[Podcast] Let’s Get Tactical: How to Build a College List

In today’s podcast episode, I talk about the college list. From navigating super scoring policies to campus visits and holistic considerations, gain valuable insights on creating a tailored list for a seamless college application process. Join me for essential tips and tools to guide you through this crucial phase.

Resources here:
Signet Education’s College List-Building Lab
Personal College Inventory
Sample College List Template
Top Questions to Answer When Researching a College

Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

TRANSCRIPT

Sheila Akbar: 0:00

What a lot of folks don’t understand is how much more control you can have over the process. If you actually invest a good amount of time building the right college list, it will make everything easier for you. If you can target the schools that are actual fits for your child, instead of coming up with a list and trying to get your student to fit the mold of what you think that college wants. Hey, folks, welcome back to the podcast, it’s March. And if your child is a junior, they should be thinking about building their college list. I know I know, it’s junior year, it’s so busy. Oh, my gosh, do we have to do this? Yeah, you should. Because most students are going to want to spend their summers writing their college essays. And you don’t want to start writing an essay. Before you know who your audience is, you really need to know what schools are you targeting, and why so that you can write effective applications to those schools. So today, we’re going to do a tactical episode on how to build a college list. full transparency, this is a replay from this time last year, but this is a new intro, I want to give you the context for this. Controlling the college list is one of the places that you can set yourself up for success, right? You want to, of course, think about what is your student want to study? What kind of a learner are they? Where in the country do they want to live all of these sort of personal preferences, and we’ll talk about that in the rest of this episode. But you also want to be thinking about this a little bit from the college’s perspective, this whole process is for colleges to be able to meet their institutional priorities. So first, think about what your kid needs from a college education. And then you want to match that up with what a college offers. Because that can tell you about their institutional priorities and the programs that they’re trying to develop and the students they’re trying to attract, right. And if you optimize both of those things, really dial in on what your student wants, and where they’re going to thrive and what’s going to set them up for the next phase of their life. And to focus in on those colleges that want a student like yours. Not only are you going to have more success in terms of where your student can get in, you’re also going to have an easier time actually preparing those applications, because your student is not going to be scratching their head, trying to think up an answer to a question of why do you want to go here? Or how do you see yourself contributing to campus? Or how will our schools programs help you achieve your longer term goals, these will be answered before they even start writing their essays. And they’re not going to feel like they are trying to turn themselves into something they’re not into whatever they imagine a college may want. They get to fully stand in their integrity and say this is who I am. And if you know what’s good for you college, you’re going to accept me. It also helps them if there is rejection in the process. Because that does happen. Not everybody gets into every college they apply to. If there is a denial, at some point in the process, they can say, well, I truly represented myself, I tried my best, I didn’t sell out. And they thought I wasn’t a fit. So this isn’t about me not doing enough or being good enough. This is about there not being a fit there between me and this college. And it’s still a hard pill to swallow. But it helps them not take it so personally and not have regrets about what they put in that application. All right, I’m going to start stop rambling about this. And just get into the meat and potatoes here and talk you through how to build a college list. We’re gonna get really practical with how you figure out what your kid wants, how you take that to use free online tools to build an initial college list, how you research schools to see if they truly are a fit and belong on your list and how you refine that list down to your final 12 to 15, including what’s the mix of reach target and likely that you really want to aim for. So check out the show notes for all the resources that I mentioned. How to build a stellar college list. I like to qualify that because you could build any kind of college list you could build a kind of mediocre one you could build one that’s full We’ll have reaches, and very ambitious. But what we want to do is create one, that’s the right list for your student. And nobody can tell you that except for your student. So that’s one of the things that we’re going to focus on is how to figure out what they actually want out of their college experience, so that you can help them identify colleges that will meet those needs. And I always say that college list should be inspiring, it should be exciting and feel like, oh, wow, you’re going to go to great places. But it should also be realistic, realistic, and a couple of ways we want to make sure these are colleges that are appropriate for your child, your your child’s not going to go and fail out or get overwhelmed, or a college where it’s just going to be so easy that they’re not going to grow. So we want it to be appropriate for them. We also want the list to be the right size, so that you’re not overextending them in the number of applications essays that they have to fill out and right. So not too few, not too many, but Goldilocks here, we got to get it just right. And that’s going to be a little different for every student. But I’m going to give you some general guidelines here as to how to navigate all of that. We start with understanding what your kid wants. And it’s important to remember that this is their process and their life. Now, they don’t always know what’s best for them. And they may not always be the best at, you know, following all the steps and completing all the tasks, but it is their college experience and their future that they are building towards. So you want to put them at the center of this process as much as possible. And for a million different reasons. Some kids are just not ready for that they’re scared of it, they feel too much pressure, or they’re just not mature enough to be thinking about what comes after high school. And so a parent will obviously have to be involved may have to step in and do a little bit more of legwork. But at every step of this process, I do encourage you to think about what can I give to my student so that they feel like this is their process, that they’re in control that they are making decisions, even if they’re not having the final say on something, right, give them some peace to own and gradually increase that so that as this process proceeds, they are owning more and more of it, and you are there as an adviser instead of a coordinator or an executor of the tasks. So in that same spirit, what a student wants out of their college experience has to really be driven by what they want, not what you want for them, that’s a piece of it. And so can be really hard to separate what’s important to them versus, you know, what’s them trying to be cool, or keep up with something that they really want to impress. So we like to do an exercise, and we call the personal college inventory. And what I recommend is that you and maybe a partner go through this on your own, or maybe you do two separate versions for each parent. And you have the student do this as well, maybe in separate rooms, maybe even on separate days. And then at some point you come together to compare notes, because you’ll learn a lot about what each other is prioritizing in the process. And it can open up some really wonderful conversations where you can share your own college experiences, or you can connect them to a friend of yours who went to this or that college. And they can learn firsthand what this thing they think they want really looks like. And it will open some avenues of communication that maybe are not there right now, or maybe could be better. And we’d like to start really broad. So you’ll see we start with area of the country, some kids want to get as far away from home as they can or you know, they have certain medical needs that mean they need to stay within a certain climate or within a certain distance from home or where their medical practitioner is. So this is a great place to start. I get a lot of students who are like, I’ll go to New England or the West Coast and nothing in between. What they don’t realize is that there are some really great colleges in those flyover states which I happen to be from one of them that they should absolutely look at, especially if we’re trying to think about where are the colleges that are a great fit for the student, because those are the colleges where the student has the best chances. And I’m sure you all know, I mean, part of the reason you’re here is you know how crazy this process is. It’s so selective, even the most amazingly talented students don’t get into some colleges. So you really do want to make sure you have a balanced list that has a mix of those really tough reach schools that everybody wants to go to, you know, one or two safeties. We’ll talk about this in a minute. And then a good number of target schools and some of those schools may be in geographic regions that your student wouldn’t first think of when you ask them where they want to go to college, but you can still have a really great college expose uriens there, and maybe it still checks all the other boxes. So I encourage you to have a little flexibility about the location, if that’s something that’s possible, given the logistics of your student, we talked about climate. And one of the reasons we talked about this is I want students to think about college as a place that they’re going to live for the next four or five years, not just a place that they’re going to go to college and have this fun academic experience away from home. When you start thinking about it as a place that you’re going to live, you start thinking about other things that matter, like what is the weather, like when you don’t have a car, and you need to walk on foot to whatever place you need to get to? And then we start to get in the type of setting right? Is it a busy city, a downtown campus? Is it in the suburbs, it is it off in the woods somewhere different students have different preferences just based on what they like to do in their free time, or the kind of people they want to be around or opportunities they want to take advantage of, you know, if you know your student really loves learning in a hands on situation, or learning on a job? Well, you want them to be in a place that has those opportunities around. So that might mean being in a suburb or a major city, as opposed to one of these more kind of remote locations. So think about that. We go through size, we go through types of schools, and then certain things about the student body, the academics, what kind of activities the student wants to be able to participate in. And then even something about financial aid, which your student might not understand what the financial aid situation is, or how much your family might be looking for. But this is a place again for for that kind of discussion. And then we encourage them to rank their preferences. What’s the deal breaker, what’s most important to you out of all of these things that you just went through what matters the most to you, and parents should do this as well. And then again, compare the notes and see what comes up for you. And then what you’re going to want to do is take the information that you hopefully get onto the same page about after you’ve gone through the the exercise, you can take it to any one of these search engines and really just plug in your preferences and get back out an initial list. There are a lot of different resources that are available to you for this part of the process of now I know what I’m looking for, how do I go find the schools that match those preferences or needs, your school district probably has a contract with Naviance, or score. If you haven’t heard those terms before, it may not be because your school doesn’t have contract with them. Sometimes they only give you access to these tools. In the spring of your junior year. There are several other platforms that do this kind of work, what they are website portals that you go into. And you can research about schools, their data, the kind of programs they have, you can also see historical data of applicants from your high school, and what their is very rudimentary what their test scores and their GPA was, and whether they were accepted, rejected waitlisted at the specific schools you’re looking at. So obviously, you’ll look at national statistics as well. But then you can see your own high schools history and relationship with various colleges that might be on your list. And that can be very helpful context for knowing how you stack up against the typical applicants from your high school to that college. Big future is the College Board’s big college search engine, it is totally free to use, you just need to have a college board free account to look at it. And it will take you through a couple of parameters where you can check off areas of the country types of majors, you’re looking for size, all of that and it will spit back out colleges give you data on those colleges and link to their direct websites as well. niche.com does almost exactly the same thing, I find the niche interface a little bit better. And you can get a little more granular with the kinds of majors you’re interested in on niche. And of course, your student doesn’t have to know what they want to major in. But if they have a couple of interests, you’re going to want to make sure those are all represented at the schools that you’re looking at. So niche can be really great for finding that college results uses government data to tell you a lot of really valuable statistics about every college. And there’s a really cool similar school search tool that can be very helpful. And then I like to include one print guide in case you or your kid is the kind of person who just likes paging through something. The fist guide is really the best one of these. You know, I want to encourage you to keep an open mind this is still the very first stages of exploration. You do not have to have the perfect school yet. And really what I think is happening at this stage is validating the preferences that you’ve come up with. Right You said you like a school that’s 15,000 or bigger. Well, let’s look at a couple of them. and see how you feel about that size. And then that size preference might change based on what they see in that big school category. So think about it that way, keep an open mind. Most of my students who get to this point of the process have 50, or 60 schools on their list. So we still have a lot of work to do to narrow it down. But we’re starting really broad. It’s really important also to consider selectivity, when you’re building your college list, you can’t have a list that is all reach schools, which mean, the average GPA, the average test scores, the rigor of the curriculum for the students who tend to be admitted to those schools are above where your student is, you have target schools where they’re right in line with what your student has achieved. And then you have likely schools, some people call them safety schools, where we’re fairly certain your student is going to get in because their GPA, their test scores, their activities, and profile tend to be higher than the students who are typically admitted there. And you want to mix of both. And we’ll talk about what the proportion should be. Again, this is very rudimentary scores. And grades are only two parts of the profile that a student will submit to a college. And at many schools, they’re not even looking at test scores anymore, we will talk about that. But that’s a kind of quick and dirty way to judge if your student can make it at one of those schools. And I mean, not just get in, but also succeed in their four years there. So it’s a great place to start. But then you’ve got to get into the more nuanced research to make sure it’s a good fit. And using all of that the preferences, the research that you’ve done, the selectivity, you know, kind of charting that you’ve done, you want to make yourself a spreadsheet. So grab the link from the show notes, and open this up, and I’m gonna walk you through it. Even for those of you who may be listening in the car, I’ll try to paint a good picture of the spreadsheet for you, you’ve essentially got a row for each college, and then a column for a number of different categories. You want to know what the deadlines are, what’s the average GPA of the last year’s freshman class, the average AC T or SATs depending on which your student is going to take if they’re testing at all, the acceptance rate, the student body size, and what kind of setting the colleges in. And then there’s lots of other columns I’ll take you through in a second to capture the more nuanced things that make the school a fit for your student. But at minimum, these categories can help us see patterns in things that, you know, students are liking and have a really quick assessment of what are their chances, and I don’t mean chances like they have a 97% chance of acceptance, but that selectivity category, right, if it’s got a low acceptance rate, and high GPA, high AC t score, that’s going to be a reach college, right? Even students who have perfect test scores and perfect grades. Some of those schools are reaches for everybody, no matter what their stats are. But then, you know, you want to be able to see over time as this list gets more fleshed out and more finalized, that you have a variety of acceptance rates in there. A variety of AC T SATs scores are GPAs that encompass where your students is. But the things that should stay the same, they should have majors that the student likes, again, they don’t have to wed themselves to one. But if they know, for example, it’s going to be in the humanities over the hard sciences, that’s important to look at. Right, they can actually go to the college website and look at the departmental pages for some of the things they think they might be interested in to verify. Yeah, this sounds cool. I like the learning outcomes here. I like the people who teach in this department, I would enjoy these kinds of classes. And as they find things that they like, I encourage my students to just drop a link into the spreadsheet, drop a link to that department page, or the course description, the specific course that you like, the professor’s profile, the clubs that you would want to join, because we want to imagine your life outside of class. And then any special opportunities that could be study abroad programs, undergraduate research, special library collections, anything that really strikes their fancy that they find on the college’s website. And then if there are other things that students like that just don’t fit into one of these categories, I encourage them to write that here. On a lot of occasions, if they go on a tour of the school, and they hear something really cool from a tour guide, or they saw some really cool building, they had a chance to talk to a professor or a student. I want them to capture that here. And then teenagers are really good at telling you what they don’t like sometimes they’re a little hesitant to tell you what they do like, but if you ask them what do you hate about this campus, they’ll have a million things to say is important to capture that too because it ends up being a deal breaker and you know this exists at another camp. Best while then there’s no point in visiting that campus or even doing the research on that campus. Or if everything else about the school is perfect, except for this one thing, well, then you can use that similar institution tool that I showed you to find maybe the school that is similar enough, but avoids this one thing that they really dislike, right. So keep track of that as well. And the reason I encourage my students to be so detailed in their research and keep track of all of these things, is number one. As they research more and more colleges, they all kind of blend together, it’s very hard to keep them straight. So you want to document it somewhere. So you can see that number two is if they decide they’re going to apply to this college, the entire purpose of the college application is to argue why I as a student am a match for you as a college. And this is what they want to hear. Right? It’s not going to end up in your main essay, which goes to all of the colleges. But if the college requires a supplemental essay, or has an interview process, these are the things that your student is going to want to mention that shows they’ve done their research, they are truly enthusiastic about the school. And they can say, hey, I have done this thing for four years in high school where I, I don’t know ran an environmental science club or a conservation club, let’s say, and your university has seven programs related to environmental science and policy. And this is exactly what I want to do with my life. And there’s no literally no better place to do it than your program. Because I’m going to take advantage of you know, this study abroad opportunity, I’m going to do research with this professor on this topic that I’ve already done some work on, you can say things like that, which really do make a student stand out and help a college have confidence that you do want to go there, which is one of the things they’re checking for. And also help you avoid saying the generic things that everybody else is gonna say, this is how you differentiate yourself. Instead of saying, Oh, I like NYU, because I love New York City. Well, hello, there are lots of other colleges in New York City, right, and there are going to be 100 Other students saying those things, right, you really need to say something that only you can say about only that college. And this research is how you figure that out. So if you’re going to do the research in the first place to build the list, keep that research so that if you do apply to that college, you have it at your fingertips. And of course, you can modify the spreadsheet as you like, you can add a column for whether we visited what date we visited any notes and pictures from the visit, you can link in here. And that can be very helpful. All right, so let’s move on to sort of next step in the process, which is you have this giant list. And now you’ve got to narrow it down, because not all 60 or 70, whatever on your initial list are going to be true fits, you know, parents might have feelings about them, students might have nothing on them. So there might be some conflict around what really does belong on the list. And then beyond that, you also need to be realistic about how much work this is going to be. So, you know, in my experience, I’ve been doing this for a long time, there is just no way to send in high quality applications to more than 15 colleges. So that’s where my list tops out. Because you are going to spread yourself thin, you’re going to say the same thing to more than one college. And they’re going to be able to tell that it’s not as authentic or that you didn’t spend as much time on this essay as you could have to make it really compelling and just really sing out in your true voice. So I encourage you to keep it tight, narrow it down to no more than 12 to 15 schools. And generally I say two to three safety schools, six to eight target schools, and three to four reach schools, right, you never want to stop a student from applying to a school that they just are enamored with. But you do want to diversify this portfolio and protect yourself from the risk of maybe not getting into any school if you put too many eggs in that one basket. So break it up a little bit. And what you’ll see is that every one of those schools should be a great fit, they should be happy to go any of those schools. And the real difference in them is the selectivity not in the programs that are offered, or in maybe not the size or anything like that they should really check all the boxes for preferences. It’s just that some are more selective than others. And then, you know, really do open up the discussion, there will be disagreements we find it is best to listen with an open mind, even if the idea is ridiculous. Listen, and also remember that this is just the list, right? The list can change. Also, just because you apply doesn’t mean you have to go. And this is one point in the process where a student is really in control, and they’re going to feel like they’re not in control for a good portion of their senior year waiting for these decisions. So maybe you want to left them have their, you know, one college that you think is a terrible idea, but they are really excited about it. You know, choose your battles, let them have something and then you can have that fight if it’s going to be a fight when they get their acceptances. And then I wanted to touch on testing strategy because as you all know, most colleges went test optional. Over the course of the pandemic. Many were test optional. Even before the pandemic, there were, I think, 1300 schools that were test optional before the pandemic even started. And now it’s something like maybe over 1800 Some schools that went test optional during the pandemic decided to make their test optional policy is permanent, meaning you can apply with or without LSAT or AC T scores, and they will not disadvantage you some colleges decided no, we really need to bring this back, because it helps us make a meaningful decision about whether a student can succeed at our university. So Purdue brought this back, and my tea brought it back. A lot of the schools in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, have reinstituted their test requirements. So you want to pay attention to what the school’s policies are, as you’re building your list, depending on what your students testing strengths or not strengths are. So I recommend if you are have a sophomore, I recommend just doing some practice tests to see if testing is going to be a strength for them. Because if they can score above a colleges average, we have seen that submitting that score will actually help them in the process. So if they have strong scores relative to the college, they should submit. But there are some students where testing is just not their strength. And that’s fine. And there are many pathways for them. But the other pieces of the application end up becoming more important. If you do end up going test optional, meaning you’re not going to submit test scores. So I like to have people investigate this question at the end of sophomore year. So that if you do decide, you’re going to go test optional, you have enough time to work on grades, take extra rigorous courses, build very strong relationships with your teachers, do more extracurricular activities take on leadership roles community service, you have time to actually do that, instead of deciding spring of junior year when you have you know, three to six months before applications need to be turned in. So get an early read on that. But it’s also really important to know what the current policy is because some of these colleges that decided to go test optional said until 2023, we will be test optional, and they have not announced what they’re going to do for next year. or the year after that. Some of them have announced you know, all the way till 2026. And some of them were just waiting. So we don’t know yet. So in the case that your students dream school requires tests, you need to know that ahead of time so that you have enough time to prep for the test and get the score that you want. So take a look at that, as you’re building out this list. I think it’s also really important to take note colleges super score policy. So a super score is when a student takes the test multiple times. But the college will take the highest section scores across all administrations and combine them as though they were taken in one sitting. So if they take the LSAT, they really did well on the verbal section the first time but not too long, the math, they take it a second time their math score goes up, they’re going to take that higher verbal score and the higher math score and put them together. Now, vast majority of colleges do super score. There are differences in terms of which college is super score, the LSAT versus super score, the AC T, there are some colleges that will do one but not the other. And it seems very unfair to me, but this is what their policy is. And there are some colleges that don’t super score at all. So you want to be aware of that as you embark on this testing journey so you know what you’re aiming for. Alright, so let’s move to refining this list. There are lots of ways you can refine it. Certainly doing the research and logging their enthusiasm is a great way to do that. Visiting the campuses is another way to do that. Because sometimes it just feels right or feels wrong. You know, trust your gut is what I like to say was when you go on campus, your body is picking up on something that you may not be able to articulate yet. And maybe it’s about the weather, but it’s important to listen to or at least register. Consider the logistics of getting to and from each school like is this a plane ride away? Is this a bus and a train? Is this a long drive? Who’s doing that drive? How often are they going to be able to get home and how important is that to you? Over the pandemic we saw a lot of people kind of just contract, right? We want to keep our kids close in case something scary like this happens again. And that’s having real impact on the numbers of students that are applying to different types of schools in their own regions and also causing colleges to want to reach out and recruit offer merit scholarships to students who live in different regions so that they can kind of diversify their pool as well. And then I’ve said this before, but really try to have your student imagine their life there. What does that look like outside of the classes and the diploma they might get? Like, what is your daily life look like? Are you going to go to the gym? Are there clubs that you want to join? Who are your friends going to be? What are you going to do? If you want to hang out off of campus? What’s there for you? So take a take a kind of more holistic look at the environment. And then you can always do more research. Now, here’s another resource for you that’s linked in the show notes. It’s a worksheet called top questions to answer when researching a college, these are a lot more detailed than the ones that are on the spreadsheet. And if you’re really having trouble deciding whether a college stays on the list or not, these are the kinds of questions you really want to dig into. So as you refine this list down to your final 12 to 15. Schools, what I recommend is turning this research spreadsheet that I’ve been showing you into a sort of priority organizing project management tool, right, it’s gonna have due dates, whether the students applying early action, early decision, specific other application requirements, maybe a link to the actual application portal, if not the common app. So what I recommend is creating a Google folder with all of the important documents that you need for that school, usually your essays, I typically recommend one Google document per school, but some students for whatever reason, like a different document for each essay, put it all in a folder, so you don’t lose it. And then I asked my students to put in the actual supplemental essay question and the word count right into the spreadsheet. And there are spaces for eight supplemental questions here. Yes, there are some schools that ask up to eight, even more supplemental questions. So keep that in mind. As you build your list, some schools are going to require more work from you than others. And the reason I have them do this whole section here is because there are only so many questions that a college can ask, most of them are going to ask why do you want to go to this school? Or what do you think of our mission statement? Or what are your areas of academic interest, or tell us about a meaningful extracurricular activity that you do. And if you lay all of these out for your 12 to 15, schools, you’re gonna see those overlaps. And I have my students color code them and highlight them. So you could say, alright, well, here are all my questions, I’m going to use this one essay that’s on my extracurricular activity for these six schools. And yes, they will have different word counts, and you’re gonna have to tailor them to each school. But they can follow the same sort of template, once you write at once. And that will really make your writing work a lot more efficient, and you have an opportunity to write something really strong once, and then tailor it, which is easier than writing from scratch every single time. So I have one of these spreadsheets for every single one of my students, they know we’re going to look at it every time. And whether they hate spreadsheets or not, I tell them, you know, at some point in your college career, or your actual working career, you’re gonna have to get to know how to use a spreadsheet. So might as well learn it now. And then as you’re finalizing this list, and usually I like to see a list sort of finalized by the end of June of junior year, you want to get some second opinions here, get someone else to look at it, because it can be very easy to get lost in the weeds here. And sometimes that second opinion can be really helpful. Now, your high school counselor should absolutely have a say in what colleges go on this list. They may not be to the point of taking things off or adding things but they may have ideas for you. Or they may be able to give you helpful context. So that’s it. I know, it’s not a simple process. It’s not something that’s going to happen in a day or even a week, you really do want to be as thoughtful as you can about this, and give yourself and your child real space to grapple with the questions that I’ve put to you here. And then of course, the research process is going to take time. But I hope that the framework I’ve given you starting with introspection and reflection, to identify initial preferences, validating those preferences, and then doing further research to understand what’s unique about each of the schools on your list and how those may serve a particular students goals. I hope that that framework gives you a way to move through this process where you feel like okay, I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m looking for, and I know what my end goal should be, which is a great diverse list of 12 to 15 colleges, any of which my student would be thrilled to go to and be able to do exactly what they want to do after college. If they went there. As always, check out my LinkedIn page, or the Signet website. For more free resources and this kind of information, you might consider getting on our mailing lists where we’ll actually mail you these tools and take you through things step by step around the college list building process and a lot of other aspects of the college process and just navigating High School. So check that out, and come back for more. Okay, parent, for sure, I just threw a ton of information at you, there are a lot of steps, this is not something you’re gonna get done in a day, this is going to take several weeks, and a lot of reflection time and research time on the part of your student. So give it some space, digest it, come back, listen in little clips, and then you’ll get through it. But if you feel like you need a little bit more help, if you feel like this is gonna go so much better if I were talking directly to your student, and you didn’t have to kind of play this game of telephone with them and try to motivate them on your own. We all know teenagers like listening to other people more than their parents. I have a live bootcamp coming up starting on March 24. It’s going to be four sessions once a week for about an hour and 15 minutes each. And I am going to personally guide students through these reflection exercises through the research process and the tracking and the narrowing to help them get a good college list in place that you can then go use to restructure your visits, and plan out your summer writing. And all of the things that I talked about benefit of investing in doing a college list up ahead of time, you’re going to be able to take advantage of all of that. And I’m completely full on working with one on one students. So if you think you want your students who are with me personally, this is one of the only ways they’re going to be able to do that. So please check that out on our circle community. And on our website. We’ll also link it in the show notes. And if that feels like it’s a fit for you or your kid, please sign up. Alright, that’s all folks. We’ll see you next week. Bye bye.

[Podcast] Let’s Get Tactical: How to Build a College List

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