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Mission Statement
The mission of the Journal of College Admission is to support and advance the work of the National Association of College Admission Counseling and college admission counseling professionals by providing members with lively, challenging discourse on issues relevant to the admission counseling field.
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Introduction
The Journal of College Admission strives to encourage conversation, share professional information, and provide challenging discourse on issues relevant to the college counseling and admission professions and the transition from high school to college.

The Journal welcomes submissions from admission, guidance, and college counselors, deans and directors of admission and enrollment, researchers, professors, and other interested educators.

Contributions can be in the form of original research, feature articles, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, humorous or anecdotal stories, and book reviews. Pertinent topics include counseling, recruitment, ethics, financial aid, standardized testing, multiculturalism, college athletics, international education, and professional issues, among others. However, the Journal's scope is much broader. As a practitioner or student, your interests and experience can help determine the content of the Journal.

The audience is international and includes NACAC members, as well as schools and university libraries. The association represents more than 9,300 counselors and institutions.

The Journal is abstracted and/or indexed in: Current Journals in Education, Education Index, ERIC-Counseling and Personnel Services Clearinghouse, and Higher Education abstracts.
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The Submission Process
All manuscripts are acknowledged upon receipt. Journal submissions are reviewed by an Editorial Board, which consists of seven NACAC members. Board members serve for three years and are appointed based on their involvement with NACAC and their backgrounds in writing.

A decision to accept, conditionally accept or reject is made within eight weeks. A conditional acceptance means that publication is contingent on the author making changes the board suggests. The editor and author work together on the revision so that the final product also meets the author's approval. Due to deadlines, the editor maintains the right to make minor revisions without seeking the writer's approval.

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of material submitted including statistics, references, quotations, and tables. The Editorial Board reserves the right to determine if accepted manuscripts are used as a feature article, "Open Forum," "Last Word" or "On the Lighter Side."

Because of Journal's quarterly publication schedule, and the quantity of manuscripts received, it may be several months before an accepted manuscript is assigned a publication date. However, all articles are published within one year of submission.

Please do not submit simultaneous submissions. If you have work that has been previously published and you would like to submit it to the Journal, obtain the original publisher's permission in writing prior to sending it to the Journal (and send the document from the original publisher granting permission to re-publish pending acceptance with your manuscript).

Submissions are evaluated based on:

Subject matter:

contributes new ideas to educational literature
balances theoretical and practical information
is based on solid research methodology (research pieces)
is timely and informative
appeals to counselors and admission officers.

Writing style:

is clear, concise and logical
is unbiased (unless an opinion piece)
avoids educational, statistical and research jargon
uses examples or models.

Moratorium
In order to encourage a variety of authors to submit and become published in the Journal, only one article may be published per author per year. Authors may submit articles more than once each year, but only one article will be published that year. Other articles may be published in subsequent years.

Copyright
It is the author's responsibility to inform the editor if the article has been published previously or if it is being considered by another publication. If the article is accepted, NACAC asks the author to sign a statement guaranteeing that the manuscript is the author's original work and giving the association permission to:

edit, publish in print and electronic form and copyright the material
republish the material, or any part of it in print or electronic form, in any future NACAC publication
grant permission to persons and organizations requesting to reprint the material, in whole or in part.

Any author who requests NACAC's permission to republish his or her own material readily receives it.

The John B. Muir Editor's Award
This award, presented by the Editorial Board at NACAC's annual conference, recognizes the author who has made the most significant contribution to the Journal during the past year.
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Nuts and Bolts

Form
Submit manuscripts via email to journal@nacac.com, as well as via mail or fax (see bottom of page for NACAC address/fax). The editor will need the emailed text before s/he can forward it to the Editorial Board. All text, including references and quotations, should be double-spaced and left justified on the page. Place drawings, tables and charts on separate pages.

Each copy of the manuscript should include the proposed title of the article plus complete identification, phone number, email, and address for each author.

If your article is approved to be published, please send a 50-word biography and a high resolution electronic photo, or hard copy to be scanned.

Length
Length should be determined by the scope of your topic. Be concise, but provide all necessary information. Manuscripts generally range from 2,500 to 5,000 words, (10-20 pages double-spaced) for all feature articles and research articles. "On the Lighter Side," "Open Forum" and "Last Word" articles should range from 750 to 1500 words. Letters to the editor should not exceed 600 words.

Keep paragraphs short. Structure your manuscript to include subheads. The article's title should be short, descriptive and interesting.

Style
The Journal conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style and Webster's Dictionary. The editor revises all manuscripts following the guidelines for grammar, punctuation and spelling found in these two texts. Document sources according to the author-date system described in Chapter 16 of the Chicago Manual of Style. This method utilizes parenthetical references in the body of the text and provides a full citation in a bibliography. Endnotes are used only for substantive notes that are supplementing the main text. The author must submit the references in the proper style.

Permissions
When an extended quotation or table is taken from a book, report or related publication, written permission of the publisher must be secured by the author prior to submission. Such permission must accompany the manuscript and proper credit must be given in a citation.

Writing Hints

When writing:

first decide the purpose of your article and then organize your material by sticking to the main point
don't brood about impressive openings--get to the point
keep your readers in mind, not your scholarly peers
rewrite cliches and avoid educational jargon as much as you can.

After you write a first draft:

put your manuscript away for a day or two. Then read it from the beginning to end and begin revising. Make your opening sentences interesting, attention getting, and specific. Don't start with, "The purpose of this article is ..."
after you've spent as much time revising as you spent on the first draft, let another person read your revision and offer suggestions for further improvement.

Before you send it to NACAC:

read the manuscript for organization
make sure it has a topic sentence or paragraph, a beginning, middle, and conclusion. Look for: undeveloped themes; weaknesses in logic; changes in viewpoint or tense; faulty connections; and confused chronology or sequence of ideas
read the manuscript for clarity. Make sure the reader knows your article's who, what, where, why, when, how much, and how many. Look for: material omission; abstract, ambiguous or misplaced words; unusual terms or obscure references; unfulfilled promises; murky antecedents; nonparallel structure
read the manuscript for conciseness. Look for: overlong sentences; passive verbs; long strings of nouns and adjectives; unnecessary, repetitious, and irrelevant words; duplication; over-emphasis; second thoughts; self-evident statements; and circumlocution
check for correct grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Proofreading Tips:

look at one line at a time
read your document out of order. Go backward, page by page, or just shuffle the pages
remember, errors come in clusters
check numbering
check the alphabetical order of the works cited, then verify the spelling of all names and titles
use the active voice
use short sentences
have clear antecedents
use short words
be clear
use figures of speech sparingly.

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Guidelines for Book Reviews

Book reviews have moved.

Before writing an appraisal of a book, the reviewer should list the author, title, publisher, city, state, the year of publication, cost, total number of pages, and identify it as hard- or softcover.

A book review should attempt to cover the following areas, not necessarily in the order they are listed, but as they fit into the reviewer's style and organization:

what is the purpose of the book?
reviewer's evaluation of the author's purpose
does the author fulfill his or her purpose?
what specific needs of the counselor does the book meet?
what special contribution does the book make?
what impact do timeliness, style , thoroughness, organization, and clarity have on the book's quality?
what weaknesses does the book have?
reviewer 's recommendation with specific reasons.

Email submissions to, Bulletin Editor, bulletin@nacac.com.
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Resource List

Education Journals

Journal of College Admission

Journal of College Counseling

Student Affairs Journal Online

College and University (AACRAO)

Counselor Education and Supervision

Q, the Online Journal of the Association for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues in Counseling

Professional School Counseling (ASCA)

Internet sites

ERIC Education Resources Information Center

Grammar Usage and Style

List of Education Journals

Articles

"Publishing in Scholarly Journals: Part 1: Is It An Attitude or Technique? It's An Attitude" published in Counselor Education & Supervision, June 1998

"Publishing in Scholarly Journals: Part 2: Is It An Attitude or Technique? It's A Technique"ublished in Counselor Education & Supervision, June 1999

Books

Writing for Professional Publication: Keys to Academic and Business Success by Kenneth T. Henson

Writing for Academic Publication: A Guide to Getting Started by Frank Parker, Kathryn Louise Riley

Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams

Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education (Jossey-Bass Education Series) by Sharan B. Merriam

Write Tight by William Brohaugh

Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh

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Suggested Topics

College Rejections on the Rise
College Access and Opportunties Act
Community College
Adolescent Development
Growing Gender Gap in Admission and Accepting Less Qualified Male Applicants
Cheaters and the Honor Code
Same Sex Accomodations and Homosexual Couples
Media Portrayal of the College Counselor and Admission Process: TV and Movie Content
Women's Colleges/Historically Black Colleges/Religiously-Affiliated
The Changing Face of College Admission: College for Everyone?
Creating a College/Career Library
Counseling Disadvantaged/Unmotivated Students
International Students and College Admission at U.S. Institutions/U.S. Student Admission at International Institutions
College Admission and Students in the Performing and Visual Arts: Preparing a Portfolio or for an Audition
Personality Tests: Can they Help Students Choose a School?
School Rivalries: How they Affect Admission
Service in the Armed Forces in Exchange for Higher Education Tuition

You are not limited to these topics! They are suggestions!

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