Tips to find out which colleges are a good fit for your child

Watch Video: Tips to find out which colleges are a good fit for your child by Robert K. Cooke, MEd, ...
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Tips to find out which colleges are a good fit for your child

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One of the tricky things for families and students to know is what school might be a good fit for them. What school can you get into realistically? And if you look online, there are all sorts of legends and myths and stories about that. So to whatever extent you can access expert advice and real data when you're looking at college applications, it's helpful. For instance, many schools now use a software program called Naviance, and that will allow you as a student or a family to go in, look at where your child's GPA is, and how that aligns with kids from your particular school that have gotten into those colleges, and whether those kids have gotten in. And it will cross-reference GPAs, it will cross reference standardized scores, etc. The wildcard in that is you don't know what the wildcards are. So you may be comparing your GPA and standardized test score with a child who is 6'10" and can slam dunk a basketball. And your kid may not be able to do that. So their GPA and their test score might lead you astray, might make you think my kid can never get in there, or my kid is a slam dunk in there, when it might not be 100% accurate. And that's why again talking to an expert in the field, talking to your college admissions adviser at your high school who can give you some perspective on that is sort of the final thing that families should be doing.

Watch Video: Tips to find out which colleges are a good fit for your child by Robert K. Cooke, MEd, ...

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Robert K. Cooke, MEd

Upper School Director

Robert has been in K-12 education for thirty years; for sixteen years he was a high school history and social studies teacher, teaching subjects such as AP US History, Western Civilization, World History, Economics, and Anthropology. His school administrative career has been equally varied, serving as Director of Activities at a large public high school, and a Middle School Director and Upper School Director at independent (private) schools in the Midwest and California. Robert earned his Bachelor's Degree in History from Carleton College, and his Master's in Education from Claremont Graduate University. He is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS), and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). Robert has served on school accreditation teams in the Midwest and California. He has two children, one of whom is an acting and English Literature double major at a large urban university on the East Coast, while the other is a high school junior in Los Angeles.

 

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