For all of you seniors who are waiting to hear from UCs, here’s a quick update.

– You should hear from all UCs by March 31^st.

– If you receive an invitation to be placed on a waitlist, you need to respond.  You are not automatically placed on the waitlist.

– If you are on a waitlist for your #1 college, you still need to accept and pay the deposit to another college to ensure that you are going to college in the fall.  You will lose your deposit from – that college if you are accepted to and plan to attend your #1 college (waitlisted on).

– If you are positive you want to attend the UC you’ve been accepted to, submit your Statement of Intent (SIR) with your $250 deposit before May 1^st.

– Sign up for Orientation ASAP; some colleges require that students attend Orientation before the start of the new term.

– Submit all high school and college transcripts, AP/IB and or A-Level exam results by July 15^th.  Make sure you receive a C- or better in all classes; colleges may rescind enrollment to students whose grades have dropped below a C-.

– Withdraw your application from other campuses after you decide where you are going to college; this gives colleges the opportunity to offer enrollment to waitlisted students.

With artificial intelligence and robotics capable of calculating and producing products and doing what people have done for centuries, the future of jobs for human beings will be creative, critical and social. So why are classes designed to teach students to act like machines? Regurgitating facts and sitting quietly in rows doesn’t stimulate innovation. As the director at Merit Academy, I have been approached by several Chinese schools (public and private) to help them improve their rote curriculum.  Their students are bright, eager to please, and hardworking but they can’t compete in our entrepreneurial and technological world because they aren’t taught to analyze and think critically.

The average Chinese class size is 50, but many classes have as many as 80 students. In order to manage a class size that large, teaching has to be a one-way lecture and learning has to be done with worksheets and multiple choice answers. Students don’t learn how to write research papers or literary analyses.  Imagine editing 80 essays for one class? It’s simply impossible for a teacher to manage.

I take pride in watching Merit students thrive.  With one-on-one classes where teachers engage in conversations with students, and students are encouraged to think outside the box and explore concepts and ideas in depth, it is really the ideal environment for developing our future leaders.  I’ve met with the teachers and love to hear their plans for each student they teach. The students ranked their teachers with the highest ratings possible. My favorite role is as their college advisor who guides the students as they launch their projects. Each student finds their passion and sets out to change the world.  Imagine if all schools – Chinese included — encouraged this type of leadership? We could solve many of the problems we face today. I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world to have this opportunity.

Now that most college application deadlines have passed, you’re probably wondering what you’ll be doing with all of your free time.

After all, you’ve spent every free moment writing essays, completing applications, requesting letters of recommendation, and putting together portfolios or videos (art, film, and dance students) for the past 4 months!

And to think you did all of the above while taking a full load of classes your senior year.  Wow! Pat yourself on the back!

Before senioritis sets in, here are 5 things you can, and should, do to make sure your applications receive the best reviews:

1. Check your emails.  I know you’re receiving a ridiculous number of emails each day but pay attention to the ones from the colleges you’ve applied to.  If they’re missing something that you know you’ve submitted, it is YOUR responsibility to resend it.  So do check to see what they’re asking for.
2. Create portals.  If your colleges allow you to set up portals, do it!  You’ll be able to see where you are in the application review process and be up to date on anything they’re missing.  You’ll also see when they’re planning Admit Days where you get to meet other students who have been admitted for Fall 2016.
3. Email them with updates.  If you did a project, this is a great opportunity for you to give them an update.  Tell them the good news that’s taken place since you submitted your application.  You could even create an event to create more news! J
4. Organize a college tour of the colleges you’ve been accepted to.  Schedule this during spring break or on weekends before May 1^st. Try to set up an overnight at your top colleges so you can really get a feel for the college life.
5. Apply for outside scholarships.  While you’re on a roll with all of your essays, you probably can reuse some of the essays if the prompts are similar.  Check with your high school counselor to see what scholarships they think might work for you.  Ask your parents if their employers have scholarships available.

When you’re done with these 5 tips, then it’s time to enjoy the rest of your senior year.  You’ll have until May 1^st to decide where you’re going to college next year.  But, don’t forget: keep your grades up or you might lose your college admissions offers!

So you can relax… to a certain extent!

In our fast-paced world where information can be had in mere seconds from millions of readily available sources, reading for depth has become an anomaly. Standardized tests require students to read passages quickly and answer multiple-choice questions within a short time span.  The timed test is really unnecessary and produces inaccurate results. The testing organization is not interested if your ability to fully understand, ponder philosophically, and then render an answer.  Nope!  They want to see what you can take away from the question under pressure in a conveniently short period of time.

In order to ace the ACT or SAT college entrance exams, students flock to take speed reading classes so they can skim over passages to make educated guesses.  When students speed read, however, they don’t comprehend what they read as if they read it at normal speed. You can’t analyze or think critically when you’re reading fast. All you get is the gist of the passage, which is simply superficial knowledge.

So if students take in bits and pieces of what they read, they’re possibly making bad decisions or assumptions that can lead to big problems.  After all, it’s easy to miss important words like “NOT” and completely misunderstand the passage. Applying speed reading to real life, the speed reader would have to spend unnecessary time fixing their mistakes – something they could have avoided by simply reading at a healthy pace to understand the text.

I love the quote by Einstein, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

So rather than rereading what you didn’t understand because you were speed reading, just read for depth the first time.  Block off time when you aren’t rushed or pressured and then read for knowledge.  You’ll be smarter for it, and you’ll do better on any test.