I asked my Class of 2023 students, “What advice would you give your younger self about the college process?” Their answers, in my opinion, should be required reading for any family embarking on the journey to college. Here are the voices of my wonderful senior class of whom I am very proud.

Tools are there to help us not get bogged down by our weaknesses. But anyone can learn to write. Anyone. Full stop. It is a discipline. It is also a skill that should not be lost to technological advances. Why? Writing requires other skills that are valuable: critical thinking, analysis, wrestling with hard ideas, and slowing down in a frenetic world.

If you are the parent of a high school student, you also wonder how your child can make the best use of their summer with an eye towards college. One of the more common questions I receive from my client families is “What do colleges want students to do with their summer? What looks good?”.

Families do not know how to assess the quality of a college, and lacking the road map to do so, they are left relying on rankings and admit rates. Here are the 5 spheres we recommend looking into in order to properly assess the quality of a college or university (and nail down your application list):