Paying Off Student Loans: One Student's Story: Schools In! Application Workshop: Drafting the Why This College Essay, including Penn, Brown, Pitt and Others
September 15, 2016
Hosted by Elizabeth Heaton
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Guest Information
Episode Description
You may have read a recent article in Business Insider chronicling one graduate’s story about finishing school 113,000 dollars in debt back in 2009, and paying it off by November of 2016. We’re thrilled to welcome that graduate, Jessica Elberfeld, to the show to tell us a bit more about how she wound up in debt, what prompted her to pay it off in record time, and how she did that. In this week’s School's In! Application Workshop, Kara Courtois will join me to discuss how to approach the Why This College essay, a common prompt presented in different ways on many applications. We’ll offer some general tips and review questions at some institutions, including Penn, Carnegie Mellon, Wellesley, Brown, Delaware, Pitt, and others.
Getting In: A College Coach Conversation
Thursday at 1 PM Pacific Time on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Planning for college? Tune into Getting In: A College Coach Conversation for tips, techniques, and insider perspectives. Hosted by Elizabeth Heaton, a former admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania, and featuring her fellow admissions and college finance experts from Bright Horizons College Coach, the show shares what colleges are really looking for and how to highlight your hard-won achievements for the best chance at success. New episodes air every Thursday at 4 PM Eastern Time, 1 PM Pacific Time on the VoiceAmerica Variety channel.
Elizabeth Heaton
Elizabeth Heaton is the senior director of educational consulting and strategic marketing at College Coach, the nation’s leading provider of educational advisory services. Ms. Heaton began her admissions career at the University of Pennsylvania, where she chaired university selection committees, evaluated potential athletic recruits as one of the school’s athletics liaisons, and oversaw the university’s portfolio of admissions publications. She also served as second chair in the selection committee for the school's flagship interdisciplinary Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology. A graduate of Cornell University, Ms. Heaton brings exceptional skills to the craft of essay writing paired with experience reading and evaluating thousands of Penn admissions applications. She is featured regularly in news outlets including Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, Time, US News and World Report, Boston Globe, and ABC News, among others, and can offer expert advice on a wide range of college admissions topics, from colleges’ expectations for high school curriculum choices and standardized test scores to choosing the right extracurricular activities and essay topics. Prior to joining Penn, Ms. Heaton worked as a public relations professional and served for a decade as a member of the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network.