Growing up in Silicon Valley can be interesting. You’re a hop, skip, and a jump away from one of the nation’s most culturally rich cities, and then, of course, there’s the obvious exposure to one of the world’s fastest growing and most prominent industries. The schools are excellent, but the competition is high. Colleges like to accept kids from a diversity of backgrounds, include regional ones. That means kids from the same area are competing against one another.
Our kids from the Silicon Valley area tend to want to leave California and venture off to the northeast. Many pursue sciences and business, while a lot outright reject the tech path. If you want to go to a top tier school and you’re from the Silicon Valley area, you’re going to need to develop a standout application, particularly one that lets your personality jump off the page. We help students do just that, with essays that are unique and resumes that impress.
An Overview of Silicon Valley College Admissions Counseling
We tailor our approach to each and every client. Here’s an example of what you can expect:
Timeline: We help students at every part of the college admissions process, from freshman who want to get ahead to juniors who are struggling to stay organized. No matter where our clients are in the process (we work with seniors, too!), we help them by outlining specific goals and action items.
Freshman and Sophomore Year: We start out by helping our students develop an academic niche. In our experience, colleges want classes with experts in various highly specific areas. We help our younger clients explore their passions and figure out exactly what they’re interested in. Then, we guide them through extracurricular opportunities that with help them build an academic brand and outline a path to taking on leadership roles. The most important part of this process is that our students connect with something that genuinely interests them so they can naturally pursue it throughout high school.
Junior Year: We help our juniors continue to pursue their academic areas of interest and develop activities that are both unique and exciting to them. We also help our students explore what they might want in a college and build a list balanced with reach schools, targets, and safeties.
Senior Year: We work very hard with students on their essays. We’ll help develop and edit every piece of writing submitted to a university, from supplements to the additional information section. All of our students are done with everything by December 1st of their senior year.
Essays: Essays a critical part of the application process. The process is hyper-competitive these days with schools beyond just the Ivy League boasting admissions rates in the single digits. Strong essays are a good way to stand out. We work with students to showcase different parts of their personality through their essays so they come across as a person with interesting traits as opposed to a mere paper application.
Extracurriculars: We work with our clients to develop areas of interest that present them as an academic expert. This should be more than just signing up for a bunch of clubs. Extracurriculars can be almost anything (even plowing through a 100-book high school reading list or having a job). We work with students to make sure these activities are working together to showcase a brand and are, above all, interesting to them.
College List: We help our students learn what they want (and more importantly) what they don’t want in a university. Our goal isn’t just to get our kids into top tier schools, it’s to get them into schools where they’re a good fit. We help our students research various schools and build a list that makes sense for them.
Getting in Touch with our Silicon Valley-Based Counselors
Getting ahead in a hyper-competitive application landscape can be tough. We help students build confidence throughout the process, from freshman year through senior year.
Reach out to us here.