Sometimes students will also sit in on a class or two, in hopes of getting a feel for what the educational experience will be like. Only a few, however, consider direct contact with professors during the visit.

Why would a visit with a professor be important on a campus visit?

Explore majors

Many students are still trying to learn about different majors as part of the larger decision about what college to attend. What better way to learn about an unfamiliar major than to talk to an expert? A professor in the department can give a first-hand account of what one is supposed to learn in that department.

Most professors are accustomed to “selling” their discipline to undergraduates, and most are willing to take the time to talk with prospective students and efficiently introduce them to the department. To give a concrete example of this, a student of mine was trying to decide whether she was more suited for a business and marketing degree, or whether she was more interested in psychology.

She had taken some introductory courses in both in high school, and she liked both. But she didn’t quite understand what the difference would be in terms of the courses she would be required to take. The format of those courses, and the career implications of both disciplines. So when she recently toured three campuses, she talked to two professors on each campus–one in marketing and one in psychology.

Upon her return, she had developed a very clear idea that while she wanted to take a few more courses in psychology, she was absolutely sure that she would be a marketing major in college. This self-awareness came through well-organized discussions with experts. Not only will her applications be stronger for having made this effort, but she is more certain of her academic path in college.

Establish contact with someone who shares your academic passions

If a student has a particular interest in (for example) the history of the Cold War and believes that he would like to focus on that period while pursuing a history major, it makes sense to learn more about the individuals in the history department who share that passion. And there is no better way to learn about that professor as a person than by sitting down in his office for a few minutes. By establishing rapport as an applicant, it will be easier to build on that rapport once you matriculate.

Gather information that will help on your application

Admissions officers all want to know why you have chosen to apply to their college. If you have taken the initiative to meet with a professor, and you can clearly articulate what makes a particular department stand out, or that you want to pursue advanced study with a particular professor (of Cold War history, for example). Then you can make a strong case for why you are academically suited to this school. Meeting a professor demonstrates that you are doing your homework and that you are really considering the academic fit between your interests and college offerings.

How do you prepare your questions to ask professors on a college tour?

If you decide to include a visit with a professor during your campus visits, you need to be prepared. Not only do you need to think about what sort of questions to ask, but you need to think about the practicalities of asking to meet with a professor in the first place.

It’s really not so hard to connect with professors. In many cases, they are really hoping to teach students who are genuinely interested in the academic subjects to which they have devoted their lives. They want to meet you.

Of course, this is less true at the most highly selective colleges. They are inundated with requests by applicants to meet with them. And don’t be too surprised of professors at these competitive schools refuse to meet with you. They just don’t have the time or interest.

But at schools that may be just a bit less competitive, professors are eager to help recruit bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students who want to learn the subject that they teach.

So how should you go about asking professors for a meeting while on a college tour?

Tips for contacting professors on a college tour

Identify the appropriate professor

For some purposes, you may want to start with the department chair. If you are hoping to talk to a specific person (because you share their academic interests), then go right to that faculty member. You can find full lists of faculty in every department on a college or university website. Make sure you find their bios, their teaching responsibilities, and perhaps even links to the courses they teach. Do your homework before you initiate contact. Remember: faculty members are teachers, and they like students who do their homework.

Start with an email

Explain briefly who you are, when you will be on campus, and why you want to meet with the professor. Address the professor formally, and respectfully (i.e., not, “Hey, professor!”). Set the tone by demonstrating that you are serious. The note does not have to be dull, but it has to be formal. Sign your name at the bottom and give your email and phone number. Also, your parents should not do this for you. The email must come from you. Professors have even less patience for parents than admissions officers.

Establish your goals or agenda for the meeting

Are you trying to learn more about a couple of different majors? Do you want to learn about research opportunities in a particular field or sub-field? Do you want to understand more about this professor’s research and teaching interests? How well your particular interests can be supported in the department?

Did you read about a particular program or curriculum element that interests you, about which you want to learn more? Don’t just say “I’d really like to meet you.” Tell the recipient of your email why you want to meet. Refer to specifics in the course catalog, the professor’s publications, or the departmental website.

Follow through

If the professor recommends that you contact someone else, thank her for the guidance, and then immediately turn around and follow that advice. I repeat: do not forget to say “thank you.” If the professor does agree to meet you, make sure to write down the appointment (and tell your parent or whoever is accompanying you on the campus visit), and then call and/or email the professor the day before to confirm the appointment.

Be prepared with questions to ask professors on a college tour

Come to the interview with three or four pertinent, relevant questions that relate to your agenda. Remember, this is not an admissions interview. You have asked for this appointment to gather information. So make sure you know what your questions are. Come with a pad of paper and a pencil, and be ready to take a few notes. Since you are asking for advice, be prepared to receive it. Furthermore, your notes may come in handy when you have to write that essay, “Why I want to go to College X.” You can make some specific references to things your new professor friend taught you.

Don’t be afraid

Just because someone has the letter “Ph.D.” after his name does not make him particularly scary. Professors are people, too, and they actually like it when students take an interest in them and their work. Most have chosen this profession because they enjoy students and genuinely enjoy dispensing advice. So if a professor agrees to meet with you, it’s because he wants to, and because he takes his job seriously.

Don’t invite your parents

As you explore a campus–and the people who inhabit it–you need to act independently. Professors expect you to act like an adult. Nothing will make you seem more juvenile than having Mom and Dad in tow. Of course, Mom and Dad may like to hear what the professor has to say. But this is your journey of discovery.

This relationship is one that you need to build yourself–adult to adult. So gently remind your parents that you are perfectly capable of handling this meeting alone and that you will meet them at the front door of the building in thirty minutes. While some parents may be a bit miffed not to be invited to this meeting secretly They’ll be impressed by your demonstration of your maturity and independence.

Need Some Help in Developing Questions to Ask Professors on a College Tour?

The expert college admissions counselors at Great College Advice can help guide you in coming up with your own list of questions to ask professors on a college tour. It’s not easy to think through what it is you want from your college application. It can be even more daunting to think about sitting down with a professor in his office to ask about your academic interests.

If you feel like you need some professional guidance, give us a call or contact us.  We’d be happy to talk to you about how we can help you map your college journey.

Great College Advice

The post Questions to Ask Professors on a College Tour first appeared on Great College Advice.

This is another example of how the liberal arts are truly “liberating.”  This young man’s foray into history and the Classics have taught him a great deal about himself.  While it’s true that college students will someday emerge from the cocoon of college into the wide, wide world to make a living, the educational experience of the liberal arts can help students understand their world better, improve their ability to communicate with others, and sharpen one’s analytical skills in ways that are hard to quantify.

The good thing is that employers are looking for students like this one (who studies at Hope College in Michigan–which is a member of the Colleges That Change Lives consortium) who can elegantly argue a case in the court of public opinion.
Read the piece here.

Great College Advice
Educational Consultant and Admissions Expert

The post The liberal arts can be a liberating educational force first appeared on Great College Advice.

About Trinity

I’m here at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and Trinity is a university. It is a master’s degree-granting institution. Which kind of messes things up for Trinity because it’s not really a liberal arts college. In which case it would be ranked alongside all of the liberal arts colleges in the United States. And it’s not really a comprehensive research university, so it doesn’t get onto the list of comprehensive research universities. So in terms of ranking, Trinity falls somewhere kind of in a limbo. But it is number one in the West; it has been for, I don’t know, a decade or more at least. It has been the top university in the West.

Curriculum at Trinity

What I want to talk about right now is its curriculum. Trinity has revised its curriculum entirely and has been very intentional about it. I’m really fascinated by the fact that this new curriculum was approved by the faculty by an unanimous vote. And anybody who’s ever worked in a university like I have knows that having a unanimous vote of the faculty on anything is extraordinarily uncommon. So that’s a testimony to the fact that the faculty are really getting involved in this decision.

How it works

I won’t go into the details. But, I think that the thing that I find the most interesting about this is that Trinity is really trying to bring the liberal arts and make it mean something. It’s not just a cafeteria plan. It’s not just a bunch of general education requirements. You pick one course from this bucket and one course from that bucket and one course from that bucket. Which really doesn’t mean that the student has learned anything that is skills-based. Or that there’s been anybody who has thought, “You know, in order to be an education person in this world, this is what we think you ought to know and learn and be able to do.”

Requirements of the Curriculum

So Trinity has some skills-based requirements that they want every student to do. That’s writing, that is oral presentations, that’s quantitative reasoning, that’s even digital literacy. They also have some requirements, yes, in the breadth of the curriculum, making sure that you’re doing lots of different disciplines. But they also have these “clusters,” they call them. These interdisciplinary clusters that force students to bring different disciplines together around a certain theme so that they can actually see how different disciplines and ways of thinking bear on the solutions to problems in a specific realm of knowledge.

Faculty Involvement

So the thing I really think is interesting about it is, number one, the whole faculty was involved in this. Second, the faculty also has a committee that determines whether or not a class fulfills one of these requirements. And if can be considered part of this new Pathways core, and can be part of that. In order for the students to want to take it, it’s got to meet some of these requirements.

And third is that it’s intentional, it’s bringing, really, the liberal arts and deciding what is that? What is critical thinking? How do we get students to develop those skills? Trinity has thought this through, they’ve got a fantastic new curriculum. It’s going to be interesting to see how it pans out as they continue to unroll it for more classes.

But I’m really optimistic. I think this is a great innovation. And I think other liberal arts colleges would do well to consider how do we actually ensure that students at a liberal arts-oriented university like this, how do we ensure that student really gets the liberal arts education, the skills, the knowledge, the interdisciplinary thinking that goes into what we think of as a liberal arts education? So Trinity University, hats off to you, it’s a great experiment and I hope it works out.

The post Trinity University’s Innovative New Curriculum first appeared on Great College Advice.

Air Academy HS
Alexander Dawson School (CO)
Arapahoe HS (CO)
Bear Creek HS
Bishop Machbeuf HS (CO)
Boulder HS
Broomfield HS
Castleview HS
Cedar Ridge Academy (CO)
Centennial HS
Cherry Creek HS
Cherokee Trail HS
Cheyenne Mountain HS
Colorado Academy
Columbine HS
Compass Montessori (CO)
Conifer HS (CO)
Custer County HS
Denver Academy
Denver East HS
Denver School for the Arts
Denver Waldorf School
D’Evelyn HS
Douglas County HS
Elizabeth HS
Fairview HS
George Washington HS (Denver)
Grandview HS (CO)
Grand Junction HS (Colorado)
Highlands Ranch HS (CO)
Kent Denver School
Kiowa HS (CO)
Lakewood HS (CO)
Lewis Palmer HS (CO)
Littleton HS
Middle Park HS (CO)
Monarch HS
Mountain Vista HS (CO)
Mullen HS (CO)
New Hope Academy
Niwot HS
Overland HS (CO)
Palisade HS (CO)
Peak to Peak Charter School (Colorado)
Pine Creek HS (CO)
Ralston Valley HS (CO)
Regis Jesuit HS (Denver)
Rock Canyon HS (Colorado)
Smoky Hill HS (CO)
Summit County HS
Valor Christian HS (CO)
Watershed School (CO)

The post Colorado High Schools With Great College Advice first appeared on Great College Advice.

Below is a partial list of the secondary schools that our students have attended as we have helped them map their college journeys.

SELECTED PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Choate Rosemary Hall (CT)
Hotchkiss School  (NH)
Phillips Andover  (MA)
Lawrenceville School (NJ)
Cate School (CA)
Holderness School (NH)
Northfield Mount Herman School (MA)
Germantown Friends School (PA)
Moses Brown School (RI)
Emma Willard School (NY)
Cushing Academy (MA)
Lawrence Academy (MA)
Brentwood School (BC, Canada)
Fountain Valley School (CO)
Bishop Fenwick HS (MA)
St. John’s Prep (MA)
Mid-Pacific Institute (HI)
Saint Thomas Academy (MN)
Colorado Academy (CO)
Kent Denver School (CO)
International School of San Francisco (CA)
Signature School (IN)
Prospect Hill Academy (MA)
Interlochen Arts Academy (MI)
Judge Memorial HS (UT)
Xavier HS (WI)
Harrow School (UK)
Woldingham School (UK)
Chinese International Schools (Hong Kong)
Shanghai American School (PRC)
Geelong Grammar Schools (Australia)
Anglo-Chinese School (Singapore)
Beijing 101 Secondary School (PRC)
American School of Muscat (Oman)

SELECTED USA PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS

We have worked with students attending some of the most competitive high schools in the country, many of whom have pursued Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) curricula.  We have worked with students who hail from just about every state in the country (we’re working to add Alaska and South Dakota!).  Below is just a sampling of the great schools where our students have attended.

NEW YORK

Scarsdale HS
Stuyvesant HS
Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women

MASSACHUSETTS

Lexington HS
Belmont HS
Hingham HS
Burlington HS
Ipswich HS
Needham HS
Bedford HS
Melrose HS
Somerville HS

CALIFORNIA

Pacific Palisades HS
Palos Verdes Peninsula HS
Westview HS
Cerritos HS
Woodcreek HS
Redlands East Valley HS
Rancho Cotate HS (CA)

NEW JERSEY

Ridgewood HS
Westfield HS
Cranford HS (NJ)
Metuchen HS (NJ)
Rumson / Fairhaven HS (NJ)

ILLINOIS

Buffalo Grove HS

COLORADO

Cherry Creek HS
Fairview HS
Boulder HS
Denver East
George Washington
Cheyenne Mountain HS
For more Colorado Schools, click here

MISSOURI

Clayton HS

MAINE

Yarmouth HS

UTAH

Snow Canyon HS

WYOMING

Laramie HS

NEBRASKA

Hastings HS
Scotch Plains Fairwood HS

TENNESSEE

Tullahoma HS

INDIANA

Indiana Academy for Science, Math, and Humanities
Munster HS

NORTH DAKOTA

West Fargo HS

PENNSYLVANIA

Lancaster HS

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Newmarket HS

DELAWARE

Cape Henlopen HS

SOUTH CAROLINA

JL Mann HS

TEXAS

Kempner High School

NEW MEXICO

Maya Gold

The post High Schools with Great College Advice first appeared on Great College Advice.

Hi, I’m Mark Montgomery here with some Great College Advice, and today we’re going to talk about Dartmouth College.

There are probably at least three things you need to know about Dartmouth College. And maybe that’s prefaced by, first, the fact that I went there. So I know a lot about this school. Both good and bad, and while I’m a loyal alumnus, I’m not beyond seeing the warts on the actual institution. So it’s a great place; it’s not for everyone.

But what are some things that you need to think about as you’re examining Dartmouth College in the context of the other seven Ivy League institutions?

The Size of Dartmouth

Well, the first is it’s the smallest of all the other Ivy League schools. That means that Dartmouth College and it is the only college among the Ivy Leagues. So classes generally are going to be smaller. They are generally going to be taught by professors. While there are some professional schools at Dartmouth, they are very much disconnected from the undergraduate experience.

There is a growing number of graduate students in the arts and sciences. Shall we say, and there’s actually a change now that they’re creating a school for all of those programs. But the numbers of graduate students that are actually in the classroom with the undergraduate students? Really insignificant. Whereas at some of the other larger Ivies like Penn or Cornell, you’re going to see graduate students a lot. Not so at Dartmouth.

Dartmouth’s Location

The second thing that you might think about is Dartmouth is geographically the most remote. It’s two hours, almost exactly, by car, from Logan Airport in Boston, and it is in the woods. We talk about it, you know, the granite of New Hampshire and the woods and all that stuff. But the area of the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River is actually relatively cosmopolitan. There are lots of start-ups in the area, housing prices are kind of crazy because lots of people want to live there. There’s the Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital as well as the veterans hospital. Which makes it a medical center for all of upper New England.

It has a great arts center, the Hopkins Center, which is a magnet for artistic creativity in the region. It doesn’t feel remote. There are only a couple of stoplights. Maybe three, four stoplights in the whole town, but it doesn’t feel like it is in the boonies. Actually, it’s a relatively cosmopolitan atmosphere.

It is Conservative

The third thing is that Dartmouth has often been considered the most conservative of the Ivies. In some ways that’s true. It’s certainly the Ivy that has the greatest participation in the Greek system. So an overwhelming percentage of students, and last I heard at a reunion was that about 70% of students belong to either a fraternity or a sorority. Now, it’s definitely true that that culture, you know, it may or may not be your thing. However, there are openly gay members of fraternities, there’s actually, recently, was an openly gay president of a fraternity. It is not a completely intolerant environment.

The Demographics

And of course, you also have to look at the fact that like all of the Ivies, the demographic is changing. Whereas all of the Ivies used to be dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants that kind of looked like me. Actually now, according to statistics reported to the government, only 47% of students at Dartmouth are white. There are 14% who are Asians, 7% are Black or African-American, 8% are Latino or Hispanic. And an interesting 2% are actually Native Americans because Dartmouth was established way back in 1769 to educate Native Americans.

It’s a promise that they actually didn’t make good on until the 1970s when President Kemeny at the time said, “We must do what we said we’re going to do.” So they’ve made a very concerted effort to recruit Native Americans with some success. Also, we have to remember that 5% of students are of more than one race. Which is kind of the way America rolls right now. And there are 9% of students who did not declare their race on the form.

Either that’s because they were confused and didn’t know how to answer the question, or actually more likely I like to think these are guilt-ridden white Anglo-Saxon Protestant types who decide that they just are feeling too guilty about their white privilege and decide not to mark their race on the form.

So anyway, however you slice it, Dartmouth is a much more diverse place, certainly, than when I went there and certainly the generation before. So while it’s conservative, maybe because of the fraternity system, that doesn’t mean that it’s an intolerant place.

Get Outside and Explore

I would also highlight the fact that because of its remote location, it is a paradise if you’re interested in outdoor activities of any kind. They have their own skiway, they own a mountain with this really cool lodge at the bottom of it, so if you want to go hiking at any time, there’s this network of cabins and stuff. It’s really a cool place if you’re interested in the outdoors.

So Dartmouth, the smallest of the Ivy League, yes; most remote, but not in the boonies; conservative, perhaps by some measures but certainly reflective of the American population and certainly reflective of all the other Ivy League schools; and if you like the woods, it’s the place to be.

So check out Dartmouth, and if you’re interested in figuring out how to get in, let me know, give me a call.

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