Building A Balanced College List

April was a transition month for students at Advantage College Planning.

Seniors have their college decisions. And while some have been writing Letters of Continued Interest in hopes of coming off of waitlists, many others have attended admitted student days, made their college choice, and put down enrollment deposits. We’re so excited and proud of what our seniors have accomplished this year!

Juniors are looking ahead and preparing to step up to the plate. Most of our juniors are busy researching colleges and focusing on fit—not name and rankings—to determine their next steps. College lists are a work in progress right now. The goal is that by the time application work begins in earnest, rising seniors will have a balanced college list made up of well-researched schools that fit them academically, socially, and financially.

But what do we mean when we say a “balanced” college list?

We’re talking about selectivity, and given admissions trends over the past few years, a balanced list is more important than ever. 

We divide colleges into three (and a half) categories when it comes to selectivity: Likely, Target, and Reach. Let’s take a closer look at each category and discuss our best tips for building a balanced college list.

LIKELY

Likely schools should be the foundation of every college list. These are colleges where the student applying has a high chance of being admitted based on the college’s acceptance rate and the applicant’s academic profile. 

Every student should apply to a few Likely colleges that they can get excited about and see themselves attending. 

Here are a few tips about Likely colleges:

• Likely colleges may come with some extra opportunities like merit scholarships or admission to honors colleges. 

• Don’t overlook Likely schools in the college planning process. Include Likelies on your college tours to learn what makes them unique college experiences!

• We recommend applying to at least one in-state public Likely college for financial fit as well. 

• Parents: What is “Likely” has changed over the years! Just because a school was less selective several years ago (or even recently…) doesn’t mean it’s a Likely school for your student.

Lastly, you may have heard the expression “Safety School” before. I want you to forget that phrase ever existed. Why? Because when someone is talking about a “Safety School,” they usually don’t mean it in a positive way. They mean it in a backup, last-resort way. That’s not what we’re doing here. 

It’s important that Likely colleges are just as strong a fit for a student as any other college on their list. Likely colleges are great places to get an education. Students need to like their Likelies and parents need to support them as much as the rest of the college list!

TARGET

A Target school is a college where a student’s chance of admission is around 50% based on the college’s acceptance rate and the student’s academic profile. The student, academically, falls somewhere in the middle 50% of what the college generally admits. 

Because students fall in that middle 50%, it’s easy for students to confuse Likelies and Targets. But Target schools will sometimes admit applicants with a profile similar to the student’s. And sometimes they won’t. 

Here are some tips about Target schools:

• Keep a close eye on changing acceptance rates from year to year. With changing factors like test-optional policies and a rise in applications at many colleges, what may have been a Likely or Target when a student started list building can change by the time they apply to college. For example:

  • Auburn University had a 155% increase in Early Action applications this year. Their overall acceptance rate for the 2020-2021 cycle was around 81%. We’re still waiting for the final numbers to shake out for the overall acceptance rate for 2021-2022, but the early action acceptance rate was only 24%!

• Some schools may appear like Target schools based on their acceptance rate but are actually Likely or Reach schools in disguise. Here are two types of schools to look out for:

  • Public Universities - Most public universities admit in-state students at a different rate than out-of-state students, and that may give students a slight advantage or disadvantage in the admissions process. For example, at UNC Chapel Hill, 82% of seats in the incoming class are reserved for students from North Carolina. So for UNC’s Class of 2025, the overall acceptance rate was 19.2%, but the difference between in-state and out-of-state was huge. North Carolina applicants were admitted at a rate of 42.2% while out-of-state students were admitted at a rate of 10.5%. 

  • Colleges with Early Decision - If a college has an Early Decision admissions deadline, those numbers can skew its overall acceptance rate and make a school look less selective than it is for students who are applying Regular Decision. Colleges often have a higher acceptance rate for Early Decision because they know those students will attend if admitted (read more about the different types of application deadline types here), and some colleges can fill half of their class or more from Early Decision. Here are a few examples from the Class of 2024:

    • American University -  Early Decision acceptance rate: 83.5%, Regular Decision acceptance rate: 36.4%, Percentage of class filled from ED: 51%

    • Davidson College - Early Decision acceptance rate: 46.9%, Regular Decision acceptance rate: 16.5%, Percentage of class filled from ED: 59%

    • Washington & Lee University - Early Decision acceptance rate: 52.6%, Regular Decision acceptance rate: 21.3%, Percentage of class filled from ED: 59%

REACH 

A Reach school is a college where a student’s chance of admission is low. The college generally admits students with a higher academic profile than the applicant. The college might also have a lower acceptance rate. A combination of the two is often common for reach schools. 

If a college list runs into trouble, it’s usually because of reach schools. When students aren’t thinking about building a balanced college list, they tend to add too many Reaches, and the list becomes unbalanced. And when students aren’t thinking about fit, they tend to add more and more Reach schools based on name or ranking regardless of whether or not they would be happy attending college there.

Just like Likely and Target schools should be a good fit for students, so should Reach schools. Students should consider whether the Reaches on their list are an academic, social, and financial fit for them. 

Here are some tips for Reach colleges:

• Don’t let Reach schools take over the college list. Apply to a few that are a good fit, but this should not be the majority of the college list!

  • Often, I hear from students that they are comfortable applying to mostly Reaches with one or two Likely or Targets thrown in for “safety” (remember how I feel about that concept?). If that’s you or your student, think for a minute about the spring of senior year. What will it feel like to open up “no” after “no” (which is, realistically, the most probable result from a Reach school)? Even if there are a few acceptances sprinkled in there, that’s a lot of rejection for a teenager to face at the end of a successful high school career. I don’t recommend it.

• Financially, families should recognize that even if a student is admitted, they will likely not receive any merit-based scholarships (and many highly selective don’t actually award scholarships based on merit).

• Students should LOVE their Reach schools and be excited about learning more about them, researching them, writing about them, etc… If any of these things feel like a drag or you think of an answer to the “Why Us?” essay, ask yourself why you’re applying and if it’s for the right reasons.

WILDCARD

At the beginning of this blog post, I said there were three and a half categories when it came to college selectivity. That’s because some colleges are a reach for everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your GPA is, what your test scores are, or what you wrote your essay about. It’s still a reach. I call these Wildcards.

For me, it’s any college with less than a 20% acceptance rate. When colleges are this selective, admission is unpredictable.

Along with the Reach tips above, here are some additional tips for Wildcard colleges:

• Fit is always important. But perhaps the most important when applying to a Wildcard. These colleges have no shortage of applications, so they can really be picky and admit exactly the type of student who’s going to be a great fit for their campus community. Apply to Wildcards where you are truly a good fit and can demonstrate that you understand what makes the college unique.

  • Can you fake it til you make it? Probably not. These admissions representatives read thousands of applications each year. They can spot a genuine fit for their campus.

• Applying to more Wildcards will not increase your chances of being accepted. That’s not how math works. You do not have a higher probability of being accepted by one Ivy League college if you apply to all of them. Find your fit. Find the colleges you truly love.

• Your admissions decision at a highly selective college says very little about you, in the end. Let that be liberating! They receive and reject hundreds of applications each year with perfect GPAs and test scores. It’s not about “not being good enough.” It’s about not having enough dorm rooms. Many of them would admit many more students if they could. So much is out of your control with a Wildcard school. Know that you put your best self forward, trust that the process is playing out as it should, and love the colleges who love you back!

BUILDING THE LIST

On average, students apply to a range of 6-12 colleges. 

Students with fewer Reach and Wildcard schools may be more comfortable at the lower end of that range. If a student is applying to more highly selective schools, they should make sure to have plenty of Likely and Target schools as their foundation.

We work with rising seniors in all phases of college list building, from discussing college fit to building suggested college lists to ensuring a student’s self-made list is balanced and realistic. To get support with building a balanced college list, reach out for a free consultation!

Scholarships 101: Measuring A College's Financial Generosity

This is Part 3 of our 3-part Scholarships 101 series. In Part 1, we covered our thoughts on private scholarships. In Part 2, we covered how students can position themselves to earn more merit-based financial aid.

At Advantage College Planning, we have a thriving work book club. Together, we read about 6 books a year (yes, even during application season). Most are related to college admissions, but some aren’t (we all enjoyed Glennon Doyle’s Untamed), and right now, we’re reading Mindful Admissions by Laurén Carter.

One of our book club picks in 2020 was Jeff Selingo’s Who Gets In and Why. In his book, he coins the idea of colleges as “buyers” or “sellers.” Summarizing from his website, colleges that are “sellers” have plenty of competitive applications to choose from to fill a class. They don’t need to use financial aid as any sort of incentive to attract admitted students into accepting their acceptance. These schools may still offer financial aid, but maybe it’s need-based only or to a very small percentage of students. Simply put: they can be generous with their financial aid (especially when we’re talking about need-based aid), but they may not be generous to all families or to your family.

Colleges that Selingo terms as “buyers,” on the other hand, take a different approach to awarding financial aid. They may award larger scholarships to attract competitive students to attend their college. Or maybe they award generous merit aid to students with little or no financial need, which can be a welcome relief to families who won’t qualify for much or any need-based financial aid but are still facing a hefty tuition bill.

Whether or not you like Selingo’s terminology, an important piece to understanding the financial aid puzzle is understanding a college’s financial generosity. Knowing which colleges award financial aid generously to which students will help your family determine if a college is a good overall financial fit.

Here are some tools for measuring a college’s financial generosity:

NET PRICE CALCULATOR

Any college or university participating in a federal financial aid program is required to have a Net Price Calculator accessible on their website. Filling out this calculator will give you an estimate of what your family can expect to pay for one year of college at that institution based on individual factors like your family’s income and your student’s GPA and/or test scores.

A net price calculator only gives an estimate, but it’s a personalized one. That’s important because the definition of financial generosity will vary from family to family. Harvard, for example, awards full financial aid packages to students whose families earn less than $65,000 per year. That’s extremely generous for those families and life-changing for those students. Filling out Harvard’s Net Price Calculator would let you see if Harvard is a financial fit for your family too—provided it is also an academic and social fit!

Pro Tip: Sometimes, a Net Price Calculator will let you skip a lot of the financial data entry if you know your Expected Family Contribution (EFC). You can get this number through the Federal Student Aid Estimator.

COLLEGEDATA.COM

A college profile’s “Financials” tab on CollegeData.com is my favorite tool for understanding how a college awards financial aid. This page is packed with information and clues about a college’s financial generosity. Here’s just a snippet of the profile for Wofford College, a private liberal arts college in South Carolina:

Let’s look at what we can learn from Wofford’s profile. Around 85% of applicants in the 2020-2021 cycle applied for financial need and around 72% were found to have financial need (meaning their EFC was less than the total cost of attendance a Wofford).

100% of applicants who had demonstrated need received financial aid. That’s great!

Wofford met the full need (not the same as the full cost of attendance!) of around 44% of students. Hmm. Is that good or bad? Let’s see… On the one hand, it could be higher, but if we look at schools that are similar to Wofford, it’s not too bad (Elon University - 19.7%, Furman University - 51.4%, Presbyterian College - 34.4%).

Average percent of need met is 90%. That’s very good! But remember—this doesn’t mean 90% of the total cost of attendance is met. It’s an average of 90% of each family’s demonstrated need (that’s the total cost of attendance minus the EFC).

College Data lists out the average award and breaks it down a step further so you can see how much of it is need-based gift (scholarships, grants, etc… based on financial need) and how much of it is self-help or work-study.

Finally, the profile lists merit-based gift awards so you can see if the college awards merit-based financial aid to students, even students who do not qualify for any need-based aid. And if they do award non-need-based merit aid, how much and how frequently. Compared to many colleges, Wofford does pretty well here!

Further down the page, College Data breaks down the same information for the entire school instead of just freshmen. It also shows the percentage of students taking out loans and the average student loan debt of a recent graduating class.

Like I said, my favorite tool!

COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID OFFICE

I’ve mentioned it in every part. of this series so far, but a college’s financial aid website and their office are a great tool for getting any additional questions answered about financial generosity at any point during the college planning or application process. Here are some financial generosity markers to look out for as you’re learning more:

• Outside Scholarship Policy - I covered this in Part 1, but some colleges will reduce a student’s financial aid package if that student is bringing private outside scholarships with them. It’s important to know this information ahead of time! And if the college does reduce a financial aid award, it’s important to know how the package will change. Ideally, they would reduce loans first before grants and other gift aid.

• Loan Limits - Some colleges are starting to limit or even eliminate loans from their financial aid packages. If that’s an important factor for you, look for language indicating some kind of policy around loan limitations.

• College Financial Health - Understanding the financial health of colleges in an underrated part of the college search process (it’s a lot less fun than seeing the dorms on a college visit or picturing yourself in the student stands on game day!). But a college generally has to have a healthy endowment in order to afford to be financially generous. In recent years, there have been major studies into the financial health of universities.

  • Edmit does a deep, deep dive for those of you who love data (for those of you feeling a little overwhelmed, it’s a lot of the same information as College Data, but let me direct your attention to the bar graph labeled Average Cost where you’ll see an average yearly cost of attendance by family income range. The section right below it, Financial Health, also gives a nice snapshot.

  • If I lost you with “bar graph,” Forbes has simplified things and given colleges a Financial Health Grade. Scroll down, and you can search by college name.

COLLEGE CONSULTANT

Your last tool for understanding a college’s financial generosity—and financial fit as a whole—is to speak with a college consultant. We have years of experience with the financial aid process and can help guide your family through the process from beginning to end.

If you want to take what you’ve learned in our Scholarships 101 series to the next level, look for one of our free 10 Keys to College Affordability webinars!

Scholarships 101: How Can I Get More Merit Aid From Colleges?

This is Part 2 of our Scholarships 101 series. In Part 1, we covered our thoughts on private scholarships. In Part 3, we’ll cover how to research the financial generosity of colleges.

College is expensive. Like really expensive. And while there are headlines in the news all the time about tuition costs rising or the student debt crisis, many families don’t think too closely about the cost of college until far too late in the college planning process.

Anyone in this industry will tell you that the hardest conversations about financial fit are with families whose students have been admitted to their dream school only to realize that they cannot afford it. We all wish for a time machine at that moment so we can go back and make financial fit a larger part of that student’s college search.

We begin the conversation around financial fit early because we want families to be prepared and to be preparing! Part of the conversation revolves around need-based financial aid, which is a separate process determined by a family’s income. But part of the conversation is about merit-based aid.

Merit-based aid is not tied to a family’s income but is instead awarded based on something that the student is bringing to the college, such as high performance in academics, athletics, the arts, or other extracurricular involvement. For the sake of this blog post, I’m going to be talking about merit aid determined by academic achievement. Sometimes referred to as “scholarships,” these are the types of scholarships we encourage our students to pursue as opposed to the private scholarships covered in Part 1 of this series. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Institutional Scholarships are often renewable for up to 4 years—As long as the recipient maintains certain requirements like a minimum GPA

2. Institutional Scholarships can be for much larger amounts—Up to full tuition, though larger awards will be more competitive

3. Institutional Scholarships are usually worth the time investment to apply—And many have no application at all because students are automatically considered when they apply to the college

We’re often asked how students can maximize their opportunities for institutional merit aid. Simply put: How can students get more scholarship money from colleges? Here are 4 tips to help students in their scholarship search:

RESEARCH COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID POLICIES

When researching college websites, students and families generally visit the Admissions page, the departmental pages for any majors they’re interested in, the Residence Life page, and so on… but don’t forget the Financial Aid page!

Colleges provide a lot of information about their school’s financial aid policies—including how they award merit aid and scholarships—on this section of the website, and families can learn a lot!

For example, some colleges are very clear that they do not award merit scholarships (like Georgetown with a total cost of attendance of $82,080 for 2021-2022) or only award merit aid to a very small amount of students (like Vanderbilt—2021-2022 cost of attendance of $79,538—whose merit scholarship recipients “represent the top 1% of all freshman applicants”). They focus funds on need-based aid instead.

Other colleges are more transparent about the way they award their merit scholarships. The University of Alabama (2021-2022 cost of attendance for an out-of-state student: $51,398) has a chart showing the automatic award out-of-state applicants can expect to receive based on their test scores and GPA, as do a number of other colleges.

If a college’s policies are not clear from their financial aid webpage, reach out to their financial aid office by phone or email. These knowledgeable staff members can be a huge help to families throughout the application process and during a student’s time at the college.

APPLY TO MORE “LIKELY” COLLEGES

We recommend students apply to a balanced list of colleges. That means there is a balance of likely schools, target schools, and reach schools in terms of college selectivity and the student’s academic profile.

A well-balanced list is important all the time, but few lists are perfectly balanced. More often, students will add more reach schools onto their lists, and as long as they are applying to enough likely and target schools that are a good fit for them, that’s usually okay! But if the question is “how can I get more merit aid from colleges?”, the college list needs to shift in the other direction.

Merit aid is hard to come by at colleges that are reach or even target schools for a student because the student is generally not in the top of that college’s applicant pool. If financial fit is a driving factor in your student’s college search process, encourage them to consider adding more likely colleges to their list. They have a better chance of being a more competitive applicant for institutional merit aid.

EARN STRONG GRADES AND TEST SCORES

For merit aid awarded based on academic achievement, colleges are looking at academic factors like GPA and standardized test scores. Students hoping to earn merit aid should work hard in the classroom throughout high school, and test prep for the SAT and ACT certainly won’t hurt their chances.

With the rise of test-optional policies, some colleges are not using standardized scores as a factor in merit aid, but other colleges either consider test scores or give students the option to have their scores considered for an opportunity to potentially earn more scholarship money. For example, at the University of Tennessee, an out-of-state student without test scores can earn an award starting at $4,000 per year, but a student with test scores can earn a minimum of $6,000 per year.

Colleges that are more transparent with their merit aid policies (like Alabama mentioned above, Tennessee, and the University of South Carolina) show that hard work can pay! Slight increases in GPA or standardized test scores can earn students several thousand more dollars per year to help pay for college.

FILL OUT SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS

For some colleges, students are automatically considered for merit scholarships just by submitting an application for admission, or the scholarship application may be included in the general application. But other colleges have an additional scholarship application that is only accessible once a student has submitted an application or maybe even once they’ve been admitted.

Many students never bother to fill out a college’s scholarship application. It’s easy to skip this extra step because it comes along once a student is out of “application mode.” Students may not want to put in more time and effort if they haven't been admitted to a college yet. Even if they have been admitted, they may not be certain that’s where they want to attend. But this can be a missed opportunity!

Students should also review their college’s scholarship portal each year because their college might offer departmental scholarships to returning students. Students may be able to find additional funding after their freshman year!

DETERMINE GENEROSITY

The last tip is to look into which colleges are generous with their institutional dollars… and which colleges aren’t. Some colleges, like the ones I’ve mentioned above, put handy charts on their websites, but that’s not exactly the norm. Stay tuned for Part 3 of our Scholarships 101 series as we dive into how to determine the financial generosity of a college!

Scholarships 101: The Scoop On Outside Scholarships

This is Part 1 of our Scholarships 101 series. In Part 2, we’ll cover How Students Can Maximize Institutional Financial Aid. In Part 3, we’ll cover How to Research the Financial Generosity of Colleges

There’s a ton of college misinformation out there, and a lot of it has to do with how to pay for college.

Haven't we all heard stories about a neighbor’s cousin’s kid who got a full-ride scholarship just for being left handed or being a twin? Do those low effort/maximum reward scholarships really exist? 

And each year, new websites pop up promising "exclusive access to millions of dollars in unclaimed scholarship money!" For a fee, of course. 

Many families new to the college planning process think their student can apply for private or outside scholarships (that is: scholarships not coming from third-party organizations rather than the college itself or the state or federal government) to make up the difference between a college’s total cost of attendance and the amount financial aid doesn't cover. But it would be a mistake to ignore Financial Fit or rely on outside scholarships to cover that gap.

In our Scholarships 101 series, we’ll cover:

• Why applying for outside scholarships may not be worth a student’s time

• How students can maximize merit-based aid and institutional scholarships

• How to research the financial generosity of colleges

Today, we’ll answer:

Is applying for outside scholarships worth it?

Depending on the student, it probably isn’t. Here are a few reasons why:

The Time Commitment (part 1)

Embarking on an outside scholarship search is no small feat! Students have to comb through thousands of scholarships to determine: whether a scholarship is legitimate or spam, whether it is still active, and whether the student meets the eligibility requirements.

The Odds

Let’s mythbust the “millions of dollars in unclaimed scholarship money” claim. While there may be some scholarships that receive few (if any!) applications in a given year, they are often local scholarships for small amounts. More well-known scholarships or scholarships for large amounts of money often receive tens of thousands of applications each year, making them extremely competitive. In some cases, more competitive than your most competitive colleges! The Coca-Cola Scholarship, for example, receives around 100,000 applications but only awards 150 scholarships for an “acceptance rate” of around 0.15%!

The Time Commitment (part 2)

Say a student has already devoted hours to their scholarship search and built the perfect balanced list of competitive and less competitive scholarships to apply to. They still have to fill out the applications. That means filling out activity lists, writing multiple essays, sometimes conducting interviews, and… wait a minute… Doesn’t this sound a lot like the college application process?! Applying for scholarships can take as much time, work, and energy as applying to college!

The Return on Investment

After all the time and effort that goes into the scholarship search and application process, most scholarships are for fairly small amounts (a few hundred to a few thousand dollars) compared to tuition costs and most are not renewable after a student’s first year of college. So even if a student earns several scholarships for their first year, that student will need to “find” that money again for the following years. And there aren't as many scholarships available to returning students. Colleges may also alter a student’s financial aid package based on outside scholarships, so don’t assume that students can “make up the difference” with outside scholarships! Colleges and universities require students to disclose any private scholarships they receive, and many institutions then reduce their financial aid award by the scholarship amount. Every college is different, and some will first reduce loans before reducing grants/scholarships. Families will need to ask each college about their policy.

For the majority of students, outside scholarships are not the best way to pay for college. But for students who are tackling a scholarship search, here’s some advice:

• Use trusted scholarship search databases like Fastweb, CFNC (for NC students), or check with the high school counseling department to see if they keep a list. Your school counselor can be a great resource!

• Students have a greater probability of being awarded scholarships when they keep the scholarship search local. These awards can often be smaller but just remember: if you’re seeing that website banner flashing with Unigo’s $50,000 No Essay scholarship, so are thousands of other high school seniors.

• Check with a parent or guardian’s place of employment to see if they offer any scholarship programs for employees’ children.

• Study hard! Doing well in school and even on standardized tests can increase your eligibility for some outside scholarships as well as make you more competitive for merit scholarships coming from colleges and universities!

• Before putting in time and energy into applying for scholarships, check with the financial aid offices of each college on your list to see how they handle outside scholarships!

And for the record, from what I can find, there was once a scholarship for left-handed students… but even it was an institutional scholarship!

A Holiday Gift Guide for High Schoolers

What sort of holiday shopper are you? Do you enjoy the hustle and bustle of shopping right before Christmas? Are you an avid Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal hound? Do you start your shopping before Thanksgiving?

I fall into the latter camp. I technically bought my first holiday gift back in August when my favorite store in downtown Raleigh closed for good (we miss you, Port of Raleigh!) and except for a few last little things to pick up, I’m more or less finished with my holiday shopping. My secret to lessening the stress of holiday shopping? Gift guides.

I love a good gift guide. I wait all year long for different outlets to publish theirs, and I have so much fun reading them. From Oprah’s Favorite Things to The Strategist, it gets me in the holiday spirit to peruse these lists with my loved ones in mind. And a lot of the work is done for me because someone else has scoured the internet and curated a list perfectly suited for whoever it is I’m shopping for.

Since we’re coming up on the holidays (and because no one’s finding a PS5 at this point), I thought I’d put together my own gift guide for the high schooler in your life. 

FOR A CHANCE TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW…

BOOKS

I’m a big fan of gifting and getting books. I think it’s really thoughtful to take the time to consider someone’s interests and what they might enjoy learning about and picking out a book for them. Putting thought into it makes a book a much more personal gift than grabbing something off the bestseller list and calling it a day.

I recommend putting time and thought into choosing a book for your high schooler, especially if they aren’t a big reader. Do they have a particular interest or is there something they’d like to learn more about? You can find great fiction and nonfiction books on politics, science, history, art, design, and just about any other topic you can think of.

And it doesn’t have to be a traditional book! Take some time to consider how your high schooler likes to consume media. Is a newspaper, magazine, or journal subscription more their speed? Would they prefer an audiobook? Audible and Libro.fm (my personal favorite because your purchases support local indie bookstores!) are great options. If physical books aren’t your teenager’s thing, then maybe a Kindle is the way to go. What about a library card if your student doesn’t have one already? It’s free! If your student is never far from their phone, download the Libby app, and they can get hundreds of ebooks and audiobooks on their phone. It’s how I’ve done most of my reading this year.

Lastly, as a gift to your favorite college admissions blogger, consider purchasing your book from a local independent bookstore - even if it doesn’t have super-fast 2-day shipping.

HEADPHONES

This is a present that would pair perfectly with an audiobook! But new headphones are also great for listening to podcasts, music, or tuning out the barking dog during online school.

I’ll be honest and say that headphone technology has passed me by, so I don’t have any recommendations. But there are tons on the market from AirPods (with a fun case, of course) to noise-canceling over-the-ear models.

A SUBSCRIPTION

At the top of my own holiday wishlist this year is an annual subscription to MasterClass. With over 90 vastly different classes, it’s a great way to learn something new - and for the holidays, they run a buy-one, get-one special on annual memberships. 

There are other online education platforms to consider (many of which I wrote about during the early days of the pandemic) like Skillshare, Lynda, and Udemy where students can learn new skills in bite-size pieces. It’s a great way to bring learning out of the classroom and to learn about things that aren’t covered in school.

FOR A PRODUCTIVITY BOOST…

AN ORGANIZATION SYSTEM

Whether your student is returning to a physical classroom or continuing with online learning, it’s the perfect time to reset and reorganize. Help your student get a jumpstart on 2021 with a new planner and a customized way to organize their things.

I recommend that this be an “interactive gift” that you do together. What works for one person doesn’t always work for another. You want this to be a system that your student sticks with, so make sure it’s what works for them. Take a trip to the Container Store together, and I bet you’ll learn something about each other’s personalities in the process!

PHONE SANITIZER

We’re still in a pandemic, and sanitizing is the new normal. 

I don’t have to tell you that phones are disgusting. Do some quick googling and be horrified by what you discover. We touch our phones dozens of times throughout the day. And even though most teenagers I know use their phones more as an entertainment box than a telephone, we often hold our phones up to our maskless faces. -Shudder-

Phone sanitizing wipes are a great stocking stuffer, but companies also make a UV sanitizing wireless charger that I’d recommend. Maybe get a few for the whole family.

LUGGAGE

Alright, this might sound a little boring and practical - I remember the year I was gifted luggage as a teenager and was more confused than anything - but one day, we’ll all get to travel again. One day, your high schooler is going to go off to college, and let’s give them something to pack their clothes in other than two mismatched duffle bags from their childhood and a laundry hamper.

A NEW BAG FOR SCHOOL

While we’re on the subject of bags, how about a new bag/backpack/tote bag/carryall of choice if your student is returning to in-person school in the spring? Most students didn’t get new bags in the fall because of online learning, so this is a great time to refresh that backpack from last year that the cat has been using as a bed for the last 6 months.

FOR AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET CREATIVE…

A NEW JOURNAL

Give your future-student the opportunity to look back on their present-self with a journal they can use to record their experiences. Journaling is a great way to tap into creativity, work through feelings, improve writing skills, and boost mental health. What’s not to love?

But it can be a little intimidating to start with a big blank notebook, so consider a guided journal if your high schooler is new to journaling. I’m a big fan of the one-line-a-day journals and Wreck This Journal is usually a pretty big hit. Here’s a list of “journals that spark extreme creativity!”

A SCREEN-FREE HOBBY

Many of us are spending way too much time on our screens these days. For a lot of students, they have to rack up hours of screentime for school each day, and then they’re still turning to their screens in their down time. So I think a perfect gift this holiday season is something that doesn’t involve a screen at all.

One of my favorite pandemic-hobby stories is from my very STEM-focused student who finally got the opportunity to work on a paint-by-numbers set she got for Christmas two years ago. She had so much fun doing something creative that was out of her everyday experience. Other students have learned to sew, picked up golfing, redecorated their bedrooms, started boxing, learned new instruments and gotten into photography.

Help your student explore their creative side and give their screens a break with a gift that supports a screen-free hobby.

I hope this list has given you a few gift ideas for the high schooler in your life! 

Happy Holidays, and I’ll see you in 2021!

Advantage College Planning Answers: Wake Forest's Lists

Today, we’re continuing with our Advantage College Planning Answers series where our consultants respond to some of the same short answer prompts our seniors are answering in their applications. In this edition, we’re going to look at two of Wake Forest’s requirements - the book list and the top 10 list.

I get a lot of questions about these two prompts. They can definitely feel a little tricky or intimidating for some students. What do you do if you’re not a big reader? Just what exactly are you supposed to rank for that top 10 list?

After you read our answers below, keep scrolling for tips and to see how I approached these questions!

List five books you’ve read that intrigued you.

LINDSEY

1. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

2. Light on Yoga by BKS Iyengar

3. Seinlanguage by Jerry Seinfeld

4. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

5. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

BROOKE

1. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

2. Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill

3. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

4. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

5. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

JAMIE

1. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

2. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

3. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

4. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

5. The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

Give us your top 10 list.

LINDSEY

Top 10 Fashion/Style Icons

1. Punky Brewster - classic 80s fashion; fun, original, and I could rock some pig-tails when I was young!

2. Ralph Lauren - patriotism personified; who doesn't look good in red, white, and blue?

3. Betty Boop - yes, the classic cartoon character with the pin curls.

4. Project Runway - creative design with creative materials

5. Mother Earth - I find so much inspiration in nature; just think of the color!

6. My cousin Katie - she had more style at age 3 than I've had my whole life

7. Michelle Obama - she's the whole package

8. Audrey Hepburn - those bangs! that pixie cut! the black dresses!

9. Rosie the Riveter - women do hard work with style

10. and the OG, my grandmother; her sense of style is unparalleled

BROOKE

10 Unforgettable Things About Growing Up in Rural Vermont

1. Walking to school in 12 (or more!) inches of snow.

2. Leaf-peeping.

3. Never locking our house doors.

4. The night sky. You can almost always see the stars!

5. Maple creemees.

6. The smell of dairy farms.

7. Wearing flannel (before it was fashionable).

8. Ben & Jerry’s existing as a food group and paying our respects at the Ben & Jerry’s flavor graveyard each year.

9. Always running into someone you know at the grocery store (without fail).

10. Frozen nose hair.

JAMIE

My 10 favorite house plants

1. My Pilea, aka "friendship plant" because it reproduces so fast, has spawned 10+ "pups" to give away.

2. My Aloe grew from a "pup" off my grandmother's plant that was a "pup" of my great-grandmother's.

3. I revived my Devil's Backbone from the brink of death and keep it up high because of its toxic sap!

4. My 2 Fiddle Leaf Fig trees are taller than me. We wrap them in lights for the Holidays.

5. My Thai Constellation Monstera started as one leaf and is now almost too big for its pot!

6. I bought a Vanilla Orchid (yes, where vanilla comes from!) at the Duke Orchid Show in 2019.

7. My Fittonia, aka "nerve plant," is a dramatic diva who droops if she's the least bit thirsty!

8. The flowers on my night-blooming "Queen of the Night" Orchid Cactus only last for one night!

9. I planted cactus seeds 4 years ago. The biggest of my little cluster is now about 3" tall.

10. My Desert Rose has dropped all its leaves. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong!

Alright, now that we’ve gotten through the fun part, let’s talk strategy for these questions. Beginning with books…

List five books you’ve read that intrigued you.

My students and I struggle with this question usually for opposite reasons. I read a lot (I just finished my 67th book of 2020), so it’s hard for me to narrow down that list! Many of my students, on the other hand, aren’t big readers or don’t have time to read much outside of school. So how do you choose five books? And what are they supposed to say about you in the first place?

This question is a chance to highlight intellectual curiosity and mention some interests that may not have made it into other parts of your application. The question is not the place to list lofty books you haven’t read in order to sound smart. Wake’s admission team can see right through that.

On this question, you’re asked to put whether or not it was required reading. It’s okay to dedicate a few spaces to books you read for school to show what really caught your interest, but this shouldn’t be the majority. Also, keep in mind that many high schoolers are reading a lot of the same books for school - if your list is The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and a Shakespeare play, it’s not going to stand out.

I’m often asked if it’s okay to include “fun” books in this section like Harry Potter, a book read in middle school, or even a childhood favorite. Yes! These are great ways to show variety and personality as long as they don’t dominate your list. Just choose one Harry Potter book (Prisoner of Azkaban, obviously) instead of listing five, and don’t make a list of all Dr. Seuss books!

One last note on this question. It’s clear that Wake Forest puts an emphasis on reading. This isn’t the only books-related prompt Wake Forest has, and it’s almost a guarantee that books will come up in their interview. That they value reading so heavily tells you a little something about what the student experience at Wake Forest will be like. You’re going to be among readers. You may be in reading-heavy classes. If sitting down with a book really feels like the last thing on the planet you want to do, you might want to reconsider if Wake Forest is a good fit for you.

Give us your top 10 list.

Can you get more open-ended than this prompt? I’m really not sure if you can! You’re asked to give a top 10 list on literally any topic or theme. You only have 100 characters per list item. That’s tough! So how do you choose?

First, start by thinking about what is meaningful to you but also personal to you. Remember, your reader wants to learn something about you from this list, so even if soccer is your passion, a ranking of your FIFA teams doesn’t tell your reader anything about you (and a lot of other soccer fans are probably picking the same theme).

When I approached this prompt, my first instinct was to list my top 10 favorite books or the 10 books I want to read next. It would probably reveal a lot about me BUT I’d miss out on an opportunity to reveal something new about myself to my reader. My love of plants probably wouldn’t have made it anywhere in my hypothetical application, but take one step into my home/indoor jungle, and you’d see that they are clearly important to me! And while you might know from Brooke’s application that she grew up in Vermont, her experience really highlights what that experience was like through her eyes (no thank you, frozen nose hair!).

Keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to explain your choices. If you want to list your top 10 favorite quotes, I hope they’re short quotes! And without explanation, some lists may not come off as you intended. I thought about listing my favorite places around the world, but without the opportunity to acknowledge how privileged I am to have traveled extensively, such a list might come off looking entitled or lacking some awareness.

Remember that personalization is key here! We all could choose Lindsey’s theme and come up with 10 very different lists, but some themes lend themselves to cliches, unoriginal responses, or answers that just don’t reveal a lot about you. There are always exceptions, but try to avoid: favorite teams, television shows, movies, songs/musical artists, video games, foods, destinations, etc…

Final Thoughts

For both of these questions, the Wake Forest admissions team wants to see your creativity and curiosity in action. They aren’t looking for Ph.D. candidates’ lists; they’re looking for lists written by a teenager! Wake wants to know what you find interesting - not what you think they think is interesting!