Even students with perfect SAT and ACT scores get rejected from Ivy League colleges. Why? Typically, because they haven’t devoted enough time to developing two essential parts of their college applications, their extra-curricular profiles and their application essays.
Your extra-curricular profile and your application essays (both the Common App/Coalition App and the supplemental essays), can set you apart from the crowd in a way that test scores cannot. These essential parts of your application give you an opportunity to show colleges how you are impressive in a way that is different from all the other high-achieving applicants.
Consider Samantha, for example. Samantha fell in love with chemistry in elementary school and now she wants to apply to the University of Pennsylvania to study chemistry. Her SAT score came in at 1490. She could spend the next six months crushing to move her score over the 1500 mark. But even if she sees a slight boost in her score, the score is unlikely to change in a way that will make an impact on college admissions officers. Instead of wasting time retaking the SAT over and over, she’d move herself into a more competitive position if she spent her time organizing an after-school chem club for girls in a disadvantaged neighborhood. By so doing, she shows colleges that her interest in chemistry is of long-standing and one to which she is committed, and that she is able to apply her interest in chemistry in a way that is beneficial to others. And that kind of work is going to catch an admissions officer’s eye much more than a slight bump in a test score.
If you’d like more information about how to develop your extra-curricular profile or your college essays, call me. I’m always ready to help you!
