College

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Hang it up and move on to the rest of your life.

Take Advantage of Dreyfoos Top Academics to Open Doors to Great Schools

Going to the #37 public school for academics has its advantages.
For many of you, the four years that you spend playing music here will probably be your last academic career in music DSOA has some of the top academics in the nation, so you are in a great spot to gain admittance to a great college. You play for your access to this school, so you already have one great extracurricular activity. You should have others though, both inside and outside of school. You need to keep your music skills up to speed with the rest of your peers, but some of the extras that they do wont apply to you. You want to focus on extra curriculars like volunteering, speech and debate, sports, student government, and all of the normal things that you would find at a mainstream public high school are things that you should involve yourself with here or in activities outside of school. If you have a particular passion, like medicine or engineering or aerospace, try to find summer enrichment programs that let you try out some of these things. Have no freakin idea what you want to do? Thats not the end of the world either. Use your summers to explore ideas, to find out what part of the country feels like it could be your home for the next four years, or take a summer work-study program somewhere. Many of you have clue zero what college is all about. Its that thing your parents nag you about a lot. Many colleges, including some of our locals, offer college summer programs for high school students, where you take one college course and often an SAT prep course. Its a great way to see the potential of where youre headed. Youre looking for game changers that either point you in a new direction, or help you follow your life-path the way that you want to do it.

Inside:
Success Checklist College Starts in 9th Grade The East/West Bounce College Size The Essay The Cleverness Tests: SAT/ACT Admissions Officers/Interviews

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College
Starts in the

Grades 9-10 Outperform

Take honors courses wherever you can. Take AP courses when available. Plan on taking 3+ years of foreign language. Challenge yourself at all things.

Grade 11 Outperform
Take classes in music theory, and learn more about the history of the music. Work in the community, particularly in your area of interest.

Grade 12 Outperform
Your skill sets are at the best they will be in high school. All-State, showcases, and more private lessons at conservatories and colleges open doors.

9th
Grade
Everything that you do matters from the day that you start Dreyfoos. Homework counts. Practice. Juries. Drop one or two here and there, and you can find your college picture changes.

Plan
Find both after school and summer programs, internships, jobs or work-study that can either help you discover what interests you, or help you achieve your goals. Visit colleges in Grade 10 to get your bearings.

Strategize
Lock down your plan to six to eight top schools. Know their requirements. Plan to begin your essays in the winter of your 11th grade year. Get apps in early by October, even where youre not applying Early Decision.

Execute
Work the recruiters at the college fair, if they come. If not, call and see if you can get an interview with your top schools, either with an admissions officer or an alumni admissions rep.

Keep Focus.
The transition to high school is full of great opportunities, social life, and distractions. Moderation and balance. Keep your focus.

Shine.
This is your time. Make it count. Put yourself out not just at school, but network with college programs and find your place in a program.

Deliver.
Be a top student. Push yourself as hard as you can. Get great SAT scores. The better you do, the more the doors open for you.

College Starts in the 9th Grade

Once upon a time your parents had the luxury of being kids, screwing around and screwing up. With colleges and conservatories receiving applications, often at six or ten to one to the positions that they hold, you can afford very few bad days of your own making. Your grades in academics COUNT double. Colleges dont judge you by comparing you against students from other schools. They gauge you against other past DSOA students. Thats heady company. If youre college bound, then you should be pushing hard for as much Honors and AP challenge as you can. Two trajectories are acceptable to colleges: People with an upward grade path, who got their act together, and people who perform at a high level throughout. See-saw grades, up one year, down the next, can close a lot of doors for you. A downward trajectory, where you begin well and end poorly, or have an off the cliff run from grade 10 to 12, are certifiable death for applications. Homework may be a drudge, but its worth enough points at DSOA that all of it needs doing, in spite of what your peers may tell

you. Practice may also seem like a chore at times, but, particularly in a conservatory/ music career track, its unacceptable to pull Bs and Cs. Theyre red flags that you dont have your act together. The goal that you need to set as a 9th grader is to be the best that you can be. You never worry about how many other people there are out there, or what other people are doing. Stay in your art, look inward, and focus on your music. Achievement springs out of good foundational habits, drive and dedication. Listen to your teachers. If they find deficiencies in your performance fix them. If they arent giving you enough feedback, go talk to them privately and ask what you can do. You want to position yourself so, by the time you are a senior, you will be the kind of competent, core player upon whom college band and orchestra directors build their program. The work began the day you arrived at Dreyfoos in the 9th grade. Where are you now? On track or off? See the bigger picture, and dont let the day to day of life rule you.

Consider Abroad

Many budget conscious families look to Florida Prepaid or Bright Futures, but if you arent locked into the Sunshine State, consider Canada. Many Canadian schools are some of the best in the world, and, even with the exchange rates, are often far cheaper than their

EVERYTHING COUNTS.

The upside of the bounce can be huge depending upon program. Certainly in music, schools like USC and the conservatories in California and Washington see fewer apps, so you become more attractive. There are things to consider about the bounce. You build a lot of relationships in college, and many people go to grad schools in range of where they studied in undergrad, because their professors have associations with other professors often on a more regional basis. So like the area that youre going to pick, because you may end up living and working there. The other downside of the bounce is travel. You are flying farther to come home. The cost of distance travel these days is not much worse than flying to New York or other Northeastern cities if you book in advance. For those though that are not able to afford much travel, scholarships that have some travel component usually only cover major semester-based travel and the Christmas break. Some also make allowance for Thanksgiving. You may find yourself staying where you are rather than going home for other breaks, or seeing family visit you at your college. Other than national summer programs, if you decide that youre going to include the bounce in your strategy, consider major performing arts summer programs in the area.

The East-West Bounce

Colleges are big cities. They like populating them with a diverse group of students from different races, walks of life, gender/orientation and geography. Geography can help you when you look at schools. Most students go either to school within a few hundred miles of their home, or they jump to the top schools of the Northeast corridor (New York and Boston). If you live in Florida, you are a more attractive candidate for geographic diversity in California, Oregan, Washington, and throughout the midwest. Less so in Texas and Georgia and other Southern States, and you get no real bounce at the Ivies or in most large Northeast corridor schools, although there is some pick up at small and mid-sized colleges. You might be a big fish in Indiana, where youre just one of several thousand Floridians applying to U.Penn.

Options Parents HATE

College Environment
choices On top of getting an education, youre also picking a lot of lifestyle for the first time. Do you want to go to an urban campus like a Boston Smith? University or NYU, or a rural campus like Hampshire College or can hike, Do you want warm weather or cold climate? A place where you fish and hunt, or with a lot of good cultural programs like concerts, bicycle, plays, and shows? Year or If you can, VISIT THE CAMPUS of your top choices in your Junior Go when even your 10th grade year. Dont go when its perfect, if you can. (There is a reason they call it dead of winter.) its probably at its worst day life is like Everyone photographs campuses at their best. See what day to optimum. when the weather is less

There are a few people that just are not ready for college. Career opportunities with a high school education are limited, and the maxi mum you can earn in your lifetime will be very, very limite d. You need to go to college, but there are other routes. You can go to the community colle ge and take fewer credits, work on personal challenge s, and build yourself up to transfer to a better school in a year or two. You can join one of the Armed Force s (even play in their band) and bank money for colle ge when you get out of the service. If youre a pacifist, try the Peace Corps or Americorps. Or just take a job in the real worl d for a year without a degree. Youll be begging to go back into academia.

a Visit the town. Is it a place where you can find what you need, from pharmacy to a place to go to the movies, etc. convenient, Go when students are IN SESSION and on campus Summers are of the same place. Summer but you can get two entirely different reads what its students are often not full-time or are there for special events. See like and like when you would be there. Talk to students. Find out what they dislike. it You are going to spend four years of your life somewhere. Make home. someplace you can call

BIG.
What Size School is Right?
When you go out to eat or the movies, which is better, getting served right away or waiting in line? Big is not better, but sometimes you can find small in big that is better. UCF has a huge population, over 51,000 undergrads. Sounds too big? The music department only has a few hundred. If youre majoring in business, though, that may be a very, very crowded place. Larger schools sell big sports programs, marching bands, and big social life. Some, like University of Michigan or Notre Dame, are in small towns but big enough to be their own city. The downside of big schools is that more people compete for limited resources and the attention of professors. You have large lecture classes with hundreds of people for the first couple of years. It is very difficult to build relationships with professors or to get the full value of their knowledge when they have to interact with hundreds or thousands of kids in a semester. With thousands of people on a campus, you may not just run in to people. Sometimes you may have a class with one person, then never see them again in any of your other classes. NYU has terrific schools for specialties, but Washington Square Union College, fondly dubbed WESUCK by Bobcats, has had some really uninspired, disinterested faculty teaching entry level courses. General ed takes up about two years of your educational experience. All universities and many colleges have graduate students. Which means that certain opportunities may go to those students first. It also means that professors writing books quite often will rely on teaching assistants to do the heavy lifting of teaching undergrads. At UCLA famed economist Milton Freidman would come out and tell his students that he was writing a book, didnt have time to see them, and that they should consult with their grad section leader.

Medium.
If the department of your choice is really good at the big college, you may want to suffer through the crowding in your general ed. At some schools, you can apply to honor colleges or one of the lesser-known colleges of Boston University, the College of General Studies. In places like these, you get a small college within the university, where you only work with professors and classes and lecture halls stay at small college size. A win-win for the big school fan. There are mid-sized colleges that offer smaller class sizes and a bit more personal attention. Of the Ivy class Brown and Dartmouth are more mid-sized. Miami is surprisingly midsized for a school with a big sports footprint. Under 12,000 to about 4,000 would be in the category. Small colleges are the best bang for your buck in undergrad education. There are mini ivies like Bowdoin (ME), Reed College (OR), Bates (ME), Bryn Mawr, New College of Florida (FL) and others, which may have as few as 1600 students, and no graduate students. There are small colleges like Rollins in Florida or Lewis & Clark in Oregon which have taken students with fairly mediocre high school GPAs and turned them into Fullbright Scholars. Small colleges give students a lot of face time with professors rather than graduate students. Opportunities to participate in more programs, internships, and other special events are easier because you have fewer bodies competing for the same resources, and often, no graduate students. Several of these schools require a 30 to 50 page thesis project to graduate. Sound intimidating? Maybe, but it can be worth a year of your life and $50,000 or more. Smart students work on something that they want to do in graduate school, and apply at places to continue working on their thesis for the masters. Some graduate schools offer them a 1/1 which is a masters/Ph.d. in two years rather than three. There are smaller college programs like Bowdoin and Bates that are SAT/ACT optional, or just

Small.
dont require them, because they dont believe in their predictive accuracy, which is the leading edge of a growing trend in college admissions thinking. Some people find the downside to small colleges that they meet fewer new people because they know everyone. Travel can be a bit more costly if the airport is a smaller field, and if mass transit or close walking distance to a market arent a part of the community in which the college sits, you may need a car. While you will find small colleges in cities big and small, some are in very small towns, or areas of a suburb. Oberlin is 30 minutes from Cleveland, and, outside of campus, there is not a lot going on in the town or the immediate area. Another advantage of smaller schools is that often housing is more affordable. Big schools in urban markets often have sky-high dorm prices and local housing is often scarce and pricey. Some large schools dont offer dorm space all four years. Most small and medium colleges can usually guarantee space if you want it. One non-traditional thought on how big you should go really has to do with how far you plan on taking your education. If you think you are going to get a BA or BS degree and go off into something where education is not going to carry you, then big can be as beautiful as small. If you plan on getting higher degrees, or you arent sure what you want to do, then small schools with individualized attention set you up to succeed.

Nameplate Schools
Harvard. Yale. Princeton. Stanford. MIT. They sound very prestigious. If youre wicked smart, get perfect grades, and look to double-down on nameplates in graduate and Ph.D. programs, go for it. If these are more of a reach, or finances are an issue, as they are for most people, consider saving the money for grad school, killing in undergrad at a mini Ivy and putting the nameplate on your grad degree. Multiple nameplate degrees are best for government and public health pedigrees.

The essay is one of the biggest pieces of your admissions puzzle, which is probably why it scares so many people. The essay(s) arent about you so much as they are representative of you, of who you are. They also give the admissions committee a good idea of your ability to write and express yourself.

From the specific to the broad, it was a simple essay filled with a kind of warm honesty that resonated well.

out in the world and succeed as a woman on her own terms. That particular essay was so well liked that it was not only read, but it became a yardstick by which many of the other essays were measured by those reading that year.

Be Impressive. Dont Impress

With so much on the line, you often might feel the need to impress your readers with

Write. Redraft. Repeat.

Give the process time. Dont wait until the last possible minute. Write a draft of your essay, then set it aside for a day or two. Revisit it and revise. Let it rest. Do it again. It will get better.

You get a LOT of help with essay writing here at DSOA. That we know. As one who has read them both for high school and college admissions for a couple of years, here are some good tips.

Know Your Audience

The essay is one of the few human interactions that you have in what is becoming a more computerized process. Even after they use grades and SAT scores to weed out applicants, admissions people are still reading thousands of these things. Dont be a bore. Write something interesting that wakes them up a bit. Its the essays that intrigue admissions officers. If you find yourself on the maybe pile you want someone in the room advocating for you. The essay, in conjunction with your recommendations can be the tipping point in your favor.

Brevity is the Soul of Wit

Shakespeare was right. The best college essays generally are the strong silent types. Like great

The Essay
a command of what you know about the subject that is your lifes passion: Art, music, dance. There are a thousand essays on their desks full of that. It drones into a sameness after a while. Dont tell them what you know. This is where you tell them WHO YOU ARE. You have to convey your passions and interests by talking about things specific to who you are. One particularly good essay that went to Tisch School of the Arts was by a girl who told the story of her grandmother who worked during WWII when the men were away, but who had to return to domesticity when her father and brothers returned. The candidate never mentioned herself in the telling, or her hopes and aspirations, but you knew from how she wrote about it, the passion, the feeling of loss for her grandmother, and her mothers scolding tone about the grandmothers high spiritedness that this young lady was setting out to do what her grandmother was never allowed to do: Go

music, you dont need an avalanche of notes or words to convey an idea. Try to think Hemingway. Keep sentences short and sweet. We tend to write as we speak, which often

leads to a lot of run-on sentences. If you have a one sentence paragraph full of ands then pop a period in where a few of them are and break it down.

Be Creative.
In the face of the blank page, a lot of people write what they think the admissions officers want to read. They list creative influences in their art. They tend to try to look at themselves from the big picture, like a bug under a magnifying glass. Dont. Often times, something seemingly trivial, something small, can be something big. In one essay, a young man begins writing about counting to 50 in Turkish while he flips a ball up and down. He did this one summer when he went to a Boston summer program. He didnt talk about the program, but about meeting new people from all over the world for the first time, and how he found out, when he asked a girl out in Spanish, after having a roommate help him, that he liked speaking different languages, and that he could pick them up easily. He wrote of seeing the world, and being a part of it.

Clarity
Often times, since we know what were writing, what were saying seems very selfevident. Unfortunately, there are other people who may read an essay full of vague personal pronouns and become quite lost. If your readers at the admissions office have to keep back-tracking to figure out who or what you are talking about, your essay will not be well received. Get friends or parents to read for you. Ask them if what theyre reading is clear, and easily understood. If they have trouble following what youve written, think how a tired admissions person plowing through a few dozen essays will feel!

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Cleverness Tests
Both the SAT and the ACT suck. You stand a greater likelihood of picking the correct numbers in the POWERBALL lottery than you do of telling much about the college aptitude of a student. The SAT is not, in spite of its name, an aptitude test. Its a cleverness and speed test. It tends to favor people who are quick test takers, good probability guessers on multiple choice, and those fast with their math. The ACT is not much better. It still favors the clever and the swift, but being a bit more writing intensive, those who take it who are good writers seem to find it a bit more bearable. None of it is not about the depth of your knowledge, but how good you can be at grinding out answers under pressure.Which not everyone is, no matter how good of a student you may be. That is why there are so many test prep books and courses that amp up test scores, and why the test can be improved upon. Technically, if it really worked, your score should be the same every time, because your aptitude really hasnt changed. Yes, its a dumb system, and yes, many admissions offices keep talking about getting rid of it. Most dont, though, because the number of applications to college keeps rising, and its a convenient way of creating artificial cut-offs that allow a lot of weeding and pruning of their applicant pools, even if the tests are flawed. Many schools super score, which means that they take the best math score from all of your tests, the best English, and the best writing. A few, like Bates and Bowdoin colleges in Maine have done away with SATs and ACTs. They dont consider them as a barrier to admission. Unfortunately, though, they are a hoop that you still have to jump through for most colleges, and the better the score, the easier your process will be. These tests serve both to weed out candidates, and to determine top candidates. If you have a perfect or near perfect SAT and great grades, a

lot of doors open up. Even a high SAT and more modest grades will still give you some lift in a college world where the test is still king. If youre looking for scholarship money, great grades are good. High test scores are better. You can get over the SAT hurdle. The best way to beat the test is not to let it beat you. You need to be honest about the kind of student that you are. If youre fast and clever, the test may be a breeze. If youre more methodical, slow, you may want to look into books or classes to help you learn the tricks to staying on time and ontrack. Have great grades and low standardized test scores? Consider a test-optional school. There are also schools like Rollins College and Lewis and Clark and Sarah Lawrence which will consider the tests, but also rely as or more heavily on teacher recommendations. If they think you have a lot of potential, some of these schools may look past the standardized tests. The cost of a test-prep program shouldnt equal your score on the test. For some people, a prep book is enough. If you need more one-on-one, find a mentor/tutor you get. If someone is talking over your head, its not that youre dumb. Its that theyre not clear and the right choice for you. REMEMBER that when you sign up for the SAT it will ask you where you want to send the tests in advance. DO NOT DO THAT. You may take the test a few times. You should be in the drivers seat. You can always report later. Some schools let you pick your own super score. Wait until you have taken the test as many times as you feel that you need to do, and then decide who/where to send the scores. The best thing you can do to beat the standardized tests is to be relaxed, and realize that, once you know the system, standardized tests arent a problem.

SAT Prep
High End
Revolution Prep offers group SAT classes at Suncoast and many Southeeast Florida private schools. They also offer one-on-one tutoring that can range between 1,100-2,000 depending upon the tutors level. The group classes are just as effective and still pricey at 500-900. FAU and Pine Crest Fort Lauderdale offer summer SAT courses as well.

Online
Several companies, including the venerable Princeton Reviews, offer online courses. If youre selfdisciplined and better working on your own at your own pace, this can be better than the book without the hassle of having to go somewhere to take a course.

Books/Flash Cards
There are several brands of books that you can find at Amazon or a bookseller that offer prep. Princeton has a well organized one. Practice tests are a good idea because a lot of the success people have on the test is learning how to manage the time well.

Improving Perfection
Several companies offer programs for students who are already high achievers. Pass on them. The basic courses work just fine for smart kids. Its only a part of the whole picture. No one can guarantee a perfect score, and the added pressure is probably not beneficial to producing a

Making the right impression.

Whether youre going to college fair booths, or meeting a music professor, or having an admissions interview with an admissions officer or an alumni representative, you want to get their attention in a positive way. Colleges track everything that you do with them. Did you go to an open house? Ask for information from them? Did you followup? Come to a college fair later to see them? Did you go to a regional open house? Tour the school? You want them to see your interest, so try to make sure that you hit a few events that they do and sign in. Thats not enough, though. You want to make sure that you get on their radar. Some schools like DSOA. That alone can open the door to conversation. If youre not shy, like Adesh, this should not be a problem. If youre a quiet person, though, you may have to force yourself to get out there with a smile, and engage the admissions people, or their representatives, in a discussion about something. Admissions officers are usually good ice breakers. When they talk to you, they are trying to get as much of an understanding of you as they are when they read an essay. My exceedingly quiet, shy twin daughters went to a college fair and the Bates Reps who engaged them in a discussion about life and school that got them talking. They liked what the people there said enough to go see the school. So we went to Maine. Not in the spring, but in February, with about 4 feet of snow everywhere. the admissions puzzle that is great to have in your admissions jacket if they will still do one. The best ones are done at the school, or on regional representative visits to the area. Dont be shy. Ask them politely, if the rep is down here in Florida, to see if they will meet with you. If they say no you are no worse off. Some schools, particularly the Ivy league flavor, use alumni to conduct interviews. Many of these can go equally well. Some, though, are done by alums who dont always do things by the book. A Dartmouth interview that I went to had three of them seated around the room strategically at different places so the student would have to turn their back on one of them to speak to the other two. The game being played was to have the courage to ask one of them to move so you could speak with all of them. It took about three or four students doing the interviews and talking about them to figure it out. Not all of them are that odd. Sometimes you can get an alumni interviewer so up for you that they will push hard to get you into the school. Some have more pull that way than others. Make good eye contact. Dress neatly at least for any college fair or a college tour/interview. If you have an alumni interview set up on an evening/afternoon, dress to impress. Shake their hand. Positive human contact is the best thing for your file!

(Making the Right Impression)

The tour went well, and the reps talked to them quite a bit more about Bates. The next fall, when Bates returned, they remarked Its the twins who came up to see us in February! They were admitted ED2 over that winter. Some schools offer interviews when you go visit them. Take them up on them whenever you can. The interview is another large piece of