Tag: pre-college

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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.


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Tucker

Tucker

Japan

The Multidisciplinarian

Tufts University

Tucker
Some people are born performers. Tucker is one of them. His mother is Japanese and his father American. They raised Tucker and his older brother in both Japan and the States. Both boys were young musical prodigies. We worked with Tucker’s older brother, now a student at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, when he was attending an international school in Japan. Tucker attended the same high school in Tokyo but transferred to a boarding school in Massachusetts after freshman year.

Tucker is known throughout his school as an actor, singer, and musician. He has played the violin since he was four and composed music for as long as he can remember. He has been a member of numerous jazz bands, orchestras, and a capella groups and has played the lead in countless school productions. Whether it’s Grease, Spamalot, or Hairspray, Tucker’s classmates expect to see him front and center.

Tucker’s world off stage is very different. He is an unassuming, quiet student who cares deeply about the world around him. He spent six weeks prior to 10th grade in a language immersion program in Spain, and half of sophomore year as the only Western student at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa. Tucker attends school in rural Massachusetts where environmental protection defines the area. He is the president of his school’s Environmental Action Club and helped write the school’s environmental policies. This combination of music, culture, and environment has come to define his goals.

Tucker longed to find a way to combine his interests in a meaningful way. He knew of schools with strong environmental science or music programs, or even cultural or international programs, but longed to find one that combined all three. Tucker visited many schools, but always came back less than enthusiastic. He would rave about aspects of the school but never about the whole school. The Short List refused to give up on helping him find a school that could offer everything he was seeking.

One weekend, Tucker was visiting his brother in Boston, and we encouraged him to visit Tufts, a school renowned for its international focus, strong musical partnerships, and environmental programs. Tucker discovered a world where he could pursue environmental studies in close collaboration with professors and classmates, audition for a dual degree with the New England Conservatory of Music, and even design and teach his own course in the Experimental College, affectionately known as the ExCollege. Tucker took the holidays to consider his options and eagerly applied Early Decision II.

Tucker found a way to communicate his background and interests in one of the best-written essays we had ever read. He communicated the same in his supplement essays, always viewing them as a way to express himself. He eagerly hit the submit button. Six weeks later he sent a text that simply said, “I got in!”


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William

William

Ohio

The Raconteur

Middlebury

Client: William

William’s family contacted The Short List during his junior year. He was a bright student near the top of his class, and we learned a few key things about him very quickly: He is extremely mature, a great writer, and a music lover. He is also able to find good in most things.

The Short List explored several options with William and began to make recommendations. The challenge was that William found a reason to attend nearly every school on his growing list. We encouraged him to visit schools and attend the college meetings at his school. He began basing his college list on how well he felt he connected with the schools’ representatives. The problem was that he connected with nearly all of them. We asked him to dig deeper and consider the programs that they offered.

William loves language, which is clear in his writing, as well as his study of Mandarin Chinese. He exhausted every Mandarin course at his high school, and he emphasized that he wanted to attend a school with a strong Chinese language program. William did not have a clear favorite among the schools he was considering. We recommended Middlebury and, characteristically, William was ready to apply early before even visiting. We encouraged him to reconsider that decision, despite our feelings that Middlebury might be a great school for him.

He took our advice and focused on completing and submitting applications to all the schools on his final list. When William was accepted to Middlebury in early spring, among other schools, he was ready to send in his deposit. Again The Short List stressed the importance of visiting different schools before committing. The family decided to visit the three top schools on his list. Middlebury was the first of the three, and by the third night William had made his decision. Before he could even reveal his choice, his parents gave him a Middlebury T-shirt, telling him it was obvious how happy he was on the campus. They had been so certain of his choice that they slipped into the bookstore and bought him the T-shirt while he was occupied at a meeting during their campus visit.


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Summer

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.


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Souhail

Souhail

Lebanon

The Coach

Villanova

Client: Souhail

Souhail is Lebanese and was a junior in high school in Beirut when he was referred to The Short List. He was hoping to earn a degree in engineering from a U.S. college, so his parents engaged The Short List to help guide their son through the admissions process. We started by trying to uncover what made Souhail special.

The more Souhail shared with us, the more we could see that he loved soccer. He had been playing since he was a little boy and was now the captain of his high school team. But his leadership extended well beyond his school team. He organized his teammates to build a soccer field for boys at a local refugee camp and was able to obtain donated soccer balls for their practices and games. The boys were not accustomed to being organized or disciplined, and had little trust for anyone outside the camp. over the next 18 months, Souhail and his friends organized regular practices, helped the boys build their skill level, and arranged games. Slowly, Souhail gained the boys’ trust and saw changes in them that most people would not have dreamed possible.

One day, Souhail and his teammates showed up for a practice only to find the refugee camp abandoned. The boys had been taken away the day before, and Souhail was given no further information on where they had gone. He was devastated because he had bonded with many of the boys and worried about their future. The experience changed his life, and Souhail wanted to find a way to continue community outreach in college. Souhail’s family dissuaded him from applying to binding Early Decision programs because he had not been able to visit many schools. They asked The Short List to come up with a list. We looked for schools with strong engineering programs, as well as strong outreach programs. Souhail was accepted to several schools but chose Villanova, a Catholic school outside Philadelphia, for its Top 10 engineering program and its reputation for having one of the most community service-oriented student bodies in the United States.

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Sam

Sam

Switzerland

The Rower

Princeton

Sam

Sam was born in the U.S. but has lived abroad most of his life. His family established roots in Geneva, and he became a dual citizen of the U.S. and Switzerland.

Sam came to The Short List as a dedicated student with a solid academic profile. He was involved in a variety of extracurricular activities and active within his school community. As a talented rower, he hoped to join an elite crew team in college. What Sam needed most was help managing the application process from abroad, especially given his demanding school and rowing schedules.

The Short List looked for ways to reduce the pressure of the application season for Sam. Part of that process was helping Sam order his priorities clearly so he knew what to focus on in evaluating and applying to schools. Being recruited by an elite rowing program was certainly Sam’s ambition but was not as important to him as finding the best school to support his love of math and science.

The Short List helped Sam develop a balanced list of colleges that offered the academic programs he desired. We also walked him through the necessary steps to build relationships with college coaches, helped him understand the NCAA recruiting rules, and identified specific ways he could advocate for himself both with coaches and admissions. We also helped him map out an application strategy to stay on top of deadlines.

Sam spent the summer before his senior year earning a spot on and competing with the Swiss Junior National Team, and he shared this achievement with the coaches at his target schools. The Princeton crew coach, in particular, expressed clear interest in Sam based on both his academic achievements and his rowing capabilities. Sam knew Princeton University offers one of the U.S.’s top math and science programs and top rowing programs. He also recognized admission to an Ivy League school is never guaranteed, even as a recruited athlete. The Short List recommended he apply Restricted Early Action to affirm his interest and demonstrate his commitment.

Six weeks after submitting his application in November, Sam was one of just 700 students offered early admission to Princeton University. He will study in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and row with Princeton’s nationally ranked crew team. We are thrilled to have helped Sam achieve his academic goal and fulfill his dream of rowing at an elite college level.

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Phoebe

Phoebe

England

The Lacrosse Player

Duke

Phoebe attended one of our fall UK presentations at her boarding school in England. We outlined the opportunities of US education, but Phoebe mostly heard that she could be a scholar- athlete and continue playing lacrosse at the college level. Phoebe is an outstanding student and a gifted athlete. In addition to playing lacrosse for her school, Phoebe also plays for her county team, a UK regional team, and, most impressively, England’s U19 National Team.
Phoebe was well known in England but not in the United States. Whenever her national team competed in international tournaments, she saw that all the great players attended or graduated from US colleges. Phoebe became determined to do the same.

Our first effort was to help Phoebe raise her visibility with US coaches. The Short List showed her how to begin building relationships. We suggested putting together a recruiting video for her top schools. We also stressed the importance of campus visits and meeting one-on-one with coaches. We then helped her put together a weeklong college tour.

The Short List showed her how to begin building relationships.

On her first day, she visited the Duke campus. The coach and players were away at a tournament, but Phoebe was able to evaluate Duke’s academics. She went on to visit several other schools and meet with their coaches but kept returning to Duke academics as the standard against which she measured all the other schools. Phoebe wanted to return to Duke for another visit to meet the coach. We looked at the various summer recruiting camps and, as luck would have it, her national team was scheduled to compete in the US at the same time Duke was scheduled to hold their summer camp. She ended up spending two days at Duke, meeting with the coaches and players. The head coach pulled Phoebe aside at the end of the camp and told her how impressed the staff was with her. Phoebe was thrilled to receive these words of encouragement from a coach whose team is ranked among the best in the country.

Phoebe spent the fall semester considering her options. The Duke coach did not make it easy. She told Phoebe she would have to get into Duke on her own merit but, if accepted, she would have a place on the team. Duke had a binding Early Decision program, which meant that Phoebe would have to commit without having something in writing from the coach. Phoebe and her parents decided it was worth the gamble because of Duke’s strong academic programs. She was clearly excited six weeks later when she emailed The Short List: “The dream has come true! Thank you for all your help; I couldn’t have gotten this without you! (A rather excited and over- the-moon) Phoebe.” A day later, the coach sent Phoebe a note welcoming her to Duke’s nationally ranked team.

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Paula

Paula

Spain

The Wall Streeter

University of Pennsylvania

Client: Paula

When The Short List met Paula, she was at the top of her game academically. She had consistently earned high marks in every high school subject and on all of her standardized tests. Having lived in New York, New Mexico, Germany, and Spain, Paula has a world-wise perspective and speaks four languages fluently.

We had already worked with Paula’s older sister, but we quickly figured out there was nothing “cookie cutter” about Paula. She was on her own path, and her dream was clear and specific: She wanted to turn her love of math into a career on Wall Street.

Paula came to The Short List having identified 25 potential colleges but no top choice. The Short List worked with Paula to narrow down her list through research, college tours, and information sessions. She discovered the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania, an interdisciplinary course of study in business education, language training, and liberal arts. Paula’s enthusiasm for the program made it clear she had discovered both the perfect program for her and a clearer sense of direction.

The Short List worked with Paula to narrow down her list through research, college tours, and information sessions.

For her Personal Statement, Paula wanted to write about her love for the board game Monopoly. The first draft explained how Paula’s various strategies for playing the game had allowed her to remain the undefeated champion for years in her family, but the essay lacked a real sense of what Paula could offer to the Huntsman Program.
The Short List worked with Paula to use Monopoly as an extended metaphor for her life, comprising the many places she had lived, her fluency with languages, and her dreams of turning calculated risks into big Wall Street profits. Paula’s risky choice of an essay topic paid off. She will join the class of 2015 in the Huntsman Program.

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Sara and Grace

Sara and Grace

New Jersey

The Thoughtful Twins

Cornell, Univ of Pennsylvania

We were introduced to Sara and Grace by our summer planning consultant, Jill Tipograph. Jill had worked with the twins in organizing amazing summers and activities that extended beyond the summer.
We sat down with Jill, the twins, and their parents. The twins shared a passion for science and a desire to pursue careers in medicine. At first, the two seemed so similar that it was a challenge differentiating them. Luckily, the family engaged our services early enough that we had time to help each define her own path.

We agreed that we would work with them separately and asked them not to discuss our efforts between them. We then delved deeper into their backgrounds, and began to get a better sense of each sister’s personality. Sara loved music and community service. She played violin in her school’s orchestra and became the senior leader of the Fundraising Council and Debate Club. She also spent summers researching at Brown and Columbia Universities, and volunteering with the community blood bank. With Jill’s help, Sara had organized a violin program for a community center in the Bronx. She collected used instruments and spent months teaching the children how to play. She even directed a show they put on for their parents. Sara’s efforts were always directed at helping others.

The Short List helped each of the sisters compile a list of colleges that addressed their individual interests.

Grace loved science but felt conflicted because she also loved literature, writing, and the classics. In school she joined the Writer’s Workshop Club and became the editor for her school’s literary magazine and newspaper. Outside of school, she attended summer science research programs at Penn and Columbia, and writing workshops at Johns Hopkins. Grace pursued both science and writing with equal vigor.

The Short List helped each of the sisters compile a list of colleges that addressed their individual interests. Grace wanted to find a school that would combine her love for science and writing, while Sara wanted a school that would allow her to pursue science and human ecology. Each had a clear favorite: for Grace, the University of Pennsylvania and for Sara, Cornell. Through multiple meetings with admissions personnel and faculty, each girl found an advocate at her school who agreed to write on her behalf.

Both schools announced their early decisions on the same day. Grace opened her decision first and the family recorded her jumping up and down at news of her acceptance to Penn. The camera kept rolling as Sara received her acceptance to Cornell. When they called The Short List with the news, both girls were over the moon as they shared their news—separately.