High School Counselor Week      PO Box 602   Bedford MA 01730  781 271-0396

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE    January 9, 2006
Further Information: Gene Kalb
781-271-0396
gene.kalb@HSCounselorWeek.com

New, Free E-Mail Newsletter Launched for High School Counselors
Advising on College Admissions and Other Issues

Northeast is First of Four Editions; Others Planned for Early 2006; College and Independent Admission Counselors Also Targeted

Bedford, MA... January 9, 2006   High School Counselor Week, Northeast Region, will be launched on Thursday, January 12, 2006 and will be published on 48 Thursdays per year thereafter. A newsletter for news, each issue will contain summaries and links to full news stories gleaned from hundreds of newspaper and magazine sources on subjects such as SATs, tuition finance, changes in admission policies, trends, federal and state issues, directories, non-college alternatives, parent issues and more.

It will be sent, free, to subscribers who sign up at HSCounselorWeek.com. Name, e-mail address, and regional preference(s) are all that are required.

The Northeast Region includes counselors in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington D.C. Counselors in other regions, however, may sign up, because about three-fourths of each newsletter is national in scope, and only one-fourth regional.

"The newsletter fills an important information need," according to Gene Kalb, publisher. "There are upwards of 2,000 college admission stories a week in the nation’s press, and the many association monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly news resources cannot possibly cover them - but high school and other admission counselors need to know what’s happening," he said.

"Counselors could do the searching themselves, of course. It might take a full day or so each week to find and sort through the mountain of stories they would find. What we do is gather, sort, summarize, categorize, add html links, and put the important ones in a very user-friendly format for counselors who often don’t have time for lunch, much less searching."

Counselors can scan the weekly newsletter in just 3-4 minutes and click on only those stories that interest them. Each weekly newsletter contains between 10 and 15 selected stories, with content summarized on the front page, and each linked to the full story for those who are interested.

"We were very aware of stressful overload on most counselors," Kalb said, "and the newsletter is designed to minimize intrusion. 3-4 minute scanning; categorized contents (including regional issues); line-clicking in the table of contents to jump to the clicked category. Different counselors have different needs and very few are expected to read the full newsletter. But they will get what they need and want to know quickly, and in a timely way."

Comments among reviewers have been very favorable and supportive, Kalb indicated. At a presentation he gave to both high school and college admission counselors representing 11 states in the Northeast, each counselor individually signed up to receive beta and regular issues. And unsolicited written comments from others included praise from the president of one major association, and another who described HSCounselorWeek favorably in his association newsletter.

The newsletter had been under development for more than four months, and from 10 to 200 counselors reviewed eight "beta" issues for comment. "The comments were very helpful," Kalb said, "and we incorporated almost all of them. It is a much better newsletter because of the process."

Many association reviewers saw the newsletter as a free and valuable service to their members - something their members need which has never been available before - and offered cooperation in various ways, including encouraging word of mouth and pass-alongs, notices in their own newsletters, use of ListServ to tell their members about it, logo exchanges on websites. and similar exchanges. "We can use all the help we can get in signing up counselors," Kalb said, "and the cooperation of the state associations are one key to that process."

The publication will be financed by unobtrusive logos and links to websites by colleges, funding sources, publishers, alternatives to colleges and other services interested in reinforcing their presence with high school counselors advising on college admissions.

HSCounselorWeek is published by de facto inc., which has been in the newsletter business, still under its original management, for more than fifteen years. It has also performed research on behalf of corporate clients such as Wells Fargo, Westinghouse, Raytheon and many others, though it confines present activity to newsletters exclusively.