Why You Need College Admissions Help

Are you a high school student or a parent navigating the complex world of college admissions? Feeling overwhelmed by college rankings, application requirements, essay prompts, and deadlines? You’re not alone, and we’re here to help!

Join us at CollegeAdvisor.com for an insightful and free webinar titled “Why You Need College Admissions Help.”

In this 60-min session, we’ll explore the often daunting landscape of college admissions, shedding light on why seeking professional guidance can make a significant difference in your journey. Regardless of whether you’re targeting Ivy League institutions, state universities, or liberal arts colleges, our team of expert college advisors will provide you with a roadmap to navigate the process with confidence.

Our webinar will delve into:

  • Understanding College Admissions: Learn about the multifaceted process, from understanding holistic admissions to decoding what colleges really want.
  • The Role of a College Advisor: Discover how a college advisor can tailor a strategy to your unique goals, strengths, and ambitions, thereby increasing your chances of admission success.
  • College Essay Writing Tips: Gain insights into crafting compelling personal essays that stand out in the sea of common applications.
  • Q&A Session: Your questions matter to us! We’ll round off the session with a live Q&A, where our experienced Admissions Expert will answer your questions.

Don’t leave your college future to chance! Arm yourself with the knowledge and support that can turn your college dreams into reality.

Date 05/24/2023
Duration

Webinar Transcription

2023-05-24 – Why You Need College Admissions Help

Hi everyone, and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. I’m a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor and I will be your moderator today. Today’s webinar is why you need college admissions help. Before we get started, I just wanna orient everyone with webinar timing. We’ll start off with a presentation, and then we will answer your questions in a live Q&A on the sidebar.

You can download our slides under the handouts tab and you can start so many questions in the Q&A tab. Now let’s meet our, our speaker Rachael. Hey Rachael, how are you doing? Hi. Doing well Anesha. So nice to see you. Hi everyone. My name’s Rachael Moore and I am a former admissions officer and senior advisor here at CollegeAdvisor.

Really started in the field over 20 years ago and tried a number of different things in the corporate world, doing early career talent development, career consulting in the college space, but always keep coming back. To where I started, which is at the college admissions role, and with CollegeAdvisor just found such, just found my sweet spot being able to work with students and share the experience that I had to help them in their college applications.

So super excited to be here today. All right, great. We’re excited to have you, Rachael. So yeah, I’ll just hand it over to you. I’ll be off, I’ll come back on for our Q&A and I hope everyone has a good session Til then, thank you. Hi everyone. So wanna start out with just talking about what the value can be for.

Help having a college admissions advisor is part of your work in completing your college applications or even from the very beginning, starting your college search. There’s so much out there that is so daunting and absolutely understand that it can be just where. Hard to even know where to start.

So hoping that this presentation today will help you to understand, you know, where to start for one and different. The different areas, the application and characteristics to help are muscles for you to build in presenting your best self in the, in a competitive college application process. So we’ll start off with forming a school list.

In developing an application strategy, in terms of when to start, we’ll often encourage students to. Can really start in end of sophomore year, like summer before junior year certainly throughout the fall of the junior year. What I will say though is that the very short, direct answer to this question, where in a perfect world it would be earlier rather than later.

Life happens, and Covid really taught all of us that. And the best time for you to start is when you’re ready to dig in. I think it’s just understanding that the more time you give yourself, the more you have to reflect and really evaluate where the right fit, what could be for you, and to really strategize your college applications.

But at the end of the day The fact that you’re working towards, you know, your next steps after high school, you know when you’re ready that’s the right time to be starting. So, Factors. You know, when we start thinking about developing a college list, you know, factors that influence it when you do start doing your research are of course gonna be cost what your family’s able to afford.

And there are a lot of resources out there that in admissions or your guidance office should be able to refer you to or in admissions. Counselor as well. A lot of colleges have, you know, will point you to resources that they have sort of calculators where you can put your personal family information into, get at least an idea of h how affordable a school may or may not be for you.

So cost is certainly a big factor. Location, you know, do you want a big city? Do you feel comfortable more in a small town? Are you, you know, what type of program are you looking for? Because that may determine the type of environment that you’re going to be in. Large schools, small school. Test. I recommend testing out.

You know, as best as you can, a variety of those schools. And then going from there with the, to look more for schools with the characteristics that you do like. And then obviously would have programs that you’re interested in academically and career-wise. So, how many schools do I need and what’s the right balance?

So generally we’ll say somewhere in that 12 to 15 range for some. That’s, that’s a very large number. You know, some schools will, some like high schools will even cap it around 12 applications. Depending on the competitiveness of the program that you’re applying to. How many of the high reach schools?

So Ivys, top 25 institutions, you know, if you’re heavy on those schools on your list, then we. We’d encourage you to go a little bit higher in that 12 to 15 number  and add more likelys and target schools on it. But you know, there are also a lot of students. I was one of them actually a long time ago, but I was.

One of them who had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, what I was looking for what felt right. And so I had a much smaller list than that and it worked out for me. So it’s really dependent on a student’s interest, their goals. The number one thing that I would just make sure of is that there is a good balance of.

Let’s say we’re using 12 schools is your number on the list. You know, a third of those is likely. A third of those is targets and the upper third to be the more high reach schools. In terms of considering your application lists and strategy as well. It’s also when to apply, you know, and there are a lot of factors that go into it.

We do a lot of sessions that you can actually go into and watch from previous recorded sessions that we’ve done, or I’m sure we’ll have more in the few. Very near future. But when to apply, you know, there’s, there are so many terms out there that sound really familiar, but their differences are really important to understand, such as early decision, which is, you know, a binding application.

Meaning if you’re accepted to a school early decision, then you will in fact be going to that school. So that’s a big decision and commitment to make. So early on in your senior year Early action, which is still early usually around a November one deadline, but they can range from mid-October to, you know, mid-November or later as well.

But those, especially if you’re really interested in a school, it’s near a top choice, could be a really great option for you too. And then there’s regular decision, which I always like to explain to students that the majority of applications actually do come in regular decision. There’s certainly many that go for an early application.

But at the end of the day the majority of applications still come in for regular, and what I will always say when I count. Or counsel a student is the best time to apply is when you can submit your best application. So if you can, if you need a little bit more time to make sure that it’s a perfect representation of you, it’s polished then apply regular, because any edge that you might get applying early, if it’s not your best work, you’ve generally lost that edge.

So, That’s a lot to consider on one slide, but hopefully that just gives you at least a good, you know, sort of basic understanding of what a lot of these different terms when you start looking for a school, things to look for.

So brand creation, your personal narrative. So. You have your list, you’ve decided you know where you want to apply, when you wanna apply. Now it’s about being a competitive, you know, how are you gonna present yourself and those applications. So you know, brand, A lot of times we call that a personal brand.

Certainly we call it that for college students like I’ve worked with in career services and as an adult. It’s truly, I believe, in our world, an essential skill for looking for jobs, different opportunities that you have, being able to really speak to, you know, what it is that likes your fire, what you enjoy, the opportunities that you’re looking for, and why you’re such a great fit for whether it’s a pro.

College or a job or an internship, even a volunteer opportunity. Really being able to make it clear for people that you’re a good fit and why that’s essentially how you develop your brand. The simplest way when I work with students that I try to explain. That personal brand is when I’m done reading an application.

When I used to be an admissions officer and I had to make a decision or a recommendation for that student, when I see their name, what were the words that I want to come to my mind that ref that? Really explain that or exemplify that student. So you know that right there, those few words that you decide on.

That essentially is your brand, and that’s when we’re gonna go through every element of your application and see how best we can organically demonstrate that through your activities that you’ve been involved in, how you spent your time out of class, which we’ll talk a little bit more about that on another slide.

You know your values, your talents and strengths, you know what interests you. That’s what we’re gonna try and make sure is evident through the various elements of the application. And the other piece that I would just say that if you work with me I’m always going to keep encouraging you to go layer deeper, is when our layers deeper is speaking to your why.

So if you tell me, you know, that you’re really excited about pursuing research opportunities because you wanna be, you know, you wanna work in a medical research lab someday. Well, it sounds amazing, and I’m not at all questioning that that’s the path that you are meant to take, but you’ve gotta be able to speak to why.

Why the medical field? What is it about the lab? What happens to you when you’re in that environment? What excites you? You know, what do you hope to, you know? Accomplish or be a part, what type of environment do you hope to be a part of, routine that you wanna work on in that environment? So really being able to explain, you know, be beyond stating what your goals are in your interests.

Really being able to give some depth to that is essential.

So extracurricular needs and impact. So just sort of tailing off of that, why it truly is all about meaningful communication. So thinking about, you know, how you spend your time outside of class. Every student’s journey is different. There is. Big myth out there. It was there when I was applying to school a long time ago.

It hasn’t left, but you know, students really put a lot of pressure on themselves and think that they need to have an application where if it’s on the common app and there are 10 spaces for activities you or honors you’ve been involved with, you have to fill in every one of those 10. That’s not necessarily the case because if you’re just listening something, but there wasn’t much depth to it, maybe you went to a club meeting a couple times a year, weren’t really involved.

There’s not a lot of depth there. And it’s not really speaking to how that’s shaped. Some of the goals and interests that you wanna pursue later on in college and in life. So, you know, it’s really, you know, some students also cannot spend as much time on their activities as they would like to because they have personal commitment.

You know, maybe they have to care for a younger sibling after school while parents are working or maybe you have a job are helping out with family members who are in the community. You know, that’s a huge part of who you are and their incredible experiences that have helped you to grow and skills develop through that as well.

So it’s really about how do we talk about the impact of what you’ve done on your growth on others and making that really clear for how that’s shaped, you know, some of the goals that you are sharing for the future. And to that point, you know, how you describe how you spend that time is definitely just as important as the activities in themselves.

So when I say it’s so much more about quality than it is quantity, that is absolutely sincere. The other piece I’ll say is leadership. Not everybody can be an officer in an organization. Not everyone’s the best fit for that, but. You’re really on fire for what that organization is all about. And you contribute in so many meaningful ways.

And maybe your energy for the mission of groups that you’re a part of, or teens that you’re a part of is really contagious. But you don’t necessarily wanna be running the organization. That leadership, you know, getting people to join you or being able to contribute, you know, quiet, no matter how quiet or unassuming your part may be, you can still exemplify leadership in ways that don’t have to have the title attached to it.

So essay development. Essay development. Really, you know, I think this is the question we get asked most when people find out if you work in college admissions, you know, what is it, what’s the best essay you’ve ever read? What makes a difference between a good or not so good essay, you know, Is it? Do you really read them?

Yes. The answer is we really read them and I will tell you that it’s always been my favorite part of the app. I think most, if not all admissions officers would say the same thing, but it’s truly I. Serves as the core of your personal narrative. You know, we get some clues about who you are when we re look at the classes you’ve chosen to take, or the level of challenge that you’ve pursued for yourself.

The rigor the activities or how you spend time outside of your class certainly gives us clues about who you are, but, At the end of the day, that essay is the opportunity to really put those clues together a little bit more and hear your voice. Yes, it’s daunting. I think part of the white reason it seems so daunting is there are a lot of opinions and suggestions out there online, in your community, in your school, friends, parents, teachers who.

Have had good experiences or maybe not so good experiences that have influenced their perception of someone’s outcome with an application and makes them think they’re an expert on the field. And what I. Often, or I’m quick to say is that first of all, most students ultimately don’t know what specifically it was that got them admitted to a school in the first place.

It’s rarely just one thing. It’s, you know, a very holistic review. But the other piece is there, the only sort of magic solution to what makes a great essay that I can offer is, That it’s authentic. That it’s an opportunity to really hear your voice. When I work with students, I say to them, I really wanna walk a journey with you.

You know, whatever it is that you choose to write about, I want to be able to hear your voice as I’m reading it. And you know, that takes time. Good writing takes a lot of time. The other tip that I hope is helpful is. Just understanding that the writing for a personal statement or a college essay is generally very different than other writing you’ve ever had to do.

You know, you know what you need to do to get an A for a paper in class for a person, for your personal statement. I want you to think about a personal memoir. That tone, you know, again, it’s sharing your experience, your thoughts on the paper, of course, what makes an a in terms of good grammar, really po polished thought out.

That’s still true. But it’s, there isn’t something that you have to do, like I said, that secret that’s out there that you have to hit, that, you know, an admissions officer’s actually looking for. What we’re looking for is the perspective that you bring.

So how a personal advisor helps in the admissions process? Well, ideally we help simplify the process by helping you to break it down. You know, I’ve talked about the different elements. Of an application beyond the things you know that are understood, like your grades and your courses that you’ve selected, and letters of recommendation, but those parts that you really have even more control over.

So the activities and honors section, the college list, you know, the essay development, you know, it’s a lot. And one piece really should compliment the other. They have a purpose but they’re distinct from each other. A advisor can really help you to simplify that process and break it down into smaller pieces and action items so that you can really start to build and gain momentum on the work that you continue to put into the process.

Certainly hoping to strategize pros and cons about when to apply and how to apply and just one-to-one guidance based on, you know, looking through college exploration, your application and your selection. So much time is focused on, understandably, on the school list. Getting those applications done.

But once those applications get sent, there’s actually a lot more work to do once you get those decisions, you know, as to what your options actually are. Sifting through the pros and the cons, sifting through potential scholarship opportunities and ex. Exploring those, that’s all really important and it’s daunting in a different way.

So certainly it’s an honor to be able to help sort of finish that process and help you feel confident moving forward to your college at the end of your senior year. So certainly, you know, br, personal branding, brand establishment, it’s a very sophisticated skillset and there’s a lot out there. You know, I think students in today’s world are certainly much savvier at that than.

Previ many previous ones. But it’s still not easy. And maybe it’s just really having someone who’s more unbiased but has your best interest at heart to help you figure out how it is you wanna present yourself and feel comfortable doing that. That’s, I think that’s one of the biggest value adds that a personal advisor can.

Support you with and certainly reducing stress and anxiety, which is so high just in our normal day-to-day life. But then you add the pressure of applying to schools on top of all the work you’re still doing now, like your activities or helping out at home or in your community and your homework and your classes.

It’s a lot. So just having someone there to you can count on to help make sure that you’re gonna have that time and direction set aside to, you know, really make sure that you’re leveraging the best opportunities and time available to you to work on your applications can be really helpful.

Okay. Thanks so much Rachael for that great presentation. We are gonna keep it moving. So that is the end of the presentation, part of the webinar. I hope that you found Rachael’s information helpful, and remember that you can download the slides, excuse me, from the link under the handouts. Tab we’re gonna move on to the live Q&A.

I’ll read through questions that you submitted through the Q&A tab. Place them into the public chat so everyone can see them, and then read them aloud so that Rachael can have a chance to answer. If you’re having any challenges with submitting questions, just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing page.

You might have to log out and log back in. Sorry, I’m laughing. Yeah, your, your visitors back there, Michelle. But no worries. No worries. They’re adorable. Saving grace.

So, oh, okay. So you, you mentioned a little bit around the college essay, and so one person asked, what are the first steps to creating a college essay? How can or should I jumpstart the process? Ooh, I love that question. Thank you for that. So my recommendation is, Starting with the common application because inevitably you’re likely going to have at least one school, if not several, that accept the common application.

And part of that app is there are seven prompts for the personal statement, which is just a fancy term for their essay. My recommendation. And I’ll give you tips to help encourage you to see the wisdom. Hopefully this advice is choose three, choose three of those prompts. And the last one is choose, you know, basically open-ended.

So you can choose your own prompt pretty much. But choose three that you feel. Are intriguing to you, or at least you could begin to write a response too free. Write three quarters of a page and don’t worry about grammar, don’t worry about how it’s coming off. Just write. And after you’ve done that, take a look and see how it feels.

You know, do you feel you could keep going with one or two of them? Do you know? A lot of times what happens in those free rights is you get other ideas, it becomes something else and maybe even answers a different prompt that you were thinking of, and that’s okay. But at least it, it, the way I describe the essay.

Writing processes, you’re building muscles. Again, it’s not writing most of us have ever done before, so you just kind of gotta give yourself the grace to feel it out a bit, which again, is why the sooner you do it gives you that time and decreases the pressure a little bit about getting it done the way you want, it, it the way you want it to.

So that is my number one piece of information or. Sort of advice for starting the asset process. Yeah, no, I love that. Tip around, just like getting started and doing free writing, I had a student who came in very prepared, thought she knew exactly what she wanted to write about, and she wrote it. And it was, it wasn’t, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what she wanted to.

Yeah. And so she, I, I gave her this exercise and we were like, just go and write nonstop for 10 minutes. Look at the prompt. Mm-hmm. Whatever comes to mind. Just write it on the page for 10 minutes. Don’t stop, don’t edit. Just write, just keep writing whatever you can think about. And she, you know, that free write led to like the essay that we Yeah.

Music. Because she like, you know, it did, it just felt more natural. It felt more of her voice rather than this thing she was putting together because she thought that topic would, would impress. Impress them. That’s the one. Yes, that’s the one. Don’t write to impress because you don’t know who’s reading it.

You don’t know what’s gonna impress them. What’s gonna impress is when it’s. What I say, it sounds so cliche now, but authentic, you know, we’ll do the polishing later. No worries on that. But just get those thoughts out. And the other piece, because what some students, especially those that just really do not like writing that I say is listen, have a folder.

That says, save for later. And there’s so many times that even if something doesn’t make the cut for that personal statement, yeah, it’ll help out with a supplement or somewhere else. So think about how you won’t have to start from scratch every single time that you have an essay, because maybe you started to dive into those thoughts to answer another question later on.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Keep everything, save everything all about repurposing. Do you have tips for meeting application deadlines and managing schedules? So to that, that last point you made about reducing stress and anxiety, how can folks start to kind of manage their schedules, manage their time thoughtfully even before they perhaps start working with CollegeAdvisor.com?

Absolutely. Oh my gosh, that’s such a great question. So. Honestly, I think first things first, if you can just dedicate it, you know, promise yourself that this is your time, this is now, you’re not gonna get it back. You know, you get out of it what you put into it. So if it’s an hour a day, Even if it’s, you know, you say, I’m gonna spend, you know, five day, four or five days a week, like on this college search process.

You know, and for, I would say, first it’s about the list. You know, just starting to research and get an idea of what feels right to you. And then from there, you know, looking at their. You know what goes into the applications? Simple things like even, right. I’ll tell you a great way to start managing your time is.

The things you can knock off pretty quickly that don’t require as much in-depth thought. Like who’s gonna write your letter of recommendation for a teacher and reaching out to them. Also, you know, the activities and honors section even. You don’t have to go for a perfection on that right away either, but just start jotting down.

You know how it is. You spend your time. And go past 10, it’s fine. And I know you see you can do more, but just get started because the more you get into the rhythm of it, you’re gonna be able to see the connections between the different parts of the application. And also it’s nice to intermingle a little bit like the different elements because you’re gonna get sick of writing essays sometime and you’re going to at times feel like a little bit of a writer’s block or like, it’s just so much.

So, you know, get your foundation, know where you’re headed. Mm-hmm. But certainly, You, you can sort of intermingle the work here and there based on what your time looks like too. The earlier you start, the more you can be strategic and, and as you were even saying that last bullet point of reducing, like having an advisor reduces stress and anxiety.

I think it organizes the stress. I think it just gives you more concrete con like deadlines about how to manage everything. Yeah. Yeah. I know it’s anxious and nervous and but so it’s just, How do you get through it, I think is the biggest benefit. Yeah, I mean I, and I’ve really, cuz test taking’s generally, like that’s not my forte giving, you know, I’ve never taught workshops on SATs and whatnot.

But actually through this work I’ve learned a lot of great strategies from advisors who, that is their thing. And one of the biggest takeaways I’ve gotten from it is you’ve just gotta consistently. You know, practice and set aside your time. Mm-hmm. And practice. And I think that’s actually a really great guide for the college application process.

Okay. You’re done with the s a t now, like use that time for. The college search process and the applications, you’ve already built those muscles for preparing the s a t. Just keep going. I’m gonna take a quick break to do a quick psa. So for those in the room who aren’t already working with us if Rachael’s.

Presentation hasn’t convinced you or has convinced you we know that the process is overwhelming. Our team of over 400 former admissions officers like Rachael and admissions experts like myself, are ready to help you and your family navigate the process through one-on-one advising. So you can absolutely take the next step in your college admissions journey by signing up for a free 45 to 60 minute strategy session with one of our admission specialists by using the QR code that is on the screen.

During that meeting, we’ll review your current workers, your application strategy, discuss how everything aligns with your potential college list. And outline the tools you need to stand out in the competitive admissions world. So we’ll leave that QR code up and get back to some of our questions right now.

The next question that I have for you do they need to take the ACT and the SAT or is one preferred over the other? Love that question because I know students feel very conflicted about it. I think I have good news on this one, which is no preference. It’s truly which one you feel the most comfortable with.

I recommend just taking. You know, give each a practice, test a try. See how it felt. See what that practice test score came back as, and the one that you felt the best about. Go with that one. Don’t overthink it, and then we can strategize from there. Is to when to take it maximum number of times to take it.

Which my general answer to that is do not do it more than three. So that you can start focusing on other parts of the application. Cuz the test, you know, if a school accepts the test, it is a part of the process. If it’s a test, optional school. That, you know, and you decide to submit it, then you need to understand that that’s part of the process.

And it can be really good you know, if you feel good about your scores, but you know, you j it’s just important to understand that just because a school’s test optional doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter at all. Like if you’re gonna do it, commit to it and there can be advantages to it. So sp keep keeping on that topic is an application less strong without testing.

That’s a great question. I would not say that that’s true. It, but what I, I think the best way to answer that is if there is not testing, it means all the more important for you to. Put your effort into presenting the best application possible with the writing, the, you know, how you communicate throughout it, the grades.

It’s, it’s going, if something’s not being used, You have to understand that it weighs even more heavily in other areas that are being used, and that by the way, was true even before Test Optional was so present in the college admissions culture. Nothing has changed from that respect.

And so keeping on like par with like things you can’t be doing to offset the testing, I’m gonna go back to extracurriculars. And so one question is, can extracurriculars negatively impact once chances of getting in? This person went on to say that they’re in like several different, they have some arts ones, they have some STEM ones, some sports ones.

So are there, can you have too many extracurricular? That’s a, here’s why I like that question. I think in part because I just had a student yesterday that I met with who was sort of going through this in her head particularly from the perspective of she really had interesting activities. Hmm, but it didn’t fit any sort of like we were talking about the branding and the, you know, and what was she gonna do to help com, you know, communicate why she’s interested in a certain field.

And so we talked a lot about how, you know, that’s part of the journey. Is figuring out, you know, testing different areas. You know, it’s, I so much more am interested in your why again, you know, why’d you shift or you know, how did you get to this point now? And you know, for this student in particular, she had more of a science sort of med orientation.

She wants business. But there wasn’t a whole lot there actually that, you know, you would be left, at least on the surface, wondering, well, how did you get here and why business? So we talked about being able to shadow different experiences that she could in research, she could do networking. To really be able to demonstrate why that she’s serious about this and so, and what’s the type of program she was looking for?

Them being able to communicate why, you know, how she feels it’s going to help her to grow. And what her goals are. So I know I took that, like I answered that maybe a little bit differently than what you intended, but I hope it’s helpful, like just to show that it’s not about the quantity as long as you are fully engaged, you know, your curiosity, your openness, being all in, like those are the characteristics.

Of an amazing student and an amazing professional. So it’s so much more about how you demonstrate who you are. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, the resume.

Is that good enough? I think, I think that effectively answers the question. There’s just sort of like, how do you navigate it and what is the impact of, of extracurriculars? And so I think the thing that I pulled out from what you shared is like, there’s a theme. There has to be a theme. And if there is.

And, and if the theme doesn’t track with your major, you just have to explain why. Like you Yeah. That might, you might just now have given yourself an additional information essay. Yeah. Get some context to, to, you know, your, your overall, your overall profile. And also probably something to talk about in an interview as well.

I, I, I think an interview would be a bad time to also bring that out. Absolutely. And just as an example, like, just to sort of wrap up that question, I mean, I’ve had students. And I you have too. They’ll say like, actually, I just asked my husband this example the other day. He was a golfer and he played in college, but he did it in his senior year.

And I said to him, what didn’t you do? That actually, and I’m thinking about it from the perspective of like, Showing your commitment and employers, and that’s very similar to high school too. A lot of students think like, I’ve gotta show them the four years. But yeah, you know, I’ve had, I had a student this year’s swimmer and she just did not wanna do it her senior year, but she thought she really had to.

And I said, that sounds like a, like she really was going, she used the word I. Hate it at this point. I said, well, that sounds like a terrible way to spend her senior year. Like, what are you doing? A place of it. Yeah. And she was, you know, she was really getting into her art and journaling and I’m like, great, we can talk about that.

So, yeah. Yeah, you, yeah. That’s interesting though, to do a sport all that time and then just come to find out you hate it and you’re like, I can’t do another year. It just so burned out. Yeah, depending, especially depending on how intense it’s, but speaking of student athletes I don’t know. Let me, I think you can speak a little bit to the athletic recruitment process, but let me know if you can’t.

Should an athlete apply after receiving an offer or before? Does it depend on your vision and how does an athletic offer impact admissions? So what is the, the process for athletes? I’m actually not the person to answer that, but we do have amazing people. I’ve even done sessions within CollegeAdvisor to learn more about it, so, Great question, but that would be someone I’d love to refer to a couple of people in mind.

I, I’m not an expert, but I think off the top, you have to be doing both simultaneously. So you have to be talking to coaches, understanding if the coach is going to advocate for you in the process, still be working on your essays, still be working on, you know, your grades, test scores. So as an athlete, you don’t.

Always get, I don’t even know if you necessarily get excused from any of the application requirements. Oh gosh, no. The school is get excused requires testing. If the school requires an essay, you still have to put together a complete and thoughtful application. And then it’s more so conversations with the coaches that allow them to advocate or rank you in the admissions process.

So you do have to be doing a little bit of both. At the same time. So yeah, and think about it. I can’t remember if you could answer that. No, that’s good. And I would just say like, think about that. Like, say you’re on the bubble, you don’t necessarily know where you are on that list, you know, but, and maybe you’re an amazing student, but it’s kind of overshadowed actually by.

What an amazing athlete you are, and if you’re sort of on the bubble against others in a competitive process, don’t you wanna make sure that you’re presenting that best person and opening up the most opportunities, whether it’s on the academic admission side or on the. Sports side, you know, it does, it does work both ways.

So, good advice. Yeah. So we are going to end it there. Thank y’all for joining us tonight. Thank you to Rachael for, for coming through, and we do hope that you will join us. For our Q2 webinars next month. But until next time, take care and have a great evening. Thanks so much, Rachael. Thanks Anesha.

It was great to see you. Good to see you as well. Bye bye.