If not now, when?

If you're thinking about applying to college, or your child is, this is for you.

So you’re getting ready to apply to college and you’d like to know what’s expected of you. There’s a ton of misinformation swirling around and you have questions, lots of them. This is your one shot, after all, and you'd like to get it right. You’re about to spend four years of your one wild and precious life, not to mention a sizable chunk of your parents’ money, and if you could get some reliable help you’d feel a lot less stressed.

Have I got that right?

Okay, imagine coming upon a window looking directly into the admissions office of your dream school. Everything going on inside— the raw deliberations, unguarded shoptalk, the actual decision making— is suddenly playing out right in front of you. I’m guessing you’d lean in and take a long, hard look and listen. Maybe even have a friendly chat.

Now, if you could just locate that window, you could sort all this out and write the perfect application.

If only.

I wrote this book to be like that window. Open it wide.

I began my career in education as an admissions officer at Harvard College before becoming a college counselor for an educational non-profit in south Los Angeles. I preferred this side of the desk and quickly learned two important things. I learned that whatever their background, any deserving student with a little help can be admitted to, succeed in, and benefit from college. But a second hard truth came with it— too few students have access to even minimal resources. And without it, they either struggle in applying or skip out entirely.

Everyone needs help, even the most self-motivated among us. A few lucky kids will be provided an independent college counselor but at a cost beyond all but the most affluent. Many private high schools have excellent and comprehensive college counseling but, again, only one in ten students will get to take advantage. Most public high school students will rely on a busy school counselor for advice and scheduling keeping if that counselor isn’t overwhelmed with a prohibitively large cohort. The LAUSD school counselors with whom I work in Inglewood and downtown Los Angeles have excellent intentions but not enough hours in the day to allow for the hour-long weekly one-on-one sessions I conduct. And as you will see in the following chapters, having someone with whom you can talk some of this through can be enormously helpful.

Digging for buried treasure sometimes requires more than one shovel.

This is an excerpt of a completed first draft of The Handbook. Rather than wait for a publisher, I’m putting this out here in the hope it may be valuable to someone.

More to come . . .