Senior year is about to kick off, so now is the time for a quick review of the college selection game plan. We’ll run this down by the numbers--and what better way to study than with a little music in the background:

Up, Up and Away I once again start by saying this is the largest graduating high school class in US history. Since more students are applying to college, and since colleges aren’t getting any bigger, there’s a good chance that hot colleges will be tougher than ever to get into--but the only sure thing is if that you won’t get in if you don’t apply. Dare to dream, sure--even better, dare to apply.

It’s a Small World After All The global recession means more colleges will be encouraging more international students to apply to US colleges. Since most international students must pay full tuition and fees, they become even more attractive to colleges who blew out the budget to build health centers and spas. How do you overcome this? Right--smoke the application.

It’s Too Close for Comfort With all of these applications, you need a little breathing space. You want to include a couple of colleges on your list where your test scores and GPA are above the average--this ups the chance you’ll get admitted there. Of course, you want to make sure you’d be happy going there, so apply now, visit soon, and ask about merit money--if you’re above average, that’s often worth something.

For a Small Piece of Paper, It Carries a Lot of Weight The tanking of the Dow means more colleges will be considering a student’s ability to pay as part of the admissions process. Does this mean you might not get admitted to a college because you can’t afford to go there? Yes, it might--mean green. Call your colleges, ask if money matters when it comes to getting in (ask if they are need blind in admissions) and make sure at least a couple of colleges don’t use money as an admissions factor.

One is the Loneliest Number This is the year you can choose which SAT scores to send in, and which ones you don’t want to report, making it just like the ACT. Problem is, students still think one set of scores may not be enough, some colleges are requiring all test scores anyway, and no one’s sure if a “bad” set of scores can really hurt you, making two just as lonely as one. How do you solve this? Ask the college for their advice about test scores when you call to ask if they’re need blind in admissions, and check www.fairtest.org for a list of colleges that require no tests whatsoever.

The Kids in Girl and Boy Land Will Have a Jubilee With this information in hand, it’s time to make the list and check it twice. 6-8 colleges should still do the trick, making sure you can afford at least two of them without much help. With the list in hand, you’re good to go--just keep your eyes open at college fairs and college visits for other possibilities.

Finally, check College is Yours for the virtues of the weekly 20 minute visit--remember, that’s the key to making this work.

Now that you know the score, you’ll soon be doing the Ickey Shuffle to Mr. Touchdown USA, even if your mind is still in A Summer Place. Get out there and make yourself proud, and remember your coaches are on the sidelines if you need some college counseling G.

Seniors, your intake of college mail is about to go up--way up.Colleges believe August is the right time to contact seniors, since there's a chance you'll have more time to actually read the material they send and complete college applications before school starts-- not a bad idea, since you don't have any (dare I say it?) homework just yet.

Of course, there are a couple of down sides to applying to college this early in the game.If an application requires essays, you'll want to make sure they represent your best writing--and since your last writing was in Suzie's yearbook in June, you probably want to knock out a couple of drafts and have a teacher review them, unless you're applying for a text messaging scholarship (“KIT, your BFF on the QT”).

“But dude!” says you, “This application says it's a special rush, early consideration, pre-El Grito de Independencia application.This baby has to be signed sealed and postmarked by September 16^thin order for me to get special consideration from this college.”

This is the second thing you need to know, and it's pretty important.A number of colleges are sending out applications that are already filled out. To make applying as easy as possible, you just have to sign your name and send it back in a pre-paid envelope.In some cases you'll add your classes for this year, and they may ask you to sign somewhere else so they can order copies of your test scores, but that brings the total application time to around 2 minutes.

The catch?Many of these applications give you the impression they have to be postmarked by September 15^th, or you'll lose out on the special consideration you're getting.Since many high schools in theUSdon't start until September 7^th, that means you really have to move to get your high school to send your transcript, and for you to get the form in on time.

What to do?Relax.

These colleges may mean well, but the stress of getting applications in that soon can deflate seniors before school even opens, and puts transcript demands on high schools that simply can't be met.That's why colleges that are members of the National Association for College Admission Counseling must give equal consideration to all applications received by October 15.This is a brand new rule, but it basically means you don't really have to FedEx an application to make the Labor Day deadline.Cool?

If you get a “preferred” application you have questions about, call the college and ask them about the October 15^thrule, or ask the Admissions Practices person in your state or region to explain NACAC's guidelines to you and to the college.You can find your state or region information at http://www.nacacnet.org/AboutNACAC/Governance/Pages/default.asp, and the October 15^th rule can be found at http://www.nacacnet.org/AboutNACAC/Policies/Documents/SPGP.pdf (See item 12 on page 4).

August is a good time to look at flyers from colleges that are new to you--it can open your eyes to new possibilities, or at least confirm your ideas about what you're looking for.It's also a great time to knock out a draft of your essays--but more than one draft probably can't happen just quite yet, and rushing apps in is no one's idea of a good time, especially before Snuffleupagus' birthday (Dude--you have to ask? August 19^th!)

It's good to be college-focused, but not college-frenzied--so spend some time with the mail, have another lemonade, and lay low.That's the recipe to keep you in company that is truly August.

What was the biggest selling car last year?

I know, I know--it wasn't exactly the best year for car sales--but that should make it easier to answer the question, right?

Honda Civic? Nope.

Toyota Camry? Second place.

Ford F-150? We could only hope!

The best selling car last year was the Cozy Coupe. Yup--see http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/10/americas-best-selling-car-isnt-what-you-might-think/

If you're thinking this is a trick question, I guess I'd say... sort of. It doesn't have a payload, but kids haul rocks with it; it isn't tricked out, but that's nothing magic markers and some Pretty Pony stickers won't fix; there's no GPS, but everyone who drives one goes all kinds of places without leaving the driveway, and arrives there without ever getting lost--unless they want to.

Still feel like you got owned? It's OK--part of this has to do with your education. If this was a question on a Social Studies test, the Cozy Coupe wouldn't be one of the answers. If it was, the teacher would have told you the answer ahead of time, so you'd still just be writing down what someone else told you. No room to think on your own, or out of the box. Give the “wrong” answer, your grade suffers, and goodbye college; give the “right” answer, and part of your creative spirit dies-- and then what's the point in going to college anyway?

Of course, some things are fixed in stone--July 4, 1776 will always matter more than July 5^th, 1776--but the world needs people who have a good understanding of when to hold on to the status quo, and when to let go.It's just that most high schools--and very sadly, many colleges--don't seem to value the approach that asks “But what about...”It's messier, less predictable, and harder to measure (although many argue the old SAT did a terrific job of doing so), plus, it just plain bothers some teachers that, in order to get you to learn how to think, they have to keep thinking, too.

Imagine...

Happily, there are teachers who love this kind of thinking, and they often teach Geometry, Philosophy, Literature, Physics, and Music.If you don't see the connection here, take a peek at Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. After reading this book, students see a new purpose in learning; they understand why rote stuff matters (mess with 2 plus 2, and gravity just won't work), why not to behave like a rebel without a clue, why it's best sometimes to keep your vision to yourself, and sometimes best to take a well thought-out leap.

As I say in College is Yours , colleges have a name for this.It's called wisdom, and universities value it highly--but it's something that is grown and cared for by you.

School time--either college or high school--is coming up, but it doesn't have to be another year of “another year.” You know the teachers who will guide your growth, and not just give you a grade; sign up for their classes.Meanwhile, take Godel to the beach with you--the pictures alone will get you thinking--and when sunset comes, remember the world used to think the sun rotated around the earth, until someone asked “But what about...” You can buy it online, or just hop in your Cozy Coupe and drive to the local bookstore.

By the way--that's the only car Einstein could drive today.Not only did he failGermany's version of the SAT, it's said he flunked his driver's exam as well.

I met Michael Jackson when I was nine. It was a Sunday, and the O'Connor brothers were driving home from church in my oldest brother's vermillion Ford Maverick.I can't quite remember why my older brother was in church that day. He rarely went, though he did spend a good part of his Sundays in conversations with the Lord as he watched the Detroit Lions on television.

We turned out of the parking lot when my brother turned the radio to CKLW (the big 8), and on it came--ABC. Nice beat, easy to dance to, and a three dimensional melody--up, down, soft, loud, and always forward. “Turn it up” I shouted from the back seat. Up went the volume, down went the accelerator, and off went the O'Connor boys down Woodward Avenue, cruising through the Detroit suburbs in the Pumpkin Express, and feeling mighty baad.

My life wasn't always that exciting--it was usually more like my Optimists Club lunch. They honored three students from each school as Good Citizens, and I had been selected. This should have been a harbinger, since the award proclaimed I was a nice guy, and I was thrilled about being publicly recognized as such. Let it be said that, for at least five minutes, I was a teenager who was comfortable in his own skin.

The five minutes ended over the salad course.I picked up a pitcher that had a white, creamy substance. I poured it over my spinach salad and passed it to the girl next to me.” This is for your salad” I said, “it's ranch dressing” (which, I have to admit, was a brand new product then). She looked in the pitcher and flatly said “This is cream. It's for your coffee.” So much for living large, but it didn't taste bad on the salad. Too bad about the girl, though--she was a redhead, and mighty cute.

This isn't to say my life was completely without fireworks. The lead counselor at the summer camp where I worked wanted the best bonfire ever, so he spent hours layering the wood and putting in the tinder. It took four matches to light the fire that night, and the resulting flame was the size of a softball. He stomped off, an act I took to be one of reason, since swearing in front of the kids was a career-ender at day camp.

He was still stomping when he came back, with what I swear was a jelly jar.He tossed the contents on the fire, and I think the flames warmed the passengers on the airplane flying overhead. The kids were stunned, but in a way that gave them something to talk about--“No, Mom, really. The flames lit the clouds on fire!”

If you're a high school senior, there's a good chance your parents have handed you this and said “Now this is a good college essay.Where's yours?”

I'm sure your parents love you, but if they're really thinking you should spend your last summer in high school working on college essays, it's time for an intervention.Read this, then find your parents, hand back the printout, and say “You're right. It's a great essay because it's based on the life he lived and loved. So I'm going to go out and live a little-- then I'll get back to the essays in August, and it will be fine.He told me so.”

Live these days well, my dear students--and if you run into any redheaded moms, don't mention my name.It would be better that way.

The question seems simple enough--does studying for the SAT help you score better when you actually take the test?

Common sense tells us the answer is yes. What do you do when it's time for a Geometry test?You study what's going to be on the test. What do you do before you take your road test for your driver's license?Get behind the wheel and cruise. What did LeBron James do to make that whamma jamma 3-pointer to beatOrlandolast Friday?Right--practice. Based on this iron-clad logic, taking a look at the SAT practice questions available in your school counseling office would sure seem to be a good idea before you crowbar yourself out of bed at dawn on a Saturday to take the actual test, especially since the new questions are patterned after the old ones.

On the other hand, this is college admissions we're talking about, a place where my seniors tell me common sense is sometimes uncommon (“They recalculated my GPA by taking out all of my Art classes, but Art is my major!”) Just as you're about to give up part of your Memorial Day weekend to do a little test prep, along comes a report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, saying students who test prep on the SAT usually don't improve more than 30 points. You might want to take a look at a summary of these results for yourself, at http://www.nacacnet.org/News/Newsfeed/Pages/Article.aspx?id=I109483552&type=News...

...and when you're done looking at that, take a peek at the related article from USA Today, where an impressive number of colleges say that a 30 point increase may be small, but it might be enough to really raise your chances of getting admitted, especially at some selective schools. This article can be found at http://www.nacacnet.org/News/Newsfeed/Pages/Article.aspx?id=I3176773572&type=News

If these two articles give you the same feeling you had when you first read the periodic table, join the club. If the report is true, students shouldn't bother prepping for the SAT, since scoring 30 more points isn't that big of a deal. Then, along come a number of colleges that say 30 points IS a big deal, since many colleges rely heavily on test scores to sort out students. This test-heavy reliance is something NACAC discourages, but colleges do it anyway--especially with many scholarships, where a minimum SAT score guarantees merit cash for a student.

On top of that, there's the other reporting source we started with--common sense. We all know a couple of students who blew out their second SAT attempt after doing some kind of intense studying. It may be that some students got nothing out of test prep, but then there's the study factor, something the report doesn't cover; did the kids who gained 200 points study harder than the students who only showed up to class to please their parents?

There's sure to be more push back on this study and what it means--for starters, call the colleges you're interested in and see if 30 points will matter to them. If you're not sure, or if you want to play it safe, my money's with LeBron's approach to making his dreams come true. Even if you don't have the bucks to spend on private test prep, use the free pamphlets and the free online materials to sharpen your game before the 8AM tipoff. Once you know your opponent, it's easier to make the test-prep highlight reel with a killer score--and like it or not, that matters to some colleges.

There's a lull in the wonderful world of college admissions, so this is the perfect time to talk about why choosing a college is so hard, in 3 words or less:

Choice and change.

This sounds pretty simple, but there is a world of “Whoa!” behind the idea that students can choose the colleges they apply to. Most students don't have a choice about kindergarten, middle school, or high school--you go to the public school that's closest to your house, or you go to the school your parents have in mind. After 11 years of being trained to go where you're told, someone like me comes by and says “OK--2600 colleges on the menu. What looks good?”

No wonder you're scared you'll make a bad choice--you've never done this before, your friends have never done this before, there's 3 million other students with the same lack of experience you have trying to get into the same colleges you want to go to, and there's all that paperwork. This is not only a big deal, it's a new deal...

...and to quote the only US President who flunked out of Columbia Law School, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. You may be a little green when it comes to choosing schools, but you figure out what to wear, eat, listen to and do on weekends without much help at all--and given the huge number of choices about Internet Web sites, choosing 8 colleges to apply to out of a paltry 2600 should be a breeze.

Of course, it's easier to make a choice if the choices don't change very much-- but colleges are better at making change than the soda machine at school. Just this week, New York University changed the tests they require for everyone applying for admission; you can now send just the ACT, the SAT with two subject tests, the SAT and two APs, the--well you get the idea. NYU says they made the change to offer students--you guessed it--more choice, but many counselors say this freedom creates more stress than it reduces; just tell the kids what to do, and they will happily comply.

Sometimes I wish college was like that, but it isn't--neither is life, and part of college involves getting you ready for making the most out of what you know, even if you don't know everything. Once you have some colleges in mind, check their Web sites about application procedures for next year. After that, call them to ask if they plan on making any changes to those procedures this summer--with this economy, they may make changes about everything from the application fee to financial aid procedures. You don't know that--heck, maybe even they don't know that--but asking will most likely make you smarter, even if the answer is “We don't know yet. Call again in August.”

As you start the college search, you can tell yourself you don't know enough to make this choice, and that the changes are just too confusing-- or you can think about who you are, what you like, what matters to you, and go from there. Yesterday in the school cafeteria, you chose between the gross brown casserole and the gross yellow casserole with less background knowledge than that--lead from your strength, do an online college search, (collegeboard.com or princetonreview.com have two nice ones) ask a lot of questions, and persist. Knowing what you don't know is the first step to freedom--and wouldn't that be a nice choice for a change?

As seniors continue to weigh their college options and colleges continue to look for the crystal ball that will tell them how many students are really coming to campus this fall, a small story broke this week that should be of great interest to juniors. Colby College is now giving applicants the choice of submitting either the SAT or the ACT OR three SAT Subject tests. The addition of the option of sending Subject tests adds a brand new option to test takers. Since Subject tests are designed to measure what students have learned in classes, students might decide these tests will better show what they know and require lest test prep.

Colby's decision adds another test choice in a year that's rich with new test choices. College Board is now offering students the option of choosing what scores to send to colleges--remember that College Board used to send all SAT results to a college, leaving the student no choice but to send low scores along with high ones. College Board feels this new option will take some of the stress out of test taking...

...but of course, it hasn't. Some colleges have responded to this new option by announcing they are going to require students to send ALL test scores, even if College Board and ACT offers the choice of sending only some. Counselors have expressed concern that the new policy will put more pressure on students who may have a high Verbal score on one test and a high Math on the other--will sending both be an advantage, or will the low scores on both put them behind the 8 ball?

Finally, all of this test talk has led even more colleges to look at their testing policies and say “Ya know what? Forget it!” Connecticut College is the latest school to go test optional; you can send some, all, or none of your test scores, and it's more than OK with them. CC joins hundreds of colleges who have made the same decision--since test prep courses can sometimes teach students to appear smarter than they are, the transcript is becoming a more reliable source of information, even though grading scales vary greatly from one high school to the next. http://www.fairtest.org/ has a list of test-optional schools; take a look, and be sure to go to the college's Web site to confirm the policy.

What's a junior to do in the midst of all this change? First, take a test. Unless you know all the colleges you want to apply to are test optional, there's a good chance you're going to need a set of scores come September--and since rolling admission colleges are first come first serve, you want to have a set of scores good to go. It's not too late to sign up for the late spring tests, so get busy--go to www.collegeboard.com and www.act.org for SAT and ACT, respectively.

Second, watch the Web sites. Colby and Connecticut College announced their changes this week, but many other colleges are so focused on this year's seniors, they might not get around to making their announcements until May. The changes may not impact your decisions about which tests to take and which scores to send, but you never know the opportunities new changes might bring. So bookmark the Web pages of your favorite colleges, sign up for a test or two, and buckle up--the ride may get pretty wild.

In what may be the biggest April Fool's Day joke ever, many colleges that usually send out admissions decisions on April 1^stare sending them out 2-3 weeks early. MIT posted their decisions at one minute before 2 PM this Saturday, or 3/14 at 1:59 (those are the first six digits of the mathematically important number pi-- a bit of slide rule humor!)Many liberal arts schools are also sending early notices of good news to very strong students (some as early as March 1st) and it seems a ton of schools are notifying students by e-mail, text message, or mobile device.

Why the rush? The sooner a college tells a student they're in, the longer the college has to convince, e-mail, telephone, and woo the student into actually coming to that school. Now that the college knows you're among the best, they want to give you a clear sine (more slide rule stuff) they really want you.

These strategies are causing concerns among high schools, who are still trying to teach tomorrow's leaders. If a college sends out decisions during the school day, anxious students will risk breaking school policy and keep their phones on in class. When an acceptance e-mail comes in with its accompanying audio of the school fight song, class gets interrupted; when a notice of denial is sent, many of the messages simply say “application denied”, leaving dejected students with little comfort and lots of reason to interrupt class with tears, shrieks, or language that may be inappropriate for those under 17.

The need to know college options has never been greater, but a little perspective is in order:

-If you're a college (hey, a few of them read this column), set your admission release time to 7 PM Eastern. Everyone is out of school then, meaning any celebration or desperation applicants feel will not affect the quality of education received by the rest of the high school, including future applicants to your college. Others have suggested colleges release at 7 PM on a Friday night, giving seniors the weekend to celebrate or reflect, then refocus for school, where you presumably still want them to do their best.

-Seniors, turn your phones off, and keep them off until school's over. You don't want to give Principal Weatherbee a good reason to put a blemish on your sterling discipline record, and this prevents you from incorrectly turning an admissions decision into a public event. Thoughtfully sharing the news (good or bad) with others requires time to think, and that's in short supply when your phone is buzzing and your troops are around you. Until you're in a space where all options are available--including privacy--power off.

-If the e-news is bad, and it's put in a bad way, tell the college. There's only so much space per message, but if admitted students get screens of fireworks and “We Are the Champions”, you deserve much more than the equivalent of ”See Ya.” Call the college and tell them the message wasn't very informative, then ask them to explain why you weren't admitted. You may find an opportunity to have them reconsider their decision (“but I couldn't take both AP Chem and Advanced Physics--they were offered at the same time”), and you'll definitely give them the message they can, and should, do better next time.

Admissions decisions seem to be about college, but they're really about you. Make sure you're in a place to get the news where you'll be OK either way--and that's most likely not in school.