College Counselor

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Do You Know What You’re Looking For In A College?

Do you know what you're looking for in a collegeLast week I talked about the importance of paying attention to a college’s personality. Campus culture is often overlooked but colleges do have unique characteristics which make them WHO they are. It is these characteristics, these personalities, that often make a campus feel like home or nothing like it.

If you missed the post, you can catch it here.

Today, I’d like to take a step back and talk about the characteristics that make a college WHAT it is.

With over 4,000 colleges in the country, students must do their research and thoroughly investigate the schools they are interested in to determine if these schools really are worthy of their interest. Here’s a few characteristics you should be paying attention to if you’re not already:

1. Size

There’s a big difference between a large research university like Penn State with 37,000 undergrads and a small liberal arts college like Assumption which tops out at 2,000. You are going to stand out a lot more at a smaller school where classes are built on active discussion and debate, and where professors teach undergrads and will have time to meet with you to talk about internships and your career aspirations. At larger schools, you are more likely to be just one in the crowd. And sometimes that crowd can be to the tune of as many as 400 other students in your Introduction to Business course.

2. Location

Location, location, location. It’s the buzz word in real estate and it can also be rather important in choosing colleges. Visit Brown University and there’s a lot of hustle and bustle going on around you in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. You’ll be in a concrete jungle surrounded by businesses, restaurants, and traffic not to mention thousands of other students from Johnson & Wales, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence College and Rhode Island College. Visit Susquehanna University in rural Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania and you’ll find a very open and green campus nestled alongside a small college town where you’ll quickly become a “regular” at the local coffee shop.

3. Majors

Colleges aren’t created equal and neither are majors. As a graphic design major, will you have to produce a portfolio? For nursing, will you have to complete pre-requisite courses in your freshman year before you can be admitted to the major? As a business major, do you start taking business-related courses right away? Regardless of your major, is there a required internship? Is there an involved alumni-mentoring program? How are graduates of the program doing and where have they ended up? You want to know the answers to these questions so that you know what it takes to get into your program and, more importantly, what it’s going to do for you.

4. Cost

Cost matters, but it matters even more when you pay attention to how strong of a candidate you are at each college. The stronger your candidacy, the more likely you are to receive a merit scholarship. This is especially true at private colleges where tuition and fees far exceed those at public schools. So, while you might have a dream school like Boston College, you need to understand that, even if you do get in, you probably won’t get much, if anything, in the way of merit money and will be stuck with a sizable bill that may not work for you and your family.

If you would like some assistance with your college search or financial aid process, contact me today for a free 60-minute consultation.

Here’s what other families like yours are saying about how Dobler College Consulting made a difference for them.

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Eric Dec 09, 2013 , , , , , , , , , , No Comments
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Colleges Are Not Created Equal

Colleges Are Not Created EqualLast month I spent some time travelling in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island where I met some amazing students, faculty and admission counselors at several colleges. As much as I enjoyed the trips personally, it also brought to mind just how important it is to understand what a college is all about before you apply.

In a post from last year, I talked about some of the major distinctions that make a college who it is. However, it’s so important to get beyond the basics like size, geography, ranking and cost.

Why?

Because if you don’t understand a college’s personality, you may end up in the wrong place. End up in the wrong place, and you may be very unhappy.

For example, at Messiah College, a Christian college in Mechanicsburg, PA, everything is about meaning and faith. What does it mean to be me, what I know and what I believe in? What does it mean to be an athlete, a writer, a musician, a male, a female, straight or gay? Messiah encourages deep conversation about everything we experience in life and how it relates to our faith.

At Clark University in Worcester, MA, the student body is very liberal and very unique. Clark is a place where difference is celebrated as diversity and the more diverse, the better. Cliques do not exist at Clark as all students are involved in a little bit of everything; it is common to find a student who is a strong athlete and a great artist as well.

I walked around Messiah feeling peaceful, like I wanted to take it all in and figure out the meaning of life. At Clark, I was constantly wondering what else I would see around the next corner and how colorful or loud it might be.

My personal reflections aside, there’s so much to like about each school. They both offer a liberal arts education strengthened by their pre-professional programs in business, engineering and health sciences. They also have generous merit scholarship programs for their best students which you can check out here and here.

But they are very different places and that’s important for you to know because a student at either school would more than likely feel very much out of place at the other school.

So, as you look at colleges and visit their campuses, pay close attention to how the campus feels, how the people feel and how the atmosphere feels. You want to walk away with a more informed opinion of how you would fit in so that you make sure to end up in the right place.

If you want some help and guidance on your college search and application process, contact me today to set up an appointment for a free consultation.

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Eric Dec 04, 2013 , , , , , , , , , No Comments
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A College Freshman Offers Her Advice To This Year’s Seniors

Advice From A College Freshman

I recently caught up with one of my former students, Meagan, who is now a freshman at CCSU’s Honors Program. We got to talking about her college search and the ups and downs of it. At one point I asked her what she would have done differently if she had the opportunity to go back and do it all over again knowing what she knows now.

That question led to a few others that I think would be incredibly helpful for this year’s senior class.

The following are some of the questions I asked Meagan with her answers.

Q1: What was the one thing about the college application process that was a lot harder than you thought it would be?

One of the hardest things about the college application process was writing and editing the essay. It’s hard enough trying not to second-guess yourself the whole time, let alone choose a topic to write about that speaks to you. I got really hung up in trying to pick a topic that wasn’t cliché, or hadn’t been done before, when in reality, no matter what topic you choose, some version of it has been done before. It’s just all about how you present it. Editing took a lot longer than I thought as well, since I’m so used to writing one or two drafts and then being done. But when it was over, it was the greatest feeling being able to upload it online and hit send knowing I’d never have to look at it again.

Q2: What was the biggest surprise?

The biggest surprise for me was how quickly deadlines came up. Although I was able to manage my time decently, things got crazy that first half of the year due to sports, school, and life in general. Sometimes it felt like time was never on my side. After every due date had come and I looked at when the next one was, I would think, “I have plenty of time to do that.” And then I’d look at the calendar later on and realize I only had a week to prepare whole supplementary essays.

Q3: If you could do it all over again, is there anything you would do differently?

If I could do it again I wouldn’t talk to my friends so much about their essays or their applications. When I listened to them tell me what they were doing, I would question myself and wonder if they had better ideas. Then I would go back to essays and psych myself out thinking it was horrible and incomparable to my friends’ essays. I just put way too much stake in what they had to say, when I should have just been focusing on what I needed to say.

Q4: What advice would you give to this year’s crop of seniors?

I would tell this year’s seniors to 1.) Chill out, 2.) Manage your time wisely because it WILL come back to bite you, 3.) Focus on yourself and not what your friends are doing, and 4.) Be realistic.

Time management during the application process saves a lot of stress and unnecessary anxiety. Keeping yourself sane during the process is important if you want to truly give colleges an accurate representation of you.

Although you value your friends’ opinions when you need them most, I strongly feel that this rule does not apply during the college application process. If you’re always asking different people things about essays, or where you should and should not apply, you’re going to get a million different answers and opinions that will leave you more confused and unsure than when you first asked. College application season is exciting because you’re thinking about the future, but what matters most is your voice and where you want to be – not your friends. It also saves you a lot of stress to not get wrapped up in their college stress too.

Being realistic will prove to be invaluable in the future. Take everything into account: cost, location, distance, and your grades. College is expensive, there’s no getting around it. It’s difficult to find a school you love without breaking the bank, but knowing you’ll graduate without $50,000-$100,000 of debt is a great feeling. Location is also important because if you want to be able to visit more than once or twice during the year, you might not want to move to Florida or out to California because flights are expensive and need to be considered. (However, if you’re not planning on visiting often, I highly encourage going to a place with nice weather.) Being realistic about what you did in high school is also important. I have seen many friends be blinded by how much they love a school and completely forget that there is a possibility of rejection. Seeing that heartbreak is not fun for any of the parties involved.

I feel like seniors freak themselves out over the college application process way too much (I know I did). No matter what happens, things will fall into place. I saw my friends crumble over applications to schools they desperately wanted to get into but when it comes down to it, you’re going to end up where you need to be even if it isn’t exactly what you first envisioned.

If you want some help and guidance on your college search and application process, contact me today to set up an appointment for a free consultation. 

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Eric Oct 15, 2013 , , , , , , , , , , , No Comments
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How One Student Made The Most Of His College Visit

Making The Most of College Visits

I received a call the other day from one my students, Nick, who had spent the day at SUNY Oneonta, a regional state university situated in the middle of upstate New York. He was scheduled to attend their information session but had also called ahead to secure an interview with an admission counselor. With the school residing nearly four hours from his hometown, it wasn’t likely that he was going back for a second visit before application season takes off. The school had only recently shown up on Nick’s radar and with a day off from school for Rosh Hashanah, he and his dad made the trek to campus.

Once the interview was over, Nick and his dad decided to skip the information session. He felt they had already received so much good information from the admission counselor that sitting through a 45-minute presentation would be redundant. They took a chance and decided to go off the beaten path to explore campus on their own.

Nick is a prospective music industry major so they decided to visit the music building to take a look around. Once inside, they ran into a few students. They made small talk with the students and then happened upon a professor who was on his way to teach a class. After introducing himself, the professor offered to show them around the building. He talked about the program’s strengths, the opportunities that were there for a student like Nick and also showed them around the sound recording studios. But it’s what happened next that got me so excited for Nick.

Realizing the time had come for his class to start shortly, the professor invited Nick to sit in on his class.

Nick accepted this professor’s offer and spent the next hour and half getting a taste of what a college class would feel like.

I’m so proud of him for doing what he did and I couldn’t have scripted it any better even if I had tried. If Nick had just sat through the information session, he would have missed out on all of this. He never would have sat in on the class, he never would have had a first hand look at the studios and he never would have called me with the level of excitement in his voice that I heard that day.

Instead, he took a chance, struck up some conversations and ended up having an experience that may just end up being a game-changer by the time his applications have been submitted and the dust has settled.

Now, that’s how you make the most of a college visit.

If you want some help and guidance on your college search and application process, contact me today to set up an appointment for a FREE 60-minute consultation.

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Eric Sep 08, 2013 , , , , , , , , , , No Comments
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Reducing The Costs Of College

Dobler College ConsultingIt seems like every time I go out to meet a new student and his or her parents, the thing we spend the most time talking about is college costs.

And it’s completely understandable. With costs rising at astronomical levels over the last couple decades, there are very few people out there who aren’t worried about how they will pay for college.

Consider that in 1993, when I graduated from Naugatuck High School, the average cost for tuition, room, board and fees was $24,504 for a private college and $9,513 for a public school. In 2012 those numbers increased to $39,518 and $17,860, respectively.

Let me do the math for you. That’s a 61% increase for privates and an 87% increase for publics.

And that’s just in 20 years. If you go back to 1972, the cost of a private school education has gone up 137% while it’s only gone up 124% for public schools. How’s that for sarcasm?

Once you pick yourself up off the floor, you can look up these numbers yourself on the College Board website.

The funny thing is that even though these figures are out there for everyone to see, I still see so many college applicants falling in love with schools that will be completely out of their reach financially. I hear things like, “we’ll figure it out” and “well, maybe I’ll get more money” when the reality is that they won’t figure it out and they won’t get more money.

What they will get is disappointment. Frustration. Anger. Resentment.

If you don’t want to get what they’re getting, pay close attention to just how generous or stingy colleges are with their money. Understand your EFC and what it means in the context of what a college may offer for you financial aid. And, most of all, make informed decisions.

I’ve written a few posts about these very ideas and if you haven’t read them yet, now would be a good time:

What You Need To Know About The Costs Of College

Why Some Financial Aid Offers Will Underwhelm

Why You Should Know Your EFC

You can trust Dobler College Consulting to help you navigate the college admissions journey. Give me a call now at 203.525.4096 or drop me an email to schedule a FREE 60-minute consultation to discuss your needs for college admissions counseling.

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Eric May 28, 2013 , , , , , , , , , , No Comments