The College Metropolis Podcast: College Admissions Talk for High School Students and Parents

#079 – As we kick off our episode line-up for 2022, we begin by recapping some of the most memorable guests we had during the past year. These are guests that shared very valuable information in matters related to college admissions and college life. The content we revisit today is broad and covers the college essay, the advantages some private colleges offer over state schools, and ways to secure more financial aid than initially offered. Additionally, you will hear about ways to prepare a high school kid for the social challenges that may be experienced in a college setting. One of our guests shares how he used the courses he took in college while in high school as part of the dual enrollment program, to help his application stand out to college admission officers. That was one of the factors that contributed to his acceptance into Stanford University. You will also learn about a myth that is prevalent among students with plans to go to medical school, and ways in which your passion can help you mitigate some of your application shortcomings. You can find the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/79.  Please help us reach a wider audience by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review. That is a kind gesture that we will greatly appreciate. Thank you!

#078 – Today, we dissect a part of the college admission process that many applicants find very challenging, the college interview. Jankel and I dive into the details of the interview, which for some schools is a required portion of the application, while for others it is optional or not considered at all. We begin the episode by tracing the steps you will take beginning the senior year of high school. These steps include turning your college applications and scheduling your college interviews where they are required or made optional. We present important facts about your college interviews, and what you can do to find out whether or not the schools you will be applying to will require an interview. Additionally, we will go over some of the questions you may be asked. The questions we present are some of the questions you should expect to be asked. This is by no means an episode that presents all the questions you may be asked, but rather, it gives you a great idea of what to expect on your interview, how to prepare for it, and what to do after each interview. We also present two very important sets of information you should have ready with you. One is to be used throughout the interview, and the other at the end of the interview. By the time you get to the end of this episode, you will understand the purpose of college interviews, know how important they really are to your chances for admission, have a plan to prepare to do great in them, and know how to stand out by having a good follow-up response after each interview. You can find the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/78.  Please help us reach more high school students and parents by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review. We will truly appreciate it. Thank you!

Ep. 077 – On this episode, we begin by reading a very kind and warm review that was given to our podcast by a parent who is a listener. Towards the end of the review, she asked whether we could talk about college interviews. Jankel and I talked about our plans to talk about that subject on the next episode. But in the meantime, we went over three very important and very commonly asked questions during college interviews. Additionally, we mentioned the importance of sprinkling in information about your accomplishments to the interviewer during the interview, and the need to have questions prepared ahead of time for the interviewer. We then begin the episode by presenting some of the changes brought on by COVID-19 to the college admission process of many colleges and universities, including the fact that a great many of them became Test Optional. We talk about the meaning of that term, and we answer the question of whether the college admission process is easier now that SAT or ACT scores are not required at Test Optional schools. We continue the episode uncovering the meaning of Test Flexible, and Test Blind or Test Free schools. You will be surprised to hear how some of these schools give applicants more control of the process of applying for admission. You can find the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/77. Please feel free to reach out to us through our homepage at CollegeMetropolis.com. You can leave us a voice message, or use the Contact Us page to send us an email. We would love to hear from you. Please help us reach a wider audience by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review. That would help our efforts greatly. Thank you!

#076 - Admission into selective colleges and universities requires more than a stellar academic record. Most selective schools follow a holistic admissions approach, in which they consider other aspects of their applicants, including character, talent, work history, community service, and other elements to get to know the applicants as individuals. To them, it is important to know each applicant beyond academics, and to use what they learn about those applicants through their applications to gauge what each of those applicants will potentially add to the college body. To learn the specifics of how colleges and universities carry out a holistic admissions approach, on this episode, we explore the 13 admission criteria followed by the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA is the #1 university in the country in the number of applications received each year, surpassing the 108,000 mark. Out of that number, the university only admits a little more than 14,000 students, and rejects about 94,000 of them. Jankel and I will go over each element of the admission criteria, and uncover precisely what they want to see in the students who they accept each year. UCLA is a good example of what most competitive schools look for in applicants. Understanding the UCLA admissions criteria will help you understand what the selective schools in your college list will be looking for when they review your admission application. You can find the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/76. You can help us reach out to a wider audience by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review. We will be very grateful to you!

# 075 – Class rank is one of the factors considered for admission decisions by college admission officers in some colleges and universities. Because class rank is so important to those institutions, it is important that you understand everything about class rank. On this episode, I talk about what class rank is, how it is computed, and how it is used in the college admission process. Additionally, I present some of the reasons why some high schools choose not to rank students. For example, in cases where the GPAs of several students in a grade level are high but also very close together, it is not unusual for students to be left out of a percentage category by mere fractions of a GPA point. I also explore the difference between weighted and unweighted class rank, and point out which of the two offers you a better opportunity to rank higher. As the episode crosses the mid-point, I re-introduce a document reported by colleges and universities, which you can use to find out how important class rank is to those schools, or if they consider it at all. It is at that point in the episode, that I explore whether class rank is important for Harvard University, Brown University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and UCLA. In fact, as I present that information on the episode, I make a decision to go over the importance each of those universities place on the different academic and non-academic factors of the admission application. You will be very surprised to hear which institutions do not care at all about class rank, and which does not make use of letter of recommendation. You can find the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/75. Please help us reach more high school students and parents by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review. We will truly appreciate it!

# 074 – Your academic record will be the first part of your application to be checked by the college admission officers of the schools to which you will apply. The courses you take and the grades you receive make up a big part of your academic record. On this episode, we focus on the importance of grades as part of your transcripts, and how they are reported as a Grade Point Average. Jankel and I uncover the difference between unweighted and weighted GPA, and the reason why most schools, especially the more selective ones, will pay particular attention to weighted GPA. As the episode reached the mid-point, we present examples of two students who took various courses, including one who took higher-level courses. Through these examples, we analyze the importance of taking high-level courses, and the effect these have on weighted GPA. Towards the end, we present the steps students could take if they graduate from high school with grades that are too low to get into the colleges or universities they dream of attending. There is a very important step they could take, which may make their dreams a reality. You can access the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/74. Please help us reach a wider audience by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review. That, plus telling your friends about us, is the best thing you can do to help our podcast. Thank you!

# 073 – After listening to this episode, you will be able to analyze whether a college or university is a Reach, Target, or a Safety school for you. One of the most important things you will do as part of the college admission process is to create a list of schools that is balanced. That is, a list that has a number of schools that will likely accept you, some that may or may not accept you, and some that, more than likely, will not accept you, but you still apply to them because they are part of your dream college list and because they may have accepted people with some of your non-academic characteristics in the past. Jankel and I uncover the easiest way to decipher for yourself whether a school will be a Reach, Target, or Safety school for you. Additionally, we present a document that will allow you to know the level of importance every school gives to each academic and non-academic component of your application. We finish the episode by analyzing the most recent admission data for UC Berkeley and UC Riverside, and the GPA and SAT or ACT scores that would make them Reach, Target, or Safety schools for an applicant. You will be surprised to see how differently each school views application requirements, even though they are part of the same university system. You can access the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/73. You can help our podcast greatly by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review on the podcast platform you used to download this episode. That kind gesture will go a long way in helping us reach out to more students and parents. Thank you!

# 072 – Today, on this episode, we conclude our series on the habits of successful and overachieving students. Jankel and I embark on a conversation about how important it is for students to have excellent organizational skills to do well in high school and carry out the college admission process successfully. Jankel tells a story about one of her students, whose organizational skills made a big impression on her. That student is now completing medical school. Our conversation also touches on the importance of having the commitment required to acquire these habits. We compare this process to everything that successful athletes have to endure to achieve their goals. Additionally, we discuss the ever-present level of activity in successful students, in academic and non-academic areas. We call them Predictable Doers. That level of activity arises from a connection to topics that stimulate their brains. I provide an example of a high school student who shared with me a piece of artwork that he created and dealth with the ancient motif of Chaoskampf. As our episode crosses the mid-line, we talk about the last three habits of successful and overachieving students. One plays a role on their self-esteem of successful students, while the others allow them to establish fruitful relationships with faculty and staff in their high schools, and continuously participate in school activities. The episodes on this series were fun and very positive. You can access the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/72. You can help our show grow by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review on the podcast platform you used to download this episode. That is a gesture we would truly appreciate. Thank you!

#071 - One of the most important things you will do in high school, is to make a list of colleges to which you will apply. Making that list will be a challenging exercise because there are a great many colleges and universities from which to choose. Although they all share some characteristics, they are also very different in many other important ways. It is important that you recognize the elements of a college or university that are important to you. On episodes 10, 11, 13, and 14, we shared with you the questions to ask about every college, so that, at the end, you are left with the ones that meet your needs in terms of location, academics, campus culture, and cost of attendance, among other factors. On this episode, Jankel and I talk about the 5 pages on every college or university website, that you should look at to see if a school appears to meet your needs. Although this is not the only activity you will do to see if a school is a good match for you, exploring these 5 pages will allow you begin your list of schools in an efficient way. These 5 pages will quickly help you realize whether that school has what you need, or not. One of the 5 pages will also help you understand how well you compare to the most recent freshman class admitted to that school. It will allow you to see the average GPA, SAT or ACT scores, class rankings, and financial aid received, for those students admitted to that school directly from high school. During the episode, we share with you the important information we found in those 5 pages within the Cornell University website. We believe that after listening to this episode, you will appreciate the wealth of information found within these pages, and be very well prepared to begin your list of colleges. You can access the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/71. You can help our show greatly by giving us a 5-star rating and leaving us a positive review on the podcast platform you used to download this episode. Thank you!

# 070 – Today, on our next-to-last episode of in our Habits of Successful Overachieving Students, Jankel go over five habits and activities that historically have produced positive results in the lives of students in the past. As we begin our conversation highlighting the importance of intellectual curiosity, we transition into the ways in which successful students find self-motivation. Inner self-motivation is a necessary must-have for anyone interested in pursuing a worthwhile cause. Jankel continues emphasizing the importance of having the right people in your inner circle. That is a point that I truly value and wish more high school students understood and valued. The wrong crown can easily derail the best laid plans in a young person. I continue our conversation by uncovering how important it is for successful students to move on in their path, even when giving up may seem like the logical thing to do. Jankel finishes the episode by detailing a common activity in successful students, keeping their emotions in check. Although it is harder to do than one may initially think, especially for a high school student, the ability to keep emotions in check is an extremely valuable component of many stories that led to success. You can access the show notes for this episode at https://collegemetropolis.com/70. Please help our show grow by giving us a 5-star rating and giving us a positive review on the podcast platform you used to download this episode. We would truly appreciate it. Thank you!