Overview: CollegeAdvisor.com Client Success Stories
The weeks leading up to senior year are when college application season really kicks off. But it’s hardly the beginning of your college journey. After all, creating a strong college application isn’t something you can cram for at the last minute. The student you become over the course of your four years in high school is what ultimately makes your application stand out.
One of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear about the college application process is to start early. For some students, that means starting their essays the summer before senior year. But if you want to enter application season with confidence and a clear sense of direction, it helps to start much sooner.
The choices you make throughout high school shape the story you’ll tell in your applications. That’s why many CollegeAdvisor students begin working with us well before senior year. Instead of trying to figure everything out at once, they have someone to help them make informed decisions every step of the way. By the time applications open, they already have a strong foundation to build on.
In this edition of our Client Success Stories, we interviewed Francesca, a driven student from California. She worked with CollegeAdvisor throughout all four years of high school and through the admissions process. Her journey shows what’s possible with long-term support, as well as the difference early guidance can make when application season arrives.
Meet Francesca
Francesca was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US when she was just six months old. Having attended the same small, private Christian school since sixth grade, she often found herself creating opportunities for herself and her classmates. She explained, “I don’t have as many resources, you could say, as [a] public school sometimes. So a lot of my journey has been starting my own clubs.”
That initiative shaped much of her high school experience. “I’m president of [the] Young Women’s Leadership Club at my school, which has been a big part of my growth,” she said. She also served as manager of her school’s soccer team.
Outside of school, Francesca continued looking for ways to challenge herself. “I did Girls Who Code [and] I’ve been doing communications classes through ASU. I’ve done macroeconomics… [and] I did a UCLA computer science class over the summer,” she said. With pre-college summer programs and an impressive resume under her belt, you might assume Francesca was always confident about her college prospects. But the truth is, Francesca — like many students — felt overwhelmed by the idea of tackling the college admissions process alone.
How did Francesca feel going into the college admissions process?
As the only child of immigrants, Francesca wasn’t sure what to expect from the college application process. “I had no idea what college was gonna look like,” Francesca told us, “[or] what I have to prepare for, how early I have to start.” Even before starting high school, Francesca felt anxious about her future.
“I was stressing, and I was [doing] online research. What do I need to start doing as soon as I’m a freshman in high school? I was so nervous, and I came across CollegeAdvisor.” Though she figured CollegeAdvisor’s online resources could help, the thought of finding an advisor so early on hadn’t crossed her mind. “I ended up getting messages from the company and they were like, oh, let’s schedule a call and you can try this out and we can talk to you about what it actually is.”
After meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists, Francesca decided having an advisor was the way to go. “I [thought] it [would] be a big help,” she recalled, “and my parents were on board too, because they’re like, ‘I don’t know what this is about. I don’t know how to help you.’”
Instead of trying to figure everything out on her own, Francesca now had someone she could turn to for guidance and ask questions along the way. Looking back, it was a decision that shaped the rest of her high school experience.
Getting Started with CollegeAdvisor
The first step in Francesca’s college journey? Getting matched with her advisor. “I remember when I first signed up for CollegeAdvisor,” Francesca told us, “[they said] you can have a preference if you want a woman to be your advisor, or a male, or someone else. And I was like, okay, I think I’m gonna press female. I feel like that would be something that [would help me] feel more comfortable, and I ended up with Fritzie.”
After getting to know Francesca and discussing her goals and preferences, our Admissions Specialists paired her with Fritzie de Mata. Fritzie is one of our Senior Advisors with more than 20 years of experience at the University of California. Here’s what Francesca had to say about working with Fritzie:
“I feel so lucky because she’s also a Filipina like me. I feel like we’ve been able to relate in so many ways and she’s just been such a kind and caring person.”
Having started working together so early in high school, Fritzie had plenty of time to get to know Francesca. One of the things that stood out most to Francesca was how Fritzie began each meeting. “She asks, ‘How are you? How have you been doing?’ It’s not, ‘We need to get straight into business’… You can tell she has a lot of intent and care behind her work,” Francesca said.
How Fritzie helped set Francesca up for success
Beyond making sure Francesca felt comfortable, Fritzie also set expectations from the very beginning. “One of the first things that she told me, I think it was our first meeting, she said, ‘You’ll get as much out of this experience as you put into it.’ And I really think that was something that I kept in the back of my head throughout the last four years.”
With those expectations in place, Francesca and her advisor got to work. Here’s how their partnership evolved throughout her high school career.
Freshman and Sophomore Year: Exploring Majors and Extracurriculars
Though Fritzie and Francesca started working together early on, they weren’t meeting regularly at first. Francesca told us, “She definitely let me know at the beginning of the process, that [my freshman to sophomore year, we would be meeting a lot less… So we would have maybe twice a year check-ins in freshman [and] sophomore year, just to make sure I’m at extracurriculars [and] my classes are going well.”
Here’s how Francesca described Fritzie’s support during the first half of high school: “I think the main thing that was helpful at that stage was [Fritzie] was pushing me to try different extracurriculars…. She was so helpful in opening new opportunities at that stage, because obviously, as a freshman, I wasn’t super sure about what I wanted to do.
With Fritzie’s encouragement, Francesca explored opportunities she may not have otherwise gone for. “Genuinely, I don’t think I would’ve thought, oh, let me do a UCLA computer science class [at] the beginning of my sophomore year,” she said. “I just would’ve never thought that’s something I’m capable of doing. But I think she encouraged me to just try it.”
Fritzie also helped Francesca figure out her classes. “She was someone who I could go over my schedule with a lot and try to figure out what’s a good level to start challenging myself more…. I started taking APs my sophomore year, and she was really helpful in encouraging me with that,” Francesca said.
How trying new extracurriculars and classes helped Francesca find her major
“When I was a freshman, I was so math/STEM. I wanted to be a computer science major,” Francesca told us. To further explore her interest in computer science, Fritzie suggested Francesca participate in a summer program with Girls Who Code.
“They basically teach you, you know, the ins and outs of coding as a beginner,” Francesca explained. “And I did it, and it was fun, and I really enjoyed it. But the part that I enjoyed the most was actually communicating with other women and being able to work together as a team and get feedback from female mentors. So that was the thing that had really stood out to me. And I had taken my UCLA computer science class that same summer and I got an A, but it was a long, hard road and I was like, I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.”
Reevaluating interests
Francesca thought those experiences would help reaffirm the path she thought she wanted to take. Instead, those classes and experiences helped Francesca better understand what she was looking for in a future career.
“It’s just been that exploration and trying and failing and just trying again. And it’s been really good — I found out I like the social aspect and I want to continue to pursue that with a major that involves that. And then I did my communications class and then macro/econ classes, and there’s something that’s still kind of math and STEM related, but still fits me.”
Throughout that process, Fritzie encouraged Francesca to keep exploring instead of feeling like she had to have everything figured out right away. “Fritzie encouraged me to just try all those things. So that’s kind of how I ended up at business. It’s been a weird road, but I liked it and I’m really happy with where I am.”
With a major in mind, Francesca was now ready to start researching potential colleges.
Junior Year: Building a College List
At first, Francesca felt pressured to aim for top-tier schools. “I feel like I’ve always kind of been at the top of my class and people have known that. And I felt a lot of pressure, especially freshman year, to get into one of those top 20 schools and be somewhere that was prestigious,” she told us. However, things changed as time went by. “I think over the last four years, especially when we started my college search and Fritzie walked me through that. I realized I don’t really need to go to a top 20 place to be happy and be somewhere that I really like.”
With that pressure behind her, the next step was figuring out what she actually wanted in a school. “I feel like CollegeAdvisor was really proactive about helping me find [the right school]. ‘Cause there’s so many colleges, and I didn’t really know how to go about that. I thought I was gonna have to do it all on my own,” she said.
Creating a focused list
To help narrow down her options, Francesca was connected with CollegeAdvisor’s College List team. She completed a series of questionnaires about her interests and what she was looking for in a college. She remembered answering questions like, “Where do you wanna live? How big of a population would you like to have at [a] school? Do you care about there being sports? Do you care about specific dorm situations?”
Using her responses, the team put together a list of schools that matched her preferences. “They sent me back a list of maybe 50 colleges that would be a good fit for me,” Francesca recalled. “And that’s when I kind of started to think [of] what’s important to me and [what] I don’t want to do. And I realized there’s a lot of options for me.”
As she continued researching schools, Francesca realized she wanted to stay close to home. By the end of junior year, she had narrowed her list to about 20 colleges. Her list was mostly in California, with a few out-of-state schools to keep her options open. After making a few more strategic cuts, she had her final college list and was ready to start applying.
Senior Year: Tackling Applications and Writing College Essays
With so many college essays to write, Francesca needed a strategy to get started. Here’s how she and Fritzie approached it:
“We did all my UC PIQs [Personal Insight Questions] first. They have four essays that are [about] community, and then creativity, and you could choose different topics. So after doing those four, there were a lot of topics I could recycle and reuse.” Starting with the PIQs gave Francesca the momentum she needed to tackle the rest of her applications. “Once I got the ball rolling, it was great.”
Brainstorming a topic
Of course, getting started was only part of the challenge. Like many students, Francesca wasn’t sure what story she wanted to tell. “I think the most challenging part was probably brainstorming my essays,” Francesca told us, “because I had no idea what I was gonna write about.” Rather than jumping straight into essay prompts, Fritzie focused on helping Francesca identify the experiences and values that mattered most.
“We had one really long one-hour meeting,” Francesca recalled, “and [Fritzie] went through some questions…not even thinking about a prompt yet. [She asked], ‘What’s important to you? What have you felt like is a big impact? What have you spent most of your time on that you feel is really instrumental to what you want to do in your future?’ And I’m just talking…. I’m not even writing anything down. But she took some notes and then she sent the notes back to me.”
Those conversations helped Francesca uncover a common thread running through many of her experiences. “We kind of found this string that kind of connects these themes and all of these things. One of mine was women. That’s something that’s been really important to me, with my own club and just the people in my life. So she was able to help [by saying], ‘I see something that connects here.’ So she was really great about that.”
Reviewing her essays
Once Francesca had finished her essays, she also took advantage of CollegeAdvisor’s Essay Review Team for another round of feedback. “It was good to see some external perspective and not feel like, this [is a] person I’ve known for four years, I feel like she might just be being nice to me,” she told us. “[The team] reviewed my application and they said it was good, so I feel like it gave me some confidence. I really liked that that existed and was there to help me.”
What was Francesca’s favorite part about working with CollegeAdvisor?
We asked Francesca what she loved about working with us, and she said, “The fact that I had been doing it for so long, I think, was my favorite part, just because I had always felt comfortable with the people I was working with. Some of my extra advisors changed throughout the four years, but Fritzie stayed the entire time… So by the time I was in my junior, senior year, it felt like I already knew her, and she already knew me. It was just so easy to talk about whatever we needed to talk about.”
That trust proved especially valuable when it came time to write her college essays. “It’s so personal, and you might be scared to talk about it to someone who’s a stranger, right? But I didn’t really feel like she was a stranger by that point. So it was really great.”
Francesca’s Admissions Results and the Road Ahead
After four years of hard work, Francesca had plenty to celebrate. She applied to 17 colleges, including four University of California campuses, three California State Universities, and several out-of-state schools.
Francesca told us where she got accepted: “I got into Penn State, and then I got into Cal State Fullerton. I got into Santa Clara University. They gave me $9,000 a year; it was a Dean scholarship, so that was nice. And then I got into Gonzaga and they gave me $33,000 a year, which was good. Then Rutgers–Camden … they gave me almost a full ride — I think I got $32,000. And then Rutgers–Newark, I also got in. Those are the early ones that I applied to, and they responded to me early too, so it was nice.”
By the time all of her admissions decisions were in, Francesca had plenty of great options to choose from. Her final decision came down to UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara. Ultimately, she chose UC San Diego because it offered the strong academics she wanted while allowing her to stay close to home.
In the end, Francesca found not only the right college, but the right major, too. This fall, she’ll begin at UC San Diego as a Business Economics major.
Francesca’s Advice for Future Applicants
Looking back on her own experience, here’s the advice Francesca would give to future applicants:
“The thing I would say is just jump right into it. Don’t be really scared, and don’t limit yourself by not being fully open and honest about what your goals are and what you think you want to do if you’re unsure about your major. That was definitely me, and I was kind of scared…. But I’ve talked through so much of that stuff with Fritzie. She’s just been a great sounding board to the point where I ended up not having those worries.”
That openness, she says, is what allowed her to get the most out of the experience. “Just be open and be ready to talk. Don’t have any walls up. I know that’s hard, but I think it’s worth it.”
She also emphasized that students play an important role in the process of working with an advisor. “A big part of [success] is just putting as much effort into the program and using it to your advantage. That’s really what makes it successful. You can’t just sit there and not work with your counselors. Reach out and try to be your best self in this experience. I think as long as you’re putting a lot into it, you’ll get just so much out of it.”
Why CollegeAdvisor?
After four years of working with CollegeAdvisor, here’s how Francesca summed up her experience:
“CollegeAdvisor is so useful because it takes a lot of that pressure off of you, especially because I wasn’t someone who knew a lot about the college process. The whole program is really amazing at being a helping hand whenever you need it.”
Francesca’s story is proof that college planning doesn’t have to wait until senior year. Are you wondering whether CollegeAdvisor is the right fit for your family? Schedule a call with one of our Admissions Specialists to learn more.
This article was written by Stefanie Tedards. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.
