Check out the infographic below that breaks down what really matters in the college admissions process, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Prospective college students should consider participating in summer college programs that will enhance their knowledge in a subject area, or provide an introduction to a new area of study. (Most high schools, for example, do not offer anthropology, linguistics or architecture.) While it’s true that most students need a break from academics, keeping young minds engaged is incredibly important, not to mention that students who have had too much time off from school can show decreased levels of motivation.

Aside from summer college courses, other summer programs may include outings and events that help students develop their social skills, self-confidence and leadership, and ultimately define their overall personality and major interests. By participating in a summer program, applicants can demonstrate to admissions officers their sincerity and a certain level of seriousness and involvement. Admissions officers look for these qualities in applications – and students with them can differentiate themselves from others with similar grades and test scores.

For the musicians, dancers and singers, performing arts summer programs can enhance skills or give high school students audition material. Further, for service-oriented students, engaging in a summer volunteer program can look good. Finally, students who are interested in languages should consider studying in an immersion program. (It’s impressive to be bilingual – and to show ambition and independence by visiting a foreign country.)

Regardless of the activity, students should look to differentiate themselves from other applicants and give admissions officer insight into their personalities and academic interests.

For international students looking to come to the United States for college – and there are now tens of thousands of students who do so, for both undergraduate and graduate degrees – it’s a very exciting adventure. But, it can also be quite complicated.

First, International students should familiarize themselves with the International Students office at their university. This office will be familiar with any questions that might arise, ranging from visas to cultural differences to transportation issues. International students will also find others from their home country or continent at this office – it’s a great way to meet students who are in a similar situation.

Prior to arrival on campus, international students should prepare themselves, as much as possible, for life in the U.S. by reading websites, talking to other international students currently on U.S. campuses and participating in message boards to learn about campus life, classroom and social etiquette and expectations of professors.

In the U.S., learning is hands-on and interactive, and college students need to become independent learners. Here, students take fewer classes than abroad but cover subject matter in greater depth. U.S. college students are also expected to participate in discussions if the class size is up to, say, 30 or 40 students. Many international students will often shy away from participating, especially if English is a second language or if their culture dictates that students not disagree with the professor. But professors in the U.S. often encourage discussion and they like new opinions and perspectives; classmates will also appreciate the viewpoints of their international peers.

Professors at all colleges make themselves available each week during “office hours.” Most students – U.S. and international – do not generally take advantage of this. It is important, however, that students introduce themselves to their professors, as faculty can be a valuable resource for graduate studies or careers.

It is also important for international students to research the location of their institution. The first time they arrive on campus will likely be their first time ever visiting campus. Is the campus in an urban center? Rural? Or somewhere in between? Is international travel difficult?

Finally, international students should look into the diversity of students at their college. Is there a critical mass of students from the same country or nearby countries? What about student organizations and clubs? Will it be easy to acculturate to life in the United States? Will there be opportunities to learn about other cultures?

Studying in the United States as an international student can be an enriching experience filled with wonderful and new opportunities. And for U.S. students – consider a study abroad program to explore new adventures of your own.

Here’s the best strategy for acing the GMAT reading comprehension section:

Read the entire passage. You need to have a general understanding of the passage in order to answer the questions asked. Some of the questions will be paragraph specific but a lot of the questions will also ask about overarching themes. If you do not read the whole passage, then answering question accurately will be difficult.

At the end of each paragraph, write a one or two line summary as a reference. It may sound unnecessary but doing so will keep you from having to reread the paragraph when answering questions. You should also highlight, underline or jot down the key words from the paragraph.

After reading the passage, go through all of the questions and their answers. While doing so, cross out answers that you know are unrelated to the passage or are the least likely to be correct. In the process, you may answer some of the questions. When revisiting the questions that you did not answer right away, you will have eliminated the least likely answers, improving the odds of selecting the right answer.

Bottom line: invest the time in reading entire passages, take notes while doing so, then going through questions and eliminating likely wrong answers.

What can you and your child do to get a head start in the college admissions process?

Prepare your class schedule in advance. Even as early as freshman year (or eighth grade), college-bound students should think strategically about the classes that they want to take in their junior and senior years. If your child is strong in math and science and might choose a science or engineering major, then she will want to take advanced math or computer science as a high school senior. It makes sense to take the prerequisite courses in the first two years of high school. Similarly, if he wants to be an architecture or art major, prepare early to take photography, art and advanced design courses to create a portfolio in his senior year.

Do well in school. It cannot be emphasized enough; start high school on the right foot, and chart yourself on a continuous path of challenge and success. Most colleges will forgive freshman grades, but it’s great if your child starts strong. Admissions officers will look for trends in grades, so it’s important to continuously do better each year.

Join a club or two. Your child can test out clubs to see what she likes. If she’s not happy, she can find another activity or ask a teacher to serve as a club adviser and start a new one. It’s good to be active, and to have participated in a wide variety of activities, to show leadership. Students should not join ten clubs throughout high school – a good idea is to get involved with, say, four to seven activities and to stick with each one for two, three or four years. Look outside of school for activities to join.

Talk to your child’s school counselor. You or your child might have a mandatory meeting with him or her – if so, make the most of it. Your child should mention aspirations for college to design a course schedule that will position him or her for success. If you don’t have a mandatory meeting, set one up. It’s your right to have such a meeting and advocate for yourself.

Keep track of your grades and your achievements – start a résumé. Create a file or folder for all high school records, whether electronic or in a filing cabinet. The more organized parents are, the better positioned for success when your child’s senior year comes around.

Use online resources to do research. Visit college websites, view student profiles and learn about financial aid. Join message boards to ask questions. The more time you spend researching college options online, the easier it will be to narrow down the list of schools that are most appropriate for you to visit when your child is a junior.

Remember that the earlier you and your child plan for college, the more organized and in control you will be. Heed this advice and gain an advantage for your child in the admissions process.

Getting your finances in in order.
With your acceptance packages, you will be presented with information about public and private loans, scholarships and other ways in which you can fund graduate school. Most top MBA programs offer various types of financial support – although the majority of students will need to fund their education themselves. Be sure to check, some programs have special lines of credit for both international and domestic students and may even be willing to act as a guarantor for those who qualify.

Informing supervisors of your departure.
When leaving your current place of work, be diplomatic and professional. It’s likely that your supervisor is aware of the possibility of your leaving as he or she was one of your recommendation letter writers. If your supervisor was unaware of your MBA applications, put in notice by written letter once you have made a decision on which program you will be enrolling at. Explain why you are leaving and offer to help your employer with the transition process. Don’t burn any bridges. Your former colleagues will continue to be a part of your professional network.

If you have been waitlisted, provide additional details or an update to the admissions office. When doing so, make sure that you do so judicially and that your new material is of value. If the program is your top choice, indicate that to the admissions office. Always follow the rules and guidelines provided by the program.

If you were not not admitted to the program you were seeking to enter, ask for feedback on why your application was denied. This will help you pinpoint weaknesses. If you decide to re-apply next year, be sure that your materials show improvement and growth.

If so, you might want to consider colleges they attended when you begin to develop your college list. (Perhaps they’re already pushing you to look at their alma mater.) The practice of admitting students whose parents or grandparents attended a particular institution – sometimes termed “legacy admissions” – has become a controversial topic in recent years, as it is often seen as preferential treatment.

Some colleges have a history of admitting high percentages of applicants who are sons or daughters (or grandsons or granddaughters) of alumni; other colleges are notorious for not taking legacy status into consideration. For most admissions officers, an applicant’s legacy will not matter too much in the admissions process – and so you’ll find that often, the average test scores and GPAs of legacy students are the same as that of students who have no familial connection to a college.

There are some exceptions. If an admissions officer is looking at two comparable applications and only has room to admit one of them – a would-be legacy and a non-legacy – the chances are high that that legacy candidate would be admitted. If this were the case, then the admissions officer would be acting affirmatively on the legacy application.

Some universities – including a few Ivy League schools – outright indicate that there is no advantage given to legacy applicants in the regular decision process, and only if the student applies via early decision will the application be given special consideration. This puts the burden on the applicant: Does he want to apply early to this particular school? Is this his top choice? (If not, then he certainly should not apply early – and in making that decision, he loses the possible advantage that being a legacy would have granted him.)

What is exactly defined as a legacy? Do siblings count?

The definition of legacy might change from university to university. Most will agree that the student needs to be a straight-line descendant – for example, daughter-granddaughter-great-granddaughter – and other relatives (cousins, aunts, uncles) are not considered for the legacy designation. That said, many admissions officers will note that, if many members of a family attend a particular school, there is a strong family tie and the applicant might enroll if admitted, and might be very excited about the school.

Some colleges also look at siblings who have attended, or are currently attending, an institution. While this is also not considered a legacy applicant (if just the sibling, and not the parents, attended), it can also signify to the admissions officer that this applicant is seriously interested in attending.

Legacy status not only connotes the ties and loyalty that a family has to a school. It might also indicate the likelihood that a family will donate money to the college. And, colleges take note of this, especially if the university is cash-strapped. If a college admits a donor’s child, then that donor will likely continue to donate to the school; conversely, if the donor’s child is refused admission, there is a real possibility that the donations will stop.

Colleges take all sorts of factors into consideration – donations, family loyalty, siblings. But they also look at your talents, likelihood of contributing significantly, making a difference, becoming a leader, and creating your own legacy at the school someday. Don’t let your legacy status (or lack thereof) affect whether you’ll apply to a college – it’s just one small piece of the admissions puzzle.

Today, let’s provide some perspective by breaking down how one such ranking, put out by US News and World Report, is conducted.

US News ranks MBA programs based on how well they satisfy their two main constituencies, students and corporate recruiters, as well as on the research output by faculty members. These criteria have stayed about the same for the last twenty years.

The ranking process begins with a survey sent out to students of the most recent graduating class. The survey asks them about the quality of teaching, the effectiveness of career services and other aspects of their school experience. Professors of educational psychology then examine responses in order to ensure that the responses have not been systematically answered in an attempt to influence the outcome.

Stage two of the ranking process involves corporate MBA recruiters. These recruiters are asked to rate programs based on the quality of MBA grads they have hired. Once these scores have been tallied, the total points for each program are tabulated. Points are assigned as follows: the number one ranked school (according to grads) is given 75 points, the number two ranked school is given 74 points and so on. These points are then combined with the recruiter rankings.

Lastly, each program’s “intellectual-capacity” is tallied based on the number of articles published by the school’s faculty in 20 publications, ranging from the Journal of Accounting Research to the Harvard Business Review. After this, the scores are adjusted for faculty size. Extra points are awarded to programs whose faculty have been published or reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg Businessweek.

An MBA program’s rank should be used in conjunction with other criteria when determining whether that school should be one you should apply to.

Of all the students who hope to compete as an NCAA athlete, typically only one in 50 will actually be recruited. Sitting by your phone and waiting for a call from a coach is not exactly the way to get noticed! The actual recruiting period lasts for only several months, but preparing for it should begin as early as possible. Like everything else with college admissions, starting earlier is always better.

Because coaches have limited contact with students – typically starting at the beginning of your senior year – you may not find out if you are on an official recruiting list until most of your high school sports career has been completed. If you are not contacted by coaches, take the initiative by filling out a contact form on colleges’ athletics websites. Most sites will have a Recruit Questionnaire that asks questions about your athletic abilities and involvement (for example, What is your time on the 100 m dash? What position do you play? Will you be a captain? Do you play on a travel league?) as well as grades and standardized test scores.

You should start thinking about college athletics as early as freshman year of high school. As a freshman athlete, develop your skills and focus on your academics. No matter how talented an athlete you are, you will not be eligible to play a sport in college if your grades do not exceed a minimum set forth by NCAA standards.

As a sophomore, learn how the recruitment process works. What are the rules? How will you get noticed by coaches? Raise your visibility and look into sports programs at different colleges, and form relationships with coaches at the schools that interest you most. While it is still early, you will know your PSAT or PLAN scores if you take these tests in the fall semester, and you will have almost two years of grades. If possible, take on a leadership role and be sure to avoid any negative actions – that is, follow your school’s and your team’s rules. (Coaches will be loath to recruit a student-athlete who does not add positively to the team environment.)

The junior year is the most important, especially if you play a spring sport – coaches will not have a chance to see your level of play in the spring of your senior year, since your applications will already be submitted. (It’s possible that coaches can watch you play or view your video if you participate in a summer league.) In junior year, start to visit colleges and coaches – and make phone calls and send emails. While coaches cannot establish contact with you per NCAA regulations (until the summer before your senor year), you and your parents can initiate contact and reach out to coaches.

As a senior, your athletic skills should show continuing development, and you must continue working hard to assure your grades are as high as possible. Admissions is incredibly selective at many colleges today, and athletics recruitment is one way to try and differentiate yourself from other applicants.

As well as you prepare, as diligently as you practice, you may find yourself at the end of a section on a real GMAT running out of time. What should you do? Guess randomly or omit the question?

Guessing vs. Solution Behavior
First, let’s clarify “guessing.”  By “guessing” or “random guessing,” we mean you have no clue which of the five answer choices is right. The right answer could equally be any of the five options. This would most often occur if you are doing rapid guessing in the last few seconds of a session — answering, say, the last 5 questions in the last 10-15 seconds.

If you study the question, and can eliminate some answers, but don’t know which of the remaining answers is right, this is called “solution behavior.” On average, solution behavior will benefit you. It is always, 100% of the time, much better than either random guessing or omitting. If you have any clue about a question, and can narrow the answers down to three or two choices, then guess from among those and move on. Never leave such a question blank.

Strategy on the Verbal Section
GMAC conducted a study in 2009 looking into the question about guessing or omitting in the final moments of the test. They looked at patterns in tens of thousands of GMATs and culled through the data. It turns out, on the verbal section, there is no substantial difference between guessing on the last few questions or omitting them. Your score will be, on average, the same regardless of which strategy you choose.

Here’s what the report says: “If an examinee found herself with only a minute remaining to answer the last four items of the verbal section, it would be to her benefit to spend time trying to answer at least one of the remaining questions with thought while feeling confident that leaving the remaining items blank would not affect the score much differently than random responding.” When running out of time on the verbal section, your focus should be: remain calm, and simply do your best working thoroughly with each question, one at a time, even if that means there are two or three questions you simply don’t see.

Strategy on the Quantitative Section
The data from test takers is far more nuanced on the quantitative section. Here, advice varies depending on your abilities.

For those who do not have a strength in math or are anticipating a relatively low score, it turns out that, as in the verbal section, it is advantageous to omit questions. If you don’t know the answer to a question, simply leave it blank, don’t guess. If you have enough insight to eliminate even one answer choice, that’s no longer guessing but rather solution behavior, and you should guess from the remaining answers. But if you truly have no clue, and especially if you are running out time, plan to omit questions, and do your best with the ones which you can either solve or apply solution behavior.

For those test-takers at the other end of the spectrum, those talented in the quantitative section and shooting for one of the highest scores, advice is the polar opposite: omitting a question is not recommended. If you’re running out of time, you will be much better served by randomly guessing than leaving anything blank.

What about for those in between? If you’re really good at math, omitting answers hurts you a lot. If you’re average at math, omitting answers hurts you a little. Basically, you are better off answering every question, even if that means random guessing in a last mad dash at the end.

Bottom line
This is the most sophisticated data-driven recommendations on GMAT guessing strategies. If at any point you can practice solution behavior — that is, you can intelligently eliminate some answer choices and after that get stuck — then you should always guess from the remaining choices and never leave such a question blank. And the more you practice against the clock, and practice a wide variety of GMAT questions, the less the dilemma of a last-minute crunch will be your problem at all.

This post was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT expert at Magoosh.