Blogs | Ivy Central

Why Should You Work With an Independent College Counselor?

College Counseling

Why Work with an Independent College Counselor?

As a person who earns a living as an independent college counsellor, you will not be surprised to know that I believe working with somebody like me can be a solid investment in your family’s future, in this blog, I will set out why. I don’t intend for this to be an extended advert for Ivy Central, rather I hope to give some pointers on what anybody who is contemplating employing a private counsellor should consider.

November 18, 2021

Writing Essays for the University of California

The UC application is round the corner and we are prepping for the 30th November deadline just as most of you are. If you are applying to one or more of these amazing universities, then these tips may be just the thing you need right now.

November 15, 2021

US Colleges

Summer Programs for High School Students

While few Summer Programs have already opened their applications for an early-round, the others will follow suit shortly! This blog comes in the form of a step-by-step guide towards planning your summer for the next year.

November 1, 2021

5 Tips to Help You Write Your Personal Essay

With the submission deadline for applying in the early round of US college applications coming up, you will hopefully have already finished your personal essay. This is the one opportunity that you have to help the admissions teams get to ‘meet you’ and understand something about the individual behind the grades and scores.

Writing a strong personal essay is, for many students, the most challenging part of the application, its test comes because what is required is significantly different from the types of essays that most students have been writing during their schooling. In this blog, I will share five tips from admissions professionals to help you if you are still working on your personal essay.

October 7, 2021

UCAS Application Guide | UK University Admission through UCAS

UK Colleges

Applying to the UK? An Introduction UCAS

The United Kingdom is the country with the second highest number of universities in the QS World University Rankings top 100, only beaten by the United States. It is then perhaps no surprise the UK also has the second highest number of international students that apply to its universities every year. Any prospective student will find out that UCAS plays a central role in their application to college so this article will provide you with an introduction to this organisation.

September 30, 2021

College Essays

Supplemental Essays: A Take on Short Takes

The Application Season is here and we are as excited as you are!

In this blog, I will take you through tips for writing those seemingly insignificant short take supplemental questions that first few, now many, colleges are including as part of their mandatory essay requirements.

September 5, 2021

Career Counseling

So You Want to be a Doctor? Qualifying in the UK

This is the second of two posts where I am exploring the different routes to qualifying as a doctor in the United States and the United Kingdom. Over the years, these are the countries that most Ivy Central students have chosen to apply to for medical training but of course there are many other options to consider.

In the first post, I focused on the pathway to becoming a doctor in the United States, in this second article I will be focusing on the route followed by aspiring doctors in the United Kingdom.

September 2, 2021

Career Counseling

So You Want to be a Doctor?

With the help of all the medical programmes on television, you may have thought to yourself that becoming a medical doctor may be the career for you. Over the next two blog posts I will take you through the steps, needed to achieve this goal, but as a regulated career, the requirements to qualify as a doctor differs from country to country. In this first article, I will focus on providing an overview of the steps required to train and work in the US,

August 26, 2021

Getting to Know the Common App

Anybody aspiring to attend college in the United States will come across the Common Application. In excess of one million students use it each year to make their application to colleges from Maine to California. Here is the Ivy Central quick guide to the Common App.

August 5, 2021

Career Counseling

Make Application Season Less Stressful with These 5 Tips

It is not surprising that, with the need to juggle the demands of school, extra-curricular activities alongside applying to college, application season can be highly stressful.

There’s also the worrying: Students worry about missing deadlines or not scoring high enough in their standardised tests. They worry that their peers will receive dazzling scholarship offers and acceptance letters, while they’ll be stuck with a pile of rejections.

They worry that there simply isn’t enough time for everything they need to accomplish.

Fortunately, you can reduce college application stress by following the 5 tips explored in this article.

July 29, 2021

Supplemental Essays | The College Community Essay 2021-22

College Counseling

Supplemental Essays: The Community Essay

The community essay prompt is one of my favorites. As mentioned in many of my blogs, US colleges and universities are looking at crafting a community and that’s exactly why colleges ask this question. They want to know how you see yourself as part of a community – any community. You do not necessarily have to be in a leadership role, but you could be.

July 25, 2021

Records Broken and the US Universities Slip

At the start of June, the 2021 the QS World University Rankings were published and 1300 universities across the world poured over the lists of colleges and universities to see if they had gone up or down from last year.

July 15, 2021

WHY THIS MAJOR ESSAY?

In less than a month’s time, the big reveal of Supplemental Essays will take place. While there could be a variety of supplemental essays that colleges/universities ask their students to answer, one of the most common and prominent is the one about what would you like to study in college. We call it the ‘Why this Major?’ essay prompt.

July 11, 2021

Supplemental Essays – University of Chicago

How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

July 4, 2021

Creating Your Own Reading List

Having been an English facilitator, I am often asked about book recommendations by students I work with and otherwise. On one hand, this question is straightforward. After all, there are so many books that most people enjoy reading.

June 27, 2021

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