Teenagers are stressed. And pressured. And anxious. And overwhelmed.
According to a recent study, 45 percent of teenagers in the US are stressed “all the time.” And though anxiety levels have risen in teens across all backgrounds, it has risen more among teens in affluent areas.
In an essay for Philly magazine, Tom McGrath explores the idea that “it’s the kids with the seemingly endless opportunities who are most anxious about their futures.”
The school year is almost over and motivation for many high school seniors is quite low.
Commonly known as “senioritis,” this is the time after college acceptances arrive and high school seniors start to feel like school isn’t important.
Senioritis often has a negative connotation. But past #NACACreads author Ned Johnson thinks the term and the feeling need a rebrand.
Continue reading The New ‘Senioritis’: Finding Your Motivation
For non-native English speakers, figuring out the college admission process often has an additional layer of challenges.
Robbie Cupps, a college and career counselor at Capital High School (ID), works in the Boise School District, which has a significant population of Spanish-speaking students.
Working with these students, she knew she had to take a different approach and a grant from the NACAC Imagine Fund helped make it possible.
Continue reading Imagine Grant Supports College Admission Program for Non-Native English Speakers
The college search and application process can be a stressful time for families and students. But there are ways to manage this stress and anxiety.
Sherri Geller, co-director of college counseling at Gann Academy (MA), recently shared her stress management tips with JewishBoston.
Continue reading Member View: Ditch the College Admission Stress
Could a video game ever replace standardized testing’s role in college admission?
Enter 27-year-old Rebecca Kantar and Imbellus Inc., her start-up that aims to reinvent testing.
Imbellus wasn’t started with the recent bribery scandal in mind, but Kantar told Bloomberg Businessweek that it is “cheatproof.”
When it comes to dealing with the key moments of my daughter’s life, I’ve always had my hands full. The first one came when she was not even two years old. She decided it was time to climb up on the playscape all by herself, just like she’d seen her older brother do. It didn’t matter that her legs were about half as long, and the diaper she was wearing significantly limited her mobility. It was time, and that was that.
As she eyed the situation, I was about 20 feet away, clearing some brush, and holding a chainsaw, of all things. There was no way I could drop the chainsaw without her noticing it, and not even the slowest gait towards her would do anything but convince her I didn’t think this was a good idea. All I could do was stand there and watch, poised on the balls of my feet to spring the 20 feet in the event I needed to catch her. She didn’t exactly look like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, but she made it up, in her own way, safe and sound.
Continue reading The College Counselor Who Left His Own Children Alone
More than 8 million high school students play a school sport. But of that group, less than one percent will go on to play sports at the collegiate level. And even fewer of those will ultimately go pro.
What do you do when your identity as a student athlete has been stripped away?
Dr. Hillary Cauthen of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology recently spoke to Teen Vogue about this struggle, which impacts many incoming college freshmen.
The Gap Year Association recently named February as “Gap Year Exploration Month,” an event designed to give attention to the options available to students who don’t want to jump right into college.
“Gap Year Exploration Month seeks to empower students to understand the vast array of opportunities available for gap time and research paths that are right for them,” the association wrote in a blog post.
“Behind this initiative is a passionate group of educators, program providers and others who want to help promote the benefits of gap time.”
Continue reading February Declared Gap Year Exploration Month
Editor’s Note: National School Counseling Week, sponsored by ASCA, is always celebrated the first full week in February. Learn more about this year’s celebration and use the comment section below to let us know what you hope your students learn from you.
Every year, I say goodbye to a group of students I’ve shepherded through the college application process. We’ve spent a lot of time together. Obviously, we’ve talked about college. But we’ve also spent a lot of time talking about life, their hopes and dreams, the challenges they’ve faced. As I brace myself for the inevitable separation, this is what I hope they’ve learned from me.
Continue reading A Letter from a Counselor to High School Seniors
A group of admission deans and researchers have banded together to form a new coalition dedicated to studying gap year outcomes.
The new Gap Year Research Consortium—based at Colorado College—will seek to determine how students who take an intentional gap year before college fare upon their return to the classroom.
“As long-time supporters of the gap year movement, we believe that creating a clearinghouse for the research that is going on at colleges and universities around the country is the logical next step in better understanding the positive outcomes that can come from taking a gap year,” Colorado College Vice President of Enrollment Mark Hatch said in a news release.
Continue reading New Consortium Formed to Study Gap Year Outcomes
