October 27, 2020

How Far Should You Reach On A ‘Reach School’?

What is a reach school? If quantified, a reach school is a college where a student’s high school grades and test scores are not likely to be in the top quarter of the previous year’s applicant pool. If you buy a copy of U.S. News Best Colleges, for example, you will see […]
August 12, 2020

The Good About the Ivy League

I’ve been an education writer for some time and a college counselor for a short time. In either role I have never perceived that the Ivy League schools are necessarily “better” than other colleges, whether they are liberal arts colleges or larger research-focused universities. These schools are too often considered […]
July 14, 2020

Do Your Homework: The Ivy League Schools Are Not Alike

I enjoyed doing my interview with Joie Mills, a rising junior at Brown University, a member of the Ivy League. Joie is not only bright; she is also quite perceptive. She did her research and found that Brown was the best fit Ivy League school for her. I meet too […]
April 22, 2016

For $38 You Can Find Out What It Takes to Get Into the Ivy League

Last summer two students who had gotten into all eight Ivy League schools published their story in an e-book called Hacking College Admissions. If you want to know their stories all that you need to do is fork over $38. I suspect that many ambitious college-bound students and/or their parents have already done […]
June 3, 2015

My Time On Campus: University of Pennsylvania

This past weekend I visited the University of Pennsylvania to attend Ivy In Your Back Yard, a program to help Philadelphia-area college-bound students and their parents begin their college search. Ivy In Your Back Yard was designed to help all college-bound families, whether they chose to apply to Penn or not. […]