Filed under: College Admission — admin @ 7:16 am

Summer is often a time when you want to have fun and step away from the stresses of high school and the pressures of college admission. Yet, making the most out of these twelve weeks will positively benefit your college acceptance, especially to any of the Ivy League schools.  Do not worry, this does not mean you will be imprisoned to a room memorizing SAT vocabulary words or working on your essays all summer. 

To begin, sit down with your teachers and parents and brainstorm about summer activities that may be beneficial to your personal growth and college admission. These conversations will help you individualize your summer to achieve personal satisfaction along with increasing your value to the college admission process. Taking the time to determine the most beneficial summer activities for your college application will greatly aid in your chances of acceptance to your school of choice.

College admission offices, specifically at Ivy League schools, look for students who are differentiated but also balanced.  Think of subjects that you are interested in and seek out programs which would allow for you to grow. If you are one who has a passion for languages, consider studying abroad in a foreign country.  This experience would help build cross-cultural understanding along with intensive language immersion. If business and entrepreneurship is your calling, don’t be afraid to try and start a small business. Check out the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) as a starting point.

Many colleges, including Ivy League schools, offer academic programs for high school students.  These programs allow for students to immerse themselves in a particular academic subject, live on campus, and explore academic and career opportunities. Harvard University offers the Secondary School Program which allows for high school students to live at Harvard, attend classes, and earn college credit.

According to Summer Parenting Expert, Jill Tipograph of Every Thing Summer, during the summer you should push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and seek leadership experience. College admission officers at Ivy League schools continue to reiterate the importance of leadership experience. There are several summer camps which offer residential summer programs for high school students that focus upon developing leadership experience. But whatever you decide don’t go for the same old stuff you have done. Step out and push yourself. You can learn something about yourself along the way.

So take a break from SAT practice tests and follow your passions this summer. The results will show come college acceptance time. Remember to include all your summer experiences in your admission applications.  The time and commitment that you dedicated during those hot summer months will help enhance your application profile and increase your chance of acceptance to selective schools.

Filed under: Interviews — admin @ 6:53 am

Interviews present a great opportunity for applicants to seal the admission deal. As round two admission interview invites have gone out, here are some things that applicants should keep in mind to avoid derailing their candidacy.

Schools differ when it comes to the admission interview. Some schools interview a large portion of the applicant pool but admit a small percentage (Wharton, as an example); others interview a smaller portion of the application pool but admit a larger size (Harvard Business School). So how should a student who receives an interview invitation interpret the interview offer? This is clearly good news—you are one step closer to being admitted. It means that you have done something good at some level with regards to your application. But that’s all you know at this point. What you don’t know for sure is what questions or holes the admission committee has identified in your candidacy. This is particularly important for schools where there is a full review of your entire application and where specific questions are highlighted for the interview (see Harvard).

The questions that may arise may be as simple as probing for more details with regards to an essay you wrote. It could be feedback that your mistake essay seems weak and for you to come up with another example. Perhaps the choice of essays and the way you approached all your essays did not reveal fully who you are and this could be a flag that the admission committee has about you. Perhaps you have focused too much on work or too much on your personal/community side. The important thing with preparing for your interview is to have one or two people who know you well evaluate your admission essays and identify the knee-jerk response/issues that jump out at them. Then you may want to have an objective person who has experience evaluating candidates to assess your story in order to flag blind spots and potential gaps/issues which you can prepare for ahead of the interview.

Some schools outsource their interviews to alumni primarily. Stanford GSB is an example. My advice to candidates interviewing at Stanford is to be prepared to talk about ANYTHING. The interview is really more of an assessment of who you are, your vibe, whether you will fit at Stanford versus how impressive your particular work project or leadership impact was. Subtlety is key. That’s not to say that other MBA programs do not ask for awareness. It matters regardless of MBA program but pay particular attention to it for Stanford. And know the schools’ brand. If a school is very big on team culture (think Kellogg, Tuck) for example, going on and on about what you did and your great, impressive achievements could signal that you are not a good fit for the program. It also appears that Stanford is taking a great deal of time in matching alumni interviewers with MBA applicants which is interesting because it allows the school to get a really good read on the candidate’s authenticity. Don’t however assume that this is based primarily on work experience similarities. It can be as simple as you mentioning that you have a passion for bullfighting….next thing you know your interviewer unbeknownst to you is an international, award-winning bullfighter. Ok, I’m being a bit fictitious, but the point is that preparation, knowing every facet of your story is key. But equally important is doing your due diligence of your interviewer when you are fortunate enough to know his/her name.

A final thought on the admission interview. Many MBA programs conduct a sizeable portion of their interviews through their second year students. While there are no major differences between alumni and student interviewers, I personally think that sometimes student interviewers can be a bit fastidious and can in some instances take their job a bit too seriously and see themselves as gatekeepers. Interviewers ask themselves whether they can see you in their program and filter your responses through this lens. I think it can be a bit awkward for an applicant who is a bit on the mature side (with tons of experience) to be interviewed by a current student who technically in the real world would be a subordinate. Just my observation. When given the choice to interview with a student versus alumna think about all facets of your story before making the decision on which option to go for. If you have never been on campus, then I recommend taking advantage of the campus interview and squeezing in a class visit ahead of the interview. It can provide some common ground to kick off the conversation.