It’s officially August, and that means high school starts again in a matter of weeks. Before you let an overwhelming feeling of dread wash over you, just take a deep breath. With a little planning and foresight, your high school years can be both rewarding and fun...I promise. It’s time to figure out your perfect four-year plan!

Regardless of whether you’re pursuing a career in STEM, social sciences, or the arts it is important to continue your growth in literacy. In previous book club posts, we’ve talked about how reading can act as a calm space in the craziness of college preparation, as well as develop your writing and creative thinking skills. In addition to these outstanding literacy benefits, reading regularly can provide you with new experiences, perspectives, and life lessons that will help you become a more well-rounded student and individual. With that said, here are few reads to add to your spring reading list:

Summer break is an important opportunity for students to add credentials to their college application. Students can travel, do volunteer work, study for the SAT, or participate in academic summer programs. There are countless different summer programs out there but they are not all created equal.

Volunteering in your community is a great way to give back, learn new skills, establish a professional network, and demonstrate responsibility. It's also a way to further explore and test whether you want to pursue a career in areas that currently interest you. For students interested in the social sciences, there are several types of community service opportunities that you can explore. 

We already know that community service is an amazing way to show a commitment to giving back and making the world a better and brighter place. What you may be unsure of is how to integrate your interests with your volunteer work, so Empowerly is here to help. 

So you got the internship you had your sights on! Congratulations, it's a great accomplishment and you can breath a sigh of relieve that you have your summer sorted. But there are some things you can do to prepare yourself between now and your start date, to make sure you get the most of your internship.

Are you looking for community service opportunities that relate to STEM? If you’re headed on the STEM track, you should look for volunteer opportunities that allow you to practice and provide your expertise in science, technology, engineering or math.

As promised, we are back with our book recommendations for February! If you missed our first post in January, we talked about the positive impact a love for reading can have on college readiness.

In the midst of college applications, extracurricular activities, and school assignments it is important to allow yourself to come to a quiet place and wind down. One thing that can help you destress after an insane day or a never-ending week is immersing yourself in a book.

The summer is still six months away, and for most high school students, planning it is furthest from their mind. But deadlines for many of the more selective and free programs fall in December and January and early planning will ensure that your summer is filled with a variety of valuable and worthwhile activities.

Many students ask us how important extracurricular activities are in the college admissions process. It is fairly clear that academics are an important part of admissions, but which parts of the extracurricular story are actually important and how do you determine that? Here at Empowerly, we have spent the past 6 years understanding what colleges care about and helping thousands of students through the college admissions process. In this article, we use our data sorting tool to help you determine how important extracurricular activities are.

Being a student athlete in high school is hard because you have to balance school work with crazy practice times. It’s easy to say “well I like soccer more than calculus, so I’ll spend more time on soccer” or “my basketball skills are more likely to get me into a top university than my grades”. What a lot of students forget, is that it’s a lot easier to be a college athlete if you’re also a good student.

Professional resumes are the bread and butter of applications. Whether it be for colleges or for a job, a professional resume is a quick one page snapshot of one’s professional and academic performance.

We’ve all heard the story: “Intel ISEF Finalist gets into (insert top choice school here)!” Common-sense wisdom tells us that elite STEM competitions, like Intel ISEF, are “golden tickets” into every student’s top-choice school. While generalizations like this are problematic and often promote unhealthy behavior, there is something worth considering within it.