Estrela Consulting Blog

  Is California on the list of places where you want to go to college? It’s a popular destination and even Californians want to stick around to enjoy the great weather and take advantage of in-state tuition at the many public universities and colleges. Students from around the world are drawn to the West Coast and, even though there’s every kind of college imaginable in California, many are drawn ...

The Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) released this month its ranking of What Colleges Look for in High School Students, based on an annual survey of nearly 2,000 independent educational consultants. While grades and standardized test scores are near the top of these annual rankings, a number of significant changes and surprises are challenging the assumptions about college ...

They're here! They're here! If you're like us you've been patiently waiting for the 2018-19 Common App Essay Prompts to be announced. Spoiler Alert: the folks at the Common App have actually decided to keep the same prompts that were used during the 2017-18 application cycle.

Starting anything new is hard – the first day of a new school year, a new class, getting in shape.  We tend to put these things off, and they linger and linger. Add to that the pressure of wanting it to be “perfect” (which nothing is!), and sitting down to write the common app essay for your college applications can seem pretty daunting!  

In 2015 the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) released their State of College Admission Report. The result of their survey revealed that colleges ranked the application essay as the 5th most-important factor in the admission process. The only items ranking higher in importance were grades, GPA, curriculum and test scores. Recommendations, extracurricular activities, ...