Admitted Student Days are a wonderful opportunity to return to a campus that could potentially be your home for the next four years. You know a lot more about college than you did at the start of this process. Now is the ideal time to ask some difficult questions and to examine everything with a critical eye.

In the old days of computer discs, I remember the best piece of advice I ever heard: “start early; save often”. This was in the context of college essay writing, and the high school senior sharing her wisdom with me, a ninth grader at the time, had just experienced a catastrophic setback because of a computer melt-down. After that incident, she saved every line of every draft of her college essay to a different floppy disc, hiding them around her bedroom and car and school locker to prevent having to replicate any more of her painstakingly personal work.

It’s college acceptance season and we hope you have lots of choices! We thought it might be helpful to explain a few of the most commonly used Financial Aid terms as you evaluate and consider your financial award letters from various schools. And for the underclassman or parents new to the college search, keep reading - you’ll want to know these too!

Wordle. Even if you’re not playing it, you’ve heard of it. Some people like their first guess to have none of the letters in the final word. Others prefer that the first word they play has at least a few of the letters in the final word. Either method is valid and could lead to the right answer.

The same is true for developing a college list. Some students want to figure out what they don’t want to have on their future campus. Others identify something they love and then look for schools that share that attribute. Either approach could lead to the right fit.

Last week, we launched our inaugural social media campaign featuring students sharing what they love about their colleges We heard from enthusiastic students from around the country at different schools - which ranged in size, location, programming, and selectivity. Though all of the students and their experiences were unique, a theme that resonated between the posts was the students’ appreciation for their school’s sense of community: they all felt academically and socially supported on their campus of choice.