May 17, 2023

#17 - How To Create A College List Happy With

44 minutes

Create a list that WORKS for you!

When April of her senior year rolled around, Saige was only admitted to ONE college. One. She was denied at 14 schools. This story still haunts me to this day. From that day forward I never wanted that crushing rejection to hit another kid as hard as it did for Saige.

Saige was a solid B student, a few AP courses, average test scores, and a good list of activities. A kid like Saige would have access to any number of colleges across the country, just not the highly selective ones. She was a good writer – but short of having a first novel published, good writing was not going to get her foot in the door of the most selective colleges in the country. And that’s what Saige believed was in her future. I knew it was not.

When Saige came to my office to finalize her list, a list filled with elite private schools and the top two CA public schools, I knew I had my work cut out for me. We sat for an hour negotiating which schools she should apply to. Like two 4th graders negotiating trades from our Halloween hauls, we went back and forth, as I tried to get some appropriate, ‘Target’ schools on her list filled with nothing by pie-in-the-sky ‘Reach’ schools.

That spring, Saige had only ONE college that said YES. Only one.

I learned a tough lesson years ago. The only goal of the college admission process is to maximize each teen’s choices. PERIOD. Parents and teens must let go of their egos and dream adequately, hope appropriately, and remain realistic about a process that sometimes feels unfair and harsh.

Sometimes I have to offer tough love to students like Saige. But, I know that in the end, a student with lots of choices in the spring is a happier student than the one with unrealistic dreams and the probable stack of rejection letters.

Best Selling Author. TEDx Speaker. College Admission Expert. Football Enthusiast.

Dr. Cynthia Colón is the Amazon Best Selling author of Be Committed! Get Admitted., and the Spanish version, Con Determinación. ¡Logra la admisión! She is the national host of Destination YOUniversity podcast and founder of College Essay Bootcamp and Dream College Academy. “Cyndie” grew up with 14 Tíos and Tías with advice on everything except how to get admitted to college. Cynthia's immigrant mother had the courage to ask for help and changed the trajectory of her life. Because of Lydia (Mom), Cynthia is an alumna of USC, Columbia University, and UCLA. Dr. Colón is on a mission to help more public school students get private school service to access top 100 colleges. Dr. Colón delivered her first TEDx Talk, “College Admissions Is NOT Fair,” in Los Angeles in 2023. She has been featured on KTLA, ABC, NBC, FOX 5, KCAL, WGN, WPIX.

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