Applying to College: How to Stand Out from the Crowd

Most high school students applying to college worry about getting lost in the thousands of applications that flood admissions' offices each year. "How can I let them know what I'm like?" is a question we hear often. "How will they know that I'm more than my SAT scores, more than my grades?"
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These are important questions. It's true - admissions officers read huge volumes of applications, and they often lose sight of the person behind the SAT scores. Your job is to make yourself known in every way possible.
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The most successful applicants put together compelling applications -- it's as simple as that. And the most distinctive feature of an outstanding application is its cohesiveness. Each aspect of the application should compliment all other parts, leaving no holes in your argument for poking, and should lead to the same logical conclusion - the conviction that you would be an asset to the school. It's important to have someone with a keen analytical eye look over your application to ensure that your app, as a whole, has reached its full potential. Make sure to run your application by someone who's either a good editor, or someone who has seen a lot of kids get into their first-choice schools. The following tips will give your application the strength and personality it needs to make a favorable impression: The Transcript: This is the most important document in your application. Let the admissions committee know that you like a challenge by taking the most rigorous courses your school has to offer. Take math and science, English, foreign language, and history all 4 years. If you're worried about pulling a low grade in a tough class, think about other activities you can cut back on to make more time for studying. Admissions officers are not impressed by high grades in easy classes - and they know what the easy classes are. There's no fooling them. If there's a subject that you're not crazy about, take it anyway. There are no shortcuts to the most selective colleges. A strong transcript with lots of tough courses will tell the admissions committee that you're a mature, dedicated, and sharp student and that you take your studies seriously. The Essay: While the essay tends not to be the most critical part of the college application, it can be if you take the time to get it right. The essay is one of the only documents that brings personality to the college application. Do yourself a HUGE favor and let the admissions committee see your personality. Don't write about issues or concepts that you think are clever, cute, or precocious. This will only lead to contrived, flat essays that do nothing for admissions officers but bore them silly. Take a few minutes to think about something that's happened in your life that was either really great or really lousy. Write about that. You want an essay this feels authentic, honest, and has an emotional kick to it. This is the way to best show your admissions reader what you're all about. If you're able to really bring your personality into your essay, your admissions reader will be more likely to remember who you are when they present your application to the admissions committee. Take the time to proofread and edit your final version. And be sure to give it to someone else to read before submitting it - typos won't win you any points in the admissions game. Supplemental Material: If there's something that you love to do, address it in your application. While there's no guarantee that your admissions reader will have an interest in your particular talent, go ahead and share it. The trick is to select your submissions carefully and not overdo it. If you're into the visual arts, choose a handful of your favorite slides or pictures and include them in your application. If you send too many, they'll end up in a box at the basement of the admissions office, unopened. Do yourself a favor and choose a small number that can easily fit into your admissions folder. If your admissions reader is at the end of a stack of applications when they get to yours, they may really appreciate something beautiful or interesting to look at. Whether or not they know it, seeing your artwork will help them remember that you're a human being. If you're a writer or journalist, choose one poem, story or essay and include it with your application. There's no guarantee that it will be read, but again, the point is to remind admissions officers that a real person, with real talents and interests is submitting this admission applications. As with any supplemental material, less is more. If you've written a book, I guarantee you that no one will read the entire book. They may - if you're lucky - read a short poem or story. If there's something else you've accomplished that you'd like the admissions committee to know, include an addendum to your application, that addresses your particular interest/accomplishment. Simply include an additional piece of paper with the word "Addendum" at the top. And as always, keep it simple. One paragraph is usually all it takes to address any given involvement. And one paragraph is all an admissions officer is likely to read. Phone Calls: If you've fallen in love with a particular school (for all the right reasons), don't be afraid to call the admissions officer responsible for your application. If you're applying to a highly selective school, this may not have much impact, ultimately you'll need a strong transcript. However, it doesn't hurt to get the person who knows best answer your questions. And it might help if he or she can put a voice to an application. In general, you want to be respectful with his or her time and call only if you have a legitimate question or concern. If so, don't be shy - admissions offices have phone numbers for a reason. Final Thoughts While it may feel as though you need to jump through hoops, yell from high towers, and otherwise humiliate yourself to be noticed in the college application process, the truth is all you need to do is take every step as thoughtfully as possible. Be honest, clear, and thoughtful as you choose your classes, write your essays, and research colleges. If you take all the necessary steps to build a strong high school record, you will find that being admitted to college will not be the overwhelming experience you've feared. Take it one day at a time, and always ask for help if you find that there's a piece of this puzzle that confuses you. By reading this article you've already taken a good first step. Good luck!

What if Labor Exchange Worked Like eBay?

One New Start to a National One Stop
By John W. Courtney


Last year US employers made almost sixty million hires. That’s one for every four people in our workforce. The effort and volume of job matching information involved each year is mind boggling. But imagine an internet version of a true one stop for labor exchange: one spot so well connected that it reaches the majority of job seekers and job openings in every market in America.

America’s Job Bank (AJB) attempted that mission and made great progress in national labor exchange, but on June 30, 2007, it will close its virtual doors. Employers will not only lose a key solution for filling job openings, but also for complying with federal employment law.

Most of the talk around AJB’s dissolution has centered on how employers will meet the United States Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act/Jobs for Veterans Act . . . expialadocious. Despite the mouthful of words, the Act is noble in cause. It has most government contractors post open jobs with local government offices to help employ our military Veterans. AJB made this simple. It used the internet and a network of state partners to give employers a one stop spot to comply electronically.

For employers, AJB’s solution eliminated a cacophony of squealing fax machines and reams of paper at local employment services offices. In that sense, AJB was a compliance one stop. But, the Department of Labor believed AJB was becoming its own monster; not Monster.com, but a lowercase version with a burgeoning budget in some years over $25 million. The result: DOL plans to close AJB this week.

What now? The short answer for states is to partner with an AJB replacement site and Veterans compliance will soon be a non-issue.

But it’s important not to miss two other pieces of the picture revealed in the wake of AJB’s demise: 1) the US is much closer today, than ever, to a true national labor exchange one stop and 2) the national labor exchange that AJB pioneered is rapidly becoming a web of 40,000 US job sites.

AJB Replacement

AJB’s replacement has been in the works for some time. When the AJB death knell rang, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) stepped up for its state members and skillfully steered toward a new wave of workforce technology. It was solicited by suitors and diligently vetted proposals for an AJB replacement. The result is a new and dynamic public/private partnership with a nonprofit association of over 250 leading U.S. employers called DirectEmployers Association.

DirectEmployers is led by Bill Warren, who many consider the father of the internet job board industry. In 1992, Warren created Online Career Center, the first employment site on the Internet, which later became the nucleus of Monster.com. More recently Warren went at it again, but this time with a model tied more tightly to his initial vision of creating the most efficient and cost effective internet solution for connecting employers and employees. He is now succeeding with a job board called JobCentral.

The JobCentral model is free for job seekers and inexpensive for employers. Employers can post a 30-day job-listing for only $25 or have access to the site’s resume database for a year for only $25. For employers in JobCentral partner states, job postings will soon be free. JobCentral is making the AJB transition easy for states as well, giving them free membership, duplicating the AJB interface and accepting existing data formats.

JobCentral’s network is large and rapidly expanding. It takes job posting feeds directly from employers at a lower cost than its big rivals and dynamically partners with many other sites. Partners include IBM, Home Depot, Pepsi and many other Fortune 500 companies. JobCentral’s online network has hundreds of sites, including job boards such as Google, Indeed, Jobster and Simply Hired as well as various newspapers and trade associations. The result is a one stop job posting network with millions of jobs.

To date, 32 states have signed up to partner with JobCentral. Many other states are close behind, making JobCentral a likely candidate to provide a real one stop for national labor exchange.

A second AJB replacement alternative is also gathering a network of state partners. NaviSite, a for-profit contractor that operated AJB for years, developed what it calls America’s Job Exchange, which also is free to job seekers and to employers who post with its state partners. So far, NaviSite has signed deals with more than a half-dozen states.

A True One Stop

The key to true one stop labor exchange is for all states to fully participate, exchanging both jobs and resumes with partners. Tight labor markets today demonstrate both a paradox and a compelling cause for this broad partnering. In many markets employers are clamoring to find workers, while unemployed workers are still taking three to four months to find employers. Where is the disconnect?

Currently, state job boards hold about one third of the active resumes of our unemployed. But they have less than 10% of the jobs. Nationwide, in 2006, that system left out over 50 million job openings for states’ job seekers to hopefully discover on their own.

In today’s market, state job boards will be hard pressed to ever gain more than 10% of the available jobs. First, they have tough competition consisting of 40,000 US job sites, each with their own marketing budget. For example, the marketing departments of Career Builder and Monster.com each spend over $150 million annually in addition to their wide networks of newspaper partnerships.

Second, no two employers are alike. Each knows exactly what works for them and rarely will one job board fit the majority of employers. The key then, for states trying to connect their jobseekers with more of the 50 million job openings, is not trying to be all things to all people. Instead states should leverage partnerships with JobCentral and the many other sites that employers now use. And they should allow job seekers the option for a one stop resume post to any partner that will upload their resume from a state site.

When job board connectivity reaches critical mass, it will drive dramatic improvements in efficiency and cost, giving job seekers and employers a wide variety of what they want when they want it. Consider other internet one stops. Instead of labor exchange, Ebay created a “stuff” exchange. Look at the results. Who’d have thought a guy in Poughkeepsie on a Tuesday at 1 a.m. could buy a collector’s quality Slinky from a pawnshop owner in San Fransisco’s Chinatown and have it show up at his doorstep in a day. What if labor exchange had a one stop as widely used and effective as Ebay?

Granted, labor exchange is different from stuff exchange. But if eHarmony can make marriages happen with the malady a personality mismatch could bring, imagine how today’s cutting edge technology will continue to develop, even beyond Resume Mirror’s parsing, WorkKeys’ certifications and Employon’s smart matching algorithms.

With 40,000 US job sites pursuing 60 million job connections each year the time is ripe for your state to be part of a dynamically evolving labor exchange one stop. JobCentral and many other partners are waiting to help.

By John W. Courtney, President, American Institute for Full Employment

www.fullemployment.org

Apply Now to Consolidate your Student Loans Before JULY 1st

Student Loan Financial Group Announces Interest Rates on Variable-rate Loans Increasing July 1st


Students can take advantage of the lower rate if they apply before June 30th.
Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) June 25, 2007 -- Student Loan Financial Group , the premier financial center specializing in Federal Student Loan Consolidation , today announced that interest rates on existing variable-rate student loans will climb eight basis points, or .08 percentage points July 1, 2007. While interest rates on new Federal Stafford and PLUS loans are fixed under federal law, students, graduates and parents who have older, variable-rate student loans can take advantage of the lower rate if they apply for student loan consolidation by June 30.Most federal Stafford and PLUS loans first disbursed before July 1, 2006 charge variable interest rates that are set by federal formula and based on the last auction of 91-day U.S. Treasury bills in May. Interest rates on loans disbursed after that date are fixed at 6.8 percent (Stafford) and 8.5 percent (PLUS)."This Spring 2007, college grad's who still have variable rate loans may consider applying to consolidate before their six month, post grad grace period ends," said John Wrinn, President, Student Loan Financial Group. "Students can lock in a lower rate if they lock the rate prior to June 30th. Also, parents with PLUS loans will save an eight of a percent by consolidating before July 1st, instead of waiting.When a student decides to consolidate their student loans, the loan consolidation lender pays off the student's current federal student loans in full and creates a new loan, with a new interest rate and a longer repayment term. Federal student loan consolidation has a fixed interest rate, based on the weighted average of the interest rates of the student loans being consolidated, rounded up to the nearest 0.125 percent or 8.25 percent, whichever is less.For existing Federal Stafford and PLUS loans that still carry a variable interest rate, the interest rates as of July 1, 2007 will be:Stafford Loans (in school, grace and deferment periods): 6.62 percent Stafford Loans (repayment): 7.22 percent -- PLUS Loans: 8.02 percentIn addition, there is no credit checks, no fees, no prepayment penalties as well as student loan consolidation can reduce the monthly payment amount by nearly 50 percent. That is because student loan consolidation stretches the repayment period from the standard 10 years to up to 30 years, depending on the amount of the education debt.Student and parent customers who consolidate their Stafford, PLUS and other eligible federal student loans using a Student Loan Financial Group Consolidation Loan can also reduce their interest rate by an additional 1.25 percentage points by making scheduled loan payments on time, and by using automatic debit to make payments electronically. Combined, these benefits can provide the average customer with $4,300 in savings on a $20,000 loan.
About Student Loan Financial Group
Student Loan Financial Group (SLFG) is a premier loan service that guides clients through the options and choices of student loan financing with ease and simplicity. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, SLFG specializes in student loan consolidation and has helped thousandths of students fulfill their ambitions of high education. Through an extensive network of highly specialized products, SLFG offers low rates, great borrower benefits and the best options available to solve a wide-range of consumer-financing needs. SLFG was incorporated as a privately held company in 2006; all of its shares are currently held by officers and employees.Contact Student Loan Financial Group Today 888-796-6480To Apply Now click HERE.

The Arrival

Ok this one came from the Careers Channel over at the new Netscape site.

With everything being 2.0 these days I guess it wasn’t long before Resume 2.0 came along. Vianney Lecroart a 30 year old French developer has created a resume based on Web 2.0 features and ideas. To quote Vianney:-

I’m a 30 years old French guy living in Jouy en Josas / France.
I’m looking for a job as a Team Leader, I enjoy working on challenging projects using Extreme Programming methodology.

What is interesting other than being a bit “gimmicky” this style of resume actually provides you a better idea of what Vianney has done and can do, it also shows the type of person he is. In my mind a great example of showing your skills to a prospective employer. I also love the use of colours and styles that simulate many of the popular Web 2.0 companies out there.
I know what a good recruiter would do, but what the average recruiter would do if he applied for a job using this resume?

LinkedIn as Resume 2.0

Author: Scott Sehlhorst of Tyner Blain, entitled “LinkedIn as Resume 2.0″. Enjoy!

When I wrote my first resume over twenty years ago I did what everyone did. I created a version, printed it out, went to Kinkos and made 100 copies on the pretty, expensive, off-white paper. Off-white so it would stand out. Just like all of the other resumes. Then I found a mistake, edited my document, printed it out, went to Kinkos, etc. And I had some really nice scratch paper (with my resume on the back) from the first printing. And I might have given out five copies. What a waste of energy, time, and money.

When I looked for a job ten years ago, I had learned that recruiting firms were scanning in the documents, so now I had to think about formatting for machines as well as people. The “two page rule” was also allegedly dead. List everything, and maybe you’ll get a hit when the recruiter does some keyword matching. And HR personnel were supposedly using keyword-matches to filter out the barrage of mismatched candidates for their job postings. With email being mainstream, I was able to deliver it electronically. This time I created two versions of my resume - one for people (still under two pages) and one for recruiters (a longer, keyword-rich microsoft word doc, also saved as .txt). I saved some money and some trees by skipping the trip to Kinkos. Maybe 10 people saw my resume.

When I started my own company two years ago, I did something a little bit different. I wasn’t looking for “position X.” I wanted companies who needed consulting help to be able to find me. And I only wanted them to find me for the work I wanted to do - not just the work I had done in the past. And whenever a potential client is evaluating my background, I wanted them to have the latest news. And that means maintenance. But I needed to outsource this combination of PR-work, background-and-reference checking, and context setting. That’s where LinkedIn comes in. Sort of a resume 2.0.

The combination of using my LinkedIn profile and the about-me page on the company blog has been working wonders in this regard. I know that at least 1000 people have viewed them in over the last year from reviewing our site analytics data. No longer a waste of energy. This is also different in other ways.

• Keeping data on the web allows search engines to find it - they’ve replaced or augmented much of the recruiter closed-system databases.
• Sharing my LinkedIn profile is easy. It would be strange to meet someone at a bar camp and say “here’s my resume.” It is easy to say “here’s my contact info.” My LinkedIn profile is “just lightweight enough” that people can use it to stay connected without feeling like they just got a resume from the creepy guy.
• Maintaining a real network (friends and associates, not link-beggars) helps keep me connected with folks who may need my services or refer them to others. When I make updates to my profile, they get pinged. I love when they make updates - I can quickly check and see what they’re up to.
• LinkedIn’s recommendations functions help too - they provide a credibility check for people. A lightweight background check - which is all most people seem to need when looking for help.

I’m going to be printing new business cards soon - and I’ll put my LinkedIn profile address right on the card. One of the benefits of having your own company. And if you can’t do that, create a “social card” - it was in vogue in Victorian times - just have your LinkedIn profile instead of your employer.