Finishing Your Supplemental College Essays Before the Deadline

For those of you who are worrying about how you are possibly going to finish all of those supplemental essays for college applications due in the next couple of weeks, read about InGenius Prep's approach to researching and adapting your experiences and interests to those of the schools you are applying to. Part of this reflective process might even make you question why you are applying to a particular school, or better yet, help you find schools that you wouldn't have otherwise have known might be a good fit for you.

At InGenius Prep, a team of dozens of former admissions officers from all of the most selective schools in the country have collaborated on strategies to succeed in your college applications. You can work with them one-on-one or with the third helping hand of InGenius's Graduate Coaches.

Learn more about the InGenius approach through David Mainiero's advice on supplemental essays posted by our friends at AdmitSee.

InGenius Prep Law School Admissions Counseling - the Smart Way to Get In!

The Law School Admissions process is incredibly rigorous. Not only do you need to have standout LSAT scores and a great GPA from a good school, but you also need to make sure your application accurately and optimally reflects your life experiences up through this point in order to convince the admissions readers that you are the right candidate for their incoming 1L class. Our team of former Deans, Directors, and Assistant Directors of Admission at all the top law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia, are standing by ready to help you achieve your dreams, no matter what school you are shooting for. We have the most talented and qualified counselors in the world, and can't wait to help you.

Getting into a great law school is more important than ever with a dwindling job market, but we're here to help!

New Video from InGenius Prep

Check out our new animated video explaining the InGenius edge in less than two minutes:



Visit InGenius Prep.com to find out about all of the InGenius Deans that can help you achieve your dreams.

Another InGenius Prep Success Story - L.T. Admitted to Columbia Med!

Congratulations to L.T. on her acceptance to Columbia! Her interview preparation the night before the interview helped her calm her nerves, and perfectly plot out her interview answers and strategy that she now considers crucial to her success in the admissions process.

Hear more about her story and her experience with one of InGenius Prep's best former admissions officers from Harvard Medical School - Philip:

Applying Emotions to Applications (Continued)

Originally featured in the Crimson Admissions blog

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Here’s an angle you don’t usually hear in discussions about the increasingly competitive landscape of college and graduate school admissions: Rejection letters don’t only sadden students and keep them up late at night repeatedly asking themselves “why?

…They have the same strong emotional impact on admissions committee members as well.

Angel B. Perez, Director of Admission at Pitzer College in Claremont, wrote in her emotional op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:“What…families don't see is the amount of emotion that admissions officers across the country pour into making these decisions. These students don't know that behind closed doors, we argue about these difficult decisions. Each of us fights for the kids in admissions committee meetings, and we're truly sad when we turn away applicants…"

Jean Webb—former Director of Admissions at YLS and current admissions counselor for InGenius Prep—felt similarly when discussing her emotional reactions to making decisions on law school applications. 

She explained that “admissions officers care about people; if they don’t, the simply don’t last long in the business. They also care about creating opportunities for people who have encountered obstacles to success. It is incredibly exciting when an offer of admission is a dream-come-true for someone.”

But, the unfortunate flipside of that, she explained, is that it is saddening to not be able to do so. And, at an institution as selective as Yale, she had to do so more than 90% of the time. I would imagine that after making these life-changing decisions for people for seventeen years can really take its emotional toll, but Jean’s passion to help students work toward their dream has not waned one bit.

When we asked her to recount one of those thousands of sad cases without, of course, she told us:

One of my saddest experiences was of a case like that -- but one that didn’t have a happy ending.  The admitted student -- with a learning disability -- had had strong support from his family throughout his education and appropriate accommodations from his undergraduate institution.  The documented disability made it possible for him to take the LSAT under accommodated conditions, and he performed very well.  His letters of recommendation were outstanding.  Once the student enrolled, however, his work was far enough below the expectations of his first-semester faculty member and student teaching assistant that they came to the admissions office to look at his file.  Had we made a mistake?  I don’t think so.  But such situations -- for better or for worse -- make admissions officers cautious about reaching outside the school’s “comfort zone” in making offers.

So, by now, I know what you must be thinking …“Boo Hoo! Admissions officers had to make tough decisions, but that doesn’t make me feel any better, and it certainly doesn’t put an acceptance letter in my hands.”

The point of this article isn’t to make you feel bad for these admissions officers, but rather to raise awareness about the fact that it doesn't always have to be this way. As Angel Perez explained, admissions readers bring applications to committee and actually vehemently argue about the difficult cases. By putting yourself in the best possible position with the most polished application and a truly compelling application persona, you can arm your admissions reader-advocate (should your application be compelling enough to pique enough interest to have one in the first place) with all the fodder he or she needs to get that “admitted” stamp on your file.

Noah Greenfield, the co-founder of InGenius Prep – an admissions consulting company for aspiring college, law school, medical school, and business school students with the one of the largest teams of former admissions officers in the world—shared a similar sentiment as his impetus for starting the company:

I was involved in making decisions for summer programs at Columbia and Yale. What was surprising to me was just how easy the decision making process was. The good applications were just so good - everyone who got into these competitive programs (from about 250 applications for 20 spots each) stood out far above most of their peers. It was only when some students contacted me after they were not accepted and asked me to help them understand what they might improve that I realized that a good number of those rejected students had the exact same numbers, extra-curriculars and experiences, etc., that the WOW students had. But, the difference to me was that they couldn't figure out how to communicate it to us in a WOW fashion. We might have taken a closer look if they had, but why would we bother when a) we were busy with other aspects of the program b) the great students were so compelling they were no-brainers?

The idea of the people behind these applications being probably equally qualified, but having less polished application materials made me uncomfortable for a long time. It would really keep me up at night that I seemed to be making such snap judgments based on such a small sample size of information. What I take solace in, though, is that a lot of that polish reflects the “extra mile” that students can go to in order to make sure their application truly stands out as a WOW application instead of one that just has like many others status upon review. I also realized pretty quickly that this phenomenon isn’t unique to the admissions process. It’s prevalent in job applications, almost any competitive or selective process in the world, and almost any important decisions that a businessperson or professional makes. Decisions are always made on sub-optimal information and often with limited resources and time, so preparation, persistence, and presentation are just as important as performance.

Another InGenius Prep Success Story: Early Admit to Penn

Congratulations to Aliza for getting into the University of Pennsylvania - her dream school. Aliza worked with Yorda - a Harvard Law student and former admissions officer at the University of Rochester - to get her applications where they needed to be on a very tight timeline. Aliza worked hard, was receptive to criticism and feedback, and was generally a pleasure to work with. Everyone at InGenius Prep wishes her the best as she embarks on her college career next year and hopes she enjoys the rest of her senior year.

Hear about Aliza's experience working with Yorda and the rest of the InGenius team straight from her mouth:

What Makes a Great Admissions Counselor

College and professional school application counseling can be a huge difference-maker for millions of students. Though many are skeptical of the help that admissions counselors can provide to an applicant, there is demonstrable value added by those who are some of the best in the business.

One of the most effective models for admissions counseling is having a counseling team that gives you access to a graduate coach, who has successfully navigated the process himself/herself at the highest level, and a former admissions officer, who has made admit/deny decisions about candidates like you in the very recent past. inGenius Prep, a relatively new player in the admissions counseling business, utilizes this unique business model that very few others do and boasts an unrivaled team. The strategic perspective and insider knowledge about the admissions process that the former admissions officers provide is undoubtedly valuable.

Moreover, the student coaches (at inGenius Prep, these are all students from top schools) have significant counseling experience and are some of the best writers and editors in the world. With the student coach doing more of the day-to-day revision, commentary, and feedback and the former admissions officer overseeing the overall strategy, the system tends to work extremely well. Another benefit is that if students do not want or need such comprehensive application counseling, they can get more affordable services that are performed solely by the student coaches. These services underprice any similar service in the market and applicants to work with some of the most successful and qualified professional school students in the world.

According to David Mainiero, the head of the BA & JD Divisions at inGenius Prep, “student coaches are carefully vetted and submit academic writing samples, application writing samples, resumes, grades, and perform mock-counseling sessions with inGenius Prep’s leadership team before they are be hired. They then read hundreds of pages of our curriculum materials and go through hours upon hours of extensive training.”

Another important quality that inGenius Prep seeks, according to Mainiero, is that a graduate coach (or former admissions officer) genuinely enjoys helping students unlock their potential. For instance, one of inGenius Prep’s former admissions officers, Jana, said “I love helping applicants express their authentic personality through the application process.” It is this type of attitude that is a key indicator of a great counselor. Carolina, the Former Director of Recruitment at Yale Law School said, “I love making the admissions process more open and accessible by helping students with their applications . . .”

InGenius’s generous financial aid program for qualified students and its non-profit division (partnerships with Teach For America and the Dallas Urban Debate Alliance) will all help thousands of students achieve their goals.

Standardized Tests as a Predictor of Success in College

The SAT and ACT are conventionally thought to be the most important components of a high school student's application to college. This is probably because of the fact that standardized tests are used by colleges as somewhat of a "great equalizer" among masses of high school students with very similar grades. The test provides a means to differentiate among some of these students and also gives admissions officers some idea of what a 4.0 GPA at a random school in Idaho means compared to what it means at an elite college preparatory school in Massachusetts. In other words, when admissions officers have such limited information about students and their schools, the SAT and ACT serve as extra sources of information from which to base their evaluation of applicants. And, as the former admissions officers at inGenius Prep have confirmed, the mantra "the more information, the better" is true with respect to standardized tests.

Although statistics about the strength of the SAT and ACT as predictors of college performance has been out there for awhile, the din of criticism of standardized tests has grown louder over the past few years. These studies citing the tests' predictive ability are all fairly methodologically flawed (a subject for another blog post) because of the inability to control for myriad variables; however, most people accept (not necessarily based on any empirical evidence) that higher standardized test scores reflect higher ability and will result in improved performance relative to lower scores on standardized tests.

A recent NPR article about "test-optional" schools calls this conventional wisdom into question and cites statistical evidence that students who apply to schools with "test-optional" admissions policies who choose to submit test scores only outrank those who choose not to by 0.05 GPA points. The NPR article cites this as evidence that the tests have a poor predictive ability when it comes to GPA. Yet, the tiny sample size, the bias from self-selection of people, and a variety of other factors make this data almost meaningless aside from its rhetorical appeal. The article goes one to discuss how high school GPA is a much better predictor of a student's academic performance in college (measured by GPA), which is certainly an intuitively appealing argument (and one that I happen to agree with). Nonetheless, the purported statistical evidence for the claim is too flimsy to hold up such a weighty proposition.

Median Grade Reporting Leads to Middling Grades...and Confusion

For three years, I’ve tried to convince myself that Dartmouth’s inclusion of median grades on our transcripts makes some sense. There must be some discernible benefit, I’ve told myself, to students, or at least to the institution as a whole; if not, why would the board have ever implemented the policy? Now that I’m applying to law schools, my latent frustration with the idea of median grades has reached a tipping point.

Obviously, the Board believed that the inclusion of median grades on transcripts would serve as an effective weapon against grade inflation at Dartmouth. In this regard, the policy can only be described as a failure; since 1994, the average overall GPA has increased from 3.25 to 3.33 as of 2001. Recording median grades on students’ transcripts is Dartmouth’s way of conveniently deflecting responsibility for grade inflation to its students. The policy is an example of the administration papering over the problem; it exacerbates grade inflation, facilitates easy class selection, and encourages a culture of academic mediocrity.

All of these problems are linked. The median grade system urges students to seek out classes with A and A- medians so that they can skate by while achieving higher GPAs than those that take classes with lower medians. Even worse, professors are given license to unilaterally implement their own grading systems, which only makes grades more meaningless. I’ve had professors tell me that if the median isn’t an A or A-, then they have failed as educators; on the other hand, I’ve had professors tell me on the first of class that only two A’s would be given out. The latter group of professors, who try to keep their median grades low, in order to stave off the ire of administrators or department heads, believe that median grade reporting solves any problems associated with their approach. Moreover, some classes (especially sciences) also have quotas for each letter grade, so students can get exactly the same grades as a student the year before me in the same class, but get a completely different grade. Because the GPA system remains unchanged, an A- in a class with a B+ median will always look better than a B+ in class with a B median. Sure, graduate schools might take notice of the median grades, but they still calculate your GPA in the same fashion. Mental asterisks can only do so much.

More importantly, median grades sustain the middling tendency whereby it becomes relatively easy for most students to reach the B+/A- mark with a reasonable amount of effort, but extremely difficult to actually make the next leap to an A. In other words, grade inflation at Dartmouth rewards the average student at the expense of the “exceptional” (most syllabi use this word to describe work meriting an A) student. At Dartmouth, largely because of median grade reporting, grade inflation is more about grade distribution then it is overall inflation. It’s grade inflation on a bell curve --- everyone is pushed toward the middle, but the middle is artificially elevated.

If I were paid as a consultant to graduate schools, I could by no means reliably distinguish between a difficult course selection and a schedule loaded with what many would call “lay-ups” based solely on the median grades reported for the class that term. And, if I can’t do it, how would an admissions officer be able to do so? For instance, according to median grades, my HIST 59 class was comparable in difficulty to ENGS 11 because both had median grades of A-. However, I did approximately eight hours of work total during the entire term exploring the various technologies used by the Department of Homeland Security, while I did maybe twenty times that amount of work studying the History of Warfare. But, the consensus on inGenius Prep’s staff of over 45 former admissions officers from elite graduate schools is that admissions committees love Dartmouth transcripts.

The fact that admissions officers seriously value those median grade statistics is really frightening. Not only do they spend very little time reviewing your file, but they also seem to think they can reliably glean information about the strength of your schedule from these median grade reports. If Dartmouth intended for median grades to serve as some indication of the strength of a student’s course selection, they should also include the cumulative median grade for all classes each term so that there is a baseline for comparison. Although I am by no means advocating this as a solution, it would undoubtedly be an improvement from the status quo.

Despite my strong bias, I believe that the only solution is no solution. Everyone should just get over the fact that grade inflation is inevitable, and not necessarily such a terrible thing. Schools across the country are always going to try to improve their reputations and put their students in the best position to attain admission into graduate programs and top jobs. Just the other day, one of my friends from a state school in Florida was lamenting the fact that the school had just changed its grade policy so that an A- no longer counted the same GPA value as an A. Oh, and my other friends there have near-perfect GPAs and haven’t been to a physical classroom in two years because they take their classes online.

These sliding grading scales are ubiquitous. Ivy League schools just tend to get more heat for it. However, their impetus for grade inflation is not quite the same. Dartmouth admits 12.6% of its applicants, and approximately 35% of all high school valedictorians. Is it really a surprise that these kids are getting good grades? If Dartmouth is admitting exceptional students, why would it not expect to see exceptional grades?

In three classes at Dartmouth, I earned a 94, a 95, and a 95, and received A-‘s in all three along with an explanation from the professor that the cut-off for an A was one point higher than I had earned. This type of lack of uniformity both within and across departmental boundaries makes GPA figures even more worthless. These seemingly inconsequential inconsistencies in grading policy add up, especially when they are on paper in front of an admissions officer who is tasked with wading through various grade-inflating perks to evaluate candidates. Certainly, these admissions officers will take into account the disparity between academic reputations when evaluating candidates, but they could never possibly keep track of all of the intricacies of grade inflation. To compound the problem, Dartmouth throws them a whole new set of median grades so that you can be judged, albeit inaccurately and unfairly, against your peers, while another candidate is not weighed down by such comparisons.

Median grades could only begin to even be partially effective if every school recorded them on transcripts, along with some kind of cumulative median grade for each term as I mentioned before and changes to the GPA system. But, it would still only chip away at the tip of the iceberg. Nothing will work because grade inflation is inevitable. The crux of the issue is that fighting too hard against grade inflation would disadvantage the student; meanwhile, not doing anything about the problem gets you a bad rap in the eyes of graduate schools, employers, and the media. In that vein, Dartmouth’s unique attempt at “fighting grade inflation” makes quite a bit of sense. They’re just spinning their wheels.