Jilian Mincer wrote this September in the Wall Street Journal about improvements to 529 plans. 529 plans were first introduced in the 1990s, but after a 2001 tax law made withdrawal from these plans tax free when the funds are used to pay for higher education, 529s became very attractive to parents and grandparents of […]
We recommend using the internet to search for college scholarships. CollegeScholarships.com is one good site. Not only do they list scholarships, but they also provide other information. For example, you can click on samples of scholarship essays to give you an edge. There is also information about various on-line and accelerated college degree programs. Accelerated […]
In our blog yesterday we suggested students get help doing the college essay by having professionals, teachers or others you trust read it, proof it, and suggest revisions. Actually students usually need all the help they can get, even doing the first draft, because the essay writing instruction they may have had in high school teaches […]
Last Spring The Ethicist tackled a question posed by a high school English teacher which basically asked, Can my editing give a false impression of the student’s work to admissions officers?
Randy Cohen responded that, of course, students should be submitting their own work on college applications, but we at Collegebasics liked another quote from this […]
A recent study proves that high school students who enroll in college courses while they are high school students are more likely to attend college and be successful in college. High schoolers taking college courses is the subject of an October 17 Chronicle of Higher Education article by Elyse Ashburn.
Recently The New York Times published an article titled Thank-You Note Enters College Admission Game. The article offers some very good advice about writing thank-you notes to college admissions officers. Ms. Arenson points out a thank-you is not mandatory but is the “new Frontier” in distinguishing one applicant from another. We certainly agree, particularly with […]
Plagiarism is a nasty word. It is nasty because most students do not understand what it is. For those high schoolers getting ready to go to college next fall, it’s a word they should become familiar with.
Teaching how to paraphrase is the start of the confusion. Students are asked to summarize things they have read […]
We are in the middle of SAT season, which means many students are thinking about retakes for better scores. How does one improve an SAT score in Reading? That’s the big question. There are all kinds of study courses, practice tests, and words of advice, but for the poor muddled high school test-taker lots of […]