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So you’ve finally made it to your senior year, and you’re a bit curious about how it will be different. I remember before my senior year I used to wonder how much it would be like the rest of the years.

More respect from teachers.

While every teacher is different, in general most teachers who always have seniors in their classes are more lax than teachers who have younger students. This is because seniors are usually more mature and able to handle more responsibilities.

If you have a more lax teacher, you’ll likely have looser classroom rules. Maybe you can eat in class now. Maybe it’s okay if you’re late every once in a while. You can use the bathroom when you need to. Generally, as long as you aren’t causing a problem, you’ll be given more freedoms. A lot of these teachers are the excellent choices to ask for a letter of recommendation from.

Of course, this does vary from teacher to teacher. Some teachers remain strict no matter what grade level they have. Don’t push the limit too far if you’re unsure.
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Your student resume, sometimes referred to as a ‘Brag Sheet’, is a collective list of all of your accomplishments as a student. When you fill out scholarship/college applications and ask for letters of recommendation, you’ll find yourself referring to it all the time, so it’s definitely best to get a head start on it.

My biggest recommendation is to add to it as you go. Keep a list saved on your computer of what you have done. If you take part in something that should go on the list, add it and save it before you forget. Of course, very few people are that dedicated — myself included — so chances are you’ll find yourself struggling to think of everything to write a good one at the last possible moment.

Not to worry!

The important thing is trying to remember everything you’ve done that’s noteworthy. Don’t worry about what’s applicable yet, you just want a nice big list of your accomplishments. You can always take some out based on the circumstances. Here are some aspects of your life to consider:

Keep reading »

The deadline to sign up for the next ACT test is on the 12th of this month. If you’re up for paying a late fee, you have until the 22nd, but who wants to do that? If you sign up, you’ll be taking the test on September 13th (no, it’s not a Friday).

If you’re interested in taking the SAT soon, you have a little bit more time. The deadline for the next test is September 9th, and, if you’re into late fees, you have until the 16th of September. The actual test is on October 4th.

The main reason for this reminder is to make sure that you start thinking about what tests you still need to take in order to be finished with it. It’s always best to take a test early. If you do poorly, you can always take it again, and you’ll be glad to at least know that you have some score to turn in if you need to.

As I’ve said, it’s important to keep an eye on deadlines. Believe me, it’s important to have fun in summer, but you do need to be aware that there are deadlines that can hit you even this early. If you need to take a test, it’s best to sign up now and avoid the stress later. It takes no time at all.

Here are the sites for signing up for each test:

• SAT

• ACT

ELC, short for “Eligibility in the Local Context”, is California’s way of guaranteeing you admission into one of the 9 University of California campuses (not the CSUs — know the difference).

ELC is given out to roughly the top 4% of every high school senior class based on the grades and classes of students. However, to me it seemed like far more than the top 4% were finding out. I came from a class of 450 students — 4% of that is 18, and I know more than 18 kids who received letters. So you might have a better chance of receiving a letter than the 4% implies, I’m not too sure.

My letter came around October 20th. Yours probably will too. What that letter will say is something to this effect:

As an ELC student, you are guaranteed admission to one of our nine outstanding campuses

What does this mean?

Exactly what it says. If it’s your life’s ambition to go to a UC, then be happy! You’ll definitely be admitted into at least one. Unfortunately, this doesn’t guarantee you into every UC (sorry, no instant admission into UCLA just yet!), but the fact that you even got one of these letters already signifies that you have excellent chances of getting into some of the less-competitive schools and even some of the more-competitive ones.

Be ready for some more mail.

You might be thinking, “Big whoop, I figured I’d at least get into Merced or something”, but the ELC program will do far more than guarantee your admission into one school.

After receiving the initial ELC letter, within the next couple of weeks I started to get mail from some of the UC campuses encouraging me to apply or, in most cases, directly guaranteeing me admission into the school. Here’s what I ended up receiving:

1. UC Davis: Guarantee of admission, as well as guarantee of first-choice major.
2. UC Irvine: Guarantee of admission into nearly all majors
   
3. UC Merced: Guarantee of admission
   
4. UC Riverside: Guarantee of admission
   
5. UC San Diego: Encouraged to apply
   
6. UC Santa Barbara: Guarantee of admission

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So I’ve told you how to get started on scholarships, but let’s not overlook how essential (and pesky) that letter of recommendation can be.

Most local scholarships will request at least one letter of recommendation, usually more. Some college applications want them. So before you even get to that point, it’s always great to make sure you have a healthy supply in your arsenal.

You always want the letter of recommendation to show you at your best, so it’s crucial to do your best to get a great one. Keep reading »

You may have noticed those new little buttons at the bottom-right corner of the screen. Or you may not.

I’d like to draw your attention to this little bugger:

"You Comment, I Follow" badge

(Thanks goes to Randa Clay for the awesome badge)

To give a basic description, by default WordPress sets links people provide in comments to “nofollow”. This means search engines don’t give any weight to that link, which is sort of like saying “The blog author does not endorse this website.” The original purpose of this is to cut back on spam, but if someone provides a link to his or her website, the only good it will do is if someone clicks it.

While I dislike spam as much as the next guy, I also want to thank those that take the time to comment me. So I’ve installed the WordPress plugin NoFollow Free to try to give at least something back. If you post a couple of comments, the rel=”nofollow” will be removed from your link. All I ask is for meaningful comments, not just some hoohah in order to take advantage of this and steal perfectly good linkjuice :]

I’d like to encourage other bloggers to do the same as well. Commenters should be appreciated.

For more information about the other badges this site uses, check out this post.

Does August seem a bit early? It’s not.

As students start to decide where they’re going to go to school, paying for that starts to take shape and scholarship applications start to become a priority. So, around that time, the competition for scholarships becomes much steeper because of more applicants.

Don’t believe me? Check out the pattern of Google searches for “scholarships” over the past few years:

The blue line designates the amount of searches. Notice how this amount jumps up around January.

As you can see, more searches are done for scholarships in the first few months of the year than any other time. This is generally the time when most kids are hunting around for scholarships.

By getting a start on scholarships early, you’ll have far more opportunities to get money than the average person who procrastinates.

Here are some good tips to help you get more free money: Keep reading »

When you start looking into colleges, you’ll notice that all of them boast any weird ranking that they can. Their websites are always full of things like:

• Ranked 6th for lowest dropout rate!
• Ranked 8th for best feminist studies program!
• Ranked 17th for nicest dorms!

Schools try to use these rankings to advertise and look impressive, but most of them really aren’t at all significant to you. What do you care about the feminist studies program if that’s not your major? Probably not at all.

These rankings are nice to look at and are good to talk about, but they shouldn’t hold much weight on your decision at all unless it’s something that you feel applies to you specifically, like if it involves your major. Think about it like in a professional sport — if you hear that such and such quarterback is the top in the league for scoring touchdowns on third down, that’s good and all, but aren’t there more important aspects?

The rankings that are a bit more important are the overall rankings.

US News ranks colleges, and their rankings are usually pretty accurate and held in high regard. They take into account a lot of different factors in making the rankings. For the list of the top rated schools, check here.

Princeton Review, the same site you can use to look up college information, also ranks schools as well. I couldn’t really find a definitive list, but they do rank in a bunch of different categories. You can look at their lists here

So what do rankings mean for you? What should they mean for you? Keep reading »