The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

Cover Stories

Ali Ewoldt, Pleasantville’s Groundbreaking Performer

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PHOTO BY DONNA MUELLER

The spark that would impassion a young Ali Ewoldt to perform in musicals was ignited in her hometown of Pleasantville. As a child walking from Bedford Road Elementary School to see high school students performing on the Pleasantville High School, (PHS) stage remains a fresh memory for Ewoldt, the first Asian American BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) actress to play Christine, the heroine in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway in 2017. By starring in this role, Ewoldt broke long held barriers against BIPOC actors wanting to perform in major Broadway productions.

When it comes to her youth Ewoldt recalls student field trips to the high school to see a preview of the current musical production. “I remember totally falling in love with musical theater. It felt so accessible. Students just like us were doing this right where we lived.”

Ewoldt, Class of 1999, praises the former Director of Music at PHS, Dr. Renato Vellutino (1932-2023) who held the post for over 40 years. ‘Dr. V’ as he was known to generations of students, made sure to include as many students as possible in musical shows regardless of age or talent.

“The amazing thing about Dr. V’s program was we didn’t have to audition to be in the ensemble or the chorus,” Ewoldt says. “Anyone interested and who was able to participate, Doc made sure we all had a little feature, even if it was a brief moment and a dance number. Everyone had a moment to shine.”

Ewoldt’s musical talent was nurtured by her parents who enrolled her in dance classes when she was 3 years old and voice lessons at 10. When she was in 7th grade she was in the high school musical Anything Goes, a turning point that launched Ewoldt on a run of several school shows including My Fair Lady in 8th grade, Kiss Me Kate in her junior year and The King and I as a senior.

“The mentality was very much of team sports – it took everyone participating together to be in it,” Ewoldt recalls. “We had upwards of 100 cast members and that was in a high school with a student body of about 400. Along with costume designers, makeup people, student singers and pit musicians there was a real feeling of community.”

When you see Ewoldt singing, it’s amazing that her lithe stature can produce such a powerful and dazzling soprano voice. Her singing coupled with her natural acting talent paved the way to many astonishing performances on and off Broadway.

PHOTO BY DONNA MUELLER

Her more notable performances include her Broadway debut in the 2006 revival of Les Misérables where she played Cosette, the Tony Award Winning revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, playing Luisa in The Fantasticks and as Amalia in She Loves Me, a role in which she was nominated for the prestigious Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical in 2023. Ewoldt has held several lead roles in national and international tours and in U.S. regional theatre.

Undoubtedly singing is in Ewoldt’s blood, no matter where she is or what the circumstances are. A great example of that is five years ago during the Covid pandemic Ewoldt temporarily left her midtown Manhattan home to stay in Pleasantville with her parents. Itching to create an event that would bring people together, Ewoldt organized a neighborhood “Les Misérables Sing-along.”

In an uplifting YouTube video entitled “Neighborhood Les Misérables Sing-along” we see several Pleasantville residents of all ages belt out lines from a Les Misérables song from their front lawns. Parodied lyrics from the songs “Look Down” and more aptly, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” were written by Ewoldt and her family using words relating to the pandemic. Joining residents is Ewoldt popping out of her dad’s car sunroof while riding around the neighborhood, joyfully singing her part.

“The idea grew out of a desire to connect to the arts and to creativity,” Ewoldt explains of the community sing-along. “We drove around from friend to friend to keep socially distanced. It was low tech, but the community was so wonderful and glad to be a part of the sing-along.”
Majoring in psychology as an undergraduate at Yale was part of a back-up plan in case pursuing a performance career didn’t happen. Not surprising, the study of human nature would become essential to the many roles Ewoldt portrayed on stage.

“My psychology studies were relevant to my life as a performer,” Ewoldt notes. “I didn’t realize it at the time but, in essence, understanding why human beings behave the way they do informs me as an actor by offering insight to a character’s proclivities and personality traits.”

“Recognizing characters that are faced with different disorders and understanding why a person makes certain choices has helped me – has given me a base line of understanding and frames the way I approach those characters.”

A key, deeper understanding helped Ewoldt play the role of Christine, the young aspiring opera singer suffering the loss of her father in Phantom of the Opera.

“So much of Christine’s behavior is because of her grief,” Ewoldt explains. “Playing her revealed a prospective on finding human truth. Even in a big, epic musical we can bring truth to the humanity of the characters.”

Studying at Yale actually did open a door to a future in show business. Ewoldt was in a Yale School of Music production of Figaro and was spotted by an agent which led to a part as an understudy and body double in Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular at Disneyland.

Ewoldt realizes that being the first Asian American actress to play Christine in 2016 opened doors for many other artists in the Asian American community. Persistence also played a big part before she landed the role; she had auditioned for about 10 years for any production she could find before she was cast as Christine.

PHOTO BY DONNA MUELLER

“I was really fortunate – it surprised all of us that the first non-white person was playing that role in the show’s 30-year history,” she says. “There was wonderful feedback from artists in the Asian Community who saw themselves in a new way. I’m very proud to make history in that way.”

Admitting she has been fortunate to have played many of her musical dream roles, Ewoldt says getting into show business has always been very challenging for her, for many aspiring young people and actors worldwide.

“The danger we all face is the constant rejection,” Ewoldt claims. “We audition but we rarely get any feedback about why we weren’t chosen.”

Addressing her strong instinct to become a recognized performer has meant different things to Ewoldt.

“Any time we perform we are being an artist, and our careers don’t have to happen on Broadway or getting Tony Awards,” she says. “One can perform off Broadway, at their community theater as an actor, a singer or a musician. There are so many diverse avenues and disciplines to seek out where the act of creating is the real pursuit versus fame and fortune.”

Ewoldt recognizes that her education, friends and family have all enriched and strengthened her throughout her career. “I learned from life-long friends from Yale and Pleasantville High School and especially those who are not performers but are wonderful people with interesting and important lives and careers. They have had a grounding influence on my life, and I’ve been lucky to have these incredible touchstones.”

One valuable touchstone is Ewoldt’s dedication to work with different non-profit organizations. In June she joined a star-studded cast in Art for Autism, a benefit concert at New York’s New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd street. The annual benefit raises funds to support individuals on the autism spectrum.

Helping autistic people grew out of Ewoldt’s interest in music therapy which she considered as a potential career.

“I enrolled in seminars about autism at Yale and have seen the power of music in different situations,” Ewoldt explains. “We learned to create an autism friendly performance where the talking wasn’t too loud and there were no bright lights, making it more accessible for folks who could easily get overstimulated. Seeing them enjoy the show was very moving.”

This summer Ewoldt performed in Massachusetts with the Barrington Stage Company, starring in their production of Camelot as Guenevere.

Acting in regional theatre with top notch performers is especially rewarding to Ewoldt. “We usually rehearse for a few weeks and run the show for a few months in different areas. We get to know different communities, and the talent of the performers is really incredible.”

Scaling Back Smartphones through OK to Delay

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How a group of parents in Chappaqua and Armonk are fighting against smartphones and social media for their community’s young teens

When Chappaqua resident Mark Kornblau’s oldest daughter entered fifth grade, Kornblau did what he says most parents of middle school-age children did at the time. He gave her a smartphone.

Soon, he began to struggle with managing his daughter’s relationship with the technology. He found that monitoring her smartphone and constantly negotiating over screen time limits was a tougher task than anticipated.

He then read The Anxious Generation, a 2024 bestseller by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt that attributes a rise in childhood mental illness to the spread of smartphones and social media. Among Haidt’s arguments that resonated was the call for collective action, such as parents coming together and agreeing not to give their children a smartphone until a certain age.

“I’ve seen with my daughter that it is not that she wants to always be connected to her phone,” Kornblau, who also has two younger children, says. “And when she knows that her friends aren’t, it’s very easy for her to separate from it.”

Melanie Cohen, a mother in Chappaqua, was also motivated by Haidt’s book, which she read as her oldest child was in fourth grade.

“It just became this expectation for so many families that you were going to give your kids a smartphone when they are going into middle school,” she explains. “And I just felt so frustrated and angry that that is the expectation.”

It was then, in 2024, that Cohen discovered OK to Delay, a grassroots organization aimed at empowering parents to delay giving their children smartphones. Launched in 2019 by a pair of moms in Darien, Connecticut, the organization gives parents resources to organize in their communities to work collectively to hold off on giving kids smartphones.

“I felt like this was probably our best angle to bring this to our town, because we don’t have to re-invent the wheel,” Cohen recalls. “OK to Delay has all the language, they have the presentations. They have all the experience.”

Cohen connected with Kornblau through a mutual friend, and together last spring they launched a Chappaqua chapter of OK to Delay. In September, they organized their first event, where close to 100 people packed the New Castle Community Center. “It really got the ball rolling for this school year,” Cohen says. “So many people felt like, thank you so much for bringing this to our town.”

Armonk resident Brett Goldman, meanwhile, saw first-hand the perils of smartphone use in middle school when he gave his now 18-year-old daughter a phone in 2019, when she was in 6th or 7th grade.

“We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know what kind of weapon we were handing her,” he recalls. “I watched what happened when I gave her a phone. It quickly became a race to maximize social media time, and I see that as, to some extent, a waste of time.”

Goldman wanted to approach things differently with his younger children, now 9 and 6 years old. Last year, he got in touch with the founder of OK to Delay and launched an Armonk chapter.

The first meeting, in September 2024, brought some 75 people to the Whippoorwill Theater at the North Castle Public Library, according to Goldman. Three months later, twice that number came to an event at the IBM Learning Center. Some signed up to volunteer, including co-chairs Jeff Sottolano and Jennifer Clark.

The aim of OK to Delay is to get as many parents as possible in a community on board to agree to delay giving their children smartphones. This way, a child without a smartphone in middle school is not an outlier, the only one of his or her friends not on Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok.

“It really is true that kids are actually happier, and they will say it themselves, to be without phones constantly,” says Kornblau. “As long as they know that they are not missing out on everybody else being on them.”

The Anxious Generation

Concerns about teen cell phone use date back to multitap texting, but the rise of both smartphones and social media has accelerated these worries over the past decade. The 2020 Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma described how social media manipulates and addicts users, spurring depression and anxiety in teenagers, particularly teen girls.

When The Anxious Generation was released in 2024, it came after more than a decade of increasing mental illness and distress among teens and adolescents. Haidt attributes this, at least in large part, to the rise of smartphones and social media, alongside otherwise overprotective parenting and the decline of traditional children’s play. Essentially, Haidt argues that parents are too risk-averse in the real world, where threats are often rare and exaggerated, and too lax in the virtual world, where children are more likely to be targeted by predators, exposed to inappropriate content, or sucked into the wormhole of social media.

Haidt is far from the first to warn of the harms of social media to children. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, warned in 2017 that smartphones and social media were creating a crisis of depression, anxiety and loneliness for teens. By 2023, the data backing this conclusion had grown more robust.

This link has also become a public policy issue. This spring, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the state would require schools from kindergarten to high school to ban smartphone use during school hours.

But the data is far from unanimous, as some research paints a nuanced picture or suggests potential benefits to smartphone use. A report published earlier this year by researchers at the University of South Florida found that smartphone use may benefit children and young teens, with 11 to 13-year-olds who owned smartphones found to be less likely to report depression and anxiety (the study was less sanguine on social media posting, finding it posed multiple harms).

Different Approaches

OK to Delay’s local chairs acknowledge multiple possible approaches to limiting middle schoolers’ access to social media. Cohen says she won’t give her children a cell phone until they are at an age when she sees the benefits as outweighing the risks. She believes that concerns about such an approach – such as not being able to track or contact your kid at all times – are overstated.

“It’s not probably going to be very dangerous for a child to walk from the middle school to Starbucks in the town of Chappaqua,” she explains. “It’s way more dangerous for them to be online and get connected to some sort of predator.”
“You’re kind of taking away from your kid the ability to build interpersonal skills and critical thinking skills,” she adds. “When we were growing up, we didn’t have a phone.”

But for parents who want to be able to reach their children without their kids having access to social media and the online world’s myriad evils, there are options like a “dumbphone” with basic functions like text messaging, a calculator, and an alarm.

Cohen, Goldman, and Kornblau all see support for their cause growing. Chappaqua’s chapter of OK to Delay has more than 400 subscribers, and Cohen believes the statewide cell phone ban has helped. The Armonk has a 1,000 person distribution list, and 110 local families have pledged to wait until at least eighth grade for social media or smartphones through the organization’s website, oktodelayarmonk.org.

“There is a good deal of momentum around this issue all around the country,” notes Kornblau. “It is very high on the list of topics of conversation among parents of kids from eight to fifteen. It’s one of the hardest things that I think our generation of parents is dealing with.”

In the longer term, the organizers hope to do more than expanding their organization. Cohen and Kornblau each have younger children still in elementary school.

“Our goal is that by the time those kids are going into middle school, they don’t even need OK to Delay anymore,” Cohen says. “This is like a topic of the past. That’s a goal for me.”

The Nicholas Center: Open Minds – Open Hearts

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TNC Community Service – Westchester Children’s Museum

What do you do when the school bus stops coming? This was the question posed by three Co-Founders of The Nicholas Center (TNC). The non-profit offers innovative programs and services that allow autistic individuals to work, learn, live and ultimately thrive in their communities.

With locations in Port Washington, Long Island and Pleasantville, TNC is helping bridge the gap between high school graduation and the real world for a number of autistic individuals. TNC was founded in 2011 by Stella L. Spanakos, Nicole Ferrara and Patrick Bardsley. The trio collectively had over 30 years of experience in autism education and nonprofit work. Their vision was to create a program model to help serve those seeking an alternative to a traditional “day habilitation” program – one that’s person-centered and community-fueled.

TNC Provides Pantry Program – Stocking Shelves at Hillside Food Outreach Pantry

This year TNC is celebrating five years in Pleasantville. “Pleasantville has been perfect for us. We are so happy to have found this location”, says Lee Anne Vetrone, the Director of Development. TNC is currently working with 35 families in the region. “Once autistic individuals age out of the school system, there are limited opportunities for skills training and community integration. Our programming and support are a real game changer for individuals, families and the community – In New York State, individuals with special needs can attend school until the age of 21. What are the opportunities available after they age out of school is the question. This is where TNC helps to fill in the gaps.”

TNC’s Coffee Cafe
Revolutionizing the way autistic adults learn, live and work in the community -this is TNC’s tagline and part of their core values. Vetrone states, “ One of The Nicholas Center’s core values is to be “folded into the fabric of the community,” – active and engaged, not sheltered.” TNC offers a Supported Employment Program (SEMP) which provides job development and job placement services based on the individual’s interests and skills. Being supported at work allows individuals to build confidence, gain independence and ultimately secure internships and meaningful employment. TNC works with a variety of community partners and vendors to help nurture these relationships.

Jeremy Scalchunes is the Associate Executive Director of Programs at TNC. He shares that the mission of TNC is threefold – vocational training and job placement; learning and social development programs such as classroom instruction, Media Arts, Health and Wellness; and community inclusion. He states, “We’re out there at networking events, the Chamber of Commerce, local parades and more. We are looking to create as many partnerships with our individuals as possible. We have 30 partnerships in Westchester with food pantries, community gardens, state parks and more. Participants volunteer at these organizations. While they help out, they receive valuable vocational experience and neighborhood engagement. The community has been very receptive to us.”

TNC Supported Employment – Second Mouse Cheese Shop

Some of TNC’s community partners include The United Way, Rockefeller Preserve and St. John’s Episcopal Church – where they are currently working on creating a Respite Cafe to serve those with dementia. “The Pleasantville community has embraced TNC with open arms,” says Vetrone. “We’ve engaged with many local non-profits, including the Pleasantville Music Festival, Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) and the Westchester Children’s Museum. For some this may be their first experience working with autistic individuals. TNC has recently been asked to create an art installation at the Westchester Children’s Museum. The exhibit, “Keep Our Seas Plastic Free,” was created using found materials. The exhibit will remain up through December.

TNC’s Supported Employment Program works to pair autistic young adults with a business opportunity, starting with an on-site internship, with the goal to build up to supportive paid employment where the individual can slowly have more independence in their role. Business staff are also trained on how to best support individuals. “We try to serve the individual’s needs and skill level to put them in the right place employment-wise”, says Vetrone. Currently, TNC has individuals working at the JBFC and Second Mouse Cheese.

TNC Media Lab in Action

How participants hear about TNC programs is varied. Some via their school districts, therapists and counselors while others hear of TNC through social media or word-of-mouth. The autistic community is always looking for new opportunities. Says Vetrone, “Parents aren’t always aware of what comes next in terms of opportunities after school is over. We serve as a resource for those looking for opportunities.”

TNC teaches life skills to its participants and offers a safe space to form peer connections. “It’s important to have a community and friends. Once school is over, it can be harder for this population to make these vital connections.” says Vetrone. “TNC creates a space to make and maintain relationships.”

TNC Supported Employment

“There’s a stigma that is often associated with hiring the neurodiverse community”, says Scalchunes. “We have created an inclusive, supportive model. We’re introducing employers to this model, and they see tangible benefits, including the benefits of different ways of thinking and solving complex issues. We create opportunities for participants to get out in the community and get jobs.” TNC’s program in turn helps the nonprofits they work with fulfill their missions and helps to break down stigmas. Concludes Scalchunes, “This is an untapped population that has a lot to offer. If we open our minds to different ways of thinking and being, there are tangible benefits a society can gain. Our mission is to break down these stigmas for society.”

The Nicholas Center
175 Tompkins Ave.
Pleasantville, NY 10570
914-919-9188
TNCnewyork.org

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NICHOLAS CENTER

Lunch? Again?! A Parent’s Guide to Surviving the School Year

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It’s back to school season, which can only mean one thing: you’ve been promoted to Head Chef on the lunch shift five days a week for the next nine months! I can actually hear your collective groans into that second cup of coffee. As if planning and cooking dinners every night wasn’t enough, someone’s already asking what’s for lunch tomorrow before you’ve even cleaned the last crumb from today’s half-eaten lunchbox. Again. Forever and ever until they head off to college. I get it. We all want to be that mom. The one whose kid gasps with joy at the smiling rice panda and perfectly spiraled cucumber ribbons, surrounded by jealous classmates begging to trade for a soggy sandwich. But sometimes that mom is just trying to remember if she actually packed the lunch or just dreamt, she did while falling asleep in the kitchen standing up.

Enter every parent’s lunchtime hero: The Bento Box: the stylish, compartmentalized little miracle that tricks us (and our kids) into believing that we have our act together. Spoiler Alert: We don’t. But we’re still crushing it anyway! These boxes create visually appealing meals with built-in borders…like Lunchables but made with actual food and care and love instead of mystery meat and ultraprocessed frankenfood. There are plenty to choose from on Amazon, but my daughter still uses her PlanetBox stainless steel lunchbox set, and she’s 18. That’s an unsponsored endorsement and 100% true – PlanetBox, call me!

The first rule of bento box lunch club is that there are no rules. Just make it fun, not perfect. We’re going for “Kid Eats Lunch Without Protest” not “Local Mom Gets Kicked off Top Chef.” Start with a theme if you’re feeling spicy. A “rainbow lunch” is a parenting win disguised as color coordination: strawberries, cheddar cubes, cucumber sticks, blueberries, and a salami roll-up. Ta-da! Nutrition, but make it cute. Or try “Breakfast for Lunch” with mini pancakes, maple breakfast sausages and a medley of miniature melon balls. Is it a little extra? Yes. But what part of parenting isn’t?

Let’s talk portion size, a.k.a. the art of convincing a child to eat just about anything by cutting it into adorably shaped small pieces. Kids love mini things, and frankly, so do we. Mini muffins? Sure. Mini sandwich triangles? Why not. Mini cucumbers with hummus? Fancy. You can probably cut anything into a heart or a star with a tiny cookie cutter and it suddenly tastes better. Don’t ask me why, it’s just science.

If you really want to earn your gold star for the day, add a DIY element. Kids love building stuff. Unless it’s that 10,000-piece toy they begged you to buy for their birthday, that one’s all you. Let them construct their own mini tacos. Yes, I know they won’t be piping hot, but we’ve got bigger battles to fight. Or toss in mini pita rounds, marinara sauce, cheese, and tiny pepperoni toppings for a pizza party in a box. Will it come back half-eaten and smeared across the lid? Probably. But you tried. And that’s what counts.

Last but not least: don’t forget the emotional bribe. A little note that says, “You rock!” along with a dozen of those dye-free, off-brand M&M’s can go a long way. Maybe even sneak in a small chocolate chip cookie. It’s not spoiling, it’s survival. And nobody understands survival better than an overworked parent.

Bottom line? Bento boxes are not about being perfect. They’re about getting through the school day with a shred of creativity and maybe a smile. Will your kid thank you? Probably not. But their lunch will look adorable, they’ll actually eat it, and you’ll feel like a domestic goddess…until dinner rolls around. But then it’s someone else’s problem. Just kidding, it’s still yours.

The Changing Landscape of College Admissions

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By the time this magazine lands in your mailbox, ambitious rising high school seniors will have spent the summer working on completing their Common App essay. Launched in 2019 to streamline the admissions process, the Common App is currently used by more than 1,100 public and private higher education institutions in all 50 states. Other students may have spent their summer conducting lab research or attending a college enrichment program, all in the hopes of gaining admission to a top university.

To Test or Not to Test?

The landscape of college admissions is ever evolving, and the class of 2026 is set to face some unique challenges. Although many students rejoiced when universities abandoned the SAT or ACT during COVID, several have now returned to testing required. While some universities claim to be test optional, Chappaqua-based college application consultant and essay coach Andi Meyer suggests that families research data from the Common Data Set (CDS) at target schools. The CDS is a collection of standardized questions from the College Board about a college or university’s admissions and financial aid process, graduation rate and student demographics. The CDS will show if a school had a higher percentage of admitted students that submitted scores. “If you rely on the general notion that a school is test optional, you can put yourself at a disadvantage unknowingly, if you don’t prepare for and submit test scores,” she advises.

In recent years, several schools that were once test optional have now returned to test scores required. “The reason selective colleges are moving back to required testing is a student’s GPA plus their test score is because that combination is the best predictor of academic success” says Sam Hassel, President of Great Minds Advising, a company that helps a select group of high-achieving students (many from Westchester) gain admission to top colleges. “It protects against grade inflation,” Hassel adds, who often discusses these trends on his free podcast “The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions”.

Many college advisors suggest that a student take both a diagnostic ACT and SAT in their sophomore year to determine which test is a better fit for them. “This can help relieve the pressure of junior year,” says Meyer who often advises clients across the country to take a long-term calendar view of their four years of high school, so that students in their spring of junior year aren’t cramming for ACTs or SATs, Advanced Placement exams and finals while simultaneously going on college tours. “Whatever students can do pace themselves can help,” she recommends.

Merit and Financial Aid Woes

This year Syracuse University, a popular top choice of many local students had a dilemma on their hands. As the college deposit deadline of May 1 loomed, they saw that their enrollment numbers were lower than expected. Admitted students, some who had received no merit aid initially, were suddenly getting merit aid in an effort to lure them to campus. “Many families don’t understand that colleges only care about their yield,” said Neal Schwartz, Founder of Armonk based company, College Planning of Westchester. Schools want to know that if accepted, a student will attend which has contributed to the popularity of applying early decision 1 or early decision 2.

Merit aid is given based on a strong student profile and how badly that school wants a student to attend but now there are different points in the college admissions cycle when it is offered. “You don’t have to give an answer to a college until their deadline, so that you can consider all forms of merit aid from options of various universities that you’ve been accepted to,” advises Meyer.

While merit aid may be in flux depending on the institution, financial aid may also be diminished as the federal government places massive cuts on higher education. The office of Federal Student Aid provides about $121 billion each year to students in the form of grants, loans and work-study agreements, according to the agency’s website. How much it will be decreased and precisely how is still a work in progress, as of press time.

State governments typically are the largest or second-largest source of funding for public colleges and universities in the U.S. State funding for both public and private institutions reached an estimated $129 billion nationwide for the 2025 fiscal year, about 4% more than in 2024, finds a recent analysis from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
However, half of all states still gave their public colleges and universities less funding in 2023 than they did before the 2008 recession. As colleges and universities see their budgets squeezed, there is a trickle-down effect for student financial aid. This coupled with a reduction in the number of full-paying international students leaves students vying for an ever-decreasing amount of aid. How this will play out will vary by institution and depends on other factors too such as an institutions endowment noted the experts interviewed.

Positioning Yourself for College Admissions

Before a student develops a target list of schools to apply to, they should use platforms such as Naviance, Schoolinks or Scoir to assess if they are a likely candidate. These platforms list admissions criteria such as GPA and test scores from a national perspective. It is important to use the comparative tools on the platforms to see how students from your high school performed on admissions. “A school acceptance rate may have an average of 15% but what is it for your high school? Greeley students are not being compared to students in Idaho,” explains Meyer. While useful, these tools only tell one part of the story and don’t take into account factors such as academic rigor, extracurriculars, involvement on sports teams or special talents.

“There are a lot of macrotrends and noise out there but you still have to think as an applicant how are you best positioning yourself, why would a school want you and what you are bringing to the campus community and why that school is the right place for you to study,” says Meyer.

Hassel helps high achieving students develop a well-defined admissions hook. Many have perfect test scores and 4.0 GPAs or higher as their peers do at elite colleges like the Ivies.

“It can take multiple years to build that academic package and ensure that students are laser-focused on a specific topic that will differentiate them from the crowd,” says Hassel. “An admissions hook can be something, such as I’m going to study post-traumatic stress disorder in women instead of veterans because it is often overlooked and I’m going to work with professor X at your school.” Over the years, that student may have done summer research in a cognitive science lab or interned for a mental health advocacy group. “Many schools these days want a well-rounded admitted class made up of specialists,” remarks Hassel, who believes this is good news for students so that they don’t spread themselves too thin with numerous extra-curricular activities with no well-defined passion.

Essays Offer A Chance to Shine

While many colleges require an essay using a Common App writing prompt several schools require college-specific supplemental essays. “With the supplemental essays, there are generally two basic questions for students 1. what do you want to major in and 2. why do you want to do it at our school- the why part is important,” emphasizes Schwartz, who has sometimes worked with students on their essay and supplemental essays but has picked up contradictions. It has to be an authentic story and of course, AI should not be utilized.

On the topic of AI, there is a wide spectrum of how it is used in the admissions process. Some are using it for what Hassel refers to as “grunt work” by copying over grades from the admissions office to weed out students who don’t have the right GPA or test scores. Others are using it to rate college recommendation letters or even rank students.

Engaging a College Advisor

While our local high schools have helpful guidance counselors who navigate the admissions process, some families choose to engage a private college advisor as early as ninth grade. They can help with course selection and research opportunities. “I may meet with a freshman quarterly but as they hit junior and senior year the meetings become more frequent,” says Schwartz, who notes that it is difficult to influence a student’s trajectory if they start working together at the end of junior year. Meyer says she prefers working with students throughout their high school years too. Last year she worked with a student on an essay the night before an admissions deadline. “The student ultimately got into George Washington University (GW) but I don’t advise that,” she says. She recommends interviewing three professionals sophomore year and finding one that is a good fit for the student and parents.

The college admissions process is stressful. “One has to wonder how is the mental state of these students? A good fit college counselor puts less stress into the equation,” summarizes Schwartz.