Dear customer,

Welcome to the August edition of ICON+’s University Access Newsletter. You are receiving this e-newsletter because you inquired about our test prep and/or admissions consulting services.

If you are in your eleventh year of formal schooling (or JC 1), then now is the time to study for your first SAT I attempt and plan out your SAT II exam schedule. If you are in your twelfth year of formal schooling (or JC 2), you should be developing a self-marketing plan so you can make yourself as appealing as possible to admissions committees.

How are you unique? What are your greatest strengths? What makes you a perfect match for your dream schools? These are the questions you should be asking yourselves.

College students in the USA often ask: “How much does my undergraduate major matter towards my future career?” Well, the answer to this question is neither black nor white—it varies depending on your situation.

Without a doubt, the type of degree that you have will determine what job market you will be competitive in. However, some degrees are more flexible than others while some careers require more specialized degrees than others. For example, if you want to enter a profession related to medicine, law, engineering or architecture, a specialized degree would be essential towards further career development.

With that said, some degrees are more flexible. A degree in economics would arguably provide more versatility in the job market than a degree in, for example, elementary education. Essentially, the more specialized your major is, the more difficult it may be to apply your skills to another discipline. However, this fact shouldn’t deter you from pursuing a specialized major if you’re certain of your desired career.
 

Read more.

While you’re conducting your college search, you might hear the term “Score Choice” come up quite a number of times, but what exactly is “Score Choice”? Recently implemented in 2009, SAT Score Choice allows you to decide which specific SAT scores you want to send to universities. Prior to the introduction of this option, all your scores were sent to your prospective school. However, nowadays, many schools have accepted the usage of Score Choice.

Despite the fact that you can pick which scores to send (and which ones not to), there are some restraints. For example, on the SAT I, you can’t mix and match individual section scores that you have taken on different test dates. That means that if you choose to use Score Choice, you must release all of your section scores (math, critical reading and writing) from that date or none of them.
 

Read up on how colleges view score choice.

Q: Which universities did you to apply to and why?

A: I applied to Northwestern early decision and got in, so I didn’t actually apply to other universities.

During my sophomore year in high school (secondary 4), one of my friends (who was president of our choir) got into Northwestern, and she showed me a video of their a capella group—that's how I first got to know about the school. I decided to do some more research on Northwestern and soon enough, I realized that it was a perfect fit for me. I’m really into watching sports, and Northwestern is a Division 1 Big Ten school, which means that I'll have plenty of opportunities to watch top notch athletes compete against one another. Northwestern has a great academic reputation, and it also has a really good music program. I visited their lakefront campus and I fell in love with it. Plus, it’s right next to Chicago. I’ve always been a big city guy and hopefully I'll have plenty of internship opportunities.

I was deciding whether to apply to Cornell or to Northwestern early decision, and I found that Cornell (in Ithaca, New York) was too isolated for me. Northwestern is not right smack downtown, so there’s the suburban kind of feel too, which is nice. If I want to go to the city, I can get there easily.
 

Q: Some say that the university-years are “the best times in life.” What do you want to accomplish by the time you graduate from university?

A: By the time I graduate, I want to have a clear idea of what I want to do with my life and have some real world experience. Like I said before, my dream career is to become a music producer, but at the end of the day, breaking into the music industry is really hard so I'll have to be realistic about that. Nonetheless, I want to find something that I really enjoy doing and I hope I'll know what it is in four years.

By the time I graduate I hope I'll have a great group of friends—people I can count on for the rest of my life. I also want to keep in touch with my high school friends. Most of my friends are going to the US, so we’ll keep in touch. I guess with Facebook and Skype nowadays, it’s a lot easier to do so.
 

Read the full interview.

Oftentimes, students who take the IELTS find it difficult to complete the writing section of the test within the allotted time. Therefore, it is crucial to manage your time wisely when taking the test.

Task 1 accounts for one third of the marks while Task 2 counts for the remaining two thirds of the marks. Since you are given one hour on the writing section, you should spend twenty minutes on Task 1 and forty minutes on Task 2. When you receive the questions, make sure you read both carefully. From then, you can choose which task to complete first. In general, you should start off with the task that you are more confident with—the one you have more ideas for. By doing this, you’ll have more time to process the other task while you complete your first piece of writing.
 

Read all tips here.