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.

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.