-
Plan For Success
In 9th and 10th grade, it’s a very critical period to explore academic and non-academic subjects of interest.
Often, however, students don't know which subjects or extracurriculars to invest time into - and more importantly, they don't know how approach these activities in a way that will show admissions officers what they're passionate about and how they've shown initiative and leadership.
Put together a four-year game plan to explore and show your interest, hobbies, and talents in a way that sets you up well for a strong application.
-
Discover Yourself
Most students don't know what programs are out there, what they entail, and what potential careers they could lead to.
They also aren't pushed to consider non-academic factors that may affect how happy and how well they fit into a new university community.
Decide what programs or subjects you are passionate about.
Determine the environmental and learning factors that you care about in a holistic university experience.
-
Explore Your Options
Students don't know how expansive US college landscape is - how varied universities are in curriculum, size, student composition, location, and culture.
Beyond this, they don't know where to look - many schools do not provide the proper tools, resources, or guidance to find this information.
Explore the 5,000+ universities are out there, and understand their available programs, their campus life, their student demographics, and their application requirements.
Develop a balanced, realistic, yet ambitious college list that fits your college experience criteria, and align with your academic profile and aspirations.
-
Shape Your Application
Asian culture encourages humility and modesty - students aren't often taught to write reflectively, personally, and eloquently, but more importantly, they aren't taught to brand themselves in a compelling way.
Essays tend to be very rigid or unoriginal.
Resumes tend to be incomplete or unclear.
Recommendation letters tend not to be there at all.
Build and execute an application strategy that presents your best self in a unique, compelling, and unified way:
Write essays that only you can tell, that share key experiences in a way that showcase your passion, strengths, and personality.
Choose the right experiences to share and position them to effectively demonstrate consistency, curiosity, and leadership.
Make the recommendation letters easy to write for your favorite teachers and counselors - build a relationship, and provide them with the talking points that highlight your key traits and contributions.
-
Check All the boxes
Without proper instruction and follow-up with school counselors, transcripts and test scores come late or go unsent, which typically leads to an auto-rejection of a student who may be stellar.This is the easiest, yet most neglected, part of the application - once done, students just want to submit. A meticulous review usually happens for essays and activity sections, but not often for the rest of the application, which may have mistakes that could cripple an otherwise strong application.
Ensure all requirements have been met:
Make sure transcripts and test scores have been sent.
Review your end-to-end application to ensure all sections - including the administrative bits - are correct, consistent, and complete.
-
