Applying to College

Seniors

Senior Meetings are required for all seniors! Please schedule your meeting AT LEAST 2 weeks before your first deadline in order to secure a counselor letter of recommendation.

Please bring or email to your counselor ahead of time:

Your list of colleges and/or College tracking spreadsheet with deadlines
Completed Reference form
Updated Resume (Resume Design Help/presentation)
Drafts of any essays you've written
Questions

More resources:

STEM College Planning Handbook
- Tesla STEM specific help on applications, college choices, and senior timelines!
Financial Aid Info
CollegeEssayGuy Free Resources
The Tesla STEM Counseling Teams page for much more!

First page of the PDF file: College_Planning_Handbook_CO2021

Reference Form

First page of the PDF file: CollegeAdmissionsGuidefromNACAC2018

Resources For Reducing College Admissions Stress

Resources For Reducing College Admissions Stress

Chronic college admissions stress is not inevitable, and you can eradicate most of it.

lesshighschoolstress.com will help you reduce your stress.

Part 1 offers a new way of defining stress and examines how admissions stress originates, how bad it is for you, and what the four options are for addressing stress.

Part 2 provides overwhelming evidence that anxiety regarding gaining admission to the most selective college possible is unnecessary. The range of college selectivity–from those that admit 5% of their applicants to those that have open admissions–is a continuum with significant overlap, not a pyramid with discrete steps. Thus, the distance between the most selective colleges and those that are a bit less selective is significantly smaller than most people believe.These pages contain multiple ways of looking at this, including an in-depth examination of how small the differences are between the most selective colleges and their ‘backups’ on some of the criteria used in popular rankings (page 5). There’s also a clear, simple explanation for why admission to the most selective colleges is so much more difficult today than it was 20 years ago.

And there are lots of fun lists, including which universities have the highest number of students in the top 5% on math test scores (pages 3-4); where CEOs of well-known US companies went to college ; where NASA rocket scientists and currently active astronauts studied; where Mayo Clinic neurologists did their undergraduate work; and where members of the class of 2017 working as law associates at Skadden Arps completed their undergraduate studies.

Part 3 shows the perhaps obvious solution.

Find YOUR Best Fit!

CollegeEssayGuy's How to Choose What Colleges to Apply to
Insightful information about how to choose which colleges might be right for you.
CollegeMatch's College Inventory
Survey to help you analyze which of the 17 most common factors are most important to you in finding the "right-fit" college.
CollegeMatch's Personal Inventory This survey helps you analyze what kind of personal experience you are looking for in a college

Discover Careers, Research Colleges, and Explore Your Interests!

Xello

Find it all within your personalized Xello account now!

Bonus: Free (to LWSD students) full length ACT/SAT prep courses included with Xello!

College Planning for 9th & 10th Grade

College Planning for 11th Grade

Junior College Planning

Resources for Juniors:

Individual Family/Counselor Junior Meeting Information
Parent Resources
Presentations and walk-throughs
Application Help
College Research Help
Post-high school Planning Handbook
Month-by-month timeline
Financial Aid and Scholarship Information
Virtual College Visits & College Fairs
And more!

Junior College Planning Calendar

College Planning for Seniors

Senior Meetings are required for all seniors! Please schedule your meeting AT LEAST 2 weeks before your first deadline in order to secure a counselor letter of recommendation.

Please bring or email to your counselor ahead of time:

Your list of colleges and/or College tracking spreadsheet with deadlines
Completed Reference form
Updated Resume (Resume Design Help/presentation)
Drafts of any essays you've written
Questions

More resources:

STEM College Planning Handbook
- Tesla STEM specific help on applications, college choices, and senior timelines!
Financial Aid Info

College Search Tools

bigfuture.collegeboard.org
College matching tool which identifies college fit through personalized search filters. Also has good information on potential college majors and careers.
C ollegeNavigator Government website with highly accurate and updated college search. Includes easily readable individual college information and a College Affordability Center.
Co llegeResults.org – An excellent way to compare colleges and discover new comparable institutions
Colleges That Change Lives listings-Small liberal arts colleges that are consistently rated in the top academic tier and praised for building character.

Rankings

College Visits and Virtual Tours

College Virtual Tour Database (Compiled by Rebecca Chabrow, M.A.)
Includes links to virtual tours, Youtube channels, and more for over 900 colleges and universities!

YouVisit
Offers immersive, 360º tours for many colleges

eCampusTours
Virtual tours of over 1,300 campuses; plus career exploration!

NACAC Official Website
Find national college tours & resources for college preparation brought to you by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors

Virtual College Fairs

NACAC Spring College Fair - May 2nd, 2021
BigFuture Days College Fairs - April 18th (Midwest) & 29th (Southeast)

NACAC Spring College Fair - May 2nd, 2021

BigFuture Days College Fairs - April 18th (Midwest) & 29th (Southeast)

We know that the pandemic and the cost of travel have made it hard for students to visit colleges, so we're bringing colleges to YOU with BigFuture™ Days college fairs.

We have two events left this school year, so be sure to encourage sophomores and juniors at your school to register today. They can chat directly with hundreds of college admissions reps and current college students. We're also hosting college planning sessions about important topics for sophomores and juniors like financial aid, scholarships, and more.

Students who attended the BigFuture Days Northeast and West + Southwest events in March said it was "the most informative college event I've ever attended" and had "essential information I never would've come across anywhere else."

Students: Register

Midwest: Sunday April 18th

University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Chicago, Northwestern, WashU, and more will be there.

Southeast:Thursday April 29th

University of Georgia, Florida State University, Johns Hopkins, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and more will be there.