Your child needs to think about how they want their life to look after college. What values are important to them? What skills do they have? What’s their vision? We really encourage students to think about what their days will look like in a chosen career path.

Let’s say you want to help people and think you want to be a nurse. Are you up for night shifts or missing holidays? Are you ready to do what nurses are required to do? Is that the life you envisioned? If not, there are many other ways to help people.

Being able to experience careers before choosing a path and going to college is the best way to know. Due to budget cuts, a lot of high schools don’t have this opportunity in their everyday high school classes. There are so many options, but without exposure, children usually know the big careers (doctor, lawyer, etc.) and the ones held by those around...

Families don’t often think about this until it’s too late, but grades and standardized tests are the biggest way to scholarships. When scholarships are based off of grades and test scores (that are standard across the board), those last for all four years of school. Multiply the dollar amount of the scholarship by 4 and that’s a lot of money!

But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t go back and fix your grades or re-take standardized tests? People often think of scholarships when a student is applying or has already applied to their schools (typically Junior-Senior year).

Don’t worry, there are other options for you.

At this point, it’s about taking matters into your own hands. Applying to scholarships is truly a job in itself. You have to search, write essays, fill out applications, and they may even ask for a video...

This is something we hear a lot from parents. They worry a lot about standardized tests because their kid isn’t a great test taker, even though their grades may be great. Kelly says bad test takers are really our own fault.

Currently, our school system is set up to rigorously test students throughout the year. Students are expected to recall the information from certain chapters or topics on a test. However, standardized tests aren’t built like this, they’re built around problem-solving.

Here’s a great example that shows how this testing method is problematic. There’re third-grade level math questions on the ACT, and what we often see happen is students try to attach some complex formula they learned in high school to that problem. They try to recall their information rather than problem solve.

Standardized testing is a skill that is vital...

CCP classes are also known as College Credit Plus classes. CCP classes are often offered by local colleges, like a community college. These classes count for both high school credit and college credit.

There are many misconceptions about what it takes to get to being a college athlete. Often, people feel like their kid is a great athlete. They're setting records, they're in the weekly newspaper, and yet, they're not getting recruited. And that is very common. We have to look at it from the coach's perspective.

Coaches are looking for someone who's going to be a good fit not only for their team, but for the school. Coach’s recruiting budgets outside of the Big Ten and SEC are relatively small. Their recruiting budgets cover things like traveling to see high school athletes play. That includes the cost of gas, the cost of the ticket to get in, an overnight stay in a hotel.

There's a lot of overhead for these coaches, so they are pretty selective about when and what games they go to. Just because you're a great athlete,...

Most college visits begin during junior year of high school. People think it’s no big deal and they’re just going to go take a visit. But think about the fact that the typical college visit means you're meeting admissions. They hand you all of their shiny, fabulous marketing materials to get you hooked on the school. Then,...