Copyright 2005 Mimi Doe and Michele A. Hernandez
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
Doe, Mimi.
Dont worry, youll get in : 100 winning tips for stress-free college
admissions / Mimi Doe and Michele A. Hernandez.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56924-367-1
eBook ISBN: 9780786739295
1.Universities and collegesUnited StatesAdmissionHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Hernadez, Michele A. II. Title.
> About the Authors
MIMI DOE is the award-winning author of Nurturing Your Teenagers Soul: A Practical Approach to Raising a Kind, Honorable, Compassionate Teen; Busy but Balanced: Practical and Inspirational Ways to Create a Calmer, Closer Family; Drawing Angels Near; and 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting: Nurturing Your Childs Soul, which was awarded a Parents Choice Approved Seal and was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award. She founded the popular Web site www.SpiritualParenting.com and holds a masters degree in education from Harvard University.
Dubbed a parenting guru by Ladies Home Journal, Mimi is the preeminent expert in the area of spiritual parenting and instilling balance and awareness in the household. She takes a practical yet deeply soulful approach to her subject, offering simple suggestions that can be integrated into the everyday lives of even the busiest families.
Mimi is featured in weekly segments on the Hallmark Channels New Morning TV and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and the CBS Early Show. Her work has been covered in such publications as Child, Parenting, McCalls, Family Circle, Redbook, Readers Digest, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, the London Independent, Christian Science Monitor, and the Washington Post.
Mimi reaches over fifty thousand parents through her online newsletter Spiritual Parenting Thought for the Week and through workshops and seminars worldwide. She is a featured expert on Beliefhet.com and a contributor to iVillages parenting section, ParentSoup. Parenting groups based on Mimis 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting are meeting around the world.
She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband and two teenaged daughters.
DR. MICHELE A. HERNANDEZ has come to be known as the admissions guru through her college consulting work with high school students and her best-selling books A Is for Admission, The Middle School Years, and Acing the College Application. She is one of Americas leading experts in selective college admissions and counseling services and has been featured in hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television programs, including Newsweek, Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Atlantic Monthly, the Today Show, CNN, and MSNBC. Her online newsletter at hernandezcollegeconsulting.com has a growing following.
As an assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth College for four years and the academic dean of a private high school in South Florida, Michele has crafted a unique angle for assisting students in gaining admission to the most selective colleges, incorporating her inside perspective on the admissions adventure. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1989 and went on to earn a masters degree in English and comparative literature from Columbia University and a doctorate in education. In her spare time, Michele reads as many books as she can, stargazes, exercises, and hangs out with her family. She is married to Bruce Bayliss, who is head of a private school in Portland, Oregon, and has two young children and two golden retrievers. They live in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
To contact the authors, head over to: www.DontWorryGetIn.com
There you will find updates to the tips and ideas presented in this book as well as lots of other goodies.
> Introduction
When Mimi and I first met, it was like a cosmic blast with sparks flying and jet-stream bursts streaming in all directions. And this was only over the phone! She called to interview me for a book project about parenting she was working on at the time, but after an hour-long chat, I doubt either of us remembered the reason for the original call. Between her expertise on parenting and mine on college admissions, we could not stop generating ideas and advice. I am just about the fastest talker on earth to begin with, but I can tell you that by the end of the hour, I was talking faster than usual and Mimi was spouting more ideas per minute than I could keep up with. We knew then it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Over the next year or so, we spoke on an almost daily basis, exchanging advice about our own kids (Mimis are older, in high school heading toward college, and mine are younger, twenty-one months and elementary school), how to handle the stress of college admissions, and how to keep our collective cools during all the stressful times that invade any family where kids are present. It was out of these conversations that the idea for this book was born: why not combine Mimis expertise in parenting with mine in college admissions? No one had ever written a college admissions guide that addressed the emotional side of college admissions, arguably one of the most stressful processes families go through. Ive been doing private college admissions counseling for the past seven years, and at the end of the process, parents always surprise me by thanking me for saving the family rather than for helping their child get into a particular college (although they get to that eventually).
Mimi and I realized that families have to be armed with as much information as possible. A well-planned college journey is much less stressful than a haphazard one thrown together on an ad hoc basis. Timing is everything, and super-informed parents and students will always be more prepared and less stressed out than those who have not done their research. But sometimes families acquire all the hard facts without planning for the emotional backlash. That is where our book comes in. We have organized it in a way that is as user-friendly as possible. There are ten chapters that cover the ten most important aspects of the college admissions process. Within each chapter, on the left-hand page, ten tips are provided that are geared toward the hard facts, the knowledge you need to succeed. I wrote these pages to highlight the most important information for parents and students to keep in mind. On the right-hand page are strategies and advice for how to successfully approach college admissions without giving up your soul, elevating your stress level, or giving in to the urge to throw yourself off a tall bridge. Of course, Mimi wrote all the right-page tips!