Telecom Loves You

When I received my holiday gift to myself, the EP from the Australian band "Telecom," I started thinking...how did this group find me? Why did I decide to buy this thing? And are there parallels with how kids market themselves to schools? Or how colleges find kids? Read on. If you see more parallels, let me know. If not, at least you can say "I heard these guys before they were huge."

They are legit, or at least someone legit says so. The highly influential KEXP radio station featured their song "Second Feature" as a song of the day a couple weeks back. It had to sound good enough to get someone's attention. I won't ask the band how many different angles they tried to contact people in the industry to get some exposure. It just happened...maybe they made their own luck.

Question for the college-bound: are you making your own luck?

They are a marketing machine. Well, at least they appear to be a marketing machine: take a look at their web page, spin through the various offerings there, look at how it's all consistent. And good.

For instance, I ordered the EP with the special sticker and button, and it was made rather painless in that I used PayPal and it was about 10 bucks US postage-paid.

Question for the college-bound: Do you feel like you're part of something unique when colleges come after you? Or not?

They're good, yet fill a unique niche. This is a band that has a really good sound that might not be easily defined. So they could be branded as yet another band from Australia -- one niche -- or they could be the next "Dinosaur Jr." I don't get the impression that they're all things to all people, but I am left with an indelible image of them as a solid, well-branded group who fit well in my music library.

Question for the college-bound: what makes you unique? Do you know whether you might fit? How are you positioned?

She would have gotten in anyway

Saw this note about Michelle Wie getting into Stanford (see the Yahoo! story here).

I also received a question from the peanut gallery about whether her status as a really really good professional golfer -- and one who won't be playing on the college team -- got her preferential treatment.

Well, her grades and test scores and the fact that she's got Stanford grads all up and down her family tree got her in.

Oh yeah, and the fact she made 20 Million in endorsements last year DID NOT HURT.

So, if you are young and making a lot of money in endorsements, U Sphere would encourage you to apply to places like Stanford.

You can also use our free services here at U Sphere like everyone else.

Or you can use the $10 a month U Advisor service and, because it's confidential, we won't tell anyone.

Good Luck Making Sense of All This...

The Early Show continues...

Big article in The Wall Street Journal (link here, subscription required) that discusses a number of random things going on with early admissions. Different Early Decision dates, different styles of applying early, different product names.

If your head is spinning, join the crowd.

The article also discusses "FastApps" and "SnapApps" -- common tools that some schools are employing to offer you, the student, a pre-approved offer of admission (sortof) by pre-populating your application with a bunch of your info.

(The article didn't mention a school that is offering free iTunes just for applying. Such an animal is rumored to exist, and I, for one, am anxious to sign up to join the Freshman class. After all, college is all about ignoring the professor while listening to your iPod, right?)

FJ Cruiser U

Pardon the obsession with a nascent vehicle (the Toyota FJ Cruiser, which was launched earlier this year) and the college search process, but I have to weigh in again.

You can read below about the search for the family minivan and how I see parallels between car shopping and college shopping. And, during the process, I found a vehicle that I fell in love with.

Alas, it's not to be, just yet -- the Toyota doesn't have family-friendly stuff like a DVD player. It's not practical. But it's so cool.

Where am I going with this? I shared emails with a student who came to U Sphere and is looking for the right school. The unheard of will not do. The off the beaten path is not something Mom and Dad will support (financially or otherwise). Names that I mentioned of the up-and-coming school will not work.

Whether Ivy or Near-Ivy is the only thing that this student will do is something that we'll have to sort out over time.

So the student can't get the FJ Cruiser out of his mind.

And neither can I.

This is despite the fact that a leading consumer publication that tested this vehichle ranked it nearest the bottom of its class. Among the comments that told me this is not right for me -- awful visibility (I'm bad at switching lanes), tough to get a car-seat in (I have three kids).

It's great if you take it off road -- I think I've been off-road once, by accident.

It's art, it's science, it's both -- the FJ Cruiser may eventually work out as another family vehicle, or the issues might get fixed in year two or year three.

And this particular kid may realize that there could be a perfect school -- or two or three -- out there that he's never heard of.

Admissions w/Humor

Received this holiday card from a progressive, forward-thinking, really cool school in Florida. Take a look:

Eckerd College Holiday Card

Help "U" Help You

Okay, there's a good chunk of online discussion and traffic about college admissions "matchmakers." Our two cents from U Sphere:

One Size Does Not Fit All.

Our favorite word is "holistic." Discovering the right schools for you should be a holistic process. You're more than your grades, test scores, extracurriculars, ability to answer a few essay questions, those sorts of things. You rely on gut instinct -- that cell phone looks cool, I don't want to be seen with my parents EVER, this pizza is horrible.

So if anyone says that this process is supposed to be simple, easy, cut-and-dried, it's not.

Advice: Get a few opinions. Kick the tires. (Or, if you're British, "tyres.") Visit. Talk to students. Hang out on campuses. Hang out OFF campuses. Find out what makes a place tick -- sniff around online, see what people blog about, check out profiles of students on myspace and facebook. Why? There are 4000-plus colleges in the USA ALONE. (And more if you count Canada, the UK, Europe, the Far East.)

And fill out a few applications (including ours, of course). You'll want to have more than just one option at your disposal.