How IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS think: secrets to college admissions

if you have that no one can take it away from me the message for your audience is that it's very important for the student to be hey admissions expert he will be spilling all the secrets to your most burning college application questions surrounding these major categories and in the end we'll find out if a top college really matters super excited for today's chat hi Jason please introduce yourself hi excited to be here thank you for having me on my name is Jason I was born and raised in San Francisco I went to a public school I got into Harvard Yale Stanford Columbia uchicago's Swarthmore and a couple other schools and from that experience I started to talk with some of the admissions officers learning about the process I ultimately chose Harvard my concentration was social studies I worked at an investment Bank worked at a 20 billion dollar mutual fund before Switching gears to work at Uber and I've also worked on a Politico campaign one of the things that we try to do is bring that experience of education and real world development with our students tell us a little bit about your consultancy our first year actually we worked with a student from Central China in a public school there she had a 1320 s.a.t that year we helped her get into Harvard as one of only eight admissions from all of China which was kind of crazy since then we kept focusing on getting better every year last year which was our fourth class we actually became the number one ranked company in terms of sending students from China into Harvard Yale Stanford Princeton MIT Caltech high level advisors in addition to myself they include a former Yale admissions officer former McKinsey consultant a current Google alphabet machine learning engineer we're excited to work with really motivated students and bring them the advisors that we think can help them achieve the next level it's really incredible that you can help students from China so much because that's actually the most difficult demographic to get into these top schools with that expertise it seems that you can really help any demographic we've kind of cut our teeth on that cohort and there are a lot of great lessons that we enjoy sharing with our clients and now your audience looking forward to hearing your insights in it if you would like to work with enjoyable please remember to check out my description box if you say that Amy sent you you'll save 500 so go check it out do admissions officers have a point system to rank candidates each college has their own policies and processes but generally the big picture across all the universities are similar many of them do have a point system because the point system helps them with ranking candidates so we know that Harvard kind of categorizes students across categories such as academics athletic extracurricular and personal factors some colleges use more factors some might use less but in any case the overall Big Goal is for admissions officers to find what my partner Susan she likes to cause gems and gems can be very different from each other you could be a gem because of your academic perspective or you could be a gem because of of your leadership or service it's really hard to Define across the entire student body but each person should be really focused I think on how do they develop themselves in their own unique way and how do they distinguish themselves at a very high level which could include starting to contribute to society I think a lot of people are like oh I'll wait until my career before I start thinking about the real world and how to contribute to the real world our argument is that you should start as early as possible makes sense it sounds like you would have an edge if you'd start contributing to the real world because many students don't know that what is the most important quality do you think that admissions officers look for there are three general areas that we could kind of simplify into does the student have a track record of Excellence if you are applying to a top tier University or liberal arts college because of their track record of Excellence of course they're going to be looking at you from a similar perspective everybody wants to say you know I want to be wealthy I want to be famous I want to go into a great school but not as many people have the track record or the work ethic or the talent to really get there number two I think it's very important for the student to be Community oriented from two different levels the first level is that generally what we accomplish in life is correlated with our value to society the more that we could actually help Society solve problems the more our value we could potentially realize but the second part of community is you have to remember when you apply to a school you're trying to find a place to live learn and grow for four years so how do you interact within your community how do you contribute to it or might you be a detractor and then the third which is um harder to Define is what uniqueness does the student bring to the table because there's only a limited number of spots at these top institutions and of course they want people who brings some level of expertise or unique perspective because that kind of ability or perspective or Talent can really make the overall Community stronger I like how the first point kind of relates to the concept where if you want to be successful you need to act like that successful person would act so if you think about your idol like how do they do the day-to-day and embody that before you get to that point because that's the only way you can get there what do you think was strong or distinctive about your college application I was really focused on all three components your grades the difficulty of your course load your Awards and your honors I was very involved with politics locally I was very hyper involved with my school every lunch I would have meetings the essays on the interview can be very helpful in Illuminating the reader which is the admissions officer what is your uniqueness I had a theater background I also did mock trial and a lot of advocacy trying to explain that experience what that meant to me and what that might mean to of the future was helpful is it better to get straight A's in regular classes or some bees in APS and honors classes if you're applying for a top 10 or 20 National University for example a lot of the admission readers are graduates of that school we're not going to fold them into thinking oh I took this easier class it's the equivalent as an A in an AP class the underlying theme is that students aiming for the best should challenge themselves with the highest level courses and curriculum as they can and bring the performance that shows their ability to develop that track record of Excellence so the short answer would be to indeed try for the higher level courses I think so considering now that test optional policies exist how are colleges considering the test scores and should the student submit a score students who are able to submit a great score of course should it's a great data point now if you did not achieve a great score then I think the question becomes a little bit more gray it depends what school you're applying for also how many resources you've had if you've gone to a private us-based high school and you have the resources to take the exam versus for example in Beijing we've had a lot of AP exams and other exams that were canceled those are two different stories and explanations for why you might not have a score it gets a little bit more muddy if you don't have a good score but generally speaking if you do have the ability and the resources to take the exam and you have a decent score we recommend you submit it how does the selectivity of a a school influence the necessity of a test score that's a great question if you don't mind I'm gonna have to take a step back from that if we talk about the top schools Harvard Yale Stanford Princeton MIT their admissions rates are around three to four percent and you might go oh wow that's hard enough three to four out of a hundred but you also have to think it's not really out of a hundred it's three or four percent of the students who applaud and generally the people who apply to those schools they're going to pretty much be in the top 10 of the student body so it's really three to four out of a thousand because it's three to four percent of the top ten percent of the student body and that's a huge step change a lot of students are not thinking about and you also have to think the competition at that level it's just all these wonderful inspiring people at that level they're all high performance how do you distinguish a top 30 out of a thousand a top three out of a thousand that's ten times harder than top 30. to go back to your question you want as many strong data points as possible in your favor what would you recommend then for a student to do if their score may be lower than the average student we work with a couple they're hard workers they're very talented but they might not be as talented in showing it on the test side specifically in which case you should pretty much have another area where you demonstrate higher level of Excellence that should be enunciated clearly in the application if you're weak in one area you really need stronger areas elsewhere to make up for it how do emissions officers weigh the stats versus the essays and experience is the essay a decisive Factor we believe that there are two questions that an admission officer generally goes through the first is is a student qualified if the student's not qualified they're not going to waste their time reading the rest of the application basically can the student graduate from the college program some students do get cut and I do think that metrics are weighted more heavily in that first round the second question though is the difference from being a top eighty percent to a top three percent and that question is is the student special how a student communicates that and shows that to the admissions officer that's going to be very different it's going to change from year to year The Meta of what's happening in the application process could also change based on YouTubers and other people's advice it's really hard to say what can make a student special one year it could be very common the next year and make it very hard for a student to distinguish themselves with a high level of competition in the end if everything else about equal then the essay could potentially be the deciding factor especially for the most selective schools I think essays and Rec letters are weighted pretty heavily because if you think about the s's whether you realize it or not they tell the reader how you think what topic you choose to prioritize in your essay is an indicator of what you prioritize in your real life so the essays are incredibly important at the highest levels how would you showcase a strong personality whether it's in the essay or in the other parts of your application one is kind of how the admission officer can hear it from the student which would be through the essays another is through Rec letters give a sense of what other people perceive you to be about and what you've done and I think a third is your action we always say actions speak louder than words so what are your actions did you only do academic things in high school or did your actions indicate other priorities there seems to be some pressure around what activities are impressive what extracurricular activities Should students do the first component is that generally there are things that are important to life if they're important to life they're also probably important to college such as our communication ability or creativity how we work with other people potentially our leadership so there are multiple things to cover you could cover them through a variety of activities so one I like to talk with my students about what does their portfolio say how they spend their time but then at the same time we should prioritize certain things in this case when you're talking with a student about their themes you should really emphasize what the student cares about if you think about if we want to apply to the elite College we need to find people who are self-motivated their learning potential is much greater I would focus heavily on what is the student interested in and however we can move the activities to be related to that students might not know what they love in which case we should show that we're passionate about trying new things and trying to find what we love as early as possible and that's good for Life anyway you could focus on building the skills to be more successful there's a balance between being focused and planning but also being adaptable there is some concern about if you do too many different things that it seems you're unfocused would you say there's a risk in that or how would you navigate it what I would say to students is focus on what matters and for each student that could be very different and if you think it matters you could probably communicate why it matters easier to your reader even if you have one clear passion there are other areas that you probably could be working on that's reassuring I think for students and at the end of the day that it's important to be proactive and not to be doing something where you feel resistance because then that's not you staying true to yourself which is what the admissions officers want to see do colleges look at your social media they probably have looked at some but overall I would not expect them to check everybody's or even a significant number maybe think twice maybe there's a reason why you might be concerned are there any red flags to be careful about a big one is negativity some students are trying to say here are my challenges everybody goes through challenges but I don't think it's enough to just say hey here are my challenges in a way the essay is written in a negative light I'm an investor for example the only only car company to grow since the pandemic above 30 to 50 percent rates is Tesla and a lot of car companies use the chip shortage as an excuse but then you see an attitude difference between those car companies and Tesla Tesla Engineers they rewrote code to use whatever chips they could get their hands on it's a different mentality as a college admissions officer what kind of student would I want to invest in that's an awesome example and it helps colleges see the student is definitely going to face challenges in college like how can I see them getting through that what are some of the biggest mistakes you think that students make when putting together their application I do think that you should get at least one outside reader because you write your own essays you know your life very intimately but you don't write about your life in a self-contained way where a stranger could just pick it up and know what you are talking about that is one important check that not a lot of students available themselves to that becomes an issue well a college admissions officer serves them more time trying to research or connect the dots if it's not self-contained I don't think so the college admissions officer will say this student doesn't know how to clearly communicate and reflect what the reader knows and needs to know and move on because at the highest level that's a skill set we should all have yeah I've been able to present yourself and think from the reader's perspective are the senior year queries important I would argue yes personally I work 80 to 100 hour weeks during High School the jobs that I took after college are also 80 to 100 hour a week jobs being able to do that in high school helped me Beyond College I don't think it's a good data point if someone sees you slacking off when people say like oh you could slack off a little bit if a student might need to for example send an update letter or a waitlist letter and at the same time the colleges sees a waitlist letter but also sees slacking off on grades it's not a good data point it's locking off my also show lack of productivity where oh I only worked hard hard when I'm told that I have to wear a card right yeah for the positive side I think students want to maximize every chance they get there will be a subset of people that will get in from the waitlist or get in from an update letter when I applied to Harvard I actually was deferred the first time and I thought I was done for it but I definitely redoubled my efforts kept doing what I thought I should do and thankfully everything worked out I think that's a good philosophy for life too if we do what we should do and try to achieve goals that we think are meaningful the exact plan might not work out but generally things will work out if you work hard the opportunities will come if you're not ready for the opportunities to come then it's like you won't receive them at all and they might be opportunities you didn't expect in the first place but could be better what advice would you give students who are in the beginning of their high school years and any advice regarding how to build their story I think if they reflect on the stat uh the three or four percent not three or four percent generally speaking but the three or four four percent of the top ten percent I think there's a lot of implication from that data point that students need to start working on as early as possible basically all the stuff that was mentioned before to just build that up as early as possible I think it's worthwhile for your younger audience to really think about that because that could help them with their prioritization that could help them with their questions it could potentially be an advantage for them if they're able to start addressing that earlier I agree that's why I share the information on the internet such that I feel like the earlier you're aware of something the more you can just prepare for it because otherwise when you get to that point it might be too late and you can't do anything about that and we're responsible for being aware you know it might seem a little bit unfair like hey some people can afford endurable services but we do offer scholarships for families in financial need it might seem unfair oh some other people have more but that's life going back to the Tesla example they started out as David against a bunch of Goliath in the industry Tesla's almost gone bankrupt don't think they use that as an excuse like oh or resources are much more limited compared to GM they had to find a way I think the message for your audience tonight and that's why I appreciate being here is that if your goal is to get to a top-tier university go find a way there is always a way we're very lucky in that sense for example our first year helping a student from the middle of China literally that high school has never sent a student to an international school and hoping that one student find a way to go from her High School to Harvard that's something that actually is a very common occurrence if you are lucky enough to go to a school like Caltech Harford and a bunch of other schools you'll see a lot of people who pull themselves up by their bootstrap they are very much more admirable and inspiring I would argue if you've had to work harder to achieve a goal that makes you much stronger I think that's really the message I want to tell my viewers as well that like it's really about you because you have so much potential it's all about you going out there to use that potential and to believe that you have that in the first place for me for example I actually didn't use any paid resources to prepare for the ACT SAT everyone has challenges but how are you going to overcome that and still work as hard as you can to get to your goal at the end of the day if you don't get into where you want it's okay as long as you know that you worked hard you won't have any regrets we like to tell our students if you built the skill set to be successful in life in general you don't need a piece of paper to say that you should have a better chance but what's funny is if you build that skill set early enough you're more attractive to the institutions that people love I would say focus on the skill set foundations and building that up even from freshman sophomore year to get you better set up for junior year when you decide to go really hard on whatever difficulties you have million dollar question how important is going to a top school really and have you found the brand Network or other aspects beneficial to you after graduation I do think that going to a top school is helpful but I hesitate to say like hey everyone should try to do it we should look at options and what is the best option and for many students going to a top school is a strong form of validation these admissions they help validate your track record before college right they say that at the very minimum you did enough and you were focused enough and you were proactive and knowledgeable enough to at least get to that standards after college your diploma kind of shows that data point to employers potential investors potential clients things like that and that's a hard data point that not everyone can achieve and what's wonderful is that some people donate a lot of money but most people who achieve that validation it's not because of their donations it's because of their skill sets and their track records I think a top school can be helpful I don't think that it will confine you to success or confine you to the opposite of success if you achieve or don't achieve it what's more important is the skill set the mentality the life perspective active that it takes to get there if you have that no one can take it away from you of course the world is littered with examples of people who've hustled from nowhere without these sheets of paper that we're able to accomplish great things for sure thank you any final words of advice you'd like to share here today one thing that I think about a lot recently we basically all know how important nutrition is to someone's health and we know that the nutrition you give to your plant determines how big and how quickly and how healthy it is but I think that's also true of our Social Circles who we hang around with their priorities get reflected in us and their learnings and I like to encourage people to find diverse Social Circles for different things so they can continue learning and growing but I also think a healthy mentality is very valuable as well and I know people talk about mental health a lot but I think a healthy mentality maybe it could be a little bit different how we think about the world whether we Express gratitude or whether we expect great things to happen is a huge difference in mentality in terms of how someone responds so I think my advice is to reflect refine improve upgrade who we spend our time with and how we think about the world I definitely agree with everything you said the kind of mentality aspect is really what helped me get through high school and Caltech is so difficult but I think the key aspect was my friends and the kinds of habits that are developed from the habit of how you think wonderful awesome awesome super helpful insights today Jason thank you so much for sharing your expertise with all of us today Jason has a really awesome company that helps students get into their top college choices and they have really awesome stats so check that out customized advice is the most important thing you can get help with to get into your dream School in addition to advice like you see here today so make sure to check out endurable in the description and again say that Amy brought you there so you can save 500 and if you want to see a specific example of how I got into a top school then click here I totally wish I had someone like Jason to tell me all these things

Channel: Amy Wang

Views: 85,054

Keywords: harvard, stanford, yale, admissions, college admissions, application, college, dream school, secrets, how to get into college, common app, college essay, how to get into Harvard, extracurriculars, community service

Id: 0qkXPNmDeEo

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 18 2022