The NACAC (National Association for College Admission Counseling) conference is the largest college counselling conference in the world. This year’s conference was held in Denver, Colorado. Options Solutions President, Melinda Giampietro has attended NACAC for the last five years and finds it invaluable for keeping up with the latest post-secondary trends, networking with university admissions personnel, and keeping track of professional colleagues from all over the world. Below is part one of her conference highlights.
On Thursday, October 4, I attended the University of California (UC) counsellor session. It was very informative and a great chance to talk one-on-one with admission directors and associate directors from UC: Davis, Berkeley, San Diego and UCLA.
Some highlights include:
• Assurance that we will continue to see more international students welcome on the U of California campuses due to an increase in the number of spots for non-resident applicants. For example, last year UCLA admitted 9,000 California residents, 3,000 non-residents, and 3,000 international students.
• Michelle Butler Larkrith, Associate Director of Admission at Berkeley, talked to me about the importance of the personal statement in the application process. She mentioned that many students attempt it like the narrative Common Application essay and what a fatal flaw this was to the application. Instead, students should approach it in a more straight forward manner, aimed at answering all elements of the question.
• Susan Wilbur, the Executive Director of Admission at UCLA, and I discussed effective ways for students to use the Additional Information portion of the UC application. For example, students should declare the BC grading scale and unique characteristics about their school. She was incredibly insightful.
• I learned Gary Clark, Jr, currently a senior associate director of admission at USC, will be moving to UCLA next month as the director of admission.
• I talked with Mae Brown of UCSD about how the university both welcomes and encourages a strong international student presence on their campus.
• In the general presentation, there was much discussion about the A-G requirements, which include social science, English, math, lab science, arts, and college prep electives. A few things worth noting for BC students: one, they want two years of a lab science from Biology, Chemistry and Physics, two years of a foreign language is required, and they require an Arts full year credit (this is very different than our BC Applied Skill OR Fine Art credit).
• It is also acceptable to report your SAT and/or ACT score to just one campus as they share information.
• UC Riverside just had its own medical school approved.
• It is $80 per campus to apply for international students and remember, the deadline is NOVEMBER 30th.
~ Melinda
