We’re off Thursday and Friday to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with our families, but we wanted to take a moment and say how thankful we are for all of YOU! Yes, college-bound students, we appreciate each and every one of you. You make our jobs fun and rewarding, and we love that we get to join you on your journey to college.

We hope that you enjoy this little respite from homework and the often-chaotic college admissions process. See you on Monday, when we host another installment of #collegebound chat. Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday, The CollegeBound Network had one of the most entertaining hours in the history of our #collegebound Twitter chat (cohosted by the great people at Parliament Tutors, by the way). The topic was the SAT vs. ACT debate, and we had more than a few laughs.

How can test prep be so entertaining, you ask? Well, when you get a great conversation going and add some slap-happy people to the mix (it is a short holiday week, after all!), mirth and mayhem ensue!

Our good Twitter friend @akilbello started the trend of funny analogies. You won’t find these on the SAT or ACT, but they are a reminder that you need to keep your sense of humor as you study for entrance exams. Enjoy!

More laughs from @akilbello:

SAT is to ACT as McDonalds is to Burger King
ACT Science is to Science as Chicken McNuggets are to Chicken
SAT is to college admissions as gold fronts are to dating

From @MEFATweets

Tests are to grades as hamburger is to Angus Deluxe Bacon & Cheese

We got in on the act with this one:

Bad test taker is to SAT as Nicki Minaj is to walking in high heels. (AMAs reference)

… and we added a few more today.

Skipping breakfast is to taking SAT as empty gas tank is to road trip.
Oxygen is to survival as #2 pencils are to answer grid.
Taking the ACT is to taking the SAT as annoying is to annoying.

Yes, these tests are a necessary evil of the admissions process. It helps to laugh about it, though, so add your own fun analogy below. Better yet, join us next Monday at 4pm ET as we tackle a new college-bound topic!

–Barbara Bellesi

Is this what your Monday looks like?

Ours does, too.

If you’re a college-bound student, chances are that most days feel like Mondays to you. But since today is Monday, we think you should give yourself a break and join us at 4PM ET today on Twitter for our weekly #collegebound chat. Yes, we’re there most Mondays at 4, but today’s even more special, because we’ll be talking about the things that STRESS OUT OUT. More importantly, we’ll also be discussing ways to combat the stress that doesn’t involve harming stuffed animals or joining a fight club. See you then!

–The CollegeBound Network

So many people admire Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away last week, for his innovation and impact on our culture and even education. And though he didn’t finish college himself, he had a connection – through his wife – to helping students make it to college.

Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a co-founder of College Track. College Track is an after-school program that since 1997 has helped more than 1,100 high school students in California, Colorado, and Louisiana get into college. The first group of minority students it worked with headed off to college in 2001, and hundreds have followed since then.

The organization even drew Justin Bieber, who performed at a College Track benefit concert in June 2011 (that event and other fundraisers helped College Track raise $2 million). Will.i.am also spoke in May 2011 to graduates assisted by College Track. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Jobs family provided “significant” financial donations to found and run College Track. Jobs’ wife remains chairwoman of the board.

College Track assists mostly low-income students who would be the first in their family to go to college. The organization starts working with students before their 9th grade year in these cities – California’s East Palo Alto, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as New Orleans, and Aurora, Colorado. It provides all types of resources – academic, social, and financial (student earn up to $1,400 for each year they participate to go toward college) – to help students find a way to go to college. Here’s how it has succeeded:

• 100 percent of its seniors graduate high school

• 90 percent go to a four-year college

• 85 percent are the first person in their family to earn a college degree

• 70 percent graduate from college within six years

Many college students helped by College Track (see these videos with students’ stories) are serving as interns and volunteers, sharing their knowledge with current high school students.

Of course, many people are wondering which philanthropies or organizations will receive some of the billions of dollars that was part of Steve Jobs’ fortune. We’ll see if College Track is a beneficiary. In the meantime, if you know of someone in any of those cities in middle school who want to commit themselves to graduating and going to college but need a little assistance, they can apply online.

A student who graduated from high school in 2007 posted a comment on College Track’s website: “To succeed, you need to find something to hold onto to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. That place for me is College Track.”

–Lori Johnston

We’ll freely admit that it doesn’t take much in the social media world to get us excited. So when something really cool happens on Twitter–like the #collegebound chat we cohosted yesterday with YourCampus360–we geek out like a Mr. Spock fan at a Star Trek convention. (Note to our collective self: The Twitter “Fail Whale” could make an awesome Halloween costume.)

Yesterday’s chat topic was “Making the Most Out of Summer College Visits,” and our fellow Tweeps definitely made the most of the hour. (Read the transcript here!) Special thanks go to our friends over at YourCampus360. Follow them at @YourCampus360! (In a non-stalkerish way, of course.)

We’re on the lookout for future co-hosts for our chats. You pick the topic and the questions, and Barbara, your ridiculously fun and exciting host, will help guide the pace of the chat and ward off any paparazzi. Interested? Tweet us at @CollegeBoundNet and we’ll have our people talk to your people.

–The CollegeBound Network

In a world where an @ sign can take down a politician (yes, I’m talking about YOU, Anthony Weiner), we here at The CollegeBound Network prefer to use our social media powers for good. And we know that many of you do as well, as indicated by our growing #CollegeBound Twitter chats that take place Mondays at 4pm.

But now we’re getting into summer mode, and while we’ll still be tweeting and blogging away, we’re going to go to a bi-weekly schedule of Twitter chats. And we want to get some of our Twitter friends involved. Please tweet us if you’d like to be a co-host of one of our summer chats! Here’s our schedule:

Summer #CollegeBound Chats
(all are Mondays at 4pm ET)

June 27

July 11

July 25

August 8

August 22

You can still find us basically any day on our blog, or by tweeting us at @CollegeBoundNet. In September, we’ll go back to our weekly schedule, though because of the Labor Day holiday, we will chat on Tuesday, September 6 instead of the 5th.

–Barbara Bellesi, your friendly #CollegeBound chat hostess

With the week of dramatic news stories that the world has just experienced, nothing short of Harvard University adopting an open-door admissions policy would capture anyone’s attention today on this blog. So instead, we’ll just invite you to our #CollegeBound Twitter chat today at 4PM ET, where we’ll talk about keeping focused in a world full of breaking-news distractions. See you there!

–The CollegeBound Network

This Thursday is St. Patrick’s Day, and if you are still waiting to hear news from colleges, you might be hoping that some good ol’ Irish luck comes your way soon.

College admissions, however, have less to do with luck than they do with SAT and ACT scores, essays, GPAs, and letters of recommendation. At least they do in theory. But every year, we hear stories of how top-notch students get downright rejected from schools and–on the flip side–how other mediocre students seemingly pull a rabbit out of a hat and get accepted to their first-choice schools.

It’s true that the fate of some college applications simply don’t make sense. I’ve known people who have made their first-choice schools only to be rejected by their so-called “safety” school. But it’s not your job to make sense of it, nor should you just toss aside the books and instead start looking for that four-leaf clover or that pot of gold in the hopes that your college search will end happily ever after.

Join us today at 4 PM ET on Twitter for our #CollegeBound chat in which we talk about how talent, hard work, and yes, perhaps a smidgen of good luck, all combine to get you into the college of your dreams.

–The CollegeBound Network