The official e-newsletter of The Equestrian College Advisor.

From the blog:

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t believe any travel opportunity should be wasted – or, more specifically, that no trip to a college town should be wasted when one can fit a campus tour into the itinerary. Thus, when planning my trip to Syracuse, New York for the 2019 Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) national championship, I made sure to schedule time for a tour of famed Syracuse University and learn firsthand what makes it such a great fit for so many students. Read More

For families considering a private college, the odds are extremely likely they’ll get some kind of discount.

That’s one takeaway from a survey released Thursday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, which represents college chief business and financial officers across the country. During the 2017-2018 academic year, nearly 90% of first-time, full-time freshman received an institutional grant — scholarships or other monetary aid given by the school, the survey found. And it’s likely that trend will continue. Read More

"Last October, the executive recruitment firm Kittleman, 

researched

 the educational backgrounds of leaders of all Fortune 500 companies to determine the “origin stories of prosperous and successful CEOs.” You get one guess for which undergraduate institution has produced the highest number of executives on this list. If your guess was a member of the Ivy League, you are wrong (though some of those institutions were well represented)."

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Your Resume and YouOne of the most intimidating parts of the college application process is often the moment a student realizes the need for an activities resume to highlight everything that defines his or her life outside the classroom. The clubs, sports, volunteer work, awards accumulated – all of it goes into a document that college admission officers and even some scholarship committees use to determine the candidate’s worthiness. (Nopressure.)What makes a good resume standout and what pitfalls should you avoid?DO

• Lead with the most meaningful items. If you play a sport that takes up the majority of your extracurricular hours, list it first. Not only does this show how important it is to you, but if the rest of your activities list is a bit short as a result of your commitment to your athletic career, readers will understand why this is so. 

• Explain all acronyms. Even though every college admission counselor alive knows that “NHS” stands for the National Honor Society, spell it out – and especially spell out any obscure or regional acronyms to make your resume as clear and consistent as possible.

• Divide into categories. Clarity is the name of the game so be sure to separate sports and clubs from awards and volunteer activities. The goal of a resume is to show your depth and well-roundedness, so categorizing your activities helps demonstrate this.

DON’T

• Pad it. If you volunteered for two hours during school on a tenth grade can drive, don’t include it just to beef up your volunteer section. Not only can college admission counselors see through the ruse, but it doesn’t add anything substantial to the picture you’re painting of yourself.

• Forget anything either! High school seems to go by in the blink of an eye, but at the same time, it’s also a long period of your life. When you start to list everything you’ve done in four years, there will be a lot of significant things that have happened to you, so make sure the biggest ones aren’t overlooked!

• List anything earlier than ninth grade. Colleges and scholarship committees are only worried about your high school activities and accomplishments – which means that victory in the eighth grade science fair doesn’t make the list.

Your activities resume is as much a snapshot of who you are coming out of high school as your transcript, so take the time to make it a true portrait. Show off – the colleges want to know who they’re inviting to campus and it might just be you!

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