April 14, 2018
Welcome back! We hope that Easter Break was enjoyable and refreshing for all. Please join us in applauding the seniors for all their hard work as they finalize their college choices for next year and gear up for their final weeks before graduation.
Seniors
Also, please remember that you should not pay a deposit at more than one school. Doing so is a breach of the admission offers you have received, as this recent article from Collegewise explains. If the lack of definite financial aid offers is creating uncertainty for you, please let us know, and we will work to ensure that you receive the information you need in order to make an informed decision about where to matriculate in the fall.
Juniors
Please stop by the college counseling office in second half of the coming week so that we can offer you our promised advice on which teachers to ask for recommendations and give you the questionnaires you will need to fill out for them. In addition, please remember that unless your needs are very unusual, you should be asking only two teachers for recommendations. If you feel that you require a third letter of recommendation, please discuss your reasoning with us before you request it. Your teachers are eager to help you succeed in the college admission process, and they put a great deal of time and energy into writing on your behalf, so it is very important that we be able to guarantee their letters will be fully utilized.
Barnard Bound Program
UC Santa Cruz Rep Visit
Kathryn Reddic, a representative of UC Santa Cruz, will be visiting Santa Catalina on Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 1:30 PM. Ms. Reddic's presentation will cover the quality of student life at UCSC, research opportunities the school offers, and an overview of the benefits of its location. Q & A will follow.
UK Universities Information Session
Thinking of applying to university in the UK? Representatives from the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham will be offering an overview of the application process and answering questions about these schools on Wednesday, April 25, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the French American International School in San Francisco. For more information and to sign up, see here.
Feelings Fade, but the Internet Doesn't
We know we have pointed this out before, but it bears repeating: colleges are paying more and more attention to applicants' social media behavior, so students need to be extremely circumspect in how they represent themselves on line--not least when they are reacting to admission decisions, as this article from Collegewise reminds us.
Financial Aid and Divorced Parents
When parents are divorced, the already tricky-to-navigate financial aid process can become a bit trickier still. Columnist Mark Kantorowitz notes, "Even an amicable divorce can cause problems with a child's college savings plans. Divorce attorneys are not financial aid experts. They may not be aware of all of the potential consequences of divorce on a child's eligibility for financial aid or the nuances of need-analysis formulas." Forewarned is forearmed, however, so if divorce is a factor in your thinking about financing college, please see here for the rest of Kantorowitz's analysis.
How Should You Spend Your 529 Savings?
Ideally, if you are a parent, you have had the wherewithal to steadily set aside funds in a 529 plan for years in advance of the college admission process. But how exactly do you allocate the funds once your child is heading off to college? Should you disperse them in the first two years or spread them evenly over all four? See this recent article from Savingforcollege.com for an analysis of the various factors you will need to consider.
Stop Asking About My Kid's College Plans
We all know that the college application process is stressful for the applicants themselves, but it's no cakewalk for parents, either, not least because their friends, neighbors, and coworkers are prone to pumping them for information about their children's college plans. Can you relate? If so, we suspect you will find some solace in this recent op-ed from The New York Times.
When Your Kid Wants to Become a Stand-Up Comedian
So you've done everything possible to set your child up for a successful adulthood, including sending her to a top-notch independent school, but her ambitions leave you worried that the eventual "launch" you envision might not go as smoothly as you have hoped. How will she support herself? What will become of her? Before you catastrophize, take some time to reflect on Lori Gottlieb's sage advice in her recent "Dear Therapist" contribution to The Atlantic.
How To Raise Successful Kids Without Over-Parenting
Particularly at a time when selective colleges are demanding a degree of perfection from applicants that they never asked of their parents' generation, the temptation to curate every moment of a child's upbringing can seem all but impossible to resist. But as former Stanford dean Julie Lythcott-Haims reminds us in her TED talk, "How to raise successful kids without over-parenting," the problem with too much parental intervention is that it prevents kids from developing agency. The solution? Unconditional love and more chores.
Can the Aging UC System Be Reinvented?
Californians of a certain generation will remember a UC system different in many significant ways from the one current students are encountering. Though the UC remains among the very best public university systems in the United States--with UCLA and Berkeley reliably ranked among the very best universities in the world--the system is under strain and facing an uncertain future, as this front-page story from the most recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education explains.
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