Best Book on Applying to College?

[High School Homeschool Dad]

If you could suggest only 2 books on how to how to apply to college, what would they be? Could you rank order them #1 and #2? The main thing is how to get into the college you're looking for.

If I get a lot of responses, I'll try to rank order what the consensus is and come back with a list to share with everyone.

I'd like something that would take me by the hand, giving me an overview and showing step-by-step on things like how to write a good essay, what extra-curriculars to build up,  what to put on an application. A timeline of what to do and when would also be nice. I'd also like something that would tell us how to find the right college, but that would be secondary. 

I already received a lot of good information about college applications in response to an earlier post on college application services (including a good list of several books). However, I'm a bit overwhelmed and would like a go-to source to build my foundation of knowledge. My thinking was it would be best to really master 1 or 2 of the best books than to read lots of them.

I really appreciate all the support that this forum has provided.

Thanks,

Kevin

Edited February 22, 2019 by High School Homeschool Dad

[Lori D.]

Not an expert, but of the books I've seen, the ones that cover most topics you might be interested are all older (pre-2010), and the more recent books tend to cover just one aspect of the huge subject that is "going to college" -- like, colleges to consider when doing the college search process; or, how to write winning essays; or how to put together a transcript and other needed documents for applying.

High School "Time Table" is a past thread that is the timeline of what to do and when throughout the years of high school.

Not a book, but you might try looking topic by topic at helpful past threads all linked in the big pinned thread at the top of the WTM College Board "College Motherlode". Below are the topics you'll find linked there, and on which "page" of the thread. You might also find some of the past threads linked in the "High School Motherlode #1" and "High School Motherlode #2" at the top of the WTM High School board to be helpful with information for your "learning curve."

Just as a final comment -- totally JMO, but I think it is a mistake to try and package a student to fit a perceived image that one thinks colleges are looking for. Instead, I'd suggest looking at the student's interests and strengths and build your homeschool high school credits and extracurriculars around that to make your student a strong scholar and a well-rounded person to be able to thrive as an adult. (For perspective: college is only 4 years of the overall decades of adult life.) And a by-product of homeschooling in that way is that it will also really let your student *shine* and stand out in college applications. : ) Just my 2 cents worth. BEST of luck as you prepare for applying for colleges! Warmest regards, Lori D.

page 1 topics:
College Search Process
College Visits
Online College / College at Home / Distance Degree 

page 2 topics:
College Applications
Common App

page 3 topics:
Money Matters
Financial Aid
Scholarships
FAFSA / EFC
CSS Profile

page 4 topics:
Honors Programs / Phi Theta Kappa
Internships / REUs
NCAA

page 5 topics
Heading to College
At College
Study Abroad

page 6 topics
Alternatives to 4-Year College
Gap Year
Military
Career Exploration

Edited February 23, 2019 by Lori D.

[Lanny]

Hi Kevin: I wish you had continued the original thread, instead of starting a new one. That thread has some great information in it now.  HogGirl gave you a list of books to begin with.   I understand where you are coming from and in retrospect, I wish that we had a "timeline" when my DD began 9th grade. Some of the things came up a lot faster than I had expected and made it very tough at times.

So, in the wonderful series of "Dummies" books do they have a title like that? Possibly and if so I would certainly check it out. 

With any book(s) you are considering buying, I would read a bunch of Reviews on Amazon, before you spend money on them and invest your valuable time reading them. 

In addition to what Lori D. wrote in the first response here, there is a ton of information here on WTM and there is ton of information available to you, for free, on the web.  

Regarding universities, I spent a lot of time on USNEWS.COM   reading the information available to me, free.  In the past few months, I have also spent quite a bit of time on CollegeData.com

If you wonder about which ECs, for example, you will put your student up with 40K others who apply to the same university, who have the same stats. Most of them don't get accepted.   ECs IMO should be things the student is seriously interested in and enjoys and wants to spend valuable time doing. 

Leadership is a big plus and can be in Sports or Clubs or something else.

As someone pointed out in your other thread, it isn't always that the student has AP courses or DE courses or ECs that get them admitted and they may have a lot of those and not be admitted.

You and your student(s) need to begin thinking about and preparing for the SAT and ACT examinations. Some do well on both. Many do better on one than on the other. The PSAT/NMSQT must be taken during October of the Junior year. There is also a PreACT exam. I'm not sure of the name. Possibly it is PreACT?   The SAT and the ACT are very different exams.  My DD used https://www.khanacademy.org/ to  study for the PSAT and the SAT.  They have an official tie-in with the College Board. It's free.  For the ACT she had access, for about 4 weeks, to an Online Tutorial with Kaplan Academy (a tie in between ACT and Kaplan) that was $100 for 6 weeks.  When I looked last week, I think the same (?) course is now $100 for 4 months or 6 months or something. There were some live sessions with an Instructor, where the students could ask questions and I believe my DD found that very helpful. They also have a lot of recorded videos on different subjects.  She felt both KhanAcademy and Kaplan were both very good, with probably a nod to the not free Kaplan course.

This is a time-consuming thing for you and your student(s) to be doing, but like just about everyone here, I believe that if you Do-It-Yourself the end result will be more positive.

Is it a "plus" on the applications my DD has submitted that she is in TTUISD or that she is Latina or that we live in Colombia? Possibly.  Are they going to accept her because of any of those things? No...   They will accept her knowing that she can keep up with the students who have had AP and DE courses, etc. and have superior stats.

My DD has been writing Essays, probably a lot of them, starting with 6th Grade English.  The Essays are a part of getting into university, but are also important once someone is enrolled and taking courses.  If your student gets a lot of practice writing Essays, that helps when it comes time to apply for university admission.

Also, DD has applied for at least one Scholarship where an Essay was required and she applied for a State Department Exchange program where I believe at least one Essay was required.

In general, I believe it is better to assume that most or all of the aid (Merit or Need) is going to come from the university and not a good use of time to chase individual scholarships unless they are for a lot of money.

 

 

[Lori D.]

8 minutes ago, Lanny said:

Hi Kevin: I wish you had continued the original thread, instead of starting a new one. That thread has some great information in it now.  HogGirl gave you a list of books to begin with...

Here is that other thread, for anyone else wanting to follow along: "College Application Services" <--- that link goes straight to the post with HogGirl's book list.

Edited February 22, 2019 by Lori D.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

2 hours ago, High School Homeschool Dad said:

If you could suggest only 2 books on how to how to apply to college, what would they be? Could you rank order them #1 and #2? The main thing is how to get into the college you're looking for.

If I get a lot of responses, I'll try to rank order what the consensus is and come back with a list to share with everyone.

I'd like something that would take me by the hand, giving me an overview and showing step-by-step on things like how to write a good essay, what extra-curriculars to build up,  what to put on an application. A timeline of what to do and when would also be nice. I'd also like something that would tell us how to find the right college, but that would be secondary. 

I already received a lot of good information about college applications in response to an earlier post on college application services (including a good list of several books). However, I'm a bit overwhelmed and would like a go-to source to build my foundation of knowledge. My thinking was it would be best to really master 1 or 2 of the best books than to read lots of them.

I really appreciate all the support that this forum has provided.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

I'm earning a certificate in Independent Educational Consulting. I think the best 2 books I've seen are Admission Matters by Sally Springer et al and College Match by Steven Antonoff.

Admission Matters is very good.  It reads like a book version of all the best advice I've seen on the boards over the last decade. It doesn't fear monger or oversell a specific system. 

College Match helps a student figure out what they are looking for in a college and leads them through finding schools that are good fits for them, not just schools that are close or high prestige. (A new edition is coming out in a couple days.)

I would add a couple more things to the list though.

The Fiske Guide to Colleges.  It doesn't cover every school, but it gives good 2-3 page descriptions of a wide range of schools. One feature I like is the overlap box, which lists similar schools.  Use this to look at overlaps of overlap. It can help you identify schools you hadn't heard of but should consider. Do double check the mist current admissions rates, because a print book has a longer production time and these stats can change quickly.

This forum.  There is so much been there done that advice here from people who know how it feels to feel weighed and measured as a homeschool applicant. And you'll get different points of view on questions, which can help you find where your comfort zone is. 

Ethan Sawyer aka The College Essay Guy. His website would be my first stop on essay writing help. He also has an interesting podcast.  He has a book on essay writing, but I haven't reviewed it yet.  But start with the website, because he gives away a ton of great advice.

[8filltheheart]

While books are a great place to start, keep in mind that homeschooling applicants do not need to approach college admissions on the same path as traditional brick and mortar applicants.  One of the benefits of homeschooling is the freedom to approach education in the way your family values. 

My personal opinion based on our application outcomes is that universities actually highly value homeschool applicants who demonstrate strong internal motivation and independently pursue academics at an advanced level.  For example,  my current college sophomore applied to college with absolutely zero APs and 1 single DE class she took spring of her sr yr (so pending course during app season).  She wrote essays about learning French independently.  I wrote about how we designed her French studies in a way to compensate for the fact that we didn't know anyone who spoke French.  (She started off with children's movies in French that she knew in English. Same with books.  We sought out an Alliance Francaise bc she wanted to have people to converse with.)  Her jr a Francophone moved to our area who missed her grandkids and essentially "adopted" our dd and they would do books studies and converse together.  She had no AP score.  No SAT subject test score.  Her Francophone "grandma" wrote a letter stating how wonderful her French was. 

She took Russian from an online tutor and advanced to a high level bc she absolutely loves languages (and ended up with a very large number of FL language credits b/c she also studied Latin.)  She studied French history in French.  We designed another history course around 20th centuray communism, a lit course around Russian lit, etc. 

She was invited to top competitive scholarship weekends at numerous Us.  She is one of 20 students now attending on USCarolina's top out of state scholarship (Top Scholar-McNair).  Her brother attended UAlabama on full scholarship and is now a grad student at Berkeley studying physics. 

Which takes me back to my post in your other thread: 

We start with our budget.  We cannot afford anything close to our EFC b/c we have a large family spread out over 21 yrs.  We would not have been able to save any $$ or contribute to our retirement accts (due to CSS formulas) from 2007-2032.  Obviously, a poor financial option.  So, our kids have no option but to attend on merit scholarships or attend low cost (like living at home and commuting).  

ECs (important for competitive merit but unnecessary for automatic merit) have been completely self-selected based on interests.  My ds loves physics and always has.  He attended astronomy camps, worked for a prof at our local U, and then did things like altar serve ever single Sunday and was a Boy Scout.  Our dd did things like translate a book from Russian into English, tutor kids in math, etc.  Neither one had a "list" of outside ECs.  Both had ECs that were very much them and represented exactly who they were and why they planned on pursuing what they were in the future.

In addition to the books mentioned and this forum, first and foremost trust your instincts and ask your student what they want out of high school and the college app process.  For non-elite schools and non-competitive merit, the college app hype is sooooo way overblown.  It just isn't that hard.

I would also suggest the hs2coll yahoo group.  It is a responsive group that is a little less public than this forum for asking questions. I would also read sites like JHU's essays that worked https://apply.jhu.edu/essays-that-worked-2018/ for samples of good application essays.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

2 hours ago, 8FillTheHeart said:

While books are a great place to start, keep in mind that homeschooling applicants do not need to approach college admissions on the same path as traditional brick and mortar applicants.  One of the benefits of homeschooling is the freedom to approach education in the way your family values. 

My personal opinion based on our application outcomes is that universities actually highly value homeschool applicants who demonstrate strong internal motivation and independently pursue academics at an advanced level.  For example,  my current college sophomore applied to college with absolutely zero APs and 1 single DE class she took spring of her sr yr (so pending course during app season).  She wrote essays about learning French independently.  I wrote about how we designed her French studies in a way to compensate for the fact that we didn't know anyone who spoke French.  (She started off with children's movies in French that she knew in English. Same with books.  We sought out an Alliance Francaise bc she wanted to have people to converse with.)  Her jr a Francophone moved to our area who missed her grandkids and essentially "adopted" our dd and they would do books studies and converse together.  She had no AP score.  No SAT subject test score.  Her Francophone "grandma" wrote a letter stating how wonderful her French was. 

She took Russian from an online tutor and advanced to a high level bc she absolutely loves languages (and ended up with a very large number of FL language credits b/c she also studied Latin.)  She studied French history in French.  We designed another history course around 20th centuray communism, a lit course around Russian lit, etc. 

She was invited to top competitive scholarship weekends at numerous Us.  She is one of 20 students now attending on USCarolina's top out of state scholarship (Top Scholar-McNair).  Her brother attended UAlabama on full scholarship and is now a grad student at Berkeley studying physics. 

Which takes me back to my post in your other thread: 

We start with our budget.  We cannot afford anything close to our EFC b/c we have a large family spread out over 21 yrs.  We would not have been able to save any $$ or contribute to our retirement accts (due to CSS formulas) from 2007-2032.  Obviously, a poor financial option.  So, our kids have no option but to attend on merit scholarships or attend low cost (like living at home and commuting).  

ECs (important for competitive merit but unnecessary for automatic merit) have been completely self-selected based on interests.  My ds loves physics and always has.  He attended astronomy camps, worked for a prof at our local U, and then did things like altar serve ever single Sunday and was a Boy Scout.  Our dd did things like translate a book from Russian into English, tutor kids in math, etc.  Neither one had a "list" of outside ECs.  Both had ECs that were very much them and represented exactly who they were and why they planned on pursuing what they were in the future.

In addition to the books mentioned and this forum, first and foremost trust your instincts and ask your student what they want out of high school and the college app process.  For non-elite schools and non-competitive merit, the college app hype is sooooo way overblown.  It just isn't that hard.

I would also suggest the hs2coll yahoo group.  It is a responsive group that is a little less public than this forum for asking questions. I would also read sites like JHU's essays that worked https://apply.jhu.edu/essays-that-worked-2018/ for samples of good application essays.

The Tulane admissions blog makes the a similar point about doing what the student finds meaningful rather than what they think admissions wants to see.

http://tuadmissionjeff.blogspot.com/2018/01/this-will-look-great-on-my-application.html?m=1

I frequently see posts other places about what a student must have to get into highly selective schools. I think the lists sometimes confuse what their kid or a kid at their school did with what all kids must do.

 

[ThisIsTheDay]

This forum. 

Lee Binz's book Setting the Record Straight.