Consultation #2
Finding the Right College for You: Identifying the best “safety,” “target,” and “reach” institutions for you; choosing your admissions strategy; getting the most out of your campus visits; financing your college education; maintaining a strong applicant profile
List of Services Provided
You’ll receive the following services that set Upstate College Planning Services apart from our competitors:
- Describe what “selectivity” really means, and how it can affect your chances of admission
- Discuss whether attending one college over another really will improve your chances of success/employment
- Describe how US News & World Report rankings are relevant to your chances of admission
- Share insider knowledge about whether colleges’ stated admissions priorities really hold when tough decisions need to be made
- Discuss who makes decisions about competing admissions goals and why, and how that could affect your admissions strategy
- Find out how you can effectively tap into a college’s current priorities
Plus, you’ll receive all of the following:
- Carefully interview you and your parents to gather information about your background and interests (use the analysis provided during Consultation #1, Getting Started, if possible).
- Help you and your parents understand the distinctions among various levels, sectors, and types of colleges
- Assist you and your parents in prioritizing college selection factors including size, location, cost, selectivity, public or private affiliation, mission/educational philosophy, curriculum, diversity of the student body, co-curricular learning opportunities, campus and living environment, and so forth
- Prepare an initial list of institutions that fit your needs and interests, based on the foregoing as well as your academic and personal profile
- Make sure that an appropriate mix of target, reach, and safety schools are included in your list
- Help you design an admissions strategy, i.e., evaluate whether to apply Early Decision, Early Action, or Regular Decision at each of your target institutions
- Offer an analysis of your current strengths and weaknesses as a college applicant, emphasizing steps that you could take now to mitigate your weaknesses and improve your chances of admission
- Provide an evaluation of your compatibility and chances of admission at any school
- Help you decide how many campuses to visit, when, and for what purposes
- Help you construct a framework for analyzing the differences among institutions
- Provide expert advice about making the most of your campus visits, including suggestions for evaluating on and off-campus housing arrangements, meal plans, athletic facilities, social and extracurricular life, co-curricular learning opportunities (e.g., service learning, off-campus study), professors’ accessibility, and related issues
- Provide you and your parents with an overview of financial aid and the scholarship application process, including the terminology of financial aid
- Assist you in obtaining information about financial aid, scholarships, and loans that may prove useful for your family’s financial situation
- Guide you and your family to web sites and other sources of financial aid information
- Refer you to colleagues who specialize in helping families with college expenses
- Review your current and upcoming curriculum, standardized test results, and plans for extracurricular and summer activities in order to position you strongly for the upcoming application process
- Evaluate whether it would be to your advantage to improve your test scores; if so, assist you in identifying methods of test preparation that have proven successful in raising scores
- Discuss how to use academic, extracurricular, volunteer, and summer activities to clarify your interests and add focus to your application
- Assist you in developing a customized calendar of tasks and due dates, including an application process schedule
- Set goals for continuing with the UCPS process, if you choose to do so
Contact us now for further information
