Lots of colleges have incorporated interactive components into their websites and have steadily increased their social media presence. But this Bridge platform is unique in that students can create accounts and friend each other and admissions counselors, allowing interaction and access to admissions personnel in a much broader ways.

Is this the future of college admissions? We already know that colleges are interested in meeting students where they are, and this is overwhelmingly on social media. MSOE’s Bridge drew 1500 new prospective students in the first month. They’ve stepped up the college admissions game and it’s likely more colleges will follow. Check-out the Bridge platform HERE.

Read more about Bridge at sfgate.com.

Connect with colleges in real-time at a virtual college fair

CollegeWeekLive boasts the biggest virtual college EVER –scheduled next week, November 2^nd and 3rd. The virtual college fair is an extremely efficient way to explore colleges’offerings and connect with colleges that interest you. Colleges and universities are most interested in finding stellar students, yes. But they are also extremely invested in connecting with the students that are sincerely interested in going to their school. In other words, colleges want to spend their recruiting time on students who, if admitted, are likely to come.

So connecting with schools to express your interest is an important part of the college admissions process. The online virtual college fair is a great way to do this. And CollegeWeekLive offers one of the best, most comprehensive fairs on the Internet.

The event will include:

• Keynote speakers who will discuss such topics as admissions, financial aid, how to improve SAT and ACT scores, and how to be successful in college.
• Student chats in real-time with college students and personnel to answer questions
• School videos

And best of all—

• Over 300 colleges and universities in live online booths available to connect with you. Access to 300 schools in one place is a big deal!

You’ll save research time and travel costs. You’ll gets steps ahead in your college research.

You can see schedules and register  HERE!

For stress maintenance, relationships matter!

College freshmen are, according to studies, more stressed out than ever before. The present state of the economy and the competitiveness for dollars and class spots makes for plenty to worry about. When you add these realities to the traditional demands of college life—being away from home; getting accustomed to academic expectations and; having to self- discipline and self-organize—college freshmen have more to contend with these days, plain and simple.

And how to help the college rookie better handle the rigors of their new environment is challenging. One important way to assist stressed-out students is to help them understand to importance of managing their relationships. If you think about it, at the core of every conflict or stressor is a relationship. At the same time, some of the most fundamental ways of getting support and encouragement is through these same relationships–

1. A romantic partner
2. A Roommate
3. A professor or TA
4. A Financial Aid Counselor
5. A Coach
6. A boss
7. A parent

There are lots of ways students can get their minds off of  troubles and reduce their stress levels short term—music, exercise, journaling, meditation. But when it comes to long-term happiness and stress maintenance, how they govern your relationships is one of the most important skills you can acquire. Here are five ways they can improve their relationships and reduce their stress immediately and in the future: (Share these with your favorite college student BEFORE they need it…)

1. Focus on Your Communication: When you interact with others—your girlfriend, boyfriend, your professor or your boss– how much and how well you communicate is key. Don’t leave your interactions to chance.

2. Agree to a Communication Plan. Set -up planned times to communicate with key people in your life—your roommate, your study partner, your adviser. With your roommate, you might agree to check in with each other every day before the first of you leaves for class each day or before dinner. This way you can sort out your issues (“I’d like to have my study group meet here tonight.” “Perfect, I plan to study in the library.”) The same is true for your professors. Connect one-on-one with them so that they know you are diligent and you can get a better understanding of material. With a boyfriend/girlfriend, agree to the times you will spend together and set times to study. Be deliberate about what you will share and what you will do alone or with others. You will soon learn that there is only so much time in a day. Communicate about how you will and will not use your time. Also, set a time to connect with your parents. If conversations with them are comforting, arrange a set time and day to regularly talk for a meaningful period of time. If conversations with your parents are stress-inducing, schedule short check-in talks on the weekend maybe, when they won’t add to your daily tension.

3. LISTEN to what others are saying about their expectations.

Your roommate expects you to leave when her boyfriend comes over.

Your sorority or fraternity expects your involvement in their every endeavor

Your adviser expects a weekly check-in.

Your study partner expects you to do half of the practice set every week.

Don’t wait until you are locked out of your room; in a bind or confused about something with a looming due date to get clarification. The same is true of your coach, adviser and friends. When you are given a clear statement about what someone expects from you—performance-wise, or friendship-wise, don’t ignore it. Listen, clarify and if your expectations do not jive with theirs, come to some understanding. Don’t expect these things to sort out by themselves or just go away.

4. CLEARLY STATE Your Expectations–Conversely, you should express your own expectations clearly and consistently (i.e. tell your roommate how you feel about sharing clothes before the issue comes up…and it will come up). Letting others know your boundaries and expectations is a vital skill for college survival. Suffering in silence is the most stressful state of all!

5. CHOOSE YOUR COMPANY CAREFULLY. Don’t just be a passive participant in the formation of your social circles. Choose and don’t settle for just being chosen. College is a time to begin to think of your time as a commodity—Time is Money! How you spend your time is vital. And just as important is with whom you spend it. Be strategic. Choose your study partners and groups with an eye toward people who share your same goals and values. A study group benefits from a diverse group of people who may approach the material differently. But everybody in that group should be endeavoring to produce high quality work and get good grades. These are values you should all share. Don’t tolerate dead weight and don’t BE dead weight. The same is true for your social circle. You should have some core values in common with the folks you spend your leisure time with. If you are always the designated driver or the “throne attendant” for your drunk friends, you may want to rethink your alliances.

When you govern your relationships with deliberate planning and communications, you go a long way in avoiding stressful situations, both short and long term, and you set-up your relationships to be positive stress buffers instead of stress-inducers. Look closely at your relationships—from the minor ones, like with the dorm entrance attendant, to the major ones, like your roommate and professors—with an acknowledgement that they hold little keys to your happiness and comfort. This will help you prioritize them and focus on developing healthy interactions. The practice of relationship management will serve you well your entire life, and not just far into your future, but right this very minute.

Now that this great man is gone, the speech is that much more poignant and unforgettable!

So without further ado….here it is!

Is This iDuo Necessary for College?

I have two kids starting college this year and we are trying to sort out which electronic devices are necessary for their schooling and which are luxuries.  I want them to have what they need to be successful, but I’d also like to be smart with my money. Plus, I don’t want to load them up with gadgets that they will not likely use and will take up their precious little dorm space.

The folks at Retrevo.com offer a Back-to-School Tech Guide http://bit.ly/naBtau that I am finding mighty helpful. Below are some highlights from the Guide ( I have heeded more than one of these suggestions already  and saved some money). But if you need a full pro-and -con discussion about what electronics your student needs, check out the entire guide!

See the entire guide here: http://bit.ly/naBtau

Highlights from Retrevo’s 2011 Back To School Guide:

- Most Students Don’t Need a Smartphone! – While smartphones are nice to have, budget-savvy students can get by just fine with a good laptop and a regular feature phone. If you really need apps, try an 8GB iPod Touch for just $299 and no monthly fees. We’re not saying that students will love this option, but you can save a lot of money if you’re not paying for a monthly data plan.

- Don’t Get a TV! – Today’s college students don’t need a dedicated TV, they need a multi-tasker. Get a large computer monitor with either DVI or S-Video and HDMI ports that can give them more workspace on their laptop and plug-into their Blu-ray player, gaming console, or other media device.

- Save Money With an E-Reader -  Once you get past the initial expense of an e-reader, your student will be able to buy books at a cheaper price than they’ll find on the shelves. Amazon recently announced they’ll be renting textbooks as well; another money-saving reason to get an e-reader.

- You Don’t Need a MacBook Air! – Retrevo’s compiled a list below, of laptops that are more budget-friendly.

- Minimum Laptop Requirements – Retrevo recommends something with a webcam, 6hrs+ battery life, 250GB minimum of storage, a weight of less than 5lbs and a Dual Core i3 or i5.

College Admissions Spying on Social Media? Seems So!

In preparation for writing 24 Things you Can Do With Social Media to Help Get into College, I spoke to hundreds of admissions officers about how they were using social media in their admissions processes. Many of them informed me that they were looking at the Facebook and MySpace pages of their applicants, and that what they saw was influencing their admissions decisions. At that time, (two years ago) very few of them wanted to go on record about their social media snooping. But one admissions officer did confess that he will on occasion have the applicant’s Facebook page on his computer while reviewing an application. Several acknowledged that though they do not customarily look up candidates online, when they do, what they find has an impact on their assessment.

Many admissions officers said that their offices do not have the time nor the manpower to look up every candidate and read their social media information, but some agree that a quick Google or Facebook search really doesn’t take that long.  Now, a recent Kaplan Survey has disclosed that the trend of looking online is becoming more accepted. According to the survey, 80% of college admissions officers have come out of the closet about their willingness to look at, and be influenced by, applicants’ social media.

The fact that colleges have whole-heartedly embraced social media is not that new.  And this ever-evolving reality is not all bad news. The fact is– social media is, and is only more increasingly, becoming an important tool in an applicant’s college admissions arsenal. When you break down the Kaplan study, as Schools.com has so helpfully done, there are some important positive insights to be gleaned. In the survey, 62% of college admissions respondents said that the social media profiles they reviewed actually helped the candidate. So they had a positive impact. Seventy percent of schools say that Facebook profiles of candidates are a medium to high priority in the admissions process.  Eighty-two percent of colleges say they use Facebook.  Fifty-six percent are on Twitter and 56% are on YouTube. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are watching you on these sites, as much as it means they have their own presence there.

Most colleges have at least one Facebook Group or Like page to share with their community and to highlight the school’s activities and accomplishments. Some have several pages. Princeton has 14, for example. These pages represent different departments  and programs of the school and are great ways to see what is happening on campus and to connect. Similarly, a large number of schools have their own channels on YouTube. If you check out YouTubeEDU, you will be amazed at the wide variety of video available on college channels– admissions advice, lectures, student projects, commencement ceremonies– the whole gamut. And colleges are very active on Twitter!  The college-related tweets on Twitter are so numerous, it truly boggles the mind!

As much as I am an advocate for showcasing your best self online, the truth is that spying on candidates is not the primary reason colleges have embraced social media. They want to find the best and the brightest students by meeting them when they are…and the research is clear– students are on Facebook! It’s important, then, to be aware that schools are online and participating in social media. But the degree to which they are using Facebook profiles to make admissions decisions should not be too overblown.

Several admissions officers that I interviewed expressed some concern about how students (and their parents) will react to this increasing practice of looking up candidates online.  The last thing admissions decision-makers want is for students to  begin to create artificial social media spaces solely for purposes of college admissions. This would be unfortunate. No one, including college admissions personnel, wants to see a scrubbed down, uninteresting blog site or social media profile that reflects little about who the candidate really is.

So what is a student to do? How should college applicants respond to the very clear message that what they do and say online may now have an impact?  The best way to capitalize on this new reality, instead of shutting down or white-washing your site, is to make it work for you!  Use you social media to showcase your interests, strengths and attributes. And make sure you leave on your pages what makes you interesting and unique.

One thing to do for sure– it’s a good idea to take the pictures of you drinking with a beer in both hands off your Facebook profile and reduce the 1000 pictures of yourself at parties…. But more about this later…

For a more expanded discussion, go to College Admissions on Facebook: Not All Bad News on  Blogher.com.

New Like Button is Share in Disguise

Facebook, ever tweaking their features, has decided to give the ‘Share’ button functionality to the ‘Like’ Button. This means that instead of just giving the thumbs-up to a status and/or link, now when you click ‘Like’  the entire link will appear on your page– full story, headline, thumbnail and all. This is a much greater commitment than the old way to ‘like’ something.

If you use lots of links to your posts to get traffic to your other online destinations– blog, network, videos– this is good news. The change will probably result in more visitors, perhaps a bigger audience. But this likely also means that Facebook folk will be more discriminating about who and what they ‘like’, and rightly so.

Go to Inside Facebook for the whole scoop!

Review of SAT prep books-Click HERE.

Review of SAT prep courses- Click HERE.

The best news of all is you should not let the prohibitive cost of some of these courses and materials stop you from getting meaningful SAT preparation. You have options.  Los Angeles area students are fortunate to have an excellent resource and a wonderful SAT preparation option in the FREE SAT Prep Workshop offered by the dedicated folks at Each One Teach One  Alliance for Academic Access, Achievement and Success. This organization’s mission is to

work with inner-city youth through a number of community collaborations, to improve their academic performance in mathematics, science and technology, in order to insure higher levels of Access, Achievement and Success in the most prestigious colleges and universities throughout our country.

And one of the stellar programs they offer in furtherance of this mission is their Free SAT Prep Workshop. This workshop offers professional tutoring for students who “aspire to meet the competitive challenges of the 21^st Century and beyond.”

So if you are a student in the L.A. area and are in need of SAT prep help, click HERE for details.

If you are interested in helping Each One Teach One meet their mission for the inner city students of Southern California, you can make a donation HERE .

You can also find  Free Sat Prep Workshop on Facebook, HERE.

And Each One Teach One’s Facebook page is HERE.

Your Dream Plan to Stand Out May look Differently in Your Head Than in Reality

You are applying to a prestigious college or a special program and you are feeling pressure to do something to stand out. This is a common sentiment among college applicants that has been encouraged by parents and college counselors across the country.

As schools become more competitive, the pressure to be unique is profoundly felt and has been the cause of not a few examples of extreme behavior. This idea that a candidate has to do something extreme to stand out has even been captured in a number of movies—in Election, Reese Witherspoon plays a student who meanly manipulates to get a nomination for class president as part of her obsession to get into college. In Spanglish, a first generation applicant to Princeton writes a much-too-long but endearing emigration-from-Mexico story for her application essay. And in Orange County, where an “over-achieving “ student visits Stanford to convince them to change their minds about rejecting him, the student and his irresponsible older brother try all kinds of outrageous acts to correct a mistaken transcript switch!

As entertaining as these depictions of desperation are, you really don’t have to look to fiction these days to find college applicants who are going a little too far to impress colleges. Take the case of the mysterious piano-on-the-sandbar in Bisbayne Bay, Miami. For days, Miamians and the national press wondered how a baby grand piano got onto a sandbar out in the middle of the Floridian bay. Finally, according to the L.A. Times, Nicholas Harrington stepped forward to admit he put it there (with the help of his parents) in furtherance of an art project that he hoped would impress the admissions committee of a prestigious art school.

State wildlife officials served the Harringtons with orders to remove the stranded piano within 24 hours. Evidently, leaving the piano in the bay is a felony. Nicolas and his parents, but for a lenient prosecutor, could have faced jailed time.

Unfortunately, his art project did not get completed. And Nicolas is left with only a story about his intentions and his close brush with the law. Admittedly, this story might make for a different and engaging college essay. But I don’t know how impressed the admissions folk are going to be. Remember, as much as colleges may want creative and out-of-the-box thinkers, illegal activity is never high on their list of positive attributes. Thorough research, follow through, integrity and ethical behavior are highly valued. As Janet Rapeleye, Princeton’s admissions director and others pointed out in a panel discussion about what colleges are looking for conducted by Wall Street Journal’s WSJ On Campus and Unigo , schools like to look to their honor codes as a starting place for students to govern their behavior, even prospective students.  Honor codes are well established rules that allow students to self-govern cheating, plagiarism and all matters of honesty and integrity on campus and in class. Any illegal activity would likely be in violation of a college honor code. A school would also likely frown upon Harrington’s delay in coming forward to take responsibility. Many colleges make their honor codes available online. Princeton University’s is here and Stanford University’s honor code here.

So if you dream up a mind-blowing idea that you are sure will set you apart from your peers, make sure it’s legal; researched thoroughly; and does not pose a danger (or threat of danger) to others.

Standing out is a good thing as long as your method spotlights you in a positive way and reflects on your integrity, maturity and good judgment. Think honor.

And as a final note, colleges are not just looking for an event or one time publicity stunt to define you. They are interested in your track record as an outstanding person and student. So hone whatever it is you do well and be prepared to show your journey and not just one end result of it!

Be creative…but safe and not sorry!

24 Things You Can Do With Social Media to Help Get Into College provides you with A Simple Plan for standing out in the application process! Order Your Copy!

How much do you have left on Facebook?

The Internet safety experts have long urged us all, especially young folk, to keep our personal information off of our Facebook pages. Now there’s a really good reason to heed their advice. Facebook has announced via one of their developer’s blogs that through a new Request for Permission process, third party applications can now access user’s addresses and mobile phone numbers. This includes those dreaded rogue applications that make Facebook an increasingly unsafe place to park your personals!

Here’s the quick skinny on “rogue” Facebook apps. These are developers who offer apps not approved by Facebook. Among them are shady operators who specialize in devising ways to get your attention, your clicks and ultimately your personal information for their own financial gain. As Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos and Computer Weekly’s Security Blogger of the Year, says:

Facebook is already plagued by rogue applications that post spam links to users’ walls, and point users to survey scams that earn them commission – and even sometimes trick users into handing over their cellphone numbers to sign them up for a premium rate service.

Now the unscrupulous developers behind those apps will find it even easier to access personal information. What is at risk, you ask? When someone has your personal information, like your mobile phone number and address, not only can they harass you via text message, phone call and mail (well, snail mail is so not likely) with ads and marketing scams, but they now have even more of your information to succeed at identity theft.

This is no small matter.

The best action to take is to remove your address and cell numbers from your Facebook page. These apps can only access your information if you authorize it. So watch out for the Request for Permission window that pops up for third party apps. Listed on the bottom of the window is an option to “Access my current information” which allows the app your address and mobile phone number. Don’t be careless with your approvals.

Beware, be conservative with your app use and keep your information off your page. If your address and cell numbers are not there, your chances of being duped are greatly decreased.

You know…as always…better safe than sorry!

UPDATE: Facebook, after user outcry, is reconsidering this change. Though Facebook folk have taken a step back from this last decision, the initial move to provide more access to users’ information makes a huge statement about how much Facebook values your privacy. They have consistently shown that they do not have much regard for the safety of your personal information. As many experts point out, Facebook really wants to share this information.  They will likely keep trying to find ways to offer access to it.

So the message is the same for Facebook (and elsewhere), guard your information with commitment!  whatever you do not want to share on Facebook, keep off of Facebook! For more information on latest on privacy, check out this conversation.