduation. As a career coach for college students and graduates, I am often asked the question: is the liberal arts degree passé? Bill Gates recently argued that our country needs to reduce the money spent on liberal arts education as it doesn’t create jobs. Steve Jobs was quoted 2 days later saying that “at Apple, it’s technology married with liberal arts married with the humanities that makes our hearts sing”. In an attempt to settle the issue, a research team from Duke and Harvard surveyed over 650 senior executives. The findings made my heart sing: gaining a college degree made a big difference in terms of employment, but the major and the school selected were not major factors. Our society needs artists, musicians and psychologists as much as we need bio-medical engineers and computer programmers.

My advice to high school and college students remains unchanged: study what interests you the most. Excel in fields in which you have the most passion and ability. Your GPA will most likely be higher and you will enjoy your college experience.

Any field of study today requires that students engage at their school of choice to build a portfolio of marketable skills. Employers want proof that a job candidate can communicate, think analytically, solve problems and work well with others. A strong work ethic and the ability to self manage remain at the top of the list of attractive qualities especially in a lean job environment.

Consider the student who majors in accounting: their mastery of accountancy is a given upon graduation. The ability to communicate, work well with others and a strong work ethic will make them stand out.

College students can build these marketable skills by obtaining paid part time work, internships (sophomore and junior year are ideal), leadership and participation in student organizations as well as volunteer work. Just as students built their resumes in high school for college applications they now have to build their resumes for the job market throughout college. College is a time for exploration; many a college student changes major and career interests as they explore the options open to them.

Still undecided? Keep in mind that many jobs that are now seen as commonplace did not exist 5 years ago—social media, forensic accounting and video gaming to name a few. In fact, 40% of the jobs being done in the country did not exist 10 years ago. It’s virtually impossible to predict where the jobs will be in 5 years. It’s all the ability to learn and be flexible in this fast changing world.

Written by: Susan Kennedy, Founder of Career Treking

One Tour, Two Different Perspectives My daughter is a high school junior and last week we took our first official tour of colleges specifically for her. Although I had, of course, anticipated this moment for years, looking at colleges through the eyes of an invested parent instead of a detached consultant, was an extraordinary experience for me, unexpected in many ways. I worried about how she would find her niche in this new community, I tried to imagine her taking a semester to study abroad, and I wondered how she would be shaped differently by her experience at each college.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/archive/x1076645602/COLLEGE-MATTERS-One-tour-two-different-perspectives#ixzz1KGkDiJSm

How to go to College... Without Going Broke

At this seminar you will learn tips on the financial aid process, which colleges have the most scholarship money to distribute, and how to maximize your free scholarship money. To register please contact Karen Grunow kgrunow@ahpnet.com or 978.261.1417.

One College Tour, Two Different Impressions

One of the “benefits”, or so I like to call them, of being the child of an educational consultant is that you “get” to tag along with your parent on college tours from the time you can remember. My daughter plays club soccer and, for years, whenever she had a tournament in some far away state, we would leave a day early so that I could take advantage of the opportunity to visit college campuses. And she, of course, got to come along. This has been our routine since she was in middle school. Sometimes she would beg off, choosing instead to pass her time reading in the admissions office while I toured. Other times she would join me, learning more than a 13 year old should probably know about co-ed dorms and frat parties.

Now she’s a junior and last week we took our first official tour of colleges specifically for her. Although I had, of course, anticipated this moment for years, looking at colleges through the eyes of an invested parent instead of a detached consultant, was an extra-ordinary experience for me, unexpected in many ways. I worried about how she would find her niche in this new community, I tried to imagine her taking a semester to study abroad, and I wondered how she would be shaped differently by her experience at each college.

But my most pleasing revelation was how ready my daughter is to go off to college. Not in that “I-can’t wait-to-get-away-from-my-parents-and-lead-my-own-life” way that many students feel, but in the way that she is ready to tackle the challenges of collegiate life and is excited by the many new opportunities that await her.

I smiled several times on these tours as I watched my daughter’s eyes light up at things that would have made no real impression on me. In one dining hall, after seeing a row of 20 cereal dispensers lined up like soldiers, she turned to me beaming and said, “This is a GREAT school!” She engaged tour-guides and asked questions about classes and student activities that would never have occurred to me. And, above all, she concluded that natural sunlight and bright, open spaces were of paramount importance to her.

Despite the fact that we used two different assessment rubrics, remarkably we came away with the very same sense of which schools were the best fit for her. We just had different reasons - mine more objective and focused on the classroom experience and hers more subjective and, apparently, weighing heavily the cold cereal options!

In the end of things, I know that my daughter is going to thrive in college. I saw it by how easily she moved around campus, how comfortably she spoke with students, coaches, and professors, and how happily she took in everything she saw. At this time next year, she’ll be ready to tackle head-on the challenges of collegiate life with poise confidence.

No, I’m not ready to see my child off to college, but she is ready to go, and therein lies the pain, and the pleasure, of parenthood.

How to choose classes for next year Over the next few weeks, students will be filling out their course selection forms for next year. Students should put careful thought into their choices, selecting those that will demonstrate their academic potential and willingness to challenge themselves while not creating a schedule that will leave no time for extra-curriculars - or sleep!