Nearly three million students are expected to enroll as first-time freshmen in degree-granting institutions in the United States this school year. Each of these students will apply to many schools – five, 10, perhaps as many as 20 – and each of those applications has a daunting number of T’s to cross and I’s to dot. With standardized test taking and school visits, essays to write and forms to fill out, there is so much to do. It goes without saying that a student also attends school, keeps up homework, maintains that spot on the team or the lead role in the school play, volunteers at the local soup kitchen and possibly even holds down a part-time job. Applying to college is intimidating and overwhelming for both teenagers and their parents.

The challenge is to be well informed, prepared, focused and organized throughout the multistep college search and admission process.

The solution is The College Bound Organizer, the ultimate guide to help students effectively navigate this very complicated and stressful process.

The book helps students:

Build a personal profile

Plan a individualized testing schedule

Research colleges to identify schools that are a good fit

Develop a balanced list of schools

Complete and submit applications

Apply for financial aid and scholarships

Meet all deadlines

Sort through and manage application results

Make a final decision

Author tips and advice, and interviews with admission professionals offer insight into the process, including what admission officers are looking for in an applicant, common mistakes students make on their applications and when applying for financial aid, and other valuable information.

Author Biography

Anna Costaras holds a BS and MBA from New York University Stern School of Business. She is the founder of a college-bound mentoring program for underserved students from her community. She is actively involved with Adventures in Learning, an educational enrichment program for children in need of after-school support, as a volunteer and college mentor, and has served on the Board of Directors.

Anna is a veteran of the college application process, having guided her three children on their paths— graduate and undergraduate— to Cornell University, Wake Forest University and New York University. Gail Liss earned a MBA from New York University Stern School of Business, studied at The London School of Economics and holds a BA from the University of Rochester. Gail serves on the Advisory Board of Young Women’s Leadership Network, which supports The Young Women’s Leadership Schools and College Bound Initiative.

Gail has extensive experience with the college application process and has served as a coach and advisor. She has also counseled her three children: two graduates of Brown University and one graduate of Wesleyan University. In 1980, when he was education editor of the New York Times, Edward B. Fiske sensed that college-bound students and their families needed better information on which to base their educational choices. Thus was born the Fiske Guide to Colleges, which is now the #1 bestselling college guide. In addition to the Fiske Guide to Colleges, Fiske is the author of Fiske Guide to Getting Into the Right College, Fiske Nailing the New SAT, Fiske Real College Essays That Work, Fiske WordPower, Fiske Countdown to College, and several other books that help you find and get accepted to colleges that match you.

A graduate of Wesleyan University, Fiske did graduate work at Columbia University and assorted other bastions of higher learning. He left the Times in 1991 to pursue a variety of educational and journalistic interests, including a book on school reform, Smart Schools, Smart Kids. When not visiting colleges, he can be found playing tennis, sailing, or doing research on the educational problems of South Africa and other third world countries for UNESCO and other international organizations. Fiske lives in Durham, North Carolina, near the campus of Duke University, where his wife, Helen Ladd, is a member of the faculty. They are coauthors of When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Tale, Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa, and Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy.