AO Advice: What Makes a Strong College Application

Webinar Transcription

2024-06-24 – AO Advice: What Makes a Strong College Application

Anesha: Hi, everyone, and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. I’m a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor, and I will be your moderator today. Today’s session is, “AO advice, Admissions Officer Advice on What Makes a Strong College Application.” Before we get started, just to orient everyone with the webinar timing, we will make a, we will start with a presentation and then answer your questions through a live Q& A.

On the sidebar, you can download our slides under the handouts tab, and you can start submitting your questions whenever you get ready under the Q& A tab. Now, let’s meet our panelist, Stacey. Hey, Stacey, how are you doing?

Stacey: Good, thanks, Anesha. I’m Stacey Tuttle. I am a former admissions officer for the Yale University School of Public Health.

That’s where I began all of my admissions experience. experience. I’m still working there today in their student affairs department. I also went to Yale University for my undergrad career. And so I have a lot of, um, insight into what it’s like to apply and then also be at the university. Um, and I’m excited to talk to you about what makes a strong college application.

And there’s a lot of different pieces to that and we’ll be covering them all. Today, or, you know, afternoon, wherever you are.

Anesha: Um, yes. All right. Well, before we get started, we’ll do a quick little full. Um, so let us know what grade level you are in. If you are a parent or a teacher, we welcome you not to select a specific grade.

You can go ahead and select either. We’d like to know that you folks are in the room as we’re waiting for results to come in. Stacy. I’ll ask you and I know you’ll get into this a little bit, but what is the most important piece of the application?

Stacey: Yeah, so I’ll get, I will get into this in a little bit more detail.

This is a very hard question to answer because the truth is all of the parts are important, right? Uh, for most admissions review processes. I will say that for some institutions, the academics may, we might, they might be placing heavier emphasis on the academic ability of the student before they move on to the review of the other components.

And so you don’t want to sleep on the academic pieces, but academics are not enough. And Anesha, I know I’ve talked to you about this from even this past season. I’ve had students with perfect test scores not get into their top schools. Um, and so there are a lot of factors that go into the application and a lot of pieces that the admissions officers need to consider, especially these top tier, uh, You know, top 20, um, Ivy League schools where they have a high volume of competitive applicants.

It’s not enough to have a perfect GPA and a perfect test score. You really do need to articulate who you are, what you want to study, what you hope to do on how that fits into the school that you’re applying to. So those essays become extremely important. The letters recommendation. I can’t tell you how many applications I’ve read where It comes down to the letters of recommendation.

Um, so it really is all of the pieces. If I had to pick one that I think is absolutely, you know, top of the food chain and the application review process, I would say it’s the personal statement.

Anesha: Okay. All right. Well, we have a lot of personal statement. I say a few webinars for folks who hear that and feel concerned and will continue to have some throughout the summer and into the fall as well.

But thanks to that initial intro, Stacey, I’ll just go ahead and let you know that we have the majority of rising 12th graders with us. So about 63%. So a lot of folks eager to think about how to structure those applications, uh, 4%, a sole 10th grader. Welcome. Thank you for being ambitious and on top of things.

And then the remaining is 20% 26 percent 11th grade and then 7 percent to parents or teachers in space. So majority of our audience right now are rising 12th graders. All right, I will stop talking. I’ll hand it over to you and I’ll be back a little bit later for the Q and a

Stacey: amazing. Thank you. Yeah, it’s never too early to get insight into the college application process for those of you who are earlier on in your high school career.

For those of you who are rising seniors. Welcome, welcome. This is exactly where you need to be. So what components make up the college application? You probably are most familiar and have heard most frequently about the Common Application. This is a centralized application service where you can apply to many schools using one application system.

And so that centralizes all the information that you need to be submitting to those schools. The coalition app is very similar, but it is a little bit more limited in the sense that not as many schools are in the coalition app. Um, it does tend to lean toward institutions that give generous financial aid or have, um, very good, uh, financially packages for students where students are not coming out with a lot of debt.

Um, and in general, the coalition app, is meant to Cater to those of underrepresented groups, um, when it comes to the college application process. So the coalition app is also something that you will see in your application process. You will need to decide which one you’re gonna use depending on your needs and the schools that you’re applying to.

So common app versus coalition app. And even outside of that, there are schools who. That don’t have, um, their applications available in these systems. Um, they have their own separate application process for whatever reason. A couple of examples that come to mind are MIT. MIT has their own application process and the University of California.

system. They have a whole application procedure for all of the state schools and the University of California and the UCs. So you’ll need to be familiar with the different application systems out there to ensure that you are applying to all of the schools using the appropriate steps. Most schools are going to be in the Common or Coalition app.

Um, and so that’s your main point of starting. Outside of that, you might have one or two extraneous application systems that you’re going to need to manage as well, depending on what your college list looks like. So, within the college application, whatever system you’re using, most schools are going to be asking for very similar information.

The first set of information when you start any application will be your personal and demographic information. So your name, you know, your age, where you’re from, all those demographic details that they ask of you. That will be your first step in filling out the application. A lot of students tend to not start that right away or maybe kind of wave it off because it seems very straightforward, simple.

It does take time though. So I definitely encourage you to sit down with your family and start that process as soon as the application opens so that it’s done. And you can move forward with the other pieces. The next section that you’ll typically see is an academic information section or an area to upload transcripts.

This allows you to enter in all of the courses that you’ve taken in high school, especially your recent coursework, and the grades associated with those courses. So that information is really helpful for admissions officers to understand the academic rigor of the courses that you’ve taken. What your high school has to offer, what the grading system of your high school is like, um, what your GPA was like, do you have a class rank, all of those pieces come through that transcript or academic information section, in addition to how you excelled.

In those courses, right? They’re going to see your grades. So that’s really an important component of the application process. And it’s also important to enter that accurately. And so make sure you’re really taking the time sitting down and reporting that appropriately because you can make mistakes and you don’t want to.

Me misrepresenting your academic information, right standardized test scores. Um, not every school requires a standardized test score to be reported as part of your application process. More and more schools are returning to. a required test score component. And so it’s very important moving into this application season that you familiarize yourself with the policies of each of these schools.

There’s still time to take standardized tests if you haven’t taken one already. I have seniors who continue to take the test into late summer and fall if they feel like they need to retake it or they haven’t taken it yet. And these are test scores like the SAT or the ACT. The another section that’s really important is the list of activities or resume section.

Some schools will ask you to upload a copy of your resume like in the common app. Many application systems or colleges will not require a copy of your resume. Rather, they’ll have you enter your activities one by one in the format they wish to view that in. And this is often challenging for students. Um, it’s an activity that I tend to do with my seniors very early.

Um, at this stage in the summer, especially, I try to sit down with them and, Talk about which activities they’re going to report on the common app. You only have room for so many. Talk about what the order of importance of their activities are. So you do have to rank them in order of importance. Um, and talk about what they want to include about those activities because there’s a limited character count associated with each of those entries.

So very challenging because you don’t have a lot of space to talk about them. And you want to be very thoughtful about what you do say. about them. Similarly, there’s typically an honors and awards section where you again have a limited number of spaces to enter honors and awards that you might have received during high school and describe those.

Letters of recommendation, I mentioned earlier, very important part of the application process. Every college will have a different set of requirements when it comes to letters of recommendation. Um, some rely on kind of a standard two letter requirement, one from a science teacher, one from a humanities teacher, whatever that looks like.

It’s important that you follow the guidance for each institution as to what those letters should look like. Um, a common question I get is, can I submit more letters than what the school is asking of me? I caution against this. Um, adding information to your application Is only recommended when it adds value to your application.

If it tells the admissions officer something more that they couldn’t otherwise have gotten in other letters or other parts of your application. So, if it’s a really important letter to you that you absolutely must submit and the, the application or the college allows for an extra letter. Okay, talk that through with maybe a guidance counselor or somebody that you trust, um, but otherwise I would say stick to the required letters and the number of required letters that you, you need to submit.

And then finally the essays. I talked about this as being likely the most important requirement as part of the application process. That includes the personal statement. So this is the essay that every institution, if you use the Common App, we’ll see. Not every institution will see what we call supplemental questions associated with the other schools, right?

So the personal statement is the the one essay that every institution will read. The supplemental questions are unique to each of the schools. So let’s just say Yale has a set of supplemental questions. Harvard doesn’t see those. Those are supplemental questions unique to Yale, but Yale and Harvard both see your personal statement.

And so the personal statement is really important in terms of highlighting the parts of yourself that you really want admissions officers to understand. And then a few other components of the application process that are worth mentioning are interviews, Not every institution is going to have an interview process, and even if they do have an interview process, they might not invite you on an interview.

Interviews are meant to supplement the application materials you’ve submitted to give them more information about you and your fit with the school. It’s one part of the application review process. It doesn’t necessarily make or break an application, but it could add value to your application. And then financial documentation will be required of you for financial aid consideration.

For What does the application timeline typically look like? So I know for a lot of you, you’re at the end of junior year, right? You’re moving on to senior year. Junior year is typically when I recommend my students determine their college list. This is very important to talk about early on for a number of reasons.

One being. The college application process takes time. Um, and so you don’t have all the time in the world to apply to all of these colleges once the applications open. So it’s very important that you create a list for yourself that you’re confident about. You researched, you understand. And it’s okay to waver a little bit.

You know, you can add one, remove one here if you need to as you go into the application season, but to have a predetermined list that keeps you organized is going to be really helpful for you in the long run. And they also cost. money, right? Each of these applications will have a fee associated with them.

And so you do want to make sure you are spending all of your time and resources in applying to the schools that are most important to you. And as you just start determining your college list, I typically recommend creating a spreadsheet. And so you have your colleges, what their deadlines are that you’re hoping to meet, Um, and the type of deadline you’re trying to meet.

So let me explain what I mean by this. Every institution will have a different set of deadlines that you can consider when applying. Some are earlier, some are later. The first type of application deadline you might see is early action. So early action means that you’re applying to the institution by an early date.

And by applying early, you actually find out your decision earlier. This is really great for students who are very prepared. They know which colleges they want to apply to. They’ve been preparing for their application components so they can meet that early deadline. Importantly, the early action deadline is associated with a slight increase in admissions chances, right?

So that is an additional benefit. I want to say slight. Um, I want to emphasize slight because it’s not huge, but it is there. Um, another type of early deadline that you’ll see is early decision. Early decision is different from early action because while it’s also early, um, it’s an early, uh, deadline, the difference is that if you apply early decision versus early action, early decision basically means I, if I get into your school, I am coming no matter what.

And therefore, you can only apply to one school early decision. You can’t apply to five or six or seven schools early decision because you can’t attend all of them if you get into all of them. You can only attend one. And so your early decision school is singular. You can’t apply to multiple schools early decision.

Um, early action. Meanwhile, you can apply to multiple schools early action because it’s not what we call non binding. You do not have to attend the institution or if you get into an institution when you apply early action to other types of deadlines that you’ll see prominently would be rolling admissions deadlines.

So, rolling admissions deadlines are very flexible. They become available very early in the application season. You can submit your application very early and find out decisions very early, or you can submit much later in the season and find out later in the season. The caveat being. If you do apply later in the season.

They do have less spots available. They do have less scholarships, financial aid available. And so I tend to encourage my students to apply earlier rather than later for rolling decision schools when possible. And then regular decision is exactly what it sounds like. The regular decision deadline, which is typically a little later in the season.

The application season later than the early decision, early action deadlines, and you find out your decision later in the season as well. So let’s talk through that timeline really quickly. Senior year, August is typically when many applications open, including the Common App. August 1st tends to be the date.

Fall so October through November ish are when many of those early decision early action deadlines are late fall early spring. Typically, December through February is when the majority of the regular decision deadlines happen. I have a note here. about early decision two. So early decision two is something that’s become more popular over the last couple of years.

This is very similar to early decision, where if you apply to the school and you get into the school, it’s binding. You’re saying, I want to go to your school if I get in, I’m coming. But early decision two deadlines are later. Then early decision deadlines. Um, they’re basically regular decision deadlines.

And so if you find out you don’t get into your first early decision school, you can leverage an early decision to deadline in a lot of those cases to apply to a different school. Um, and so there’s a lot of strategy there, but in case you see early decision to, it’s this, it’s very similar scenario to early decision, regular early decision.

But the deadlines later, it’s not as early. In the in the season, April is usually when rolling admissions closes. And then November to April is when colleges typically release their decisions. So if you applied early, early decision, early action, you’ll likely find out your decision in somewhere between November and January or February.

If you applied regular decision, you’re likely going to find out closer to February to March. And then May is typically the deposit deadline to matriculate at your top choice school. So this is what Anesha was asking earlier. What parts of the application carry the most weight? And the truth is all components are important.

Most institutions will observe a holistic application review process, meaning that they’re reviewing the application as a whole before making their decision. Now, every institution has different priorities and needs, and those even change from cycle to cycle and that that is not within your control. So, for example, they might have.

Um, Quota that they’re trying to meet in terms of the number of seats in a particular department or program. They might be looking to fill demographic data in certain regions of the country. They might be trying to understand how to balance their international versus domestic student populations. That is not something you can control.

What you can control is your application. And so to that end, there are two things that are is really, they’re really important for you to do. The burden is on you as the applicant to take care of that. These steps in order to position yourself the best you possibly can in the application process, um, so that it’s clear you’re a good fit with the schools you’re applying to, despite all of the priorities they have, they want it, they want to admit you, or if they have, you know, a demographic they need to fill, or a, um, a department they’re trying to fill spots in, without a doubt, you need to be one of those students.

So the first step you need to take is make sure you have a clearly articulated sense of self, your identity, your, the narrative you’re putting forward, the story you’re putting forward about yourself. Who are you? Like, where have you come from? What have you learned? How have you grown? What, who are you now?

Because of those things that you’ve learned and done and grown from, and Because of who you are now, what are you interested in? What are you doing? What are your values? And ultimately, what are your goals for the future? Academically? Professionally? Personally? How do those puzzles fit together? You need to have that self reflection in order to appropriately translate the most important parts of yourself And what you want to convey to admissions officers via your application.

Right. The second step you need to take is be an educated applicant, do your research this by what I mean by this is, you should in all the colleges that you’re researching understand, are they actually going to meet your needs? Are they going to actually. fit your values, fit your, or meet the resources that you need to achieve your goals.

Are those schools appropriate choices given who you are? And then are you going to be a good fit for that school as well? You know, this, this goes in both directions. The school needs to be a good fit for you and you need to be a good fit for the school. To that end, there’s also additional quantitative components that you can look at online, including their admissions rates, So if these are very competitive schools, you need to be aware of that.

You need to understand that if you’re applying to very competitive schools with very low admissions rates, you want to make sure you’re balancing that with other schools that are also good fits for you, but perhaps are less competitive in order to ensure that you are going to have a number of possibilities of admission moving into the application season.

And so you want these reach schools is what they called them, what we call them, to be balanced with match and likely schools. So these schools that are Almost, you know, a one to one fit where your background is really the right fit for the school, their admissions rates aren’t really low, but they’re also not really high, or likely schools where perhaps they do have much higher admissions rates, but across the board, you’re doing your research to understand that you have a balance of schools across different types of admissions rates and competitiveness, and they also have the things that you need as a student, as a future student of those institutions.

And then also look to their average admission statistics. So what are the GPAs and the test scores of their most recent admitted class? Are you falling around those average statistics? If you’re falling lower, maybe you’re not going to be as competitive of an applicant. Maybe that’s not a great fit for you, given the educational background that you have.

Um, if you’re falling higher. You know, maybe that school is a school that you can get into, um, and maybe you can reach even higher, good schools that even have, um, more competitive admissions statistics. So definitely do your research in the process. I talked a little bit about the holistic review. We’re reviewing the application as a whole.

Typically in that process, the academics are reviewed first because the institution needs to understand, are you going to be able to succeed academically when you get to my campus? Are you going to be able to excel given the resources, the classes that you’re taking, the faculty we have available? So the academics are reviewed in order to assess fit.

Sometimes if those admissions statistics are not aligning with your academic background, you, that might be the, the last step in the review process for a lot of students. There is sometimes a very competitive academic review for some of these institutions, but for a lot of institutions, they’re reviewing the academics and then moving on to the other components.

So the academics is just the first step. Um, for me, I typically read through the activities, and then the essays, and then the letters of recommendation. That was just my preference, my order of preference, but all of those pieces are read, all of those pieces are considered. Keep in mind how many applications an admissions officer does have to review in a given season.

They do not have a lot of time to digest this information, and so it’s very important that you are creating a clear, concise picture, and making those puzzle pieces fit. through the narrative that you’re conveying to the admissions officer. Don’t make the story hard to understand. Try to avoid being too verbose.

Try to avoid making it so that the admissions officer really has to read between the lines and try to understand what you’re saying. Really focus on clarity and, and conciseness. Um, in order to ensure that you are making the read enjoyable for the admissions officer, and therefore they do want to advocate for you and admit you to their institution.

So how can students develop an application that showcases their strengths and unique experiences? You’re going to hear this a lot, and it might sound a little corny or cliche, Focus on the narrative that truly conveys you as a person, right? Don’t look right, don’t look left, and ask, What’s this person doing?

What’s that person doing? What should I be doing? Because this is what’s expected of me. No, focus on those things that actually make you, you self reflect on what’s important to you, what you’ve done, what you hope to do, really channel, um, the information that you want to convey to admissions officers about yourself and not what you think they want to see, right?

Your uniqueness is what’s going to be. What’s going to be what gets you into the institution? Um, they don’t want cookie cutter. You know, it’s important that if you’re a pre med student, you might be pursuing research or trying to understand shadowing physicians and the type of work that you might be doing.

It’s important if you’re a humanities, potential humanities major that, um, you know, you’re really exploring your literature classes and pursuing, you know, higher level coursework in that area. But there are other parts of you. You don’t have to be a one dimensional applicant to these institutions. You can convey all parts of yourself and have that be a very successful application.

And ultimately, an exercise I typically Um, have with my students is asking yourself continually throughout your application. So what, what are you trying to say? What are you, what is your story? What are you trying to convey to admissions officers? If you continue to ask yourself that throughout your application, your application will be stronger for it.

And in terms of the application components, a few takeaways. Start planning your candidate profile as early as possible. So those of you in the room who are early on in your high school career, it’s never too early to start thinking about how you want to shape that profile, um, and really channel your energies to convey the right information to admissions officers later.

Don’t just collect extracurriculars, really be purposeful and ask yourself, am I enjoying this? Is this something I really want to be spending my time doing? Is this helping me to advance my academic or career goals in any way? Or is it just helping me to align my passions with my extracurriculars?

Choose letters recommendation that will write you meaningful and strong letters. So this is a mistake I see students make a lot. They might feel like, you know, I absolutely have to ask my biology teacher for a letter, um, because I’m looking to go into STEM, but they have a much better relationship with their English teacher.

It’s okay to ask your English teacher, um, and in fact, it might be beneficial because they’ll write you a much better letter. They know you better. Write essays about your passions. We’ll talk about essays more in a little bit. And balance your academics to ensure you can perform well while also pursuing that rigorous coursework.

I will be the first to tell you, I did not take all of the AP courses available to me because I knew I could only manage My extracurriculars and social life. My academics. Well, if I had a balanced schedule and so you don’t have to take all the APS in the world, it’s great if you can, but you do not have to feel that pressure.

Make sure that you’re balancing your schedule so that you can actually excel and get good grades in the courses that you’re taking, because if you take all these rigorous courses, and then you don’t. Get the right academic training out of that because you just didn’t have time to absorb that material or you’re, you know, obtaining grades that really don’t represent your ability.

That’s not going to be to your benefit. Okay, Anesha. All

Anesha: right, we’re gonna do another quick poll to give Stacey a bit of a break. So let us know where you are in the application process, if you’re just getting started, if you’re researching, working on your essays, or almost done. Um, Stacey and I were talking earlier about how we have a couple of students who are very nearly, uh, done with the process.

So, um, let us know where you are. As we’re waiting, one question In the chat that I want to ask for you ask you Stacey was someone asked where can we find information about average admission statistics and admissions rates.

Stacey: That’s a great question. So if you’re a CollegeAdvisor, we actually have a great, um, database that you could explore.

But most of this information is readily available online. You can Google it, look at admissions websites. They usually publish statistics from their average admitted classes. You can see all sorts of data. In addition to, you know, average GPA, average test scores, you might see information on, um, you know, where.

They’ve made a class is coming from in terms of different countries, different states. That might be really helpful for you to in your research. Not every institution will readily publish this information, but a lot of them do.

Anesha: Yeah, I put in their college board niche. Um, I also suggested iPads, but that is where I think the data heads out there really want to look through a database.

Um, but there’s a lot of information out there, um, in a lot of different sources. Just make sure that it is a reputable source so that, you know, you’re getting valid information. Um, all right. Okay. Uh, we’ll go ahead and close our poll.

Doesn’t look like folks. Oh, yeah. Okay. I was like, it didn’t look like folks are responding. All right. Um, all right. So, just to close this out for this 1, so about 9 percent have not started totally fine. I hope the 10th graders in there is okay. If you have not started 45 percent are researching schools.

Good place to be for a lot of folks. 34 percent are working on essays. 13 percent are getting application materials together. I think everyone’s in a good place, given the age ranges and the grade levels that we have. No one is almost done. Totally makes sense in June of the application year, but that’s where folks are and we’ll be back a little bit later for additional questions, but I’ll let you go ahead and wrap it up, Stacey.

Stacey: Thanks, Anesha. Alright, so we’re going to move through these next slides quickly in the interest of the Q& A. Um, so let’s talk about the personal statement I mentioned earlier in the supplemental essays, how you can stand out in those. So I typically summarize. My advice in these tips, do answer the prompt.

If you are writing your essay and you’re finding yourself straying away from answering the prompt appropriately, you need to go back and revisit the prompt. You need to keep asking yourself, am I answering this appropriately? If you don’t answer the prompt, it’s going to be a little bit of a red flag in terms of focus, maturity.

You want to make sure you’re answering the prompt. Paint a picture. Be descriptive. Put me in your shoes. You know, don’t just say, I won this research competition. Okay, well, tell me more. What was that experience like? Why are you telling me about this to begin with? Be concise, clear, and specific. Every sentence should advance your narrative.

If you are right, you don’t have a lot of words to write these essays. So if you’re writing a sentence and it doesn’t add any value, or maybe it’s redundant with a prior sentence, or it’s not really helping move your narrative along, delete it. It’s really hard to, um, let go of writing sometimes, but it’s really important that you are concise and that you’re being very clear in your writing.

Reflect and discuss your personal growth. This is really, really important. Continue to ask yourself the question, so what? What does this matter? Why does this matter? Again, I won the research competition. Okay, so what? What did that mean for you? What did you learn? Why did that matter to you in the grand scheme of what you hope to do?

Your values? Did you learn anything about yourself or other people or what, you know, you hope to align with as, as a mission, um, in life? Tell us more. It’s not enough just to say you really need to dive deeper and outline that journey. I think I find it helpful to think past, present, and future. Again, wherever you come from, who are you now, and where you hope to go.

Be authentic and true to your passions. Can’t not emphasize that enough. Your application will be stronger because of it. And proofread, proofread, proofread. You need to be checking that. You should not write your essay and the same night submit it. That is not going to be a recipe for an admissions decision that will be positive.

Don’t regurgitate information from your activities section. We already have that information. You don’t need to tell us again that you did these activities. Again, dive deeper. And if you’re going to dive deeper, do it in a significant way. Maybe focus on one or two activities and what those experiences were like.

Reflect on how you’ve grown, how you’ve been impacted, or how you’ve impacted other people, or places, or things. But in the circumstances where you’re asked to talk about another person, or even when you’re not prompted to talk about another person, we get that, you know, you might have people in your life who have been very influential in your path forward.

Um, I know for a lot of people that might be a family member. But we’re not here to read about Why grandma should get into Yale. We want to know why you should get into Yale. So really think about if you’re talking about other people, why, what is that telling admissions officers about you? Why are you telling that story?

Definitely, um, submit your application with a review from a trusted source outside of just yourself. Um, so submitting without that review is not a recipe for a positive admissions. decision. So talk to your advisors, your counselors, your parents. You don’t want to ask for too many second pairs of eyes, but it’s helpful to have one or two at the very least.

And try to avoid naming a specific school at any point, just because there’s room for error when you’re submitting applications where you might accidentally submit an essay talking about one school when you’re actually applying to another. How can you demonstrate your personal brand through your extracurricular activities?

So I can’t emphasize this enough. Pick activities for which you are truly passionate. Really think about what drives you. What are those things that you’re good at? What are those things that you’re genuinely interested in? What are your personal values? And what are those academic and career goals that you have?

Align your activities with those key components of yourself and you will create a stronger narrative for you. And remember, not everything has to be 100 percent related to your career or major choice. You can pursue activities that are beyond that. What you’re just hoping to do next for your career or in academia, because those have relevance and value to they help you grow and be a better person or more mature individual, more focused individual, they’ll help impart qualities or characteristics in you that could be helpful in your future undergraduate and professional career.

Um, I mentioned earlier, try to avoid. fitting into the typical narrative of what you think you should be doing. Your story is unique to you. Follow your passions, and you will be better off for it. And as much as you feel comfortable doing so, be vulnerable. It’s helpful for admissions officers to see the full story, even those personal details.

You don’t want to be too personal, right? You don’t want to include extraneous, extraneous detail that, again, isn’t helping advance the story. Your, your narrative and what’s important to tell admissions officers, but if you have components about yourself that you feel comfortable sharing that are important to admissions officers understanding your journey, you can certainly share those and be reflective.

You really do need to talk about how you’ve changed, how you’ve grown, how you’ve been impacted in terms of choosing recommendations. Build those relationships early and continue to maintain those people who know you well will write more meaningful and authentic letters And when it comes time to ask Ask them in person.

I typically recommend end of junior year. Seniors in the room, if you haven’t talked to your recommenders yet, you should do so now. Then you tip, I typically advise following up with an email with your resume, maybe a copy of your personal statement if you haven’t. Um, and just outline in bullet points what you were hoping that they would talk about in the letter, particularly as it released today.

relates to your relationship with them. Again, avoid asking individuals who actually don’t know you well just because you feel like you should, and follow those instructions that are set forth by the institutions. Mistakes to avoid. Stay organized. Be aware of those deadlines that I talked about earlier.

Make a spreadsheet and stay on top of those financial aid and scholarship requirements alongside your application requirements if an institution has them. Try to avoid repeating your career or major of interest to exhaustion. It creates really for this one dimensional profile of you and that’s Absolutely not the case for most individuals.

You will have many parts of yourself and you’ll want to think about how you want to convey those parts of yourself to admissions officers. Do you have a creative side? Are you a leader? Um, you really love service. Think about all of those parts of yourself that you hope to talk about. And then try to avoid creating a college list that’s exclusively reach schools.

So we talked about this. You want to balance lists. You don’t just want to apply to schools because of the name or prestige. Those things, those schools have a lot of resources and they’re great institutions, but really think about your own priorities and put those priorities at the forefront of your college research and ultimately your college selection.

Best practices, stay organized and start early. Be clear, concise, and consistent. Again, admissions officers do not have a lot of time to review applications, so you want to make sure that you’re making that read as, as easy as possible for them. Um, and you’re, you’re conveying that narrative as clearly as possible.

Focus on presenting yourself honestly. I can’t tell you how many students um, feel like they need to embellish. So don’t do that. There’s, there’s no benefit in that. It’s not going to come across authentically, um, and it creates a lot of room for error. But don’t be afraid to talk about yourself either.

It’s not bragging. You can talk about your accomplishments. You can talk about what you love to do, um, as long as it is true and authentic. Focus on what ignites your passions. Again, your application will be stronger because of it. Do that research. Understand what’s important to you in a school and make sure that aligns with the, what the school is offering, right?

Take those tours. Speak with current students, alumni, and admissions officers to get the information you need. And then finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Application strategy wise, essay writing wise, junior activity list, Get a 2nd pair of eyes over to you and Asia.

Anesha: Sure. All right. So we’re going to move over into our Q and a, uh, we hope that you found this initial round of information helpful the way that our Q and a will work is that I, you can go ahead and drop your questions in the Q and a chat.

I will paste them into the public chat so that everyone can see them and read them aloud in order to give Stacey an opportunity to give an answer. If you’re having any challenges with so many questions, just know that you might have to log out and log back in and make sure you’re logging in. Thank you.

through the link you received in your email and not from the webinar landing page. All right, our first question for you, Stacey, I answered it a little bit, but I thought you’d give context to it. Um, so someone asked, can I get recommendation letters from any teacher at school or do certain letters have more weight, say from a science or math teacher versus an English and art teacher?

Stacey: Yeah, so there will be different requirements of each school. Some institutions will ask specifically for a letter of recommendation from a social science teacher versus a science teacher versus a math teacher. If you are applying for a particular major, it is helpful to have an instructor. Related to that major, write you a recommendation if it’s a strong one, right?

And if they can speak to your abilities in that coursework that you took with them, if they can speak to your abilities in any extracurricular work they’ve done with you, um, But you don’t have to necessarily have letters recommendation that directly live online with your major. It is helpful. So again, those who are early in their career, think about fostering those relationships early.

Um, and eventually you will need to, you know, fulfill those letter recommendation requirements for those institutions. And so having a breadth of of options, of relationships with other instructors, maybe extracurricular coaches, mentors, will be helpful when it comes time to fulfill those requirements.

Anesha: I think this next question is a question a lot of people have on their minds.

Is there still a possibility of getting into a top 25 school even though I am not, I don’t have anything insane, i. e. a non profit or published a paper?

Stacey: That is a great question. I think a lot of students sell themselves short. You, and they don’t necessarily think of some of the things they do as great when they are great.

Um, and you should really think about, you know, what are those components of yourself that make you, you, because those are the great things that you’ll be conveying in your application. You don’t have to have a nonprofit created in high school. You don’t even have to have research experience in high school.

I didn’t. Um, you just have to make sure that you’re doing those things that you really, really love to do and committing yourself to yourself to those because that’s what they’re what institutions are looking for. They’re looking for students who are going to be 100 percent in. They want students who are going to be involved on campus.

They want both inside and outside the classroom. And so. Conveying that is what’s going to be more important. And then also aligning yourself, right? You want, you don’t want to paint this picture of yourself as an artist and nowhere did you talk about STEM and then you choose zoology as your major. That doesn’t add up.

You need to make sure that it’s very clear what kind of trajectory you’re planning for and why you’re choosing that institution. Um, and again, You know, like some students think that having a job is an important job is a great thing on your application. Um, it shows, you know, maturity and discipline. Um, some students think that it’s not important to convey that they take care of maybe a family member.

That’s something you can include on your application to there’s a lot of parts of who you are that will be important for admissions officers to consider and it doesn’t have to be what you think might be this giant endeavor. All right. At a very early age, you’re still, you know, learning yourself and developing your interest and that’s okay.

Anesha: All right. Um, someone asked, um, I want to inquire about college admissions for students coming from highly select, highly selected school programs with the majority of AP classes. Do colleges compare these students to other students from the same selective program, potentially affecting their opportunities?

Stacey: So every institution is a little bit different in this regard, but for the most part, um, yes, institutions are looking at a student within the context of the school that they’re applying from. And they’re looking at the student in the context of not only the school they’re applying from, but also the region you’re applying from, potentially the state you’re applying from.

And so there are admissions officers dedicated to your region, to your school, and they will be considering your application and reading applications alongside others from your institution, your programs, your schools. Um, what’s most important again, is not looking left and right and saying, you know, what are they doing?

What did they do? How am I going to be able to compete with that? You might, they might have a perfect test score and maybe you have a great test score, but maybe it wasn’t, you know, a 36 ACT and you get into the institution and they don’t because you wrote a better essay. You have better letter, better letters of recommendation.

You are more focused. You articulated your interests more clearly and aligned better with the institution in question and the needs that they have. Um, and so. It’s more important that you’re thinking about, okay, how do I convey my fit with this institution and not comparing yourself left and right to the people in your program?

But to answer your question, yes, they are reading those applications alongside each other.

Anesha: Yeah, I love what you said of just like not comparing yourself and then also remembering how what makes you stand out like your specific story, your individual life experience, even if you are next to the person who’s taken all the same exact classes as you have.

Yeah. You might have different interests. You might have approached the classes differently. So I think being able to find those opportunities to tell your story as well. Um, just wanted to add that. But before I let you get back, we’re going to do a quick little PSA. So CollegeAdvisors team of over 300 former admissions officers and admissions experts are ready to help you and your family navigate the college business process through one on one advising sessions.

We’ve already helped over 6,000 clients in their college admissions journey. In our 2021 through 2023 data, we found that CollegeAdvisor students were 2 to Four times more likely to get into colleges like Stanford Vanderbilt and Harvard. You can increase your odds and take the next step in your college admissions journey by setting up for a free 45 to 60 minute strategy session with an admission specialist on our team by using the QR code that is on the screen during that meeting.

You receive a preliminary assessment of your academic profile, along with some initial recommendations. By the end, you will learn about our premium packages, and we will And the premium packages that we offer, um, and get an expert perspective on your college list and your essays and much more. That is our quick little PSA.

We will leave the, um, QR code up on the screen. My next question for you, Stacey, is, um, oh, that’s interesting. What are some tips for procrastination?

Stacey: Oh, that’s a really good one. I think, number one, is engaging a mentor parent guardian with your process to ensure that you have a partner in the process that you’re not going it alone.

Um, you have somebody else holding you accountable. If you’re a procrastinator, it’s helpful to do that. Um, and if you do have that person involved in your life, sit down with them and create a timeline. Okay. Say to yourself, this is the date I’m going to have my first draft done. This is the day I’m going to have my second draft done and really hold yourself to that timeline.

Ultimately, you know, you have to get the work done. Nobody can force your pen to paper. That’s just the fact, but if you stay organized and you start that conversation early so that it doesn’t seem so overwhelming, make your college list, create the timeline, talk to somebody that you trust on your pro about your process.

And work toward those goals. You need to really treat it like it’s a class or a homework assignment to get these applications done.

Anesha: The next question for you was regarding, um, so we’ve gotten a lot of questions about recommendation letters. Um, so someone asked what characteristics or aspects should be included in the recommendation letter?

Stacey: Oh, so that’s going to be different for every person, right? Um, These are the characteristics or aspects of yourself that you would like to be conveyed to admissions officers, but sometimes they might not be things that you even thought about yourself, right? The person writing the letter might see it in you and you didn’t even see it in you.

Um, and so having those conversations with your letters of recommendation. writers to understand, okay, we have this relationship. Do you feel like you could write a letter about me? And you know, I feel like we have this great engagement over this activity or your class really helped me grow. What would you say about me?

I, I, interestingly enough, I’ve actually had, um, really great letters of recommendation from students who took classes with lower grades in them because those were the more challenging classes. And those instructors were able to talk about the students. diligence and, and growth in the course and their ability to overcome obstacles in the course.

And that made me look at the student differently. That made me feel like, okay, they can, you know, the course was hard and they didn’t get the best grade, but the teacher really spoke about their ability in the class. And so you can achieve a lot of different types of goals using your letters of recommendation.

I would, again, pick people who know you well, And can speak to parts of your personal profile that you want highlighted to an admissions officer.

Anesha: All right, um, this is we’re kind of speaking. Oh, 1 thing I want to say to that regarding letters of recommendation that in order to boost or support the letter of recommendation is perhaps even writing a letter to your recommender about what you’d like them to write about, or at least priming them about things that you appreciated.

You can remind them about a project you did really well in a presentation that stood out for you. Talk about aspects that you liked about their class and so not letting let allowing the ask to be an opportunity to also remind them of how you’ve performed and shown up in the class and not just kind of saying, hey, can you write those out of recommendation for me, but actually having a thoughtful email where you ask them and remind them again of why why you’re asking them in particular.

I just wanted to throw that in there is another. Okay, someone asked for someone pursuing non STEM slash social sciences, um, how problematic is it to have lower grades at AP Physics? So for, I think, a humanities focused person, how are their STEM APs evaluated?

Stacey: Yeah, this is a really valid question. So I think the point that the student is trying to get at is that During the admissions process, do grades not as relevant to my major matter as much?

Um, they do still matter to some degree, right? Like if you got a D or an F in a class, And you’re applying to Yale or Harvard, they’re going to look at that and wonder, can you handle the academic rigor of my camp on my campus? Right? And so it’s not unimportant that you didn’t excel as much in those courses.

Um, but for another institution, it might matter a little less because maybe they’re not concerned about how you’re performing in those courses, because in the courses that. are relevant to your major, you did really well. And maybe they’re not as concerned about that. And it also just, it depends on the grade.

It depends on the context. Maybe you didn’t get great grades in AP Calc, but you got a great SAT quant score. That is something admissions officers will consider. Maybe you didn’t get a great grade in AP Calc, but like I said, Maybe you had your AP Calc instructor write you a letter of recommendation, and they talked about your resilience in the course.

There are a lot of other things that can be considered alongside your grades. It’s not necessarily going to make or break an application, but, uh, especially if it’s not in alignment with your major, but grades are still important.

Anesha: Uh, the next question for you is, what specific things should we be highlighting in resumes?

So let’s say, and our college, and in our essays, but let’s focus on resumes first. What are specific things that you should be highlighting in resumes?

Stacey: Yeah, and so I think one of the number one mistakes I see high schoolers make is having a resume that’s longer than a page. Um, this might sound really rude, but you have not lived enough, enough life yet to have longer than a page for your resume.

And that’s how most admissions officers will review that. They will be, um, you want to avoid annoying an admissions officer, right? With too many email questions or excessive. pieces of information with your application because that doesn’t sit well either. So if you’re submitting a resume that’s too long, they’re not going to be very happy about that because they don’t have a lot of time to review your application.

So you do want to be concise about it. I would highlight really you have to sit down and assess for yourself. What are the most important things to you in your application process that you want to be highlighted? What are the things that align with your currency? They’re your career and your academic goals.

Those should be highlighted. First and foremost, because that’s the primary reason you’re applying to college. And then also think about those things that show long term commitments, leadership, things that you truly are passionate about. Those things should make your resume. And then also don’t include things that were from before high school.

There’s no reason for that. Keep it to your high school experiences.

Anesha: I think you gave some good tips regarding the essay. So I’m going to just remind folks to take go ahead and take a look at the handouts and pull and remember that you can take those slides with you if you want additional reference.

And I don’t want to spend more time on the essay, because I think you gave some time to that. But one quick question about the essay that I will ask is someone asked, Do you have a recommendation as to when the first draft of a personal statement should be done.

Stacey: Oh yeah, so this is going to be highly personal to some degree.

I do think you should have a first draft personal statement, um, at latest sometime in August, depending on where you are in, um, depending on where you hope to apply and how early you hope to apply, right? And so if you’re aiming for those early publication deadlines, you really want to Building enough time in your schedule to go through multiple drafts.

You’re never going to settle on the first draft. There’s going to be multiple drafts of a good personal statement. And that does take time. Sometimes it takes a couple of months to get to the final personal statement draft. And you, you know, don’t want to put that off too far into the start of senior year because you have other obligations.

And so I always encourage my students to really dive deep into that process in the summer. Optimally, I’d love to have a first draft in June. And that’s me being, I think, a little bit, um, more on top of things than I think the average. the average person, the average realistic individual in the application process.

Also keep in mind that essay prompts can change from year to year. So you can prepare for essays for all these schools, like supplemental essays, they might change. And so you have to be prepared to pivot if you need to. That said, with the personal statement, there’s always what I call the choose your own journey essay available.

And so even if they do change their prompts for the personal state, Statement. Typically that choose your own journey option is still an option. And so whatever you’ve written would still apply.

Anesha: My next question for you is SAT related. Does it matter how many times students take the SAT? Does it affect the college admission taking it multiple times?

So if you could talk to as well as like how our SATs presented to colleges as well.

Stacey: Great question. So I would, I would, I’ll never recommend taking it more than three times. Statistically speaking, you are not likely to get, uh, much higher of a score after the third time. And also you’re not going to, it’s not going to make a huge difference in your admissions decision if you have 10 points in one direction or the other, right?

Sometimes students are, they get like 1490, but they wanted a 1500. And so they keep taking it until they get the 1500 or they break 1500. That is not a good use of your time. In my opinion, I guess that I’ve had students get perfect test scores and not getting to their top schools. What’s more important is that you’re demonstrating competency, right?

You are getting a higher test score. You’re falling within. If you look at the school’s admission statistics, you’re falling within the average admissions. Statistical ranges for their admitted class. Um, so you’re not maybe falling below the average, but maybe you’re falling right at the average or even above the average.

That’s what you’re looking for. You don’t need to have a completely perfect score and colleges. You see. All of your test scores for the most part, you typically do have to submit all or nothing. Um, but for a lot of institutions, they are weighing your highest super score. Um, it depends on the institution.

You do have to look at their policies. Um, but most of the time, what? The super score means is they’re taking the highest of each section and then adding those together for your combined total high score across the test. So they do see them all, but then they super score it.

Anesha: Um, okay. And then the, what might be a last question, I thought this was interesting.

My child wants to use AI the writing. Um, What is your view on running your written essay through an AI tool to help with grammar, words, et cetera? What types of information? Oh, sorry. Yes. Let’s say let’s stop there. What is your view on using AI to, I guess, give feedback on an essay?

Stacey: That’s a great question.

So I would be familiar with, um, institutions policies around using AI, um, to emit any part of an essay. I don’t, I think there are some institutions that have policies that allow for AI to be used for proofreading purposes, but it’s a very fine line between, from proofreading to rewriting. And at that point, AI is typically frowned upon in the admission, the essay writing process for admissions purposes.

Um, I would never advise. starting with AI to write the essay itself, right? You should be writing your essay. Your thoughts should be coming from you and they should be authentic and true to who you are. Um, and they should not be coming from any AI tool. And honestly, when it comes to proofreading, I would advise avoiding the complication of the AI and the problematic issues that come with using AI.

use standard proofreading tools, have people review your essays, um, and you will have a good outcome as a result.

Anesha: Yeah, I think that’s good advice. I’ve been experimenting with this recently to see how AI gives advice. Like I’m just putting things in and I think you have to just be very particular about how you structure the question.

So if you ask for feedback, like what can I do to improve this? But again, Coming from like an established essay, but also, yes, to your point, go ask people, ask humans, um, But yeah, I, I, I do, I’m, I’m geeking out over the, like, the possibility of AI as a tool. But um, yes, talk to humans and get feedback. There’s a ton of people out there who can give you feedback, especially through CollegeAdvisor.

Um, but we are going to leave it there. Thank you so much, Stacy, for um, all of the questions and for that great presentation. Thank you everyone for joining us. We definitely hope that you will join us for our future sessions later this month. Um, so we are wrapping up the month of June with a session on crafting a standout college application for business majors.

So we talked a little bit about other types of majors, but for those who might be interested in marketing, finance, communication, business, join us on June 26th. And then we’ll actually cap off with a historically black colleges and universities panel on June 27th. So we hope to see you soon, but until next time, take care and have a great evening.

Stacey: Thanks all.