Admissions Thesis

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"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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-Robert Frost

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In all high schools (and in all endeavors for that matter) there is a Pareto Distribution—a small group of students possess the majority of all the academic and extracurricular achievements. You (or your child if you're a parent) are probably in this group as you are reading these words.

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Admissions brings upon a paradigm shift. You could imagine the students at the top of the distribution are on the path less traveled by at their respective high schools. Now, the top students from each high school now compete with only other top students on an international level. Everyone that has been walking the less traveled path in their individual bubbles come and walk together. This is why admissions is so competitive.

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The meritocracy students have known for their entire lives is numerical, objective, and familiar. Students strive for top scores and GPAs as a marker of their success. The meritocracy of admissions (if you can call it that) is an entirely different beast by accounting for one additional factor: what you deserve.

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In an objective system like K-12 there are winners and there are losers. Your GPA doesn't care if you're disadvantaged, poor, have to commute an hour each day to school, or have a troubled home. Admissions compensates for this.

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The magic word in admissions is "holistic". Admissions officers see and consider everything—how much your family makes, what your teachers say about you, how well you capitalized on the available opportunities compared to your peers, your disadvantages, and the advantages you had. There are countless factors that interact with each other in such a multi-dimensional way that even admissions officers admit that they couldn't even tell you what an ideal applicant looks like. After all, the game of deciding what someone deserves is a messy matter. However, the three things that admissions officers have made clear publicly repeatedly through articles, blog posts, and interviews is that the are looking for fit, differentiation, and deservedness.

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The immense complexity of this process creates many opportunities and equally many mistakes. The biggest mistake of all is to think there are hidden secrets to success in admissions aside from information about the application process directly from admissions offices. Admissions officers themselves have said there are no secrets, and at the very least, you can believe there is no conspiracy to lie in your face.

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Yet, there are so many websites and consulting services advertising secret methods guaranteeing success that you begin wondering whether the weight-loss pills salesmen have made a career switch recently. This sort of marketing (for both admissions secrets and weight-loss pills) works because people look for secrets and shortcuts to avoid the inevitably challenging process. If that is what you are looking for, you have come to the wrong place.

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Applicants make admissions more competitive than it needs to be because they take the overly-trodden path. Students fail to adapt to the paradigm shift of admissions and continue trying to win by being the most successful and achieved. They continue playing admissions like its a unidimensional game. Impressive does not equal unique when everyone is impressive.

This is hardly the student's fault. Admissions is divorced from reality. Never before has a meritocracy evaluated you by your race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, uniqueness, creative writing, the value of your house, deservedness, equity, etc. Never again will you be evaluated in such ways either. In fact, half the things on a college application are illegal to be considered in a job interview.

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Here lies our value proposition. Admissions is its own world, and working with someone that lives in that world can be of great help. Just like you would want to work with a lawyer to file legal documents or a tax advisor on taxes.

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There is no road less traveled by except the one you make for yourself. The road everyone else can see has already been long trodden. The only way you find this path is by building your profile with a strategy and create a fine-tuned application. There is no one-size-fits-all. Applicants must communicate their deservedness through individual paths forged from the unique person behind each application. Having experienced help in this process will make all of this ten times easier. This is what an admissions service like ours can help with, and the only value any honest admissions service can claim to offer.