With our combined ninety-plus years of assisting students with their college plans, we bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and energy to helping Hamden Hall families in their college searches. The principal goal of a successful college search is clear enough: to help each senior identify and gain admission to one or more appropriate undergraduate institutions. An “appropriate” college is one where the student finds an ample selection of courses in his/her fields of interest; where the student will feel socially comfortable (allowing for a reasonable period of freshman adjustment); where the student will be challenged academically but not overwhelmed; where the student can explore and develop his/her entire range of talents and interests and grow to become a confident, responsible human being.
The college application process is more than just filling out forms, and much more than just “getting in”. It is a complicated experience, involving a seemingly endless series of deadlines, forms, writings and tests. More than this, it is a wonderful opportunity -- perhaps the student’s first -- to make a careful and considered decision which will affect the course of the future. The process itself can and should become a meaningful growth experience. Good applications and good decisions require unprecedented self-examination, self-description, and confidence in one's own judgment.
It is our philosophy that each student should be guided and encouraged but not replaced in this experience. Parents and counselors share responsibility both to assist and to empower the student at this exciting transitional stage of life. We must provide the information and the support necessary to enable the student to present him - or herself in the most favorable light, and to ensure that good applications are written and sound decisions made. But the ultimate relationship must evolve between the candidate and the college. We are the coaches and the fans; he or she is the star.