College admissions has never been more competitive: high GPAs, strong test scores, and a well-rounded resume—once sufficient for an acceptance—are now common features of most applications to highly selective colleges.

In this episode, we reveal what top colleges nowadays seek: students with compelling admissions stories centered around a focused academic passion, or “hook.” Using the process we’ve employed with our own students to help them gain admission to top colleges, we break down how students need to go about identifying their own unique narrative, how to build and continually re-shape it over time, and how their approach should differ depending on how close—or far away—they are from actually applying to colleges.

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
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When many parents applied to college around three decades ago, college lists and outcomes assumed a fairly predictable, linear order. You had your “safeties,” schools to which you were almost certain to be admitted, your “targets,” schools to which you could reasonably expect to be admitted, and “reaches,” schools to which you would most likely not be admitted.

Nowadays, however, college outcomes seem less predictable than ever, with students often being rejected or waitlisted even at schools that might be classified as “safeties” and “targets.”

What exactly is going on? In this episode, we distill the variation in outcomes to different application components and requirements at various colleges, the decision plans under which a student applies at each college, and other factors such as “yielding” (whereby a college pre-emptively rejects an overqualified student viewed as unlikely to enroll).

While many may claim that admissions is a random process, we instead take the perspective that there are systematic differences between applications that students can control and other differences of which they can at least be aware so as to optimize the precision—and reduce the variability—of their outcomes.

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising
TikTok: @greatmindsadvising
YouTube: @GreatMindsAdvising

You’ve probably heard of Early Action, but do you know what Single-Choice and Restrictive Early Action are? Seven of the top colleges (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, CalTech, Georgetown, and Notre Dame) offer one of these unique sub-types of Early Action that place significant restrictions on the other colleges to which students under these plans may apply.

In this episode, we break down what these plans entail, why Single-Choice and Restrictive Early Action are often confused, and what they can mean for your admissions prospects if you are targeting one of the schools above.

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising
TikTok: @greatmindsadvising
YouTube: @GreatMindsAdvising