The following piece was written by Rachel Korn. Rachel has been featured in our Admissions Expert series and is a former University of Pennsylvania admissions officer, as well as the founder of her own admissions consulting firm.  In your applications to college, you will be asked what you did during your high school summers. Why? Your choices of summer activities actually say a lot about your personality, what you love, and your skills. Admissions offices care about your summer activities because they want you to be productive. They do not expect you to work all the time and never play – in fact, admissions officers lam ... Read More About How to Choose Summer Activities for Your College Applications

Too many students are under the impression that Linkedin is only for adults with jobs who are already well established in the workforce, but this is a simple misconception. One of the best resources Linkedin provides is personally tailored job listings that reflect your career interests, so this is basically a haven for aspiring professionals. To make this simple: if you are a college student who is beginning to put together a resumé and think about internships, you should create a Linkedin profile. One reason you may feel silly getting on Linkedin at this stage in your life could be that you haven’t yet held a role that you feel ... Read More About How to Create a Linkedin Profile

To be frank, journalism is a tough job market – especially now.  The field is changing and positions are being eliminated.  Yet, this is also one of the fields that offers a great deal of opportunities for students to take advantage of to build up their resumé before they even graduate.  This should be a particularly appealing concept right now since the ability to build experience in the actual workforce after graduation is dwindling before our eyes – for several fields.  But thankfully, there is still a lot of freedom for journalism students to get their bylines out there. The most obvious go-to is the ... Read More About Things To Focus On as a Journalism Major

Although many college students may view senior year as the time to start thinking like an adult, junior year is really the time to do it.  By no means does this imply you are obligated to stop engaging in student life and must spend all your time networking in business suits, but you do need to start shaping your mindset for that reality.  Otherwise, you will enter senior year with no preparation for the real world that is ever so quickly approaching you. Possibly the biggest reason for all this is the fact that internship season is falling upon you.  If you haven’t had an internship already, the summer between junior and ... Read More About Why Junior Year of College is Important

Job interviews can be dangerously overthought.  Of course you’re going to overthink them though, they can potentially change your life.  You clearly want to do your absolute best to make sure you say all the right things and practice all the right etiquette.  But sometimes that is exactly what can hurt you – trying too hard to memorize and perform certain things.  Realistically, you need to understand that employers are interviewing a number of people, not just you, so they will easily filter out applicants who they can tell are “putting on a show.”  Now, how do you make sure you don’t fal ... Read More About How to Master an Interview

Ah, the classic cover letter.  If you don’t have at least some sort of template for one of these typed up, then you are nowhere near ready to embark on the job application process.  However, there is something very crucial to remember about these original templates you create – never send them out without meticulously personalizing them to the job/company you are applying to. Once you have the basic form of your cover letter set up, do not forget to go over these essential points: Who are you sending this to? This is not in reference to the company.  It means who specifically will be receiving and reading this init ... Read More About How to Personally Tailor a Cover Letter

Creating a resumé for the first time can be just a little bit daunting.  Where to even begin is probably what throws students off the most.  There are a lot of things to take into consideration, such as what format to use, what information to include, what order to put that information in, etc.  Well, it is actually quite simple.  The best way to approach putting together a resumé is by understanding its main purpose – to represent your professional self in the absolute best way possible.  This is an extremely detailed elevator speech put on paper meant to convince any employer that you are the top ... Read More About How to Create Your First Resume

Your first internship is a crucial stepping-stone in your professional life.  For many students, it is the very introduction into their professional life.  Internships are truly invaluable experiences that directly show you the difference between a teenage part-time job and a “real” job, so to speak.  Many of the elements that make these types of jobs distinct from each other are obvious, but there are also many elements that you can only understand by literally going through it. Landing an internship in the first place is no easy feat, so be sure to pat yourself on the back for accomplishing that step.  Also, ... Read More About How to Prepare for Your First Internship

Students who participated in after-school activities for two or more years during high school were almost twice as likely to complete college than those who did not.  This finding comes from professors at Columbia University, who also found correlations between participation in extracurriculars and increased high school GPAs. The key is not simply joining a club, but being involved for an extended period of time.  The determining factor is persistence, or "grit".  If you can develop persistence and passion for an activity, that mindset is likely to carry over to your academic pursuits.  In contrast to the extrinsic motiv ... Read More About Why Extracurriculars Boost College Success

            Federal and state regulators are becoming increasingly concerned with employers exploiting college students through unpaid internships, as a means for free labor, according to a New York Times article.             There has been a sharp increase in unpaid internships because of the recent economic recession. Many employers have been forced to make cuts. They have been picking up the slack and cutting costs by hiring unpaid interns. Also, there is a strong desire for many college students to pursue unpaid internships to enh ... Read More About Regulating Unpaid Internships