THE student tour guide probably recognized the dazed look on our faces. We had driven six hours through cornfields to visit Grinnell College. The Iowa cornfields ended at the very edge of campus. “We are in the middle of nowhere,” he acknowledged.
Thus, student organizations offer distractions. “If you want to form a club devoted to solving Rubik’s Cubes or watching ‘Family Guy,’ no problem. If you want to change the world or fight...
A few weeks ago, I joined a producer and crew from the “Today” Show on NBC as they shadowed Seth Allen, the dean of admission at Grinnell College in Iowa. We watched Mr. Allen as he visited two New York City public high schools, the Bronx High School of Science and DeWitt Clinton. The segment — which is something of a primer for students on such information sessions — was shown today on “Today,” and can be viewed above.
Rosemead High School graduates Cynthia Amezcua and Lawrence Chen were awarded $120,000 and $100,000 full scholarships, respectively, from the Posse Foundation. Amezcua will attend Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and Chen will attend UCLA.
Seth Allen
Dean of Admission & Financial Aid
Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa
Before setting pencil to paper (or fingers to keys), try out your essay as an oral story to family or friends. Encourage clarifying questions and watch for facial and body language to identify where your essay may need work. Constructing your essay verbally at first allows you to become comfortable with your ideas without being distracted by...
In fact, Seth Allen, immediate past president of the Common Application, a group of 400 colleges and universities that use a standardized undergraduate application form, sees a widespread misconception “that getting a paid job isn’t nearly as valuable an experience as going to a physics boot camp or building homes for the less fortunate on a Caribbean island.”
