A 20-year veteran of teaching and admissions counseling, Josh Stephens advises applicants to selective undergraduate and graduate programs. Outside of counseling, Josh is a leading journalist who writes about urban planning issues in California.
One of my favorite concluding paragraphs waddled ashore in a 2014 piece by longtime New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who is a master of expressing complex ideas simply and rendering devastating judgments cheerfully.
Academics
Dear High School Boys, In my 15 or so years of college counseling and teaching, I’ve worked with roughly equal numbers of boys and girls, and I’ve never addressed just a single group. I’m now addressing this note to boys, man-to-men, because we live in
College Choice
High school juniors get atwitter this time of year when the Common Application releases its essay prompts. This year’s prompts, released last week, mean less than ever before. That’s a good thing.
High School
The typical high school curriculum renders Americans geographically illiterate. Our ignorance about the world and about each other has finally taken its toll, in the unlikely form of Donald Trump.
College Choice
Students should always take expansive, creative views of their prompts. They should think critically. If that means that they acknowledge a prompt's stupidity, so be it.
Essays & Applications
A few weeks ago, the University of California announced the retirement of its venerable set of application prompts, to be replaced by eight new "personal insight questions." Before I get to those questions, let's take a moment to mourn their predecessors. A Brief Lament Between the
Essays & Applications
Probably the most mysterious element of the college application - so mysterious, in fact, that most applicants don't know it exists - is the school report and the counselor letter.
Academics
Today, the long-awaited redesign of the SAT exam takes a step forward with the debut of Khan Academy's online SAT preparation program. The redesign responds, in part, to some harrowing shortcomings of the current iteration of the exam. As reported at a session I attended at last
Essays & Applications
The Common App released this week a long-anticipated new set of prompts for the main essay (also known as the "personal statement"). They replace prompts that were instituted as part of the 2013 redesign of the Common App. The Common App claims that "the changes...reflect
Essays & Applications
Transfer applications, often due March 1, pose challenges that students did not face the first time around. Some supplemental essays are so redundant it's as if the schools' admissions staffs have never read the personal statement prompt.
Culture
College admissions offices frequently encourage prospective applicants to visit their campuses. Students need to know what they're getting into, and they should appreciate their prospective colleges beyond the college's names and rankings. Sometimes, a mention of a visit in a supplemental essay or a sign-in
Culture
You know the moment when you ready yourself to leap to your feet at the end of a symphony, only to hear that glimmer of a violin note that keeps you glued to your seat and safe from mortification? That was me a few weeks ago at the College Board