Rock Your Reach Selective College App Guide Now Available

Rock Your Reach has released its 2009 How-to Guide to help college applicants "Focus on the YOU" show Selective College Admissions Officers what they are looking for with their Common App Supplement Essay Guide www.RockYOUrReach.com.

9 "Reachable Reach" Colleges - Top Selective College Application Help for Students!

Are you applying to one of these selective colleges?

* Princeton University (NJ)
* Brown University (RI)
* Tufts University (MA)
* College of William and Mary (VA)
* Rice (TX)
* University of Richmond (VA)
* Trinity University (TX)
* Occidental College (CA)
* Wesleyan University (CT)

These sought after colleges have it all: beautiful campuses, competitive sports, great teachers, balance in social life. Most important of all, College, not the ‘University,’ is their focus.

RockYourReach.com is a new program that provides a fresh perspective on America’s selective colleges. Our program has been designed to give you the 'reach' you need to gain admission to these top selective schools.

We have combined the experience of a recent graduate of Princeton University and the research efforts of a senior organizational consultant which will help applicants ‘reach’ colleges and understand that the education provided by selective schools differs in many important ways from what its traditional constituencies experienced; and that they are often much more financially accessible than they were.

We offer an online resource that offers the inside track to the common application and more:

* Rock Your Reach Colleges with a Great Common Application Essay
* Get Focused on What you Need to Say
* Get Focused on Saying it with the Common Application

Visit www.rockyourreach.com for more information on our program.

2009 Freshman Applications...Coming Soon

Once upon a time, if a high school senior wanted to apply to nine colleges, he or she would have to fill out nine different college applications. With the advent of the Common Application and Universal College Application, this same student can often fill out just one main application, and depending on the colleges to which he or she is applying, the student may have to fill out anywhere from zero to nine college-specific supplements (which can include multiple essays and short answer questions). With each passing year, more colleges accept either the Common App or the Universal College App, which certainly helps students cut down on time necessary to apply to colleges. Yet, there are still holdout colleges who require students to fill out their unique institutional applications. Even if a student can apply to a college or university using the Common or Universal application, because colleges and universities have complete control over when they release their applications and/or Common App and Universal App supplements, the student wanting to start his or her application over the summer is still at the whim of the colleges on his or her final list.

Case in point: the new 2009 Freshman Common Application came out on July 1 - and it looks a lot like the old 2008 Common Application. This will be a relief to rising seniors who got a head start on completing the application's main essay question and short answer question, because the essay prompts and questions remained exactly the same as last year's.

Yet, many, if not most, popular universities (New York University, James Madison University, and University of Southern California just to name a few) have yet to release their own 2009 applications or 2009 Common App Supplements (JMU and USC don't allow students to apply using the Common Application, while NYU does).

The delay in releasing freshman applications until late August or even early September has always bothered me.

As a college admissions consultant, I am troubled by universities that say they don't want the college admissions process to be stressful or to distract students from their studies, while these same colleges' actual behavior - their decision to release their applications at the latest possible date for no discernible reason - actually indicates these colleges couldn't care less that students have to juggle academics, extracurricular activities, filling out applications, and writing essays all within a very short space of time.

Many of the students I work with want get some of their college essays out of the way well before school starts in late August or early September so that they can enjoy the last few days of summer. They also want to finish essays early to avoid being deluged by homework and studying for five senior academic courses while also having to fill out applications and write the essays that go along with the applications - all within the space of a few weeks in early fall.
Some colleges will say that it's healthy and important for students to learn how to prioritize their ever-increasing tasks during their senior year and it is therefore important that students learn to juggle everything at once. This is a valid point of view, and one with which I actually agree.

Yet, this stand often undermines these same colleges' arguments that they think there is too much anxiety wrapped up in the process of applying to college. It only makes sense that if the time period during which a student can begin and complete an application were longer, the process would be far less stressful for a significant percentage of highly motivated students - the same students many of these colleges claim to want to attract to their campuses.

If colleges really want to put students to the test by throwing a lot of work at them in early fall, that's fine. But don't believe their admissions officers' when they say they are doing everything they can to make the process of applying more transparent and less stressful.

In the meantime, we wait with eager anticipation to see which colleges have actually changed their freshman applications, and which have just reprinted their old one with a ‘2009' instead of a ‘2008.'