Why You Need College Admissions Help

Webinar Transcription

2023-02-21 – Why You Need College Admissions Help

Anesha: Hi everyone and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. Pardon me today, I have a little bit of a cold, but I am a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor and I will be your moderator today. Today’s session is, “Why You Need College Admissions Help.” Before we get started, I just want to orient everyone with webinar timing.

So we’ll start off with a presentation and provide some tips and guidance, and then we will answer your questions in a live Q& A. On the sidebar, you can download our slides right now and you can start submitting questions in the Q& A. Under the Q and a tab whenever you get started. Now, let’s meet our panelists.

Ferrell. Hey, Ferrell. How are you doing? I’m well. How are you this evening? I’m good. I’m great.

Ferrell: Well, thanks so much for being here. And again, my name is Ferrell Armstrong. I’m a former admissions officer. In fact, I was the former assistant director of admissions at Vanderbilt University, where I was the head of international admissions and also served on Vanderbilt admissions committee.

Before that, I was also at the University of Georgia. So I’m looking forward to speaking with you this evening and look forward to the Q and A session at the end of the program.

Anesha: Awesome. Thanks, Ferrell. That’s a great introduction. Before we get started, we just want to give Ferrell some context on, uh, what grade level you all are in.

So please take a few moments and let us now complete our work. Cool. And then we’ll move forward and get started on our presentation. Ferrell, you might get into this, but what do you feel like is the most ideal grade level to get started on the college admissions process? Whatever one you’re in right now.

Ferrell: Yeah, there’s, there’s actually data that shows students that starting to process earlier have a higher acceptance rate. Um, on some exit polling that was done several years ago, students that had actually started to put a school list together and it actually had it done by the end of sophomore year, had about a 24 percent higher acceptance rate to college because everything at that point, junior and senior year could be made unique to what their schools wanted to

Anesha: see.

I love that. Okay. That’s where I’m on track with my students and getting college list done by the end of this, uh, sophomore year. So I feel, I feel affirmed with that. So I appreciate you sharing that. That’s why you’re working CollegeAdvisor. We’ll go ahead and close our poll. And I’ll just let you know that the majority of folks right now are in 11th grade, about 60 percent of our attendees are in 11th grade, but we do have about 20 percent in ninth grade, another 20 percent in the 10th grade, and then a handful of 12th graders and others.

So everybody’s in high school. But the majority are in the 11th grade,

Ferrell: but perfect, perfect makes my life easy. So I don’t have to start talking about middle school. Um, great. Well, listen, I mean, I think the important thing to realize about this process is it’s really about how you choose to use your time, uh, both as a, you know, a student and as a parent.

And so the number one thing that I want you to understand is that this is kind of like a multi stage process that if you could spread it out over a period of years, You’re going to be a lot more, I think, happy that you did, um, and, and take a lot of stress off of you. Now, knowing that, excuse me, knowing that 60 percent of the audience this evening is also in 11th grade, um, for you 11th graders, you’re under the seven and a half month mark before your first application is due.

Uh, so if you don’t have a school list in place, if you’re not at the early stages of essay development, Um, you are behind and you’re going to want to start taking immediate action steps to get yourself back on track. Uh, so as we start talking about this process, one of the very first things that needs to start happening is you need to begin building a school list and then slowly developing an application strategy around that.

Now, the reason you would like to start developing the school as soon as possible is frankly, what I was just sharing with Anesha, the sooner that you have a more refined school list. From that moment on, every activity that you involve yourself with, every course that you enroll in, can be made unique to what the schools are wanting to see, at least the schools that you’re applying to, right?

And that will naturally, without any additional work from you, make you more competitive because For any of you that are sophomores or freshmen, um, that will allow you to have more credentials than what somebody starting this process as a senior will be able to acquire by the time they submit their application.

Uh, so the ideal situation is that you’re starting at the early stages of high school to start exploring schools. Now, with that being the case, You really need to be thinking about what is important to you in what you want in a school I I think a lot of times today and I shouldn’t say a lot of times i’d say most families I speak with Are you know wanting to send their student to a top, you know, 25 to a top 60 school It’s always name and rank name and rank name and rank and the reality of this is that I think that’s a horrible way Of looking at this process.

I would not look at this from The university’s name and rank, I would look at it at the program that you’re applying for, uh, and it’s, you know, rank. Uh, for example, when I’m, when I say the school Babson, most people I talk to have never heard of Babson before, uh, and they’re, you know, and it’s funny because I meet a lot of students that want to go into business and entrepreneurship.

Babson’s the number one entrepreneurship program in the country. And yet most people haven’t heard of it before. So understanding what programs at different schools, how capable and how unique they are is the very first thing I would start, you know, looking for when you’re, you know, identifying your school list.

But let’s, let’s get into more of the micro than the macro. Um, I think it’s important that we start by talking about finances. How are you planning on paying for your school attendance? Are you paying in cash? Um, great If you are that’s awesome Are you going to be taking partial loans or are you going to be taking full loans to pay for college?

Financial cost of attendance should be one of the major influencers in putting your school list together Another reason that is the case is that if you are going to be applying for financial aid Unfortunately, some schools today practice an admissions practice called Need Aware Admissions. Need Aware Admissions can use your financial need against you in the review and selection process.

And without knowing it, oftentimes students are applying to eight, nine Need Aware schools, when if you could limit it, You should, right? I would not really want someone applying to more than two or three if it can be prevented. Now, what are other pieces here? Well, let’s talk about geographic location. Um, are you comfortable being on a five hour plane ride away from your hometown?

Or parents, are you comfortable with your child being five hours away from you by a plane flight? Or are you more comfortable with them being a three hour car drive? So there’s a unique kind of aspect that every family and every student has to identify in terms of their comfort being away from home.

What are the, you know, types of resources that are important to you? Um, I think a lot of times students get caught up in, uh, I’ll just say it, the pitch from the admissions department. And they, they forget what makes them happy. It’s great that a school might have a Starbucks on campus. Now, if you’re a coffee snob like I am, Starbucks may not be your first choice, so that doesn’t impress you.

But maybe it does, and that teaches the room. That’s great. But do you have access to your hobbies that you currently enjoy now? You know, I’m a martial artist. I’m a Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner. And if I was to go to school right now, That would be something that’s highly important to me, the ability for me to go and train in something that I’m very passionate about.

Well, if I was looking at schools and that was not readily available to me, that would remove that school from my list because I would not be able to go have access to something that I greatly enjoy, um, you know, to a fairly frequent part of my life. Um, so thinking of things in that manner, I think will really start to give you more things to consider, not just be focusing on the name and the rank on.

Then again, I think whether this one is, um, something I think gets overlooked from time to time, and I’m not trying to be rude or arrogant or even funny here, but it’s always kind of, um, humorous when you see students that have, uh, Never experienced snow for the first time, uh, and they decided they want to come to a school that’s going to be, you know, having snow on the ground four to five months out of the year.

Um, some students aren’t really prepared for that, and, and I think that’s something that you need to be honest with yourself about in terms of what weather do you prefer. And then the final thing that I would say that should be influencing your school list is the community and its environment.

Unfortunately, today, uh, because people get caught up in the, the ranking of their school that they’re attending, uh, frankly, just being able to brag about where they’re going, a lot of students are forgetting that some of these environments are not the most welcoming. Um, look, there are wonderful schools in the top 25.

Having worked at one myself, I believe in the community that Vanderbilt has to offer. There are other schools in the top 25 in the top 1 50, even that the environment is ultra competitive. You are in direct competition with your classmates, even your roommates. And a lot of people don’t know about that until they get there.

And that’s just not something they were looking for. So you need to understand, is it a supportive community? Is it somewhere you can get easily involved? Um, or is it going to be, you know, very rigorous, not like only academically, but also from a community perspective, are you going to be in competition?

Um, so those are things that you need to start thinking about, not only as a student, but as a parent, you know, how your child responds to things, you need to start having open conversations with one another, uh, about these things. And students, if I may. I’m only 35, so I’m closer to being 17 than I am 50, and I still remember wanting to kind of push away what my parents are telling me.

Uh, and the reality here, 35, I’m looking back and seeing that they were right about 100 percent of the time. Okay? So don’t roll your eyes and discount what your parents are telling you, because in many cases, they do have your best interest at heart. They care about you. Um, now I think what’s, you know, something that is kind of up in debate right now is the number of schools that you should physically be submitting applications to.

Um, the average student today is applying to eight schools, but we are seeing kids apply to 20 and 30 schools. I mean, I’ve even had students apply to 60 schools, which. Um, we here at CollegeAdvisor do feel that the proper balance is about 10 to 12. You will start to see diminishing return, uh, once you apply to more than 15, uh, just because the amount of work that is involved.

And the reality here is most people don’t understand what the workload really comes, uh, really looks like even for just 10 or 12 schools. So at 10 or 12 schools, if you do this process as it should be done, you’re looking at 45 to 50 essays. And we’ll talk about that here in a minute. Um, because you should write each essay and make it unique to each school it’s going to.

You should not plan on reusing essays like you’re going to be told to do by your friends and your peers. So with that being the case, when you’re putting your school list together, it’s not just about choosing a bunch of schools, you need to diversify your school list. You should have public and private schools because private schools are actually more likely to provide you scholarship than what public schools are.

Understanding what scholarships though are good that you are going to be more competitive for something that you should get guidance on. Um, that being the case, private schools scare a lot of people because of that higher price tag. But after scholarship, in many cases, private schools will end up being cheaper than an in state public option for you.

To that end, you should be diversifying your list into three categories. Reach, target, and safety schools. And the smart aleck person inside of me always kind of gets a little bit of a grin when I hear people talking about what is and what isn’t a reach school. Um, and nobody I’ve spoken to in the last couple of months has been able to tell me what actually is and what isn’t.

And the reality is that your definition of a reach school is determined by the admissions rate of a school. And so, when we talk about schools like William Mary, it’s an incredible school and it’s a sub 30 percent acceptance rate. I’ve had people tell me that that’s, it’s crazy that William Mary is a rich school because it’s not a very good school.

Frankly, it’s a great school, and any school under a 30 percent acceptance rate is to be treated as a rich school. A target school has an acceptance rate of 55 percent or more. And then a safety school has an acceptance rate of 85 percent or more. And you should have a balanced list between those three categories.

Unfortunately, I do see, uh, and have experienced students applying to nothing but reach, uh, or target schools. And, you know, they, they panic and they come to us and they say, Hey, like how many, you know, what do I do now? Because I just got denied to every single school that I applied to. And when I go back and look, it’s because they applied to nothing but reach a target schools.

Um, so all of this needs to be taken into account and where things are getting trickier as applications continue to increase. More and more schools, especially public schools, are being forced by their state legislatures to put enrollment caps on their population. Um, so the University of Georgia is a fantastic example of this.

UGA has an acceptance rate of roughly 46%. Most families are going to treat it like a target school, even though they shouldn’t. Uh, but most families are going to treat it like a target school. The reality is that, as an out of state applicant, the way the math shakes out, you have about a 16 percent chance or less of getting accepted to the University of Georgia, simply because you’re an out of state applicant, and the state legislature of Georgia caps out of state enrollment at no more than 20 percent of the entire population.

So UGA, while on paper is 46 percent acceptance rate, you should be treating it as a reach school. Getting guidance on that is why organizations like CollegeAdvisor exists. And that’s what we specially specialize in to make sure that you actually understand what you’re applying to and the significance of how these schools are going to be reviewing you.

Now, that being the case, you should also be getting a deeper understanding of how schools are making their decisions. And unfortunately, I think a lot of families today still subscribe to the idea. that your admissions is based upon GPA and test score. Hopefully that was proved false by the fact that these schools now are, in most cases, still test optional.

However, many schools are going back to requiring these test scores. That being the case, your GPA and your test score are not what gets you in. Your GPA and your test score only determine if we open up your application. What really gets you in is, you know, do you fit the needs of the institution? Um, and obviously, you know, how can you make yourself stand out and make us believe that you fit those needs and would be a great addition to the school.

So that’s really affected by things that we’ll talk later in tonight’s presentation. Things like essays, activities, and even letters of recommendation. But enrollment management is legitimately a data science that you can get a master’s and even a PhD in today. And people are now going back to school to get a PhD in enrollment management to become the, you know, dean of enrollment at a school.

Enrollment management is my background. I’m not a PhD, but that is my expertise. That is what I spent the last 13 years doing. These schools are using predictive modeling and data analytics. and other algorithms to make informed selection of which exact student to accept and why. In order to stand out in that process, you should be using data to guide you as well.

And there’s not a better way to use that data than in terms of choosing your application type. So many families today get confused between the early decision and early action applications. There’s a lot of confusion, obviously, because they are pretty much the same name. Early decision is a contractually binding agreement that you can only apply to one school in the country for, and not that many schools even offer it anymore.

Early decision in a school that offers it will always be the best shot of admission, uh, because you’re, you’re signing on that contract, and, and they’re willing in many cases to take a student a little bit lower than their normal acceptability ranges, um, because you’re signing that contract and committing to them financially.

Early action in regular decision will be what 90 percent of your applications look like, right? And unfortunately today there is a pretty bad rumor between the two. Many families today are told that early action is always better than regular decision. Uh, and that is unfortunately false. This is situational by school and it’s situational by your own applicant profile.

So in order to effectively determine how you should be applying to a school, you want to be looking at historical data over the last three or four years per each school that you’re intending to apply to. And what you’re looking for is how is some of your race, gender, GPA, test score, and major of interest performed at, let’s just say, Duke, in comparison to, uh, let’s say, University of Texas.

You know, you might be better in early action at Texas, but better regular decision at Duke. And if you don’t apply that way, it can legitimately decrease your chance of admission. So blindly applying, as most people are doing, because they’re being told by a friend or an older family member, um, that early action is better, is what unfortunately leads to a lot of students unknowingly getting denied.

They don’t know why they got denied, they’re a talented student, um, but they got denied. It’s because in many cases they’re applying the wrong way. Data can guide you and avoid that whole problem, uh, which is why you want to be looking at this approach. With experts in enrollment management. Now, I think for me, what I want most families to walk away with tonight, students, parents, um, is that the entire purpose of the application is to be kind of presenting or creating a brand for yourself, your application, not to sound poetic, but it’s the medium that you use to convey this idea or image of who you are to a school, an idea or an image of someone or things, the definition of a brand.

So that’s the entire purpose here is to create a brand for yourself. What you need to be doing is you need to be aligning yourself, um, based upon your experiences, but then you eventually you’re going to have to be able to convey this through your essays and activity descriptions, which we’ll get to here in one second.

But your brand is really about kind of aligning yourself with your interests and to your activities. If you find yourself wanting to pursue something, you need to start seeking out activities to gain experience in it. Um, and the reality is, is that. That is going to be what gives you confidence that this future academic or career pathway is for you or not, right?

And the sooner that you can start determining that, the better. And then you can start picking schools around that, um, to be, you know, giving you the best experience to make you more relative to the field that you’re wanting to go into. Um, of course, what you need to understand is that the whole point of you starting this process now, wherever you are, is to give yourself the time.

To create a kind of an this idea or profile of not only what you’re in pursuit of what you’re going to be bringing to that school’s community. You know, what are you adding to the conversation? Schools are not just looking for, and this is not meant to be offensive. We’re not just looking for, you know, lab students or library students.

We’re looking for social academics. We’re pursuing students that want to come and be challenged in the classroom, but also be social contributors to the community and help students. grow in other ways outside of the classroom. And so you’ve got to be able to convey this to the schools. Not only that you are, you know, academically in pursuit of something, and you have interests of going somewhere with that in the future, but also how you’re going to affect change within that particular community.

And of course, the final part of this process in developing a brand is really connecting the dots. What I tell students and families is that your goal should be to get me to understand what you’re passionate about, what you’re in pursuit of, what you want out of life and what you’re currently doing now to make that possible.

And then how my school can help you get there. So when you can connect those things together, uh, with your interests and your academic and obviously your social strengths, then aligning your values in terms of not only what you, you value, But what a university values, that’s how you’re going to be forming a greater connection with the school, making them want to take you because they understand not only what you’re in pursuit of and how they can help you, but now they understand how you’re going to benefit their community as they continue to grow into the future.

Anesha: We are getting some interesting questions in the Q and A, so I’m excited to get to that part, but thanks so much for the context thus far. We’re going to do one more. Um, and for those in the room, let us know how far along in the admissions process are you if you’re just starting, if you’re researching schools, profiles, comments at the top, I hope a lot of you are in the process of researching schools, hoping that a lot of the juniors are in the process of working on your essays, sorry, apologies.

As we’re waiting for some responses to come in, what are some examples, I guess, of really effective brand profiles that you’ve seen or what’s a An example that stands out for you.

Ferrell: Yeah. So I mean, this can go any number of directions, but you know, the, the one I love to kind of talk about is, you know, maybe let’s just use one that’s very popular.

Let’s use a medical example. Right? Um, having a student that’s able to come in and show that they are, you know, um, a community, community focused individual. They’re a community leader. They’re a servant leader. Through medical servant hood, right? So going and getting involved in shadowing and internships, which we’re about to talk about being able to, you know, describing your own words and your essays, why that matters to you, which we’re about to get into.

And then having people being able to back that up with how they see you interacting within your school community, within your larger community, outside of school, and having those all connected to the dots when we as admission staff get done reviewing your application, the theme of you should be.

Medicine, right? Just if I say LeBron James, somebody says arguably one of the greatest of all time, one of not the that’s MJ for the record, just to go on the record. Okay. But to that end, if I say things like Toyota, people will typically say a car manufacturer. If I say Apple and Samsung, they’ll say tech manufacturers.

If I was to say, in your case, Anesha, Anesha, if I was the admissions officer reviewing your application, and I’m being put on the spot like that, The goal is that that emissions officer can give the same description for you as they can for Michael Jordan, LeBron James or Toyota manufacturing, right?

You’re in pursuit of this. This is what you’re all about. That’s the idea of a brand. And when a student can kind of give us that throughout their application. They’re going to be the first student that we’re targeting for admission and measuring everybody else. It gets

Anesha: I love that. If you were wondering, my high school profile would have probably been leader.

I did a lot of different things, but I had a lot of officer leadership roles and across it across the activities that I participated in. This is not about me, but that would be my word, I think. Um, but we’ll go ahead and close our pool. Uh, so the majority of folks are in the process of research schools, which I think makes sense.

About 62 percent are researching schools. schools. 27 percent haven’t started yet. We hope that this is your, your kickoff, your nudge towards getting started and the rest are working on essays are almost done or have the application materials together. So, um, we’re in a pretty good place with people moving forward in the process.

Ferrell: That’s what I want to hear. That’s good. Uh, we’ll talk deeper about this here right now actually. So let’s jump into extracurriculars and I think this is where I typically get A lot of confusion. I also get a lot of frustration from both students and parents alike. Um, and I want to come right out of the gate and just and hit the elephant in the room.

Um, the old idea of being well rounded is something that you need to remove from your brain. Uh, I never want you to apply it to this process again. If you, as an individual, were building a house right now, would you, if you needed to have it wired for electricity, would you hire a certified electrician or would you hire a neurosurgeon?

Now, my assessment here, my assumption, excuse me, is that someone’s actually typing right now to me, don’t do that. Uh, but my assumption is that you’re going to choose a certified electrician. And the reality that you’re more than likely choosing that certified electrician is because you’re trusting historical proof that this individual can safely do the job.

Admissions departments trust historical proof and evidence of your experience. that you’re serious about what you’re applying for. So the more activities that you have relative to the major or career field that you’re telling me you’re in pursuit of, the more likely I am to target you. I want to see three, four, five, maybe even six activities that in some way, shape, or form connects you to what you’re applying for, what you’re telling me you’re in pursuit of.

It’s that simple. Someone that’s coming in with nine or 10 different things and only has one thing that connects them to their intended field of interest, It’s not as trustworthy, especially when you consider that the most common applicant to college right now is an undecided applicant. And the second most common applicant is a psychology major.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the field of psychology, but 65 percent of psychology applicants change their major. And that leaves an admissions department scared because that creates the potential for an unbalanced enrollment scenario, which is what we’re hired and paid to prevent. And so now there is a further burden of proof being put on, you know, psychology applicants today, uh, and other students to really make it clear as to why you’re applying for a certain field and to prove it to us that you’re in fact serious about it.

So the sooner that you can start creating an activity experience or, you know, finding activities. To align with this, you’re essentially telling us that you’re passionate, that you’re serious about what you’re coming here to study at my institution, but you’re providing me proof of interest, which I’m going to place value on, as we just established with the example of the electrician wiring your home, as opposed to a neurosurgeon.

For the record, and so I don’t get any comments. I’m sure there are very capable neurosurgeons that can also wire home. Just be on the safe side. Okay. That being the case, I think it’s important that you start developing things like shadowing and research experiences as soon as possible, no matter where you are in the process.

Um, clubs and sports are great. I was a swimmer. Uh, I had scholarship offers to swim in college. I also had an ROTC scholarship to college, but then, uh, shoulder surgery prevented me from being able to take either of those opportunities. Uh, but the reality here is that when you’re applying, if you’re not being recruited to, to compete in that sport, your athletic experience doesn’t do anything for you to, of any significance in the review process.

It looks good that you stayed committed to something that you enjoyed, but But just because you play the sport doesn’t do anything for you. What we’re looking for is we’re looking for demonstrated formats of leadership. We’re looking for demonstrated activities like passion projects relative to your major of interest.

Um, and we’re looking at at all possible. We’re really looking for research. And surprisingly, research continues to be what is limited, uh, in terms of Being on someone’s experience. Uh, I should say having some proof of experience in a research, uh, field, um, that tends to be what the minority of applicants are bringing to the table today.

So you having research experience really does, um, kind of increase your shot of admission because it’s still a very unique thing to have. Um, so, Internships and shadowing are much the same thing. In most cases, shadowing just is not involved with a paycheck like an internship normally does. Um, but when you can, you know, let’s use an engineering student as an example.

It can be very difficult to determine what engineering field you want to go into. By shadowing, you know, a city engineer that’s approving building projects, by shadowing an architect that’s, or, you know, an industrial architect that’s doing, you know, city design, uh, or maybe working with somebody, um, That’s computer engineer, um, you know, getting different experiences so you can understand what you are more in alignment with.

And then once you have that initial kind of decision made, diving deeper within that particular field by additional shadowing or internship experiences. Um, passion projects are an incredible way to demonstrate this because passion projects should be able to be completed in your own time, no matter where you are in the world.

They do not require you to be, um, in a. One particular physical location. Um, you should be able to do this, you know, with a laptop essentially, um, and spread it out through social media or host events online. You can host events in person, um, raise awareness for, you know, your area of interest. Um, but these don’t have to be, you know, completed under some organization somewhere.

And I think the other thing that goes along with this is the idea of leadership. And I would like to suggest here that leadership comes in multiple ways. It does not just come from being the president or founder or secretary of a club that you started at school. Leadership is very much influenced by what people are saying about you in their letters of recommendation.

You know, if a teacher can tell me that you set the example for other students to follow, That’s a high degree of leadership. If you’re appointed to an opportunity, um, maybe within the local city council, but you were appointed by your school principal, the fact that you were appointed by a person of leadership like that, that’s a, that shows leadership in and of itself for you, even though you may not have some specific title of president or secretary.

Right. Um, what you’re doing within your local community, recognizing a need, uh, you know, within your local community, that is another format. I should say recognizing a need and then addressing it is another, you know, angle, if you will, or format of showing leadership. So leadership is not just found by having a title by your name.

It’s relative to what you’re doing and what people think about you. Now, the last part here, and this is where we have to be a little careful, um, is that you could have the best experience in the entire world and you could still get denied. Because you didn’t present it properly. You didn’t create enough attention for yourself.

And so what these schools in most cases are not telling you about is how they physically review you. As your application is being reviewed, you are being rated in different categories. Uh, there are categories for things like school fit. Do we feel that you’re the proper fit for this community and this culture?

Um, there’s an activity rating. There’s a leadership rating at some schools. There’s a personality type rating. There’s obviously an academic rating. And the more points that you’re going to be awarded in those categories, the more likely you are to be admitted. The problem becomes is that in the activity section of the application, you are only given 150 characters for a description.

And you’re only allowed 10 activities that you’re able to describe. So essentially you have about 19 words per activity and you’ve got to make yourself seem more significant than potentially thousands of others that you’re competing against. And in many cases today, schools are only looking for predetermined keywords or phrases.

Many schools today are using algorithms to do this part of the process for them. Other schools are. Having admissions officers do this, but they’re still looking for very specific things and they’re not going to just put it all out there for you, right, because this is how they’re going to make their cuts.

So understanding how you represent your experience and that certain schools are looking actually for predetermined keywords and phrases and finding out what those are going to be will be a substantial difference in the review process. And I think this example will make my point clear. At one point in my career, we had a student that applied for mechanical and civil engineering.

Um, he had a 1570 on his SAT. And he’d actually taken part in a six month long internship with NASA. Now, to be clear, the student was in fact from Florida, which made that six month internship a lot more attainable or doable, I should say. Um, but he was in fact denied. And the reason we ended up denying him is that when the admissions officer went through his activity section, um, he did not collect enough points because we did not find any particular keywords that Had any value on and so because that student did not collect any points Um, he fell through our process when the algorithms took over He no longer met the minimum.

He got a zero for the activity rating When he needed a minimum of two and because he did not get that two He did not meet the requirements to move on in the process and was denied Unfortunately, that is a very common experience and this is one of Dozens of examples I could tell you about, not only for my time working in an admissions office, or two admissions offices, but essentially, you know, serving students now outside of admissions offices.

Uh, having, you know, families come to me or our organization last minute, after the early action process, and then panic because they got denied. You know, in early action to multiple other schools. Now they need a game plan for regular decision. We go when we look at their activity descriptions and they’re not using proper language that’s going to get them more points in the process.

So getting guidance on that is a necessity. It’s not something that any family should be leaving to chance, especially when you consider that there’s been a 90 percent increase And applications over the last two years, and due to that, more and more schools are having to convert to a, you know, an algorithm based process because they don’t have enough admissions officers and staff members to review everybody.

So they’re really having to use algorithms to cut down on the amount of applications they physically review. And it’s depersonalizing the process. So this guidance is not something that’s nice to have. It’s a necessity if you’re looking to get the best outcome for yourself, both academically and financially.

Finally, you know, ironically that I put this last, but the most important part of the application itself are, are in fact your essays. And simply put, it’s the only time that we hear your voice. And why that matters is that admissions officers are gatekeepers. Our job is to make the right decision and who we’re opening the gate to.

And I’m going to make the assumption that for many of you, if I sort of at your front door this evening, you’re not just going to open the door and say, come on in, you’re going to want to get to know me a little bit. And I would do the same for you. Having not met anybody, I would most likely do the same for you, put you through a little bit of a vetting process, right?

Well, that’s what the review process is. Like, we’re going through this application, trying to see if you’re the proper fit in addition to our community. And also if academically, if you can, you know, make the cut per se, um, but the essay is really the only time that we get to hear directly from you and the significance of that is I want you to become vulnerable and revealing in the more revealing that you can be, the more we are going to feel like we become connected with you and when we do that now I can start having conversations with my colleagues up.

You know what? You know, Justin’s going to love Dr. Wilson. Well, the difference there, when I’m having that kind of a conversation for a student is I’ve now established a place for that individual when I’m talking about them that way. And what allows me to do that is you as an applicant opening up and being very revealing in detail, as I’ve already said, and most students don’t do it.

Most students are not being thorough in describing themselves and they’re not being thorough. So. in connecting themselves within their, within the community that they’re applying to, right? You should be able to connect the dots between why you’re pursuing what you’re pursuing and why that particular community and culture is the proper place for you to do it.

When you copy and paste your essays, you’re taking away from the impact that you can have because you’re being generic and 000 foot admissions officers are trained to see right through that. We want you to be very specific and tailored to why my community culture is the better place for you. And that’s naturally going to make me think that you’re a much better fit for this community.

And it’s also going to make me think that you’re way more likely to enroll if we admit you. So when you can do that and be so revealing and not hold back, that’s what’s going to make me want to take you. And to say one additional thing here, the reason most students are not going far enough. It’s very, it’s very cultural.

Most cultures across the world today teach their children to be humble and respectful, which I certainly appreciate. I have two little girls. I have a third child on the way. And the number one thing that I, I hope I’m doing as a parent is raising humble, respectful individuals. That being the case, a lot of times, students that are, are, have really kind of grown up with that expectation are hesitant to promote themselves within their essays because they’re afraid of sounding disrespectful or sounding rude because maybe they sound like they’re being too forward.

You need to look at this as a competition. My fear is that if students don’t look at this as a competition, they won’t take their essays far enough, and they’ll leave me without enough information to take action with. And that’s not something I want for anybody. So start really looking at this as a matter of what else can I share about myself?

Not, that’s enough. That’s going to be the difference maker for you because now we’ll feel more connected with you and start to really see how we’re going to, you know, benefit by your presence within our community. Obviously, the essay is the number one area that you get to highlight your future with, right?

Which obviously connects you back to your brand or your narrative that we talked about earlier. So making sure that you’re weaponizing yourself through the written word. Is how you’re going to create the biggest impact, um, outside of your activities that make you relevant to what you’re applying for.

Those two components are the most important components of your application. And without them being connected together, without you being able to illustrate why you’re in pursuit of something within certain essays, and having the activities to back that up, You’re at risk. The students that can connect those dots, they will be the students that schools are prioritizing first in the process.

So listen, I mean, this is a lot of information, and it’s definitely something that can be overwhelming, and it’s not a can be overwhelming, it is overwhelming. For students and parents going through this for the first time, or parents going through this the 6th or 7th time, the process has changed. This is not something that is the same as it was three years ago anymore.

Um, and so it is important that you get some help and that you understand how you can not only simplify the process, but how you can be more strategic and make your application more unique to you and the schools that you are targeting. So what we do at CollegeAdvisor is we, we would work with families one on one in a private scenario to walk you through this process.

In a timely manner without creating stress, we can work around your availability to establish a personal brand for you to establish the proper school is that is unique for your not only academic and career interests, but also that meets your financial requirements that meet your geographic location that you would like to be in all while helping you do things like interview preparation by putting you through mock interviews, going through your essays with you to make sure that you’re aligning yourself within what that school is wanting to see.

And while it does seem like a lot, and we have covered so much, having that guidance by team members that have made the policies that these schools are operating with, and have made decisions on who to accept, having individuals with that background walking you through the process will dramatically reduce the amount of stress and anxiety that you’re feeling, because we are not going to purposefully let you do something wrong.

If we see a family that’s, or a student I should say, going off track of what is going to help them in a particular school’s process, we help to bring you back and center you so you’re giving yourself the best potential outcome possible. That is why you should consider getting some help in the process, not only because of all the changes just in the last two years, but because of the overwhelming, you know, time consumption that it is, and the amount of things that you have to do within it.

We can help to reduce that amount of time by, you know, shortening this process up and making it specific to you and really helping you cut down on the overall research as you have to. So if you’d be interested in having a little bit of a deeper conversation more relative to your own personal needs, if, if there are some more private questions relative to you specifically that you’d like to get answered, We would invite you to scan the barcode that’s in front of you right now and sign up for a meeting that is, you know, in alignment with your schedule.

And we’d be happy to sit down and answer some of your questions more specifically. Um, and then we can also talk a little bit more about, you know, what needs you may have and how we might be able to address those with you here at CollegeAdvisor. But it’s been a pleasure this evening, and I’m very glad to get to your question.

Anesha: Thanks so much, Ferrell. Um, great presentation. So thorough, so thoughtful. I, before I jump into questions, there were a few that I answered that I just want to say my answers aloud for the sake of the recording. Um, and then jumping, going to jump into some questions for you. So one question was, you had mentioned research experiences, and I think that was specific to folks who are interested in, um, science or medicine.

So if you You should be looking for opportunities that align with your specific major. So this person is specifically interested in political science. My suggestion is where you can look at volunteering at local government, political campaigns, becoming a community organizer, shadowing at law firms or local courthouses.

So for the research, it’s not necessarily, You have to go research in a lab, but thinking about what you’re specifically interested in majoring in and what are ways that you can get more deeply involved in it so don’t get caught up in the word research as much as digging deeper into how you can explore that interest.

Do we have recommendations for websites you can use to research schools? I put out their niche college board, college vine, but ultimately, once you have a list, you should be going to the college of specific. Websites. Um, and then one question that I’ll share my answer to, but that would love to kick it off to you, Ferrell, because there were a lot of questions around it.

How do I start the essays? And where do I find applications? Um, so I said, the common app is where the majority of applications will be. And I also shared the link. To the common app essay prompt, but I don’t know if you have more context on specifically how students can get started on the essay prompt part.

Ferrell: Yeah, I mean, I’ll, I’ll break, I’ll break a longstanding rumor right now. Colleges don’t change their essays every year. Like you’re told. Um, most schools purposely reuse the same essays two and three years at a time, and they will even list them on their website. Um, so go to the website. Like we, when I was at Vanderbilt and they still do it, they’ll say, Hey, These are a space for the next three mission cycles, which means three years, and they’ll tell you through 2025 2027.

Um, so go to these schools websites, look at them, see if those are determined, and if they’re not pick up the phone, call the admissions department, have a conversation with an admissions representative, um, and get them to confirm, you know, what is or is not being reused and start taking action on those that you can confirm and get ahead of this process.

Anesha: My next question, you kicked everybody off. We talked about keywords and the algorithm. So there were a few questions. So how do we know what keywords the algorithm is looking for? What are value keywords that we should work to include an application? Um, what are those phrases? So any, I guess, context or well, the

Ferrell: problem becomes is that these are variable by school, which is not gonna make anybody else happier with that answer.

But to give you some context here, the exact student I was describing was Accepted to MIT in Michigan, denied to UChicago, Vanderbilt, North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Um, and, and so that ideally can illustrate for you that it is a little bit different by school. Um, now, some context here. If I was to choose between, and when I say this, I don’t want people thinking that I’m referring to action words because that’s not what I’m saying.

Um, but an example would be, I would choose to use the word appointed over the word selected. Okay. Appointed typically has indicates a little bit. Higher degree of leadership than being selected because who’s doing the appointing typically someone already in a higher level of leadership. Right? Then we start talking about things like a level of participation.

Um, did you do something? Did you participate, compete and do something or perform? Um, that was school wide or did you do something that, you know, was inclusive of people outside of your city? Or I should say within your city or maybe it was outside of your city in your county. If you let’s use soccer, let’s use, um, you know, um, theatrical performance, right?

Or maybe, Maybe you are a, you know, French horn, uh, player and you were selected for the state youth orchestra. That’s now state level experience, right? The moment you are at a soccer tournament and you compete with a school from outside your county, that is now state level competition. And the higher the echelon of performance or reach or participation for an activity, the more points you’re going to be given for things like that.

Um, and so that matters. Um, but it is important that you understand what different schools are looking for as much as

Anesha: possible. All right. Sorry. Looking for my next question. It was,

Oh, if you have any overarching tips on meeting the application deadlines and managing

Ferrell: schedules, you’re going to hate me. Just start now and start working on this every other day. Um, I mean, the reality here, and I’m not saying this to be rude, the number one thing that students do wrong is they put this off to the summertime after 11th grade.

So let’s let’s all have a come to reality session really quickly. Okay. If you apply to 10 to 12 schools, like we’ve assessed or established earlier tonight, we’re looking at approximately 45 to 50 essays by a show of invisible hands. Who thinks that 45 to 50 essays over an eight week period called summertime sounds better than doing them over seven and a half months?

I’m assuming no one’s raising their hand right now. So I’m not being rude. I’m not trying to be disrespectful and arrogant. My point is weaponize your time. It is a lot easier if you can spread this process out and take the pressure off of yourself. In my experience, the students that are the ones that are overwhelmed, the students that are ones that are They’re telling, you know, their friends at how miserable they are, they waited if you can write an essay right now over a day or two and then take three or four days off before you start another one, that’s a lot better regimen to follow up, then, you know, shoving them all into the summertime.

And when you do that, that’s when you have to start removing things from your schedule that you enjoy hobbies and activities that you want to take part in. So the more that you can spread this out, the better it will be. I typically, you know, suggest to a family, you know, if you can spend two to three hours a week on this.

Right now, you’re gonna be perfect.

Anesha: So, we had a few questions of folks kind of expressing the level that they’re in. So, one question is, is there anything you would say specifically that freshmen should be doing that’s different from what juniors should be doing right now and at this point in the process?

Ferrell: Yeah. Freshmen should be in the exploratory stage. You should be exploring schools of interest. You should be exploring potential avenues of academic interest, right? Um, freshmen should not be locking into their academic interest right now, right? But exploring it, yes. Summer planning, internship, research, you know, summer academic camps, things like that should all be what freshmen are really kind of looking into.

Sophomore should be doing the same thing from an activity perspective. But ideally, they’re making it more relative to what they’re trying to go to school for, and they should be starting to refine their school list and get it more specific. Juniors, you should already have that school list in place. If you don’t, that’s, that is requirement number one.

Um, and then you should be getting more, you know, relative activities. If you don’t have a profile, that really kind of pops for what you’re applying for. You need to be getting more relative activities with the limited time you have left to make you unique to that, to that field, if you will, while at the same time, completing your essays and getting that done.

And then juniors as well and sophomores, if you have not taken, you know, SAT, ACT, you need to be having that scheduled and prepping for that at the same time.

Anesha: There was a question, a follow up to the statement you had made a bit earlier about essays, a number of essays. So someone said, how are we getting 45 to 50 essays with 10 to 12 colleges?

Ferrell: Because the average school has four supplemental essays. It can be as many as 10 per school.

Anesha: And they also asked about the length. So the length will vary. It could be as short as 100 characters and as long as 500 to 800 words. So it will really, it will vary. So when we say essay, we mean kind of like writing prompt, um,

Ferrell: yeah, broadly, I think in crime, wrong.

I think, I think Tulane actually has the longest supplement right now. I think it’s like 900 words. If, if I remember correctly, I think they had the longest supplement, but, and then I know Texas has a 700 word. Most are, I would say most are between three and five hundred. Yeah, I,

Anesha: if Tulane had that writing limit, none of my students, but I will say, my students came in at maybe six hundred.

I don’t know if we pushed to, um, to nine hundred at any of my Tulane applications. So, and again, that’s something to keep in mind. It’s, it’s the word max. It’s not necessarily what you have to write to, um, if you can be thoughtful and shorter. Um, so as someone said, a lot of schools, um, Don’t have their prompts out yet.

You can start writing the personal statement, um, you, which is the general ass epic essay that all applications will get through. And again, that’s the, on the common app, the common app prompts. So if the schools don’t have their prompts out yet, you can be looking. Again, they

Ferrell: may not be on their website, but if you call and ask many schools will go ahead and tell you, Hey, yes, we are reading the same essays next year.

Anesha: So that was that question that came up earlier of like, what are the best types of things? What should I be asking admissions officers? Will they get annoyed with me? And I, part of, part of me is also thinking, should you wait until a little bit later in the year and not perhaps call folks right now as they’re reading?

But what should folks typically be trying to ask admissions offices? When is the best time to reach out and contact you?

Ferrell: I mean, yeah, you should go ahead and be reaching out to admissions officers right now. Uh, there’s, I mean, they may be a little bit more delayed in getting back to you, but the reality here is that they’re at the final stage of the reading process.

Admissions offices are transitioning into. In the next week or so, the final admissions committee where I actually sat and voted and kind of having those discussions, so there’ll be a little bit delayed in getting back to you right now, but that’s not a reason for you to wait and reaching out and trying to get some questions answered.

You know, every admissions office has an on call officer every single day. So you can call and if it makes you feel better, you don’t have to identify yourself and you can speak to the on call officer and ask those questions. And then they never know. Who it was. So I, I don’t want you being worried about it, but you have questions.

You deserve to get answers. And with all respect intended, this is the career field that admissions officers have chosen. We for the most part enjoy those interactions. Uh, and I would encourage you to, to have those interactions with them.

Anesha: Are there specific topics you think folks should be focusing on or any, any question they should go ahead and give a call or, you know, are there specific.

Ferrell: You know looking for you know, any any changes for next year Are you going to go back to requiring SAT or ACT scores? Are you changing your essay supplements next year? Um, you know in any major prediction changes any new requirements or things like You know, chat GPT and the considerations with that coming out with A.

I. Um, there are gonna be some schools starting to implement some changes, you know, this next year for that. Um, so understanding, you know, any, hey, are there gonna be any new steps in the process that, you know, maybe my older sibling didn’t do two years ago. So those are all valid conversation. I’m sorry, not questions or not conversations with valid questions.

uh, that you, you can be asking.

Anesha: So there are a lot of questions regarding people were sharing, sharing specific interests. But if you could go through, I guess, some examples of extracurricular activities that folks should be trying to think about. One example was, what should I do if, what should my child do if he’s undecided?

What should I do if interested in business journalism, law, political science. Can you kind of run through, I guess, some important extracurricular activities that folks might want to prioritize or focus on?

Ferrell: Yeah, as a pre law and political science major, I mean, shadowing at a law firm, going and, you know, doing an internship or shadowing, uh, shadowing at a think tank, right?

A policy think tank, uh, political, you know, political activism, per se. Um, going and working, you know, uh, with your local city attorney. Most, most municipalities have a full time attorney on staff. Going and sitting down doing an interview with them and understanding what their day job looks like. That’s all law, political science related right there all day.

Um, you know, look for, you know, international or, you know, relations, you know, programs over the summertime. Um, those are all good things for poli sci and law. Um, business, um, be sitting down and talking with local business owners in your, in your vicinity. Entrepreneur or people that bought a franchise.

Guys. Understand what it took to get them there. What, you know, what, what the majority of their day looks like, um, understand how they’re handling payroll. Maybe you’re interested in finance. Okay. Well, if you’re interested in finance, go in and sit down with the financial manager, understand the market trends, how get them to educate you on how they make their, their decisions.

Educated guesses with with how to protect their clients money and investor clients money Um learn that process start doing it yourself start demonstrating that by doing things like podcasting YouTube channels to create a passion project for yourself and Demonstrate that experience for others. Um Yeah, undecided.

Start digging now. Try multiple things. And this answer is not a popular answer. When I’ve given this answer before, it has frustrated people. I’m saying this to help. You’ve got to start trying different things, even though when I say that, sometimes I get a little Response, that’s, well, the only thing that’s likely to happen is that they’ll find out what they don’t like.

My positive attitude is great, and that’s one less thing we have to worry about. We’re getting closer to finding what you do like, right? So start digging and trying things because if you can at least tell a school that you’ve been actively trying to figure out what you wanna go to school for, it still looks a heck of a lot better than saying you haven’t done anything at all.

And so, whether it’s a shadowing experience, if a little three day shadowing experience. Maybe at a engineering firm, maybe it’s a, you know, maybe it’s a little, you know, shadowing for a day at a local law firm, anything you can do like that, a little short experience is to try to, you know, spike created, you know, a spike of, you know, opportunity in that student’s head.

That’s what you’re looking for right now is an undecided applicant to try to spawn some idea of what they might want to pursue to school.

Anesha: And I would say, I think to the topic of today’s conversation of why you need college admissions help, I’m currently working with my students. But together cold emails that they could send out, making sure they’re wording it correctly, making sure they’re being thoughtful of how much time it will take it and making sure they’re presenting it with minimal kind of, um, responsibility or kind of, you know, time ask for the folks that they’re reaching out to for some of those shadowing opportunities.

So I think that’s also just another plug for why support would be helpful of just having some context in a second pair of eyes to go through those requests and outreach or putting together those passion projects and things like that.

Ferrell: And I love it. Love what you just said about cold emails. I think that is such an important thing because no disrespect intended.

I get a lot of famous that say, well, they didn’t respond. They’re testing you in most cases, send three or four more and then see what happens. Um, it is a, it’s a cold calling process. You nailed it. That’s how most of these internship shadowing experiences come about is cold calling or cold emailing or.

Honestly, you know, going and knocking on doors at local businesses, introducing yourself, and that can be uncomfortable for a lot of people today, considering we spend more time, you know, consumed by technology and social media, but that’s how you create these opportunities and find these opportunities.

Anesha: Switching gears to talk a little bit about finances. So some folks ask, how do you apply for grants and scholarships? We will clarify. Yeah,

Ferrell: multiple angles here. So, first of all, for financial aid and grants, that’s all going to be required that you complete the federal application for federal student aid, aka the FAFSA.

That will go live starting August the 1st. I’m sorry, October the 1st of your senior year of your child’s senior year. Um, you, for every single school. Every single school is required to have what’s called a net price calculator on their website. You can use that to predict what your financial commitment at school will probably look like.

Most schools will guarantee those estimates within about 5%. Um, in terms of scholarships, scholarships are Um, you, you’re gonna have a variety of answers there. Scholarships can be obviously through the school. Um, those you won’t be able to apply to until when you apply to the school or after you apply to the school.

Uh, and then you also have your third party scholarship opportunities. There are wonderful things like niche.com, uh, FastWeb. That service databases for these that you can be kind of creating a profile for yourself and looking through. Um, I think the big some, I don’t want to say big one, but a lot of overlooked things are, you know, going through once again, your local municipality, contacting your local city and seeing if there are any endowed scholarships for, you know, graduates of that city, you know, kids growing up and graduating from that city.

Are there scholarships that you can apply to? Because you’re a citizen of like, I live in Brentwood, Tennessee. You know, can is there a scholarship for Brentwood? You know, residents who have Children graduating? Um, parents, if you are a member of, you know, an association through, you know, your career field, a lot of associations and have endowed scholarship.

So my own mother was part of the Tennessee Grocers Association because my mother was in the grocery business. So there was a scholarship that I was able to apply to. That members of that association, uh, were able to apply to or their Children were able to. Uh, and then, of course, um, if you are religious and you attend a place of worship, a lot of times, places of worship, uh, have endowed scholarships as well.

So, uh, talking with, uh, your, you know, your worship leader, your religious leader for, uh, and seeing if those opportunities exist within your place of worship as well,

Anesha: answer some questions while we’re going through, because I know we’re going to run out of time. Um,

Goodness. So sorry, everybody. Well, I’ll ask the question that I was trying to answer. So someone asked about, um, if they’re interested in majoring in medicine, is it okay for them? Is it okay that they’re in model UN and, uh, speech and debate, like connecting, I guess, is that not showing their interest in medicine?

If they’re doing these non major relevant, um, extrovert activities,

Ferrell: those are great activities, but if you want to go to school for medicine and you don’t have any show, you don’t have any condition medicine, that’s the So you are going to, you can see. Stay in those activities, but you’re gonna have to supplement and find other connections to medicine.

Anesha: Uh, do you have any tips for the interview

Ferrell: process? Um, obviously always dress presentable. Um, that’s number one. Uh, even if it’s a Zoom or you know, an e based interview, making sure that you are, you know, in a tie if you’re, you know, or jacket, you know, whatever your comfort zone is in terms of dress, but. I would say treat this as business professional, no matter how informal that or formally tell you it is, you should treat it as business professional.

Um, and be prepared, you know, go do your research in terms of what that school, you know, ideal candidate is. They’ll say it on the website, learn their values. Um, you know, learn what they’re trying to see out of someone that they’re going to admit to that school and be prepared to talk about why you would add to that, um, have your resume ready.

Okay. Um, you know, be prepared to, you know, digitally send your resume. If it’s an eBase interview, uh, to the individual that you’re meeting with better yet research, the person conducting your interview, typically ahead of time, you’ll find out who it is. Google LinkedIn, find what you can on that individual, create that personal connection by saying, Hey, I understand that, you know, you worked at Vanderbilt or, you know, that you’ve worked now at CollegeAdvisor, yada, yada, yada.

Create that personal connection, break through that initial awkward barrier. Um, by knowing something about your interviewer, uh, and you’ll be surprised about how much easier that interview goes.

Anesha: We’re in the last minute. A couple questions about resumes since you said that. So, yes, you should have a resume or is there a different way that you would recommend students organize their activities and extracurriculars?

Resume. I

Ferrell: mean, the only problem is that Some schools are not going to let you upload that supplemental resume. So you you’re, that’s why getting help and understanding which activities you need to be sharing within the common app or UC app are important. Having the right keywords for them and then having a supplemental resume for the schools that will let you upload it is always a good thing.

Anesha: We are going to have to end it there. We’ve had a ton of questions, so I’m so sorry for folks. Someone also asked about the QR code. Apologies if it was not working for you, you will get a link in the email after today’s session with the recording as well as another chance to sign up if you’re interested in pursuing.

Apologies that the QR code is not working for you tonight, but that is the end of our webinar. Thank you so much for all of your thoughtful questions. Why preaching knowledge across the entire application process. I’m appreciative. I learned some things and I and I hope our students are two things as well.

That is the end of the webinar. We hope you gained some insights and we also hope that you’ll join us for our future webinars Coming up at the end of this month. Our last session will focus on On maximizing your resume. So that was a few questions that folks asked. So come back and join us on the 27th.

Um, as we will focus on tips for boosting your resume throughout high school. Uh, take care, everybody. Have a good evening and we hope to see you in the future. Bye.