Happy Friday Everyone!
For this week’s CTP tip, we will be providing you with ways to stay organized over the weeks to come. Balancing standardized testing, essay writing, financial aid applications along with classes, assignments, friends and family can be challenging (we as college students still struggle with this on the daily, so know that you’re not alone). Therefore, to get the most out of this experience, it is important that you have a means of strategically achieving your goals and holding yourself accountable.
The first step to staying organized is to have a clear idea of your goals, your action plan and your deadlines. Invest in a notebook/planner and first write down all the things you have to achieve every week. Rate those items in terms of urgency and difficulty. Ideally, you should be spending the most time on the most urgent and difficult activities. Finally, block in times in your planner to work on these items. When you do cross off a certain item on your list, reward yourself (an episode of your favorite TV-show, candy – whatever works for you, as long as it doesn’t break the bank. Do it to keep yourself motivated!)
The second step is to pace yourself. A lot of the work you must complete to produce a successful college application can’t be done overnight. The best essays come out from weeks of editing and rewriting, and the highest SAT scores are contingent upon routine practice leading up to the exam date. Set a dedicated time each day (for instance, 45 minutes a day for SATs and 45 minutes twice a week for essays) to work on these items. Stick to your routine and you will see a lot of progress!
The third step is to structure your workspaces (notes and on your computer). For SAT’s keep a folder of your notes divided by section. On your laptop/computer, set up folders for financial aid, transcripts, essays, practice tests and guides to colleges. And of course, back up EVERYTHING on another computer or a flash drive!
The last step is to work with others. Find people who will motivate you and you in turn will motivate when the going gets tough. Work with them, share resources and support one another. The process will be less stressful for you if you’re around people with the same goals as you.
Managing college apps with classes can get tough but know that you are supported and more than capable. Stick to your plan, organize your workspaces and keep your self motivated. You got this!!

Hola folks!! A quick reminder for students who took the October SAT exam last Saturday: Don't forget to utilize your 4 free SAT score reports. In case you don't know, taking the SAT exam doesn't mean that colleges will automatically see your scores in the test. At this point, it's only the collegeboard that has access to your SAT test results.

In order for colleges to get your results, your score report would have to be sent to them directly from the collegeboard. Normally, sending an SAT score report costs around 12 dollars per school. However, collegeboard allows you to send your SAT score report for any four schools of your choice for free as long as you send the scores within 9 days of taking the exam.

Therefore, if you took the SAT exam last Saturday, make sure to go to collegeboard.org and send your score reports for four colleges. You only have a week left, after which you'd lose the privilege of sending your scores for free. So do it now.Time is ticking!!

Hello everyone!

For those of you who haven't joined our Piazza forum yet, please complete the form below so that you can get an invatation link to sign up to CTP's forum.

https://forms.gle/gACS6io6yvDwbj9t9

Don't know what CTP's Piazza forum is? Check out this post from last year:

We have been getting a lot of requests to create a college application forum that is specifically catered to Ethiopian students. Well, we heard you loud and clear and now we are happy to announce that the CTP Piazza page is live! With just a few steps, you can join the discussion forum which will serve as your one stop destination to ask any college application related questions. With more than 20 current and past students who have studied at U.S. colleges montitoring the forum, you can be sure that you will get an adequate response to all your questions. And now, we invite you all to join the Piazza page and take part in the discussion!

Hello everyone!! Don’t forget to register for our Piazza forum(read prior message)! Also, today we have our second Instagram takeover coming to you from Cornell University! Again, it’s a series we started last school year where students abroad can show you what a day in their life looks like. So check out the stories if you’re interested! Make sure you’re following us on Instagram. Here’s the link: www.instagram.com/ctpethiopia

You know what time it is🎊🙌🏾🤙🏾🎊🎁!! We have our THIRD Instagram takeover coming to you from SUNY Plattsburgh University! As you know, every week we show you what a day in the life of a college student here is like and so far it’s all been Ethiopians like you! So check out the stories if you’re interested! Make sure you’re following us on Instagram. Here’s the link: www.instagram.com/ctpethiopia

Hi CTP, hope you’ve all had an interesting couple of weeks. As ED1(Early Decision 1) comes to a close, we would like to say a bit about the second Early Decision window, commonly referred to as ED2 or Early Decision 2. ED2 has the same benefits ED1 does, but its timeline is significantly different and will affect how you proceed with your Regular Decision applications. The deadline for ED2 is usually around January 1 and, typically, most colleges let you know about your application status by February 17. As you might have guessed, applying ED2 doesn’t guarantee you’ll hear back from colleges before most Regular Decision application deadlines, so you’ll have to still apply to the rest of your colleges through Regular Decision before you hear back from your ED2 colleges. You can think of ED2 as a second chance at applying Early Decision, but with the timeline caveat. For most schools, acceptance rates tend to be lower for ED2 compared to ED1, if they have the ED2 program at all. Here’s the most up-to-date list of colleges we could find that have the ED2 option so you can get ahead of things: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenmoon/2018/12/13/early-decision-ii-colleges-the-complete-list/#2437de114acf
Here is some additional tips to help you decide if ED2 is for you: https://www.saraharberson.com/blog/7-things-to-keep-in-mind-before-applying-early-decision-2

Hope that was helpful! We’ll be back next week with another dose of tips and notes.

Make sure to read the previous message with useful info on Early Decision applications! On a different note, we know you’ve been eagerly waiting for something. Perhaps...an instagram takeover🤷🏾‍♀️ Well the wait is over because we have our FOURTH takeover coming to you from Bryn Mawr College! As you know, every week we show you what a day in the life of a college student here is like. Check out the stories if you’re interested! Make sure you’re following us on Instagram too. Here’s the link:

www.instagram.com/ctpethiopia

Hello everyone,

Hope you are having a great weekend! For this week’s CTP tip, we wanted to talk about one of the most crucial elements of the college application process, The Common Application Essay. The Common App essay is the best way for admissions committees to get to you know you. Recommendations are what your teachers say about you, transcripts are what your grades say about you, but think of the essay as what YOU say about YOU. For this reason, try to treat the essay as an opportunity to tell colleges why you are unique and what matters to you. Since your Common App essay will be seen by numerous colleges, you will want to paint a portrait of yourself that is accessible to a breadth of institutions and admissions officers.

Because the Common App essay is only 650 words long and has few formal directions, organizing a response might seem daunting. Here are a few steps to formulate a strong and unique common app essay

Brainstorm

To begin developing your own high-level ideas, you can address these Core Four questions that all good Common App essays should answer: “Who Am I?”, “Why Am I Here?”, “What is Unique About Me?”, “What Matters to Me?”
The first question focuses on your personality traits — who you are. The second question targets your progression throughout high school (an arc or journey). The third question is more difficult to grasp, but it involves showing why your personality traits, methods of thinking, areas of interest, and tangible skills form a unique combination. The fourth question is a concluding point that can be answered simply, normally in the conclusion paragraph.  

Overall, there is no single “correct” topic. Your essay will be strong as long as you are comfortable and passionate about your idea and it answers the Core Four questions.

Organize

Common App essays are not traditional five-paragraph essays. You are free to be creative in structure, employ dialogue, and use vivid descriptions—and you should! Make sure that context and logic are inherent in your essay, however. From paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence, your ideas should be clear and flow naturally. Great ways to ensure this are using a story arc following a few major points, or focusing on cause and effect.

Write

Your Common App essay must display excellent writing in terms of grammar and sentence structure.
A few tips to accomplish this are: 

“Show, don’t tell” is vital to writing an engaging essay, and this is the point students struggle with most.  Instead of saying, “I struggled to make friends when I transferred schools,” you can show your emotions by writing, “I scanned the bustling school cafeteria, feeling more and more forlorn with each unfamiliar face. I found an empty table and ate my lunch alone.”
 
In many cases, writing can include more specific word choice. For example, “As a kid, I always played basketball,” can be improved to be “Every day after school as kid, I ran home, laced up my sneakers, and shot a basketball in my driveway until the sun went down and I could barely see.”
 
To use active voice over passive voice, be sure that your sentence’s subject performs the action indicated by the verb, rather than the action performing onto the subject. Instead of writing “this project was built by my own hands,” you would say “I built this project with my own hands.”
 
Finally, avoid clichés like adages, sayings, and quotes that do not bring value to your essay. Examples include phrases like “Be the change you wish to see in the world” (it’s also important to know that sayings like these are often seriously misquoted—Gandhi did not actually utter these words) and lavish claims like “it was the greatest experience of my life.”
 
Deciding on a Prompt

Each of the common application essay prompts lends itself to distinct topics and strategies, so selecting the prompt that best aligns with your idea is essential to writing an effective Common App essay.
Here are this year’s prompts:
 https://www.commonapp.org/blog/2019-2020-common-app-essay-prompts

We understand that common app essays are one of the most difficult, time taking and daunting elements of the application process. Just know that it is a process and it takes time to craft your own unique story. You got this!!

Hey Everyone,

Since Regular Application season is approaching us, we wanted to highlight some of the criteria to use in choosing your colleges. Some of you have a college that you have wanted to go to since you were six, while some of you might not be as sure when it comes to choosing that one particular college among the many thousands. But fear not, CTP is here to help you get an inch closer to choosing that "Dream College."

The first thing you should know is that you shouldn't have just one Dream College. It just doesn't work that way. You have to be flexible. You can't put all of your eggs in one basket. So try to find colleges that match your expectations. Of course, one college might satisfy your expectations more than any other, but you should also keep tabs on other schools, just in case. Especially during the regular application season, it's of paramount importance to have a list of dream colleges rather than being fixated on just one.

Now that we have covered that we need to have multiple dream colleges, now let's see what criteria we should use in picking these colleges.

1. Financial Aid: Depending on your financial status, this might actually be the most important criteria of all. College expenses are expensive going sometimes as high as 80,000. As such, it's a no-brainer that this criteria matters. Don't take it at face value when colleges say they give financial aid in their emails. Colleges and universities don't often speak openly about financial aid policies. This is a touchy subject for them. You need to find out whether they give financial aid for international students or not. Specifically, you need to find out whether the colleges provide students with need-based financial aid for international students or not, which you can find on Google. Unless you have a gold mine somewhere, it's best to pursue colleges that have need-based financial aid for international students.

2. Apply to your Ethiopians’ Alma Mater(s): this is something some people fail to realize. Whenever colleges send you information about themselves talking about how many international students they accept or have, you should take that with a grain of salt. This statistics on international acceptance doesn't fully shed light on the case with Ethiopians. While making your list of dream colleges, you should think about whether Ethiopians have been able to go to that school, and if possible, how many? I'm not saying that you have no chance of getting into colleges that Ethiopians haven't gotten into. All I'm saying is that the math is definitely not on your side. So, if possible, try to get a sense of how many Ethiopians go into that college, and use this as one criteria to make your choice

3. Major Interest: although colleges more or less are good at all of the majors they provide, one college could have the best software engineering program or the best business program in the country. As such, this is also something you can factor into your choice. Also, you should be able to truly understand the education policy of each colleges because they might have something different to what you expected. For example when it says Columbia University has a core curriculum, you should be able to know what that actually entails.

4. Setting: You should also know that you aren't only going to learn at that college, but you are also going to live there. Therefore, you should think about whether you would like to live in a city or a suburb.

5. Be Realistic: This is the criteria I hate to point out, but it's still important. SAT Scores and transcripts don't tell the whole story, but you should try to see the score bracket of that school and your score and make serious decisions based on that. It's good to be optimistic but you also gotta be realistic at the same time. I'm not saying scores are the be all end all of the application, but they do matter.

https://www.internationalstudent.com/school-search/usa/
This is a site that you can use with regards to searching schools in the United States that accept international students. But, be sure to look out for institutions outside the US as well. There are some amazing institutions in the rest of the word like Canada and Abu Dhabi that accept international students.

https://blog.collegevine.com/schools-that-grant-financial-aid-to-international-students-a-complete-list/
This is a helpful site for figuring out which colleges provide need-based and need-blind financial aid for international students.

Hello everyone! Last week must have been rough for y’all without an Instagram takeover. We’re so sorry😢🙊 BUT! Don’t think we’ve forgotten you because today we have our FIFTH takeover coming to you from Princeton University!🎉🎊🙌🏾 As you know, every week we show you what a day in the life of a college student here is like. Check out the stories if you’re interested! Make sure you’re following us on Instagram too. Here’s the link:

www.instagram.com/ctpethiopia

Hola peeps! Today let's talk a little about recommendations.

Recommendations are a very important, and yet the most underestimated, part of the college applications. By now you may have heard the spiel that admission officers expect very highly of your personal statements (the college application essays) mostly because it's the only place where they get to know and, depending on how good you are with your rhetoric, SEE your personality. (psst If you didn't get what I meant by "SEE", then check out last week's post about college essays and paritcularly about the SHOW DON'T TELL advice.")
And that's all true. Your personal statements indeed allow others to hear about the person you are outside the realm of academics and numbers. But there's one thing they fail at. Personal statements are accounts written by YOU about yourself, your personalities, and your accomplishments. And it's not unusual that people try to exaggerate their positive side and hide their negative sides. That's why admission officers are always looking for Teacher and Counsellor recommendations. They want to hear about you from someone else that's neither you nor your friend.

There's a reason why habesha parents try to investigate and find out about the man their daughter is about to marry through other people rather than directly confronting him. There is a reason why they "mastenat" him by their super secret source of knowledge (aka gossiping with other people). But anyways, I digress.

Before I go into any details, let me first walk you through some scenario. Suppose I wrote to you a two page letter today describing about how I am a brilliant mathmetician, an astonishing physicist, an inspiring activist, a dazzling musician, a charitable giver, an incredible orator, a phenomenal singer and a virtuoso painter. You would never come close to believing me, will you? Plus, who am I kidding, I'm not really that good at painting :).

But suppose it was my Biology professor that was sending you an email about how he has seen me consistently participate in the class, show an incredible level of dedication in my semester long project about "Hygiene and its health impacts in Ethiopia" where I showed not only great leadership skills in organizing my team mates throughout the process but also an insightful understanding in my final paper that I submitted. He also recounts to you how proud he was when I helped with organizing a "Save the planet, or if not, just clean Addis" community event where I help mobilize the students in our school to go out and clean the neighbourhood. And suppose he also mentions to you in his email about a particular conversation we had about "Cultural medicines in the rural regions and their astonishing effectiveness" and how he realized that day not only how passionate I was about herbal medicine but also how inquisitve and committed I am in my quest to learn and discover new and relevant things. Then you would have no reason but to believe him and be impressed by the driven and self-motivated person that I am.

THAT'S WHY RECOMMENDATIONS CAN BE EXTREMELY HELPFUL in your college applications if done right. As you set on your endeavors of trying to convince college admission officers about why they should accept you, having someone like your professor put in word for you about how you are "an Einestien in the class, a Marthin Luther King in the afternoon, a Spider man at night and a Mother Theresa in the weekends." would most defintely help.

Now in all my attempt to entertain you long enough to reading the whole of this post, I hope you've got my point: Stories of heroism sound more plausible and captivating when they're told by someone other than the hero.

That said, I can only wish that I have convinced you to see recommendation letters as much more imporant than you used to before reading this post. It's highly advisable that you ask your teachers to write you a recommendation at least a month in advance before your application deadlines. Here are two more short readings that we recommend you do as you think about recommendations. Maybe you can also make your teachers read these too so that they understand how much their recommendations can have an impact on your future and how they should go on about writing you one.

Hello everyone! Make sure you read the prior messages about recommendations. We think it’s very helpful! And today we have another Instagram takeover all the way from the University of Chicago!🎉🎊🙌🏾 As you know, every week we show you what a day in the life of a college student here is like. Check out the stories if you’re interested! Make sure you’re following us on Instagram too. Here’s the link:

www.instagram.com/ctpethiopia

Hello fam,

Hope you all had a good holiday season. For those who have completed their college applications, give yourselves a pat on the back. You’ve worked very hard to complete all those essays and other application requirements. We, at CTP, hope that you get to bear the fruits of your efforts. If you still have Regular Decision II lurking in the corner, we send you this digital energy boost and hope that it helps you cross the final bridge. YOU GOT THIS! 💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽

For those who are already thinking about the next application cycle, CTP has a number of events and opportunities that you can benefit from. Here is what we are cooking for the next few months.

1. Spring Workshops: all day workshops that take place on three Saturdays starting in mid March that will give you an introduction about the college application process and other CTP programs.

2. CTP Summer Sessions: a 6-8 week summer program that goes deep into topics introduced on the Spring Workshops. More information about the summer session will be communicated when the application opens in March/April. Watch out for your inbox!

3. Insta takeover: a weekly (sometimes biweekly) effort that introduces you to a day in a life of a college student studying abroad. Don’t miss all the fun, follow us on insta today! — https://www.instagram.com/ctpethiopia/ —(you can also find past takeovers on the saved stories section).

4. Last, but definitely not least, our famous weekly posts about the application process, presented to you by our dedicated members.

We hope you are as excited to engage with CTP in the coming months as we are in making it as useful as it can be.

In closing, as we work hard to provide you more opportunities and resources, we ask that you help us spread the word about CTP by telling someone about our work. Spread the knowledge :)

Peace and Love,
The CTP Team