I’m going 85 mph in the old beat-up station wagon. It’s a scorching hot Saturday in July and Zac and I are running late to Football Saturday at Tufts University. The cop squeezes the trigger, my heart turns to melted, dimpled macadam, and I’m prepared to pay my first whopping college bill.

I tuck the wagon in the right hand lane, the cop chooses not to chase, I slow to the speed limit, and Zac stares at the clock on the dash.

“Dad,” he says a couple minutes later, “you gotta move it. We’re going to be late.”

I don’t hear him because I’m imagining a wedding planner racing around like a lunatic hours before her own kid is about to be married. The caterer’s drunk, the flowers are all wrong – why should a college planner be any different? The thought makes me feel better, but it’s not getting us to Tufts.

“Pick it up,” Zac grunts.

“Zac,” I snarl slowly, “if you had had the directions like I told you to get, and we didn’t have to turn around and go back to the house to get them we wouldn’t be running late.”

That was but a minor bump in the road, one of the first of many on Zac’s exhausting drive to find the right school, and as things would have it, the right school found Zac.

Zac narrows it down to Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Babson, UConn, and Northeastern. And in October Zac gets a call from Coach Frank Hauser, the head football coach at Wesleyan.

Hauser wanted Zac to play for Wesleyan. Zac had not thought of Wesleyan since it’s around the corner from Essex where he has lived from the day he was brought home from Middlesex Memorial Hospital in Middletown. This was a good bump that none of us saw coming, another reason to stay loose throughout the admissions process.

Zac was told that he was their number one pick for linebacker. They thought he could help the team. Zac was invited up. A professor contacted him and advised him of the academic support that was in place for athletes at this school where the mean SAT score is 700.

Zac spent homecoming weekend at Wesleyan with several players from the football team; he bumped into an old friend from sleep away camp in New Hampshire who is currently attending Wesleyan and who told him how much he liked the place.

Zac, who really doesn’t talk too much to me, told me about some “pretty crazy stuff” he saw, including a girl who had the words, Keep Your Laws Off My Body written on her arm. He said he liked how she felt comfortable in her own skin. He said he liked how he felt on campus and what the other students had to say about Wesleyan. He talked about the economics department and a campus that he said played like a good piano.

I often remember what we heard at Tufts from the dean of admission that sweltering Saturday when I drove liked a frustrated madman the wrong way down tight one-way streets to get to the gymnasium on time. The dean told the students to find a college that loves you and that you love right back. It wasn’t long before Zac was loving Wesleyan, and he was asked to apply early decision.

We were all very excited until the next bump. Coach told Zac that he had been to admissions and he would feel more confident about Zac’s candidacy if he got another 40 or so points on the SATs.

Another 40 points? That’s two lucky guesses. It’s late October now and Zac was advised to take the test on Dec. 4, and to apply early decision two. The day before the test I make it clear to Zac that he should see me at my office. We would do our last bit of prep for the exam and then go out for our kind of comfort food – a big steak, fried shoestring onion curls, and garlic mashed potatoes.

My comedian arrives at 4:30 or so in the afternoon. He puts his head down on one of the round study tables. “Zac,” I say, “let’s move it.”

“Dad,” he says, “I’m exhausted. I just gave blood at school. I can’t focus.”

Zac got his points the next day and then the excruciating wait set in until he got the nod the other week. After the acceptance letter arrived it took Zac a good few days to start to unwind; the wait had made for some rocky sleeps and preoccupied mornings.

I recount this story to share with you how important it is to get all your scores in line by end of junior year, certainly no later than October senior year. Had Zac done so he would have been asked to apply early decision one and he would have known by Christmas.

I also share the story to advise that good and unexpected bounces are coming, and, of course, I write to tip my cap to my oldest son, who had a great run at Valley Regional High School in Deep River.

This win, Zac, is one for the books!

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

Since students are really good at making unnecessary mistakes on their college applications, we’re going to review some of the more prevalent errors that can louse up an application.

For starters – don’t skip the directions. Just because your dad never reads directions isn’t going to help here. Print out the full application directions so you can check off tasks as you complete them.  This will save you big time.

September is the ideal time to start on your applications. You’ll have more time to   polish the essays, spot mistakes, and position yourself for early admission if you so choose.

Students who leave their applications until the week before they’re due often make these unnecessarily costly mistakes:

Students will miss the supplemental essays on the Common Application or slip the mouse and click on the wrong item on a drop down.

It’s startling how many students say they’re from Afghanistan – which is listed right below the United States on many applications.

In the last-minute rush to get things done students sometimes forget to tell their counselors where they applied, and the transcripts, recommendations, and student profiles never leave the building.

See your counselor the day after you click submit to be certain that the transcripts and supporting materials will also arrive on time. Colleges do not notify a high school that a student has applied – that’s your job.

Students who start early have the opportunity to review their transcripts before they’re sent out to see if the following areas are completed correctly: Spelling of name, correct address, social security number, phone number, course name, credits received, and final grades. Same for GPA and class rank if your school still has a ranking system.

Keep your username simple on your electronic application (first initial and last name will do) because if you forget your username you may have to start a new application.

On each electronic page make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page, and to the bottom of each pop-up to avoid missing any questions or directions.

Don’t forget to save your work. Generally, you will be timed out after 40 minutes. When you move to a new page your work is often automatically saved, but why take chances. If you take a call or go for a snack, use the save/logout feature.

Don’t write your essay online. Make sure you review it several times and have an adult review it as well. What you think is cool might be and it might not. Get a second opinion, but don’t let an adult take control of it, it’s yours and it should reflect who you are. And don’t overwork the thesaurus.

Don’t get into the blame game. Don’t single out a teacher for a poor grade. Rather, state what you did after you received the poor grade: went for extra help, took a summer course. The application is no place to whine.

Carefully review the summary page. Look for any place that reads, no information added, click modify and then complete that box.

Ask for help. Don’t be shy. Click on Help Desk, Technical Support, or use the contact links.

Print out your receipt. You will have a record of your application ID number and a complete summary of your application.

Spellchecking and proofreading are not the same. Students are famous for misspelling their intended majors.  Have a parent or teacher proof what you’ve written.           Don’t forget to sign and date the back page of a paper application. Don’t have mom write half of the application and you write the other half; they’re either going to think split personality, or lazy.

You wouldn’t go to the prom with a nasty stain on the front of your dress or drippy red sauce spots on a white shirt so be certain that there are no soda or coffee stains on the applications, and don’t fold it over and over so you can compress it into a business envelope.

Be careful not to mix up county and country. Many of you live in Middlesex County; none of you live in a country called Middlesex.

This next mistake was made when your parents went to school and it will be made when your kids apply to school. A student will try to customize the essay by stating toward the bottom of the essay that he really wants to attend UConn and then sends the essay to Bentley.

Use the correct browser. Most online applications function only with Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, or Netscape 5.0 or higher. You can usually download them from the application site.

Pay the admission fee by credit card if possible, checks can delay the processing of an application. You will also have another receipt.

Look for e-mail confirmation that your application has been received. Print out and file the application acknowledgement. Call the college’s Office of Admission if you do not receive confirmation of application in two days.

It’s important to be aware of the impression that your e-mail address makes. One admission officer shared that a student was rejected because his e-mail address suggested sexist, violent behavior toward women. An easy solution, create a hotmail address for all college applications, SarahStudent@hotmail.com.

While many e-mail addresses are not ugly, plenty of them are silly and immature, and while I know this sounds a little over the top, the tiniest thing can pull you out of the race. So don’t let a meaningless moniker stand between you and the college of your choice.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

Keep in mind that the teacher recommendations that accompany a student’s college applications can make or break a candidacy – that’s because 80 percent of the students who apply to any given school have the grades and SAT scores to get in.

So let’s take a look at how teachers evaluate students and how important their college recommendations are particularly if you’re applying to a selective school.

The Common Application, which is currently the application of choice for 346 colleges and universities, including Amherst, Columbia, Harvard, Northeastern, Princeton and Washington & Lee, calls for two teacher recommendations.

After noting how long the teacher has known you and in what context, the teacher is asked – What are the first words that come to your mind to describe this student? Teacher has one line for the answer.

The teacher is then asked to list the courses he or she has instructed the student, noting the year it was taught, and the level of course difficulty.

That done the teacher is asked, Please write whatever you think is important about this student, including a description of academic and personal characteristics, as demonstrated in your classroom. We welcome information that will help us to differentiate this student from others.

Freshmen, sophomores and juniors share more in class. Let your teachers see you at your best. Get to know your teachers better, take more initiative in your education, and things will improve in class and in turn so will your recommendations.

Juniors since you’re going to need two teacher recommendations, I suggest you line this up before the close of school in June. You could ask one to focus on personal characteristics and the other to focus on academic characteristics. If you don’t map it out, there’s always the possibility that both teachers will focus on the same characteristics.

After completing a written evaluation, the teacher will look at a grid (which you can see by going to www.commonapp.org) and compare you to the other students in your class and how you rate in the following 16 categories (not too long ago there were 11): Academic achievement, Intellectual promise,  Quality of writing, Creative thought, Productive classroom discussion, Respect accorded by faculty, Disciplined work habits, Maturity, Motivation, Leadership, Integrity, Reaction to setbacks, Concern for others, Self-confidence, Initiative, independence, and Overall.

Now here’s where it gets excruciatingly real. For each of those categories the teachers are asked to check one of the following boxes: Below Average, Average, Good, Very good, Excellent (top 10 percent), Outstanding (top 5 percent), and One of the Top Few Encountered in My Career.

The way ratings are set up on the application, admission officers don’t need to read the teacher essay – they simply have to look at the check marks and depending upon where they fall, you’re either in the pile for consideration or in the circular file.

Since a lukewarm recommendation is not going to help your candidacy, what’s a student to do? Find a good time this spring (not moments before the start of class next fall) to ask your teacher if he or she would write you a recommendation.

If the answer is yes, then advise how much you want to go to a particular school, and ask your teacher if he or she is comfortable supporting your candidacy. You will find that for the most part teachers will let you know when they can’t write a glowing recommendation.

Finally, send your teacher a thank you note as soon as she agrees to write your recommendation and enclose your resume, it can make a difference in how she views you.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

To every high school senior who didn’t get into his or her top pick: I know how much it hurts. I also know that in the long run it’s not about the specific college you’re about to attend; it’s about what you learn and what you do with your college years.

Success requires a lot more than graduating from a top school. The big name school is good for an initial interview. But once you get in the door, it’s all about you.

The spotlight will not remain on your college for long. The focus quickly shifts to the expertise you acquired in your chosen field, and what you did outside of class.

So to all of you, who received Dear Johns from your top choices, take heart, history advises that people – not colleges – create successful, exciting, productive lives.

Alan B. Krueger, the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and Stacy Dale of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, directed a study that attempted to assess the potential economic payoff from attending a more selective college.

The study concluded that the money students earned upon graduation was “unrelated to the selectivity of the college that students had attended among those who had comparable options.”

The average earnings for the 519 students who were accepted by both moderately selective (average College Board scores of 1,000 to 1,099) and highly selective schools (average scores of greater than 1,275), varied little, no matter which type of college they attended.

Krueger, a giant in his field, advised students in a subsequent article in the New York Times: “Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is the one that would not admit you. That you go to college is more important than where you go.

“Find a school whose academic strengths match your interests and which devotes resources to your instruction in those fields. Recognize that your own motivation, ambition and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma.”

Enter a puny, bespectacled senior at Saratoga High School near San Jose, Calif., who wanted to make movies. His application to the renowned film school at UCLA was rejected. He went to Long Beach State. He tried to transfer to the University of Southern California, which had a film school, and was sent another rejection letter.

At Long Beach State, Steven Spielberg made five movies before graduating to become one of the premier moviemakers of his generation.

Jay Mathews, a very funny man, who writes on education for the Washington Post, and who admits suffering from Ivyholism – an addiction to the notion that big name schools make the difference, has put together a 12-step program to achieve some peace and freedom for Ivyholics.

Here are seven of those steps to help with Ivoyholism – a disease that’s not going away – an affliction you’re just going to have to learn to live with if you got it.

1.Getting into a brand-name school does not improve your life. Students with the character traits that bring success in life – persistence, charm, humor – are doing just as well financially 20 years after college graduation whether they went to Brown or Kansas State.

2. Teaching and learning are often better in schools you never heard of: The list of no-name schools with great college teachers is very long.

3. All those smart kids rejected by brand-name schools make lesser-known colleges great: If you think for a minute about the quality of people who are not getting into Harvard, Yale and Princeton, you have to envy the schools that are going to get them.

4. Very few of our heroes went to Princeton: Martin Luther King Jr., went to Morehouse, Colin Powell, City College of New York, Warren Buffet, Nebraska-Lincoln, Rudy Giuliani, Manhattan, Oprah Winfrey, Tennessee State, Ken Burns, Hampshire, Muhammad Ali did not attend college.

5.Career contacts are just as good at Nebraska as at Dartmouth: Every college in America has produced powerful alumni who can help you get somewhere.

6. Brand-name schools produce many graduates who are just average, and worse: The Harvard alumni reports are full of the same bad news you hear at any college reunion – emotional illness, alcoholism, broken marriages, ennui.

7. Why are all those foreign students happy to be at Cleveland State? The reason is that they, unlike us, have figured out that it doesn’t matter where you go to college in America, as long as the place conforms to your desires and needs.

The number of prime working-age Americans with college degrees quadrupled during the second half of the past century, Hillary Kowalski points out in an article entitled, Employment Puzzle: Assembly Required.

It’s curious. College degrees are more expensive than they’ve ever been – and they don’t count for as much as they did 50 years ago. It’s not about the college – it’s about the person holding the degree and his or her skills and personality.

So here’s what you do – whether you’re going to a big name school or a school that you have to say twice before people wish you good luck.

Keep your grades up, Kowalski says. Get involved in student activities that reflect your interests, take on leadership roles when possible, and find internships or work in your field of study.

A student, who graduates from a third-tier college, who has made five movies, written eight scripts, was president of the film club at school, created a film newsletter, found summer work in a studio, and pestered studio moguls about his work, is in a better position to find work in his field than the student who graduate from a top film school and who is completing his first film.

Grade point average is another key piece of information, because grades symbolize how well a student understood the subject matter and the university’s grading system. “GPA is a factor, but it’s not the only factor,” said Brenda Wagner, manager of the IBM National Recruiting Organization in Armonk, N.Y., which recruited 3,700 college graduates in 1999. At IBM a student with a high grade point average and no work experience or internship sometimes lost the position to a student with a lower grade point average, but experience in the field.

Involvement in a variety of activities in college is also an aspect that employers like to see, since it demonstrates a student’s thirst and ability to handle an assortment of tasks simultaneously. Employers like to determine whether students can multitask or if they are more like diamond cutters: Expert at doing once facet at a time. This allows employers to project just how versatile a prospective employee might be, and in the age of cutbacks, companies look for workers with growing power.

Since employers search for future rainmakers, they look to find evidence that the person who wants the job is going to make big things happen. One way some employers attempt to do this is to look at the clubs, teams or groups that students have influenced. The past indicates future performance.

It’s important to remember that in grades K-12 the focus is generally on a student’s potential rather than his or her performance. Employers or graduate admissions officers look at college graduates differently. They look at recent graduates as handicappers will assess the field of horses in the upcoming Kentucky Derby. Bettors want to see how the candidates have run.

Students – no matter where you’re about to go to college – the most important factor is what you do with the next four years. If the endgame is to wake up Monday morning excited about where you’re going to work, then start thinking about the workplace now.

If you spend four years at college involved in courses and activities similar to the work you’re going to be doing, the recruiter won’t have to wonder if you’re the right person for the spot. It’s all about matching up.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

News from the college mountain tops to all high school students: A growing number of prestigious colleges want students to focus less on grades, while other famed institutions want to crack down on grade inflation.

Princeton University is leading a charge on the abundance of A’s. It proposed this month to limit the number of A’s to 35 percent of all course grades.

A Princeton survey concluded last year that just under 50 percent of the undergraduate grades at the eight Ivy League colleges, Stanford, M.I.T., and the University of Chicago were A’s.

“A’s are common as dirt in universities nowadays because it’s almost impossible for a professor to grade honestly. If I sprinkle my classroom with the C’s some students deserve, my class will suffer from declining enrollments in future years,” wrote Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer in the Washington Post.

“In the marketplace mentality of higher education, low enrollments are taken as a sign of poor quality instruction. I don’t have any interest in being known as a failure,” noted Rojstaczer, who at the time of publication hadn’t handed out a C in two years.

This ought to let students relax some about whether the crackdown on A’s is around the corner, and it also suggests that the growing number of educators, who’ve been railing against going to college to graduate summa cum laude were spot on.

Harry Lewis, a former Dean of Students at Harvard University, wrote a striking letter to incoming freshmen two summers ago entitled, Slow Down – Getting More Out of Harvard by Doing Less. Replace the word Harvard with the name of the college you’re going to attend, and I think you’ll see that the advice works.

It’s not about graduating with a trophy transcript. It’s about starting college with an “open mind about the possibilities available to you,” Lewis wrote and gradually spending “more of your time on fewer things that you discover you truly love.”

So chase what you love, remember less is more, study hard, make friends, and stick with it for as long as it truly satisfies. Remember, you’re a student, you’re expected to change.

Lewis advised students to carve out a well-balanced life on campus, to participate in activities for fun, and to take time to cultivate strong friendships, because they’re certain to have a stronger influence on their lives than many of the courses they’re about to take.

In short – whether colleges crack down on the abundance of A’s or not – education is about learning how to pursue a rewarding life. How to figure out what’s best for you. What follows is a fast synopsis of what Lewis wrote in an attempt to get students to move away from the hyper-managed lives that got them to college:

Don’t try to get every detail of your academic program nailed down ahead of time. Courses change, and you will change as well; it is wise to recognize from the beginning that you will want to be able to respond to your own shifting interests as well as changes made to the course catalog.

Be cautious about doing a joint concentration. If you are interested in studying two subjects, the sensible course is often to pick one as the field of concentration and to take selected courses in the other.

Don’t be afraid to change concentrations, or to switch to a non-honors program. Students are sometimes inhibited from switching fields because they have “only” a few courses to go in the field they now dislike, or because with a late start they can’t achieve everything that other students will have achieved in the new field … such inhibitions against the change may be unwise.

Don’t think that you’re doing something strange if you take a term or a year off from Harvard before you graduate. If your motivation is flagging, or your grades are not what you think they should be, or you’re just not interested in what you’re studying, take some time off to refresh yourself and get your focus back.

Don’t choose a concentration for reasons of professional preparation. It’s a mistake to think that there’s an optimal course of study leading to a particular postgraduate career.  You gain more from being intellectually engaged with a subject you love than you could acquire in professional training.

Make choices that leave you more choice, more flexibility. Think of your freedom of choice – of what courses to take, of how to spend your Sunday afternoons, whatever – as a commodity that is precious in and of itself. Don’t construct a schedule for yourself that wastes that freedom.

Learn to do constructive things with your time not because you have to but because you want to. For most of the rest of your life you will be reading a book or playing an instrument or going to a lecture in the evening only because it’s interesting and fun.

Look inside yourself for the question you are really asking. Don’t be afraid to raise with your adviser a question of substance, for example, about the importance of wisdom of some intellectual inclination you may have, rather than questions that address only rules and how to satisfy them.

Don’t try to do two major extracurricular activities simultaneously.  If you’re starting on the varsity lacrosse team, you probably shouldn’t accept the lead in the House musical the same term.

Join a student group and work to change it, rather than starting a new one. The skills involved in working with others towards common (even if not identical) goals can be as important in later life as a talent for entrepreneurial innovation.

Don’t ignore your health, physical and emotional. Your mind and body will break down if you don’t relax, exercise, eat well, and most of all, sleep. Give yourself a break – take a few hours just to go to an athletic event, a movie, a theatrical production on campus, a rock concert. Sit outside and read a novel, go to a place of worship, find a pleasant place off-campus where you can be alone with your thoughts. Hang out with your friends, play Frisbee, keep up the dining hall conversation till everyone else has left. It won’t hurt, will probably only help, your academic performance.

Don’t expect yourself to be perfect. Do things that matter most to you as well as you can possibly do them, but don’t be hard on yourself if your best at many things is not as good as someone else’s best. Viewed from the distance of their 25^th reunions, most Harvard graduates remember their friends, a few of their teachers, and their coaches, artistic directors, and other mentors better than they remember what they learned in most of their courses.

Finally, don’t treat my advice – or anyone else’s – as rules you must follow! What matters is that you come to understand what you want; the challenge is to give yourself enough breathing room to discover your loves and how to pursue them, your own ambitions and how to achieve them.

To read the full text of this letter, written by Lewis, www.college.harvard.edu/dean/

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

If the mean math SAT score for students admitted to John Hopkins University’s engineering program was 746, why did they accept a girl who scored 530 on the math?

“I think there is an unwritten push for females to apply John Hopkins, who are interested in engineering and the sciences,” said John Birney, the university’s associate director of admissions, one of the more candid admission officers in the nation.

“We gave the advantage this year to women who are trying to enter a field that is underrepresented for their gender, but who didn’t have the highest scores versus their male counterparts,” Birney added.

Reviewing the current list of students accepted to the engineering program, Birney said, “We accepted one girl who scored 530 on the Math SAT. Her combined score for math and verbal was 1080; the mean score for the entering class of freshmen was 1447.

“We accepted nine females who scored less than 600 on the Math SAT II C,” Birney said. The mean score for the Math SAT II C test was 752.

David Hawkins, Director of Public Policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, calls it the “tip factor.”

“If a school’s mission is to draw more women into a specific program than once they have the applications, they start to say, ‘who will help us round out our institutional mission,’”Hawkins said.

This ought to be all the evidence you need, young ladies. Colleges and universities with undergraduate programs in science, math and engineering want you to apply to their schools. Hawkins notes that there are private scholarships and federal grants for girls interested in math, science and engineering programs.  Matter of fact, they’ll recruit you, if you show genuine interest.

Tim Napier, associate director of college counseling at the Hopkins School in New Haven, which is graduating 20 Ivy League bound seniors, says that since women are underrepresented in math and science programs, including engineering, they have an edge in the admissions process.

Top schools are not only recruiting high school girls, but they’re creating programs designed to attract them. Napier mentioned Dartmouth’s New Women in Science Program.  Incoming women are paired with a mentor, a female professor, who helps to reinforce the value of science for women. At MIT undergraduate women reach out to high school girls to dispel the myth that technical schools are cold, uncaring enclaves interested only in building better bridges and more efficient automobiles.

Napier, as he’s famous for doing, put his finger on a big part of why girls shy away from math and science programs. Women, he says, are more inclined to study subjects they find socially relevant.

“A few years ago Yale was concerned about attracting more women into science research, Williams was concerned about getting more women into their math and science programs, and Brown University advised this past year that they were really hoping to see strong women in their math and science programs,” Napier said.

Napier noted that a Hopkins student was accepted to Brown’s science program in biological research early decision, because “some of the excitement Brown had for her was her commitment to science.”

So I called Brown University to speak to the head of the math department to ask why fewer women perused undergraduate work in math than man. Dr. Joseph Silverman, a number theory scholar, a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, father of two boys and a girl, and chairman of the math department, said he had not quick answer.

Silverman cast back to when his children were in public school. He remembered going to his daughter’s elementary school, sometime before she entered fifth grade to teach a math class. The school had already separated students into level one, level two and level three math classes.

“My daughter was in the top math class and I did a math talk abut number shapes; how to form three dots and make a triangle, ten dots and make a pyramid like at a bowling alley.”

Silverman was struck most by the ratio of girls to boys in the class. “I told the teacher, ‘I can’t help noticing that there are 21 kids in the class, of whom five are girls.’ The teacher’s reaction horrified me, ‘Oh, I hadn’t noticed,’ ” she said.”

“I know they did some sort of standardized test, discussed each kid, and how to place them so I think it may start before high school,” said Silverman.

So why aren’t girls drawn to math and science like boys are? Why don’t girls strive for a career in engineering or computer science at the same rate that boys do?  I asked my friend, Regis Stirling, who taught math at Old Lyme High School for 32 years.

“I have struggled with that my whole life, and I really don’t have a clue. There every bit as good in mathematics as the guys. The most dynamic mind I ever saw belonged to a girl – how she came up with things amazed me.

“There’ve been lots of girls I taught that were super math students and very few went on and majored or even studied in a mathematical field. There’s still a stigma that math is a male subject.

Just before Thanksgiving vacation, Stirling used to ask the girls in his calculus class to share with their grandmothers over turkey dinner that they were studying calculus to see their reaction. “There are roles that women see themselves in, and math isn’t up there,” he said.

It took more than a few calls, but I finally caught up with Marilee Jones, director of admissions at MIT. Casual, friendly, down-to-earth, a keeper of the entrance door to one of nation’s most sought after universities, said MIT was actively recruiting women.

“Technical schools have to fight very hard to get girls interested in applying,” Jones said from her Cambridge office. “The crucial pulse-point is right there.”

MIT has a vast outreach program aimed at attracting girls. “We have undergraduate students who do literal outreach for us. People don’t understand the nature of a technical school. They think it’s competitive and cold hearted. It’s just the opposite.

“We’re chronically under enrolled – that’s the opposite of liberal arts colleges, they have more girls than boys,” Jones said.

An article in the educational journal, The Chronicle noted that “at a time when women make up the majority of undergraduate students in the U.S., and medical and law schools are close to gender parity, the portion of women in enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs continues to hover around 20 percent, according to data compiled by the Society of Women Engineers.  Despite repeated attempts to attract more women into engineering, the proportion was 15 percent 20 years ago.

Jones thinks things are going to change relatively quickly, because girls haven’t realized that engineering and technology are playing a large and growing role in the field of biology.

“Girls will come in when they think it has to do with life as opposed to do with machines. There has to be a human quality to the work they do. They may not be drawn to building bridges or making a car, it’s kind of a turn off for most girls, but when it comes to working with materials to be implanted in a human body to prevent disease – that’s when you’ll see the girls,” said the director of admissions at MIT.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

While everyone knows college scholarships are a painless way to defray the spiraling cost of college, too few students acknowledge that the S in scholarship stands for search – scholarships don’t come knocking, they must be discovered.

The key to raking in scholarship money is for students to get in search-mode, and the search begins in their hometown.  Students should set their sights on organizations in their own backyard that sponsor scholarships before moving on to the national competition.

A smart and easy way to identify backyard scholarships is to ask a college counselor at school for a list of local scholarships. Local organizations advise guidance departments of their scholarships.

Since many local service clubs belong to a national organization, inquire if the national organization also offers a scholarship. The local chapters of the American Legion, Rotary Club, Elks Club, Knights of Columbus, and Lions Club, all belong to national organizations, which offer scholarships, some of which have $25,000 awards.

I won $24,000 from the U.S. Congress to pay for a master’s degree. The James Madison Fellowship is issued to one schoolteacher in the state of Connecticut annually.  Sounds like big stuff, huh? Don’t be fooled. The competition isn’t nearly as deep as one might think.

To make the point I refer you to Todd Beckman, a program clerk, who works for the James Madison Fellowship. I gave him a call to see if he would say how people applied for this award in 2000, the year I won. That year there were 18 applicants from Connecticut. I rest my case. The competition isn’t that thick.

In New York that year, 16 people applied and two won $24,000 prizes, and in California they had 16 people apply and there were three winners. “This year we’re doing a lot more to get people to apply, we’re expecting 400 applicants (from 50 states) and we’ll probably get less than that,” Beckman said.

Once you’ve exhausted service organizations then look at the scholarships offered by local religious organizations. A good person to contact is the cleric in charge of a local house of worship. If you belong to a house of worship, you have an edge. But if you don’t that doesn’t count you out. And again, be certain to look at the national and international organization of the particular church, mosque or synagogue.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of freshmen who are currently looking for scholarship money, and that the search doesn’t stop once a student has been accepted to college. Sharp students learn of scholarships while they’re in college and apply and win awards all the way through college.

If a parent belongs to a union at work, or if a student is thinking of working in a field that has a union, get online and see if that union offers a scholarship. The Air Line Pilots Association, the American Federation of Teachers, The National Association of Letter Carriers, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, for example, all offer scholarships. They all have web sites, which list the funds available and the criteria necessary to apply for the money.

One of my favorite stories is about a student discovering a scholarship, because of a brain-pounding headache. He was about to gulp a Tylenol down, and while reading the fine print on the bottle he discovered the manufacturer offered scholarships. That head-busting headache generated $1,500.

Students can win a scholarship if their parents or grandparents served in the military. The 25^th Infantry Division Association sponsors the 25^th Infantry Division Association Scholarship for children and grandchildren of the unit. This tip comes from Gen and Kelly Tanabe’s wonderful book, 1001 Ways to Pay for College, a good book to own.

There are lots of local scholarships that are there for the taking. Students who play varsity sports should find out if their team has a booster club with a scholarship program. The Touchdown Club at Valley Regional High School in Deep River presented $2000 in scholarships to graduating seniors the year my son was on the team.

According to the New York Times there are more than 700,000 scholarships available from over 25,000 providers annually. The web site WiredScholar maintains that its database currently contains over 2.4 million scholarships worth over 14 billion dollars.

Since some deadlines are in the spring of junior year, the time to get rolling is now.

A smart way to start searching beyond the backyard for scholarships is to go to the Internet. Take a look at Free Scholarship Information, http://www.freschinfo.com; The College Board, http://www.collegeboard.com; The Wall Street Journal: College Journal, http://www.collegejournal.com/partners/scholarships_search/; The Princeton Review, http//www.financialaid.com; Adventures in Education, http://www.adventuresineducation.org; SuperCollege,  http://www.supercollege.com ; Scholarships.com, http://www.scholarships.com; Petersons, http://www.petersons.com; CollegeNet, http://www.collegenet.com; ScholarshipExperts, http://www. Scholarshipsexperts.com.

Bottom line, we hardly scratched the surface – get into search-mode and clock those dollars. It’s easier than most think, but it takes some digging.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

Incoming freshmen at Princeton University are advised that the age old adage “well begun is half done” works wonders for college careers.

So I thought I’d pass along a loose assortment of useful insights written, rewritten, unwritten, and then re-rewritten by Princeton students and alumni to help freshmen get off to a super start.

The Student Guide to Princeton, which can be found in its unabridged from at http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pub/sg/index.shtml, often made me nod my head in agreement. See if you agree.

“It’s important that you don’t fall behind during the first three weeks of the semester – in the whirlwind of choosing classes, adjusting to your new friends and dorm, and finding your way around campus, this is very easy to do. If it does: run, don’t walk, to your professor or TA’s office hours. Every single instructor at Princeton sets aside time every week for this very reason.

“If they can’t help you right then and there, odds are they’ll be able to meet with you again later, recommend a tutor, or offer some sort of extension. And if their schedule is especially tight – try inviting them to a ‘business’ lunch. So long as they actually get to eat, many professors and grad students are more than willing to talk over chicken wings and fries.

“Lastly – to beat my favorite dead horse: get to know your professor outside of class! Curriculums are great and all, but there’s nothing quite like shooting-the-breeze-over-coffee for finding out what makes a subject truly fascinating.”

Chapter One addresses the start of school and your new roomie. “Unless you are a freakishly well-adjusted person, there will probably come a time during the year when you decide you don’t like your roommate.

“It might even happen by the second week of school, because sharing a room the size of a closet with someone you’ve never met before is bound to have its stressful moments. And let’s face it, we can all be tough to live with sometimes. But if you and your roommate are having serious trouble getting along, there are plenty of resources available. Talk to your RCA, college master, or even the people in the counseling center.

“If you can get past your roommate’s little quirks, you will probably find him or her to be a valuable resource. While you shouldn’t expect your roommate to become your best friend, many do (mine did – although only after six months of sibling-style squabbling), and it’s nice to know that someone will notice if you don’t come home at night.”

Chapter Three (now don’t you go skipping chapters but I don’t have a lot of space so I have to bounce quickly) addresses setting the alarm early, thinking long term, other academic resources (coffee), and finding cool classes.

“Cool classes – Looking for a sure-winner course? Check out the Student Course Guide for full descriptions of courses, plus cool recommendations. Remember, however, that there is nothing more subjective than opinions on courses: many people are very happy taking an all-physics course load and rate every class “splendiferous!” while others dread having to fulfill their science requirement at all.”

Now make sure you get this: “Thinking ahead during your first year will probably save you much agony later on in your college career. For starters, many departments require that you take classes in their field even before you declare them as a major. Furthermore, in departments that have a ton of requirements, taking classes there your first year helps ensure you have the freedom your junior and senior years to take classes outside your field of concentration.”

Chapter Four is an injunction to get involved. I quite agree. Study after study shows that kids who get involved in campus activities are the ones who make friends the fastest, set down roots the quickest, and live well-rounded student lives. Involved kids aren’t missing the house they couldn’t wait to bolt from.

“The easiest way to get involved in most of Princeton’s clubs and organizations is by going to the Student Activities Fair during orientation week (which brings us back to well begun is half done). Practically every club on campus shows up and tries to recruit new members. Even if you don’t join any clubs, you’ll probably be able to score plenty of free food. Don’t be shy. Remember, these people want you. Browse around, and put your name on any list that looks interesting. (Don’t worry – you’re not signing your life away – most groups expect a high dropout rate.)

“One final note on student activities: Try not to get overextended.  Organizations here tend to suck up much more time than comparable organizations in high school. It’s not worth failing economics because you really wanted to start a lawn bowling club.”

Chapter Five is entitled Just for Fun. As my grandmother used to say, all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy (and she was a tireless worker). Not that most of you need to be reminded of the importance of play; so map and execute properly and you will work hard and play hard.

Every school has its own culture and goes about life a little differently so make it your business to discover what fun-loving activities your school is big on.

Princeton, we see from the guide, is big on eating, playing and watching sports, movies, bowling, getting out of Jersey, getting to the Big Apple (food again) and I’m not making this up, the guide notes how big students are on Philadelphia, and the first thing it notes about the city is history and then cheese steak.

You get the picture; you’re going to gain weight if you go to Princeton so find a club sport to burn some of those calories. And if you’re not going to Princeton, find some good eateries (as if I had to tell you) and a few good friends who like pizza too.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

ThickEnvelope.com, a brand-new Web site that produces probabilities for admission into 80 of the nation’s most prestigious universities, has created a perfect storm.

On the one hand, there are expert high school guidance counselors make the case that this new college can opener can’t do what a sharp counselor can do, because the site can only process data and data can be misleading.

On the other hand, ThickEnvelope’s creators say that not every school has sharp, willing guidance counselors who are there for the students.

“You should really ask yourselves if you are part of the problem or part of the solution,” Jon Reider, the current chair of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, wrote to the founders of ThickEnvelope  (thick envelopes signal college acceptance, thin envelopes spell rejection).

Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School and formerly an admissions officer at Stanford University for 15 years, took the position that the new site was “measuring meaningless quantities” and the embodiment of “the creeping commercialization of the whole college admissions process.”

The creators of ThickEnvelope.com, Grant Ujifusa and Richard Sorenson, met some 40 years ago when they were freshmen living in the same dormitory at Harvard. Two summers ago, over lunch, while speaking of their own children, Ujifusa and Sorenson imagined a Web site that would spare students and parents the infernal wait for an acceptance or rejection letter.

“We came up with the idea because both of us had two kids who went through it all, and what you do if you are the child or the parent is chew fingernails,” Ujifusa said.

Sorenson, a former assistant director of admissions at Harvard, says that for $79.95 a student will receive a report on his probability of being accepted into 80 select schools in the nation. Based on answers to a long list of questions on the site students are advised that they have somewhere between a 5 and 90 percent probability of being accepted to the 80 schools.

Before we give the critics of ThickEnvelope additional time, it’s important to note that there are free Internet services that do similar work. They can be found at www.collegedata.com and www.fastweb.com – students can also look at the college admissions predictor at www.sheppardssoftware.com. There are similar businesses to ThickEnvelope, such as, www.go4college.com, which charges $8.95 per college and www.collegeconfidential.com , which charges $89 and students speak with college counselors.

The biggest knock against ThickEnvelope, according to Reider, is that colleges want to know above all about the student’s GPA and  “a GPA means nothing to a college separate from the grading scale of that high school and its reputation.”

The biggest plus, I believe, is for eighth, ninth and tenth graders. At no cost, they can go into the classy site and quickly see what the nation’s top colleges want from students.

Reider went on to ask the creators of ThickEnvelope, “How can your system factor in the context of the grades as produced in a particular high school? Colleges have enough trouble with this, and they at least have some knowledge of the high school.”

When all the right numbers are there in good order (1430 SATs, 3.96 GPA) the qualitative factors take over (who is this particular person) and Reider argues the value of ThickEnvelope stops here. “The results for the most selective colleges show both admits and denies with similar credentials. Below a certain floor nobody gets into Harvard; but above a certain level, this one makes it, and that one doesn’t.” The electronic crystal ball, he says, don’t measure personality, character, intellectual vitality or a compelling history.

ThickEnvelope has created the perfect storm over college admissions, because it puts the focus back on how students pick schools. Students, all too often, pick schools based on reputation rather than picking a school based on their own identified needs. Students should start with themselves first. First, they need to make their own select list – not of where they want to go to college – but of what they want to learn and accomplish.

One in four college freshmen at four-year universities don’t make it back for sophomore year. Students are flipping majors like burgers on the Fourth, and transferring from one school to the next at a growing rate. Never mind, not graduating college with a major that won’t find a place in the workplace. This is all in part because too many students believe that all they have to do is get to college and the rest will take care of itself.

Too many students not only enter college without enough thought, but some find themselves in the second year of a rigorous PhD program, such as physics, only to discover that while they have the talent to compete in the field they don’t have the drive. They discover to be at the edge of their field that they will have to compete against people who are just as talented and with more drive, and they’re not up to making that kind of commitment.

Too many high school seniors are under the impression that if they don’t get into one of the big schools, they’ve failed. That’s all so wrong, because getting into the “big school” isn’t the key. Finding the right school for the student is the key. There are many examples of students who graduated from “great schools” and lived less than A plus lives.

Students need to be able to put their finger on just what they want to explore before they start to look for colleges. It’s not about a school’s rank, it’s about what a particular student wants and then finding a school that will work for that student. Another reason for students to start thinking about just what they might want to do with their lives.

ThickEnvelope has created a perfect storm because students often choose colleges blindly. Students generally pick schools based on what parents suggest, peers have done or are doing, and what professionals say. Students should identify what they like most and want to learn most before they start picking schools. What type of work might they like to do? It could be as broad as,  “I want to work with money and make lots of it,” or “I want to help people and driving an expensive car doesn’t matter to me.”

It used to be said that the hardest part about college was getting into college. I’m going to say the hardest part is picking the right school for the right reasons and that has little to do with any other name than the name of the student.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com

As captain of Valley Regional High School’s basketball team, Jeff Marois understood how good teams came undone, and underdogs manufactured victory.

As a freshman last fall at Eastern Connecticut State University, the rookie student thought that because classes didn’t meet every day, he didn’t have to hit the books nightly.

It wasn’t long before things started to avalanche. A paper was assigned, a project was assigned, then on top of that a writing assignment.

Naturally, Jeff – a most capable player – figured things out for himself and began to net the grades, but students shouldn’t have to take the same collegiate knocks that pupils have taken since the colonists started going to college in the 1630’s.

So with a wish for a smooth freshman ride, I share an insightful list that the Princeton Review put together called, The Top 10 Freshman Goof-ups, and How You Can Avoid Making Them.

1) The I Don’t Feel Like Going Out; I’d Rather Hole Up in My Room Syndrome – College might feel like a small metropolis compared to the comfy, cozy size of your hometown high school. And it may be tough to feel motivated to get out and meet people and explore – especially when the homework is piling up on your desk. But don’t give into temptation! During the first part of their freshmen year, students are more open to meeting new people then they have ever been or ever will be again. Social circles are being formed.

2) The It’s My Money and I’ll Spend it on DVDs, Shoes, and Pizza Every Night If I Want Syndrome – One of the many wonders of college is the incredible number of temptations on which to spend your money. Sure it’s your money, and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But if you aren’t careful, that semester budget of yours will disappear after the first month.

3) The I’m Away from My Parents for the First Time so I’ll Behave Like I Was Just Paroled from Prison – Some freshmen find that their first time away from the parents can develop pretty quickly into partying like you never had the freedom to in high school. A bad hangover is only the beginning of the trouble these kids find themselves in.

4) The Who Is this Advisor Guy? Why Is He Trying to Tell Me What Classes to Take? Why Should I Bother with Him Syndrome – Ideally, your advisor should serve as a guide through the bureaucratic red tape that goes along with academic life, and as an aide in helping you make smart choices in your college career. Be open and honest with them and make an effort to communicate with them often. One of the keys to succeeding in college is establishing good, working relationships with your advisor and professors. Get to know them.

5) The I Can Handle My Own Problems Without Anyone’s Help Syndrome – Also known as Mom and Dad Don’t Need to Hear About this Syndrome. This is one of the worst mistakes you can make in your first year of college, and one that is likely to have the most lasting effects. If something is wrong (tough time adjusting, making friends, depression, difficulty with classes, homesickness) you should tell someone immediately, before things get too bad. Problems have a tendency to snowball in college, and with so many students to worry about, no one will know something is wrong unless you speak up. Your RA and dean are great people to talk to. They will admire you for coming forward.

6) The No One Will Notice If I Miss a Few Classes or Don’t Do a Few Assignments Syndrome – Also known as The JM Syndrome. Blowing off classes and assignments because you can is a dangerous road to go down, and the consequences are more far-reaching than you’d imagine. Low freshman-year grades can kill your GPA for the next four years. This would hurt if you wanted to go to grad school. Flunking out after freshmen year is not uncommon. Don’t fall behind early in the game.

7) The Freshman 15? What’s That Syndrome? It is not implausible that not having enough time for regular exercise, and subsisting on a diet of delivery pizza and Chinese food, soda, not to mention the unlimited buffets in the cafeteria, can result in dramatic increase in chubbiness, even in someone as svelte as you, says the Princeton Review. The solution: just take care of yourself. Eat fruit and veggies, drink lots of water, get some exercise and a sufficient amount of sleep.

8) The I’d Rather Be with Friends from Home or Better Yet, at Home Syndrome – Maintaining friendships with your friends from home is a wonderful and important thing to do during your time away. Clinging on to friends from home can prevent you from meeting some amazing new people.

9) The I know I Want to Be a Doctor so Why Should I Bother Checking Out Other Majors Syndrome – Knowing what you want out of life and out of school is great. But you’ll be exposed to a lot of new things at college, and approaching your academic career with tunnel vision might keep you from hearing your true calling.

10) The I’m Gonna Get My Money’s Worth and Really Make the Semester Count Syndrome – Okay, tough stuff, we know you’re good. You got into school in the first place, right? So there’s no need to over-commit and tackle an insane schedule that you’ll regret every day for the next semester. Remember, you have four years to get all you want out of college. Use your first semester to establish good habits, and to learn about the place, and all that it has to offer.

Sam Rosensohn is the founder of College Planning Partnerships, which offers prep classes for the SAT and helps students to prepare for college and write college essays. He can be reached in Clinton at 860-664-9857 or at sam@satprepct.com