The Independent Teenager's Guide to College Admissions: How to Make the Process Your Own

By James Saltzman

The Independent Teenager's Guide to College Admissions offers students a self-directed, responsible, and enterprising approach to their transition from high school to college. Written by a professional with decades of experience as a college counselor and English teacher, the booklet brims with advice for finding the right colleges, producing compelling application essays, helping counselors and teachers write lively recommendations, and interviewing successfully. Many teenagers have ample experience, wisdom, and drive to direct their college search. All they lack is a strategy, which this booklet provides, step by step, with writing and research exercises that match interests and talents to opportunities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hillcrest Media Group
• Release date: Jan 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781634133685

Book preview

AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

Please go to the nearest 400-meter track. Sprint for an entire lap—about a quarter mile—four times, taking 30 seconds of rest between each run.

Sound like fun? The college search and application process contains many steps that can seem as grueling as those sprints, to anyone unprepared. (If you are a track star, increase the sprints to eight and rest only 20 seconds each time.)

Can anyone win the state title in the 400-meter dash without training? Or write a glorious college application essay in just 20 minutes?

Most often, success follows careful preparation. Consider this booklet your self-coaching manual for building a college list, interviewing, composing application essays, and creating documents to guide the adults who write your letters of recommendation.

This booklet’s numerous writing exercises will help you personalize your approach to each of these tasks.

Freshmen and sophomores: you can use this booklet to get a head start on your college search, or you can adapt the exercises to gauge the progress of your high school career so far and to set goals for what remains.

Have you figured out that I was kidding about those quarter-mile sprints? If not, stop running and turn the page.

GET ORGANIZED

Getting started with your college search is easy. From your nearest pharmacy or supermarket, purchase a packet of pens, a package of loose-leaf notebook paper, a package of paper for your computer printer, and a three-ring binder.

Also buy, label, and install tab dividers for:

A self-profile of your high school years

An achievements inventory of your most significant accomplishments during this time

Research notes for prospective colleges

A college search guide created from these notes

Documents for faculty writing letters of recommendation for you

Drafts of application essays

Use these notebook sections to store what you produce for the writing exercises in this booklet. To help you with this process, each writing exercise is connected to one of the bold-face titles.

You can complete the writing exercises in pen or with your computer, whichever works better for you.

TELL YOUR STORY

Your high school years tell a story, your story. This chapter will help you put it into words. From writing about yourself, you can learn a great deal that will aid you in every phase of your search, from deciding what to look for in a prospective college to remembering anecdotes for application essays. What you write for this chapter will create the foundation for the booklet’s remaining exercises.

Most of the writing exercises in this booklet emphasize description. That means bringing events to life with words. Depict actions, sounds, shapes, colors, tastes, whatever the reader would experience at