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Building a College List That Works

Illustration of a categorized college list with sections for aspirational, target, likely, and anchor schools, designed to help students organize and reflect on their college choices.

There’s the occasional moment in a junior meeting where I can see the pressure mounting — students staring at a blank college list, parents eager to suggest the alma mater or the “top” school they read about in U.S. News, and me trying to bring the focus back to fit. Because the truth is: A […]

Junior Year College Planning: A Guide for Counselors and Students

Maybe the biggest surprise to me when I started this job was how crucial junior year is in college planning. When I did this decades ago, I don’t think I even started thinking about college until my senior year started. Not sure how much of that was due to changing times and how much was […]

Helping Students Take Ownership of the College Process

In my 20 years in education, it seems like students have needed more and more hand holding. A lot of teenagers are hesitant to take initiative, frequently look for reassurance, and often get overwhelmed by the idea of making decisions for themselves. At the same time, I get paranoid that I’ve become the old man […]