We were shocked and saddened by the tragedy at Oakton High School this week, and our thoughts and support are with our Oakton families.

BIGGEST COLLEGE-RELATED NEWS OF THE WEEK

SUPPLEMENTAL ESSAY TOPICS RELEASED

A number of schools have begun to release supplemental essays for the 2022-2023 application cycle, including Virginia Tech, Villanova, University of Miami, University of Georgia and more. UGA also announced that they will be releasing their actual Common Application supplement on 8/1 in order to align with other schools' application release dates. This is welcome news, as UGA applicants in previous years have had to wait until September to complete the supplement!

MIT TOPS WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS

The QS world university rankings came out this week, with MIT topping the list. This list includes universities from all over the world (see #2 - the University of Cambridge), but five of the top 10 were U.S. schools, and four were in the UK. The only outlier? Switzerland’s ETH Zurich.

HISPANIC-SERVING RESEARCH INSTITUTION ALLIANCE

Twenty hispanic-serving research institutions across the U.S. announced a new alliance at their launch event in D.C. yesterday, pledging to increase the number of Hispanic faculty and doctoral students at their institutions. The alliance includes UT El Paso, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT ZELENSKY ADDRESSES UK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

During tonight’s live broadcast, President Zelensky will address students at Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, UCL, Glasgow, and a number of other UK universities. Zelensky is expected to address the importance of international cooperation, as well as answer student questions. The event is being held by a newly formed group of Ukrainian students at UK universities (USU).

BEST ARTICLES OF THE WEEK

We’ve covered on the blog both the New York Times opinion piece “My College Students Are Not OK,” as well as the backlash from many readers about the burnout that college students are experiencing in the wake of the pandemic. Now, the column’s author, a first-year writing professor at SMU, has published a series of responses to questions about how this burnout fits into larger issues about the cost and value of attending college. If you’ve been following this story, the piece is definitely worth a read!

During pride month, we also wanted to share this article about the mental health challenges that face LGBTQ+ college students. Many, many students struggle with the transition to college, but it can be helpful for LGBTQ+ students and their parents to be aware of the particular challenges that may arise, and the resources on their campus that are available to help with this transition.

In a follow-up to the article we shared last week with unexpected public colleges that lead to six-figure salaries, check out this list of ten jobs with the best future outlook for college graduates. Some of these jobs are certainly surprising - with elementary school teacher topping the list!

OFFICE HAPPENINGS

With the start of summer, things are really ramping up for our juniors! We know that they are going to put in a lot of hard work over the next several months, but it will be so worth it when they are done with our Finish by September Timeline and can spend senior year focused on their classes and other commitments, not applications. For our past clients, this is often one of their favorite things about working with us!

All those essay coaching meetings mean that we are excited to bring on new coaches, and McClain will start meeting with students next week! You can check out one of McClain’s guest blog posts here, and current clients can book a meeting with her here. Welcome back, McClain!

And last but not least, I was out of the office yesterday celebrating my son’s preschool graduation! A bunch of our current families were working with me while I was pregnant with him (with their older children, of course) so I get questions from time to time about how old “the baby” is now. Hard to believe he will be off to kindergarten and turning six in the fall!