Overview: CollegeAdvisor.com Client Success Stories
Welcome to our Client Success Stories! Each year, our team here at CollegeAdvisor has the privilege of working with countless incredible students. Through one-on-one advising, we help them strengthen their applications and find success in their college application journeys.
The college application process comes with many challenges, some universal and some unique to each applicant. That’s why we began this series. We wanted to give you the chance to hear directly from our students about their experience working with CollegeAdvisor.
While reading our Success Stories, we hope you get a real sense of what it’s like working with one of our advisors. In these articles, we explore how our students felt going into the process, their challenges and successes, and the fantastic schools they’re planning on attending in the fall.
In this edition of our Client Success Stories, we interviewed Devavrat Tarwala: a motivated student with impressive career goals. We’ll learn about how Dev’s advisor helped him refine his essays and college list, what he learned from the process, and his advice for future applicants. But first, let’s learn a little more about Dev!
Getting to Know Devavrat
Dev was born in India and moved to the United States at a young age. He says, “I grew up everywhere. I first moved to the U.S. when I was three years old. I lived in Los Angeles, and then I moved to New York City after that. Then I lived in Columbus, Ohio, after, right near Philadelphia. And then I finally moved out here to Westchester, right above New York City.”
In our interview, Dev told us about how his life experiences have shaped him into who he is today. Dev notes, “I never felt like I was the odd one out per se, but I did feel a little different than everyone else in my family. And that topic of what it means for me to be an Indian and what it means for me to be an immigrant really came out in my college personal statement.”
A future doctor
Despite growing up in so many places, Dev has had no trouble focusing on his passions. “I definitely want to be a doctor in my future,” he told us. Considering his plans for the future, it’s no surprise Dev’s favorite classes in high school were AP Chemistry and AP BC Calculus. When asked why he liked those particular AP courses, he said, “Both of those classes really provided me with a lot of challenges…I feel like those classes made me more excited for college and for challenges I might find in college classrooms.”
Outside of the classroom, Dev also found exciting ways to explore his interests. And, with a clear career goal, Dev was able to gain valuable experience early on. On his activities he says, “A lot of my extracurriculars have focused around either hospitals or community service. I did an internship at Lenox Hill Hospital a couple of summers ago. And then I did an internship at a Mount Sinai lab last summer, which I am going to continue to do this summer.”
With his sights set on one day attending medical school, Dev first had to go through the rigorous process of applying to colleges.
Preparing for the college admissions process
Like many other driven students, Dev was thinking about college admissions long before beginning his applications. He recalls, “I was always really concerned about getting into a good college. Especially, I wanted to get into those top tier universities… I think ever since ninth grade, I was really concerned about making sure all my extracurriculars and my grades were all in line so that I could then get into the best college.”
Despite investing in his grades and extracurriculars, there was one part of the college application process that Dev hadn’t really considered: college application essays. For many students, college essays are one of the most challenging parts of the application process. So, it makes sense that college essay help is one of the top reasons students start working with a company like CollegeAdvisor.
Getting started with CollegeAdvisor
During his time with CollegeAdvisor, Devavrat had the chance to collaborate with not one but two members of our team. He worked with senior advisor Abubakar Mian and former admissions officer Mary Katheryn Whittington.
Dev started working with his advisors the spring of his sophomore year. They started slow, gradually picking up the pace as senior year approached. When asked how often Dev met with his advisors, he said, “It might be once every month or two initially. Then, I think it was my junior year summer where we started meeting every single week or every other week.”
One of the big benefits of getting started early is having time to develop relationships with your advisors. Dev told us how this helped him get more out of the advising process, particularly when it came down to writing his essays. He says, “Since I knew both [my advisors] since my sophomore year, they both got to know me as a person. They felt more like friends that I would be meeting with, which I felt was really nice because I could be much more open about myself…which allowed me to get more out of my essays and get more personal with my essays.”
Now, let’s learn a little more about how Dev’s advisors worked with him throughout the application process.
How Devavrat’s advisor helped him find success
As first-time applicants, students may not know what to expect from CollegeAdvisor’s one-on-one sessions. Here’s what Dev had to say about the day-to-day experience of working with a college counselor.
“It was discussing essays and the other stuff I have to do for the Common App, like the activities and awards sheet… It was a lot of planning and a lot of brainstorming for ideas initially.”
Overall, Dev felt positive about the structure and encouragement he received from his advisors. He said, “I feel like CollegeAdvisor had a lot of good worksheets, templates, and tools in general, just to help me brainstorm or help me start to plan out everything I needed to get done for the college application process.”
In general, Dev told us CollegeAdvisor really helped him write college essays, build his college list, and explore summer internships. In the next sections, we’ll discuss what challenges Dev faced and how his advisors helped him navigate through them.
Writing college essays
Once Dev and his advisors had gone through the brainstorming process, they dove headfirst into the writing process.
“That’s when my homework basically just became write a draft, try to condense it where I can, and then send it over. Then they give me feedback and then I write another draft. And it would kind of be that back and forth until I got a really nice polished finalized essay.”
Writing strong college essays is a very particular skill, one that requires a lot of self-reflection, perseverance, and honesty. Online essay guides are a great resource and starting point for many students. However, Dev really benefited from his relationship with his advisors and the personalized feedback they were able to give him. On his advisors’ essay help Dev says, “There were times where they could clearly tell me, ‘Hey, Dev, this essay doesn’t feel like you or it feels like you cut your personality out of this essay just to reach the word count.’ And that was really helpful because that’s something I feel like I couldn’t have done myself.”
While supplemental essays are typically shorter than a personal statement, their limited word count can make them even more challenging. It’s tough to show exactly who you are and why a college should accept you in so few words. But, by the end of his applications, Dev understood what was important to reflect on in his college essays. In fact, he really became a college essay expert himself. Dev says, “I could then tell colleges about who I want to become and how I hope to achieve that, and how I hope the university can help me achieve that.”
Building a college list
In addition to writing college essays, many applicants feel overwhelmed just trying to decide which schools to apply to. In Dev’s case, he utilized the vast knowledge of his advisor to explore schools he may have never considered otherwise. “My advisor definitely gave me a lot of university ideas.” This is what Dev had to say about the process of building his college list:
“He would give me a lot of suggestions. He would be like, ‘Hey Dev, here’s these colleges. Look into them, tell me if you like them, tell me if you don’t like them.’ So he would add them to my college list… Every single time I would remove a college from my list, I would always have to explain why I would remove it. And this did help me better understand why I want to go to some colleges and why I don’t want to go to others… And the reasons why you don’t apply somewhere will help you understand why you want to apply to other places.”
The process of adding and removing schools can be stressful, and it can be difficult to trust your instincts. But, by trusting the process, Dev was able to hone in on exactly what he wanted in a college. He said, “It was really helpful because it made me realize that I want a good pre-med culture, I want good hospital-related extracurriculars, I want a cool environmental science program…and that helped me narrow it down.”
In the end, Dev’s advisor really pushed him to consider his interests and desires. The final result? A college list best suited to Dev’s preferences and needs.
Finding summer internships
Earlier, we talked a little bit about Dev’s extracurriculars. In particularly, we touched on how excited he is to be continuing his internship at a Mount Sinai lab. As a prospective student, it’s important to remember that what you do outside of the classroom is just as important as your academics. Dev shared with us how CollegeAdvisor helped him land his summer research internship.
“I think my CollegeAdvisor pushed me to cold email a bunch of Mount Sinai professors so that I could eventually land this position at the lab.”
Beyond filling out college applications, CollegeAdvisor helped Dev explore and create a valuable opportunity for himself. In particular, Dev’s advisor helped him push beyond any feelings of doubt. Dev explains, “In all honesty, I didn’t have a lot on my CV to prove that I would be a good addition to any lab. So I had to email I think 40 people. And my CollegeAdvisor, he really told me, ‘Not everyone’s going to respond to you. Just send out as many emails as you can. One person hopefully will.’”
It’s wonderful to hear about our students feeling empowered to advocate for themselves. And, this is just one of the many learning experiences Dev got to have through his advising process.
Growing through the college application process
As students begin working on their applications, they may be surprised just how much they learn in the process. However, Dev proves to us how important it is to persevere. And just how much you can learn along the way.
In the essay writing process, Dev shared with us his frustrations, and how we successfully worked through them. Referring to essay writing, he said, “It just felt pointless, almost because I did all that work just to get something that went nowhere…But if you think about it, it didn’t go nowhere because I did develop the skill of writing essays, and I could write better and better essays.”
Going even deeper, the intense self-reflection required to write strong college essays helped Dev learn more about himself. Dev says, “I think the college process has really made me more conscious about who I am as a person, like what I want to do and my personal narrative. Because there’s definitely a lot of self reflection, and it made me realize a lot more about those experiences that have started to shape me into who I am.”
Devavrat’s admissions results and the road ahead
Thanks to strong planning, a great support team, and his own unwavering dedication, Dev had no problem when it came down to meeting his application deadlines. So, by the time admissions decisions came out, Dev had plenty of great options to consider. Dev recalls, “I was deciding between… UCLA, UC Berkeley, WashU, and University of Richmond.”
As he was deciding, he made sure to really imagine what four years at these colleges would be like. He told us, “I toured all the schools, and I looked at a lot of students’ experiences.” College visits are crucial when it comes to choosing your school. And, thanks to all that work figuring out what he was looking for in a college, he made sure his final decision aligned with his values, goals, and interests.
In the end, one school stood out: Washington University in St. Louis. Dev says, “I found that WashU had the most collaborative nature out of all the schools. And it had a really close hospital too… I really liked that it had good research opportunities [and] class sizes were relatively small compared to big universities.”
What will Devavrat major in?
WashU’s foundational PreHealth program allows students to major in any subject. So, Dev will have the opportunity to further explore his interest in both science and math.
“Environmental science might be a major or a minor for me. It depends on how much I love those courses,” Dev said. “Because there’s a lot of interesting courses like zoology or ecology, which I would always love to learn about… I might also further my passion in math, because I do really like math because of the problem-solving nature of it.”
So, Dev’s still deciding on his exact major, but he chose a great school. One with plenty of options that will get him closer to reaching his ultimate goal of becoming a doctor. With a bright future ahead, we asked Dev to look back and reflect on his application process.
Devavrat’s advice to future applicants
When we asked Dev what his advice to future applicants would be, he said, “It’s best to start early.” He recommends that students save plenty of time to brainstorm and write their college essays. Dev also recommends to start thinking about potential colleges even earlier.
“If you are really interested in a couple colleges…see if you can find a way to tour the campus… Just start brainstorming a massive list of colleges you might want to go to. And you could slowly start cutting it down over the years. Because your opinions will definitely change about colleges… So you want to have that kind of journey earlier so that you could at least find schools where you’re like, yes, I’ve liked the school for a very long time.”
As an experienced college applicant, he also gave this realistic piece of advice: “Don’t have a dream school… I think having a collection of schools you would like to go to is best… Because sometimes college applications can be really random.”
Why CollegeAdvisor?
Whether you’ve already begun working on your college applications or you’re just starting to explore colleges, CollegeAdvisor can help you navigate the process with confidence. For many students like Devavrat, working with our admissions experts really makes all the difference when it comes down to building the strongest application possible.
For Dev, he really saw the difference in his college essays. He said, “Having dedicated college advisors is really helpful because sure, I can give it to a friend or my family to review…but they will struggle with knowing what colleges want to see out of your essays or what you should focus on… The advice and all that review work that I did with my CollegeAdvisor was very helpful and made my essays really strong.”
Beyond simply helping students edit their essays, our advisors also care about helping our students discover their own personal strengths. Dev agrees saying, “My CollegeAdvisor, he really helped with that, because he guided me and he got all of this self-reflection out of me. And that led me to think about what my identity means to me and what that then means for the person I want to become in the future.” He continues to be grateful to Abu and Mary for helping him reach his full potential.
We can’t wait to see what Dev will do next!
This article was based on an interview with Devavrat Tarwala and written by Stefanie Tedards. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.