Ten Greek/Latin prefixes to know before taking the SAT

Posted by Dee

Learning your Greek and Latin prefixes can be invaluable for SAT, PSAT, or ACT testing.

Here are AdmitSpit’s picks for ten you should know by rote.

1. mis-. Means: badly. Examples: mistreat, misdemeanor, mistake.

2. ante-. Means: before. Examples: antecedent, antebellum, anterior, antemortem.

3. anti-. Means: against. Examples: antibacterial soap, antibiotic, antipathy.

4. circum-. Means: around. Examples: circumnavigate, circumvent.

5. con-. Means: with. Examples: congregation, converge, construct.

6. contra-. Means: against. Examples: contraband, contradict, contraceptive.

7. dis-. Means: apart. Examples: discord, disadvantage, disconnect, disarm, disregard.

8. mono-. Means: one. Examples: monogamy, monotonous, monopoly.

9. per-. Means: through. Examples: percolate, perforate, permeate.

10. with-. Means: away. Examples: withstand, withdraw.

Techniques for dealing with character limits

Posted by Dee

As written about in yesterday’s post, “What they don’t tell you: character limits,” there is quite a predicament many students face when trying to submit their college essays through an online application. Often, despite fulfilling word limitations, the online form will still cut the essay short. To deal with these character issues, I have developed the following techniques.

First, figure out just how much you need to cut. Is it less than 30 characters? Or is it a good chunk of a paragraph? This will affect which techniques you use.

If it’s a hefty portion of the essay you need to edit, start at a macro level.

Read your essay critically, and find sentences that contribute little to your piece and cut out those superfluous phrases.

Also, combining sentences can efficiently eliminate unnecessary words. Let me give an example. “My mother is my role model. I look up to her so much and I learn so much from her each day.” First of all, I hope your essay wouldn’t be this ridiculously cheesy, but nonetheless, those two sentences had 91 characters. They could be rewritten to minimize character counts like so: “My mother, who I look up to and learn so much from each day, is my role model.” This sentence had 78 characters (and, not to mention, reads much better too). Saving 13 characters may seem petty, but remember, when applied over the entirety of the essay, it adds up. Plus, on a micro level, saving 13 characters may be all you need…

Once you bring your character overdose into the 30 character region, you can start

What they don’t tell you: character limits

Posted by Dee

As a high school student you will be told over and over again how important college essays are. You may attend workshops about writing essays for college. Your English teacher may require you to turn in a college essay so he/she can give feedback. You may even look up suggestions online. BUT, the one thing they never tell you about is that damn character limit!

Let me back up and give some context. When you submit your college application online, you should write your essay in a word processor and then copy-paste it into the field provided online. Don’t write your essay in the online text field because a) it doesn’t check for spelling and punctuation errors like your word processor does, and b) you can’t save as easily and if your internet crashes, you’re in trouble. Often, colleges will designate a specific word limit, which can be easily checked in your word processor (in Microsoft Word, go to Tools, then Word Count). Occasionally, they’ll have a character limit instead of a word limit, but most often you’ll encounter the word quotas. The thing is though, that even though you may meet the word limit, the online application may still cut off your essay!

So, preview your essay before you submit it!

Preview Situation 1: You may preview your essay and see that it’s all fine. Good for you!

Preview Situation 2: You preview your essay, and it’s too long! Now what do you do? This is what I have personally spent much time dealing with; it’s arguable that I actually spent more time fixing my essays for the character counts than actually writing them.

I’ll detail the actual techniques you can use to shorten your essay for the online text fields next, since I think it indeed warrants its own blog post. Check back!

UPDATE: See AdmitSpit’s post “Techniques for dealing with character limits.” (9/29/2006)

University of Virginia gets rid of ED

Posted by Dee

Now part of the growing list of schools to cut their early admissions programs, the University of Virginia announced that they too will replace Early Decision with a single application deadline of January 2nd for the freshman class entering fall of 2008.

For the full article from The Cavalier Daily titled “U.Va. drops early admissions program,” click here!

Standard list for colleges’ standardized testing requirements

Posted by Dee

Some readers are wondering about colleges’ specific standardized testing criteria.

I couldn’t find a comprehensive list anywhere on the Internet that compiles the testing requirements at each of the top schools, so I created one! The name of each school, along with the testing requirements and any special notes, as well as the SAT and ACT codes are provided (note that SAT codes are for sending both SAT and Subject Test scores). Hope it’s helpful!

Brown: SAT and two SAT Subject Tests (except Writing), or the ACT with writing option. SAT 4-digit code is 3094. ACT 4-digit code is 3800. 

CIT: SAT or ACT (with or without the Writing Test option), SAT Math Level II, and either physics, chemistry, or either emphasis, Ecological or Molecular, in Biology. SAT code is 4034. ACT code is 0182.

Columbia University: SAT or ACT, and two SAT Subject Tests (for Columbia Engineering, take any math SAT Subject Test and either Physics or Chemistry) Also, if you have a funky grading system at your school or if you’re home-schooled

College Application Checklist download

Posted by Dee

So, while sitting in my Chemistry lecture, I managed to put together the document for AdmitSpit’s College Application Checklist. I hope you’ll find it useful; it’s pretty neatly organized and it should be helpful in allowing you to keep track of all the elements of the admission process for each school you apply to.

Let me explain how to go about using the checklist effectively.

1. Open up the Word document: College Application Checklist from AdmitSpit.

2. Print the document. If your computer tells you that the margins are too small, just tell it to print anyways because it’s usually okay. If it does cut off part of the chart, you can resize it. Otherwise, let me know if there’s something I should fix; leave us a comment if there are other issues with the print-out.

3. In the very first column, list out all the schools you are applying to.

4. For each school, put an ‘X’ in any column that does not apply. For example, if you are applying to Stanford, you will not have an interview because they don’t offer them, so put an ‘X’ in the box that says “Interview” in Stanford’s row.

5. Now, for the next few months, as you go through the college application process, update this chart whenever you complete something. When you are half-done with a task, put a ‘/’ mark. For example, if you have written your Essay 1, but still need to edit it, put a ‘/’ in the box. Then, once you edit it and turn it into a final draft, you can make the ‘/’ into an ‘X’ sign. Other examples for when you would use a ‘/’ is if you’ve set up your interview, and after you actually do the interview you put an ‘X’ there. Or, if you’ve already asked a teacher to do Rec. 1 and given him/her the envelope, you could put a ‘/’ sign, and then once you receive the reply card back, you could make it an ‘X’ mark.

This is the checklist I used last year, but if you have any suggestions, problems, feedback, questions, etc., leave a comment!

College admissions checklist

Posted by Dee

A lot of the college admissions process is just staying organized. I’ve been asked by several readers if I have some sort of checklist that I used last year to keep track of all the application aspects. I did indeed have a checklist that I used, but it was hand-written and sort of sloppy, so I’m creating a Word document for it that I’ll post on. I have the bulk of my classes today so I’ll have the document posted by 9 p.m. tonight. Check back!

Learn to like reply cards

Posted by Dee

You’ll be dealing with a lot of mail when you apply to college, and despite most of it being random junk you don’t want or need, you’ll want to learn to love reply cards. Reply cards are traditionally used for weddings and events and such, but they can be very useful when applying to college too.

In each envelope you send off to colleges, you want to know if the materials actually arrived, right? There’s a service for this through the post office where, if you pay more money, you’ll be sent a mail notification that someone at the admissions office did indeed accept your admissions materials. But, instead of paying a bunch of money for a fancier service, you can just make your own reply cards!

Step 1: Get a bunch of index cards.

Step 2: Put a stamp in the upper right-hand corner.

Step 3: Put your name and address in the center of the card.

Step 4: Flip the card over and scribble a note to yourself about what was in the envelope. For example, you could write “teacher recommendation 1″ or “high school transcript.”

Once the college admissions office receives your envelope, they will stamp their own address in the upper left-hand corner and send the postcard back to you. Since it’ll have the school’s name on the card now, and you’ll have the note you scribbled to yourself about the content of the package, you’ll now know for certain who received which materials.

My high school advisor told us about this trick, and I wasn’t sure how widely known it was and since you’re probably starting to send out college mail right about now, thought I’d let you know about this tip!

“Tell me about yourself” interview samples

Posted by Dee

It occurred to me yesterday that when I gave guidelines for responding to the quintessential interview question of “tell me about yourself” I failed to actually give an example of the answering strategy put into action.

So, here are three different examples of how to answer the query.

Model 1: Activity-geared answer

(This would be for students who participated in some really unique extracurricular activities that they’d like to focus their interview on.)

Interviewer: So, Dee, tell me about yourself.

Dee: Well, just to start off generally, I’m a senior at Somewhere High School, and in addition to academics, throughout high school I was really involved in three (or two) activities that I really enjoy and spend a lot of time on. First, I am really involved in music. I played the tuba in our high school band, and by senior year, now I’m drum major. Second, I’m really active with local politics. I interned for our state’s senator whose offices are located in my city, and I learned so much researching issues for the campaign. Also, I’m an avid soccer player. I’ve been playing since I was five, and I was really excited when I was voted team captain of our club team last year.

Interviewer: Oh, that’s great. Tell me more about being drum major. What does that

By the way, Cornell’s thinking about joining Princeton & Harvard too

Posted by Dee

Like the title says, thought I ought to let you know that Cornell, according to The Cornell Daily Sun, is also thinking about doing away with its early acceptance program, like Princeton and Harvard.

Click here for the full story titled, “C.U. May Scrap Early Admissions.”