Applying as a STEM or Computer Science major

LUKE: Yes. Thank you, James. I’m Luke. I’m a Lead Coach here at Prepory. I have over seven years of experience in the admission space. I’ve helped students get into selective schools with top STEM programs, including Cornell, Princeton, Michigan, and various others. In addition to working with students and mentoring other coaches in my capacity as a Lead Coach, I’m actually also our software engineer. So, I studied computer science at Williams College, and I have the awesome opportunity of applying that experience to several exciting projects here at Prepory like Rory, our AI-powered admissions assistant that we just recently released, and which you’ll hear about a little bit more later. So, I’m really excited to be here with all of you to talk about how you can earn a spot at a top STEM or computer science program.

JAMES: Yeah, thank you, Luke. Yeah, so we’re hoping to give you guys a couple of different perspectives here on this. I guess I should have said as well. This last cycle I was able to help students get into MIT, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Northwestern, Cornell, all for STEM programs. So, we really have been fortunate enough to understand how this process works and really help our students get into some of the top institutions in the world. So, I want to give you guys a brief little background on Prepory though, just so you know who you’re talking to. We are part of a larger family here of about 60 plus admissions professionals, all who have either former admissions officer experience, former counseling experience. They’ve been in these rooms, they’ve had these conversations, they’ve been able to build these profiles with their students, and we really are seeing a ton of success.

Not only this past cycle were we able to get students into all Top 50 institutions, but also just really seeing kind of almost a four times multiplier in terms of helping you get into those schools with the sub-15%, sub-10% acceptance rates, which are by no means the only schools out there, but for many students who are trying to get to the most competitive institutions, which are only getting more competitive, we’ve been really seeing a huge ability because of our well-rounded team that relies on and supports each other to be able to kind of counsel students holistically to really match them, especially STEM students, to the wide range of factors in the college admissions process. So, we give one-on-one counseling, we’ll talk a little more about the end about kind of how we do what we do, just a small selection of schools that our students were able to get into this past cycle.

And again, it is something we really strive for, for that excellence, to be able to help students get into their top options. But we want to make sure that students are approaching these locations, these institutions with intentionality. Because really, as you will see throughout this presentation, a lot of what it comes down to is being able to show intentionality in your activities, in your writing, in your academics. And we really want that to be the case as well for the campus community that our students are going towards. So, we not only are able to get students into these great institutions, we’re also extremely interested in helping them graduate successfully with a robust education and a cadre of experiences behind them. As far as how we’re going to conduct tonight, what we’re going to chat about, we’re going to go a little bit into some wide-ranging admissions trends.

We have many we could pick from. We just have a few we want to dive into that we think will help to frame this experience. There is definitely some air between the expectation and the reality for many families of what it means to get into not just a competitive school, but a STEM program in particular, especially engineering or computer science. So, we want to make sure we’re laying the groundwork and maybe dispelling some myths by talking about a few of those trends. We want to dive into what a compelling applicant looks like in all facets. There are many different pieces of the application, especially for STEM students, that need to be crafted in a very particular way. And then every STEM student’s favorite topic, the writing. I know that for many of you out there, just hearing the word essay or personal statements might make you sweat a little bit, but we are going to dive into those.

We are going to talk about how you can approach it, how you should approach it, and really why it’s beneficial for you to view the essays and the personal statement a certain way. And then, like I said before, we will end with a Q&A to try to answer some of y’all’s questions and hopefully some of those, Luke, and we might have some other staff members backstage that are helping answer questions. So, you might see some responses in there that Luke’s going to take care of. If he sees any trends, he might throw them my way at the very end, so, that is a little preview of what we’re going to go into. And I think trends are a really great way to frame this argument because I think, especially right now in 2025, there are quite a few tectonic shifts in college admissions.

And keeping up to date on all of those is extremely important for us as professionals, but also for us as counselors of students and helping them have the best outcomes possible. But I think a really clear trend over the last probably decade or two is the sheer competitiveness of, the increasing competitiveness, of particularly computer science, but also computer engineering and engineering in general, some more of those traditional, tech-based STEM majors. And what we’re really seeing here is, and something I want to make sure everybody here understands, is that there is often a mismatch between some of the admissions rates you might see online for a university and the admissions rates for some of the particular STEM majors that they might have. So, we have an example here up on the screen in case you’re not looking at the screen. UW, University of Washington’s overall admit rate in the past cycle was about 43%.

But when you narrow that down to CS and computer engineering applications, you’re looking at a sub 10% acceptance rate. Now, universities are not very forthcoming. Often with these numbers, they often are not breaking it down into that granularity. But obviously, with our expertise we’re able to look behind the curtain with many of our contacts in these offices. And we are bringing this to you just to make sure that when you see those acceptance rates, that might be for the entire university, but if you are applying to something like computer science, data science, and then of course any engineering major, you’re likely looking at a significantly more competitive acceptance rate.

LUKE: Yeah, I think to continue with that. I think in light of that increased selectivity for many of these STEM fields, one thing we’re going to emphasize repeatedly throughout this webinar is the fact that employers aren’t just looking for those technical skills that you might acquire in a STEM major. They’re also looking for critical thinking skills and some other adjacent things, as well. And this is especially true with the rise of AI, which we’ll talk about a few times. I definitely feel like I can speak to this as someone who studied computer science but did so at a liberal arts college, and I did so alongside a major in the social sciences. I was also a religious studies major, and I think that’s benefited me in several ways. But I think one thing I would point to, James and I, we’re both sort of interested in the broader world of technology and we talk about various podcasts and things like that with one another. And James, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I feel like recently a lot when I’ve listened to interviews with tech CEOs and sort of big decision-makers in the world of technology, they’ll mention time and time again that companies aren’t just looking for people who know how to code, right? Of course, that’s really important. Those technical skills are critical, but the people that contribute the most are those who can pair those technical skills with creative thinking, creative problem-solving skills, and communication skills. And like I said, I think this is especially true in light of AI. AI tools are getting really good at technical tasks, like coding. So, it’s going to continue to become increasingly important to develop abilities that go beyond just technical skills. In the tech projects that I work on at Prepory, I find that much of what I do, it’s not just writing code, it’s communicating with other stakeholders at the company. It’s collaborating, it’s understanding the vision for a project, looking at the big picture to come up with creative solutions. And like I said, I think this is a theme that James and I will continue to return to. I think it’s absolutely critical and will continue to become more critical.

JAMES: These are really the two lenses that we want to establish for this because knowing that it’s more competitive specifically for some of these top majors, even at top schools with competitive admission percentages and understanding that increasingly the end user, the organizations, the companies that are asking for or hiring young grads in these fields, they are not just wanting those tech skills. So keep those two lenses in your mind as we go. And this is, I think something we’re seeing increasingly with our larger multipliers each year in terms of the general advantage that Prepory can help here is because we are really focused on that holistic building of students. It’s not just “Here’s how to get the top scores,” “Here’s how to maintain the top grades.” How are you telling your story? How are you really figuring out, with intentionality, what kind of grand challenges or problems in the world you might want to solve?

And that’s why we’ve been seeing a really big advantage, especially for schools that have that 10% or below acceptance rate, we’re seeing a really solid multiplier in terms of your chances of getting in with our Prepory students because we know that it is increasingly getting more competitive with more students getting interested in these fields, and we know it’s taking much more than just perfect grades or perfect test scores to stand out at these places. So, speaking of compelling applicants, what does a compelling applicant look like? There are a few different ways in which we’re going to highlight this compelling applicant, and some of the trends are not going to be surprising or some of the factors might not be surprising. Some of them might be, but really what we want to make sure we’re breaking this down into is that there are many components to a competitive applicant.

One of them probably is most well-known. That’s the grades and test scores, of course, those are going to be the most competitive or most, I guess, necessary competitive factors that you have. We’re going to talk about the technical skills, what we’re going to talk about, how to make impact and how to show that leadership, but also sort of deeper sense of passion for the field that you’re applying to. We’re going to go a little bit deep into all of these, and I think it’s probably best to start with the more quantitative measures. This is maybe the piece of the puzzle that many of you parents, or students, maybe you and your friends most look into. What do I need to get into MIT? What do I need to get into Berkeley? Or right away your mind might go to grades and scores. This is a piece that just needs to be there.

If you are applying to a Top 20, Top 10, especially engineering or computer science institution. The term in the industry is “standard strong.” And what that means is for a student who’s applying to let’s say MIT or University of Pennsylvania, or NYU, or Cornell, they’re applying probably with close to a 1600, maybe 1550 and above at the very least, but they’re also going to be having the 4.0 or near 4.0 unweighted, GPA, along with a ton of advanced coursework. That’s just what you would expect to see as an AO, as an admissions officer at one of those institutions. So, this is just a necessary baseline to help you get in the door in the first place for these top, especially STEM-oriented schools and STEM majors, and so that is something, of course, that is in your control as far as test prep, as far as your effort you’re giving and the classes you choose, which of course we help our students with.

But then going beyond the grades and the scores, you want to bring this home, as well. You don’t want to just say, “Yeah, in my classes I was fantastic. I also have been really trying to hone my craft and hone my individual skill and personality at home.” And one of the best ways I think for that to be shown is through some projects, we call them passion projects. This is really a way for you to show admissions officers that you’re not just checking boxes in class. You are so obsessed and so interested in the impact of this field or these fields that you can’t help but to try to tinker with them at home. Luke, I don’t know if you just, especially with your background in CS, do you feel like any students you’ve worked with have any sort of projects that have stood out or things that have helped them to really show that passion outside of the classroom?

LUKE: Yeah, I can think of two that I’ve encountered recently. Just to start with a computer science example, since that’s sort of in my wheelhouse, I heard about one student at Prepory, not mine, who teamed up with another student who had more sort of an electrical engineering area of interest. This student was mostly interested in coding, and they developed an AI-powered tool for helping visually impaired people navigate their house. And I thought that was a really, really interesting opportunity because it showcased lately, I think as you nicely put, it showcased more about the student than just their technical abilities. It showed what they cared about. It showed a particular area in which they wanted to make an impact. To get outside of computer science, I have a student now who’s interested in mechanical engineering, but he’s also an avid artist. That’s another awesome aspect of what he does.

And he’s pursuing a passion project in which he takes these engineering skills and that involves computer-aided 3D design, and he’s inventing a new kind of easel for artists that sort of addresses a pain point that he’s encountered in his own personal practice art. And I really love that project because it showcases who he is. He has these abilities. He’s developed these skills in 3D design, he has this interest in mechanical engineering, that’s how he’s applying, but he’s combining that with this other aspect of who he is, this other passion that he has, and I think that’s when passion projects are at their most effective. The kind of grid here is that they go beyond demonstrating technical skills and they show other dimensions of who these students are, what they’re interested in, and what they care about. And I think we’ll talk about this a little bit more later, but some of the really effective ones we see sort of focus on a particular problem in the students’ community, and that can be really powerful.

JAMES: And really a way that you guys can think about this. For those that are listening in, I would say if you’ve ever dated somebody or if you’ve ever even just gotten a new friend that you are interested in being friends with, somebody you might meet at school, maybe you’ve met them at work or out in the community, you want to know that they have cool, interesting pieces of their lives that they can share with you and that you can also share with them. Somebody who’s only ever interested in what you are doing, that can be kind of nice for a while, I guess, it’s a little bit of an ego trip, but it gets old because then you feel like it’s very one-sided. This person only ever wants to do what I want to do. When admissions officers are reading these applications, they want to know that there’s a human being underneath that has really cool things that they’re doing, things that are weird and interesting and dichotomous and don’t always make sense, but it really shows a whole person.

That’s what it takes to really stand out in this field, is to be able to show that you have a really enriching life beyond just, “I know all these languages, these coding languages,” “I know all of these technical skills,” and as Luke mentioned there a second ago, getting it beyond just yourself, whether that’s your academics or even just things you work on, projects you tinker with, one of the best things you can do is to show as Luke’s at a problem that has popped up in your community and how you maybe used your creativity, your passion, and then of course your technical prowess to try to solve it. This can really be a huge just piece of the puzzle that helps you stand out to admissions officers, showing that yes, you have the technical skills, and yes, you made the choice to decide to do something with it outside of your studies, but then even more than that. You looked outside of yourself and said, “How can I use this passion and these skills to better the people around me and better their lives?” So it doesn’t always have to be the grandest, biggest, most impressive-sounding, metrics-driven involvement. It can just be something that’s a little bit smaller that you can talk about really earnestly and really passionately, whether that’s in your writing or elsewhere on the application. It’s being able to, yes, show your passion for tech, but show how you’ve used that to better the lives of others around you. And I would say one of the ways in which when we are talking about school, because I know that we’ve mentioned school as an academic environment of course, and we’ve talked about things you can do at home and things you can do at home and in the community to really showcase yourself.

There are also, of course, the school-oriented organizations, clubs, and competitions. It can be different teams, whether that’s first robotics or otherwise. And you really do yourself a favor by getting involved in these, but not just getting involved in these organizations to say, “Oh, look, I’ve got seven things I’m involved in that are STEM-related,” “I’m just a member and I only go one hour a month to the meeting and barely pay attention, but I’ve got it on my application.” That’s just not going to fly. That doesn’t really show any sort of underlying personality or intention. Instead, why not start a club? If your school doesn’t have a rocketry club and you’re obsessed with rockets, great. What’s stopping you from starting one? If they have some organizations like Olympiads and Robotics, sure, those are great to get involved in, really to kind of give you the reps, if you will, to get your skills up, but how did you go beyond just being part of the team? How did you try to deepen that involvement over time? Did you go for leadership positions? Did you try to take on new responsibilities even if there wasn’t necessarily a leadership position involved?

All of that can help show these underlying values, again, beyond just your technical skill that admissions officers want to see. They’re trying to bring somebody into their home, and they want to make sure they know what that person’s about. So, by showing teamwork, by showing collaboration, by showing that community-oriented lens, you’re able to show that you can be part of a bigger picture such as a new collegiate environment. So, leadership is a really great way in deepening your involvements in tech-oriented organizations, in and out of school, is another great piece of the puzzle that can help you stand out as an applicant.

And intellectual curiosity, this is I think such a great, but often overlooked, piece of the puzzle. Again, it’s just that feeling when you’re reading an application, a two-dimensional application on your screen, the feeling that the student you’re reading has a through line, they have a narrative thread that is believable, that makes sense, that’s coherent, that shows that they just have all these questions. They are not just wanting to get into a competitive institution to say they got in, but really wanting to take it to the next level and understand things that they have no clue about. That kind of intellectual curiosity, especially for hard technical STEM students, can really show that you are not going to be coming to a campus with a ton of other competitive people and just think you have it all figured out. It can show that bit of humility. It can show that love of learning. And then of course, just a genuine curiosity for the world. And Luke, I don’t know if you have any perspective on yourself or students you’ve worked with this regard.

LUKE: No, I really like how you put it. I find it so effective when working with students, when they’re willing to acknowledge that they don’t have it all figured out. You’re applying to these institutions as a high schooler. The human beings reading this application don’t expect you, as a high schooler, to have a perfectly polished technical background, have a very perfectly fleshed out vision of exactly what you want to do with those technical skills. They want to see that you’re a human being with a story and values and priorities, and a willingness to go out on a limb and explore these questions that you’re curious about. And I think, as you’ve touched on several times, and I think it’s really powerful, we want to show your humanness. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish in these applications. So, as a STEM applicant or as any applicant, you don’t have it all figured out, and that’s okay, and I think leaning into that and showing a little bit of humility and curiosity is really powerful.

JAMES: Yes. And one of the best ways to really showcase this, one of really the only ways that you get to, for lack of a better term, speak to the admissions officers is of course through your writing. Now, I don’t need to know that because I can’t see anybody in this chat, any of you lovely people, but I can probably guess that many STEM students here are not the biggest fan of narrative writing because it has a certain ambiguity to it. It has subjectiveness to it that is often so antithetical to the kinds of black and white objective truths and answers that you’ve gotten really good at finding and seeking out through something like CS or data science or engineering. But it is truly one of the best ways, if not the best way, to really come off as that human being as a person to an admissions officer. I want to start by talking about topics to avoid here. I think this is pretty imperative. I put this slide together because again, as somebody who has read 30,000 plus engineering applications, I love Legos. I have, you cannot see it, because I have a background, I have a whole menagerie. Ooh, you can’t kind of see it. There’s the globe.

LUKE: Yeah.

JAMES: Perfect. Okay. I have a whole menagerie of Legos behind me.

LUKE: It’s an impressive collection. Take my word for it.

JAMES: It’s quite fun, but I’m going to overdo it. No, it doesn’t matter. I love Legos, but when you’re writing about something as simple as Legos or getting an Eagle Scout in, if you’re part of the Scouts of America, those topics among many others, I put this here as a joke, because it’s often those topics which sure, maybe that was one of the things that first got you into engineering or learning to code through Lego Mindstorms, it’s unfortunately a topic that is used so often, and so you have to really look beyond these sorts of technically touching topics. Legos is, I think, one of them. You’re like, “Oh, okay, that’s kind of fun,” but also, it’s really like, “I can get real technical.” That’s not at all what these essays are for. So just in case, if some of you are maybe tempted to talk about Legos in your essays, I would highly recommend, especially STEM majors, just to maybe not do that.

There are some common pitfalls I think that we could talk about. We could talk about this all day, but we’re not obviously going to keep you here longer than another 10 to 15 minutes or so. But there is a tendency, especially for STEM students, to answer the question directly and then not elaborate talking about what you did rather than why it’s important for an admissions officer to know. This could be regurgitating your resume and just really leaning on a lot of technical jargon that no 23 to 28-year-old admissions officer, which is often who you’re being read by, is going to really understand or care about. This is not your chance to be impressive and sophisticated in your writing. You’re not getting graded on this. You’re not getting a Pulitzer Prize. It is a chance for you to show your life story on the page. Similarly, making everything about STEM, making everything generalized.

We have this at the very bottom, this idea that even if you’re not using generative AI, which for essay writing, you should not really be using generative AI to just write it for you. You’re losing such a critical skill. This is becoming a common pitfall in and of itself, but you are losing such a critical skill of how to think about your own life story when you farm it out to ChatGPT or any other generative AI. Luke, I know this is the world you, you’re very passionate about this topic. What can you say about this in particular?

LUKE: Yeah, I want to emphasize that fourth point there, making every essay a STEM essay. Just to give a little bit of context, one of my favorite things about Prepory is that we offer a program called Committee Review where we simulate the process of an application going through an actual admissions office. And as James can attest, a lot of those conversations resemble what it looks like in an actual admissions office. We see a lot of STEM applications; we see a lot of STEM essays. The STEM applications that stand out in all of our minds, and I’ve had a lot of conversations about this, are the ones that, yeah, in some essays you talk about STEM, you talk about those, you mentioned those technical abilities, you talk through those projects, explain your interest in the major, and we’ll get there in a second, but the ones that stand out in our minds are the ones that break the mold, too. Are you interested in baking? They want to hear about that. They want to hear about those things that make you a human being, right? That makes you a unique human being with your own passions and interests beyond the academic ones. Music or surfing or hiking or whatever it might be, communicate those things, right? Of course, you’re going to need to convey those skills and those academic interests, but that does not need to come at the expense of all of the other things that make you who you are.

JAMES: Correct. And the last thing I’ll say on this before we get through the next few slides quickly is when it comes to generative AI, we’re now at this inflection point where it is so ubiquitous, and do not get us wrong, Luke and I are our two very big fan of AI. We think there are a lot of great applications for AI, even sometimes in the writing process like for brainstorming or phrasing certain sentences or thoughts, but to just absolutely answer this prompt with these topics and then do a little prompt engineering and kind of re-edit it a little bit. Not only is that just often caught and now universities, as somebody who still reads applications at a Top 30 institution, there are now buttons on these review forms where if we have any suspicion that AI has been used in the writing, we will flag that application for potentially just auto denying.

You have to remember that when you try to go because you waited too long or you didn’t put in the time, that could be a potential outcome. But now it’s not even just enough to not use AI, you have to be able to be specific with your story. You have to be able to dive into those deeper levels of introspection and talk about why an event mattered to you, how it made you feel, what kind of impact it had on you. That is going to help you really jump off the page to an admissions officer. We’ve got a couple of tips here on the screen, and obviously I’ll let you guys read through it, but something I want to just maybe pose to you as far as the tone goes when you’re writing these personal statements, and this goes for any of your students that are listening, it is not a chance for you to just regurgitate your resume.

What I want you to do is I want you to think about what if you were sitting across from an invisible admissions officer, just a friend at a coffee shop, you’re at a cafe drinking coffee or tea, and they ask you whatever prompted it is that you’re answering. When you read your writing out loud, does it sound like the answer that a human being would give off the cuff or does it sound like somebody from the 16th or 17th century because it’s so formal? There are just some simple ways in which you can reorient your mind to answer these questions, and that’s often really going beyond just what I’ve done. It’s what I value and why. With “why major,” this is maybe one of the only areas, this is one of the common supplemental essay prompts. This is one of the areas where you will most likely always talk about STEM and talk about your interest in STEM. With the “why major” though, again, some other things to think about is don’t just talk about the objective reasons why somebody would want to go into computer science.

If you do that, then anybody could have written, including AI, could have written that essay. It just doesn’t matter. But if you’re going into something like let’s say one of the grand challenges or problems in the world you want to solve is hastening our transition to renewable energy, then in the “why major,” I would want to see specifically why does that issue matter to you? How do you specifically think that majoring in environmental engineering or majoring in actuarial science or data science is going to help you make that impact on the world? You really have to get specific beyond just “this is an important reason to go into this field, and I’m going to go into it.” Luke, any thoughts on the “why major” there? To add to that?

LUKE: Yeah, I think maybe it’s one way I articulate it sometimes with students is that readers don’t want to hear about why a major is useful or good to pursue. They want to hear about why you want to pursue it, why it is useful for you, given your particular goals and values, right? So, as I mentioned, I majored in both computer science and religious studies in college, and I think one thing that helped me, and I think helps a lot of students who have a diverse array of interests, is exploring the intersection between a STEM field and maybe some particular application or other field. I felt like with my array of interests, I was able to go beyond just talking about how I’m interested in computer science, and I want to learn about these useful technologies. Instead, I was able to articulate that. In my case, it was my interest in applying these technologies to algorithmic tools for understanding human language, which was the sort of domain to which I wanted to apply those technologies. And I say that as an example because I think the more that you’re able to explain how you want to use a particular STEM major to make an impact in some specific area, the better, right? I think the biggest pitfall to avoid is the “why is this a good major?” essay. That’s not what it’s asking, right?

JAMES: It’s not, no. Great point. Luke and I saw that somebody might’ve raised their hand as part of the webinar. Just again, since we aren’t able to necessarily answer specific questions out loud verbally between us, we do have a Q&A button at the bottom of the window. If you want to click on that, you can type in your answer there and then we’ll answer those as they come. We’re also going to have a Q&A section at the end with our most asked question. So, if you don’t see your question answered right away, don’t worry. It’s probably coming up here at the end in a few minutes. One other piece of the puzzle that I want to talk about as far as what a competitive candidate, what somebody who’s aspiring to be a competitive STEM candidate can do, is to really curate their letters of recommendation.

And this is going to require you to, depending on the year that you are in high school, if you’re a 9th grader or a 10th grader, if you’re an 8th grader, you’re maybe just graduated from middle school, you’re looking to come into high school, one of the best habits you can get into is getting to know your teachers as people and letting them get to know you as an individual. I know it can be lame. You might think it’s lame. Teachers or some of the best people on the planet. They just want to see you succeed. And one of the best things you can do as far as a letter of recommendation is to curate a diverse perspective from that teacher’s voice. And that means not just going to the math, the Calc BC teacher who saw you get an A plus all year and never have to try because you just were so good at math.

I mean, what can they really write about you? She’s really good at math. They would see that. They would already know from your transcript that you have that proficiency. It’s the ones who can speak to maybe the times where you had to overcome something or overcome a deficit or grow in some specific, not just academic, but personal way, as well. And as you can see here from these bullet points, often that can take the form of humanities teachers, especially for STEM students. Most STEM students really do not like world language classes. So, if you’re in Spanish or French or Mandarin or German, I know that that’s, again, one of those tropes of STEM students that they don’t just like those subjects. But if you had a really good rapport with that teacher and you were able to really bring your grade up or maintain a high level of proficiency, that might be a really strong discordant voice in your review that adds to the overall melody being sung about who you are and what you value.

So that is something to consider as well as a final piece of the puzzle. And what I will just say, as we’ve talked about all these factors, your extracurriculars, obviously your academics, taking the most competitive math and science courses possible at your high school, depending on what opportunities are afforded to you, you’re writing, your supplemental essays, your letters of recommendation, all of these are just little factors that add up to something that is greater than the sum of its parts, and you really do need to be intentional about each and every one of these factors. So as a brief highlight here, we talked about it’s beyond the technical skills. It’s coming off as a human being and showing a narrative thread that connects your extracurriculars and your major selection and the essays and your personality and your letters of recommendation. Starting projects, founding projects, if you don’t have opportunities that maybe you see elsewhere, starting opportunities for yourself and others can help you stand out.

And then of course, being able to showcase as a STEM student that you’re not just somebody who codes, that you’re not going to just be coming to a university sitting in your dorm room all day doing really intricate coding, but never contributing to the wider enriching campus community around you. Those are some of the key takeaways or what it takes to be a competitive STEM applicant here in 2025, especially for any of you juniors, rising seniors, obviously this is coming up big time here in the fall. We’re almost to the big dance as we like to call it. And then of course, just as we look at emerging technologies, we’re talking about STEM here. This is a STEM-oriented webinar. We also want to show how Prepory is adapting to this and trying to use every advantage and every tool in the toolbox. And I actually definitely need to turn this over to Luke because he knows more about this than anyone here at Prepory.

LUKE: Yes, so as I mentioned earlier, I’m the creator of Rory, Prepory’s AI Assistant, and I think part of our goal with Rory was to make this guidance more accessible, to have a place where you can ask those questions and get a well-informed answer beyond questionable advice that you might find on the internet or generic advice that you might get from something like ChatGPT. Rory is an AI chatbot, you can talk to it like you would talk to ChatGPT, but what makes Rory really special is the fact that it’s built using our own proprietary database of curriculum materials, anonymized student sessions, and even insider information on specific colleges and universities put together by our team of admissions experts. This database allows it to go well beyond what you might get with a typical AI chat platform, and I encourage you to check it out. It’s free to access online. Rory can help you with everything from coming up with unique passion projects that connect your STEM skills to other aspects of who you are, which is something we’ve emphasized throughout this webinar, develop your ideas for essays, strategize your application approach for particular schools, so if you say, “This is my profile. What do I need to do to maybe become better suited to Cornell,” for instance? Rory can help you with that as well.

I want to emphasize that Rory is a really good starting point, but it’s no substitute for Prepory coaches. As I’ve mentioned in the Q&A, I highly recommend that you book a consultation with one of our admissions experts to get tailored human advice that AI can’t replicate. And like I said, Rory, really great place to start, but there’s no replacement for the incredible work our team does here at Prepory. So, with that, I will pass it back to James.

JAMES: Yeah, no, thank you Luke. And Luke, I mean, almost single handedly has brought Rory up from the ground, and it’s been such an interesting and such a fun way to get our knowledge out there and be able to help students in such an easy-to-manage and approachable way. But as Luke mentioned, like other generative AI tools out there, they might be able to help on the front end with the beginning stages, but there really is nothing like somebody who can get to know you using their own human experience and own experience, both maybe at the higher education level and going through an admissions process themselves, like working with a coach. And as far as how Prepory really helps to mitigate some of the anxiety that can come from that urgency, I mean, we are on the doorstep here of the college admissions cycle coming back.

We’re about two months away, a little under two months. So, how is it that we are able to help our students every year? We have one-on-one coaching between the student and the coach. It can be multiple times a month depending on the time of year, depending on the grade level, all the way from freshmen up through seniors, transfer students, even in grad students, to really help you not only with every piece of the puzzle, but also with yourself and how you are thinking about what your definition of success is going to be beyond high school. If you don’t know as a senior, as a junior, as a freshman, that’s where we come in. We are able to use our dedicated team of 60 plus admissions professionals who are just in love with this work, who are trying to help build incredibly thoughtful students who advocate for themselves and go out and make an impact in the world.

And on top of that, as Luke mentioned a while ago, Mock Committee Review-style review sessions where a whole panel of experts will tear into every piece of your application and give you actionable feedback on how to improve it and tighten your narrative, unlimited essay review, interviewing for the interviews you might have coming up, on top of, of course, the wealth of knowledge and experience that each of our coaches has. And of course, parents, this is something that you are involved in as well. We check in with parents on a six-week basis no matter what age your student is, and we really want to make sure it’s us versus the problem, the problem of this complicated opaque admissions process, not us versus the student or us versus the parent. It is all of us together to do what is best for each and every one of your students.

It is an absolute joy to be doing this work, and we would love to hear from you and love to talk about how we can specifically help you and your student get started because the ball’s rolling, the train’s leaving the station. We are really trying to help our families get in on this before we lose out on this critical summer period. So, if you would like to book an initial consultation, please scan this QR code, visit this link at the bottom. I think Luke’s been putting it into the chat. Thank you so much, Luke, for doing that, but we’ve really enjoyed talking to you guys. This is something Luke and I, like he said at the very beginning, we send podcasts to each other all the time about this. We love working with STEM students because you often go on to do some of the most incredible things on this planet, and we just want you to make sure that you know that it’s not just a matter of showing how many coding languages you know; it’s all the value you bring as you are as a human being, and that’s the Prepory way.

That’s how we like to do it. So, thank you all for joining tonight, for hearing us out. I know it’s about 7:45 local where we are on Eastern time in the States, but for the next 10 to 15 minutes or so, we’re going to stick around. Luke, I think, has been curating some questions from the Q&A to ask out loud, and if you have a very specific question, feel free to put it in there, but it might be actually a better environment to come to a one-on-one free consultation just so we can drill deeper into your very specific question. Luke, I’m going to turn it over to you. What are the people asking?

LUKE: Yeah, for sure. First, just want to definitely emphasize, please feel free to book that free consultation, get some advice tailored to your particular situation. That’s an excellent resource. So, one constellation of questions that I noticed has to do with AI, which we touched on a little bit. So, we got one question that I heard: “Computer science is saturated; hard to find jobs. What’s the sort of fate of CS given the AI boom?” A couple related questions here: “What are maybe some projected areas of growth for engineering-related fields?”—but really coming down to this question of: “Are there risks in pursuing these majors?” “Should I be considering a change in career?” “If I do go down this path, how can I maximize my chance to be unique?” So that’s a lot of questions to throw at you, and they’re big ones, but if you want to want to take them.

JAMES: Nope. No, I am not going to take every single one, but I think this is such a great, I like how you put it, constellation of questions. I mean, who would’ve predicted in 2022 before November, before GPT-3 came out, that we would be talking about computer science not being a slam dunk major to go into? And there are some very real risks. One of my favorite podcasts, Luke and I have talked about, it’s called Hard Fork, it’s from the New York Times, features a couple of journalists who really have an incredible beat on the world of CS and tech and probably, I don’t know, four of their last five conversations have been with tech CEOs talking about “How are you going to deal with this problem that AI is replacing a lot of those entry level coding jobs or entry level tech positions that young graduates can start at and then work their way up?”

And a lot of the advice that I’ve been hearing from these CEOs as they look at the problem is when we have somebody who has, if AI is something that you want to become versed in, and really I think that that is something all of us need to at least be versed in, if you can show that you have a wide command of how to use these tools of how to string them together for complicated processes and projects and use them for automations in your own workflows and be able to really have a command of how to use them to your advantage, that is just sort of a baseline technical skill that is now really heavily encouraged. But to the question of is CS a risk?

I think for certain students, yes, it can be. And the same would go for engineering because, gosh, when I was at Purdue, y’all, one of the—I don’t say y’all that much, I don’t know why I said that—but one of the things that I would see so, so much was students who came in and they were like, “Oh, yeah, Purdue Engineering, I want to do engineering.” Like, “Okay, why?” And they’d sit there, and they’d blank out. “Well, aside from liking Legos, well, I’m good at math and science.” “My mom, my uncle, my neighbor’s dog had told me that I’m good at math and science, and you can make a lot of money as an engineer. It’s a very sought after position.” While those all might be objectively true, none of that means that those roles in those career fields are good for you as an individual.

So, I think that for the students who maybe up till now have just been, and parents, this is to you guys as well, who are just pushing your kid into CS or not pushing your kid, but single tracked looking at like, “Oh, no, this has historically been the highest profit as far as return of investment going to school for CS or engineering.” Well, yes, that can be true. If you are going in and not really loving it and not truly reveling in the ability to change the world and solve problems within either of those fields, then yeah, you might be a little bit of a one-trick pony when you come to graduation. As Luke did, I think one of the solutions to this is looking for some of those tangential majors. And when I say tangential, what I mean is majors that are of course related to CS in engineering that are going to need a tech expert of some kind, but that speak to one of those other maybe juxtaposing interests that you might have.

So, Luke, you mentioned before art; it could be something in the world of art. There are tons of business majors that are popping up that have some sort of data integration or data analytics and or data science and business. There are a lot of those majors that are starting to crop up at some of these top schools, bioinformatics or biostatistics. A lot of, if there’s any bio or med interests out there tonight, there are quite a few fields that are combining these interests of some kind of tech or CS with something else. My suggestion would be to really get specific, get intentional about what kind of grand challenges or problems in the world you feel yourself gravitating towards solving and then working backward from that. “Okay, that’s what I want to solve.” Great. What kind of career fields can help solve it? “Oh, all of these.” “Okay, well, which ones fit the skills and passions that I have? Oh, these, okay, cool.” “What kind of majors can I go into, or should I go into to get into those fields?” You really have to map it backward, and I think that’s one of the best things that we as coaches are here for, is to be able to help you map that out from the end to where you are.

LUKE: I think that’s an excellent answer. I just really want to underscore the importance of developing those things beyond technical skills. What do we do as humans? We connect and we socialize, and we relate to one another, right?

JAMES: What we’re doing right now. Yeah.

LUKE: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that is the domain of our existence that it’s going to be very hard for AI to break into.

JAMES: Oh man, we’re getting philosophical.

LUKE: So, I think the more you can develop those other skills, connecting with other people, communicating with them, critically thinking, using these technologies, but pairing that with the very human tendency to communicate and collaborate, the better off we’ll be. I think that’s the most important thing I want to underscore. Okay. Two more. Great question. I think we’ll have excellent cluster of questions there, so thank you for that. Two more that we’ll try to get to over the last five minutes here and just like as we’ve emphasized, please, please use that link to book an initial consultation.

JAMES: Yeah, if you feel like you want something a little more tailored to your situation and your fingers are tired because you’ve been typing for 17 minutes about trying to get the whole thing out, maybe just copy and paste that somewhere and then book an initial consultation.

LUKE: Absolutely. I got another great question. I answered it very briefly in the Q&A, but I think it warrants discussion here. “Wouldn’t any passion project appear as if it’s checking a box?” “How do you make a passion project, make it seem like you’re not just doing it for the sake of your applications, but it stems out of your genuine interests?”

JAMES: “How do you not make a passion project seem like you’re just checking a box?” That’s a great question. I would say one of the things that comes to mind right away is longevity, and obviously I know we have a wide range of parents and students and others here in the chat tonight, but if you’re somebody who’s not a rising senior, and even if you are a rising senior right now, there is still time to say, “Yeah, I started this junior year, right at the end of junior year, to then move into senior year and beyond.” Because I think what often gets students into trouble on the App, in terms of their passion project, is they might’ve just heard about on admissions TikTok in September, “Hey, put a passion project down,” and then four weeks they’ve been working on it just in senior year, and there’s not really any longevity they can surmise. There probably wasn’t a lot of growth that came from that passion project.

Whereas, if you started early, and this is why we love working with underclassmen, is you get to build that story over time. I think that one of the ways in which you can make it feel like it’s not checking a box is to remember that idea of intentionality. If you’re really interested in raspberry pie and building small little gadgets, how can you work on the things you already work on or incorporate the things you already work on or are already involved in out in your community or problems that are very common with where you live, to then have an outlet to serve other people? That’s usually never going to come off as disingenuous, especially if you’ve been doing it for a while. That is maybe one of the best ways to make sure that a passion project doesn’t just seem random, like it’s checking off a box. It has to fit into the overall story that you’re telling and all the other pieces. Does that answer that question?

LUKE: I think it does. I really like the emphasis on pairing it with some priority or value, some issue you care about, some interest outside of STEM. I really think that goes a long way toward making these come across as more sincere and also it will feel more sincere. You’ll care about it. It’s not just exercising those technical skills.

Last one. My favorite one. “How did James start fine woodworking or furniture making, and what does that have to do with his involvement in STEM?” A real question from the Q&A.

JAMES: Is that really a real question?

LUKE: It’s a real question, yes.

JAMES: Oh my goodness. Read it one more time. I just, that’s so funny.

LUKE: “How did James start fine woodworking or furniture making, and what does that have to do with your involvement with STEM?”

JAMES: Oh my gosh. That has everything to do with STEM. So very, very briefly, I got involved in a very serendipitous meeting when I was at Purdue, I had mentored some students on campus. I was involved in various organizations as a staff member in admissions, and one of my mentees, she said she was going to be at this little craft fair down by the Wabash River where we lived. My partner and I walked over there, and we saw her at a random booth that was filled with these incredible spoons and utensils and beautiful boxes that were just handcrafted, and she was like, “Hey, this is my grandpa. He’s awesome. His name’s Dave.”

And Dave and I kind of just talked and hit it off, and he became my woodworking mentor ever since then and taught me so many things about working with wood and how to craft and engineer beautiful pieces of art. I mean, there’s really such a thin veil between the two. He was able to help me build my son’s baby crib from scratch, from hard maple and walnut, and it’s just, I think one of the purest expressions when it comes to fine woodworking. Sorry, this is not meant to be a fine woodworking podcast, but fine woodworking is just such a great way to really test the engineering mindset of “what can you build with your creativity and how can you create beautiful things simply from your willingness to try and fail?” And I’ll never forget what Dave, my mentor, said to me. I asked him, “How do you become a woodworking master?” He had a Pennsylvania secretary desk that he was his magnum opus. He’s like, “How do you know you’ve become a master woodworker after 50 years?” “How do you stop making mistakes?” He’s like, “You never stop making mistakes. You learn how to turn them into positives. When you become a master, that’s how you know you’ve reached it.” So, for me, it’s very important to me, woodworking, and I just think that it’s a way for me to remember to never stop trying and never be afraid of failing, because you can create some beautiful things.

LUKE: Which I think are excellent takeaways for anyone listening tonight.

JAMES: Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Yes. I don’t know where somebody dug that up. I guess that is on the website somewhere.

LUKE: I think you might’ve mentioned it in your intro, too.

JAMES: That might’ve been it. Yeah. Yeah.

Guys, thank you so much. For all the folks that have joined us tonight, I hope you had fun. I hope this wasn’t boring. I hope it was insightful and you learned a little bit about, and maybe there were some moments where you were like, “Ooh, I’ve been working on doing that. That’s how I kind of thought we were supposed to do it.” Again, please reach out to us. We would love to have a conversation with you guys about how we can just help you help yourselves in this process, and of course, how we might be able to build a relationship with one of our coaches and your student in terms of finding out what is the best version of their story. So please feel free to follow any of the links, the QR codes that we’ve posted. But otherwise, thank you all so much for coming tonight. We hope you have a great rest of your evening or morning, wherever you might be, and come chat with us. We’ll talk to you all soon. Have a good night.

LUKE: Thank you everyone.