PETER: Sounds good. Thanks so much, Alison. Hi, everyone. It’s great to meet you today. My name is Peter Evancho.

I am a college admissions coach here at Prepory. I’ve worked with the company for about five cycles now. And in addition to my work with Prepory, my educational background includes a bachelor’s from the University of Rochester in neuroscience among some minors. I have a master’s from Brown University, and I also went to law school in Buffalo. After law school, I was set to go to New York to work in big law, but ended up doing a bit of a career change, and I’m now in medical school, where I have some graduate and medical school admissions experience as well outside of the company.

So we’ll leave medicine aside for today, but I’m here to talk to you about law school specifically and how to put together a great and compelling law school application as a high school student. So this talk is generally geared towards high schoolers — not, I mean, there’s a lot of it that’s still applicable to students who are in undergrad applying to law school, but this is a talk that’s specifically for high school students applying to undergrad thinking about law school in the future. So, yeah, before we get started with the talk, Alison, I’ll turn it back to you really quick to talk about Prepory a little bit.

ALISON: Amazing. I really love your expertise, Peter, and I always say this, but how thorough you are. And that said, I’ll give a quick overview of Prepory before we dive into the agenda. So next slide, please. So who is Prepory?

We are a college admissions counseling firm with over a decade of experience in this space. We’ve been around since 2012, and we have supported over 14,000 students in navigating every grade level of high school strategically from 9th grade through senior year. In that time, we’ve guided more than 14,000 students towards highly competitive college goals. And one stat we’re especially proud of is ninety-four percent of our students are admitted into one or more of their five top schools. And when we say top five, it’s about aligning with each student’s goals and aspirations, not just a number.

Our work is about turning your specific highly competitive dreams into results during the most competitive time in admissions history. For students who are targeting highly selective schools with under 15% admit rates, our students are 3.38 times more likely to gain acceptance over the general applicant pool. And in the last admission cycle alone, our students were accepted to dozens of Top 50 universities nationwide. And we can go ahead and jump to the next slide, please. So a snapshot at last cycle — from every school on the U.S. News & World Report from number one to number 50, we saw acceptances for every Ivy League school and every UC school across the board.

It was an exceptional cycle, and it’s this way year over year. Alright. With that said, we are gonna go ahead and jump into the agenda. Peter, I will hand it over to you.

PETER: Perfect. Thanks, Alison. Yes. So all great talks have — you have to tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them it, and then tell them it again. So this is the first of three times I’m gonna tell you what we’re gonna talk about today.

So in our agenda, we’re gonna start by talking about how prelaw programs evaluate demonstrated legal interest. We’re also gonna talk about activities that signal real interest in prelaw and just real interest and passion in anything generally, versus things that people sometimes think will look good on college applications but are pretty easy to see — as AOs, admissions officers — as being more resume padding. We’re also gonna talk about the strategic planning timeline. So sort of as Alison alluded to, the things that you can be doing in 9th through 12th grade to prepare yourself to be accepted to elite programs at universities that specialize in prelaw. We’re gonna talk about some pitfalls to avoid, how to build your cohesive prelaw narrative with some examples from some of our own students, and then end off talking about how we can help you specifically.

And then we’ll leave some time at the end for questions and answers that arose from this talk. But you can, of course, feel free to drop them in the chat as they come up so you don’t forget them, and we’ll do our best to get to them as we go, but we’ll have time at the end to talk about them as well.

PETER: So with that, I’m gonna start by talking about legal interest by telling you what legal interest is not. So some people think that in order to demonstrate legal interest, you have to intern for a judge or work at a law firm. That is wrong for two reasons and cuts both ways for students oftentimes because they’ll either think that all they have to do is intern for a law firm or shadow a judge, and therefore, they have demonstrated legal interest and will have a competitive application for undergrad, which is not true.

Or they think that if they don’t have that on their application and they weren’t able to secure that, they’ll never be competitive for, you know, Top 50 schools for a prelaw-oriented major, which is also not the case. Intellectual curiosity comes from a lot of areas in terms of making you ready for prelaw and can also be evidenced through myriad different opportunities and involvements that we’ll talk about sort of as the talk progresses. Another myth is that prelaw is a specific major or a very rigid track. Most schools do not have a specific, quote unquote, prelaw major. Students can and do major in quite literally anything and then go to law school.

The common ones are, you know, political science, history, English, philosophy, but you can really do anything and then apply to law school. There aren’t really like course requirements like some other graduate degrees have. For example, I did neuroscience, and then I applied to law school. So you can do really anything in your undergrad and can find a way to make that look compelling for law schools. But that’s a little bit of a different talk.

So with that, what are some things that elite colleges do evaluate? So there’s kind of this idea that’s floating around about the difference — about, you know, this well-rounded student that everybody wants to be. And that’s sort of old hat, and it’s not really the way that admissions officers evaluate students anymore. That was the kind of student who would be involved in basically every club at school, and their involvements were a mile wide and an inch deep. And they weren’t really able to get any depth and have any really strong, impactful, meaningful outcomes from what they were doing.

So what you really want to be now is an angular student and someone who demonstrates their passions and their interests through long-standing commitment and outcomes that are meaningful and specifically tailored towards a particular group that they’re looking to improve the lives of or a particular cause that they care about. And so what schools look for isn’t so much, you know, student government check or essay contest check. It’s more these values that can be evidenced through a lot of different things. So intellectual depth is very important, and that’s something that will come across all four of your years of school. So that’s gonna be continuing to get, you know, harder, harder, more rigorous coursework and then having a commensurate rise or at least maintaining your GPA throughout that increase in rigor.

Critical thinking and analysis can also come from your coursework, but it also comes from outside activities. Like I said, if you did end up working with a judge or at a law firm, but it can also come from starting a club at your school or doing a competitive summer program or volunteering in the community. There’s a lot of different ways you can do that. Same with communication skills. Like, that’s not just brief writing and mock trial.

You can also do that in Model UN, or you can do that at your school’s journal or newspaper. Commitment and leadership also comes from very similar roots of being involved in something for a long enough time that you are trusted to be the one that steers the ship once you’ve been doing it for a bit and also that you know the involvement enough that you can start thinking of ways to make it better and thinking of programs that you can start one-offing from that original involvement to help create change in other areas that might not have been seen yet. And then all of those kind of culminate together to showcase an authentic interest in what you’re doing. So it’s really not that you can, you know, start getting involved in junior year, junior spring anymore and then just have a really impactful senior summer and then go from there. You really have to be doing what you say you want to do at the beginning.

You really have to kind of start thinking about that even as early as 9th and 10th grade, which is why it’s great that we have so many 9th graders here on the call this evening.

PETER: So some activities that signal real prelaw potential. Obviously, there’s the, you know, the judge and the law firm that I was talking to you about, but there are a lot of other ones that are very important and that can showcase this interest for prelaw programs that are not just like the ones that people would think about. So there is the direct legal experience — if you want to call mock trial direct legal experience in high school, but that’s something that can definitely very clearly evidence an interest in law because you are pseudo-practicing law as a high school student, and you’re digging into case law, and you’re figuring out arguments. You’re maybe being a witness or maybe being an attorney.

There’s not a lot of special, you know, wordplay that needs to be done to show that you’re doing that because you’re interested in law. Volunteering at legal clinics in your community — law schools, if you’re near them, oftentimes will pretty much always have legal clinics and a lot of times appreciate the help of student interns coming on board to help with different tasks. Court observation projects, job shadowing attorneys. So those are all things that may or may not be obvious, but are also not wholly necessary in order for you to showcase yourself as being someone who is interested in law because law encompasses advocacy, law encompasses social justice, and those things can be shown through a lot of different involvements. So policy and government.

I’ve never worked with a student who didn’t go to a — or, there’s gonna be too many double negatives there. Basically, every high school has a student government of some sort. So getting involved in that. You don’t even necessarily have to be the president. Do something that you’re really interested in. Be the secretary and be in charge of, you know, whatever things the secretary is involved in at your school, if those are the things that you’re passionate about. You don’t have to start off being the president right away. But if president, vice president, e-board of some sort is your goal — which, to demonstrate leadership, it should be — getting involved in that sooner rather than later is best because you shouldn’t be deciding junior year that you want to get into student government. Model United Nations is another one that is a great opportunity to work on communication skills. Interning with your local government.

I don’t want to belabor too many of these. I think they’re mostly self-explanatory as you’re seeing them. But — and then skill-building programs. So, like, the competitive summer programs that you can apply to, that are oftentimes due either already — like, due in December or January — or sometimes the later ones are due as late as, like, now into March. It’s kind of like the big time to be looking for and then applying to these competitive summer programs that are really helpful to give you a leg up for college admissions, to build skills that you can discuss in your essays.

And then, of course, prelaw club membership. So if schools — some schools have those — being involved in them, and then eventually, you know, running them and creating programs for them looks really great. And if your school doesn’t have one and you happen to be very interested in prelaw, a great way to show initiative is to be the one who petitions with your student government or does whatever kind of bureaucratic work-throughs that you need to to start that program at your school. So, activism and advocacy, again, also part of law. So you can be involved in debate, speech competitions, founding and leading different advocacy initiatives in your community about things that you’re passionate about and things that you care about, organizing community events around, like, social justice issues that you are passionate about or really anything.

It could be about — if you really love teaching and you want to put together some kind of program that allows you to reach a particular population that you care to educate, that also shows initiative. It shows that you’re a go-getter who gets things done, and it shows that you have the communication skills to garner support from people around you and to make a difference in the lives of whatever population you’re aiming to impact. And then research and scholarship can come from a lot of different ways. So this could be, you know, national or state essay competitions, school newspapers, philosophy and ethics bowls, writing competitions. So all of these allow you to showcase really strong interest in prelaw and prelaw-oriented things without necessarily ever stepping foot in a courtroom or ever helping an attorney to practice law.

So with that, I kind of want to talk to you a little bit now about what — it is very clearly obvious from the beginning — trying to fake any one of the things that I just told you you should be considering working on as early as your 9th and 10th grade year is a pitfall. So what are some things that admissions officers spot pretty much right off the bat? So some of the things are just when you kind of — like I said at the beginning — get involved in a lot of things, not right off the bat, but in like junior year, to try and pad your resume and get ready to seem like you’ve had these experiences for longer than you have.

So a lot of the authentic demonstrated interest comes from a long-standing involvement in whatever it is that you’ve been doing. And so you’re really cut off at the knees if you start doing that junior year and then try to put in your essays — or if the schools interview you — that you’ve had this long, long interest, if you started it six months ago. And it’s very easy to see that. Similarly, you can have — basically, when you’re applying to college in the end, which is what all of you are eventually gonna be thinking about, you’re gonna have an activity section that’s essentially gonna be your resume. And part of that activity section is going to be the number of hours you spent doing things, the number of weeks you spent doing things, and then also the depth of involvement that you had.

So you can have activities where you’ll have a volunteer activity that you’ve done, and you may be able to say two hundred hours of time doing that activity, which will sound very important and impressive to you. But then when you read through it and there’s no real depth because those two hundred hours were split across, you know, two or three hours among many, many, many different involvements, you’re not really gonna be able to say that there was much of an impact. And there’s not really gonna be a “if I weren’t part of this, would the program be different?” And the answer would be no, which is very easy for AOs to see when your involvements were sort of half-lackluster. So a lot of the things that are very easy to spot kind of fall into that basket that I was talking about earlier of the well-rounded student. So it’s great to look at all of those activities that I showed you before and say, okay, I’ll just do every single one. And if you want to never sleep, which is usually what I advise my students to do — sometimes they listen to me, sometimes they don’t — go off. That’s great. Go with God or whatever your higher power is. But —

ALISON: Peter, with that, you’ve just brought up something really, really helpful. I’m noticing this comes up a lot, especially in initial consultations, which is a huge part of what we do here at Prepory — really building out a highly competitive profile. And how would you say that Prepory best supports students in really parsing through the sheer amount of options that — if you are thinking about a prelaw route — that you have all these options? How are you going to pick through them? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

PETER: Yeah. Definitely. So it kind of depends on when you start working with somebody. But one of the best parts about using a college admissions company to help — or really anybody to help you make these decisions — is that you have someone to play devil’s advocate and someone who knows what a competitive application looks like to kind of help you piece through and not get overwhelmed right off the bat and feel like you need to do everything. So the previous slides where I showed you kind of those five different buckets that prelaw activities fall into — you look, we get to work very closely with our students, and particularly like junior and senior year when we’re meeting every week for months and months on end. I’ll know very well if you’re somebody who really loves writing and wants to get into, you know, being at your school’s newspaper and being involved in a journal and being involved in research and scholarship — that bucket or not. And if you don’t want to, that’s great. And I can be there to tell you to be calm and that you don’t have to do that and channel that anxiety that I know you feel into the other four buckets or the other three buckets and do what you’re really passionate about and help you build projects that will follow all of those involvements so you can get to a point where you’ve sustained enough to have 10 very strong activities on your list that have had impacts that build into this narrative and don’t seem haphazard and random and that you were fulfilled enough and that you can write really strong essays about them and speak very eloquently about them during your interviews. So I guess I would say it’s mainly helping to kind of quell the anxiety of analysis paralysis and drowning in your options, to be able to narrow down the things that are truly right for you based on what your opinion is — you, the student — and then also what I’m able to glean from getting to know you as well as I have for all the students that I’ve had.

ALISON: Absolutely. And, you know, we’re seeing so many questions about really specific and unique circumstances, but also very common circumstances for prelaw students, like asking in terms of what exposure to law firms or law opportunities and prelaw opportunities looks like, especially if I’m thinking of a specific pathway. And what I do want to say is for students, we provide very specialized guidance, especially when we’re thinking about not only a prelaw pathway, but what specifically within law are you looking to do. And I would definitely recommend for many of our attendees that are asking really specific questions — feel free to please book an initial consultation with me or a member of my team, and we want to provide you with really individualized support as well.

PETER: Yeah. Thank you, Alison. So I’m gonna move on to the next slide, which is an opportunity actually for Alison to talk a little bit more about some of our students.

ALISON: That’s right. So at Prepory, we really pride ourselves on being a college counseling firm that you can truly trust and rely on. We’re very thorough and comprehensive, and the proof is in the pudding with our exceptional outcomes. And some of our reviews here really portray that well. We have nearly five-star reviews on every single platform, and these are our former students that are saying their exceptional experiences.

I’ll give one of my favorites — Thomas: “My experience has been amazing, and this program opened up so many opportunities for me. Without this program, I never would have thought that I could attend a prestigious university. And for that, I’m extremely, extremely grateful.” At Prepory, our students — they are three times more likely to be accepted into social sciences programs at colleges and selective universities with an acceptance rate of less than fifteen percent.

And this really matters because when you’re thinking about the support that you need for your specific profile, you want to hire a highly qualified team. Another one of my favorites is Oliver: “Thank you, Prepory. Everyone is so incredible when it comes to college applications. It is thanks to them that I was able to create a cohesive story that led to me being accepted to my dream school. Thank you especially to Demre and Peter. Both of them gave me constant excellent feedback and pushed me to be my best.” And that’s exactly our goal. We want to help you realize your full potential so that your visions end up turning into results.

PETER: Absolutely. Thank you, Alison. I’m gonna keep moving on now to talk about sort of how you can begin implementing what we’ve been talking about so far year to year in high school. So starting in 9th grade, these are kind of the three sort of buckets that this is going to fall into as we move through. So I’ll give a more detailed description in 9th grade, and then it’ll get a little bit more repetitive as the years go on.

But academically, you want to start off strong throughout all four years of high school. So whether at your beginning year of high school — you can keep it going strong as you continue. One of the first things I was talking about was intellectual curiosity and the importance of demonstrating strong academic rigor, and that starts in 9th grade. Everybody has different schools that they’re targeting and different levels of competitiveness that you’re looking for. I can tell you — T-30s are B-averse — if you’re going to get it, 9th grade, I suppose, is the year and the year that most forgiveness is given. But generally speaking, building yourself a strong foundation in 9th grade with good study skills, good writing skills, good study habits is going to pay dividends 10th through 12th grade when B’s are pretty much not acceptable. So that starts with, you know, taking courses that you’re — I mean, you can only have so much flexibility in 9th grade to take courses you’re interested in, but really setting yourself up for success to take the most rigorous courses in the fields that you’re interested in. So our prelaw applicants, oftentimes, this is the humanities — English and history and languages. But, again, it can be anything.

And particularly for the top, you know, the Top 20, Top 30 schools, they want to see you doing well in everything. So just because you want to do prelaw doesn’t mean — and, you know, you’re gonna apply as economics or IR or English — doesn’t mean that you can, you know, do terribly in AP Bio or just, you know, not take calc, because they want to see that you’re demonstrating rigor across all disciplines. Extracurricular exploration. This is the year where I feel very — I have a pretty low threshold of pushing back on students, you know, saying they wanted to try a club that may or may not end up being something that they use as part of their overall narrative — because this is the time to explore. So this is where I say it’s totally fine to be the well-rounded student and join every single club.

This is the member year. This is when you can definitely just, you know, go see what things are about, see what’s going on, see how you can get involved, and see what things are important to you. Because if you don’t look and you don’t try, you’re not gonna figure out what you actually like, and you’re not gonna figure out what you don’t like, which will only help us more to be able to narrow down what your focus is gonna be and what we’re gonna be talking about years from now when we’re doing your application. And then skills development, which kind of is gonna come from doing the first two things well and thoughtfully — working on your public speaking, starting to follow policy and news that’s interesting to you — because, also leading our interview program here, it’s the question of, “What is a social justice movement or what is something that’s going on in the world right now that’s important to you, and how do you think you can fix it or be part of influencing it?”

Questions that kind of fall under that are becoming more and more common in the interview process for undergrad. And so starting to figure out — be a good citizen and know what’s going on in the world around you and things that you agree with and things that you think that you can make better — can start as early as 9th grade year. 10th grade is 9th grade plus. So, you know, continuing academic development, starting to take more honors and AP-level courses if your school allows you. Also try starting to take courses that might be — if your school offers electives as early as 10th grade — things that are kind of more in the law and policy or even speaking and communication types of courses — that’s a great opportunity to get started doing that.

Maintaining your strong GPA. So, again, courses are going to start getting more difficult. You don’t want to see a dip in GPA that is commensurate with your rise in rigor. You want that to maintain. And this might be the year where you start taking your SAT or ACT to see where you’re at with that.

It might be the score you use. That’s something that, you know, talking to a coach or talking to a counselor or someone who knows you well can help decide — when is a strategic time to take that first test. This is where you kind of start trimming the fat with how excited I was to let you do whatever you want in 9th grade year. This is where we start picking out things that you want to move through in leadership with and become a part of the e-board for or start being more involved in projects on. And this is the year where members should really start kind of fading off, and you should start getting involved in things in a more meaningful and in-depth way.

And then summer planning — 10th and 11th grade year. It’s almost — well, like, half of what we do is just figuring out how to make a meaningful and busy summer for your 10th and 11th grade years. So you’re doing a lot, building those skills, not having gaps in your resume and college application, and also having meaningful and fun experiences that you can talk about in authentic ways in your application essays. 11th grade is 10th grade plus. It’s also, unfortunately, not 12th grade minus because in 11th grade, everything gets very hard.

But unfortunately, you’re not a senior yet, so your teachers aren’t as nice to you about, “Oh, well, you’re almost done, so everything’s fine.” So this year is the highest expectations for your school and also starts to get very high expectations in terms of college. And this is, unfortunately, a lot of the times when students start to first think about college applications, and it can be very overwhelming. Academic advancement. You should be taking a lot of APs if your school offers them or IB if your school offers that — whatever your highest level of coursework is.

Particularly, if you’re targeting T-30, T-50 schools, they want to see that you’re taking the highest level of coursework available. They will see what courses are offered at your school, and so they will know what you took compared to what was offered. And they will be able to see a 4.0 student taking all of the just regular-level courses when they could have challenged themselves and taken the harder ones and maybe gotten like a 3.8 or a 3.9. This is definitely a peak SAT year for people who are, again, aiming at the T-20s, T-30s. Well above 1,500 or above a 34 is basically what’s needed for the T-20, T-30 schools to kind of pierce into those.

And so, you know, we provide a lot of guidance on — a lot of our students take these exams multiple times. Do I take the SAT again? Should I try the ACT? There’s a lot of very personalized and tailored advice given to students based on what their scores were. You know, I was an SAT/ACT tutor before, also kind of while I was working here.

So I love giving my students advice about this too because I hate the SAT and the ACT. So anything we can do to help you guys do really amazingly — I know that everyone’s more than happy to be excited to do. Leadership and impact. Be a leader. Be more impactful. I won’t belabor that point. And then college prep. So this is where you really start building your college list, where you start visiting schools and seeing what you like and what you don’t like. Students oftentimes start brainstorming for their personal statement.

They kind of start looking at their — again, if they start thinking now — they start looking at their activity section, realizing they only have six spots when there’s 10 available, and they get worried. So this is a year where if you haven’t started thinking about it before now, you really start to fill in gaps quickly. And then if you had been preparing earlier, this is where you really start kind of just — the roots keep going and the tree keeps growing and things just get harder, but you’re prepared and you’re ready to go. And then finally, 12th grade is 11th grade plus plus. So this is where school still matters.

You can’t just kind of not do anything during the fall and then let everything fall to pieces. Your grades still have to be really great. And I always tell my students when I work with them in their senior year that I’m the most challenging relationship they’re going to have for the fall because I’m gonna be on them all the time, and there’s gonna be a lot of stuff that we have to do. And I’m gonna be their busiest involvement other than school and family for the entire fall semester of senior year. And that’s because this is essentially a part-time job — applying to college in the fall.

There’s a lot of essays you have to write. Sometimes students are able to get a lot of them done over the summer if they’re very proactive and they have time given what they’re doing. But continuing to maintain strong grades, working on your activities, and adding on top of that all of the essay writing and application planning and execution that goes along with college admissions.

PETER: So with that, some pitfalls that students oftentimes find themselves in. Starting too late, as I mentioned.

So realizing that you’re gonna be applying to college in six months when you’re a junior in your spring semester is very stressful. We work with students all the time in their junior and senior years. I basically exclusively work with students in their junior and senior years. I can understand and have been well involved in the pits of despair, but we come out on the other side and everything’s grand and wonderful. But starting too late is a big one.

Choosing prestige over fit — that’s a very personal conversation that I have with my students for months and months, trying to figure out what is the right school for them based on what they’re looking for, putting together very tailored and individualized college lists beyond just, you know, 18 of the Top 20 schools. Neglecting your academics. So, you know, you kind of have to be continuing and doing everything that you’re doing. You’re gonna keep adding more and more on as you work through school, and it’s gonna feel overwhelming. And part of that is also what your coach should be here for. I develop very strong relationships with my students, I would like to think.

And so a big part of what we do — also what I do with my students — is just trying to help them and let them know that they can do it as we work through the four years of high school. Lacking narrative coherence is sort of what I was talking about with the haphazard selection of involvements — just picking things because they’re available and then not doing them because you like them. It makes it very hard to write about your path when you’re a senior when you were just kinda picking things for fun or because they happened to fall into your lap. Avoiding intellectual risk is basically just taking the easy way out with your coursework. And then not seeking mentorship and trying to do it on your own. This is a complex process, and there’s counselors and advisers in schools, outside of schools that are available and want to help students in this area.

PETER: So with that, we’ll talk a little bit about building a cohesive prelaw narrative — all of it, what we’ve been building up to so far. So basically, you want to kinda think about three things. What are you interested in? How do you want to grow your interest in that? And then how are you going to showcase this interest on the back end when you’re eventually telling colleges what you did and why you did it?

Those are kind of the three things that you want to think about as you build a framework. I won’t go into it too much because it’s nebulous without talking to a specific student about their specific situation. But these are kind of the things that you want to think about and can kind of consider as we talk about the upcoming student portfolios or example student situations that we’re gonna be looking into. So I have two students that I want to talk to you all about. These are prelaw students that we had last cycle who applied to tons of top 20 schools.

I believe they were a Yale admit and a Penn admit. I don’t know which order, but those were the two acceptances. So this student applied IR, business, and econ, and you’ll notice there’s three majors. That’s true. We advised them to apply under three majors, and they applied to different majors at different schools, which is a very specific instance for them that I won’t get into.

But that’s not a typo. They did apply different majors to different places, and there are some strategies around that. So 4.0 GPA, 1580 SAT, no slouch, unweighted GPA. Giving you some ideas of what their activity section looked like and what their honors and awards looked like on their activity section. So this person won national/international essay competitions.

They were a student intern and brief writer for the United Nations for three years of high school. Foreign relations director for a nonprofit for four years of high school — all four years. Editor-in-chief and founder of their literary journal. Researcher and author in language, culture, and arts department for two years. And then also studied culture and language for the Department of State in their 11th grade summer. So you can see a lot of competitive involvements during the summers and during the breaks, a lot of sustained involvement. Everything’s 9 to 12, 9 to 12, 10 to 12. You don’t see a sporadic 11 or a 10 or here and there. This person was involved in a lot of things for long periods of time.

And you also see a lot of leadership — foreign relations director, editor-in-chief and founder. And so this is just kind of big-picture activity. There was a lot more in their application, but just to kinda boil it down for everyone. So this is kind of the more quantitative stuff that their application looked at. And then the narrative summary kind of gives an idea into what their personal statement looked like.

So this particular student wrote about their experience reading an essay at the UN that used their creative side and used arts and storytelling to convey statistics and hard data to help change people’s — or influence people’s — perspective. And it was kind of a reflection on what advocacy means to them and how arts and cold, hard data are not actually in opposition, but come together to create what is zealous advocacy, which is what attorneys do every day of their lives — zealously advocate for their clients. And so this student had really great grades, a very compelling application in terms of activities that showcase a long-standing demonstrated interest in advocacy, in interpersonal communication skills, and leadership. And then their whole essay was about sort of their own personal reflections on advocacy. The next one is political science, IR, and public policy.

This is not a typo — they had this exact same GPA and test scores, which I thought was kinda crazy. Also won national essay competitions. Leadership — founder and chair of their education nonprofit. Advocacy ambassador for a theater troupe. Intern for a local government team court attorney. So all things 9th through 12th grade — long-standing involvement, founder, a lot of leadership here, great test scores and grades. And then this person’s personal statement was also a lot about advocacy, but theirs was from the perspective of children that they met when they were in India for a summer and sort of how they advocated for the use of the arts in the education system that they were a part of when they were there over the summer. And kind of talked about the importance of civic engagement and also took a little bit of an artsy angle to advocacy, which is not to say you have to write an arts advocacy personal statement to get into Penn prelaw. But these two both did kind of take that interesting angle, and it worked out very well for them.

So that’s kind of just a brief overview of some of our students who have done very well in the prelaw field — kind of what you can see is looking like a very good application on paper in terms of the quantitative stuff, and then a little bit of a taste, without sharing the whole personal statement, of what they talked about and how they tied those in together to be a specific narrative where the AOs can remember them as, “Oh, this is the blank kid.” And you can kind of see how that would come across. So with that, I will turn it over to Alison to talk a little bit more about the summer programs, which I feel like is on people’s minds a lot, especially as we come into the spring, and then kind of wrap it up by talking about how Prepory can be here for you in this process.

ALISON: Definitely. Thank you so much, Peter. I feel like I learn something new every time we’re together. You really did an exceptional job of sharing your expertise, and we’ll continue with summer programs. With that said, summer programs are a very, very, very important point of discussion if you are a high school student.

Whether you’re 9th grade, 10th grade, or an 11th grader, you need to have a highly competitive summer plan. I cannot stress this enough. This is one of the most underutilized components of your academic profile, and you don’t even realize it until it is too late. So with that said, what does a highly selective plan look like? Is it dependent on one specific program or one specific internship with a lawyer?

Absolutely not. You need to have a highly competitive plan through and through because you are spending ninety days outside of the classroom, and admissions officers across the country are going to be wondering, “What did you do with those ninety days when you were not in the classroom? Did you spend it competitively? Did you have a plan moving forward?” Those plans are being developed right now.

I would highly encourage — if you don’t have a competitive summer plan, you’ll want to book a consultation. But with that said, for highly selective law programs, we think about Yale Young Global Scholars, Stanford’s Law and Trial program. We also think about Columbia University’s summer program in American law. The reality is, though, this is essentially treated like a mini college application cycle. You’re gonna be writing essays.

You’re gonna have resumes. We’re gonna need to rank your activities in a highly strategic way. And then we’re going to think about how this is going to tie into your overall narrative. Are you going to list this as another activity on a busy resume, or are you actually going to build a cohesive narrative arc — that you are a highly competitive student that these universities will remember and that they will invest in? When we think about these programs, it is not a necessity for everyone.

There are a lot of meaningful alternatives as well. So different ways that Prepory students make worthwhile use of their summers and see highly competitive outcomes in their admission cycle. It can include independent research with a university professor. We think about gaining these positions — there’s a lot of cold outreach that needs to take place as well, no matter which professor you wish to study under.

There are also opportunities to work within your community through internships with local elected officials and advocacy organizations. What’s most important with this involvement is you are showing that you are a go-getter, that you are a leader, and that you are somebody that is going to push the campus forward as an undergraduate student. Other examples can be developing curriculum for a middle school civics program. Are you able to talk about the issues that you are very passionate about? Prelaw programs — they are seeking highly competitive but incredibly passionate and driven students that are leaders.

When we think about deadlines, of course, there are deadlines that are closing in terms of having a competitive summer plan, and we want to use this golden window of opportunity to really build that out for you step by step. And of course, you’re gonna have support on every component of the applications — interview prep and line-by-line revisions from my highly talented admissions team as well as our writing specialist team. With that said, we can move to the next slide. So how can Prepory help you get admitted? Prepory wants to absolutely help you in enhancing your probabilities in the most competitive admissions landscape in our country’s history.

And this is definitely in a multitude of ways. So it’s not based on if you have great grades or a great SAT or ACT. That is the baseline. There are a multitude of components that admissions offices are going to specifically be looking for, and you want to make sure that you leave no stone unturned and that you truly understand how to maximize your opportunities. So when we think about the layers of support that my team is going to offer you and your students, we will show you on the next slide.

We’ll talk a little bit more about it. So for you as a Prepory student and your family, you will be having hourly one-on-one advising sessions over Zoom with your dedicated college admissions coach who has admissions and counseling expertise, and they are highly experienced within your specific pathway. You will also have parent check-ins to be on top of what is going on with your student’s profile. You will never be expected to be a project manager. That is our responsibility, but you will always be in the know.

And our goal is to really demystify the college admissions process and keep you up to date every step of the way, as well as provide you thorough notes that will be accessible within our online My Prepory platform. Of course, for prelaw students, this matters a lot when we’re thinking about how we are going to align your narrative. Our admissions team is going to provide you annual profile review as well as committee review during your application cycle as well. So not only every spring as a freshman, sophomore, and junior, but three more times during your senior year application cycle. Of course, what I always say is that your strategy is very important — not only in the things you do, but in how you talk about them, how you write about them, how you interview about them — not just for your personal statement, but for five to six supplemental essays per university as well as for scholarships.

We want to think about how you are going to elevate your leadership in order to be a student that these universities and these honors programs are going to invest in and they are going to remember. You have a full team of support. I have over 70 incredible admissions experts on my team who are ready to help you this week. And with that said, we’ll move into our final component of this evening — our Q&A session. We definitely have answered a lot of questions.

You all have brought really, really thoughtful and passionate prelaw questions this evening. We definitely want to answer a couple more. And, Peter, I’m going to be looping you in on this. But something that has definitely come up is when we’re thinking about summer programs and opportunities. We have a great one.

Some of these programs — there are many programs that you can find online that you’re paying abysmal fees to attend. And, Peter, we talk about this all the time. For a student that has highly competitive goals, do you need to be enrolled at a, quote unquote, billion-dollar institution in order to have an effective profile?

PETER: No. You do not need to be doing a Harvard, Yale, Princeton summer program to go to a top university for prelaw or for anything, actually. I, like, just a minute or two ago, was responding to a question asking if, you know, how jobs look, for example, for the summer, in lieu of these really expensive and sometimes not feasible, ultra-competitive summer programs. I love when kids have jobs. I have worked with many students who have jobs over the summer or over their breaks, and we can talk about them very meaningfully.

They’re very big skill builders. There’s a lot that you can take about a student who’s had a job in terms of, like, teamwork and resilience and balancing their time with school. That is also not to say you have to have a job and go to your local Starbucks or whatever, but — love when kids have jobs. And I’ve had kids who’ve done jobs in lieu of big, really competitive summer programs just because it was easier — it was the resources available, it was just more practical to do that — and they fared very well. So you don’t have to do one of these super competitive summer programs to get in. They certainly look very good as long as they’re ones that are — which we can help navigate — ones that are not just pay-to-play kind of programs where you pay a billion dollars and then are there for two weeks and don’t do anything.

I’ve had students who I’ve worked with who have done — I can think of one who did probably three or four summer programs at UChicago and Penn and Hopkins, I think. And I think we only put one of them on his application because he — because the other stuff he did was just so much cooler and so much more interesting — that happened at school and just in his local community. And he’s at UChicago studying economics. So you absolutely don’t need a super competitive summer program — it will not be the make or break for your application.

ALISON: Definitely really helpful, Peter. And just thinking about the time we have remaining, I definitely want to rapid-fire some of these. I’ll answer some as well. When we think about courses — are the courses that I’m taking in high school important and gonna impact my prelaw narrative? Absolutely.

Yes. You need to have a highly competitive and rigorous schedule. Is it going to depend on whether you took AP Physics or AP Chemistry? No. It’s not gonna come down to that.

But these universities, especially for prelaw students, they’re going to look at — how are you doing in your English courses, in your history courses? Are you pursuing highly competitive rigor? Are you seeking supplemental rigor if AP isn’t offered at your school, if that’s not an option? How are you making use of dual enrollment or even early college programs? Absolutely, AP and IB are helpful, and they can really show that you’re a competitive student, but you want to be really, really careful with course planning.

And that is why that is embedded into all of our programs and our services at Prepory, and it is springtime. This is course planning season, and we are here to help you, and we’ll happily talk about that during your initial consultation as well. With that said, in terms of spring programs and summer programs, we also provide a lot of guidance on researching that and providing additional answers in terms of what is best for me this spring, what is best for me this summer, how am I gonna sustain that with my passion project. These are all things that we want to help you and project-manage for you so that we can make sure that you are making the most use out of your time. Peter, I definitely am gonna toss one back to you.

For students at schools where they don’t have the options for harder courses to apply for — since if honors is the only option that they have, will that count against them? How can a student whose school doesn’t offer so many AP courses make the most use of their time at the school?

PETER: Yeah. Absolutely. So when you apply to college, your guidance counselor is going to submit a letter along with your application that is essentially a report of your school and what are the happenings at your school. And AOs review things regionally. So not only will the AO reviewing your application most likely be familiar with your school anyway, but they will also know — if they’re not, for some reason — they will have your school’s profile in front of them when they’re reading your application.

So they’re not just gonna pick up your app and see zero APs and say, “This kid didn’t try,” right, “In the reject pile.” They’re gonna see what’s available at your school and see, “Okay. So you actually took everything — the hardest-level courses that you could at your school — and did very well.” And that’s gonna tell them that you probably have the rigor for what they’re looking for at their school because you did everything that you could to be competitive at your school, because you’re compared against the people in your area and what resources you have available to you. With that, there are, of course, other ways.

I’ve had a student a couple years ago where there was a situation where there weren’t that many APs available at her school. And she took a ton of online free courses through Harvard or — we just found different certificate-type courses that she could take. And we listed as one of her activities probably 15 or 20 of these courses that were just really interesting to her and things that she wanted to learn more about that just weren’t available to her at her school. We also have students do — so I’ve had students who have taken courses at their local colleges, which may or may not be a feasible opportunity. But there are certainly ways to work around the availability of courses at your school. But even without that, you’ll be compared against what you could have done at your school.

And if all that’s available to you is honors courses and AP and IB isn’t a thing and you took all of those honors courses, you will still look as competitive as you can be, given that, if that makes sense.

ALISON: Absolutely. That makes a ton of sense. And, you know, you’ve really answered that so succinctly. Something that I also want to share is — for students, and this is a big one, it’s coming up a lot. Probably a really great token of advice if you take anything from our Q&A.

If you are serious about prelaw and about going to law school one day, your college courses — whether you took them while you were in college or you enrolled in them as a high school student — those grades are calculated into the LSAC GPA. So you want to be very careful as well with challenging yourself, but making sure that whatever you are committing to academically, that you are able to succeed in those courses. Because later on down the line, if you received college credit for that at an undergraduate or a college or a community college, that will come back and will be calculated. So we want to be mindful in advising you on the best possible opportunities as well where you’re going to succeed. With that said, would it be strong?

We have some really great internship questions. For students who have specific questions about whether they’re choosing between options for the summer — whether it’s interning or whether it’s research — I would recommend booking a consultation so you can get those questions answered, and we can give you an idea of how to move forward. Jobs versus paid internships — are they the exact same? No. But you’re not gonna be doing the exact same thing if you are hired at a job within, for example, a restaurant in your community or a paid internship with a local politician’s office.

It’s gonna look different. You’re gonna elevate it in a different way, but we want to make sure we’re framing your activities in the most competitive way possible with the guidance of our coaching team, our admissions team, and our writing specialist team. What makes students usually aim for prelaw? It can be a multitude of things. You can find your passion early on in high school.

You can still be exploring, but you’re not locked into a specific major. However, you do need a specific narrative to really lay out your goals, especially because when you are applying to English and history and other popular majors — for example, international relations, a really, really competitive major — you are going to be stacked up against competitive applicants who also are building a really cohesive and compelling narrative arc. Peter, feel free to jump in here if there’s any question you see that you feel needs to be answered live. But what I will say is when we’re thinking about applying to scholarships and grants too, it starts with your positioning. This work truly begins freshman year, but as soon as possible, and we want to support you in building a really rigorous academic and extracurricular plan so that you’re not just a student that these universities admit, but you’re a student that they want to invest in.

PETER: Alison, I guess I’ll — the question that you just answered was corrected with a typo. I guess it was majors. So — majors that people usually aim for for prelaw are — I mean, you can quite literally do anything, and I’m not — like, you can literally do whatever you want and apply to law school. There’s no — like medical school, you have to take a certain number of courses, and so it usually works such that you fit into a STEM-oriented major. You can really do whatever you want for law school.

I will say, having been in law school, most people do something in the humanities, social sciences — whether it’s IR or economics or English or history, philosophy. I feel like philosophy is the prelaw major, essentially. So those are very popular ones, but you also see people doing STEM and going into law school. Like, I was friends with a lot of people in law school who went in for STEM and ended up being very interested in patent law because patent law has a lot of technical aspects to it that usually scratch the itch for people who really like STEM but also are interested in law school. So generally, I would say usually English, history, philosophy, poli sci are kind of the big prelaw majors.

But honestly, picking something that’s not the common prelaw major, especially if you’re interested in it and you’re not doing it just to do it, can really serve to help you. Like, all throughout law school, all throughout applying for jobs at firms and everything, me having been in STEM, which was my interest and passion, really helped me and made me very unique, and people really ate that up, for lack of a better thing to say. So — do what you love and what you’re super interested in, whether it’s psych, whether it’s public health, whether it’s French — whatever — and then you can still apply to law school. You’ll still take the same LSAT. It’ll be okay.

But generally speaking, it’s philosophy, poli sci, English —

ALISON: Really, really helpful. I love your answer, and that’s something important to point out — is you have a lot of options. We want to help you maximize some. This has come up a couple times, and I love this topic of AI and how AI is changing our world. And it’s not only changing law, it’s changing every field from computer science to the medical fields.

What I will say is although there are concerns in every single industry about AI, the reality is — and the honest answer is — when you are pursuing legal support, humans trust humans over robots. I am a strong supporter of this. I will say AI will absolutely optimize tasks that can make certain roles within the legal field a bit cumbersome, but the reality is as AI continues to change, so will many jobs. It’s not going to replace lawyers or legal professionals, but it is going to be something that you need to utilize in your day to day as it continues to develop. And that’s something important to consider in the most unsweetened way possible.

I really love the passion about how AI will impact the legal field. The reality is that AI is changing the world. There is no escaping that. The best thing to do is utilize it to optimize to the best of your abilities, but it’ll never replace lawyers. And I’m a firm believer that human beings will always be at the forefront of the legal industry.

PETER: Yeah. I think maybe just to answer one more question perhaps before we close — a question about applying undecided and if you should still talk about your interest. I will say the decision to apply undecided has a lot of nuance to it. So I don’t know how sure this student or person is about applying undecided. But generally, for people who are thinking about that or who are thinking about more interdisciplinary majors, you need to talk about your interest.

I don’t know if interest here means academics or it means your extracurriculars or what you want to do with your life. But you need to talk about your interest in your application because you need to set yourself apart as being an angular person who is interested in something. Otherwise, you’re not gonna get accepted. So how concrete that something is does depend a little bit on whether or not you are applying undecided. And certainly, you have to find a balance between — if you are applying undecided — being specific enough that you are a person and that they can understand your passions and where you’ll go with things, but also not so specific that it’s like, “Okay. Well, then why didn’t you pick that major? What are you trying — why are you trying to pull the wool over my eyes and apply undecided?”

So there’s a lot of strategy and decisions that go into applying undecided. I think I’ve only worked with a couple of students who have actually done undecided because they were just truly so — didn’t know — and ended up going to schools that were more open-curriculum-oriented, and that kind of worked in their favor. But applying fully undecided and then having a bland application where you don’t actually go into any passions of yours will certainly not help you.

So it’s all about finding a balance — that would be a little bit more — any more advice than that is a little more granular for this talk, but it’s a good question. Yeah. Anything else on your end there, Alison?

ALISON: You know, Peter, honestly, I think that you did a wonderful job of answering that final question. And what I will say is we have definitely a wonderful group of students who have attended today. We are definitely excited to meet you. I’m really encouraging you to take advantage of this opportunity to book your free consultation with Prepory. The QR code is on the screen, and I’m looking forward to meeting you all and discussing more in-depth one on one.

Really, really great questions, and we’re excited to help you every step of the way with a highly successful and a highly competitive admission cycle. Alright. We will see you all soon.