KATIE:I do see we have a few more still joining, which is wonderful. So I will end the poll here. And, basically, the bulk of our conversation tonight is going to be Christian. I’ll let him introduce himself in just a moment. But just a little bit about me, I’m a Senior Enrollment Manager here at Prepory.

So when you book a consultation with Prepory, which we’ll talk about also, you get to have a conversation with me and my team to talk all about your specific needs. But for most of our conversation tonight, we’re going to be talking about summer. It’s on a lot of our students’ minds right now. So I had a lot of conversations about summer just today. Really excited to hear your insights on this.

And as Christian is talking, please feel free to share your questions in the Q&A. We have some team members backstage answering those questions. I’ll be answering some, and Christian will also be fielding questions live. So go ahead and introduce yourself, Christian.

CHRISTIAN: Right on. Well, greetings, everyone. Good evening or good afternoon wherever you happen to be in the wide world around us. My name is Christian. I’m very happy to be hosting this webinar with Katie. A little bit about me.

My experience in this admissions field started at the NYU Office of Undergraduate Admissions where I worked previously. And in the past, I’ve helped students get into NYU as well, of course, as well as other institutions like Rice University down in Houston, Texas, and the University of Michigan Ann Arbor as well. I also specialize in early planning for long-term success for families just like you all, especially here in these 9th and 10th grade years, which is why I’m here this evening. Nice to meet everyone.

KATIE: Awesome. I love that, Christian. I’ll dive in here and give you a little bit of context about Prepory, and then Christian will kick us off with an agenda and dive into this conversation. So who is Prepory? You can go to the next slide here. Perfect.

So, we are a college admissions counseling firm. I’m going to give you some background about us. Prepory has been around for over a decade. We’ve helped over 14,000 students through this process all the way through high school. So starting in 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th, and 12th. 94% of our students are admitted to one or more of their top five choice schools.

And this is something I love that we emphasize because this has to do with your goals. So this is making your dreams come to life, so that is really important for us. We also do really well with top programs. I know a lot of you were interested in top schools, Top 30, or even Top 100 schools depending on your goals. At Prepory, when you work with us, you are 3.38 times more likely to gain admittance to a school with an acceptance rate below 15%.

So those would be those very top programs that we’re talking about. And you’re going to see some of those results right here on the next slide. We had acceptances to all Top 50 schools in the country in just the last admission cycle. So this is year over year for us — familiarity, and we’ve been building profiles for these schools, like I said, for over a decade here at Prepory. So very familiar with what it takes to succeed, and summer is just such a huge, huge part of that, so really excited for Christian to dive in.

CHRISTIAN: Right on. Thank you, Katie. I’m excited to dive into this topic too. I happen to be very passionate about this topic just because it really is such a great time, you know, those 9th and 10th grade summers for students to explore. So we’re going to be walking through tonight how to make the most of that.

So first of all, I already see we have a couple of questions about this in the chat, actually. We’re going to first define together what is an activity, right, and go over some key criteria that make for really solid ones. We’re going to explain why experiences such as these are valuable to admissions officers and which experiences are valuable to admissions officers. We’re going to go through a little bit of an exercise evaluating early high school experiences, and then I’m going to review some common early planning mistakes so that you can avoid them, of course. And then we’ll talk a little bit more about Prepory and what makes us and our work with our students very unique.

And then finally, the last portion of this presentation will be Q&A. We’ll just be talking, responding to your burning questions, to the best of our abilities.

CHRISTIAN: So first, let’s just dive right into this by defining what is an activity. It might — oops. Excuse me.

Sorry about that. So you might hear the word “activity,” and you might already have some ideas about what that means. Right? What I find most useful in my work with my students is the following definition wherein activities often meet one or more of these criteria. First of all, the activities feature some sort of key major or career alignment.

Right? Meaning that it’s very much a clear stepping stone to what the student wants to do in college and beyond. They often also include community impact. So making a difference, be it big or small, in your home community, your school community, your region, your state, maybe even the world. Who knows?

There are various ways to define that. And then my favorite bit here, the dynamism and the joy — the ones that we say are kind of, quote, unquote, just for the student. Right? Like how I was in high school and I was co-president of the video game club for three years with my two best friends. Right?

Activities also feature hard and/or soft skill acquisition and refinement. So we wanna see you grow through these experiences and really take on the opportunity to learn from them. Oftentimes, these activities too originate from within an established institution. They can be preexisting, but also we see through these activities students forming their own institutions, their own student organizations, which we’ll go into more detail about in a future slide. And then finally, the key criteria here, I’d say, is the depth of commitment matters, which is why we’re talking about 9th and 10th grade tonight, especially because what you do now — you might think like, oh, I’m so far away from college. What I do now doesn’t really matter. It’s years from college. Right? So you might think, oh, what I do now doesn’t really matter. But, hopefully, by the end of this presentation, you will get the sense that what you do even now in these early underclassmen years really does matter.

KATIE: Christian, I have a question for you already.

CHRISTIAN: Sure. Okay. Go ahead.

KATIE: From our Q&A. It is just thinking about kind of a conversation I had with a coach who said students are doing more than they think they are. And as we’re talking about the different types of activities, I’d love to know if you have some examples of things students typically leave out that maybe count under the definition of an activity for college or maybe are still valuable.

CHRISTIAN: Oh, I have so many, Katie. I have so, so many. And it always makes me — those are some of my favorite moments with students right where I’m talking with them. And I go, wait a second. Go back two sentences. What did you just tell me you’re doing? Right? Oh, I have this — I have this one student who’s a — who is a senior now, who when I first met him as a sophomore, he told me that he likes to play his clarinet for the local farm animals in his hometown.

He lives in Texas near actually where I’m from originally. And he’s like, yeah, I like to play my clarinet for the cows, and I hold concerts in my neighborhood. I’m like, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Go back. Go back. So what I’m hearing is not only do you have a deep connection to this art form, but also you’re an event planner and you’re a community organizer.

We can take that. We can use that. We can put that into your activity list for the Common Application. So that’s one of my favorite examples because of what a fun, creative way to use an art form that you really care about to bring together community. Ties back to some of my past work in the arts as well.

So, yeah, that’s a good example of what I think you were discussing before, Katie, with these examples.

KATIE: Mhmm. Yeah. Definitely.

CHRISTIAN: Right on. So these activities. Right? Why do they matter? What is really the impact on admissions when it comes to these activities? First of all, these activities are an early opportunity to demonstrate alignment with the major.

Right? You know, oftentimes, a student will ask me in session, like, Christian, this all sounds really good, but how will the admissions officers know that I’m really all about this? Or how will they know that it’s authentic? It’s legit? You know, with the way we’re all trained to read applications, right, we know, based on the sort of upward trajectory over the course of your four years in high school, right, whether or not you’re really moving down a particular path.

Right? So we like to see students go — you can be more broad in the early years. Right? But then as you approach senior year, we see you get more and more specialized ideally. Right?

Specialized toward a specific alignment or an angle. With that being said, you know, activities in the 9th and 10th grade, for that very reason, they’re not weighed as heavily as the rising senior — aka the post-11th-grade summer — but, nevertheless, they are an early opportunity to start demonstrating that alignment. Right? The next thing too is that it can prepare you for higher level or, in other words, more competitive coursework. Right?

Oftentimes, when students — I’ve worked with a number of business students in the past who identify that, for example, they really wanna get into AP Calculus AB or BC by senior year in order to be competitive for the Top 10 business programs in the country. But they’re wondering, like, oh, how do I even do that? Well, the summer is an opportunity to catch up and even get ahead too. Right? Taking Algebra II/Trig, for example, in your sophomore summer can be very beneficial for helping you to get onto that track that you want.

Right? It’s also a really good opportunity — these 9th and 10th grade summers — to explore and identify college majors. Right? A focused college application, no matter what, is typically more effective. Sure.

There are many colleges and universities that’ll let you enter in undeclared. But if you can show them that you have a very strong sense of purpose and what you wanna do and why you need their help to get you to those career goals, right, then your application is going to be much more effective. And then finally, these experiences with relation to the application — speaking of — these experiences allow students to discover specific career goals and research questions or issues of concern that are ultimately going to make for really strong narratives in your application essays that you will have to write.

KATIE: I’d love to ask you about coursework in particular. Are there particular disciplines that you feel like this comes up in the most, or is it really across the board? Or, you know, what should students kind of be asking themselves, and when would you wanna seek help with really planning your curriculum?

CHRISTIAN: That is a very good question. So looking at — you know, I’m imagining my prior students’ transcripts in my mind. Right? So, typically — your coursework is, of course, going to have an impact no matter what your major is. Right? But if we’re talking numbers, stats, we’re talking about your STEM majors especially and your business majors. So if you wanna be an engineer, if you wanna work in finance, things like that — you know, you’re generally more quantitative-heavy majors. Those are going to really rely on those test scores, especially for the APs. You know, it’s suffice to say that for top 10 programs in either engineering or business, for example, AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Chemistry — those are basically must-haves for competitiveness.

Right? And so with that being said, this can be the sort of thing that catches students, you know, by the time they get to 11th grade, especially, a little off guard because they think to themselves, like, oh, I wish I had planned that out sooner. Right? That’s the thing that we especially wanna help you to avoid — is getting to that moment at the, you know, sort of the halfway point of 11th grade and realizing, oh, I’m running out of chances to make my transcript as competitive as it possibly can be. So that’s why my work with my underclassmen, I make sure to prioritize coursework planning. That’s why we at Prepory help you out with that very specifically. That way, you don’t get caught off guard with that going into your upperclassmen years.

KATIE: It’s so true. And we are having conversations right now with juniors where I had a conversation with a parent where they’re like, well, I wish we’d done this, and I wish we’d done that. But since we didn’t do either of those things, can you help me? And, of course, there’s always ways that we can get creative and strategize, but even then, she’s maybe going to be thinking about sacrificing some summertime for coursework at a later point when she could be doing really impactful activities, like internships or some of the things that we’re going to talk about — maybe research — and some of that time’s going to need to go to coursework. So it’s definitely something that you wanna start thinking about early and start planning out in a really robust way.

CHRISTIAN: Absolutely. Everyone should take Katie’s advice. Just saying. Just saying. So now we’re going to move into talking about the experiences that are valuable to admissions officers. I see we actually have a question about this, or we had a question about this in the Q&A just a few minutes ago. So if you’re still listening, this is the answer that you have been waiting for so patiently. Thank you so much for your patience.

So the golden question: which programs actually add value to your application, right, to your profile? And I put the word “actually” in there very deliberately. Because like I said before, you all have some idea of what summer activities can look like. Right? But, obviously, you wanna make the wisest, most efficient decisions because you only have so much energy and time during the summer.

So what I’ve done here is I’ve broken down a variety of different activities into basically three categories according to how much impact they add to your application, whether it’s low impact, medium impact, or high levels of impact. Right? Now I wanna make it very clear that nowhere on here does it say zero impact. Right? Because, obviously, the accumulation of your experiences is very valuable, and your preparatory coaches, should you decide to work with us, right, we’ll take everything you’ve got. Right? We’ll help you package it in such a way where you can show this off to the admissions officers and say, hello, world. Here I am. Please let me into your institution. So we’re going to go into each of these categories in more detail, starting with the lows and then working our way up to the highs and detailing why each of these types of activities are in their respective categories.

KATIE: While we do that, Christian, I’d love to — we had a question in the chat that I could answer, but I wanna bring Josh’s question to you because he asked about high school research. And I don’t think you’d laid it out exactly in your category. So, you know, is that medium impact? Is it high impact?

And he specifically — Josh specifically asked, you know, I wanna hear from the NYU admissions office experience here. So I’ll —

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. No. Absolutely. I’d be — I’m happy to see that the question’s angled toward NYU, a place I very much care about. So, yeah, so to answer your question, Josh, let me make sure I read this in detail here. You say, “I want to do high school research before I apply to college because of the experience and rigor it holds for a student.” Okay. Good. So what’s my advice on that?

Okay. So what I would say about that is, if you want to do research, right, then, actually, what we’re talking about tonight about using those 9th and 10th grade summers to ramp up to such opportunities is going to be very helpful for you, I think. Because, ultimately, there is a sense of preparedness. Right? So what we call — we call these internally, we call these a “capstone event.” Right? Doing research at a university, for example, tends to be sort of a culminating event of all the knowledge you’ve gained from your coursework and prior summer experiences. Right? So if you think that you want to do research at some point before applying to college, then the time to plan for that is now. And, hopefully, the rest of this presentation will actually help you to see, like, okay. Here’s how I can begin to scaffold that in a general sense. And then, of course, you can always book an initial consultation with us as well to talk in more detail about this because every student’s different based on where you’re from, what high school you go to, what opportunities are available to you, of course, right, given where you are. So, we can help you identify the specific stepping stones that can help you build up to that culminating research event. And, actually, this activity section example from one of my current — excuse me, not current — one of my former students, actually shows this off pretty nicely.

So you’ll notice here — so this is a mock-up of the Common App activity section that we have all of our students fill out as part of our work together to help them get their information organized early on. Right? You’ll notice here for this student that they had two research internship experiences both in the 11th and the 12th grade too. I’ll also say this as well. This was a prior student of mine who also had a pretty decent amount of AP or honors-level coursework in her transcripts too. So those — getting into that coursework and especially the 10th and 11th grade is what ultimately prepared her for these experiences. Right? Because I’m not just going to let anyone into the radionucleotide lab at Georgia Tech, right, for example. You gotta show that you’re qualified and that you have a strong demonstrated interest too because, of course, resources are limited. Right?

So you’ll see here that, yeah, research mainly comes into play in the 11th and the 12th grade, not so much in the 9th and 10th grade. But in the meantime, nonetheless, breaking down further portions of this student’s activity profile — you’ll see that in the meantime, this student is competing in Interscholastic Decathlon, for example, focusing on the sciences and mathematics. Right? President of her school’s Science Bowl team. Right? So demonstrating not only leadership, but superior understanding of subjects related to the hard sciences, like physics and chemistry, for example. Do we have the other — oh, yes. And here’s the other page right here. Some other things the student is doing in the meantime to ramp up to those culminating research experiences.

Right? This student is learning a foreign language, for example, specifically German. Right? And in fact, ascended to vice president and then president of her school’s German National Honor Society chapter. Right?

And then in the meantime too, we also have various other experiences like holding down a part-time job, participating in varsity sports, and participating in local community work as well, which again helps students to develop those hard and soft skills that are going to be useful later on in their academic career and as well as demonstrate that student leadership and most importantly, that student citizenship too. And I would say that that citizenship piece especially is something you really wanna work on culminating is if you wanna get involved with research in the future because many higher-end institutions will tell you outright that we’re here for the common good. Right? That’s what all of our research is for. Right?

We’re here to make the world a better place. So demonstrating that you too are someone who is concerned with making the world a better place is equally as important as demonstrating mastery in the hard sciences, for example. So those are two things that I’d say work really well actually for this student as she made her way through 9th through 12th grade and what ultimately led her to getting into those experiences, which helped to make her application, frankly, a knockout. She was a very successful student. She got into — if I remember correctly, it was Cornell was her top-choice school, and she got in with this profile.

So there you go.

KATIE: I love that. And I love that you’ve got that example there. Just a sandwich maker in 9th grade, really building that citizenship piece. And, you know, we did have a question about worthwhile activities that are not a huge expense. Right? And there are so many things you can get involved with local to you that can build your profile even when you are not yet at an age where you can have a summer job.

CHRISTIAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s get into a closer evaluation then of those high school experiences that I laid out in that chart before.

So starting with the low-impact activities as promised. Right? So first of all is vacations. Extremely straightforward. Right? Oftentimes, your vacations, those are leisure time. Right? They can still make for decent essay material should the prompt allow for it. Right? But, really, that’s the only function. You’re not obviously demonstrating any sort of academic mastery. Right? You’re not demonstrating any rigor because it’s a vacation. So, of course, you’re not demonstrating rigor. Right?

And so on and so forth. That’s the main reason why vacations — they’re not no-impact activities. They’re low-impact activities because they’re basically just like a cool story to tell, maybe, if you have the chance for the essay prompt to do so.

Service trips. Now this is a very tricky one for students to comprehend oftentimes because they think like, oh, not only am I doing community service work, but I’m also traveling around the world. That must also mean something. Right? Not necessarily. It’s because, as we analyze trends in the higher ed space, right, we find that the issues with service trips is that the change is, first of all, very momentary. Right? The results are also difficult to measure because the site of the change is so far away. Right? And the impact is often vaguely defined in a lot of cases too. And there’s also a very simple mechanical reason too, which is that by the time you get back, you might have forgotten all the details about the things you did there, right, which doesn’t make for a very compelling story or compelling narrative.

There’s also job shadowing too — not to be confused with interning, which we’re going to get to in a little bit. Right? Basically, this has to do with the degree of work and learning that’s going on. Right? If you’re there just kind of following around someone in a particular office setting, it’s very difficult to evaluate the learning that you’re experiencing and also very difficult to evaluate the meaningful skill acquisition that’s going on. It’s kind of undetectable in the application, which is why it’s a bit of a weaker impact activity.

And then I just saw a question about this in the chat. So here’s the answer for you. Pay-to-play summer programs. Right? Oftentimes, here’s how you can tell you’re looking at a pay-to-play summer program. Academic performance is often not a requirement for admission, or the GPA threshold’s very, very low. Right? That’s a very clear indicator that they are casting a very wide net with that program and that it’s essentially pay to play. Right? They’re going for your money.

Right? Also, the learning is often very general and very shallow and often not eligible for college credit too. So if you’re looking at the program and you go like, this seems incredibly broad — the education they wanna provide for us in this program — you’re probably looking at a pay-to-play program. Very different from having a variety of different options to choose from. Right?

But if there’s no specific course where it’s like, oh, you get to learn about military history through the power of cinema, for example. Right? If it’s not as specific as that, then you’re probably looking at a pay-to-play program right there.

KATIE: One of the things that always sticks out to me about that too is thinking about when you’re looking at pay-to-play opportunities — I love that you mentioned really specific coursework. One of the words that I feel like we get asked about a lot — parents get mailers or they get flyers, and the word is “leadership.”

So they are very impactful — there are definitely impactful leadership programs and opportunities that are out there, but I feel like it’s one that gets thrown around in a way that is maybe impactful, maybe not. How would you suss out if something that purports to be about leadership is going to be impactful for you?

CHRISTIAN: That is such a great question, Katie. And, actually, we’re going to talk about that in this medium-impact section. So I’m going to get to that in just a second because that’s actually one of the medium-impact activities I have listed here.

So I’ll really quickly make my way through these. Unpaid internships. So similar issues to job shadowing do exist here, but they can be impactful if meaningful responsibilities are assigned. So if you get some practical training in how to — even if it’s just how to organize data in an Excel spreadsheet, for example, right, and understanding and linking that to an understanding of how proper data management impacts an organization, right, then that would be a more impactful experience. Right?

Another thing to be cautious of too with internships is, frankly, specializing too early. Because if you get an engineering-based internship in the 10th grade, but then you decide you’re going to run off and study theater at NYU, for example, later on in the 12th grade, then that internship — it’s great, but also it doesn’t show alignment like we talked about before. Right? So that’s why timing is a very important factor here.

Subject matter summer programs like STEM camps, for example. Similar issues to pay-to-play programs do exist with these, but they can be impactful if aligned coursework or project experience is offered. And, actually, Katie, I think this actually begins to answer your question about those leadership programs. Right? So if the leadership program is one that offers some sort of meaningful level of coursework or project experience, right, if it culminates in some sort of project work that you can then go to school or into your application and talk about in grand detail later, then that leadership experience or that STEM camp in this case will have been worth it.

I have a student who’s about to go to the University of Sydney for aerospace engineering who — that all started for her with her 10th grade summer program she did where she got to work on projects related to aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. Right? And now she’s going to learn how to go build planes, which is so sick for us. Right? So, again, that sort of straight-line trajectory straight to the end there is what ultimately retroactively made this a very impactful experience for her.

Now volunteering. Age-old question, volunteering. Right? What do I do about volunteering? Volunteering can be low impact if it’s only within the scope of your school requirements. Many high schools have a requirement that you have to do, like, oh, 40 hours before you graduate of community service. Right? If your volunteering only exists within that scope, then that’s going to be lower impact. Right? And your impact will be therefore higher if the hours spent on your volunteering work exceed those requirements and especially if the scope of your responsibilities escalate over time.

KATIE: I talk about volunteering all the time. I feel like it is such a missed opportunity and a missed opportunity to start early. Right? Because — mhmm. Later on, then you might be able to help younger students get involved in that volunteering opportunity. Now all of a sudden, you have a leadership role. Mhmm. Right? So, that’s a piece to think about too. And I’d love to know, can you talk a little bit about doing your volunteering in one area versus spreading it out and doing a lot of different things?

CHRISTIAN: Oh, that’s a very good question. So that ties into our definition of activities from earlier in the presentation, right, where we talk about one or more of those qualities being true about your activity at once. One of my favorite parts of the process when I work with my students is helping to design their passion projects because project management’s in my professional wheelhouse, and I really love helping them to find the intersection between their primary academic interest and their interest in helping their communities out.

Right now, I actually have a team of my students who I connected together because I was like, you all can work together on this project, I think. They are designing an application basically designed to help students with color blindness, right, who are interested in the arts, basically locate resources and find community for sharing their work and also learning about ways to work in their own mediums. Right? And so it’s kind of almost like an internal, sort of small-scope — they refer to it as TikToks. I guess that’s what all the kids these days are on. Right? And they’re currently still in the designing and planning phase of that. But the idea of that app is to really increase accessibility in the arts.

Right? One wants to be a computer programmer. One student really cares about graphic design. Right? And the other student really cares about public health, which accessibility is, of course, a public health concern. Right? So as they all — and they all have this one shared common interest in art. Right? So I was like, you know what? Why don’t I connect the four of you together, and y’all can figure this out.

And they’ve actually really enjoyed working together so far. It’s really cool because they live across different states. Right? So they hop on their little Zoom call every couple weeks or so. Brendan, my one student tells me, and they go at it, and it’s really cool.

Speaking of more activities. Right? So medium-impact activities. So these leadership programs that you mentioned earlier. Right, Katie?

So these are a good starting point to develop baseline leadership and writing capabilities. The writing capability point is a big, big feature, I think, because oftentimes you’ll do a lot of writing in these programs. Now the thing about these is that the 9th and 10th grade — really those summers are like your window to do programs like those. Anything beyond that, right, and you’re going to be a bit too broad too late into the game. Right? Ideally, you’d become more specialized than that over time. So that’s why I say that it’s most effective for our rising 10th and 11th graders — aka the students who just finished either freshman or sophomore year.

And then finally, there’s the age-old question of sports. Right?

KATIE: Big one, Christian.

CHRISTIAN: What’d I say? Such a big one. Oh, yeah. Such a big one. Such a big one.

These are very situationally impactful. Right? They’re really only going to have the most impact if your student is on track for recruitment at a higher ed institution. Outside of that, it’s a great way to show leadership, a little bit of community stewardship. Right? But other than that, it’s not that impactful if sports aren’t your plan in the long run for college, I’d say.

KATIE: Mhmm.

CHRISTIAN: One other thing I wanna point out too before we move on from this section — on the point of volunteering, another reason why volunteering is very criminally underrated in a lot of students’ eyes is that student citizenship is a pathway to scholarship money. In fact, I was just talking with our coworker, Christopher, about this earlier today. Christopher — not to be confused with Christian, although it does happen a lot — where he has this one student who was looking into a scholarship. What’s it called? It’s called the — let me find the name of it right here. It was called — find the name of it right here because I have it off to the side still. The — ah, the Bryan Cameron Scholarship, of course. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that scholarship really prioritizes helping students who are citizen leaders in their own communities make it to that next level of higher education. Right? And many such scholarships have student citizenship as a big criterion for winning that award.

Right? So if you’re thinking especially like, I really wanna apply for a scholarship in my future, then definitely do not underestimate the importance of your community impact portion of your application, right, or of your profile. Excuse me.

Speaking of, let’s talk about those high-impact activities — those heavy hitters, those home runs, right, those things that we love to see as admissions officers on your application. So first of all, paid employment opportunities. Right? Mainly because students’ responsibilities are clear and quantifiable. And even if the job is not directly aligned — especially if it’s customer service, for example, right — soft and hard skills that are gained in those roles are very easy to define and very easy to explain. Right? It’s just literally easier to talk about on your application.

The next thing is selective summer programs. Here’s another sign to figure out whether or not a program is pay-to-play or if it’s got more oomph to it — if it is fully funded. For example, the Florida State University Young Scholars Program. You’re fully funded for your entire time at that program or the Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, where my family lives actually. Those are fully funded programs where you don’t pay anything except for the application fee and, of course, associated travel fees to get to that program. Right? And moreover, those courses can often count for credit if there is coursework involved. The courses are also often more rigorous too, so therefore, the higher selectivity is necessary. And it’s a great opportunity to form meaningful relationships with your professors. Right?

And those professors that you meet in those settings, oftentimes, they’re going to make for great recommenders come application time, especially for our would-be scientists in the room.

Other high-impact activities — taking on advanced supplemental coursework, for example, Algebra II or Precalculus, going back to my example from earlier. First of all, it demonstrates subject area proficiency, of course, and it also demonstrates the initiative you’re willing to take in order to pursue a certain major in college. Right? For example, taking Precalculus to get yourself on a calculus track to be competitive for a top business program, right, or maybe a top engineering program.

And then finally, kind of coming back to the volunteering conversation from before, self-started community impact or passion projects are like the creme de la creme.

KATIE: Oh my goodness.

CHRISTIAN: My French teacher from high school would hate that accent just now, but — Thank you for the backup there, Katie.

KATIE: That’s right. I’ve got you.

CHRISTIAN: Appreciate that. These are some of the highest-impact activities we, frankly, will ever see on a student’s application. First of all, it’s the best opportunity to fill one or more of the three buckets — the major alignment, community impact, and joy buckets that we talked about before — because you get to fully customize the experience. Right? So if you wanna make sure that your activities have some semblance of involvement with marine biology, if you wanna study marine biology, then you can design a project around that, and we can help you — especially as preparatory coaches — design that project. Like I said, project planning, that’s my passion right there.

They also demonstrate superior leadership capabilities, right? Especially when it comes to the Common Application. Oftentimes, you’ll see essay questions on there like, oh, how will you contribute to life at Rice University? Right? Or how will you contribute to life at Pomona College? Right? This is where that storytelling material gets made. Right? It’s by carrying out these passion projects or these community impact projects. Right?

They also are the best when students have the opportunity to start early. Right? They don’t have to rush them. That way they have time to build those portfolios or grow these projects over time. Right? That’s why we bring them up in this presentation tonight. And finally, they just showcase tremendous individuality and are often more distinct. Oftentimes, it’s such passion projects as these that really help us as application readers remember who you are ultimately, which can always play in your favor.

KATIE: Alright. I’m going to give you a one-second break here, Christian, to explore the chat and see if there are questions that you wanna bring into the end of our conversation where we’re going to go into common mistakes and the key takeaways from everything that we’ve been talking about.

One thing to dig into — we have had a couple questions about medical shadowing and also connected to volunteering a little bit and some passion projects, thinking about Scouts and Gold or Eagle awards, how we think about those.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. So that’s always something to — what I typically say around that, just to answer your question from my perspective, is that a Gold Award is a project that’s going to be done, and your passion project is not. So can these things dovetail? Yes.

KATIE: Right? You could definitely do something that then gets folded into your passion project, or the other way around. Right? You’re working on a passion project, and that becomes part of your Gold Award. But I think that this is really a huge piece of what you’ve been talking about all throughout — is how these activities build on each other and how some of these things that you start in 9th and 10th grade, it’s — you don’t just switch to another activity, but you get the depth in those specific activities.

And those are the types of conversations that we are always having with students. So that is what you’re seeing on this page — is that we really open students’ eyes to how that is a reality. And with the passion project piece in particular, I can’t tell you how many conversations I have with students where they’re like, well, you know, we didn’t get help. Now it’s the middle of 11th grade, and I thought about a passion project. I did have an idea for a passion project, but I just didn’t really know how to go about it. You know? I didn’t know how to get started. Or I care about volunteering, but I didn’t really know what to get involved in. And so I just stopped there. Right?

I stopped digging. I stopped asking those questions because I was busy. I was playing varsity golf, and I was too busy to be asking those questions. Right? And so I think when you are meeting regularly with someone who has this on their mind — they have your college admissions outcomes on their mind every time they show up to a conversation with you.

So you have all of the things that you’re doing at home, in your life, the things that you love, but we’re always focused on your college admissions process, and that is what is so important about getting help.

CHRISTIAN: Yep. Absolutely, Katie. Absolutely. Shall we still go through the Q&A here to talk about a few more of these questions, or do you wanna move on to the —

KATIE: If you have a couple that you wanna address, go for it.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Sure. So first of all, wanna address the question about medical shadowing and whether or not that would still be impactful. So that’s the one golden exception to the shadowing point I made earlier. Medical shadowing is very different because that’s just a whole — mhmm.

KATIE: Mhmm.

CHRISTIAN: The way the trajectory, medical school works. Right? That’s the one — excuse me — that’s the one type of shadowing that would still be actually very impactful in a student’s application. In fact, a former student of mine had started getting involved with hospital shadowing in the 9th grade, in the summer after 9th grade. And now he’s very much on track to being able to go for a Top 20 pre-med program so he can then go on to medical school, basically his trajectory right now. He’s doing great. That’s Jayden, if you remember, Katie.

KATIE: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

CHRISTIAN: Also too, I saw a question in the Q&A about AP Chem.

KATIE: Oh, yeah.

CHRISTIAN: So I — so I was talking about — I have chemical engineering on my mind when I said AP Chem for engineering. No. Your student does not necessarily have to stack a ton of APs that are unrelated to their major. Right? Of course, going after the APs that are relevant to your specialization would be important. However, this is one of those finer points of coursework planning that would be best discussed on an individual basis with a student because with coursework competitiveness — excuse me — you’re compared against other students applying to the same school from your high school. Right? So it kind of also happens to be the case where it’s like, if Stacy has five APs and she’s applying to Carnegie Mellon, then you might have to adjust your coursework plan based on whatever it currently happens to be, right, based on prior year admission data, which we, again, we go over in session with our students.

As for programs like BU RISE — so, yes, BU RISE is a program, for example, that does cost quite a bit of money. I would not say that that program is considered pay-to-play, though, because of the impactfulness of the coursework and the different ways you can customize that experience to gain some pretty meaningful learning. I had a student who went to BU RISE as a rising junior and got a letter of recommendation from one of his instructors from there, which is currently helping him with his applications. We just wrapped up his applications last month in January. So good questions all around.

How are we doing on time here? 7:46. I should probably move on to the next —

KATIE: Yeah. Go for it.

CHRISTIAN: Here. Yeah. So let’s now talk about — so speaking of planning, let’s talk about some of the early mistakes that one can make in planning early on and how to avoid them.

So here they are. The first one kind of goes without saying at this point, but just to say — over-prioritizing low-impact activities. Right? So filling your rising 10th and 11th grade summers — a.k.a. your 9th and 10th grade summers — with low-impact activities, that’s the simplest mistake you can make. Right?

We understand especially too, for the parents here in the audience tonight, that you wanna make sure that your kids are having a fun and meaningful — in the life sense — experience before having to dive back into the rigors of high school. Unfortunately, the most selective college programs in the country, they don’t care as much about that. Right? So, ultimately, you don’t wanna over-prioritize such low-impact activities such as those family vacations and whatnot. Right? Otherwise, you might be setting yourself up for a rougher upperclassmen period.

Overspecializing too soon. So, again, for our 9th and 10th graders, right, that’s why we’re talking about this tonight. Going back to that point I made about internships earlier — you know, it can be a bit of a whiff if you decide to go after an engineering internship but then you decide to switch to something that’s totally not that later on. It’s also important too that even if you know what your specialization is going to be — even if you know that you’re going to apply to Purdue University in Indiana for their mechanical engineering degree, right — you still should not neglect the humanities.

Right? They still want highly capable writers, and they want people who are capable of conducting that sort of dialectic thinking that a training in the humanities really helps to promote. Right? So just because you wanna focus on STEM doesn’t mean you should be overly focused on STEM. So consider then too how maybe you can use that summer to supplement your humanities education and training. Right?

Not coordinating with your teachers and counselors. Right? So, obviously, your teachers and counselors at school, they spend a lot of time with you if you’re a student in high school right now. You see your teachers just about every day. Right? So definitely coordinate with them. You might even ask a teacher one day about, like, hey, do you know of any opportunities in our area? And they might go, yeah, I know a few. And then boom. Suddenly, the doors open to you that you did not even know previously existed. Right? They are best consulted sooner rather than later, especially once early interest in a major arises.

Right? So as soon as you even have the slightest inkling that this might be what you wanna do in college, you should sit down with a trusted teacher or a counselor and have a conversation about that. And then finally, if you do go on to these experiences, right, in the summer — especially these programs — be sure to follow up with teachers and mentors post your experience. Right? Because they very much care about you and your development, and you wanna keep them in the loop about what you’re working on currently or how your experience with them helped you to grow and to learn.

Because also too, that might lead to a sustained relationship over the course of many years that will help you get into college or maybe even find an internship later on when you’re in college. One of my internships in college came straight from my high school — one of my high school teachers, my high school history teacher, actually. Fun fact. So boom. There you go. All comes back around in the end.

KATIE: It all comes back around in the end.

CHRISTIAN: So just to wrap up here before we move into Q&A — some key takeaways from this presentation. Right? Ultimately, we want you all to understand that underclassmen summers are an opportunity to plan ahead and get ahead. Right?

Also, you should seek opportunities that allow for deep learning, are aligned with your major, let you make a real impact, and ultimately bring you joy. Right? We are not saying that you have to force yourself to take that program and that course if it’s not what stimulates you, if it’s not what makes you feel excited about learning. Right? Because that means it’s not going to be useful for your application. We can sniff out in an application when a student’s writing an essay about an experience they didn’t really care about. Right? It’s just such a different vibe to the essay. Not to lean too much on vibes, of course, but we can see it in the writing.

Preexisting opportunities are impactful, of course. Right? But self-initiated projects are often much more distinctive. Right? Taking the initiative, taking up that opportunity to step up and be the leader that you want to be, right, is very impressive, generally speaking, to various admissions offices.

And then finally, use this time to explore. And I don’t just mean, you know, sit sort of passively and let the opportunities kind of pass through your vision and, like, oh, maybe you’ll go do that or maybe you’ll go do this. Do what Katie suggested earlier. Right? Be asking those questions. Be curious. Because pretty soon, that window is going to close, and you’re going to wish like, ugh, I wish I let myself have a bit more range to explore sooner in my high school experience because otherwise I could have figured this out sooner. Right? You don’t wanna be in that position.

So, also, too, I have a timeline to share with you all as well. So this is actually a sample timeline that conveys one of my current students’ activities from before the 10th grade to the current day, basically, and a little bit beyond to the near future.

First of all, in the summer before 10th grade, this is when my student — his name is Matthias. This is where he prepared for advanced coursework related to his interest and began his standardized test prep. Right? Such that once he got to the 10th grade, he was able to enroll in APs in his school and also dual enrollment courses, which you see as the next step here. Right?

The interests are becoming more focused. They’re coming into focus, and you’re beginning to build relationships with teachers and track your current extracurriculars. Right? So now you’re writing everything down. You’re keeping track of everything you’re doing now at this point.

Right? My student, Matthias, also applied to NSLC at Duke University — go Blue Devils — and signed up for AP and dual enrollment courses for the 11th grade. And most importantly, it’s important to note, he signed up for more of those courses than he had in the 10th grade. Right? So seeing that escalating trajectory for academic rigor — we don’t wanna see less advanced courses from year to year. We wanna see more ideally.

And then, in the summer before 11th grade — so just this past summer for him — he attended NSLC. And then in that experience, he found inspiration not only for his community impact project and began designing his own community initiative, but he also discovered the research question he wants to pursue, which has to do with AI and a little bit of sociology as well. Basically, he is very curious about how AI and various modern tech conveniences are impacting early childhood development. He discovered this question during an AI seminar at NSLC. Right? So that’s how NSLC ended up being very valuable for him because he stayed curious. Right?

And then now, currently in the 11th grade, he’s beginning to build out his passion project, pursue leadership in the various clubs and organizations that he’s been a part of. He just made team captain for his varsity soccer team, for example. He and I recently worked together over the last three months to help him apply for internships and jobs that he’ll ideally do over this coming summer, and, of course, research opportunities too. And now he is also actively taking his SAT attempts as well. Ideally, you wanna be all done with the SAT before the start of your applying fall — so the start of your senior fall. That way, it’s just one less thing you have to worry about. Right?

And then this coming summer, his initiative, ideally, if everything goes well, will be off the ground. He’s starting to execute some of that impactful project work that’s going to make a measurable difference in his community. And then standardized testing, like I said, is ideally finished. And then, of course, he’s working in his internship or his job or his research opportunity that he acquired from the prior applications.

So this is an example of a trajectory that does work. Doesn’t mean it’s the only trajectory that works, but this is the trajectory that worked for my student. And this is what the benefit of working with a preparatory coach is — is that we can help you customize really what this would look like for you and your students.

So speaking of — Katie, I believe this is your portion where we talk about how we help students get admitted. Yes?

KATIE: Absolutely. So I’ll just give you a little brief context about what our programming entails, what it looks like, and then we’ll answer some final questions for you all. I’m glad that we’ve been able to get to quite a few of them live and that our wonderful team in the chat has been answering some here as well. I see more answered than asked right now, which means we’re doing great here.

So what does Prepory support really look like? The core of our programs is hour-long one-on-one advising sessions with a coach like Christian. Right? So actually sitting down to think strategically about where you are in this process, what is going on for you, and meeting regularly about these things. So when you’re talking about longer-term and longer-scale profile planning, you need to be checking in regularly about these things as everything evolves. And because there are going to be weeks and maybe months where you have a lot going on and you are more tired, but your meetings with Prepory are going to keep you motivated and help you get around those roadblocks that you’re facing.

We also build into these programs parent check-ins, of course. Parents, you who are in the audience — you guys are such an important part of this process, and you bring your own wealth of questions about things that you’re hearing from other parents from the school. Right? And you wanna know if that guidance is accurate. Right? What’s our professional take on those things? That is, of course, built into the program where you have a space to ask those questions.

We also do a mock committee review application process, and I wanna talk about this even though we are talking to a lot of 9th and 10th grade parents and students here tonight, and that is because we do an annual profile review every year with students. So even in 9th and 10th grade, we do annual profile review where we put together a team of former admissions officers to look through your current profile, your current application materials, and give you that outside perspective from someone who hasn’t met you, who doesn’t know the whole context of what you’re interested in, and who’s able to say, hey, this is a great use of your time. This is a great use of your time. Have you thought about this summer program for next summer? And you get to fold that back into your plans with your one-on-one coach.

So this is really special to do as an underclassman, but it also gives you a chance to see — just like Christian showed us all the way at the beginning — how are these activities going to show up on your application. Right? You’re starting to practice putting those together and listing them out in the way that they’re really going to appear so you know exactly how to track them going forward.

So if this sounds interesting to you, please book a consultation with our team. Happy to talk you through all the details of how our programs look nine through twelve and what our support could mean for you and your particular goals in terms of what you wanna major in or the schools that you’re looking at. And with that, we will take it away to our Q&A. Thank you so much for joining us. Many of you, I know, have been asking about how to book a consultation also in the chat.

We have the link there for you. You can also scan the QR code. Nice option, and we’ll spend just a couple more minutes here going over some of your questions.

CHRISTIAN: Absolutely. Yeah. Do you have something you wanna start with?

KATIE: Yeah. So I have been peeking into the Q&A here, and I saw — let’s see here. Ah, here we go. Perfect. So I see a question about, can I explain one more time what low-impact pay-to-play is again?

CHRISTIAN: Sure. Absolutely. So let me go back to that slide. I’ll jump back there really quickly.

So to recap kind of what pay-to-play is. So on the surface, it looks like just about any other summer program. Right? But there are some key signifiers that distinguish a pay-to-play program from a more impactful summer program experience. So first of all, if academic performance is either not a requirement at all to attend the program or if the GPA threshold is very low — we’re talking maybe even in the 3.4, maybe even 3.3 range. Right? If that’s their minimum, that’s a sign like, okay, maybe this is a bit of a pay-to-play program. Right?

Also too, you can often look at the brochure, for example, or the website for the program. And if the course opportunities or if the learning opportunities seem very general, very shallow, or if they seem almost nonexistent, right, then that is a telltale sign that you’re looking at a pay-to-play summer program.

Now to clarify, because this is also a question asked earlier about programs like BU RISE — it is not as simple as, oh, the only good programs are the ones that are free. Right? Obviously, the free ones are great because they’re free. You don’t have to pay any extra money to attend them. Right? There’s no tuition. But there’s still plenty of impactful programs that one can attend that might have a program fee.

For example, plenty of the summer programs at NYU — like, for example, NYU Sparks, which is our robotics and mechanical engineering program that we’ve run for many years through the institution itself — does have a program fee attached to it. But that’s a great early programming opportunity for 9th and 10th graders who know that they wanna do something with robotics or with mechanical engineering.

Mhmm. Great question, though. Katie, do you see a question that looks interesting to you that you’d like to chat about?

KATIE: Sure. Can you talk a little bit more about jobs? Is a paid employment opportunity — as this is Mario’s question — as simple as working as a cashier in a store, or what might you be wanting a student to explore with that experience?

CHRISTIAN: That’s a very good question. So, yeah, generally speaking, yes. Being a cashier can absolutely work. I’ll use my own experience, for example, here because — not to date myself here, but I myself went through the very early phases of what we consider the modern college application experience, right, given my age.

When I was still in high school, I worked at my local thrift store. I worked there for two years. Did a lot of things. I was a cashier. I was a stocker. I was also — we had a separate warehouse on the other side of the parking lot where we processed donations from the community. I worked there. Right? So I got to work in a variety of different roles there. That was my most recent paid opportunity by the time I was an applying senior.

Right? And from that, I talked about learning how to use a point-of-sale system. Right? And also building connections with my community especially. Right? Because like I said, it was a thrift store, so it was very community driven. Right? So that was my first experience with community organizing, which I then turned into — I was like, oh, I can organize a group of people. Therefore, I’m a good applicant for studying theater in college, which was what my undergraduate degree from NYU is — I got my BFA in theater from there.

So, see, I took an experience that seemed very unrelated. Right? And I turned that into something very much related, actually. And this is something that, especially with some coaching help too, we can help you to do as well because handling money for a business — that’s a tremendous responsibility. Right? So we do take that very seriously as admissions officers when we evaluate that. Never underestimate the importance of that. Never underestimate — you know, STEM students do this, pre-med students do this, and so many different disciplines. So that is so cool. My business students especially — shout out to them too — and my engineers too, especially my ones going off to places like Exeter in the UK or Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Excited about those, I gotta say.

KATIE: That’s so great. I’d love to — other questions about —

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. A lot of questions are still coming in, and we’ll stay just a few more minutes here. But one I think — I see Allison is in the chat maybe answering this one, but I think it’d be a good one to address live, because we’re getting a question about: are there any mandatory extracurricular activities? So the first question was about chess. Is chess considered an extracurricular activity? Is sports mandatory, and what might be mandatory?

That’s a good question. So whether or not an activity is mandatory — oftentimes, that comes down to what your school requires for you to graduate. Right? I would say, frankly, that no activities are necessarily mandatory. I have engineering students who, because of the opportunities available to them, they can’t go do research. Right? That’s not something that’s within their grasp. That’s okay. We think of plan B, C, all the way to Z. Right? We help them plan that out still.

Speaking from a former admissions officer perspective, something that is taken into account when your profile is evaluated is context. Right? So we say, okay, you’re from this state or you go to this high school. Right? Okay. Great. So what is available to you, and what are you or are you not taking advantage of? Right? So that’s another reason why, in our one-on-one sessions, right, I and my colleagues — we work to really get to know our students and where they’re from and the context they’re coming from. Right? That way we make sure we’re picking out the things that are going to help you to get to where you wanna go.

And sometimes in that evaluation, I’ll see warning bells go off in my mind. I’ll be like, oh, you should be doing — oh, you have AP Chemistry available to you? You wanna study chemistry in college? Yeah, you should do that. That’s definitely a requirement. So I’d say that’s one thing I would say where mandatory subjects come into play. If you wanna study chemistry in college and AP Chemistry is available at your school — take AP Chemistry. If you wanna study engineering in college and you have AP Physics, especially AP Physics C, available to you in your high school — you better try your best to get into AP Physics. And so on and so forth. So it’s almost like a one-to-one match with the subject area and the advanced coursework in question.

KATIE: So helpful. Mhmm. Yeah. It’s so specific to the student. Right?

CHRISTIAN: Mhmm. Very specific to the student.

KATIE: I’ll ask you one more question here. It’s another clarification one. Allison’s getting to as many of these as she can in the chat. But like we have been saying the whole time here, please book a consultation with us. Many of you have very specific questions about your particular pathway, and we wanna give you the best advice possible. And we want to demonstrate to you how comprehensive support is really going to impact your child’s pathway, your child’s future.

But the clarification question that we got in the chat that we’ll cover here as our closing question would be discussing the volunteering under medium-impact activities again.

CHRISTIAN: Okay. Good. Good. Good. So volunteering. Right?

So, really, the reason why volunteering — let me go back to that slide really quickly. The reason why volunteering is considered medium impact, like I said — so first of all, there’s whether or not you’re only doing it because your school requires it. Right? This is something that, again, admissions officers can sniff out just by looking at your application. Right?

And, of course, especially if they have background information about your high school too — because several larger universities especially organize their counseling teams by region. Right? Odds are they’ve been to your high school even too. Right? So they know the score.

If they know your high school requires only 40 hours of volunteer work to graduate, right, and they see you have 40 hours, they’re going to assume — even if it’s not necessarily true — they’re going to assume automatically, like, oh, okay. You were kind of just doing this just to graduate. Right? So that’s not really impactful.

The other thing too I’ll say is some other things that kind of qualify the impact of volunteering are, for example, the depth of the commitment. Right? Is this something that you went to for a week one time two years ago, or do you go once a week every week for thirty-eight weeks out of the year or even all fifty-two weeks out of the year for two years, right, that you’re solely dedicated to? And moreover, is this an opportunity where you can scale your responsibilities? Right? So you go from being sort of boots-on-the-ground volunteer to then coordinating volunteers. Right? Or maybe you’re helping with organizational outreach, right, and stuff like that.

Another thing too I’ll say is we really like it when students are able to merge their academic interests with their volunteering interests as well too, just because those projects tend to be more unique. Right? And they also show a greater sense of purpose.

For example, one of my prior students — she helped various elementary schools in her area found their very first robotics clubs. Right? And it’s because she herself is very passionate about robotics and very passionate about STEM education. But robotics — those are tricky programs for schools to start because, first of all, it’s like, how do you even design that for elementary school students who — small parts are kind of a nightmare. Right? And also too, they’re very expensive. Right?

So she came up with a framework that she then took to her local elementary school — starting with her own from her hometown, right — and gave these presentations to leadership at the school, developed a model for helping to procure parts, especially recycling parts especially too — especially those not used by local high schools anymore. Put those and give those out to another program that can use them, like starting a robotics club at a local elementary school. Right? So she coordinated herself and five friends and other various volunteers to collect all those materials, right, and then distribute them to local elementary schools. And that was her passion project. Right? That was a passion project, and it was community impact all at once. So see, it covered multiple buckets.

Right? So that’s a great example of high-impact volunteering, whereas low-impact volunteering would be like, oh, yeah, I did 40 hours at the food bank one time only because my school told me to. So, therefore, volunteering averages out to medium because it really depends on what you choose to do with it. That’ll determine whether or not it’s high impact or low impact.

So, hopefully, that clarifies your question to whoever it was that had that clarifying question. Great one too. Thank you so much for asking that.

KATIE: Thank you so much, Christian. That was such a fabulous example also to close with. We got into so many individual student cases together that hopefully clarified for some people how this picture actually comes together. It’s not just one summer plan. Right? It’s how your summer plans actually fit into all of your activities, your full profile, and making that cohesive for the admissions process.

So in any case, thank you all so much for joining us tonight. I had a fantastic time talking with you, Christian. We are so passionate about supporting underclassmen through this process and especially digging into those passion project ideas and finding these overlapping activities that you’re talking about where we can get the most impact.

So if you’d like to have more conversations with me or with my team, please book a consultation with us. And thank you again so much for being here. Thank you all. Have a good night, everybody.

CHRISTIAN: Take care. Have a good night.