COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MASTERCLASS Week 3 Video 1 Beyond The Numbers

All right, welcome. Week three. Hope you've made it this far with me. We're gonna go through a lot of the stuff building off of what we've done previously. So if you haven't looked at the videos from weeks one and two, press pause, go back and watch them now, because they really do set you up to allow you to move yourself forward at a better pace. It's kind of like building a house on sand. If you try to move forward from this point forward, you're not going to have that solid foundation that you really need to put yourself forward in the best light possible for colleges. Just a quick recap what we talked about in those videos, just to make sure everybody is on the same page. We start off by talking about the seven success secrets of high achieving students. And the first five really are the driving forces. And these are that you start off with a plan, you approach it with urgency and consistency, and you do it with a level of energy or enthusiasm. And ultimately you have this level of expectancy that if you do your plan, you ultimately will succeed. And then we talked about in the second video the idea of the mindset, how you should best approach this, what is your mind? Where should your mind be? And there's two mindsets you should have at all times when you approach this and really anything in life. And that's first, a mindset of grit or persistence or stick to itness or that fire in the belly, as my gmammo would have said. And also a mindset of growth, this idea that you can do anything and that obstacles won't stop you and that you will figure out a way to get to the finish line. So those were the seven success secrets. And then I walked you through the mountain exercise. And if you're going to watch any video from weeks one or two, that is the video you want to do because it talks about what mountain or obstacle or success level do you want to reach? Why do you want to reach it? How do you plan on reaching that level? What obstacles do you see in the foreground and in the background? And also what mentors or models or roadmaps can you use to help you get there? And then ultimately, how can you help other people up that mountain? We then went on to the next week talking about what concerns and considerations and factors you should weigh in when deciding about where you want to apply to college. And then I talked about the resources, the resources that are available for you to try to narrow down the list of hundreds and thousands of colleges down to a list that's manageable. So you can think about doing a deep dive dissection on those colleges to ultimately come out with your list of colleges where you're going to apply. So that leads us to today. Okay, so today, here we are in week three. And I hope you've done those exercises because today we're going to start putting those exercises into practice in the form of actually thinking through how we want to present ourselves to colleges. And the first thing I'm going to talk about, I'm going to talk about how some of the things you think you know about college might be wrong and that a lot of the. A lot of the thought processes going around about college admissions are simply incorrect. And that there's a lot of myths that I hope to bust today. And the first one is a hard one for people to get past. And that's this obsession with numbers that we really should think beyond the numbers, because the reality is that colleges do think beyond the numbers. So what numbers am I talking about? The first numbers I encourage people to not think about at some level are the rankings. And we talked about this before, that simply because a college is ranked high in the U.S. news & World Report doesn't mean it should rank high in your list of colleges where you're thinking about applying. Right. It's about a matter of finding colleges that are the right fit for you ultimately, and not that it's a right fit for US News and World Report. The other numbers that we try to get people beyond are this obsession about SAT, ACT, APs, GPAs, all the other acronyms that are out there. It becomes to the point where you're living your life by numbers and you're more than a number. And the story I tell about this is a phone call I got actually this last year. And the story gets to me because I know these people very well. But I received a phone call, kind of a panic phone call, late last fall from a mother who's a good friend of mine. And she said, jeb, I need you to help me. My daughter is not going to get into any college. And I was a bit confused because I know her daughter. I know that her. Her daughter is quite accomplished and is an extremely bright person and presents extremely well. And I said, well, tell me about your daughter. What do I not know? And her answer was, well, Jeb, she's just a B student. And as the conversation continued, she kept saying that phrase, she's just a B student, over and over. Again. That was how she defined her daughter. And to me, it hit Home. That that's how a lot of people define themselves and their children. That they define themselves or their children by numbers. That my child is just a B student, or my child has an SAT of X, Y and Z, or that my child has the following credentials and they're always numerical. And that reminded me that we need to stop doing that. Because it hit home that here was someone who I know and she's not just a B student. The reality is she's a remarkable individual with a unique story. And it was just simply a matter of helping her tease that story out and making her stand out. So that while her grade point average might have been a B plus, she was not a B plus student. She was a remarkable individual with a terrific backstory that happened to have a 3.3 GPA. Okay? So I tell that story because that is what I hear time and time again, that when I talk to parents and students, the lead sentence is their grade point average or some number that supposedly defines who that student is. And I know that the thought process is because they feel like that number is going to determine where their child goes to school. That that is the thought process that a lot of people fall into. And what I've seen time and time again is that's not the reality, right? That there's often many other factors that come into play in determining where somebody goes to school. And this plays out really well in the favor of students who have had a rough time in say, their freshman year, their sophomore year, or even their junior year. And then all of a sudden they find themselves and they see their grades take off, right? We talk about this upward trend or the students who are juggling a million other responsibilities. And because of that, their grade point average might be low, their grade point average might be quite low, but their full story is not their grade point average. Their full story is their full story. And the reason why I highlight this is because the thought process used to be, and I think for a lot of people my age, the thought process when we applied to college was that you needed to be the well rounded student. You've heard this, I'm sure, right? That you had to have certain grades, you had to have certain sats, you needed to be the captain of the, of the football team, and you must do X, Y and Z community service projects and all while never sleeping, right? The reality is that now instead of looking for the well rounded student, colleges are looking for the well rounded student body. That colleges and admissions officers are trying to piece together a student body, a community that will reflect where that college wants to go. Right? Every college has certain goals and missions that they want to achieve and they do that by building a community that reflects that. So whenever they look at a list of applicants and they see the different criteria and accomplishments that each of the students have, ultimately from that pool of applicants, they have to piece together a community that's going to jive and move that school forward and toward where they want to go. So for students, it's a great opportunity. First off, for you in the legacy class is a great opportunity because a lot of people are not thinking this way and they're just approaching everything as if it's a checklist, right? We must be the well rounded student with X, Y and Z. But you know, because I tell you all the time that you need to find your niche, you need to find your strength, highlight that and you're going to fill the need of a university's need, right? You're going to find a university that matches to you and you're going to fill the need of that university. Okay? So it's not a matter of trying to be of all things to all people, it's a matter of being a standout in the area where you find passion and where your strengths lie. So it's a matter of finding your niche and then filling the need of a university. So finding your niche and making that match into a whole that's a need for a university makes your chances of being accepted substantially greater than if you just applied yourself across the board as trying to be a jack of all trades, a master of none. Remember that saying, it's very important. So how do you figure out what a university's needs are? How do you understand why where a university, what the university's wants and needs are? It's easy, easy from the mountain exercise to know where your strengths are, right? You've already done that exercise and you've done the exercise of pulling together your opening statement, how you want to be, how you perceive yourself and how you want the world to perceive you as your opening statement. So now you got to find a university where that opening statement resonates with the university. So how do you find a university that's going to be receptive to your opening statement? Universities are making it easier for us now. Universities, through their websites, talk about the incoming class every single year. In the fall, the university puts out a press release and updates its website, talks about the accomplishments of the incoming freshman class. That press release talks about what the university sees as valuable. And if you go through that press release, you'll hear things like, this incoming class is the best class to ever come here in the history of the world. And then they'll talk about the specifics of the incoming class that are important to that university. So they'll talk about that. A certain number of the students were published authors. A certain number of the incoming class were captains of their football team. A certain number of the incoming class did certain activities. That is a list of priorities and objectives that the university thinks are great. And they are put out by the university and it highlights and spotlights what they want. In a way, although not meaning to, they are saying, please send us more of students like this, right? So they're not putting out press releases saying, we have the most well rounded student body full of well rounded students ever. They're talking about individuals and they're talking about individual accomplishments done by those students. So if you can see where you match up to previous press releases, you see, wow, I can be that student for this university, and this is a university that I could actually see myself going to. Then it puts yourself in a good position to position yourself and market yourself at some level to the university as being the next person for their press release in the following years. And the same thing is true for their websites. The websites, as I mentioned previously, are marketing propaganda to some extent, right? So in the brochures and in their websites, they're talking about what they see as being valuable in their student body. So they're making it easier through their press releases and their websites and in the conversations and the speeches given by university administrators and officials. So listen closely and chart out what they're talking about and seeing if one of those things matches for you, because you may ultimately be the fit for the person and your numbers may not match up to what you believe they need to be, but it may not matter. At the end of the day, the one thing that does matter is that you stand out. And that for a lot of universities, especially after the common application came into play, the number of applications being submitted has increased tenfold. So for example, at some of the schools that may have 1,000 seats, the number of applications has now gone up to some of these schools of well over 20 to 30,000. So you're looking at a huge increase in applications, but the number of seats have stayed the same. And we talked about before that a large percentage of those seats are in effect reserved for children of alumni, children of donors, international students and athletes. And everyone else is left fighting over what remains. So you're left fighting over a certain number of seats. So how do you get those seats? You must stand out. You must make yourself beyond the numbers. You must say, yes, I have the credentials, but I also excel in this category. And that I'm this particular student for you and this need that you have university. I'm the person that can fill that for you. That you need to be that student. That when the admissions committee is flipping through the files, they think, yes, finally I have the person for that role. So you need to identify what that role is for you and try to make sure it matches up to your opening statement and your passions. So the question I leave you with on this first video of week number three is what role are you going to play for your dream college? What role do you want to play? In the next video, we'll talk about how to put that forward in the best light for the school and the best way that allows you to succeed. So see you on the next video.