Webinar: Applying to Ivy League Colleges

00:00:05.810 –> 00:00:20.209
Jeffrey “Jay” Durso-Finley: So, good evening, good afternoon, good morning, depending on where you’re logging in from. I’m excited that you’re here tonight. You are here for applying to Ivy League and Highly Selective Colleges. I’m Jeffrey “Jay” Durso-Finley

00:00:20.330 –> 00:00:38.130
I’m going to be your host tonight, and this particular webinar and session, will cover overall strategies and approaches for applying to the most selective schools in the country. We’re going to focus a little bit on the Ivy League, as that’s obviously a group of colleges of interest.

00:00:38.130 –> 00:00:53.060
And also on the admission approaches of other hyper-selective schools that have low admission rates, just so that you can get a sense of how to enter into those application pools, and hopefully find success.

00:00:53.550 –> 00:01:10.479
Before we get rolling, let me tell you a little bit about International College Counselors. This is a fantastic group of highly experienced college counselors who will focus and help students and families

00:01:10.690 –> 00:01:24.969
whether they’re aiming for undergraduate or graduate, on college planning and guidance, helping kids build school lists and form application strategies, helping them refine their extracurricular interests, build resumes

00:01:29.070 –> 00:01:46.069
And help with essay work, application review and analysis, interview prep, everything that you could possibly imagine that goes into creating a compelling application, and a compelling candidacy. International College Counselors will help your student

00:01:48.070 –> 00:01:56.450
succeed in the application process. And I think one of the things that I’ve been the most impressed about since I’ve joined the International College Counselors is the

00:01:59.560 –> 00:02:08.280
effort that this group goes into staying completely relevant and on point, knowing what the changes are immediately.

00:02:08.280 –> 00:02:20.410
As a group, we talk daily about some of the policy changes, admission changes. It is a very experienced and informed college advising group.

00:02:20.760 –> 00:02:26.199
And it’s been just a pure joy to be part of this endeavor.

00:02:26.200 –> 00:02:43.400
Before we dive into the content about applying to highly selective institutions, including the Ivy League, I have to tell you a little bit about myself, so you know where I’m coming from. I was an admission officer at Brown University in Providence for almost 10 years, which really, for me, was a fantastic education in itself.

00:02:46.080 –> 00:02:55.890
For how highly selective schools work, how admission policies are implemented, how they build a class. Incredibly instructive and helpful for them when I moved on to the college counseling world.

00:02:55.890 –> 00:03:10.389
Where I spent 20 years in highly selected boarding school at Lawrenceville School, where I helped to facilitate or, helped create candidacies for literally hundreds and hundreds of applicants to highly selective schools.

00:03:10.720 –> 00:03:23.700
It was just a way to gain a lot of insight onto why particular applications find success, the challenges that the admission process presents, within those highly selective environments.

00:03:23.700 –> 00:03:26.950
I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing colleagues and to have two different publications. One is on picking a college and the other is on understanding athletic recruiting. In fact, I’m working on a third book now. So I’ve been doing admission and college counseling for, oh gosh, I’m moving on 40 years now. But it’s been a wonderful ride, and I feel very lucky, to be part of the international college counselor community.

00:03:46.940 –> 00:04:00.979
So, that’s a little bit about me, and a little bit about, where we’re coming from. So we’re going to dive in. First, I’ll give you a little bit of an overview of what the program and the presentation are going to be about.

00:04:00.980 –> 00:04:12.600
If you’re here tonight, you understand that admission into Ivy League schools and highly selected schools is obviously competitive, and you’re trying to get some information on how to navigate that.

00:04:12.870 –> 00:04:33.520
One of the things that’s interesting about this particular area of hyper-selective admission is that you may have heard something about the enrollment cliff out there, or demographics are changing, regional colleges are seeing a decline, colleges and universities are closing. This does not affect the highly selective schools in the Ivy League. They continue to get

00:04:33.720 –> 00:04:38.900
More and more selective, and they continue to have higher and higher applicant pools.

00:04:39.850 –> 00:04:45.890
And lower and lower admit rates, and this is actually spreading to other highly selective institutions.

00:04:46.770 –> 00:04:52.639
I was doing some research this morning and found over 30 colleges and universities in the United States that have admission rates of 10% or lower in the last year. While that in itself is a crazy statistic, that is not representative of where a particular student will end up in an applicant pool, because that assumes that if you have to take out specialized populations, athletes.

00:05:13.520 –> 00:05:34.189
gender balance, international versus domestic. So when you apply from a particular school or from a particular area, with a particular major, the actual admission rate may be oftentimes much lower. So, it is a selective and challenging environment. Now, that said.

00:05:34.310 –> 00:05:44.639
While gaining an acceptance to these highly selective schools can be challenging, if not difficult, it’s not impossible. Obviously, it happens, on a regular, on a regular, regular basis.

00:05:44.680 –> 00:05:56.870
But what part of that is the preparation that comes before you file the application? A little bit of strategic approach such as figuring out, for example, when to apply and what major to choose, then creating a candidacy that’s particularly compelling.

00:05:57.140 –> 00:06:19.929
So that’s really what we’re going to talk about, is how to put those things together, what these colleges and universities are looking for. And I would just throw out there that in addition to talking about the Ivy League, it’s important to note that they are man other highly selective colleges like Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, MIT, Rice, and Northwestern.

00:06:42.190 –> 00:06:56.510
Part of the draw of this particular program is this notion of the Ivy League, and so let’s take a second to talk about what is the Ivy League. Interestingly enough, the term Ivy League was coined in the 1930s by a sports writer for The New York Times, who was talking about the rise of intercollegiate sports, particularly football.

00:06:56.510 –> 00:07:18.169
The presidents of these eight institutions got together because they were concerned about the influence that intercollegiate sports, especially football, was having on their institutions. So they created their own athletic conference that was formed in the 1950s. So, the Ivy League is, in essence, an athletic conference. That’s where it came from.

00:07:18.170 –> 00:07:22.400
There are eight member schools, many of which you’ve heard of.

00:07:22.790 –> 00:07:35.460
And they’ve been playing against each other for 80 years at this stage. They’re Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and Dartmouth,

00:07:35.730 –> 00:08:00.000
Over time, these institutions, given their focus on academic excellence and their balance of the social, the residential, the extracurricular, the academic, and the athletic. The total experience has really come to have a connotation or a reputation of academic excellence, and to a certain point, selectivity.

00:08:00.040 –> 00:08:16.599
These schools tend to be highly, highly well supported by their alumni body, and have tremendous resources, and that is, in essence, what the Ivy League is. It’s an athletic conference of eight, highly successful, highly academic, institutions.

00:08:16.600 –> 00:08:23.479
The students and families tend to be drawn to these because of the opportunities that exist there.

00:08:24.150 –> 00:08:44.120
When you think about the Ivy League, I think oftentimes students and families tend to lump them in together as one particular cohort, and that comes from some of the things that I was referencing, right? They’re obviously very prestigious and selective, and academically challenging.

00:08:44.490 –> 00:08:59.710
Their campuses are beautiful. They’re all up in the Northeast. These are private institutions that even the smallest feels like a university setting. The acceptance rate we’re going to talk a little bit about. But, the resources there are pretty remarkable.

00:08:59.710 –> 00:09:17.019
In terms of financial aid, everything is need-based. There are no merit scholarships, there are no athletic scholarships within the Ivy League. You will hear someone, or you’ll read something in the newspaper that says, oh, X, Y, and Z got a track scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. No, they didn’t.

00:09:17.020 –> 00:09:27.160
They don’t exist. They do not give merit scholarships, they do not give athletic scholarships. Everything is based on need so that they can bring the broadest

00:09:27.160 –> 00:09:38.749
college-bound population when they develop their enrollment. So again, they tend to be lumped in together because of these similarities, which makes sense.

00:09:39.830 –> 00:09:58.510
I do want to take a second to talk a little bit about some significant differences that exist within the Ivy League, because they’re there. Location is very different, the size, you’ve got, Dartmouth, which is a little bit over 4,000 students. Cornell’s getting close to 15,000 students.

00:09:58.510 –> 00:10:11.340
The curriculum can be very different. You’ve got Brown with its open curriculum, you’ve got Columbia with its core curriculum. Being in Hanover, New Hampshire and being in New York City is a very different environment.

00:10:11.340 –> 00:10:25.489
Being at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia versus Cornell’s Ithaca campus are very different environment. Dartmouth D-Plan and their quarters, and their emphasis on the outdoors versus the other opportunities that exist within the city schools.

00:10:26.750 –> 00:10:39.299
You’ve got the eating clubs at Princeton, you’ve got the residential colleges at Yale. There really are some pretty tremendous differences. So while there might be some historical ties.

00:10:39.300 –> 00:10:50.899
If you’re going to be in some of these applicant pools, you really need to dig in and understand what some of those differences are, because whether it’s curriculum, whether it’s setting, whether it’s social life.

00:10:50.900 –> 00:11:05.850
Whether it’s the academic structure of the program, campus ethos. There are some significant differences that need to be kind of sussed out to determine whether or not there is a good fit for your child or for you.

00:11:07.850 –> 00:11:27.469
Now we have made some consistent references to admission rates and the selectivity of the institutions. I’ll leave this up on the screen for a little bit, because it takes some time just to digest this. You can see just how things have changed in just the last 10 years.

00:11:27.580 –> 00:11:33.880
A place like Penn has nearly doubled its applicant pool, which is just astonishing.

00:11:33.880 –> 00:11:47.810
Others have gone up 40, 50, 60% in the last 10 years. When I left college admission in 2001, part of it was because we had moved

00:11:47.810 –> 00:11:56.910
to a model where we were looking for reasons to say no versus reasons to say yes, because the applicant pool had gotten so strong. And this was 25 years ago.

00:11:58.880 –> 00:12:12.089
Right? So, it’s really quite a process in terms of gaining entrance into these institutions. I’m going to pause for a second as you sort of digest these numbers, and if you look to the far right.

00:12:12.360 –> 00:12:25.700
one of the things that ICC does is that we crunch the numbers every single year for the students that we work with, to see how they fare within these highly selective pools. You can see the acceptance rate for the students who we work with,

00:12:25.700 –> 00:12:47.860
as being significantly higher than the overall admit rate, and this is based on the way in which we can help students create their candidacy. So yes, it’s selective, yes, it can be challenging, yes, the numbers can be overwhelming, but with the right approach, the right strategy,

00:12:47.860 –> 00:12:55.530
you can maximize your candidacy and maximize your self-presentation in a way that can give you a leg up in the process.

00:12:55.530 –> 00:12:58.510
And the statistics and the numbers bear that out.

00:13:01.170 –> 00:13:20.170
Right now, we’re setting the stage here. And the next question is, if given the selectivity, and again, this is true of the hyper-selective schools, highly selective schools, the 10% schools, whatever you want to call them.

00:13:20.250 –> 00:13:37.739
What, in essence, in the grand scheme of things, are these hyper-selective schools looking for? That’s really where we’re going to focus the next section of this discussion, is what’s being analyzed when students enter into these applicant pools.

00:13:38.660 –> 00:13:42.550
What’s the application process? What’s the admission lens?

00:13:43.370 –> 00:13:46.370
What’s the evaluation that takes place within the Ivy League admission process, and within the hyper-selective schools.

00:13:51.200 –> 00:14:05.030
As you might imagine, when you have, generally, 5% and 6% and 7% admit rates, and you’re highly described in terms and popular,

00:14:05.520 –> 00:14:14.329
as an admission office and as an institution, you’re trying to create a community in excellence in all of its forms.

00:14:15.020 –> 00:14:30.160
You start with the academic realm, and we’ll dive into that. But really, you’re trying to create a community, a diverse community, and you have the option of this enormous applicant pool from students who are literally coming from around the world.

00:14:30.160 –> 00:14:37.050
And they say they want a diverse community. Sometimes you hear the word diversity, and it gets kind of melted down into things like ethnic diversity or racial diversity

00:14:40.300 –> 00:14:55.640
But within the highly selected schools, it is so much broader than that. It’s academic diversity. You want STEM kids, you want arts, you want writers, you want musicians, you want theater arts kids.

00:14:55.640 –> 00:15:05.970
You want geographic diversity. A lot of colleges like to put out on their end-of-the-year statement that they’ve got students from all 50 states.

00:15:06.000 –> 00:15:23.209
They want all their athletic programs to win. They want to support students who have legacy interests or long-time standing history with the school. Then they also want to bring in first-generation kids and support that aspect of the

00:15:23.650 –> 00:15:37.880
building a community. So again, it’s a notion of nurturing special talents, nurturing diverse interests, and creating a community, in all of its forms.

00:15:38.040 –> 00:16:01.999
And that’s something to keep in mind. When I worked on the college side, I would get students who would come up to me at the end and say, alright, I don’t understand. I have really good grades, and I have really good scores, and I was the class president, and my extracurriculars are really strong, but I didn’t… I wasn’t admitted. Can you tell me what was wrong?

00:16:02.590 –> 00:16:16.609
And that was not a phrase that ever came up in admission committees, to be perfectly honest. And to a certain point, I started developing this sort of explanation, which sounds like kind of

00:16:16.790 –> 00:16:30.810
an excuse. But there’s always a reason why somebody is admitted to a highly selective institution.

00:16:31.230 –> 00:16:41.860
Something that that admission officer can point to that says, given these grades, given these scores, given these extracurricular commitments, given their residential life, potentially their impact.

00:16:42.000 –> 00:16:46.149
We think we should invite this person to join the community because of this reason.

00:16:46.530 –> 00:16:55.270
So there’s always a reason why somebody was admitted. But there’s usually no reason why someone was not admitted.

00:16:55.850 –> 00:17:10.259
Everything was great. It’s just the admission wheel did not come around and land on their candidacy. And that’s sort of hard to grasp, right? Because this is one of those things in the highly selective world where a student can do everything right.

00:17:10.720 –> 00:17:27.970
absolutely everything right, and not necessarily gain what they’re after, because of the incredible strength of these pools. And I will give you one other description, just so you can understand. Without actually being in the admission room.

00:17:28.140 –> 00:17:40.580
It’s sort of hard to wrap your head around the size and the scope of, what the app… what the admission pools look like.

00:17:41.390 –> 00:17:59.159
But I’d always held that at Brown University, when I worked there, we could admit our class, and we would probably take 2,400 to get 1,400 kids in, take that admitted group and throw it out, go back into our pool again, admit another class, and throw it out.

00:17:59.160 –> 00:18:09.789
And do that two more times, and the fifth class we admitted, after throwing away the first four, would statistically be identical to the first one.

00:18:10.320 –> 00:18:27.170
That’s how crazy some of these applicant pools are. And again, this was over 20 years ago. I can only imagine what it’s like to be at places like Princeton and Stanford now with the size of those applicant pools and the strength of the kids who are applying.

00:18:27.320 –> 00:18:43.659
So the idea is that there is something compelling within the application where an admission officer will look at that and say, yes, they have the grades, they have the scores, they have the extracurriculars, they have the campus impact, and then there’s this.

00:18:43.740 –> 00:18:56.810
Which makes the admission officer sit in a room and argue why this person should be admitted. So now we’re going to get into a little bit more specifics.

00:18:57.160 –> 00:19:12.220
So, in the grand scheme of things, if you were to get on your computer and type into Google a college fit, you would get millions of responses.

00:19:12.590 –> 00:19:18.440
This is one of those concepts that exists out there in the highly selective world.

00:19:19.560 –> 00:19:41.410
Because all colleges and universities are looking for a fit. Now, how they define fit is very, very different. The University of North Carolina, part of that fit is supporting the in-state population. If you’re Wellesley, part of your institutional fit is that it’s a single-sex school. So each institution has their own notion of what defines fit.

00:19:42.720 –> 00:19:49.779
But this really applies to the elite programs.

00:19:49.780 –> 00:20:07.560
At Brown University, we used to look for students who were going to use the open curriculum incredibly well. That was the defining element of our institution, so we needed to have students who were going to take advantage of all the options that were available. A place like Cornell has sub-colleges.

00:20:07.560 –> 00:20:13.040
And they read specifically for fit, both for the major and within the college, because

00:20:13.040 –> 00:20:29.449
the hotel school, and the ILR school, and the engineering school, and the ag school, they all read differently, so they’re going to find the institutional fit within Cornell. Who’s going to really embrace the core curriculum at,

00:20:29.450 –> 00:20:37.660
Columbia and all the dual degree programs that exist in Penn. So, they’re going to look to see whether students have…

00:20:37.750 –> 00:20:55.270
the academic chops to be able to be successful. Do they match, or do they fit with the institutional ethos, with the curriculum, with the major, with the program? They do spend the time, a lot of time, trying to figure out whether or not an applicant is a good fit for that institution.

00:20:55.630 –> 00:21:17.249
And I think they are looking to see if the student will contribute to the campus life, if they’re going to add to the fabric of the institution. Do they meet the educational ethos, or how the program works, both residentially and academically, on that campus? One of the phrases that I sometimes use when I work with students.

00:21:17.250 –> 00:21:27.080
Is that an acceptance to a college or university is an invitation to join the community.

00:21:27.110 –> 00:21:38.389
So part of putting together your application is having somebody who reads the application and then says, huh, yeah, this is somebody who I want to have around for the next four years.

00:21:38.390 –> 00:21:48.480
Because I think they’re going to contribute to the overall academic, residential, intellectual, and extracurricular life of this institution. And I want to extend that invitation.

00:21:48.490 –> 00:21:52.489
So, they’re looking for fit,

00:21:52.500 –> 00:22:08.679
And they’re trying to make sure that a student understands the program, and they’re going to fit well within that program. So, with International College Counselors, one of the things that we do is spend a time trying to figure out the balance of academic interests.

00:22:08.680 –> 00:22:26.019
This means in part the courses that are going to have students be successful, where they want to take those academic interests, what majors line up with the things they want to do for a long-term personal professional plan, and then help them find the colleges and universities that match that. And all of those things need to line up.

00:22:26.120 –> 00:22:40.449
Their course load, their interests, their perspective major, their extracurricular life, all of those things kind of fit together, and they’re in the right admission pools, then that’s a representation of how things

00:22:41.270 –> 00:22:46.870
move more successfully, because they found that right fit.

00:22:54.440 –> 00:23:19.370
Are there things that are more important, or things that get honed in on very, very quickly? That’s where we’re going to go next. So what specifically, when an admission officer sits down and reads an application, where do they go first. It’s not a big surprise that you knew I was going to go right to a student’s transcript.

00:23:19.560 –> 00:23:35.600
their course load, the grades received in core courses, the institutional rigor. The grades received, the rigor that’s taken on, and the success within that rigor is by far the most important factor within an application.

00:23:38.440 –> 00:23:48.479
If your goal is to aspire into a highly selective institution, you need to take the most challenging classes that you can within your secondary school.

00:23:48.480 –> 00:23:51.280
And be successful within those classes.

00:23:51.280 –> 00:24:14.569
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in an International Baccalaureate program, or your school does or does not have AP courses. Each institution determines their own curriculum based on their community, and colleges and universities are very adept at figuring out what the curriculum is within that institution, and then they’ll look to see whether or not the student is taking the most challenging classes offered within that curricular framework.

00:24:17.990 –> 00:24:37.589
You really have to push the five major core disciplines: English, math, science, social science/history, and languages. If you are somehow deficient within one of those fields, for example, you decide to stop Spanish after your sophomore year, they’re going to notice

00:24:37.880 –> 00:24:46.739
because they expect the honors level or AP level of a foreign language in their students who are applying and being successful within the applicant pool.

00:24:47.020 –> 00:25:15.920
You can see on the screen the, different schools use different weighting, so don’t get focused on the GPA, because one school might give a full point for an honors or an AP course, another might give half, so the colleges and universities don’t really get wound up about the GPA. They’re going to look at the grades, the rigor, and their performance within core courses. That is exactly where the analysis goes
.

00:25:18.470 –> 00:25:25.960
As I talk about this writ large, one of the things that always pops up and is always a pretty consistent question.

126
00:25:25.960 –> 00:25:39.459
is, and this is the absolute classic admission officer question, is it better to get an A in a regular tracked course versus a B in an honors or an AP course?

00:25:39.460 –> 00:25:50.839
And I completely understand where that question is coming from. When you hit the highly selective sphere, the Ivies and like institutions, they want the highly selective course, and they want the A’s.

00:25:51.310 –> 00:26:04.109
So as you elect a course load, the most important thing is to find that perfect balance between rigor and performance. The phrase that I always use is that you need to have the toughest course load you can safely handle.

00:26:04.290 –> 00:26:15.170
If you do that, then where your candidacy falls will find a balance point naturally.

00:26:15.170 –> 00:26:33.000
Starting from 9th grade, so many of the courses are sequenced, but we at International College Counselors do help students figure out the plan for what are the appropriate rigorous courses, where should you step forward, whether it’s across the entire curriculum, or whether it’s in certain areas, what are your interests, where are your strengths?

00:26:33.390 –> 00:26:44.900
And so, I’ll have conversations with students, whether they’re 9th graders or whether they’re 11th graders or 12th graders, trying to figure out what’s the best course load for them to create the strongest

00:26:45.140 –> 00:27:03.200
presentation of their candidacy based on their academic areas of interest and the major and degree program that they want to pursue. So that’s a conversation that happens all the time, and that is part of the programming that ICC offers.

00:27:03.360 –> 00:27:20.499
If grades and performance within core courses are paramount, standardized testing is probably number two, and it’s really sort of swung back and forth in the post-COVID world.

00:27:20.500 –> 00:27:24.929
There were a time when 98% of the colleges were test-optional.

00:27:24.930 –> 00:27:30.679
Especially coming out of COVID. Now the pendulum is starting to swing back in the other direction.

00:27:30.680 –> 00:27:55.659
As a counselor, I go back every spring and every summer and dig back into colleges and universities to see, has anybody changed their mind again? Has anybody gone back to requiring tests? Who’s test-optional? Who’s test blind? Right now, Columbia and Princeton are the only schools that have said we’re going to stay test-optional for a while as they figure out whether or not they can admit a class that they’re excited about.

00:27:55.660 –> 00:28:00.320
And they know is going to be successful, based on their test-optional policy.

00:28:01.020 –> 00:28:08.150
Colleges and universities, especially in the South, especially public schools, are coming back online with requiring tests.

00:28:09.360 –> 00:28:20.790
Some of the highly selected schools are staying test-optional because they know it affects the size of their applicant pool and the diversity within that applicant pool. So it’s gotten really murky.

00:28:20.790 –> 00:28:36.040
Having conversations about standardized testing with students is incredibly important, because you think a really strong score that’s representative with the overall applicant pool can help me.

00:28:36.140 –> 00:28:46.530
But in a test-optional world, one of the little, sort of little secrets about how the test-optional world works is that when you’re test-optional, your average SATs go up.

00:28:46.760 –> 00:28:59.399
Because anybody who’s outside that middle 50th percentile isn’t going to submit. So the next year, the college’s average SAT gets higher. As more people don’t submit, the next year, your average SAT gets higher again.

00:28:59.400 –> 00:29:09.389
One of the things that I’ll do with my counselees is try to answer that question about do you submit or not submit? And we’ll literally sit down with their college list, look at the middle 50th percentiles, and say.

00:29:12.890 –> 00:29:30.419
you should send it here, you should send it here, you should not send it here, not send it here. So, the timeline for standardized testing, which particular standardized test, ACT versus SAT, whether or not to send, that’s an ongoing conversation that I have with my college counselees

00:29:30.420 –> 00:29:46.470
to make sure that they’re presenting their best self in terms of their candidacy. So in terms of when students take standardized testing, there are a lot of communities who feel that,

00:29:46.840 –> 00:29:58.969
the more testing you do, and the earlier testing you do, the better. I’m probably an anomaly in that, to be perfectly honest, because what I often say is you want to find that sweet spot.

00:29:59.140 –> 00:30:11.430
When you’re ready, when you’ve done some test prep, when your curriculum matches what’s on the SAT or the ACT, so that you feel confident, you’ve had some experience, you’ve done some practice tests.

00:30:11.430 –> 00:30:30.060
Just going in without the background doesn’t help you. Going in with some confidence and some preparation, some intellectual maturity, that’s going to really propel you as you move forward, and I have those conversations with my counselees all the time, because it’s important. So, you’ve got your course load as appears

00:30:30.200 –> 00:30:51.989
on the transcript, and you’ve got your standardized testing. So those are the two biggest pieces. And this is just a really interesting slide, and again, I’ll leave this up, for a little while just so you can digest it, but it gets at what I was saying in terms of the differences between the testing profiles.

00:30:52.010 –> 00:31:01.860
Let’s say you’re a 35 ACT, you’re a 99% test taker.

154
00:31:02.300 –> 00:31:05.920
And you’re not in the top 25% at some of these institutions..

00:31:10.260 –> 00:31:28.619
You submit your 35, absolutely, but it doesn’t help, because the vast majority of other students who’ve submitted their standardized tests are going to be within that middle 50th percentile. So, it will be acknowledged that it will be a strength, but it isn’t an identifier or a signifier as it used to be.

00:31:28.880 –> 00:31:38.859
And so, one of the things that I’ve always joked about in the last 4 or 5 years is that if a place like Boston College remains test-optional for the next 5 years.

00:31:38.860 –> 00:31:50.460
their average SAT and ACT is going to be the same as Harvard’s, because that score is going to go up and up and up and up and up over time, and there’s a ceiling that you can’t get any higher.

00:31:50.460 –> 00:32:03.819
So the standardized testing is something that we have many conversations about, because it’s very complicated, but it is a significant component, and over time, it feels like it’s going to be a significant component at some institutions.

00:32:06.030 –> 00:32:11.319
Now, as you start to go through, and create a candidacy.

00:32:11.870 –> 00:32:23.640
And you’re working on the application, you’re doing the component parts. One of the things that we spend an inordinate amount of time, and it’s actually one of my favorite things to do, is to work on students with their self-presentation and their essays.

00:32:23.780 –> 00:32:32.060
If you think about it, the essay is the only component of the application that you are, as a student, are doing right now.

00:32:32.840 –> 00:32:38.169
When you apply. Everything else is being done by someone else, or has happened in the past.

00:32:38.290 –> 00:32:44.119
Your recommendations are coming from somebody else. Your junior year grades are already in the barn.

00:32:44.120 –> 00:33:01.479
So the essay in your self-presentation is getting across who you are right now. So having an admission officer get a sense of your personality, what matters to you, the way your mind works, really get a sense of who you are, is critical.

00:33:01.480 –> 00:33:16.459
We start working in the junior spring on the Common Application essay, and I always encourage the students that I work with to come at it from a perspective of, tell a story that only you can tell.

00:33:16.990 –> 00:33:21.589
Using an essay that anybody could have written is not going to help you.

00:33:21.860 –> 00:33:28.569
You have to have an admission officer get to the end of reading your essay, and think to themselves,

00:33:28.930 –> 00:33:31.700
this is somebody that I want to get to know better based on the way you’ve kind of tickled their mind.

00:33:32.600 –> 00:33:48.590
Or, if someone else walked into that admission officer’s office and said, hey, who are you reading? It’s like, oh, I was reading, Jay Durso-Finley. Say, well, tell me what he’s about. He’s like, hey, well, I just read the essay, and this is what I learned about him.

00:33:48.940 –> 00:34:10.560
Those are the things that have to come out in the essay. And having read literally thousands of essays and helped thousands of kids put their best self forward, I love doing essay work, and in fact, I was originally trained as a high school English teacher, and so it’s a personal passion of mine that I really enjoy as part of my work at ICC.

00:34:11.360 –> 00:34:28.479
Now, in addition to the main Common App essays, 650 words, trying to communicate a sense of self, especially at the highly selective schools, the Ivy League schools, the University of Chicago is famous for their supplements, their supplemental questions.

00:34:28.610 –> 00:34:35.830
So the supplemental questions come as part of the main application.

00:34:35.830 –> 00:34:50.329
Some of them are related to the student’s understanding of an institution, some of them are related to the potential impact on a community, some are related to their academic interests. But what’s really been interesting over the years is that colleges and universities sometimes

00:34:50.330 –> 00:35:06.720
actually pay more attention to the supplements than they do the main Common App essay, because they know that the main essay has been proofread and shown to an English teacher, and shown to a college counselor, and, you know, been revised and run through Grammarly.

00:35:07.410 –> 00:35:16.579
And for many high school students, it is the piece of writing that’s gotten the most feedback, or most eyes on it, that they’ve ever written.

00:35:17.610 –> 00:35:20.249
The supplements? Not so much.

00:35:20.450 –> 00:35:30.930
So college admission officers are savvy enough to look at the supplements to make sure a student understands why they’re applying, where they’re applying.

00:35:31.640 –> 00:35:43.380
And what they’re going to bring to an institution that’s got a little bit more free-form nature to it. And you can see some other hints that are on the screen right now. It takes a while, it’s a process.

00:35:43.380 –> 00:35:55.079
I always tell the students that I work with that it’s not like you can go home on the weekend and say, okay, I’ve got my Spanish translation, I’ve got 10 math problem sets, and I’m going to write my college essay. That’s not how it works.

00:35:55.080 –> 00:36:09.859
There’s going to be multiple drafts, it’s going to take weeks to get it done, and so what we do at ICC is a lot of brainstorming, a lot of revision. We share essays with each other. When the application is completed, we’ve got a double review process

00:36:09.860 –> 00:36:23.279
to make sure that my analysis of an application matches someone else’s analysis of the application, and it has to be personal, academic, intellectual, and self-reflective, which is why AI doesn’t work.

00:36:23.900 –> 00:36:41.569
Because that objective, that’s analytical, that’s a distillation of information that’s out there. And one of my favorite stories, actually, about students who are using AI about with their essays is that I talked to an admission officer at an Ivy League college last spring, which will remain nameless.

00:36:41.960 –> 00:36:55.499
But they talked about how they ran into this situation where a bunch of essays about why this college that kept on referencing a program that doesn’t exist.

00:36:56.340 –> 00:37:12.930
So they put the prompt into ChatGPT, and it kicked out this program. So they knew that everybody who had applied, who put this program in their why, this university essay, had used ChatGPT.

00:37:13.140 –> 00:37:34.440
So, there are ways in which that using AI absolutely comes back to be problematic. So, again, your college admissions essay needs to be personal, it needs to be introspective, it needs to be academic, it needs to be intellectual, it needs to be about you, and using AI just does not work, but again, we can help you kind of get through that, to really present yourself in the best way possible.

00:37:35.570 –> 00:37:49.760
We’ll talk a little bit here about the extracurricular sphere, and how that comes into play. I think the mantra that we always talk about is you want depth, and not breadth.

00:37:49.760 –> 00:38:06.889
If you don’t have 10 things that you put on the Common Application, that’s not a problem. Any admission officer you talk to says they want you to do things over a period of time, whether it’s service, whether it’s academic clubs, whether it’s theater arts programming. It could be anything.

00:38:07.120 –> 00:38:12.909
whatever you’re really excited about needs to have some depth to it.

00:38:13.250 –> 00:38:25.809
It needs to be contributed to over time. So, one of the things that helps to round out a candidacy and our conversations that I have with students is, how do we want to use your summers particularly well.

00:38:25.860 –> 00:38:40.709
How do we want to use the options that are available at your secondary school particularly well, and where can we find things that round out your extracurricular and your co-curricular life that are outside of what’s easily offered to you within the school?

00:38:40.710 –> 00:38:46.830
That’s a real interesting and important distinction, because just being involved in a few clubs in school.

00:38:46.830 –> 00:38:58.159
doesn’t carry a tremendous amount of weight. At the highly selective level, they want to see that you’re doing things beyond what’s easily offered to you. So when I work with students, we have conversations about

00:38:58.160 –> 00:39:09.100
A variety of extracurriculars whether it’s service opportunities, whether it’s academic opportunities, whether it’s research, whether it’s internships, the range is pretty strong and wide.

00:39:09.100 –> 00:39:15.650
But there needs to be some action and some activity, and that’s a great conversation to have, because once students

00:39:15.650 –> 00:39:40.489
really dive into the things that are important to them, and connect it to their academic and their personal and their professional life later on, it makes their high school experience and their college experience that much more rewarding. So, we have conversations at ICC all the time. We’ll reach out to other members of our team and I’ll say, hey, I’m working with a student who really wants to do classics, or really wants to do computer science. What are the best opportunities for them to do

00:39:40.600 –> 00:39:45.499
an internship in this area, or take a class in this area?

00:39:45.710 –> 00:39:52.779
We help students build up that resume.

00:39:52.780 –> 00:40:08.180
The Ivy League and the highly selective institutions are looking for students who are reaching beyond what’s easily available in their high school, and beyond what just comes through their classroom experience. At ICC, we help students go beyond.

00:40:09.140 –> 00:40:24.909
In terms of helping to create the application itself, most institutions, highly selective institutions, are going to request two letters of recommendation. So these are the people who are going to be your mentors, who are going to be your supporters.

00:40:24.910 –> 00:40:32.530
We’ll help students, especially in the spring of the junior year, match-up who we’re going to submit… who will help

00:40:32.530 –> 00:40:48.190
supporting a student’s aspirations and their application based on their major and degree program, because some of that has to link up oftentimes. A student who’s going to do engineering has a very different set of expectations for letters of recommendation than a student who’s going to do creative writing.

00:40:48.250 –> 00:40:59.099
Having those conversations about who might be a good recommender, and it goes beyond, to be perfectly honest, people who gave students good grades.

00:40:59.180 –> 00:41:17.810
Somebody who doesn’t really know the person talks about what books were read and what papers were written, and says, oh yeah, she was great, I gave her an A. That doesn’t help in a highly selective environment. The person who really knows how a student’s mind works and how they might have grappled with a particular subject area

00:41:18.440 –> 00:41:28.020
And triumphed is the kind of information that an admission officer uses in a committee to be able to really

00:41:28.020 –> 00:41:44.800
make an argument for inviting that person to campus. So again, this is something that we do… I’ll do with all my juniors every spring, have a conversation, have them give the information that’s really necessary for, for students to be able to be

00:41:44.800 –> 00:41:50.809
to make that connection within their faculty and choose who to ask for a letter of recommendation.

00:41:50.980 –> 00:41:57.320
It’s part of the process that is easily done, and that we’re happy to do.

00:41:57.580 –> 00:42:01.040
We’re sort of coming to the end here.

00:42:02.030 –> 00:42:10.130
So given the construction, the grades, the transcript, the rigor, the performance, the standardized testing.

00:42:10.130 –> 00:42:22.960
The essays and the writing and the personal sections, the extracurricular profile and how that’s presented into an application, and then the letters of recommendation. All of those areas and the support and the guidance

00:42:22.960 –> 00:42:38.999
That’s something that I do, that we do, that I’m excited to be part of a student’s life, to put all of those things together. Now, again, in highly selective environments within the Ivy League, the analysis and the components of this are bigger than that.

00:42:39.000 –> 00:42:50.750
I really sort of… I love this slide that was put together for this presentation, because there’s 58,000 U.S. high schools.

00:42:50.750 –> 00:43:05.409
That means there are 58,000 valedictorians, and when I looked at it, I realized that that’s actually inaccurate, because there are many schools, especially in the Midwest and in the North, the Northwest, that determine their valedictorians

00:43:05.410 –> 00:43:13.260
By an unweighted GPA. So when I was in college, I would read schools that had 40 valedictorians, because they all had 4.0s.

00:43:13.430 –> 00:43:24.590
So if you think about the selectivity that exists out there, these numbers are just overwhelming. And I talked a little bit about how,

00:43:25.260 –> 00:43:32.190
Admissions considers students in terms of building the class.

00:43:32.190 –> 00:43:46.629
When I left college admissions over 20 years ago, we turned away more than 60% of the valedictorians that applied, which in some ways is a scary statistic, but in other ways it isn’t, because it means that class rank isn’t the only thing.

00:43:46.630 –> 00:43:58.089
Somebody who creates a really compelling profile, or has a compelling extracurricular, or brings something else to the community, we weren’t bound by rank.

00:43:58.250 –> 00:44:16.089
But it is important to understand the context and the competition, because if you’re somebody who’s the class president and is the number two in the class, that’s awesome within your high school. In the context of the overall, Ivy League admission process.

00:44:16.090 –> 00:44:34.810
You’re up against many students who look like that, and it’s just something to kind of keep in mind, because what it really needs to do is not to dissuade you from your aspirations. In fact, you should be aspiring to be in those pools and to try to gain access into these schools because of

228
00:44:34.850 –> 00:44:46.569
the amazing opportunities that they provide. But what it does suggest further is that you’ve got to find other ways to build your college list, and that’s what help with.
00:44:46.650 –> 00:44:59.179
At ICC, we think about admission plans for each student. How do you work with, single-choice early action? How do you work with early decision versus early action at Georgetown versus Dartmouth?

00:44:59.500 –> 00:45:10.509
When does it make sense to make a commitment? When does it not enhance your candidacy? So these are all conversations that we’re having with students as to how to maximize their options

00:45:11.740 –> 00:45:28.790
In terms of what their college list looks like. It is a highly selective world, but there’s ways in which you can enter into the admission stream to maximize your candidacy and maximize your options.

00:45:34.380 –> 00:45:50.929
What else is out there? What really should I be doing as a student? And if you’re a parent, or a guardian, what should my child be doing at this stage? And these are some general tips to sort of

00:45:50.930 –> 00:45:58.760
start to think about. It’s one of the things that we do, and that I do regularly with all of my students.

00:45:58.760 –> 00:46:16.870
My conversations with students and families include the idea that you have to build a really interesting, diverse, and deep college list. It can include highly selective schools, it can include schools within the Ivy League, it can include other places that offer specific merit options or scholarship programs that you might be after.

00:46:16.870 –> 00:46:28.239
It can include liberal arts colleges, which are highly academic, and students who are coming out of big secondary school institutions. They find it incredibly reinforcing.

00:46:30.280 –> 00:46:33.980
You need to be very well organized,

00:46:34.790 –> 00:46:48.910
You need to do a tremendous amount of college research. You need to be connecting with your college counselor, you need to be connecting with your ICC counselor, you need to use your summers well, you need to, create a candidacy and a collection

00:46:50.030 –> 00:47:09.540
of backgrounds and interests and accomplishments that produce that compelling academic profile. I had two conversations today, in fact, with students that I’m working with as to what we’re going to do over the course of the year to bring together all of these disparate

00:47:10.140 –> 00:47:18.420
Ways of having them produce, the most interesting, and kind of resonant

00:47:18.420 –> 00:47:35.419
student profile that they possibly can, so when it comes time for them to file their application, it’s going to be looked at in a way that the admission officer is going to slow down and go, this is really interesting, this is somebody that I want to find out more about.

00:47:35.570 –> 00:47:39.689
Once you’re engaged.

00:47:39.690 –> 00:47:55.790
with the guidance counselor or your ICC counselor, that’s where we’re going to go, and as I said, it can include highly selective schools, it may include Ivy League institutions, depending on where your strengths lie, but it’s going to be a comprehensive approach, and that’s just important.

00:47:56.190 –> 00:48:14.069
It is a multi-year process. You need to stay organized all the way from 9th grade on. Help-seeking behavior is a critical skill for high school students. So whether it’s me, whether it’s an academic tutor, whether it’s a guidance counselor or a college counselor within the secondary school.

00:48:14.070 –> 00:48:18.180
You need to be engaged and organized.

00:48:18.180 –> 00:48:34.249
and motivated from the start. There are 3,500 post-secondary institutions in the United States. There’s going to be a place that you’re going to find your residential, your intellectual, your social, and your extracurricular fit.

00:48:34.250 –> 00:48:51.890
You’re going to get it done. And if you have people on your side, whether it’s your family, or whether it’s me, or whether it’s somebody else from International College Counselors, it’s going to happen. So that’s a really exciting aspect of moving through your high school life, because you’re going to succeed.

00:48:51.980 –> 00:48:57.909
It’s going to happen. And so, we’re excited to help you through that.

00:48:58.000 –> 00:49:02.719
I will leave this up for a second here.

00:49:02.730 –> 00:49:27.409
If you want to fill out an ICC info form, go ahead and hit that QR code, take a screenshot. If you want to send me an email, I’m happy to respond. I know I have probably half a dozen

00:49:27.410 –> 00:49:37.240
questions in the chat, and I’m going to copy those, and I will respond to all of those directly to you. So I’ll be sure to answer those questions.

00:49:37.240 –> 00:49:52.010
I really appreciate your attention tonight. I hope that some of the information that I’ve provided has been useful, and if you want any more information, you have questions, you want to get some feedback.

00:49:52.010 –> 00:49:53.740
Or you want to connect with

00:49:53.740 –> 00:50:17.870
members of the ICC community in terms of our scheduling team, you can fill out that info form there, you can email me directly, and I will be happy to help. So, thanks so much for your attention, and hopefully we’ll see you on another ICC webinar. Have a great night, morning, afternoon, depending on where you are, but really appreciate your time.

00:50:17.870 –> 00:50:21.709
And wish you all the best of success in your college aspirations.