It involves asking and answering questions like:
What do I want to study and why? What experiences in my life led me to want this? What have I done or what will I do to prove this is what I want? What else can I bring to a college campus that they will want?
It’s tempting to gloss over these questions and get to dreaming about top schools. But if you think of yourself as a product that a selective college is going to buy, you want to be clear about your value proposition. The answers to these simple questions will inform your admissions strategy and every application element and should be driving your activities between now and when you apply next year.
Remember that you need to know what you want before you can go get it. And then you need to prove that you’re worthy of receiving it. Don’t worry if you can’t come up with your entire life’s plan right now. That is not necessary and many kids switch direction once they are in college.
Our goal is to prepare for the upcoming application process, which requires clear direction. When you start working with us as a junior, we can help you develop enough solid proof points to back up your application story. These are the academic and extracurricular pursuits that can be called upon later during the application process to show, rather than tell, that you have been thoughtful in how you’ve spent your time. Our guidance will stem from an initial “Blueprint” session where we look at each element of your admissions profile and recommend how to enhance and improve them with the time you have remaining. This will include everything from course recommendations and testing strategies, to extracurricular choices, to how to further relationships with the right teachers.
Solidifying your personal narrative is the first part of our admissions advising process for juniors and it happens through structured dialogue between you and our advisors. It will be a conversation that evolves over time but that always keeps the primary goal in mind - admission to a highly selective college.
