gap year – The Short List

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.

Summer

China

Multiple Applications

Princeton

Client: Summer

The Short List started working with Summer after she had been denied by most of the schools to which she had applied. We had worked with several of Summer’s classmates who recommended she speak to us before deciding between acceptance to a U.S. school that did not excite her, school in the U.K., or a gap year before applying again.

Summer was a top student who should have had more choices. It soon became clear that her application materials were a key part of the problem: There was no theme to them. Her essays were not very well thought out and she did not highlight the things that we felt would have made her stand out.

We helped Summer plan a gap year to deal with her loss and find a new purpose. Summer had gone through a very difficult year. In addition to applying to college, she was completing the final year of her IB diploma program. While challenging, this workload should have been manageable for someone with Summer’s academic record. We pressed for more information and finally learned that her father had passed away during the previous year. We asked if she really felt ready for college. It was as though a watershed had opened; someone had finally given Summer permission to deal with her loss.

We helped Summer plan a gap year to deal with her loss and find a new purpose.

She spent the first months after graduation at home with her mother as both adjusted to life without her father. While home, she learned that she had scored a perfect 45 on her IB final exams, something that only 1% of students worldwide achieve. She then signed up for an art history course in Italy and was awarded a two-month marine conservation internship in Madagascar for December and January. From February on, she stayed in Beijing with extended family and took an intensive language course.

Summer had started running as a coping mechanism and, as she built her endurance, decided to run the New York City marathon, registering with the American Stroke Association to honor her father. She spent several weeks prior to the race in the U.S., and we encouraged her to use the time to visit schools. She wrote essays that revealed her strengths in meaningful ways and sent her early application to Princeton only once she was fully satisfied with it. Days later she found herself at the start line of the marathon. Summer shared that she met other families who had lost loved ones and thought about her father throughout the race: “This year is bittersweet; wonderful developments are happening in my life but I can’t share them with my dad. I know that wherever my dad is now, he is looking down on me with pride.” Six weeks later, Summer learned that she had been accepted to Princeton.