No. You won’t be applying for the scholarships. But you will (and should) be an integral part of the scholarship search and application process. If you want your student to be successful (translation: more money for college), you need to get involved. Be the cheerleader cheering them on to success. Be the taskmaster assuring they stay on task. And be the errand boy (or girl) by helping out when needed.

Here are 10 scholarship tips for parents:

1. Discuss the importance of scholarships—Your college bound teen should know that scholarships will not only help you, but they will help him by not having student loan debt when he graduates. The more money you win, the less you have to worry about college costs.
2. Encourage the extracurriculars—Outside activities are critical when applying for most scholarships. If they aren’t required, it’s an added bonus to the application and paints a positive picture for the scholarship judges.
3. Start early—It’s never too early to begin the search. Keep your eyes and ears open to scholarship opportunities and pass them along to your student. There are indeed scholarships for all ages.
4. Check with your employers—Many companies have employee sponsored scholarship programs for the employees and their dependents.
5. Block off time for the search—Set aside at 30 minutes a day to search for scholarships, and more if it’s possible. Searching for scholarships is just like job hunting: you have to put in the work to reap the rewards.
6. Encourage your child to create accounts on free scholarship search sites—Check out these posts for some sites to bookmark: How to Find Scholarships Online, 7 Great Scholarship Search Sites, 56 College Info Websites, 50 More College Prep Websites.
7. Proofread your child’s scholarship application and essay—Check for errors and omissions. These few things can make the difference between an award and ending up in the reject pile.
8. Pay attention to deadlines—Late applications will not be considered. Find a filing and organizing method that works best for you and your child to stay on top of deadlines.
9. Check with the high school guidance counselor—Encourage your child to meet with his guidance counselor and express interest in scholarships.
10. Encourage persistence—Don’t stop searching. The more your student applies, the more chances he has to win.

Although many of us enjoy family vacations when our children are young, traveling with teenagers is notoriously difficult, with many people assuming it’s impossible to find a way of doing it that will be interesting to all involved. More often than not, that’s simply because they’re going about it the wrong way. Taking teenagers traveling isn’t about keeping them entertained – it’s about talking in advance about their interests and planning trips that will give them the opportunity to learn and grow. Let them take the lead and you might be surprised by how much you learn.

Real life learning

No matter how much time has been spent on study, there’s nothing like learning in real life. It’s particularly useful right before young people go away to college – giving them the chance to take the lead in organizing some parts of the trip will enhance the life skills they need to get by on their own and will show them that they are respected as capable individuals. Giving them the chance to see famous monuments and historic buildings with their own eyes will make the things these places represent much more real to them and help them to understand how they fit into the world.

Washington D.C.

To cultivate an understanding of American history, nothing is more valuable than a trip to Washington, D.C. – a chance to see (and perhaps tour) the White House, visit the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and explore the Capitol Building and Library of Congress. The city has some magnificent museums, including the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum – great places to explore for someone about to commence a college career. Key historical documents can be found in the National Archives, and if there’s time left over, you can soak up some culture at the National Gallery of Art.

Philadelphia

Once the capital of the United States, Philadelphia is the place where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed, and you can still visit Independence Hall where it all happened. Just opposite, there’s the Liberty Bell Center, and the architecture you will see in the city’s older streets tells its own story about the early days of American history. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has far more to offer than just the cool set of steps where Rocky Balboa trained; hidden treasures like the Eastern State Penitentiary speak to the beginnings of a distinctively American value system, and when you want some downtime you can go check out the Philadelphia Flyers.

New Orleans

Perhaps the single most important site for French cultural influence in the early United States, New Orleans has a rich culture also influenced by the Spanish and by survivors of the slave trade. Despite the damage done by Hurricane Katrina, it still has many beautiful old examples of European-style architecture, and its old inhabitants are remembered in spectacular tombs. It has a wealth of museums to explore, from the Voodoo Museum to the Backstreet Cultural Museum, and it’s the site of Chalmette Battlefield, where you can learn about the Battle of New Orleans.

One of the best jobs you can get today is a job with the government, especially with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The benefits are unbeatable, the pay is excellent and you get some of the best experience possible in your field of endeavor. There’s just one problem: Government jobs aren’t easy to get. Sure, some of the lower-paying ones might be attainable, but the best jobs out there require extensive training and a comprehensive education.

Main Misconceptions

You are probably thinking that you’ll have to move to Washington, D.C., to find a federal job, but that’s not true. According to Forbes.com, you can find a government job in all 50 states, as well as overseas, with the 84 percent of them of them located outside of the nation’s capital.

Even though the government has a federal deficit and is cutting out some jobs, your chances of getting hired are high, with over 2.3 million federal civilian employees out there. At least one quarter of these workers are eligible to retire, so the government is always seeking qualified people to fill those vacancies.

Basic Requirements

To get a job with the U.S. Department of Commerce, you’ll probably need at least a bachelor’s degree in economics or a related field. You’ll also need to have three years of specialized trade promotion experience. You must also be a U.S. citizen, between the ages of 21 and 59. In addition, you must be available to work in a worldwide setting, and you must be able to move around the world, if needed.

You may be required to relocate every three to four years. You must also be able to obtain medical and Top Secret Clearances and pass a drug test. It might seem like a lot, but you probably already qualify if you’re not a convicted felon and you live a responsible, healthy lifestyle.

The Application Process

There are plenty of jobs available with the government, but only the most advanced credentials will secure you a job in this marketplace. The application process for working with the U.S. government is exhaustive. You must complete a competitive oral and written exam. You must also be willing to wait. The U.S. government often takes six months or longer to fill some jobs.

After you complete the exam, they may call you in to complete a one-day oral assessment before they make a final decision. If you pass the assessment, they place you on a waiting list, called the Rank Order Register. This list is valid for a period of two years. From here, you wait.

The U.S. government fills jobs when vacancies open up. You also need to pass Top Secret security clearance, a medical clearance and a drug screening, too.

Limited Appointments

You can work for the government in a more limited capacity through limited appointments. Limited, non-career, Foreign Service officers are members of the general public that the government hires as foreign commercial service officers for a specific job, duty station or tour of duty, based on a specialized skill or experience. These job assignments are typically limited to two years for the first assignment.

You can’t work for the U.S. Commercial Service for more than five consecutive years, and there are no promises that your contract will extend beyond the two years. In fact, there’s no promise that you will be assigned for the full two years on your first assignment.

Taking the Civil Service Exam

Taking a civil service exam is standard part of the application process. Even if you have your heart set on working for the U.S. Department of Commerce, there are many other jobs available within other areas of the government. These jobs are listed at the government web portal, usajobs.gov, through the Office of Personnel Management. You can search their website for the type of job you are looking for, the specific department you want to work in, your skills, or even your location.

Although the process may seem laborious and complicated, obtaining a job in the U.S. government can provide many excellent opportunities like training, for example. The salaries federal workers receive are highly competitive with the private sector. For example, middle management jobs can pay over $100,000 per year. In addition, the federal health insurance and retirement benefits are often superior to the programs corporations offer.

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Lisa Mills is an independent labor researcher with a love for education and career opportunities. She enjoys blogging about the options and benefits of a variety of fields.

The essay. Believe it or not, it’s a topic covered in teen angst shows—and when it’s covered, the parents end up writing the essays for their students. Why? Because the students are usually dreading, dreading, dreading writing the essay. And on top of that, they have no idea what to write or how to write it.

Apart from writing the essay yourself (you know you’re tempted—but resist with everything that is in you) here are some essay tips you can pass along to discreetly and subtly to your college-bound teen.

Answering the Common App Essay Prompts

The big idea here is that the story you want to tell matters a lot more than the prompt you attach to it. Most stories are about more than one thing, so yours might be about identity and failure, or about contentment and coming of age. So write the story first, and then figure out how to pitch it to an admissions committee. Having said that, it’s still useful to understand the questions.

5 Topics to Avoid in the College Application Essay

There’s a reason why schools require students to include essays, and it’s not just to see a sample of their writing ability. With thousands of applicants sporting similar qualifications and too few spots to accommodate them, something has to tip the scales, and it just might be the essay section. Picking the wrong one could mean getting a rejection letter. So here are just a few topics that students may want to steer clear of,

10 Tips for Writing More Competitive College Application Essays

With college admissions season in full swing, students nationwide are beginning to prepare their applications. While many of the academic elements like GPA, class rank and SAT score are set, one part of the application that students still exercise control over are the essays. To help students write competitive essays that will help get them noticed by admissions officers, Veritas Prep, the largest global provider of test prep and admissions consulting services, teamed up with Application Boot Camp®, America’s top college consulting firm, to offer ten tips students should follow as they draft their college application essays,

The College Essay Demystified

College essays go through many lives.  You will write, re-write, and re-write again, over a period of weeks or even months.  Inspiration can hit at any time.You want to have lots of time for your essays to percolate, to have those magic light bulb moments, or maybe even to wake up in the middle of the night from a dream and write a brilliantly creative essay (this really does happen!).

12 Essay Experts on Twitter

These twitter accounts are essay coaches—they help you write your OWN college essay by providing encouragement, guidance and support throughout the essay writing process. Follow them for tips about the essay and connect with them if your student needs help.

Read Wendy’s Post: Best Questions for Parents to Ask to Help with the College Essay

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Wednesday’s child may be full of woe but Wednesday’s Parent can substitute action for anxiety. Each Wednesday Wendy and I will provide parent tips to get and keep your student on the college track. It’s never too late or too early to start!

The bonus is on the fourth Wednesday of each month when Wendy and I will host Twitter chat #CampusChat at 9pm ET/6pm PT. We will feature an expert on a topic of interest for parents of the college-bound.

Wednesday’s Parent will give twice the info and double the blog posts on critical parenting issues by clicking on the link at the end of the article from parentscountdowntocollegecoach to pocsmom.com and vice versa.

Scholarship searching is an art. It requires a commitment of time, energy and perseverance. As in any worthwhile pursuit there are tips to make it easier and more effective.

Here are 10 tips for your scholarship search:

1. Assemble your scholarship search tools—Having the right tools makes all the difference. Your tools for this search will be a professional email, a filing system and a calendar.
2. Search scholarship databases—Scholarship databases are an invaluable tool in the search. Here are 7 sites to get you started.
3. Check into other schools’ resources—If you live near a community college or better yet, a university, you can utilize them as additional resources. They have libraries and scholarship listings that might be unique to your area.
4. Utilize your school’s resources—Counselors are great resources for your scholarship search. Scholarships come across their desks every day and most of them have scholarship application forms available for the asking.
5. Search your community—Every community has local organizations that offer scholarships to local students.(i.e. non-profit groups, local businesses)
6. Don’t forget government sources—Believe it or not the U.S. Government also offers scholarships to high school students heading to college. Explore these opportunities.
7. Pursue all personal and family affiliations—Brainstorm about your family and scholarship opportunities that are specific to you.
8. Apply effective internet search techniques—Follow the primary trail to secondary trails. Many times there will be less well-known scholarships lurking in the shadows of the primary trail. How does this translate: the less that know about the scholarship, the less applications, the greater your chances of winning.
9. Uncover school specific awards—Most colleges have scholarships that are only available to their students. Research the colleges you are contemplating attending and find out what types of scholarships are available. You may have to fill out a separate application when you apply to the college.
10. Search organizations—Go to the library and ask the reference librarian for an Encyclopedia of Organizations. Make note of any scholarship opportunities that are listed that might pertain to you or your family.

Over the past five years I have read and commented on hundreds of essays from students all over the country. As a result of that work, I have two categories of advice: general essay-writing tips (which we’ll discuss soon), and specific ways to make the Common App essay prompts work for you.

The big idea here is that the story you want to tell matters a lot more than the prompt you attach to it. Most stories are about more than one thing, so yours might be about identity and failure, or about contentment and coming of age. So write the story first, and then figure out how to pitch it to an admissions committee. Having said that, it’s still useful to understand the questions. So let’s look at them in detail:

1. Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

There are several ways to read this question:  Is your ethnic, racial, cultural, or linguistic background central to your identity? Do you have a specific story you can tell that illustrates that in an engaging way? Sweet. Try it and see how it goes.

But that’s not the only thing way to answer this question. It can also be about what it felt like when your family moved from Oklahoma to NYC, and how that move made you who you are today. It could be about the birth of your little sister the summer before your junior year, and how becoming one of her primary caregivers changed your perception of yourself.

2. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

One way to think about this question is that’s not really about the failure at all, but rather, about the response to failure. It’s an opportunity for you to tell the admissions officers how you respond to adversity. What’s nice about this question is that you don’t have to pretend that your failure was actually a success, or any of that job-interview nonsense. If you face-planted in epic style, write about that, as long as you then write about how you dug all the gravel out of your face and kept going.

You can also add to your understanding of this question by thinking broadly about what it means to fail at something. You could write about failing tenth grade chemistry. But really, it would be a lot more interesting to write about how you came to the realization that no matter how hard you worked, your feet would never allow you dance on pointe. One of my students wrote about how she came to accept that fact, but that in doing so, she also discovered not only how to dance for pleasure again, but to enjoy other activities, too.

3. Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

Just like the question about failure, this question should be understood as broadly as possible. Don’t limit it to school. Do your parents believe that financial security is the only consideration in choosing a career, while you want to be an actor? Do your parents want you to follow your dreams, while you want something grounded and practical for yourself? Does your school worship athletic prowess, while you think social action is more important?

Stories about standing up to bullies or publishing an article in the school newspaper that the administration didn’t want you to are great examples, but bravery isn’t always loud and public; sometimes it’s quiet and private.

4. Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

What’s your favorite TV show? (Quick – just pick one.) Now, think about what makes that show your favorite. Is everyone in it happy all the time, and good friends all the time, and nothing ever happens because there’s no drama? A lot of my students have said things like, “I feel really content while playing the piano because it lets me lose myself in the music,” or “I feel really content in my grandmother’s kitchen.”

But being content doesn’t really make for a good story. So for this essay, try to think about why you feel content somewhere. One of my students wrote about being content in the dance studio at her school, and the process that led her to feel that way. She hadn’t always felt content there. In fact, for a while she had felt intimidated there. The essay turned out to be about how she grew into herself, both as a dancer and as a leader.

5. Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

Just as the failure question isn’t really about failure, this one isn’t really about the accomplishment or event: it’s about how you fit into your community. So you can write about your bar or bat mitzvah, or your quinceañera, but you could also write about your first job, or the time you had to put your dog down, or what you learned from looking after your younger sibling.

Remember when I said that the story matters more than the prompt? That’s because all the prompts are really the same prompt, asking for the same story: “Tell us how you’ve grown and matured over time.”

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­Today’s guest post is by Rachel Shulman of Shulman & Hill, LLC. Rachel is a passionate teacher, and her students often comment that this passion and excitement for her subject makes them more interested, sometimes in spite of themselves. She has helped students achieve their goals in all three AP History classes and both AP English classes, as well as on the Reading Comprehension and Writing sections of the ACT and SAT. Since the fall of 2010, she has edited over 300 college application essays, working both on her own and with independent educational consultants.

A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in History, Rachel also holds an MA in History and an MS in Library and Information Science, both from the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign.  

Based in the Boston area, but with students all over the country, Shulman & Hill specializes in standardized test preparation, high school English, History, Math, Physics, Biology, and college application essays. We provide individualized learning plans tailored to the student’s unique learning style. Our goal is to leave our clients prepared for independent academic success.

If your student is heading for college, they may also be studying abroad. Once you’re in a country that doesn’t speak English, it’s so much easier if you are fluent in the language there. Even if you’ve studied that language in high school, living among the culture and speaking fluently is another story.

These five language apps should help:

Duolingo

This app is extremely well structured for a free language-learning program. The program has you drill through exercises, which are part of larger lessons, to learn basic words, phrases, and grammar. Then you practice what you’ve learned by working on translations of real-world content from blogs and websites. Other Duolingo users then rate these translations, a practice that has been shown in some studies to actually work (Duolingo was originally conceived at Carnegie Mellon University).

Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish.

Byki Mobile

Byki is a flashcard program that you can use to learn new words in any one of dozens of languages. It’s the free component to the much more rigorous and Transparent Language program, and you’ll find a few prods to upgrade or buy the larger software package occasionally (but not too much).

Languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Altai, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Belorussian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buriat, Chechen, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malay, Mirandese, Mongolian, Norwegian, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian or European), Romanian, Russian, Scottish, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajiki, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvan, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Zulu.

Memrise

Memrise is a language learning program that extends beyond vocabulary and language to things like history and science, but at its core it’s a flashcard-style program that’s augmented with memory tricks, images, and other useful tools to make learning a new language easier. Its focus is largely on memorization, but it’s also designed to help you have fun learning the language you’re trying to pick up. Memrise gamifies the process a bit, awarding you points and reputation as you learn, and the opportunity to compete against other users while you learn and complete activities. If you’re interested in seeing what you can learn before you sign up, you can browse some of their courses before you give it a try.

Linqapp

Ask a question on Linqapp via text, photo or audio recording and a push notification goes out to all users who are fluent in your target language. A points-based reward system encourages people to provide quick and accurate answers. Linqapp works very well, especially for the most popular languages on the platform, which are currently English, Chinese, Spanish and Japanese.

To use Linqapp, you can sign up with a Facebook account or email. Once you log onto the app, you are prompted to select your native language, the languages you are fluent in and the ones you are seeking answers about. Text questions can be asked for free, while queries with photos or audio recordings require Linqapp points (each user starts with free bonus points, and more can acquired by answering other people’s questions). Once you post your question, a push notification is sent to fluent speakers and a timer is set for 15-minutes so people who respond within the timeframe are eligible for points. You decide which answers are helpful and how many points you want to reward to the user. Each person has the option of filling out a profile and contacting other users (for example, I can envision using the app to eventually find other people in Taipei who enjoy U.S. cult films or “Breaking Bad,” based on the questions they ask and answer). Linqapp’s community is the most important aspect of the app.

busuu

New to the App scene but not new on the web is busuu. Practice speaking with native speakers and apply what you have learned. Use the listening, reading, writing and speaking task to improve your language skills, take on interactive learning exercises and quizzes and stay motivated with regular feedback. The community has over 35 million native speakers, so there are plenty of help to practice speaking the lingo.

Languages: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese

Some parents may mentally throw a party when their child goes off to college, while others may feel their home will be empty without the noise, mess and general frenzy that teenagers bring to a house and wish they were not going to college at all.

To decorate or not to decorate?

Many parents may believe that they need to keep their child’s bedroom the same and always available for when they return, while others may rub their hands together in glee at the thought of having a reclaimed space to play with. It may be best for parents to leave the room untouched for a little while, perhaps a few semesters, to see how often the child returns to the family home, and whether when they do, they need their own room to sleep in.

What to do with what is left behind

The child will not have been able to take all their stuff with them to college, so when it is time to redecorate, it goes without saying that there will be a fair amount of furniture and accessories that will need to be stored or repurposed. With the child’s permission, check through the room’s contents, throwing out anything that is broken, and give to charity anything, such as toys, that they have grown out of.

Different uses for the spare room

A vacated bedroom offers parents the chance to reclaim a bit of their home for themselves. Hobbies that were carried out in awkward places now have the chance to spread out. Wives who want their husbands out from under their feet can suggest that the child’s bedroom becomes a room solely for masculine use, perhaps being turned into a home cinema room complete with blackout drapes and a comfortable recliner chair; a home gym fitted out with wall-length mirrors and equipment, complemented by light, stimulating wall colors; or even a games room, with pinball machines and a football table.

A mother could have that arts and crafts room she always wanted, complete with a worktable and shelves or storage units full of beads, ribbons and other haberdashery. More prosaically, it could become a room where all the laundry is sorted and ironing could be carried out, rather than have it spilling over into the downstairs reception rooms. Of course, the room could serve both parents if it were transformed into a home study with computer desk and chair, a small select library with long and high bookcases, or even a meditation room with low lighting and minimalist decoration.

Remember they come back

It is a good idea that despite whatever type of room the space is turned into, it serves a dual purpose and can become a bedroom once again, however impromptu and impermanent it may be. An excellent way to achieve this is to have a sofa bed in the room, which will not only provide a place to sit during the day, but will turn into a bed on those occasions when the child returns home and needs a place to sleep.

Parents usually have two misinformed views about scholarships. First, they think it’s impossible to win scholarships because its like the lottery, a one in a million chance to win. Secondly, they think that only kids with high GPAs win scholarships. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m not going to lie. Winning scholarships requires a commitment both on your part and on the student’s part. It’s not going to happen if your student isn’t invested heavily in the process. And it’s not going to happen if you aren’t willing to help. It requires work, perseverance, and determination. If neither of these are present, scholarships will be impossible to win.

Here are 3 scholarship truths that can make all the difference:

You MUST search

Searching for scholarships is not easy. It requires an endless persistence in looking for them, a willingness to explore every available opportunity, and a commitment to invest your time and resources in the effort. Yes, you can sign up on scholarship engines like Zinch, but these engines are not your only options; and if you’re not willing to dig for those lesser known scholarships, (especially locally) you’re only decreasing your chances of winning.

Parents can play a huge part in this part of the process. Pay attention, read everything you can, watch for them on social media, subscribe to podcasts (like How to Pay for College HQ) and subscribe to blogs that talk about scholarships (like this one). High school students are extremely busy and their time and effort is best spent completing the applications. You and your college-bound teen can be a team for this aspect of the process.

You MUST apply

One expert, Gyan Devi, says the time spent applying to scholarships reaps more rewards than a part-time job. However, the students MUST be invested in this part of the process. You can’t write their essays, complete the paperwork, or push them into it. If they aren’t invested, it’s not going to payoff with rewards.

One way to motivate them to do this is to have the money talk early in high school. If your student understands that winning scholarships directly affects his/her ability to attend college, they are going to be more likely to commit their time to applying.

You MUST be unique

According to “The Scholarship Mom“, packaging makes the difference. In order for your student’s scholarship applications to stand out, you need to package it properly. Just applying, especially when your student is one of thousands, probably won’t produce winning results. Just like anything you’re trying to sell or promote, it’s all about the marketing. And your student is marketing himself to the scholarship committee. You need to make sure he puts his best foot forward.

The truth about scholarships? There are scholarships for every student, some with high GPAs and some don’t even ask for a GPA. But, unless your student is willing to commit their time to the process, he/she is not going to win any scholarships. If you and your student work as a team, the odds of winning that big payoff increases dramatically. If you follow these simple tips and suggestions, the time spent will be well worth the payoff.

Photo by By Aleksi Tappura

I began my search for essay experts on Twitter a few days ago. To my surprise, and disappointment, most of the accounts I found were for companies or organizations that write essays for students. I find that disturbing as a parent, and as a college coach. It baffles me that students would actually pay someone to write their essay for them; even more surprising were the number of essay experts who were not on Twitter or inactive.

Along with the multitude of essay writing services, I also found a great number of complaints from dissatisfied customers complaining about the quality of the essay they paid for. And the age old proverb is true: if you want something done right, do it yourself.

These twitter accounts are essay coaches—they help you write your OWN college essay by providing encouragement, guidance and support throughout the essay writing process. Follow them for tips about the essay and connect with them if your student needs help.

Essay specialists

1. College Essay Guy @collegeessayguy

2. The Essay Expert @brendabernstein

3. Essay Hell @essayhell

4. Chris Polley @essaybrainstorm

5. All College Essays @allcollegeessay

College counselors who help students with essays

6. Megan Dorsey @collegeprepllc

7. Jeannie Borin @jeannieborin

8. Paul Hemphill @vcollegeadvisor

9. Jessica Velasco @Admissions411

10. Jim Overton @ccofsc

11. George Scurlock @collegehelp1

12. International College Counselors @College_Experts