20 Ways Student Volunteers Can Support Our Veterans

Amherst College War Memorial

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Each Veterans Day, our nation honors the brave men and women who served our country and risked their lives to guarantee our freedoms.

In addition to thousands of active military and their families living in every corner of the country, there are almost 23 million vets in need of assistance, support, and simple friendship.

High school students can acknowledge the sacrifices made by our military by getting involved. You can volunteer for an organization serving veterans and/or military families, or you can initiate a project within your immediate community.

Your contribution can be as simple as taking time to meet regularly with an elderly veteran or as complex as initiating a holiday gift drive for families living on your local military base. Often the most valuable service you can provide is just being there and listening.

This Veterans Day, take a moment to reflect on the meaning of service.  And do something!

Here are some ways student volunteers can help:

1. Visit a wounded veteran in the hospital.
2. Complete a Create The Good project where you can help military families with chores, repairs around the house or meal preparation.
3. Organize a fundraising drive to purchase PX/BX gift certificates or calling cards for troops.
4. Deliver meals or care packages to homebound veterans.
5. Agree to foster a pet for military personnel deployed abroad or organize a drive to find families willing to foster pets.
6. Start a club at your high school to adopt a platoon.
7. Help a veteran tell their story through a project such as the Veteran's History Project. You can download a VHP field kit from the Library of Congress website.
8. Join with friends to send cards and letters to the troops through A Million Thanks.org or Operation Gratitude.
9. Volunteer with an organization, such as Canine Companions for Independence, to provide therapy dogs to veterans.
10. Together with your family or with the support of a school- or community-based organization, adopt a military family for the holidays.
11. Create a service where you and your friends offer free babysitting services to military moms who need to run errands or spend time away from the kids.
12. Set up a drop-off box for coupons and organize a coupon clipping event for mailing to military families stationed abroad.
13. Produce a newsletter for local vets.
14. Host a party or put on a concert at a local VA Hospital.
15. Arrange to send care packages through the USO, the Any Soldier Program, Treats 4 Our Troops, HeroBox.org, or Operation Gratitude.
16. Support your local USO and volunteer to support “signature” services and events.
17. Organize a drive to collect new and used DVD’s for veterans.
18. Set up a drop-off site or organize a “drive” for cell phones for soldiers.
19. Get your scout troop to pledge hours of community service to Operation Honor Cards, a project designed to support military families, service members and veterans.
20. Say "thank you."

25 Colleges with the Lowest Acceptance Rates

There’s something perverse about a system that equates excellence with rejection. Yet in the backwards world of college admissions, schools proudly point to how few students they were able to accept in any given year as a badge of honor.

For admissions offices, it’s all about the numbers.  More applications translate into more rejections.  More rejections mean increased selectivity.  And with selectivity comes prestige.

It’s this line of thinking that led colleges like Washington and Lee University, the US Naval Academy or the University of Iowa to include incomplete applications in applicant counts reported to the federal government and others.  

By reporting more applicants, these schools generate lower admit rates and appear more selective in the highly competitive market for applicants.  And it's not against any published rules.

During admissions season, the New York Times keeps a running tally, and US News and World Report (USNWR) uses admit rates as metrics in determining the “best” colleges.

But the reality is a little more complicated. Some of the most “exclusive” colleges in terms of selectivity are there because they offer a specific kind of experience or have a corner on the education market. Others have low admission rates because tuition is free or extremely low.

So those who think the nation’s lowest admission rates are only found within the Ivy League will be surprised to find that the Curtis Institute of Music (6.8%) and the Julliard School (7.3%) are right at the top along with Harvard, Stanford, and Yale for the lowest admit rates in the country.

Locally, the Naval Academy (7.5%) once again topped the list, with Georgetown University (17%), Washington & Lee (19.5%), and Johns Hopkins (17.7%) all coming in under 20 percent.  Liberty University (22.8%), the University of Virginia (29.6%), the Corcoran College of Art & Design (30.4%), the University of Richmond (30.3%), and the College of William and Mary (32.2) also made it onto the top 100 list.

Thanks to the number crunchers at USNWR, here is the most recent list of colleges with the nation’s lowest acceptance rates (the rest of the list may be found on the USNWR website):

Harvard University:  6.1%

Stanford University:  6.6%

Curtis Institute of Music:  6.8%

US Naval Academy:  6.8%

Cooper Union:  7%

Yale University:  7.1%

Julliard School:  7.3%

Columbia University:  7.4%

Princeton University:  7.9%

MIT:  9%

US Military Academy:   9%

College of the Ozarks:  9.5%

Brown University:  9.6%

Dartmouth College:  9.8%

US Air Force Academy:  9.9%

Alice Lloyd College:  10.2%

Cal Tech:  11.8%

US Merchant Marine Academy:  12.4%

University of Pennsylvania:  12.6%

Amherst College:  13%

Pomona College:  13%

University of Chicago:  13.2%

Duke University:  13.4%

Claremont McKenna College:  13.6%

Swarthmore College:  14.2%

11 Excellent Reasons to use the Universal College Application

Harvard University was a founding member of the UCA

This has been a very interesting year for the Universal College Application (UCA).  

Confident in the quality of its product, the UCA has continued in its struggle for market share against the larger and much more powerful Common Application.

And during the past three months, UCA staff has scored numerous points by providing a user-friendly, reliable service in the face of problems plaguing the Common App and other electronic college applications this year. 

And they’ve been rewarded with five new colleges signing up in the past two weeks, including Princeton, Wash U, Tufts University, Trinity College, and Hampshire College.

“This was the first year any of my students used it. It was seamless and exquisitely simple,” said Michelle Lanphere Green, a California-based independent educational consultant. “Teachers’ recs uploaded easy. No lagging between sections. Honestly, this is what the CA4 SHOULD have looked like. I hope to see more colleges joining UCA next year.”

Some of the biggest names in the industry—Harvard, Tulane, RPI, and Johns Hopkins—have been with the UCA from the beginning, and many others quietly acknowledge the superiority of the application for ease of use and overall responsiveness to the consumer.

Yet the notion that the Common App brings more in customers—applicants—and carries with it a panache of superiority—membership has its benefits—has left the UCA to swim against the tide of colleges that sheepishly rushed to join the ranks of the increasingly less “common” Common Application.

And until this year, no one stopped to think what the impact will be on college admissions if one application product is allowed to force all competitors out of business by using aggressive pricing policies and wielding influence through organizations supporting the industry as a whole.

Colleges may complain off the record, but they’ve continued to support an application that isn’t always responsive to them, counselors, or student applicants. And they signed up with an untested product which neglected to provide a backup plan in the event of failure.

While the Common Application continues to tweak its system and send daily updates on “known” problems, the computer geeks behind the UCA have stepped up their game by adding a number of enhancements to their application.

And here are a few reasons you might consider switching to the UCA:

1. Membership.  The UCA currently has 37 member colleges and universities including recognizable and very selective institutions (see above).  And the UCA is continuously open to adding new colleges any time during the application cycle.
    
2. Distinction.  Using the UCA sets your application apart from the ubiquitous Common Application.  Think what it must be like to read thousands of documents that follow the same format and look exactly alike.  Frankly, it must be a relief to see someone thinking outside the box and going the extra mile to use a different form with different features.
3. Functionality.  The UCA website now automatically scales for tablets and mobile devices.  Based on feedback from consumers, user interface has been improved and it’s now even easier to navigate and track progress.  In addition, the UCA works just fine on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Internet Explorer.  And the UCA has never once experienced a system-wide crash or slowed down because of jammed servers.
4. Customization.  Applicants can easily create an application to submit to one or more colleges and can just as easily copy, edit or modify to submit to one or more additional colleges. And this is an amazing tool if you want to signal a little extra love in your personal statement or customize standardized test scores to reflect a college’s policy on Score Choice or test-optional reporting. By the way, counselors are also free to customize their recommendations.  With the UCA, there’s no need for a counselor to remain tied to a “generic” document.  If there’s specific information a counselor wants conveyed about an applicant to a particular college, they can submit one recommendation and then easily copy/edit to send something different to another school. And colleges really appreciate having a recommendation that speaks directly to them.
5. Document Uploads. Unlike the competition, the UCA still allows students to upload documents into the application.  There are no wonky direct entry text boxes or formatting limitations dictated by software limitations or anonymous decision-makers who actually want every application to look alike.  And students are free to edit or change their personal statements however many times they want.  The UCA refuses to dictate to students what their essays look like or how many versions they can create.
6. Autosave.  UCA forms autosave every few seconds so applicants don’t have to worry about losing data if something happens before they are able to save manually. 
7. Express Delivery.  Applications, recommendations and school reports/transcripts are delivered immediately as soon as the applicant, counselor or teacher clicks “Submit.”  It is not UCA policy to hold documents pending payment by the student.  If an applicant never submits their application online or chooses a different product, supporting documents from counselors or teachers are still sent to the admissions office—free of charge to the applicant, the recommender, or the college.
8. Multimedia.  Applicants can include a link within the body of the application to provide colleges with additional information that can be found online.  This could be a personal website, video, news story, an art portfolio or any other online content.
9. Resume.  Because the UCA continues to provide for document uploads, applicants are free to submit resumes as part of their application.  While not every college necessarily wants to receive a resume, this flexibility allows the student the option of sending a document a college can choose to include as part of their review process or not.
10. Personal Statement.  The essay prompts used by the UCA are sufficiently broad to include most topics including the perennial favorite, “topic of your choice.”  There are no plans to change or otherwise limit this question next year, and the 500-word limit will remain a guideline and not a rule.
11. Paper.   The UCA continues to make paper versions of all their application forms available for download directly on the UCA website.  As counselors and applicants have found, paper applications are useful for working on rough drafts or for going over general content requirements in group presentations. 

As an additional service, the UCA provides a First Marking Period Report and an electronic Early Decision agreement both of which come in handy for students applying early. 

But most important, the UCA Technical Support team is at your service.  Along with a comprehensive “knowledgebase,” experts stand ready to patiently answer any questions you submit online.  And they really do answer immediately.

For more information on the Universal College Application or to open an account, visit the UCA "new and improved" website. 

It’s just a different route to the same end.

7 Tips for Helping your Counselor Write a Better Recommendation

Of all the problems affecting the new Common Application, the difficulties encountered by school counselors and teachers in the submission of recommendations are currently among the most vexing.

“We’ve been dealing with a school report and teacher recs that wouldn’t submit for over a month,” commented one Michigan-based school counselor.

Most colleges will tell you that the counselor recommendation can be one of the most important elements of your application.  And they will also tell you that “generic” or “copy-and-paste” narratives don’t do much to further an applicant’s candidacy for admission.

But with huge caseloads and limited time to get to know students, counselors sometimes take shortcuts and resort to “stock” statements, which give little insight into a student’s character, qualifications, or potential for success.

“I’ve seen counselors attach the same recommendation—exact same recommendation—to more than one application with only the names changed,” laughed one admissions official.  “I suppose they think we won’t notice, but it’s not helpful.”

Unfortunately, with increased use of the Common App’s online school forms, the problem is worsening as counselors submitting electronically through the Common Application are prohibited from tailoring their recommendations for particular colleges.  With the Common App, it's strictly one-size-fits-all.*

And counselors have also been given the option of not providing any evaluation at all, which presents a whole new series of problems if your counselor hasn't had the chance to get to know you.

When all is said and done, you need to know that your counselor not only knows who you are but also has all the tools necessary to write a strong and effective evaluation.

And this is best accomplished by developing a personal connection with the person behind the desk. 

Here are 7 tips for helping your counselor write a better recommendation:

1. Schedule an appointment.  There’s no substitute for a one-on-one conversation with someone asked to evaluate your “personal qualities and character.”  Although it’s better if this relationship has been developing over four years, don’t delay introducing yourself to the new counselor or strengthening the bond with the person you’ve known for some time.  Be aware that email and the internet aren’t the best means for promoting a personal connection, as it’s hard to communicate all the between-the-lines qualities that come through eye contact and a smile.  But don’t waste your counselor’s time.  Come prepared to discuss some element of the application process—college list, test strategy, senior year classes, or what you did last summer. And be sure to ask what you can do to make the process easier.
   
   
2.  Prepare a resume.  This handy document has all kinds of important uses, and you should make sure that your counselor has an up-to-date copy in your file.  Beyond simply listing accomplishments and memberships, a good resume will provide details that make you stand out like specific job responsibilities, unusual skills or certifications, or unique hobbies and interests.  Keep in mind that format and the way you present yourself on a resume speak volumes about your attention to detail and maturity.
   
   
3.  Share your essays.  The best “personal statement” tells a story that builds on but doesn’t duplicate what’s on your resume or application.  It’s your opportunity to introduce yourself, suggest what kind of student you will be, and provide evidence of “fit” with the colleges on your list.  Your counselor can benefit from these insights and may learn a little more about who you are or what motivates you by the topic you select and the way you approach it.
   
   
4.  Provide recommendations.  Some schools have a process in place for automatically sending teacher recommendations to your guidance counselor.  If this isn’t the case, ask your teachers to send copies of their recommendations to the counseling office.  Teachers have frontline experience with academic achievement, class participation, and work ethic, all of which are key components of the school evaluation.  Also consider asking employers or mentors to send your guidance counselor copies of any recommendations they've prepared.  These evaluations often address personal commitment, responsibility, and character traits beyond what may be seen in the classroom.
   
   
5. Sign a FERPA waiver.  The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) requires that students be advised of their rights concerning educational records such as letters of recommendation.  Although no high school or university can require you to waive these rights, your counselor will feel more comfortable writing a candid assessment if you go ahead and sign a FERPA waiver at the start of the application process.  And note that recommendations without signed waivers are likely to be given less weight by colleges in the application process.
   
   
6. Write a press release.  Consider preparing a brief statement outlining any additional information you think colleges might benefit from knowing as they review your application.  Connect special accomplishments, projects, or activities to long term goals and ambitions.  Make the case for particular colleges, programs, or majors.  And address barriers faced during your high school career if they explain “blips” in academics.  Keep in mind that counselors are likely to use whatever you give them, so be thoughtful about what you write and how you approach sensitive topics.
   
   
7. Allow enough time.  Counselors are busy people. Don't wait until the last minute to respond to requests for information supporting your application.  If your counselor wants you and/or your parents to complete a college questionnaire or “senior profile,” fill it out completely and return it as soon as possible—preferably long before deadline. You should neither want nor expect your counselor to "rush" your recommendation.  Instead, give your counselor lots of time to reflect on how organized and responsive you are. 

And whatever you do, let your school counselor know how very much you value their personal support and follow-up with a very personal thank you!

*Note that this isn't the case with the Universal College Application and that some "tailoring" of recommendations may be possible for those submitted through Naviance.