1. Leverage technology to engage students in the college search process. You can’t find true love in the phone book and you can’t find the perfect pair of jeans by trying on every pair in the mall. (Well ok, you can, but it might take awhile.) Turn the tables on printed A-Z guidebooks by giving students the opportunity to express their preferences and criteria first. The CampusCompare MatchMe meter returns great matches from more than 2,500 schools on its website.

2. Get parents on your side by suggesting alternatives to costly college visits. High schoolers can a get a real sense of college life through reviews, videos, and comments posted by current students. This stays credible with the teens and saves parents an expensive campus visit.

3. Introduce students to schools they haven’t heard of. It’s easy to fall into the rut of recommending the same 10 or 20 schools each year to seniors. With CampusCompare, you can search hundreds of schools by academic major, school size, SAT/ACT range, campus location etc. to find a better match than those same old 10 or 20 schools. Remember, the right college match could be in another time zone—or right in your backyard.

4. Help keep students on track with application deadlines. CampusCompare’s nifty calendar tool is automatically fed with important date reminders, such as test dates and application deadlines. Help your students get the stress out of their schedules by using this online resource to get them organized.

5. Give deluded students a reality check. A lifetime dosage of “you can do anything!” will certainly workwonders for John or Jane Senior’s self-esteem, but it can also cause them to reach out of their league and be destined for a rude awakening. A round or two of rolling the dice with CampusCompare’s “What Are My Chances?” tool can soften the blow by preparing him to see realistic acceptance odds.

Everyone tells you that you should go on campus visits to get a feel for the atmosphere of the school. But showing up is the easy part.

Getting prepared is a lot tougher.  If you are visiting more than one college and heading out of town, you may have to book flights, hotels, rent cars and actually find the college.

It could be a serious juggling act. You don’t want to end up driving around in circles looking for the campus with no map or even worse, no place to stay!

The college visit is your place to make a good impression on the admissions officers too, so you don’t want to forget something important like writing thank-you notes to the administrators that you met.

So here’s your campus visits checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything.

http://www.campuscompare.com/college-resources/files/CampusCompare_CollegeVisitChecklist.pdf

Let’s say you are applying to 10 colleges–between your transcripts, your admissions essays, your recommendation letters, making sure you have all the right forms for each college could be a bit of a juggling act.

Here’s a checklist to make sure you stay organized. Because juggling is only handy if you are applying to clown college.

List your safety, target and reach schools and then check off the documents you have for each school and see the ones you need! 

Dowload the College Application Checklist here.