Countdown to College: 21 To Do Lists

This super list, packed with advice, schedules, book suggestions, and Web sites, guides high school students through the often mind-boggling and numbing college search. This guidebook emphasizes that volunteering, self-assessment, job experience, resumes, and thank-you notes give a student searcher goals clarification and admissions recognition. It also offers additional academic and financial advice, such as connecting with counselors and teachers, planning an academic schedule, checking admission requirements at certified institutions, and launching a scholarship search that will keep a wide range of educational choices open.

Suggestions for productive free time are as simple as “read a book” and as complicated as applying to international summer camps. The junior and senior year chapters include sources for getting through testing, campus visits, essays, Advanced Placement choices, application deadlines, “senioritis,” and hidden costs as well as packing and planning for the big move. The yellow-paged lists introduce and summarize brief chapters that explain the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’. Brief, broad in scope, and user friendly, the book will appeal to motivated students and will probably spend more time off than on the shelf as it is also an effective communication tool.