New insight on building student reading comprehension skills

How do students learn how to not only read material in textbooks and articles, but also truly understand what they read? In an article in the April 16, 2025 edition of Education Week, (https://ew.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/ew_04162025/) Kelly Cartwright, Professor of Early Child Literacy at the University of North Carolina, says there are several answers. One focuses on exposure.

What is the Common Application?

You might be familiar with the Common Application, Common App for short, which serves as a single application that is shared by over 900 colleges, including every Ivy League school and similarly elite universities like Stanford. The Common App allows you to enter information like your name, demographics, extracurricular activities, and more just once for every school that uses it. It’s also where you’ll encounter “The Common App Essay,” otherwise known as your personal statement (PS).

Though not every school uses the Common App—many state or public schools often have their own systems—the work you do in writing your Common App Essay will serve you in every other component of the process, including applying to non-Common App schools and writing the secondary and supplemental essays that often accompany both types of applications.

Here are seven things you can be doing to set yourself up for a college application:

1. Getting the best grades in the toughest classes your school offers.

You probably know that your GPA is really important to colleges, but you may not know that colleges pay attention to how much you challenged yourself. I’m not saying you should definitely take six AP classes every year, but I am saying that colleges receive info detailing how many AP classes are offered at your school and how many of those you took. So think twice before dropping AP Psych.

Note: I’m often asked, “Should I take an AP class and get a B or take a regular or honors class and get an A?” My stock answer: “If you want to go to Stanford, take the AP class and get an A.”

Start the New Year Off Right Back to school time is here! What comes to mind when you think of “back to school”? I think of new teachers, new classmates, new expectations and new adventures.

Traditional back to school time brings excitement, a little worry and hope.