Reference, Higher & Continuing Education, Student Life 

From the author of What Colleges Don't Tell You, 300+ secrets for raising the kid colleges will compete for.

In order to succeed at the insanely competitive college admissions game, writes Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, you have to have a game plan - and you have to start young. Gone are the days when parents could afford to let high school guidance counselors supervise the admission process alone - gone, also, are the days when a student could wait until senior year to prepare for it.

Instead of encouraging parents to join the last-minute college application frenzy, in What High Schools Don't Tell You, Wissner-Gross - a nationally sought-after "packager" of high school students - shows parents how to transcend it, by helping them to create a long-term plan that, come senior year, will allow their kids to virtually write their own ticket into their choice of schools.

Part I of the book lays out the basics: Parents should start by helping their 8th or 9th grader identify his or her academic passions (Does your child dream of someday publishing a novel? Discover a cure for cancer? Running for government office?), then help to design a concrete, four-year strategy based on those particular interests.

Part II describes hundreds of specific opportunities available to make kids stand out in an array of subjects - opportunities that most high school guidance counselors, principals, and teachers simply don't know about or don't think to share. Entire chapters are dedicated to opportunities and strategies in mathematics, science, the arts, humanities, journalism and advocacy, political leadership, and business, identifying exactly which academic credentials will wow and admissions committee and which summer programs and extracurriculars can turn an ordinary applicant into a must-have.

The only college guide geared toward parents of middle school and early high school students, What High Schools Don't Tell You should be essential reading for any parent whose child dreams of attending one of the country's top schools.

Elizabeth Wissner-Gross is an educational strategist who, for more than ten years, has worked with hundreds of middle and high school students to create early individualized "game plans" for gaining admission into the country's most competitive colleges - including Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern, Columbia, Caltech, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, Duke, Amhers, Williams, and many more. She has appeared on The Today Show and has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and other publications.

Taken from the inside flaps.