June 2021

In June we excitedly welcomed Alyssa to our team as our Intern. Alyssa was a Running Start student and now attends WSU and is pursuing a Business degree in Marketing with a minor in Digital Technology & Culture. We have several back-end projects for her and know her contributions will be helpful and valuable.

Our seniors graduated and are heading off to so many fantastic schools! We are so proud of them! Our juniors, who are now seniors, are busy working on college lists and essays, along with so many creative and meaningful summer activities. Freshmen and sophomores also have amazing summers planned--everyone is busy and we're feeling COVID less and less.

Some of the webinars we attended this month included the Sisters Colleges; Macalester; Brandeis, Case Western, George Washington, and Rochester; Conversations with admission deans of Barnard and Stanford; and What's New With the Common App.

Common App changes include many about the data entry such as name preference, gender identity, citizenship, parent info., military info., and school discipline (removing). The problem solving essay question is being replaced with a prompt about gratitude, and there are some small updates in the testing, and courses and grades.  For the Recommenders, school discipline is being removed, the ability to add an additional report will be available, preview will be available, and they can submit to multiple schools. While these changes may seem small, they reflect positive changes to keep up with current trends, but more importantly, they create more equity in the process.

Our software provider has made several updates and we participated in a webinar to review those, and also spent time digging in and becoming more familiar with the upgrades. 

Lastly, many families of students in all grades continue to meet with us as they seek counseling in the college admissions process.