By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. In one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons, “Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade,” Bart and Lisa are both moved into the third grade. Bart moves down from fourth, because he fails a standardized test, while Lisa moves up from second, because she excels on that same test...
By Dr. Adam Muri-Rosenthal, Ph.D. Allow me to begin this post with a vast understatement completely belying its content: writing college essays is hard. As I repeatedly find myself telling students, the college essay is a genre unto itself: peculiar, idiosyncratic, and for most students, entirely novel. It also demands that students produce something exceptional..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. Many people sent me a copy of the Wall Street Journal article, “To Get into the Ivy League, ‘Extraordinary’ Isn’t Always Enough,” the day it came out. I obviously couldn’t not read it given the panic it was causing. So I sat down at the kitchen table with my morning..
By Adam Muri-Rosenthal, Ph.D. Social media is no less ubiquitous in the college application process than everywhere else in our daily lives. Just as a potential employer may search for your name on Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram (to name a few), the practice is gaining increasing acceptance in the world of college admissions,..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. To say that a lot has changed since March 2020 would be an understatement. I’m sitting here typing away on a flight between San Diego and Washington, DC, wearing an N-95 mask, and holding a portable air purifier on my lap. I got to the airport in an Uber that..
By Adam Muri-Rosenthal, Ph.D. As of 2020, a rule established by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) went into effect according to which a DPT (Doctor of Physical Therapy degree) would thenceforth be required of anyone practicing physical therapy. High school students considering physical therapy as a profession should thus take into account that, in..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. There are a few challenges I expect to face with students year in and year out. First, most students will like their Reach Schools better than their Likely Schools, and some of my seniors will try to apply to zero Likely Schools (trust me, that is a no-no). Second, most..
By Adam Muri-Rosenthal, Ph.D. With the arrival of spring comes the honey-sweet smell of freshly budded cherry trees, the delight of extra daylight hours, and—for high school juniors—the stress of standardized tests, college application preparation, final exams, interviews… the list goes on! There simply is never a dull moment. And while preparing yourself for college..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. Everyone should do something that makes them happy at least once a day. As The Atlantic’s happiness expert, Arthur Brooks, notes, “[T]here is plenty of evidence that time spent daydreaming and enjoying non-work pursuits can lead to not just happiness but also better work performance and higher creativity.” Yet, not..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. As someone whose job is to help young people convey their innermost thoughts, strongest feelings, and most meaningful experiences to perfect strangers (namely admissions representatives), one question that has frequently arisen over the years is, “Should I talk about my mental health struggles?” As conversations about these topics become even..