Research Opportunities
Ralph Becker
The Importance of High School Research

Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.

The Importance of High School Research

Extracurricular & Internships

3 Reasons to Try Out MOOCs Before Applying to College

3 Reasons to Try Out MOOCs Before Applying to College

Mahir Jethanandani’s California high school offered only a few classes related to business and finance – disciplines he was interested in exploring. So, he turned to massive open online courses, or MOOCs, offered through Coursera to learn on his own.

“It came with an extension of knowledge and fundamental concepts that I felt improved my understanding of subjects that I claimed that I loved” but didn’t have much exposure to, says the 18-year-old. MOOCs also led him to explore other disciplines he was curious about, including law and neuroscience.

Summer Reading for Students: Revamp Your Summer Reading

Summer Reading for Students: Revamp Your Summer Reading

To take your independent reading game to the next level, consider selecting books that take center stage on university lists. The following books have been recommended to current classes at UMass Amherst, Duke, Stanford, USC, Washington State, and Occidental College. Pick up one and see what you’re missing. You might just become addicted.

The Importance of Internships

The Importance of Internships

Is there no one thing that contributes to a successful college experience?

About a year ago in the article Motivating College Students, I referenced a book by Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takucs, How College Works, which actually boiled down the successful college experience to one key element: someone needs to spark a student’s motivation.

The same type of searching applies to internships as well. Most of the time it is unclear  what type of internship one wants, with what type of people, in what kind of organization, and doing what type of jobs.

The Collegiate Leadership Obsession

The Collegiate Leadership Obsession

Admissions officers spend a lot of time sorting through raffs of transcripts, standardized test scores, essays, recommendations, interview summaries, portfolios, and lists of extracurricular activities in search of clues of leadership, that prized trait sought by hundreds of American college campuses.

Work Experience and the College Admissions Process

Work Experience and the College Admissions Process

“All work experience—even if it’s working in a convenience store—is life experience and involves responsibility. We value all of it…” Karl Furstenberg, Dartmouth College (How to Get Into the Top Colleges, Richard Montauk and Krista Klein, Prentice Hall, New York, p. 282)

If you have gained any kind of work experience over your high school years, broadcast it across all you applications proudly. Why wouldn’t you? Even if, as mentioned above, it is a menial job, it shows that you understand how to sell your service to others, have discipline, time management skills, a solid work ethic, and have learned something about the real world, working with people and solving—in some form or another—real world problems. Few schools discount such efforts; Dartmouth, we know, lauds them.

Becoming a Recruited Scholar Athlete

Becoming a Recruited Scholar Athlete

Before attempting to become a recruited athlete, you need to ask yourself whether you have the athletic ability to compete and the desire to play at the college level (after all playing sports in college is a huge commitment of time and effort). If your answer is yes to both, prepare to play ball.

Intellectual Curiosity and College

Intellectual Curiosity and College

According to the IECA’s (Independent Educational Consultants Association) ’Top Ten Strengths and Experiences Colleges look for in High School Students,’ number nine is “Demonstrated intellectual curiosity through reading, school, leisure pursuits, and more.

Encountering the World of Enterprise through Job Shadowing

Encountering the World of Enterprise through Job Shadowing

Students are usually so immersed in their studies and extracurricular activities that they are hard pressed to venture into the real world, and try to figure out how they might fit into it. Often, their first approaches are through internship programs, or through volunteer efforts in hospitals and other venues. Some students, of course, must work part time to supplement their family’s income but, they also, many times, find it difficult to look beyond their daily efforts. No matter the circumstances, all of us need to actively explore the range of career opportunities available. One of the best means of doing so is job shadowing.

Searching for Internships

Searching for Internships

According to a 2005 NACAC (National Association of College Academic Counselors) survey on factors that are given "considerable importance" in the admissions process, 'Grades in college prep courses/along with strength of curriculum' were most important, with just under 75% of schools surveyed citing this factor; admissions test scores were second, with 60%; then came class rank (which to me is just another way of asking for grades) with 30%; next, the essay with 23%, and then extracurricular activities with 8%. ("Dramatic Challenge to SAT and ACT" by Scott Jaschik, www.insidehighered.com.--Yes, the schools surveyed were allowed to select multiple factors.) Naturally, the one area that tends to consume many students and most parents is extracurricular, the least important factor according to the schools. Further, among the extracurricular activities, the elusive internship always seems the most difficult to discover and arrange.