Growing up in New Jersey comes with its own set of advantages and challenges. On the one hand, you’re close enough to New York to venture into the city for creative outlets and internship opportunities. But being a part of the greater New York area also means that when it comes time to apply to college, you’re going to be measured against so many incredibly competitive applicants.
New Jersey high schools are also big on sports. More often than not, when schools go all in on team sports, other extracurricular opportunities take a backseat. And those students who aren’t athletes often struggle to find meaningful ways to engage with their interests and make their college applications stand out.
If you want to apply to top tier colleges and you’re from the New York City metro area, you need to get creative. We help our clients from New Jersey put together comprehensive plans that align with their passions, help them figure out the next steps of their lives, and get the attention of college admissions counselors.
New Jersey College Admissions Counseling: A Brief Overview
How we go about the process depends when you start working with us. But you can count on the following:
Timeline: If you’re not sure how to best approach the rest of your time in high school, we can help. The reality is that every single year of high school plays a role in the college application process, and students need to structure their time and goals accordingly. We break our yearly timelines into manageable action items that ensure long term success.
Extracurricular Activities: If you’re not sure what you’re interested in, we’ll host discovery calls to get to the bottom of a few areas of interest. From there, we’ll help you find ways to explore and engage with our findings. If you already know what you want to pursue, but you’re just not sure how, we’ll come up with creative opportunities that will help you stand out of the crowd.
College Lists: Creating a school list is hard work. A lot of our clients come to us with an idea of where they might want to go, but they need us to walk through the process of researching schools and finding solid additions to their list. We’ll look at your performance throughout high school thus far, help you choose a potential major, and then find schools that fit the bill.
Here’s an example of how we would create a college list for a Junior in high school:
Let’s say that we’re working with a client who got a 33 on their ACT and has a 3.6 GPA. Our exploratory calls have us to the realization that they want to study either History, English, or Political Science. They’re interested in exploring liberal arts colleges, and location is not a factor in their search.
In this (and every) case, we would start by considering admissions viability. Eventually, the school list will be broken out by reach, target, and safety schools. But at the beginning of the college list process, we’d start by comparing our clients' metrics to the previously admitted students at various liberal arts colleges around the country.
We would then do multiple deep dives on the academic programs of anywhere from 15-30 schools. While most students don’t declare a major until sophomore year, it would be important for this client to love the History, English, and Political Science departments at all of the schools on their list. Relying on our knowledge of both the landscape and our client, we’ll make suggestions about schools and research them with our client. We never base our college lists off of national rankings, instead we look into the offerings until we’ve found ten schools that meet the academic, social, and cultural needs of our client.
Essays: We’ll work together to brainstorm topics and ideas that eventually turn into unique college essays and supplements. Our clients work exclusively with one of TKG’s writers, but all of the work that we do is reviewed internally. This means that nothing goes unseen, and we’re constantly considering feedback and improving the work. It doesn’t matter if you love writing or have no idea where to start, we’ll meet you in the middle and go from there.
How To Contact A New Jersey College Counselor:
We’ve worked with hundreds of clients whose parents want the best for them, but are having a hard time navigating the process alongside their child. By allowing us to step in, we ease the burden and ensure that our clients stay on track. Whether you want to get a head start on the process early on, or just need help fine tuning essays after being deferred early decision, we’ll seamlessly step in and ensure that our clients are ready for what’s to come.
If you’d like to hear more, contact us here.