South Bay Educational Consultants

02/24/2024

Testing policies are nuanced and vary from college to college. Here’s a good read on some definitions where AP/IB scores are part of the evaluation.

Colleges are increasingly using standardized exam scores beyond just SAT and ACT scores in their admissions decisions.

01/17/2022

"People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder."

Psychological research is clear: when people procrastinate, there's usually a good reason

02/17/2021

Common App has released its prompts for the 2021-2022 school year, and there's a lovely new option on gratitude that replaced the solving a problem prompt.

In crafting a new option, we relied on the expertise of counselors and admission officers on our Outreach and Application Advisory Committees, along with input from psychology and gratitude researchers.

02/22/2020

Research shows that character affects admission decisions

The fact that 70% of admission officers deem character to be moderately to considerably important to an applicants’ candidacy should have students’ ears perking up.

01/27/2020

Students: To be college-, career-, and life-ready....Check. Your. Email!

This time of year, colleges are emailing important admissions and financial aid information. Small problem: Teenagers. Don’t. Check. Email.

10/18/2019

Prospective applicants are being evaluated by some schools that care about managing their enrollment numbers. Read how predictive analytics is used in College Admissions.

Records reviewed by The Washington Post show that at least 44 public and private universities in the United States work with outside consulting companies to collect and analyze data on prospective students, either by tracking their Web activity or formulating predictive scores to measure each studen...

03/24/2019

What students do at college matters much more than where they go. The key is engagement, inside the classroom and out.

03/05/2019

UT Austin has become very challenging for out of state applicants. By law, no more than 10% of total admissions can be out of state.

College admissions at The University of Texas at Austin has become very selective for non-auto admits. This blog examines the numbers for Fall 2019, the history

02/17/2019

The College Board came up with a surprising conclusion about keys to success for college and life: two codes

The College Board came up with a surprising conclusion about keys to success for college and life.

02/09/2019

To determine ‘demonstrated interest,’ some schools are tracking how quickly prospective students open email and whether they click links.

Some colleges, in an effort to sort through a growing number of applications, are quietly tracking applicants’ online interaction with the schools and considering it when deciding whom to admit.