Welcome back! Today we are going to focus on a success story with one of the students we have been working with.
Before we do, we want to announce a change in the way that we will be working with students in the future.
Currently, we take students in a variety of places from an admissions perspective. That has resulted in everything from parents that want to start working as early as in the 6th grade to students messaging us at the last minute.
That has worked for students, but it creates a disjointed experience from our perspective.
Moving forward,we will only be taking limited students on a class basis. That means, we will only take a limited number of individuals in the upcoming high school class (class of 2025).
That means we can provide more specialized focus for the students we work with, as well as more comprehensive services.
We will provide greater detail in the future, but stay tuned!
Now back to the focus today: A success story.
Some aspects of the application will be kept fairly generic to provide privacy for the student, but we want to provide a view into 1) the type of student we work with and 2) what is possible if you know how to package your application to get into the most selective schools.
This student applied early action to Harvard and was accepted. Their information:
4.0 UW GPA
36 ACT
13 AP Classes (no less than 4s on any exam so far)
Projected Valedictorian of high school
Several Academic Extracurriculars
Deep Volunteer work with a single organization
Varsity Sport
Strong letters of recommendation
Strong Essays (began working on essays over a month in advance)
Overview and Key Takeaways:
Before we go too deep, there are a lot of things to notice about this applicant
This applicant had a perfect GPA. In the highly selective applicant pool, this is almost non-negotiable. We are not here to make you feel good - if you do not have a strong GPA in your school, you are making it more difficult to get into the most selective schools. There are plenty of people with perfect GPAs that will get rejected or deferred. This is a bare minimum.
The ACT score is perfect. This only strengthened the candidate, but was not a requirement to be accepted to Harvard.
While the applicant was a participant in several activities, they had depth in only a few extracurriculars - namely in a sport and in a volunteer organization.
This applicant also took their time with their essays - they did not attempt to write an essay a week before it was due.
This applicant also had no traditional hook - not legacy, geographically from the Northeast, not a recruited athlete, etc.
The lack of hook means this is a pure academic acceptance. No gimmicks.
The key to him getting accepted is really a lesson to everyone who is applying.
The first thing is that you have to take care of the blocking and tackling. In an academic sense, that means you have to get your GPA in check.
Too many parents, counselors, and others focus too much on hitting the home run with an extracurricular instead of just getting on base with a solid GPA.
GPA is the one thing that you can always control - you do not need to go to a competitive school, you do not need to take 20 AP courses. You just need to be the best in your classes in your environment.
The second thing is that this applicant benefited from working ahead of time to make sure that his portfolio and resume were put together well in advance of application time.
For example - he was the captain of his varsity sport. You do not just do that overnight.
He began as a junior varsity player as a freshman, then moving to varsity his sophomore year, and then becoming captain as a senior year. He was strategic in selecting extracurriculars and only adding on in a way where he enhanced his overall academic profile.
Why is this important?
Because when you think about things strategically and make a plan, you simply have to execute the plan and then you do not need to worry about how it will all come together.
That gives you time for #3 - taking your time to put it all together.
We worked with this applicant for WEEKS to get through their application. We were not struggling to find time to take the SAT or worrying about whether grades were strong enough. Instead, we could focus all of our time on essays and revisions.
In the most competitive environments, the details are the most important.
Your strategy knocks out 90% of the competition.
Your execution knocks out an additional 5%.
The details are how you become the winner.
Taking the time to just work on essays and other application material meant that he was able to put his best foot forward and differentiate himself without the pressure of timelines.
What this means for you:
Starting early is the best way to get into the college of your dreams
A holistic strategy beats a home-run strategy every time
The more competitive the environment, the more the details matter