Success Story: Gabe’s Admission to Berkeley
Gabe had a 3.9+ uGPA and excellent activities, but he started the college process with a lot of uncertainty. I began by helping him raise his SAT Verbal score from 640 to 740. I also helped him start a meaningful extracurricular activity that he used in his Common App essay. I then helped him understand the supplemental essay prompts and focus his essay writing. As a result, he was accepted to all the UCs—including UC Berkeley—Williams College, and USC (with a $120K scholarship). In this deep dive, we discuss improving SAT scores, writing admission essays, and the "difficulty" of receiving too many acceptance letters.
Success Story: Ben’s Journey to MIT
Ben was gifted in math and computer programming, but he struggled with writing. He wanted to apply to MIT, but I knew that he would need a strong recommendation from a humanities teacher to get in. I helped him improve his writing to the point where his English teachers started to talk to each other about his essays on Shakespeare. When he applied to MIT, he was the only male student admitted from his high school, one of the top public schools in the Bay Area. When I recently reached out to him, he told me that he was working at a startup in SV and still grateful for my help on his application essays.
Success Story: Ella’s Early Decision to Stanford
Ella had excellent grades, test scores, and leadership as a principal musician in her orchestra, making the foundation for a strong application to Stanford. In addition, she was an excellent writer with a potentially strong application essay topic. Unfortunately, she faced a huge problem: Her way of writing about the topic showed arrogance, a red flag for admissions committees. Even worse, she was completely unaware of this problem. I showed her how she could keep the topic but change her way of writing about it. The revised essay showcased her best qualities as a student. She was admitted Early Decision to Stanford.
Success Story: James’s Path to MIT
James had earned a spot in the US Math Olympiad Summer camp, making him one of the top 45 math students in the country. He wanted to go to MIT, but he was having difficulty turning his love of mathematical proof into excellent essays. Thanks to my background with proof-based math classes, I helped him write about math in a way that caught the attention of the MIT admissions committee, earning him his admission. After graduating from MIT, he started a company that was acquired by Google.
Success Story: Derek’s Early Decision to Cornell Engineering
Derek wanted to apply to Cornell engineering, a top-10 program, but he faced a problem: He lacked high school leadership experience. From my time working with him, though, I knew that he had a passion for card tricks, an activity that I had never seen any other Silicon Valley students write about. By using this activity as the foundation for his main essay, Derek created an application that showcased his unique take on life and learning. While his parents were at first skeptical of the topic, I knew that this approach would overcome the weaknesses of other parts of his application. Two weeks after Derek applied, Cornell contacted him for an interview. After that, he was admitted. He recently completed his master’s in Engineering at Cornell and is excited to start his career.
Success Story: Samantha’s Acceptances to Berkeley & Brown
Samantha was gifted in math, an excellent writer, and had made an extensive portfolio of ceramic art. All of this achievement left her with an interesting problem: how to combine these activities in a way that made sense to an admissions committee. For Berkeley, we created individual essays in these areas. For Brown, we created a single essay that combined astronomy and art. She was admitted to UC Berkeley with a Chancellor’s Scholarship, and also admitted to Brown for their top-ranked applied mathematics program. She chose Brown, the perfect school for her to continue exploring her diverse interests.
Success Story: Chris’s Path to MIT
Chris was an excellent math student. He self-studied math over the summer so that he could skip right into AP Calc BC as a junior. Because I was his literature teacher, he came to me for advice on his admissions essay and for a teacher recommendation. I told him that for an MIT application, in addition to discussing his passion for STEM, he needed to share the excellent work that he had done in my English class. This included additional writing projects that no other students had attempted. In my letter of recommendation, knowing what MIT would be looking for, I emphasized this aspect of his ability to think outside the box. He was the only student in his high school accepted to MIT that year. He later completed his graduate work at MIT, and today works in startups in Silicon Valley.