Corsava has come a long way from the original College Choice 101 cards, but our goal is still the same—help students think about what matters most to them in a college and help counselors supercharge their counseling by getting to the heart of student preferences early and quickly. Your feedback has been invaluable, and it is rewarding to hear the stories of how your students have been so positively impacted—whether it is seeing a student who approached the college process with trepidation move on with confidence, helping a student with learning differences explore their many options, or simply getting everyone on the same page early. But most of all, I am reminded that we are in this together to help our students find a great fit—taking into consideration learning styles, educational and campus culture, and the many important factors that lead to student success.
Spring Refresh
With longer days and more sun (putting on my Seattle cap), it seems like just the right time to refresh with some of our most popular tips and resources to help you make the most of your Corsava account. My hope is to save you time so that you can do what you do best—impact your students—and maybe free up some time along the way.
Counselor Landing Page—your place for resources and tips
We have a lot of plans ahead for making the Counselor Landing page grow to fit your needs. You can now access all of the help videos in two locations on the main Corsava website: https://corsava.com/for-counselors, and in your account area once you are logged in. The landing page includes an overview of the Corsava process for students, from initial college exploration to final choice. You can highlight this in your posts for families as it provides a simple overview of how Corsava Cloud works.
Inviting Your Students
We recently shared a sample invitation to explain what your students need to do to set up their account. Some counselors have added it to their counseling website for easy access and simply pointed their students to it to get started.
I thought it would also be fun for you to see the email that your students automatically receive once you invite them to do a sort:
And if you want to learn more about helping your students add their college impressions to your account, we have added some simple steps to share.
How Student College Impressions Work
Invite your students to set up a Corsava account and complete a card sort online.
Scroll down on the Student Profile page and Click on "Edit
Student’s Name
College List."
You and/or your students create a college list within their Corsava account.
Students research colleges, either on campus or using tools closer to home. Students can access their Corsava account on any device and give their impressions about each college on their list.
Students simply have to choose an impression for each card. When they select a college, the “Must Have” and “Would Be Nice” cards from the student’s most recent completed sort pop up automatically.
Set up your online account
For those of you who have been using Corsava hardcopy cards but have not yet set up an account, these videos will help you start to explore the many features that will engage your students in a fun way.
Online accounts allow you
Create summary reports of your student’s hard-copy sorts to share with families,
Invite your students to complete online sorts with a report created automatically, and
Add a college list and notes so that your students can share their college impressions with you.
Dig deeper into your student’s profile page
Have you scrolled down on your student’s profile page? There are more resources you might not be aware of—their geographic preferences (now including all 50 states, not just regions), a way for you and your student to add colleges to their list and give their impressions of each, and a place for you to share notes with your student or keep notes private. Students can do the same from their accounts—add colleges and write notes to share with you or private notes about their colleges (great for future essays, interviews, and meetings with admissions reps).
Let’s beat the rankings—join the Counselor Café
Year after year, we lament the fact that so many of our families rely on rankings that are served up by entities that have never counseled students. Yet no one has come up with a viable solution that allows us to use our collective knowledge to disrupt the status quo and incite change. The only way we can make that happen is to be a part of the team sharing knowledge. I want us all to be part of the solution. After all, who sees students year after year, visits colleges, hears back from families and students about their experiences, meets with admissions reps when they come to town, and attends conferences to grow our resources and learn more about how to best support our students? Not the colleges who rate their peers, not the various media outlets that use algorithms to devise their rankings...but you.
Corsava’s goal is to disrupt the status quo and upend college selection in a whole new way. But change takes work, and the Café is the place where we can make that happen. Adding your impressions and notes will grow our collective feedback on colleges so that soon we can provide you with recommendations from your fellow colleagues.
As more data is added, list-building features will grow, allowing you to search on various criteria and view summary reports on individual colleges. We now have over 100 counselors around the country who have pledged to the Honor Code, and the numbers grow daily. Experienced counselors can request access to the Café by logging into their account and clicking on the Café tab on the top right-hand side of page. The final step includes pledging to the Honor Code and agreeing to maintain the integrity of our shared impressions and resources.
My dream for the Café is large, and it will take all of us working together to make it a reality. In order for us to implement change, we must build something great, something that will help all of us in our work with students, no matter where we are and no matter what our resources.
Making the most of student impressions
As May 1st deposit deadlines loom, we all know students who are struggling with their final choice. Have you had your students check out the college impressions tools on Corsava? I had fun testing it out by doing a card sort of my own, adding colleges to my list, then giving impressions of my Must Have and Would Be Nice cards. I wanted to see what my students would experience. I’m excited that it is so easy and that I can see how their colleges align in real time in my counselor account.
If your student has completed an online card sort, their top preferences (Must Have and Would Be Nice) automatically load in a fun card sort. Students then enter their impressions about each college on their list and automatically see an overall impression score when complete. Students can also add shared or private notes to track college details to help compare their choices. Spring admit days can be overwhelming for seniors, so tools to help them circle back to what is most important helps them look beyond the marketing messages in the final frenzy to get students to enroll.
Remember that this is not only a great tool for those making final decisions, but also for those juniors exploring and researching from home or out on the road visiting schools. Seeing in real time what your students think about college attributes that matter to them is a powerful tool and keeps your students focused on what will lead to their success and happiness.
A positive approach right out of the gate
Why start the college process telling students what they cannot do, discouraging them with numbers and statistics? We all have seen students get into some terrific options, with merit aid or good financial aid because they are a great fit. Let’s help them focus on what will make them successful wherever they choose to apply.
I am reminded of the first beta test of Corsava in an AP Language Arts class at a Seattle public high school. When a student completed a sort and was so relieved not to have to enter her GPA and standardized test scores, she was instead able to think about what mattered just to her as she considered her college options. I want to avoid at all costs the same old discouraging searches.
Predicting admissions outcomes is an art, not a science, albeit a mysterious art. How many of you have seen students get admitted to schools that their GPA and scores would not predict? Maybe their story in their essay told something more than could be presented just through the numbers, maybe they had some interesting extracurriculars that clicked with a particular college, or maybe because they were the first in their family to attend college meant they could find support at a particular college.
By having our students engage in a fun way, we can keep them at the forefront of this process so that they know what they want, not just what everything thinks they should have or what their scores and GPA limit them to.
College Essay Guy Meets Corsava
Learn more about how Corsava came to be—impacting students and helping counselors in their important work.