COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MASTERCLASS Week 6 Video 1- Academic Thresholds

All right, welcome back. This is week six, video one. And today we're going to talk about academic thresholds and academic metrics. Basically, it's the hard evidence, we talk about in the book breaking into college, that when applying to college, is kind of like bringing your case to a jury. And the academic metrics, these numbers are the hard evidence that you're presenting to the jury in the form of the admissions committee. And they want to know, have you cleared certain hurdles? For universities, they differ, right? For some universities, the hurdles are higher, for others that are lower. But at the end of the day, every college has some number, although not published, that they really look to have out of their incoming class. And for many students, this is the hardest fact about college admissions, is that at some level, you. You are reduced to numbers that you are, in fact, looked at as somebody with a gpa, an sat, and ACT score. And what we try to do through this program, of course, is try to bring you out from behind those numbers to make your story come alive. Because we know from previous experience that when you do that, you win, that when you make your story come alive beyond the numbers, you're more likely to get the acceptance letter from the college where you want to go. But from the academic metric standpoint, it is important to know that some schools effectively have a threshold that they're looking for and that you need to know that in order for your story to ultimately get out there for you even to be heard, you have to get past that first round review by the admissions committee. So trying to understand where that line is drawn for a lot of the schools is difficult, right? Trying to understand if they have a de facto or in effect, a GPA cutoff by which they don't even consider you. And the reality is, many of them do. They in effect, have a line by which they want everybody to clear when it comes to GPAs, SATs, ACT scores. So trying to decipher what exactly where that line is is difficult because the acceptance rates and the stats that you hear and you read about in large books and online are not the same for everybody. And we've talked about this before, right, that the acceptance rates that you see publicized are very different. Not everybody faces, for example, a 10% acceptance rate, that there are some students who come from backgrounds, for example, being children of alumni or coming from a family that has donated a large sum of money to a university, or being an athlete or being an international student. There's about seven to eight different, what are called admissions hooks. And these students have a lower Bar to clear. Right. Their chances of getting in are greater than someone who doesn't have one of these admissions hooks. So trying to figure out what your particular hurdle is is difficult. But with that being said, it is something that we encourage our students to do, to try to figure out where they may fall in the admitted student profile. So the way that we do this is we try to look at the years previous and try to see where you fall. And we have an exercise to help you through that later in this week. But the first thing I want to stress beyond anything else, before we get into the nitty gritty of trying to see where you fall within a scale, is to hammer home the point that grades and SAT and SAT scores are the most important factor in deciding whether or not you get into the school. Okay, I'm not contradicting myself here. They are again, threshold levels that you want to clear. The point is you want to get past that hurdle, and then you're going to be able to differentiate yourself through your story. But you first need to understand that, that your grades do matter and your SAT and ACT scores do matter for the most selective schools in the country. So if you have aspirations of going to those schools, you need to really focus in on your studies. And this is from day one that you need to focus in and say, I'm going to make my studies a priority. And importantly, that you want to challenge yourself by taking courses that are the most challenging courses available at your school that allow you to keep your grades high. Okay, and here's the story I always tell about this one. It's a personal story we talked about in a previous video. How I went from a small rural town in Kentucky in the last high school I went to in the three of my sophomore year, there weren't a lot of funds available for textbooks. I was taking the most advanced chemistry course that that school offered. But there weren't enough textbooks to go around for the students. So in order to do the homework, they had an extended study hall built into the schedule. So everybody that went to that school had an extended study hall where you were supposed to do your homework because there weren't enough books to be taken home at night to do actual homework. And what I realized was that I really wasn't being challenged and that a lot of students were being left behind at our school simply because there weren't enough resources. And I know a lot of students watching this right now are facing similar hurdles at their schools. It's not a level playing field across the country when it comes to funds available for schools. So what happened was the next year, when I was able to get into the boarding school that I talked about, it was like drinking water from a fire hose, right? I went from a supposed honors chemistry class at one school to an advanced placement AP chemistry class at this private school. And I was quickly overwhelmed. And after the first grading period, I had a 62% average. And in any country, that is an F in any language that is not good. And I really, really was working hard. It wasn't a matter that I was goofing off, Quite the contrary. I was just simply overwhelmed by the level going from here to here. And the students around me seemed to really master the material, and they were talking about subjects or details about chemistry that weren't even in our textbook. I didn't understand exactly what was happening because I, all of a sudden found myself on a treadmill going backwards. And the harder I ran, it seemed like the more tired I became. And it wasn't a matter of being a matter of effort. It was a matter of not being able to keep up. And that's hard. That's hard for, I think, especially for guys in high school, right? You have this competence, this bulletproof sense about yourself. To say that you can't keep up is a tough, tough pill to swallow and to admit. And there came a point where the teacher, along with the school counselor, pulled me aside for a meeting. And those meetings are never fun, right? It's you and two authority figures. And the interesting thing that happened during that time was it wasn't a meeting of, you're not hacking it here. It was a meeting of, how can we help? Right? They saw me struggling and trying and not succeeding, and they wanted to support me. So what they ultimately did was move me down a level to an honors chemistry class where I was able to keep up and do well. But what I think happens too often is teachers don't recognize that, and students aren't willing to say, I'm struggling. And what happens at the end of the day is they end up with grades that are subpar for them, and then they're stuck trying to explain it to colleges two to three years down the road. So my plea for you is to take the most challenging course for you that allows you to keep your grades at a level that you're happy. Okay? So don't let my AP Chemistry experience become your experience. Really, really focus in, especially early in the semester, to make sure that you're right. Sizing your courses for where you should be. Okay? That's my $0.02 on academic metrics. When it comes to course selection, take the most advanced challenging courses possible so that the college counselor, the school counselor at your school can mark a little checkbox. We talked about the secondary school report. The counselor sends off this report to your college where you're applying, and in it it says, did this student take the most challenging courses available to the student? And you want the counselor to check? Yes. So having a conversation with your counselor about what courses you need to take in order to qualify, qualify for him to check that box for you is an important conversation. So for me, at that time, that was the most challenging course that I could take. Subsequently, I was able to move back up into AP Chemistry. But having that conversation early on allowed me to also understand that my road was not diverting. Right. I could easily get back on. It's just simply a matter of making sure everything is timed out in a way that you can make it palpable. Good word. So that's the course that you want to take, the route that you want to take in order to ultimately end up with a secondary school report that says, yes, indeed, this student has taken the most challenging courses available and has done well and well enough to qualify ultimately for an admission spot at that school. The other thing that I want to stress at this time is we talked about the opening statement. Keep coming back to the opening statement because it is the cornerstone and the filter by which this whole program flows. So if your opening statement talks about how you have this love of science and you have dreams of becoming an astronaut, and then the college looks at your transcript and notices that you haven't taken any science electives or that you have this love and burning for computer science, but they look at your course load and there's nothing in there that speaks to that. There's a misalignment there, right? They want to see that your course selection supports the story that you're telling in your essays, your teacher recommendations, and throughout your college application. So choosing your courses to back up and corroborate how you view the world and how you view yourself is important for this whole idea of building a case for admissions that pushes you forward. So take a look at your transcript now if you're a senior and see if that's true, and if it's not, see how you can, as we say, spotlight and spin those courses that support your argument that that is indeed how you view the world right now, if you're on the front end, if you're on a freshman or a Sophomore, work with your school counselor, work with your parents to try to identify those courses that not only support your argument, your opening statement, but also feed your passion. Right? This is a time of self exploration and for you to really to appreciate and do a deep dive discovery on the topics that you're interested in. So it works both ways. But it's important from the college admissions standpoint that your transcript really does reflect the storyline that you're telling throughout your application. The last story I want to tell you. So I'm telling you again some of these stories from my life and stories of students I've worked with, again, so that hopefully inspires you. I think too often we hear from our classmates or from parents about their perfect child and we get frustrated or we feel like we don't quite measure up. And by telling you my stories about how I stumbled and ended up okay, my hope is that it inspires you to step forward and say, I can do it too. So the story I'm going to tell you now is a story I touched on in an earlier video. It's when I ended up on the wrong dean's list, right? At universities, they have a dean's list, which is the list of students who are doing well. And then they have a second dean's list. And this is the list the dean keeps of people being expelled from school. So I talked about this before, how I went and I basically chained myself to a chair in her waiting room till she would talk to me. And then I lobbied her about how I could turn my grades around. And what I did going forward was just that it became this upward trend. And this is the story for so many students, especially in their freshman year of high school. You come in and all of a sudden your grades take a dip. This is the AP chemistry experience I had. But a lot of students experience this in their freshman year where all of a sudden they're not in middle school anymore. The course load is terrific, right? All of a sudden, every Single teacher has 30 minutes to an hour of homework every night. And you have six teachers and you're doing other activities, so your grades tend to fall downward. The important thing is, is that you find your way back up, okay? So that by the end of the day, so that by the end of your senior year that your grades are substantially higher. And then the story that you're able to tell is the story that I was able to tell law schools and that is this upward trend is that, yes, that my overall GPA may have been down here, but the storyline That I was able to focus on was. Was everything from this point forward, that it's a story of persistence and moving forward and saying, yes, at this point, we were all struggling. And you almost make it as if this is a time in which you're refining yourself, which is the reality for so many freshmen. And that this time here is where you should be really focusing in on, because you're not getting a freshman, right? You're getting a senior who has lived this life and is now excelling at this level. And this is the ideal way to go if you've had a bad freshman year, the harder thing to do. And this is where I get a lot of phone calls. And it happens a lot, especially in the junior and senior year. You'll have a student who's coming along here. Here's freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year. They're floating along and then all of a sudden there's a drop. And then sometimes it goes back up, sometimes it goes way up, sometimes it goes back up to the level. We have to figure out how to explain this drop. And sometimes there's a very good reason for it. But the worst thing that people do is they just let this be the storyline so that their GPA is this without directly addressing a drop. And when there's a substantial drop, they just assume the worst. So letting them know exactly what happened here is important because it's a question in their mind. And when people have questions, the answer for them is going to be no. A confused mind says no, right? So if an admissions committee sees, ooh, what happened here? And in the junior year, that was only a year ago, this happened, what kind of student am I getting? Am I getting this kind of student or this kind of student or that? I don't know. Take away the uncertainty by addressing it and the question is, how far of a drop do you need to address it? Depends. And this is where I really look to students to work with their school counselor. If it's a substantial drop, then you want to explain it. If it's a monetary, you know, one class drop, then it can be easily ignored. Especially if, for example, and this is where we'll see it with students who are, for example, very good in science. And then all of a sudden you'll see like an English literature grade comes back, so you have a high like a 3.9 GPA, and then they get a C in English Literature. This person is applying to mit, has aspirations of being a computer scientist and really doesn't care if his sentences have verbs in them. Right. I have a lot of friends like this. This is an easy story to tell, and it's consistent with your storyline. The harder problem are people who have. Have a love of science. This is the storyline they want to tell. And then they end up with a biology grade that's the C. And they have overall 3.9 GPA. Caveat being if you end up with a C and you have a 3.9 GPA and you're a science mate, have an interest in science, but you work really hard in biology and you have a teacher who wants to talk about your level of persistence and giving back to the students, it's still something you can address through a teacher recommendation. So all of these different variations depend. Right. And we cover a lot of these during legacy class. We have a lot of discussion about where you are right now in your classes, where your GPAs are and what is the problem and how can you address it through your story, through teacher recommendations, through your essays, through your short essays, that all these things can be explained when there's a real underlying reason for this drop. And it's just a matter of really teasing out exactly why we're seeing this drop and seeing if there's a problem here, like being overwhelmed, being in AP chemistry class that you shouldn't be in, or if there's some other issue going on. And this is really where we work with the parents and we work with school counselors and the students to help make that storyline so important for the students who have the other way. Right? So we talked about the upward trend for those students who are coming along. Great freshman year, great sophomore year, junior year starts going down. Senior year, levels off at the bottom. This is a harder story to tell. The GPA will fall somewhere around here. Right? So the question is this. When you read a book, you remember the first of the book and the end of the book. For college admissions officers, their focus is on the end of the book. They want to know what kind of student they're getting today. And what they're seeing is we're getting a student whose GPA is here. And if that line is below their academic threshold, even though your overall GPA might be higher, you may not get the chance to tell your story. It's not all gloom and doom, okay? It's just simply a matter of recognizing, especially if you're in your senior year and you have this downward trend that you need to double your efforts to try that drive that GPA back up, and that while you may never get your GPA back up, to this level. You have a terrific storyline to tell about the senior year of contribution that during this time of so much activity that you're able to produce at this level. Okay, Very important points on the trends. So here we are right now talking about numbers. We started this program talking about that people are numbers obsessed. There's a certain level of focus that needs to come into play. The takeaway is you got to get over this certain hurdle on the numbers front in order to get your story out. So make sure you're over that hurdle. To clear hurdles, you don't have to jump way over them. Right. Get over the hurdle in order to get yourself in the running to get past that initial review of the admissions committee. Okay. In the next video, we're going to talk about Sats, Acts, Aps, IBS, ElementOps. Next video.