Shellee Howard from College Ready breaks down five steps to boost college admissions: take rigorous courses like AP and IB spread across all four years, not just senior year; show genuine passion through extracurriculars; prep seriously for the SAT and ACT; find schools that match your academics, culture, and budget; and start college essays early.
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Hello and thank you for joining Shellee Howard and College Ready. I am super excited to share with you 5 easy things that you need to know and can do right now to get you or your student in college. When I say easy, that's kind of a relative term, but in the scheme of things of overwhelm and uncertainty If you could just follow these 5 things. First, most important, have a plan. There's nothing more important in the college admission process. Having a plan can mean the difference of getting in or not getting into college. What do I mean by having a plan? Well, first you need to create your academic plan. What does that look like? How many rigorous classes will you take? How many do you want to take? In other words, do you want to take dual enrollment? Do you want to take college classes, community college? Do you want to take AP, IB, college prep, honors? All of these should be a choice. Sometimes students feel like, "Do I have to?" I hear that often. No, you don't have to. You get to. You can choose to take as much rigor as you want. Did you know that your high school does not have the same classes as a high school down the street? Your school may have 10 AP classes where another school may not have any. But a college knows if you can take this many rigorous classes. They want you to take this many rigorous classes. So planning a strategy— you don't want to do it all in your senior year. That is a tragedy as you're trying to apply to college. You want to space it out. So if your high school allows you to take an honors class or classes or college prep classes your freshman year, I recommend taking them. It's good to know, are you ready to do that kind of work? If they allow 2 APs or 5 APs or whatever that is, make it your plan, make it your choice. Thinking about college classes, do I even need a college class? Do I want a college class? And why am I doing it while I'm in high school? Well, college is so different. Like nothing. There's nothing like high school when you take a class that you truly enjoy. If you like politics, try a poli sci class. If you like speech and debate, try a communications class. If you like finance or marketing, try a business class at a college. Don't wait until you get to college. You can try them now. The second thing Define your strategy. So it's one thing to have a plan, but it's a whole different thing to have a strategy. So what does that mean? What is your overall plan going to be? Who are you? Colleges wanna know. What are you passionate about? Do you know? Do you have an idea? Do you know how to figure that out? We can help you do that. I know it's hard to imagine, but life outside of the cell phone and the computer is so amazing, and you will find your passion, but you must seek it. The next thing is, what will you do to demonstrate your passion or your strategy? How will you show colleges that you can do what you say you can do? And then show them proof. If you don't have proof, how will they know if you can or you can't do what you say you want to do? Think of it this way: if your strategy is to be an advocate, say you want to go into law and you have a huge passion for all things advocacy, and you are one of those students who just get fired up, you want to protest, you want to debate, you want your voice heard, then I recommend showing them by either volunteering something political or something in your community or taking a class in speech and debate or politics. Show them proof. The third thing is what What will your scores tell colleges about you? Well, scores are pretty much black and white, or yes and no. They tell colleges that this student has mastered this or they haven't. So even though there's a thing called test optional right now for this graduating year, we don't know what next year's gonna be. So if you are a junior, a sophomore, a freshman, an 8th grader. Please don't have a strategy that there is no such thing as a test score. There was a time that the ACT test told colleges that they were going to allow, allow you to do section by section and only take one at a time, and everything went crazy. And I kept telling students, let's just wait and see. Work your plan, work your strategy. Guess what? It never happened, and there was so much concern. So please take your test prep very serious. Plan to take the PSAT, plan to take the SAT and ACT several times after you get the score you need. How do you know that? I'm happy to share that with you. I know the average test score for every college in the U.S. So there are so many things that you can do. There's AP exams, there's IB exams. These things are not going away. SAT too, very important if you want to be unique and have your own strategy. Number 4, how will you pick your schools? This is so critical. If, if there's one thing out of all of these 5 that is more important than all of them, well, of course you need the GPA, is pick the right schools because the right schools give you the right academic fit, social fit, and financial fit. What do I mean by that? Your academic fit is based on your GPA and your rigor. This school will keep you challenged, will keep you learning, will be at the right pace. That's not every college. Then you have the social fit. This does not mean the party scene. This means, are your people at that school? If you are competitive and if you like fighting for every A, you need to be at a school like that. But if you don't, that could be a big problem for you. So please pick the right school. Then there's the financial fit. It terrifies me when parents say, you know what, if they get in, we'll just wait and see. Well, what are you gonna wait and see after they get in? How will you pay for it? Loans are real. You do not want a college loan. When my son graduated from Harvard in 4 years for free, he had zero debt. Why? Because he planned the strategy properly, picking the best school, taking the, the most rigor that fit his capacity, taking tests to prove his greatness. You want to have a strategy and a plan and then show proof. And then number 5, look at the essays now. So if you know you want to apply to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, guess what? There's no essays. That might make some of you smile, but then again, if you want to apply to a school like Harvard There are 7 essays, and I can tell you exactly what those essays are going to be. So if you know them now, wouldn't it make sense to start to write that essay in your head as you're going about life? If there's a question that you're going to have to answer about, tell me a time you did something for somebody else that did not benefit yourself, why not start to put that together? So you can see there are 5 really easy things to do, and with a plan and a strategy and ideas and proof, you too can get into the college of your dreams. We would be more than happy to help you and guide you, but more importantly, we're here to support you if you have any questions. We are still offering our free strategy session through the end of October. Feel free to give us a call, send us an email, or a text, and we look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you so much and have a wonderful afternoon.
