Your Roadmap to the Naval Academy: A Strategic Application Guide Planning for applying to the Naval Academy starts early. You can’t wake up senior year and just add it to your Common App. Preparing for the Naval Academy: A Four-Year Timeline Ninth Grade: Explore and Begin Start early by visiting the Naval Academy and attending an admissions session to understand

It’s for those who love structure and serving the country. USNA: Part 1 of 2 It’s as prestigious as MIT, on par with the Ivies as the #3 best liberal arts college in the U.S., and it provides a free education worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that’s not what makes the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, special.

Institutional updates Kelly Ball, director of JMU admissions, gave counselors an update just before the release of Early Action decisions. James Madison University’s new president, James C. Schmidt, is implementing a strategic plan with four phases: listen, envision, create, and implement. JMU athletic success led the football team to a college playoff appearance (they lost to Oregon). The new state-of-the-art

I took a UniTru (https://www.theunitru.com/) tour on January 21 with a student at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She showed me the campus through a conferencing app on her phone. It was a bit jumpy for my stomach, but I got to revisit the campus (I was there in 2025 with an IECA tour) and refresh my memory.  My tour

Application Types & Deadlines Conditional Acceptance: Admission to a college contingent upon meeting certain requirements (such as completing prerequisites or achieving specific grades). Contributor: On the FAFSA, a contributor is anyone (student, parent, stepparent, spouse) required to provide their personal and financial info, plus consent to pull IRS tax data directly, for the form to be processed and determine eligibility for federal

A ACT (American College Testing): A standardized college admission test featuring three required sections (English, Math, and Reading) and two optional sections (Science and Writing/essay). The composite score (1-36 scale) is calculated as the average of English, Math, and Reading scores only. The Science section, which became optional starting in April 2025 for digital tests and September 2025 for paper

Waiting is hard.  Whether you were deferred or just waiting for later admission decisions, like UMD Early Action decisions on February 1 or Regular Decision answers that come in March and April, you’re stuck in that very hard place of having to wait. It may seem that you are powerless, but you aren’t. You can take meaningful action. First, focus

Why Documentation Matters Don’t trust your memory! After visiting multiple campuses, details start to blur. That picturesque quad–was it at UVA or Richmond? The amazing recreation center–LSU or Alabama? Thorough documentation is your best friend for making informed college decisions. If you don’t have a preferred note-taking system, you can use this handy sheet, either electronically or by printing it

If you applied in the Early Action/Early Decision round, you’ve probably started hearing from some of your colleges by now. I hope you’ve opened an email or letter in your portal that starts with “Congratulations!” and confetti. I know how disappointing it is to read “We regret to inform you that we cannot offer you admission. . . .”  Or

One life skill that I like to teach my college-curious kids is calendaring. It’s common for Mom to maintain a master calendar for the family, and that makes sense when the family has so many moving parts. But as teens hit their junior and senior year of high school, they need to be responsible for scheduling and managing their own