By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. Over a half century ago, while Jimi Hendrix riffed “The Star Spangled Banner” at legendary Woodstock, another group of people were making a countercultural decision that we’re only starting to feel the momentum of today. In 1969, the admissions team at Maine’s Bowdoin College made the school the first American..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. The arrival of Covid-19 has disrupted education in a way that we have never experienced before. While the impact of the pandemic on your high school education, admissions prospects, and financial aid packages is nowhere close to being known, we are providing you with information that we do have as..
By – Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. We’re frequently asked if we can help identify scholarship opportunities for our families. While we happily forward on options that we serendipitously find, it’s nearly impossible to comb through the various databases out there to discover scholarships that perfectly fit each student. Some of the requirements are just too..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. This article first appeared in The Huffington Post on September 18th, 2016. The college application process can bring out the worst in families, with its high stakes, countless unknowns, and a mountain of work to surmount. Kids procrastinate. Parents nag. Kids procrastinate some more. Parents nag some more – that..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. “Nobody reads anymore.” This lament is heard round the world, and perhaps most loudly in college admissions. While doing well in school and leading in extracurricular activities will undeniably help you get into an amazing college, reading is the real secret to success. “How can that be?” you might ask...
Quoted in “Counselors React Strongly to New ACT Score Reports” in The Examiner on June 25, 2015. Victoria Tillson Evans, an IEC in Washington, D.C., concurs, “The ACT is basically trying to assert, in an underhanded manner, that a student’s performance on a standardized test is a strong measure of their future success. As a..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. This article first appeared on BuzzFeed on June 7, 2015. The sound of the ocean. The warmth of the sun. And… college applications? What? That can’t be what summer vacation is about. Yet, for rising high school seniors, that’s exactly what you need to be focusing on, that is, if..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. What young person doesn’t dread the S.A.T.? The mere mention of its name creates anxiety for many, and for better or worse, it can determine who does and does not get into his or her dream school. What’s even worse than the S.A.T., however, is the fact that not everyone..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. Many families bemoan the costs of standardized test prep courses and tutoring. After all, you can easily fork over hundreds or thousands of dollars to participate in a course or receive weekly private sessions. At the outset, this may seem like a lot of money; however, if your child is..
By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D. One Exam. Four Hours. The Rest of Your life. If you’re anything like most people, you dread the power of the standardized test. After all, not only do most college admissions committees use S.A.T. and A.C.T. scores to siphon off candidates, but financial aid officers also often implement them to..