April 1st. It’s the day that high-school seniors await each year with equal parts anticipation and dread. News from colleges has been trickling in all month, but by day’s end on Monday, the much-anticipated stream of envelopes and email will have all been opened and dissected around dinner tables throughout the country.
Important decisions lie ahead for the 1.7 million college-bound students who are receiving these notices, fat and thin. Some recipients who are content with their offers of admission – as Corey Parker’s character was in “How I Got Into College,” the trippy 1989 movie, pictured above – will celebrate. Others will cry. Many will spend the next few weeks feverishly cramming in trips to colleges that are now on their shortlists or conducting other last-minute research, so they choose wisely.
This year has been particularly brutal on future members of the Class of 2023 with all the headlines about improprieties in the admission process. But one way or another, much of the panic for these prospective students will start to ease within the month. By May 1, most seniors will have made their picks, and even made room for others sitting on waitlists, and a great sense of relief will wash over everyone. Colleges, here they come!
In the meantime, here’s a way to show a little love (besides some much-appreciated hugs) to anyone in your life who is just now hearing back from colleges: send them off this fall with the latest edition of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year.” It’s the perfect gift.
Published by Hundreds of Heads Books, the book is an indispensable, yet light-hearted, guide that features frank advice from 1,000 current and former students representing more than 200 campuses.
Edited by yours truly, a former New York Times reporter, and illustrated by Lisa Rothstein, an award-winning cartoonist whose irrepressible artwork has appeared in the New Yorker, the coming 6th edition has been wholly reimagined and updated to reflect the myriad ways that college life has changed, not always for the better. So, expect all-new content on:
– the hidden hazards of free speech on campus
– arranging accommodations if you have a disability, plus an inside look at how colleges learned to welcome emotional support animals in the dorms
– frank talk from parents of freshmen who did NOT survive their freshman year because of hazing-related incidents
– new rules of dating and consent in an age of Title IX and #MeToo
– what to do (and not do) if you are arrested on campus. (For the record, we have zero advice for those whose clueless PARENTS are arrested.)
– practical advice aimed at helping kids beat the Dining Hall blues, find the best-paying jobs on campus and figure out all the free swag you can get from the library, everything from sleds and shovels to dressy clothes for interviews.
Lisa’s witty cartoons and drawings throughout perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the modern college campus. There is even an all-new chapter on “Coping” that addresses the stress students universally report feeling these days, and no wonder.
Ingram is distributing the book, which will be released on April 9 online and at all stores near you. But it is available for order here at howIsurvived.com as well as online stores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million. Feedback always welcome, as are reviews!
– Alison, Editor of “How to Survive Your Freshman Year,” 6th edition.