Category: Meet Our Clients

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Elizabeth ’21

Elizabeth ’21

USA

The Test Optional

St Andrews (Scotland)

Elizabeth '21Elizabeth spent her high school years in a Connecticut boarding school’s Global and Environmental Studies program. She studied French and Arabic and earned the Honors Tea Award for “Best Student in a Language Class.” She joined Model UN, became an officer in her school’s UNICEF club, and was awarded the “Norton Center Initiative — Charitable Blend.”

The Short List helped Elizabeth plan summer programs, including a dual-immersion French and Arabic trip to Morocco and a photojournalism trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. The crowning moment was a chance to study in Jordan her 2019 — 2020 junior year. Then COVID disrupted everything in the spring, and she quickly boarded one of Jordan’s last flights out of the country.
We hoped good test scores would offset Elizabeth’s incomplete transcript, so our test prep division worked closely with her. She improved with each mock test and was ready to perform well…before her test site cancelled the test, and each of the next five tests she registered for.

Once we knew Elizabeth would be applying test optional, we encouraged her to focus on her extracurricular activities senior year. She became an Environmental Proctor, UNICEF Club President, Residential Advisor, and Tour Guide, all of which showcased her desire to create community.

St Andrews in Scotland, with their dual program in Art and Middle East and Islamic Studies, became Elizabeth’s top choice. We brainstormed ways to share her international background and interests in her essays and interview. Thankfully, St Andrews accepted her after focusing less on a complete transcript or test scores and more on how Elizabeth viewed other cultures and communities. Her international journey continued when she moved to Scotland last fall.

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Michael

Michael

Hong Kong

The Stand Out

Brown

Michael (2019)Parents typically contact us for guidance for their student. However, Mike reached out to us on his own. His parents empowered him to be the decision-maker. We provided updates, but never actually spoke to them.

Mike spent most of his early childhood in and around New York City, where he said everyone looked and acted just like him. “The key,” he said, “was not to stand out if you wanted to fit in.” Mike took challenging classes, but not too challenging. Got involved, but not too involved. Thought about college, but with little clarity. That would change the day Mike’s family moved to Hong Kong following Mike’s 9th grade year.

Mike was the only African-American student at his new international high school. His classmates worked hard to excel in their academics, got involved in activities both in and outside of school, and were already thinking about college. Mike wondered how he would survive in a place where he didn’t blend in.

Mike first joined the Entrepreneur Club because he liked business and math. His club created two small businesses and organized a case study competition for 13 international schools in Asia. He also got involved in MIT LaunchX, a club that teaches high school students how to develop and pitch new business ideas. He founded the Stock Market Initiative and organized a school-wide stock market competition.

Mike’s classmates took note of his leadership skills, electing him to student government and eventually to the executive committee, where he serves as Senator of Discipline.

Mike told us he wanted a school that encouraged independence and had a strong math program. The Short List helped organize a summer college tour that included Brown University. Brown stood out for its open curriculum and self-directed student body. Mike needed to connect his background and interests to the school, and, under our guidance, took a carefully measured approach to every step of the process, down to the last word of his essay.

Reflecting back on his three years in Hong Kong, Mike said, “It’s funny, but in trying to fit in, I somehow learned to stand out.” We believe Brown took notice: Mike was the only student from his school accepted Early Decision out of more than a dozen who applied.

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Oliver

Oliver

South Korea

The Game Designer

DigiPen

Oliver attends an international school in South Korea. He came to us somewhat lost as to what he wanted to study in college. The more The Short List learned about Oliver, the more we understood why.

Oliver was about to enter junior year and his school’s two-year International Baccalaureate (IB) program. His three higher-level courses—psychology, economics, and French—highlighted the breadth of his curiosity. His extracurricular activities demonstrated his creativity: He served as set designer for various school theater productions and participated in Tech Crusaders, a club that designed the school’s website and taught coding to middle schoolers. 

Oliver was slow to reveal his passion for video games, believing we wouldn’t understand. But we clearly saw how video games combined stagecraft, coding, and design. Once we validated his passion, Oliver took us deep into the world of video game production, storyline, and user experience.

We traveled to Korea to meet with Oliver and his family, and we encouraged Oliver to consider summer game design programs, including one at the University of Washington. The Short List also researched both traditional universities and renowned game design schools for Oliver to visit while in the U.S. Finally, we brainstormed Oliver’s IB program extended essay. Oliver settled on researching how the gaming industry has influenced French culture, adding a twist by deciding to write the paper in French.

Oliver spent several weeks on the University of Washington campus collaborating with award-winning designers and passionate classmates on the design of a new video game. When he returned home, he poured his energy into his applications, highlighting how his academics, extracurricular activities, and summer program connected him to game design. 

After submitting his applications, Oliver turned his attention to completing his IB essay. He also organized an in-school Super Smash Bros charity video game tournament, with all proceeds supporting Compassion International, a charity that supports service work globally. Oliver was beginning to see how he could turn his passion into meaningful action. DigiPen Institute of Technology saw the same and, in December, accepted Oliver into their award-winning game design program.

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Léa

Léa

Bermuda

The Urban Islander

Northwestern

Léa grew up in Bermuda and attended one of the top international schools on the island. She believed she would be happiest attending college in the United States but knew nothing about the U.S. admissions process. Léa was a freshman, so we had plenty of time to help her explore and prepare.

Léa was a leading student in her school and community. At the end of her freshman year, she was recognized with the President’s Award for her top GPA, nominated for Bermuda’s Youth Volunteer Award for her work at an autism community center, and elected by her classmates to one of three prefect positions.

Léa was clearly talented and driven, so our goal was to keep her focused. She was a strong STEM student but also loved art. The Short List encouraged her to use the summer to explore her interests outside the classroom and helped her research summer programs. She was accepted to a photography program at NYU and boarded a plane with her Nikon D3400 ready to explore the city.

Manhattan is about the size of Bermuda, but couldn’t be more different. Léa was inspired and used every opportunity to photograph her new environment. She then returned to the U.S. the following summer for another photography course and to continue exploring colleges.

Léa was particularly drawn to city schools where she would face a high volume of competition in the admissions process. She needed to match her top GPA with top standardized test scores, and was not happy with her initial results. We paired her with one of our test prep division, and Léa saw her scores soar. Things were coming together nicely when she entered the application season.

Léa visited several schools over her three high school summers and felt she would be happiest at Northwestern with its strong STEM, art, and communication programs. She loved the easy access to Chicago and vibrant urban life. Léa says her first summer in New York turned her from an island girl into a city girl but also helped her realize she never wanted to venture too far from the beach. Northwestern, with its sandy Lake Michigan campus beach, providted the best of both worlds, and offered her admission in December.

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Emma

Emma

Pennsylvania

The Teacher

Duquesne

We often hear from students, “I would love to get as much done this summer as possible because I know senior year will be busy.” As we got to know, Emma, however, it became clear that “busy” was an understatement. Our first priority became reducing stress for her and  her family.

Emma was a cheerleader throughout high school and elected team captain. She was part of a three-year leadership academy that included teaching second-graders in Belize. She joined Kids Helping Kids and was twice selected to travel to the Dominican Republic. She progressed upward through the organization, serving first as a junior mentor, then one of seven super mentors training other mentors, before being elected a natural helper and finally to the executive board.

Emma thrived working with others, so we recommended she join The Short List’s first-ever summer group class for families looking to expedite the early application process. Emma’s group consisted of six students and two counselors. Each week they tackled another step in the process and collectively completed their common applications shortly after Labor Day. Weekly assignments kept the process moving forward in a manageable way so Emma could maintain a summer job as a lifeguard. She quickly stood out as the student who came to each call prepared, spoke up during the group sessions, offered feedback to others in her group, and welcomed their feedback in turn. 

At school, Emma served as a teacher’s aide and had long considered becoming a teacher herself. The Short List helped her research schools with strong academics, school spirit, and affordability. She visited several and took careful notes, comparing one school to the next. She was accepted to every school she applied, even one to which she hadn’t applied but that offered her an acceptance because her application was so outstanding.

Emma was thrilled with her choices, but one school stood out from the rest because it based tuition rates on academic major and earning potential after graduation. That meant she could get the education she wanted without becoming burdened with student loan debt that would make teaching less feasible a profession.

Emma decided Duquesne University was the perfect school for her goals. She announced her decision at a family gathering toward the end of 2018, and then got back to her busy senior year.

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Gillian

Gillian

England

The Patent Lawyer

Columbia Law School

We first worked with Gillian when she was a high school student applying to college. She eventually attended Colby, a liberal arts college, to study both art and sociology. She contacted us again after graduating Colby for help planning her future.

Gillian shared how her interests in the sociological applications of art led her to intern at the Art Institute of Chicago prior to senior year. She worked closely with the photo editor in clearing reproduction rights for images and other copyrighted material.  She gained some understanding of the rules by which artistic knowledge was circulated and replicated, discovering in intellectual property (IP) laws a key aspect of the relationship between art  and society.  

During her senior year, Gillian met the Associate Director for Conservation at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The director showed her how new technologies and digitization were changing the understanding of how art should be conserved and replicated at an unprecedented rate.  The museum’s Rights and Reproduction Department faced complicated issues when it came to securing artists’ copyright protection given the new forms by which art was being produced and the proliferation of unmonitored online exchange.

Gillian came away from the discussion believing she was intersecting with a crucial moment in the history of art and law. She applied for an internship at a top law firm with a renowned IP practice. She read through case files and discovered IP law offered her the chance to grapple with the questions raised during her visit to the Whitney. After giving a presentation on artificial intelligence’s influence on redefining traditional practices of copyright authorship, Gillian knew she wanted to become an IP lawyer.

Gillian’s time at Colby made her aware an education in law would not be enough, so she applied for post graduate studies in sociology of media and culture at Cambridge University in England.  She believed the master’s program would provide her with theoretical and analytical skills to understand the impact of technology on both art and IP law.

We also worked with Gillian to identify the best law schools for her future practice area. She decided to apply Early Decision to Columbia because of its Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts. The Short List helped her craft her resume and work through her essays to highlight how Columbia would provide her a distinct opportunity to engage with issues of authorship, new forms of cultural production, and the dissemination of artistic knowledge. Gillian’s focus and commitment paid off when she received word just before the holidays she had been accepted and would soon be moving to New York City, one of the world’s artistic capitals.

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Jack

Jack

New York

The Gap Year

University of Chicago

Jack
Jack was born in Australia, and his parents make their home in Hong Kong. He was home-schooled for several years and often joined his parents on their global travels. In a world of adults, Jack found his personal escape in books. Those books motivated him to become a storyteller.

Jack’s family enrolled him in a boarding school in England at the age of eight, where he learned to adjust from a world of all adults to one of only kids his age. Jack still loved stories, and by the time he got to high school, he was telling them through photography. His classmates began asking him to photograph their events. They often joked that, while Jack followed their moves on the football pitch, they followed his movements up and down the sidelines capturing them in action. After the games, Jack’s room would come alive with students eager to relive the game through his photos.

We met Jack in the spring of his junior year and began helping him plan a gap year. In late summer, Jack suddenly announced he wanted to apply to university now, instead of during his gap year. Jack hadn’t visited a school, taken a standardized test, or done any preparation to apply. We knew he—and we—needed to move quickly.
We helped Jack register for the SAT and lined him up with our test prep division. We then helped him research schools. He had a growing list with no demonstrated interest, so we recommended he plan some visits and helped Jack put together a college tour for the fall of his senior year. He fell in love with the University of Chicago and wanted to apply Early, but meeting the Early Decision deadline with the quality application we knew he needed was going to be difficult. Thankfully, UChicago has an Early Decision II deadline. It would still be binding but would give Jack six more weeks to prepare.

Jack worked hard on his essays and activity resume and secured recommendations from his teachers and counselor. We held our collective breath until we saw his SAT results were within range. Jack stayed focused and submitted his application before the deadline. In mid-February, we received an email confirming that Jack had been accepted, and will join Zoe at UChicago after his gap year.

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Sarah

Sarah

Massachusetts

The Future Governor

Harvard


Sarah was a member of The Short List’s Monday Night Group Class. She loved working with five other students and two counselors each week to craft her story in an application that would get her noticed. Little did we know Sarah’s story would go well beyond her applications.

Sarah grew up in an unconventional mountain town in the middle of a state forest. Her town is the second-smallest town in Massachusetts with only 150 year-round residents, and no one in her family has ever gone to college.

Sarah is a National Honors Society student who took every advanced course her school offers. She then enrolled in several online courses to go beyond her school’s offerings. Like many rural areas, Sarah’s town does not have high-speed Internet, and much of Sarah’s homework and class assignments, especially her online courses, required her to go online. Sarah would drive a few miles to the parking lot outside the one-room town hall where she could access the Internet through the town’s satellite Wi-Fi service. There were many nights her mother had to drive over to the town hall to ensure Sarah would come home and get some sleep.

Sarah is a born leader. She is senior class president, a three-sport athlete, and team captain. However, her resume is dominated by community service. She has coached soccer every Saturday morning, worked with the homeless, and helped organize her town’s summer church fair. When her community suffered particularly hard during the economic downturn, with factories and local businesses shutting down or moving away, Sarah led the local chapter of Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), helping provide positive alternatives to young people losing hope and turning to opioids and alcohol.

Her story caught the attention of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, who invited Sarah to his State of the Commonwealth (State) address. Sarah thanked him for the invitation but couldn’t attend because her basketball team was playing a critical game to determine their playoff chances. Much to Sarah’s surprise, the Governor shared her story in his speech and then invited her to the state capitol to personally meet with him and his wife. They asked Sarah about her ambitions and life on the mountain, including what it was like sitting in the car late at night doing her homework. Sarah humbly replied, “It wasn’t so bad. I just turned on the heat in the winter, but in warmer weather I would sit outside.” Listening, we completely agreed with the Governor’s assessment of Sarah: “You are an incredible young lady.” On March 28, Ivy League notification day, Sarah sent a text that said it all, “I got into Harvard!”


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Wonjai

Wonjai

South Korea

The Social Scientist

Pomona College

Wonjai
We met Wonjai during his freshman year attending an international school in Seoul. Wonjai is an extremely bright young man who did exceptionally well in school. He had a near-perfect GPA and was a two-sport athlete, but found his greatest joy as an active member of Global Issues Network and Model United Nations.

Wonjai loved both classroom and experiential learning, so we encouraged him to explore summer programs in global politics. Prior to high school he enjoyed a three-week Global Issues Network program on the John Hopkins University campus. We recommended he spend part of sophomore summer at Georgetown University’s two-week summer MUN development program, followed by a Habitat for Humanity build in Cambodia, to continue broadening his worldview.

Wonjai entered his sophomore year understanding firsthand how economically divided the world is. He became more involved in both MUN and GIN, attending MUN conferences in Seoul, The Hague, and Beijing during his remaining high school years. He also organized an annual Habitat trip to Thailand. Junior summer he participated in a four-week social internship for low-income communities in the Boston area.

Junior year is often the most difficult year of high school, and Wonjai reached a point where his intense academic and extracurricular commitments threatened to overwhelm him. He decided to hit the pause button and give himself permission to dial back on his club commitments and take a more relaxed approach to his studies. The change worked for him. As Wonjai focused on learning rather than grades, a surprising thing happened—his grades actually went up.

Between his junior and senior years, Wonjai was accepted into Notre Dame’s selective GIN program, “Towards A Just Peace,” where he met equally passionate students. He also went on several college visits and had settled on an Early school, but we encouraged Wonjai to make one final trip to visit Pomona College in Claremont, California, before returning to Seoul. By the end of the visit, Wonjai’s entire college outlook changed. He discovered a diverse international community focused on the liberal arts and learning. He walked off the campus knowing it was the school for him.

We were equally excited but knew he had an uphill battle. It had been years since Pomona had accepted a student from his high school. Wonjai was fearless and determined, so we worked with him to tell his story through his application and leverage the support of his teachers and counselor. In December we received an email from Wonjai with the subject line, “AMAZING NEWS!!!,” followed by, “Forgive the all-caps, I figured the occasion warranted it!” We couldn’t have agreed more.


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Zoe

Zoe

New York

The Junior Olympian

University of Chicago

Zoe

Zoe comes from an international family in the heart of New York City. Her father is Colombian and Cuban, and her mother Ecuadorian. Zoe loves everything about living in the city, especially the Natural History Museum where they began to know her by name. She is a visual and experiential learner.

As a young girl, Zoe was diagnosed with hypotonia—a condition that results in low muscle strength—that would leave her weak and listless. Her family enrolled her in Taekwondo, and she took to it immediately. She practiced every day and watched her body get stronger. Her growing confidence carried over to competitions. She quickly climbed the ladder at her dojang and began entering national and international competitions. She qualified for the Junior Olympics at age 11 and took a silver medal. By the time she was a junior in high school she was winning gold medals.

We began working with Zoe as a junior and could immediately see she was a prolific writer and debater, with a love for economics and the social sciences. Despite her intelligence, Zoe’s challenges often left her frustrated. Once identified, however, she was given the tools that allowed her to soar in everything, including academics. She understood others suffered the same and decided to independently research education policy reform around special education. Amazed by her research, her school asked her to present her findings to the entire student body.

We recognized it would take a unique school to match her academic ambitions, urban sensibility, and drive to succeed. She is accomplished in so many different ways that we challenged her to consider schools she might not have thought of. She visited the University of Chicago and immediately fell in love. UChicago has a rigorous core curriculum, a quarter calendar that moves twice the speed of a semester calendar, and world-renowned social sciences departments, particularly in economics. Zoe’s mind was made up when she found she would be able to conduct research as a freshman.

We showed Zoe how to demonstrate her interest and build a relationship with the school. She had the GPA and test scores, and now just needed to complete her application. Like everything in Zoe’s life, she jumped in with great intensity. Every word of every essay had to be just right before she would hit the Early Decision I submit button. Zoe received the good news she had been accepted just before the December holidays and knew she had submitted her last application. She is already planning for her move to Chicago in the fall.