Is there a secret sauce?
There are lots of college consultants out there who love to say they’ve cracked the secret code to help you gain admission to the most competitive and elite colleges. We’re not those consultants. Because we don’t believe there’s a secret formula. Is there strategy? Yes! Are there things you can do to position yourself better to get that chance to show up at your dream school with your XL twin sheets in tow? Of course. But we’ll tell anyone and everyone that there’s no secret sauce. What there are are the pieces of your application that tell the story of you. And a really balanced and strategic list.
The core of your story looks like this:
Grades + Strong Curriculum
Test Scores*
Personal Statement
Activities
Letters of Recommendation
Balanced List
All of these add up to college acceptance letters. (To read more about how to think about each year of high school if you hope to attend a highly selective college, please read our blog post Aiming Elite.)
We’ve said it before, and we’ll just keep saying it like the broken record we are: the most important piece of your application is your transcript and the strength of your curriculum. This means earning the best grades you can in the hardest classes that make sense for you. If you go to a high school that offers a million APs and you only take one per year, that puts you in a completely different category of Reach/Target/Likely from your classmate who took one AP as a sophomore, three as a junior, and five as a senior. And that’s totally okay! You just need to build your college list understanding this. (And we can help with course selection and with list building.)
The one piece of your application that you have complete control over in the moment is your Personal Statement. You can write an amazing essay that is a breath of fresh air for those poor admissions officers locked in their offices reading 400 essays a day, 397 of which talk about what a great student and hard worker the applicant is. No thanks. Our clients’ essays engage their readers. Some make the reader laugh, some make them tear up a little, some do both. Most importantly, they show who our clients are beyond grades and numbers. But please remember, writing an amazing essay won’t get you into a different reach category than where your grades and curriculum place you. It can, however, help you get a spot over another applicant with similar academic qualifications.
And this brings us to the all-important list: please, for the love of the baked potato bar, build a balanced list. Start from the foundation: find three safety schools (you’re in the top 25% of their stats) where you would be okay if the sky fell and applications quintupled at your dream school; next– find at least 3 target schools (you’re right in the middle of their stats, but closer to that upper end); and then as many reach schools as you want. Keep in mind, any school with below a 25% acceptance rate is generally a reach for everyone (yep, even valedictorians with 1600 on the SAT get rejected from schools with a 17% acceptance rate).
We love helping students build balanced lists and create authentic and strategic applications. If you’re a 9th or 10th grader and want to talk about what classes to take next year, what activities to try, and if you should get a summer job (YES), give us a call (617.447.0186) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com. We would love to partner with you
*We wish we could say test scores don’t matter, but the truth is complicated and depends on many factors such as how long a school has been test optional. An excellent score on the SAT or the ACT can make a big difference for certain schools. We’ll help you strategize which test is a better fit for you, and talk about the different pieces of test prep that result in a score you can submit.
