To ease the stress, take notice of the details of each college’s admission requirements and try to stay organized. This will help you to stay focused and refrain from making avoidable mistakes that could cost you acceptance.

The Beginning

By now, you most likely have researched colleges and narrowed your selections. At this time, it’s important to gather the application process details for each school and organize your files. Attach the instruction for each application to each file and research the college online to ensure you haven’t missed any part of the application process. Organization is crucial when applying for colleges. Admissions will assess whether you followed directions which could help or hurt your chance of acceptance.

The Application

Don’t wait until right before the deadline! Give yourself plenty of time to fill out the application or you may be at risk of making unnecessary mistakes.

Enlist Help

The college application process generally requires at least one letter of recommendation from a teacher or school counselor. Use this person to review your application and essay for mistakes and also to offer suggestions.

Achievements

This section baffles many potential students so it’s worth discussing. The Achievements section is where you want to distinguish yourself from other applicants. List any academic honors you received since your freshman year of high school. You will also want to list any extracurricular activities, volunteer programs, or any other summer or after-school programs you joined.

If you think you have not achieved anything since freshman year, think again. Colleges want to see experience. Anything that was not part of your daily school routine can be classified as “extracurricular”. Were you involved in any after-school activities? Did you ever work at a summer job? Do you collect vintage baseball cards? Anything that makes you interesting can be listed in the Achievements section.

Just be careful not to “overdo” it. While colleges may want to know about your vintage baseball card collection, they may not want to know that you play ball every day with your friends after school. Know your boundaries and you should do just fine.

The Essay

Colleges require an admissions essay because they want to gauge your ability to write as well as assess your personality. Though each college will weigh the essay portion of the application differently, most use it as a determining factor for acceptance.

Here are a few tips that will help you write a successful essay:

• Be Yourself – Stay away from what you think your college will want. Write about what means something to you; in this way your essay will be unique.
• Follow Instructions – Answer the exact question asked for the essay. It’s easy to lose focus and veer away from the topic. Notice your tendencies and stay on track.
• Be Creative – If your essay describes your process for winning a trophy for a tennis competition, don’t start with a sentence like, “I trained 4 hours every day during the day and sometimes on weekends”. Rephrase it creatively like, “Every day of the week I invested time and energy to reaching my goal and bringing home the trophy.”
• Great Introduction – The introduction is the first content an admissions officer will read. Make sure it is creative and grabs attention. Don’t summarize the entire essay, but leave a little mystery to make the reader want to read more.
• Leave your Draft – After you write your first draft, leave it for a few days and then come back to it. You may see things you didn’t see before and find ways to enhance it.
• Review and Edit – Ask people you know to read and critique it. If possible, consider a professional editor.
• Don’t Stress – After all is said and done, go with your gut. If you over think the process, it could stifle your creative juices. When you feel the essay is complete and it is your best work, leave it and send it off with the application.

Additional Materials

If you desire to send additional material (i.e. portfolio, personal work, blog) it may help your application as long as the college allows it. It’s important to follow the instructions in the admissions packet. In some cases, excess material can actually hurt your chances for admission. Consult with your school counselor if you need help with this matter.

Sit Back and Wait

Once your application is complete, the next step is to sit back, relax and wait for an answer. If you put time and effort into your application and you know you did your best, you can be proud of your effort regardless of the outcome.

Jeff Selingo, in a Huffington Post article, “Why Can’t We Educate for a Job and an Education?” summarizes the problem:

We often talk about the goal of college as learning a specific skill or growing intellectually. Both aims are not mutually exclusive, of course, although by framing it as an either/or question we have allowed two opposing camps to emerge. On one side is higher ed, which believes it’s educating future citizens by helping them grow personally and intellectually. On the other side are employers who have jobs they can’t fill because they’re unable to find skilled workers.

It’s clear, however, that there is a disconnect. The unemployed graduates will tell you the degree hasn’t improved their job prospects. Those employed in minimum wage jobs feel defeated and disillusioned.

Is the problem with the chosen major?

One theory is that students are pursuing the wrong majors. The governor of Florida recently enraged the higher ed community by saying that humanities degrees are ineffective in the marketplace so they should be eliminated. Still others will argue that humanities degrees spur creativity and have their place in academia.

In “Why Can’t College Grads Find Better Jobs?”, the issue of graduate unemployment is addressed:

Part of the issue has to do with what students are choosing to study. Young college grads with education, teaching, and engineering majors are more likely to find a job that matches the rigor of their college degree than grads who majored in humanities, according to 2009 Labor Department data cited by the New York Times. According to the Manpower survey, many employers think the problem is rooted in the education system, which fails to get children interested in what the economy really needs: science and engineering.

Here’s another interesting fact: sales is among the top job offers for college graduates with a starting salary of $41,179, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. There are, however, only 40 sales programs taught in over 4000 colleges and universities. Another convincing argument that colleges are not recognizing the importance of training students based on the current job market.

Is the economy to blame?

Most graduates who are unemployed blame the economy and greedy corporations for their lack of employment options. You can’t argue with the fact that the recession has definitely affected the graduate job market. Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply since 2009 along with starting salaries. Only 50 percent of the jobs landed by new graduates require a college degree spurring the critics of higher education to debate its worth. Average starting salaries for graduates have dropped 10 percent since 2008.

Even more disturbing is the long-lasting effects of graduating in a recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research reported: “Graduating in a recession leads to large initial earnings losses. These losses, which amount to about 9% of annual earnings in the initial stage, eventually recede, but slowly—halving within five years after graduation.”

The inability to secure a job after graduation has caused many graduates to go back to school for more education. They fear that being on a low paying job trajectory could hurt their future careers; the low salaries tend to follow them for years after graduation.

Do students lack motivation?

The authors of Academically Adrift, Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University, and Josipa Roksa, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia contacted a study among recent graduates. ”How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer for many undergraduates, we have concluded, is not much.” For many undergraduates, they write, “drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose is readily apparent.”

Students were given a Collegiate Learning Assessment designed to measure gains in critical thinking, analytic reasoning and other skills taught in college. Forty-five percent of students surveyed did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning during the first two years of college; 36 percent of students did not improve their learning over four years of college. The main culprit for lack of academic progress of students, according to the authors, is a lack of rigor.

InsideHigherEd.com summarized the study’s conclusion as laid out in the book:

The book rejects the idea of federal mandates on testing or the curriculum, suggesting that such requirements rarely work. And the book acknowledges that many college educators and students don’t yet see a crisis, given that students can enroll, earn good grades for four years, and graduate — very much enjoying themselves in the process. But in an era when “the world has become unforgiving” to those who don’t work hard or know how to think, Arum said that this may be a time to consider real change.

Should college prepare you for a job after graduation? Are students responsible for assuring they are prepared for the workforce after college? Can graduates overcome the recession and secure employment in spite of the overcrowded workforce?

Rent

One of the latest trends in obtaining the college textbooks is renting the textbooks, just as you would rent a movie on DVD or video game. Renting textbooks allows you to pick out the textbooks that you need for each class. You pay a rental fee for each of the books for the semester that you will be using the book. Most of the rental companies then provide you with a prepaid return-receipt shipping label to ship the books back to the company from which you rented the college textbooks.

The advantages of renting your textbooks include:

• Having the books that you need
• Pay to use and then return the books when finished
• Don’t have to worry about selling the books back or get stuck with the books because they are out of use
• Less expensive than buying new textbooks
• Comparable in price to buying used textbooks

Buy New

Another option for getting the college textbooks you need is to buy the textbooks new. If it is a new edition of a book, then there may not be any used textbooks that you can buy, but you still have the option to rent. Some students prefer new textbooks because nobody else has used, read or written in the book before you. While this is a primary advantage of buying new textbooks, one of the primary disadvantages is that brand new textbooks are much more expensive than buying used textbooks or renting textbooks.

If it is a textbook that your profession may require you to keep for future reference, you may prefer to buy a brand new college textbook. For example, if you are going into the medical field, many textbooks may be used at various points in your career as reference materials. In a situation such as this, you may prefer to have clean reference books.

Buy Used

The final option in obtaining the college textbooks you need is to buy the books used. One of the primary advantages of buying used textbooks is they are less expensive than buying brand new textbooks. Renting and buying used textbooks tend to have comparable prices. Used textbooks tend to have writing and highlighting from the students that previously owned and used the books. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. The notes and highlights may help you to understand the information better or it may be a distraction for you.

Used textbooks may be kept as references. Otherwise, you have to worry about trying to sell back the textbooks to the bookstore or college textbook reseller—and it’s never for the price you paid for them.

With all three options, you can typically buy the college textbooks in person or online. Renting textbooks is most commonly associated with an online transaction. In-person or online transactions may or may not be convenient for you, so how you complete the transaction may supersede the importance of what type of college textbook you choose.

Previously, college students had the option to buy college textbooks used or new. Now, students also have the option to rent college textbooks. Since each option has its own advantages and disadvantages, you should weigh the options to see which choice fits your needs and wants the best.