What College Major is Best?
Want to spend a couple of unproductive hours on the internet? Start Googling for advice on what college major you should select. You’ll find countless articles with strong points of view—some selling the pragmatism of the hard sciences, engineering, or business—others telling you to pursue…
Top Myths About College Admissions – Part 1
As professionals in the field of college admissions, our team at College Transitions actively follows developments and trends in higher education on a daily basis. In keeping our ear to the ground, we are also privy to a good deal of misinformation and misassumptions—errors in…
Should I apply Early Decision?
In the early 1990s, the University of Pennsylvania was struggling to keep up with their fellow Ivy League universities and found themselves frequently relegated to “back-up plan” status among the nation’s top students. Their institution’s location in less-than-idyllic West Philadelphia and the “sounds like a…
Should I Apply Early Action?
The average applicant is fully-aware of Early Decision as a “card to play” in the admissions game. In that arrangement, each party makes a concession—you, the applicant give up your free-agency status, and the college, in many cases, grants a borderline candidate slightly better odds…
College Application Season is here!
Seeing an exclamation point-punctuated proclamation, as in the headline above, might strike you as a bit over-the-top, like when car dealers start selling 2019 models just a few months into 2018, barking over the airwaves with disingenuous urgency that, “We have to clear these 2018s…
How to Request Letters of Recommendation
Let’s engage in mental exercise intended to do something quite strange—help you imagine your teachers as real human beings. Don’t worry—there’s a purpose to this! Put yourself in your favorite English teacher’s shoes for a moment. Let’s call him Mr. Hemingway. Mr. Hemingway rises at…
How to email an admissions officer
Typically, there are two reasons that a prospective college student would want to email a college admissions officer: 1) They have a legitimate question that they are genuinely not able to find the answer to online, or 2) they are “playing the game” by demonstrating…
Does being a “legacy” increase your admission odds?
Colleges love to throw around high-minded words like meritocracy, access, and egalitarianism when discussing admissions policies. Yet proclamations of a focus on social justice and opportunity ring a bit hollow when you consider that so-called legacy applicants, those who have familial ties to an institution,…
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Downloadable Resources for your College Transition
