The Committee Perspective: What Really Matters in Your Application

JAMES: And then there are also seasonal readers. I myself am actually still currently a seasonal reader for a Top 25 school, and that’s a muscle I still like to use. And that’s something that really will be able to allow admissions offices to get the volume down that they have because increasingly application volumes are growing at many of these schools up into the, if not tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands for some cases, so seasonal readers are usually retired or admissions professionals that have left the traditional admission space and have moved elsewhere, and so they’ll have those as well. As far as the cycle goes, again, just giving you a sense of what an admissions officer is going through, this is important to know because when your student goes to apply, you really have to know where their application is going. Obviously, it’s our job, or we see it as our job, it’s your job as a parent or as a student to ensure that the best foot has been put forward and that’s great, but you also have to understand what the person on the other end is doing or has just been doing for the last few months.

Most admissions officers at most universities when they start reviewing applications have just come off of the fall travel season. They might be coming to your high school, they might be coming to a local community college or a local college fair at some, it might be at a hotel or it might be at a college. So that is something that is often in the back of the minds. There’s a lot of tired admissions officers starting to read in the fall. In the winter is that heavy admissions reading season. That’s mostly when we’re all hunkered down. I used to have a little pumpkin spice candle with my holiday lights up and some instrumental jazz in the background.

That’d be my happy place to read once that all has kind of gone through. We’ve gone through the big deadlines and gotten everything read in the spring is when if we have any seniors joining us or anybody with seniors, a lot of the program days are starting to happen, “Come to our campus, come check us out, come visit us and get a sense of if this could be a home for you.” And then summer is kind of like a prep and plan period, and then it all starts back over. So it’s good to know this cycle or the seasonality of admissions to know where your application is going to be going, who it’s going to be sitting in front of, and what they’ll have just gone through after they get done with their fall and they sit down to read your application or your student’s application.

JAMES: Now, as far as the admissions season, this is more on the side of where we work. This is more on the side of deadlines, knowing when things might be due. And there’s a big caveat here. I wish we just had half of this screen just as a big asterisk because there are so many different individual deadlines for the 3,500 plus higher education institutions in the United States. We do not have them all listed here. That would be an awful webinar if we did. Instead, what we have done is just giving you a sense of those pivot points, those big kind of dates in mind. If you don’t remember anything else, these are just kind of the general dates to keep in mind for your future student. Again, whether they’re a junior, a 9th grader or a 4th grader, hopefully, I don’t know if anybody’s here for a fourth grader, but it’s good to keep these in mind.

August 1st is generally when the application opens the Common App, the most common application, no pun intended, out there for students to use to apply to colleges, opens on August 1st, as do many other very typical applications being used. August, September, October. Those are going to be the heaviest application submission months. That is the heavy application season because generally most of your Early Decision, which is binding, Early Action deadlines, are going to be around November 1st. If you don’t remember any other date, keep that one in mind. Remember, 1st of November, that is where pretty much everything is due in some form. And of course, if you see anything on here, I don’t want to read off of this. I don’t know if y’all have been to those presentations. I’m not going to be reading a lot off of the slides, but if you see something, feel free to put it in that Q&A at the bottom of your screen.

If you haven’t used Zoom, it’s typically on the bottom right, I believe. Don’t quote me on that. It might be bottom left, but it is typically at the bottom of your screen. Feel free to put any questions in there. If you’re like, “Oh, what is Early Decision? What is restrictive Early Action?” Go ahead and throw that in. Katie will help you and then we can also answer it at the end if you want. Around December 1st, the University of California has their deadline, end of November, beginning of December, and then January 1st typically is when most applications are going to be due as a final backstop. We call that Regular Decision. You’re not going for Early Action, you’re not going for Early Decision, Regular Decision. Anywhere from January 1st to maybe January 5th. Some have January 15th or January 20th. Those are typically big public schools, but that’s typically what the fall is going to look like.

For spring, this is more on when decisions come back. So, some of those Early Decisions, like Early Decision, the period is going to come back maybe mid-December. Some of those might come back early January, depending on the round you did. A lot of those EA (Early Action) decisions start coming back in early January, mid-January, all throughout February, especially into March. We’re actually getting close to some big deadlines here now, some big release deadlines. That’s generally when your student’s going to start hearing back from schools is January, February, and March. Most universities will have their decisions out, fully: admit, deny, defer, wait list by the end of March at some time. The FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is due generally in February. That’s something that we would also be able to work with you with if you had any sort of financial aid needs, we could just definitely talk about how to fill that out, what it is, what it’s for.

And then generally speaking, the unofficial end of the season is around May 1st. That is typically when most universities are going to say, “Hey, we kind of need a decision. Can you look around, have come to one of our program days, go to all the program days you need,” but May 1st is typically when a deposit is going to be due, and usually around the time when a housing contract is going to need to be signed or maybe a few weeks after that. And then of course June, August is when you prep, go for a visit a day in the summer, maybe some orientation for orientation week, and then you start. That’s kind of what a full year is going to look like August to August for seniors on the backend. So again, if you have any questions about dates and deadlines, I’m not going to read off everything here, feel free to put that in the Q&A.

JAMES: Now, the big one, and again, this is the name of this presentation. We want to talk about what actually matters in your students’ application. That might be why many of you are here tonight. And with this holistic review process, before I go to the next slide, I do just want to help you frame this because there’s so many factors that go into a review. It is a very complicated process, but I think the best delineation that I can give you right away for you to think of this is academic and non-academic, and we’ll start with just some of the academic factors. Now, notice I’ll be looking around, it’s a couple words up here. GPA is not listed. Outside of a handful like single digit handful of top universities, the most common one I think is probably University of Texas at Austin, most universities are not going to specifically care about the three digit GPA that you have.

Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that when you apply, yes, on the Common Application or whatever you use, you will put a GPA, but no admissions officer worth their salt is going to look at a GPA and then say, okay, 4.0 and move on because it doesn’t tell us anything. You all know this. Grading scales, weighting scales, rigor opportunities, all of those vary from state to state, even district to district right next to each other. So instead of a GPA, these are some of the things that we will look for. Minimum high school coursework expectations. That’s generally going to be, “Does the student have four years of math and English, maybe three years of science and social studies, two to three years of foreign language?” Every university is going to have a different opinion on what those minimums are, but generally, they want to see that you are taking the core classes.

We absolutely are going to look at your grades. Yes, GPA is an amalgamation of those grades, but honestly, way too many students are putting their entire self-worth into that tiny three digit number, whether it’s pressure from themselves, their peers, or their parents, and it’s kind of terrifying sometimes to think how obsessive students can get. Instead, what we’re much more concerned on is what are the actual grades and what is the strength of the curriculum? The common adage of, “Do you want me to get a B in an AP or an A in a regular class?” Well, we want you to be strategic in your selection of courses so that you can get an A in an AP class. That would be what any admissions officer would tell you. But when it comes to the grades, we want to see that you’re obviously doing well. Good trends. We want to see that strength of your curriculum that you’re taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to you by your high schools.

Admissions offices are going to get a college or a school report. It’s sometimes called a counselor report where they’ll get a two page dossier of “What does this school offer? What percentage of students are in this class or in these classes on this track?” And then we’re going to be able to see, “Okay, well their school only offers five AP classes, but they took all five versus a school that offers 30 and a student took five.” That’s really going to be considered in the process. It’s a lot of contextualization in the admissions process on the backend, on the other side of the desk. So they want to see that you’re challenging yourself and taking advantage of those opportunities afforded to you by your high school, whatever they may be. Relevant coursework. If you’re going into something like engineering, they want to see that you’re good at math and science.

They probably aren’t going to want to drive over a bridge that you make if you’re not that great at math and science and applying as an engineer. So relevant coursework really comes into play. This is something that we as Prepory coaches really help with, especially early on, especially early on, is being able to help students map out, “Okay, these are some thoughts you might have on directions you might go in. What kind of coursework could you take?” We’ll look at course catalogs. We’ll walk them through it and make sure that they’re taking the relevant courses that are going to be competitive for potentially the kinds of majors that they might apply to one day. Good upward academic trends or consistently high trends in those grades and in rigor, maybe from year to year, but also semester to semester or trimester to trimester if that’s what your school does, we want to see good upward trends. And then SAT, ACT test scores. This is a part of the process. It’s increasingly becoming more part of the process because more schools are going back to requiring these tests, but it is just one piece of the puzzle.

Yes, for the most competitive universities, we are going to recommend higher scores. There’s not a minimum score we’re recommending that you have, necessarily. It’s all dependent on the major you choose on the school you choose, but higher test scores are just going to make that less of a factor that might work against or be neutral for a student’s application, but it is just one piece of the puzzle. It is not everything. So, I really want to make sure that everybody has a healthy perspective on that. We do look at test scores if they are submitted, if a school is test-optional and they make it optional, we won’t look at a score and we’ll be able to review them completely separate than that because along with these academic factors, and again, feel free to put any questions you have in the Q&A, we also have all of these non-academic factors.

Now, I’ll go into these a little bit more, not each of them, but a little bit more into things like extracurricular activities because I’m sure we’re going to get some questions on this. What does a good extracurricular activity look like? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that because what we’re ultimately trying to do is ensure that every student, when they craft an application, has an authentic intentional application that shows consistency from section to section. So the classes you choose, what you write about, your letters of recommendation, the major you chose, and your extracurricular activities, should all kind of align with each other. And that means that for the extracurricular activities, if you’re going into a certain type of major, we want to make sure that you’re picking things that are going to help bolster your claim that you want to go into maybe this field or this field.

Extracurricular activities can take a whole range of directions. They can be clubs at school. Yes, they can be businesses or organizations that you start in your community. Community volunteering. They could be research, internships, part-time jobs, I feel like part-time jobs don’t get enough credit. Jobs are a fantastic, even things like babysitting—I know that might sound weird—but even things like babysitting are a great way to show responsibility to show that you care for people. So there’s really a ton of different ways—to say nothing of passion projects, which are things that you could work with with a coach to really help show your interests and your passion for a topic or a field outside of any traditional club or organization. All of those, we really want to make sure that we’re understanding how you’re spending your time and occupying your time outside of the classroom.

I’m going to skip over essays for a second and talk about majors. Majors. That is obviously something that every university, almost every university is going to ask students to even show interest in. If they don’t outright have you select a specific major, they might ask, “Well, what are your top three interests or what might be some of your interests?” For the colleges that ask for a major, that is generally what you’re going to be considered for, first and foremost. So that is a part of the review process. The essays and supplementals, of course. How are you telling your story? I mean, I could probably do a whole hour long presentation just on essays and supplementals. I will not do that right now, of course, but something I want you all to keep in mind is that these essays are not meant to be Pulitzer Prize winning pieces of literature that get awards.

They really are meant to be a conversation, a conversation between an admissions officer—who again, is kind of tired because they’ve been traveling a lot, who has a hundred applications to get through today and owe all these other responsibilities in life events. They’re trying to have a conversation with you. It’s not a place for you to start talking about all the activities you just did. It’s not a place for you to humble brag. It’s not a place for you to necessarily just trauma dump everything that’s happened and just expect that to get you in. It’s a place to have a conversation as if you’re having a cup of tea or a cup of coffee at a cafe. Some of the best essays that I still remember to this day are ones where I felt like if this person was sitting across me reading it word for word, I would’ve believed every word and it would’ve felt totally natural.

So that is typically what we are doing with the essays and supplementals, and that’s a big part of this process from both our end and from the admissions officers end when they go to read it. Letters of recommendation, also part of that non-academic space, usually from a couple of teachers, they just help to kind of again, confirm what’s already being seen in the application. The time of year that you apply, as we showed the dates and deadlines before the earlier you apply typically, and I don’t mean in August necessarily, but by getting some of those early deadlines, it just means space is probably not going to be a part of the factors that AOs consider, whereas if you wait till much later, space might be one of those factors. And then of course, your personal background and experience, anything that you might put in that they’re able to use and kind of determine if you’d be a good fit. All of these things come together holistically to ensure that we’re really making the best choices as admissions officers for who we bring in each and every year. So that’s just a little bit about the holistic review, and again, if you have any questions there, please feel free to put them in the chat.

KATIE: This has been great so far, James, we are getting some questions already, so I’m holding onto some of those for you at the end, but I just wanted to jump in here and talk a little bit about how our team approaches this here at Prepory. They’re looking at this as well from every different angle. It’s really difficult to take a cookie cutter approach and be successful in this process. It’s just not going to work. As well as focusing in on each student’s unique accomplishments, their unique skills, and kind of drawing out their strengths to produce a much more complete picture of who this student is to be successful in the admissions process. So when you work with Prepory, this is the type of help that you’re going to get. It will be specific to you and also specific to your goals in the college admissions process.

JAMES: Yeah, no, thanks for chiming in on that, Katie. And yeah, we have a picture of our team here just to kind of reiterate the fact that this is not a single person working with you in a vacuum. You’re getting the entire Prepory family here. You’re getting the whole team because we all have areas of expertise. We all have little nuggets of info that we only want to pass along so that all of our students collectively are able to celebrate the wins. So thanks.

KATIE: I know you’re about to dive into trends here. Just to note, as well, that all of our coaches go through annual training about these trends, things that are shifting over time in the admissions landscape, so that every coach is up to date on what is the most strategic approach.

JAMES: Yeah, thank you. Great lead in. Speaking of trends, there’s a lot happening in the last couple of years. There’s been a lot happening in the admissions and education space, and I think that that’s just part of the game. There’s always things that are changing, and really this is just meant to kind of give you all a sense of what we are thinking about and how we are maybe considering how to change what we’re doing or how to inform people. And the first one I want to talk about actually might seem kind of counterintuitive at first, but the first one is that we are actually in the midst of, or right on the precipice of, what has long been called the admissions or the graduation cliff or the admissions cliff. And what that is: essentially, there’s actually a nice little chart here, to show that enrollment or graduation rates in high school are essentially peaking this year and a little bit next year only to then fall pretty steadily and precipitously over the next decade and a half or so.

And for those of you that maybe are just aware of, and this is mostly data here in the states, but for those that have been around or have been kind of connecting the dots 18-ish years ago was right in the midst of the financial crisis of 2007, 2008. So, it is very hard for a lot of people to have kids right after that. We’re kind of seeing that trend along with other just sort of birthing trends and fertility trends. So, it’s something that colleges are really grappling with. I started seeing presentations about this back when I started in admissions in 2014, 2015. And what this means for you and your students is the fact that there are going to be fewer students applying to the same number of universities, which on the surface might mean like, “Oh, it’s going to be easier to get in.” That will likely not necessarily be the case because a lot of these universities are going to be much pickier about who they’re bringing in, about the quality that they’re bringing in.

But it is an opportunity for students and families to just ensure that they are putting that best foot forward to ensure that they have somebody to walk down that path with them as maybe fewer people are applying to college, that they have somebody in their corner to ensure they get it right, because things might be opening up. We can’t really know what is going to happen with admit rates or with opening, but this is something that universities are thinking about, which means it’s something that we’re thinking about and we do believe it is another reason why we are so relevant and we feel so lucky to be in this space right now because we get to walk with students in this path.

A second trend that we and probably yourselves are also very aware of is ChatGPT and it’s friends. All of the AI programs that have been coming out over the last few years, have felt like a waterfall. A lot of my friends that are still in the traditional admissions space at universities, just the stories of, I mean, even in my own reviewing since coming, it is just there are ways in which you are being trained to see if this is an AI generated essay, to see if there is AI content that just looks to be generated. And this is actually pretty important. Even if it’s not AI generated, the fact that so much of it is now makes really capturing your narrative and really honing in on that voice that much more imperative. Because even if somebody does write something that is an average writer, that’s what AI does. It is an average amalgamation of everybody that’s written college essays and it’s tailored to the prompt you give it. And if your essay sounds like that, then it could be mistaken for AI. It’s not as if universities are using AI detectors.

Those are very flawed. There’s some use, but they are flawed. So it’s really just a matter of highlighting the importance of voice and going back to those essays, the importance of really ensuring you have a clear narrative thread and a clear narrative lens through which you are having your reader, your admissions officer, read your story. And we incorporate AI into our process for teaching for education purposes. I personally have students, one of my favorite activities actually is to go through, have them answer one of the Common App personal statement prompts and then generate it in whatever tool they want, Claude, ChatGPT, whatever else it might be, Gemini. And then I’ll even give them a couple of prompts to say, “Hey, okay, try to make it better. Give it another prompt.” And then after that, we edit it together and they can start to tell because they know these things are out there.

If students are on this call tonight, you guys know they’re out there, people use them. It’s just ensuring that you’re not using AI mindlessly. There is a time and place for it. We’ll never have a student ever write their essay solely with AI and just keep prompting and prompting and prompting because it’s just going to be a mess. But it is a tool that we’re not afraid of, and it’s a tool that we’re really ensuring we can handle and incorporate to benefit students. I’m not sure if that’s the case or the philosophy everywhere, but we don’t want students, we don’t want families to be afraid of this. We don’t want it to be abused or be used in the wrong way. We want people to realize that you have to understand the use case because universities are very much on the lookout for whatever smells like or looks like AI generated content.

Now, the third trend, we’re not going to go, obviously we could go way deeper into many, many different trends here, but I think that this one is maybe the most pressing right now, especially here in the States with just a lot of the decisions, a lot of the changes that have been happening in the last couple of months even. But going all the way back to summer 2023 with affirmative action being overturned, and again, these are just trends that are happening wherever you might sit on them, they are affecting this process. And so we are just being very mindful of at the very core of it, how are these trends? How are these policy changes? How are these changes to financial aid and FAFSA, to the Department of Education, to research grants? How are these changes affecting the outlooks of our students? That is top of mind, that is what we care about.

So for any of the big shifts that are coming quickly, they have been coming quickly for any of the big ones that have been coming down that are continuing to come down, we have a very informed staff here. We have whole channels that we use to chat with each other to kind of post anything, we are all subscribed to, for instance, members of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. We’re all getting our morning briefs. I know I read mine every morning around 8:39 AM, that’s usually when I am done with drop off with the kids and I’m back and ready to go. So it’s just a way for us to stay abreast of any new changes that might be coming down the pipeline, and that is something that is just continuous. So we’ll always make sure we’re aware of the latest information to keep your students and to keep you informed and on top of it.

So those are some of the trends that we are seeing. This one’s kind of an amorphous one because things are changing. The trend is that there’s not really a trend except that it’s just becoming a little bit more volatile from time to time, and that has its challenges, but that’s why we’re here: to meet it. So those are some trends. Again, any questions you might have on any of these? I know I’m kind of talking a little quicker. I just want to make sure I’m respectful of y’all’s time. I really am looking forward to talking to you via the questions you’re posting, if you have any. But that’s really just kind of an overview of maybe the top trends that are really top of mind for us here at Prepory right now. And speaking of Prepory, I’ll actually pass it back here to Katie to talk a little more just about us and how we fit into this process.

KATIE: Absolutely. So we have really comprehensive programs here at Prepory, and we work with students from 9th all the way through 12th grade and including the transfer process. And the reason that we approach this this way is really because of that holistic way that your profile will be reviewed. So we want to come at it from every angle with you. That program includes one-on-one time with a coach to brainstorm ideas, to go over your essays, to explore different schools, to learn about what your interests are, and then really to hone in on what your specific goals are and have strategic support all the way throughout the application process. And through this program, 93% of our students get into one or more of their top five choice schools. Our data also supports that this type of program is what really works for students. So if you go onto the next slide, you’ll see what that Prepory advantage looks like for all of you. These might be some of the schools that you all are thinking about in the audience that you’re considering, and we really want you to have a full sense of how we can approach your unique needs in this process and make sure that wherever you are coming from across the country, if we have international students on the call as well, that you understand where you’re landing in this process and how we can be helpful to you.

So I want to dive into the questions here. I’ve been collecting some of these in the Q&A. One goes way back to the beginning, “Just a little bit more insight, if you could share about the role of the seasonal reader, how does their opinion flow to the people who are making the decisions in this process?”

JAMES: Yeah, great question actually. So the seasonal readers are typically going to be on the front lines or in that first filter, if you will, of the admissions review. So they’re generally never going to be the ones making a final decision. They’re often going to be on the front end with the volume making first reads, making the first kind of marking up, “Okay, here’s the general sense of their transcript of their academic profile. Here’s the general sense of some of the non-academic things that stand out,” And then they’ll typically send those on to—so when I was at Purdue, I was the lead reviewer for the College of engineering. I had about seven or eight seasonal readers every year—typically, they would send those on to myself and other full-time admissions counselors, and then we would hold committees every week and kind of go through the decisions together. Not every single one necessarily was just looked at by one person, most are looked at by two, sometimes three people, but generally seasonal readers are going to be more on that front end of the review process, never at the end, never at the backend where it’s the final yes or no. They’re just mainly making recommendations if that answers the question.

KATIE: Okay. Great.

JAMES: Great question.

KATIE: Thank you so much. That’s really helpful. And the next question that I have for you is, “What is the difference in the committee perspective for the UC applications versus Ivy Leagues?”

JAMES: Can you say that one more time? Just want to make sure I understood that correctly.

KATIE: Yeah. “What is the difference in the committee perspective through the UC applications versus committees at the Ivy Leagues?” Do you see a difference?

JAMES: Oh, okay. Gotcha. Great question. So the differences, the UCs do have their own application that they use, and in some ways it’s great. In some ways it’s just a little foreign to the many, many other schools that are on the Common App. But as far as the committee review process, it is also similar in that they might have a larger pool of that first line reader, seasonal readers, admissions counselors, but they’re often doing the same exact filtering process where they’re looking for many of the same exact factors. They might have it ordered differently on their application since they use their own app. One big difference that you may know about is instead of having a personal statement and then some supplemental questions, some shorter questions, like most of the other universities in the U.S., they will have four personal insight questions or PIQs, you can choose from eight different prompts.

You have to pick four of them. They’re 350 words a piece, and that’s the only writing you do. That’s really it. So there are some small changes like that, but as far as on the backend, from the AOs perspective, I’ve not worked in a University of California admissions office, so full disclaimer there, but from individuals that I do know that have worked in those offices, it’s essentially kind of the same process of filtering at the beginning, getting folks into kind of an admit direction, a defer direction, or potentially a deny direction, and then having that go to the full committee to make those final decisions.

KATIE: So as we continue through these questions here, I just want to share that if people have questions about their specific profile, your specific student, if you are a student, I do have consultations available over the weekend, so on Saturday you can sign up and that will start with diving into your specific profile and then talking about your goals in this process and how our program can help you. So if you’re interested in that, you can use the QR code, and I’m putting some information in the chat about that as well, but we’ll keep diving into those questions that are coming up here.

JAMES: Perfect.

Talk to Katie.

KATIE: Yeah, this one’s about FAFSA for you. “Is FAFSA on a first-come, first-served basis?”

JAMES: That is a great question. There is not a typical order for first-come, first-serve. There’s not a queue that you enter into. With that being said, there are a lot of changes happening right now with federal aid, so my suggestion is that if you can get it in earlier, great, but it’s not as if there is going to be a pool that dries up if you wait until closer to the deadline. So as far as I know, no, but again, like I said, things are changing fairly quickly, so I don’t know what that will look like here in this next cycle, but historically, not a traditional queue or a first come first serve on a basis. Yeah.

These are good.

KATIE: They’re really good.

JAMES: Some of these I’ve not had. This is great.

KATIE: Yes, and some of them of course, I could have answered in the chat, but I think there might be other people here who want to hear these answers, so I saved them for you.

JAMES: Thank you.

KATIE: Here’s another one of those that I think a lot of people might be interested in: “How does dual enrollment in-person at a local college compare to AP?”

JAMES: Oh, that’s a good question. So I mentioned before when I was talking about the holistic admissions process, that context is everything. I’m just realizing my fingers are getting trippy, so I normally talk on my hands, but I’m going to try to talk down here just so I’m not messing with anybody. Oh gosh, it’s like AI generated hands right now. But when it comes to dual enrollment, sorry, there are a couple of ways that universities will look at this. First of all, they’ll look at the context. So does your school have a really good partnership with that local community college? Is it something that is well established at your school? And if so, if you’re coming from a high school where maybe instead of AP they decided to invest more in dual enrollment, that’s something that admissions officers will know from that school report, that counselor report.

So as far as “How does it compare?” All I’ll say is that it’s a step up. It is an indication to an admissions officer that you didn’t just take the regular at-level class. You wanted to go a level above, even maybe a level above honors, if that’s possible. But there is a consistency typically to the AP curriculum, and so I think that just more schools are used to seeing AP classes at the large majority of high schools. But, if you’re going to Orange County College, if you, you’re near Orange County College and Southern California, and that’s the school that your high school has dual enrollment through, people in Florida aren’t going to necessarily have that, or people in New England are going to have those dual credit classes on their transcript. Dual enrollment is not something that is frowned upon, especially if that’s what your school offers as opposed to AP.

But where it does get a little dicey or maybe a little, and this is something we would talk to students about over a couple of sessions probably, is the intentionality behind the class is chosen. So I had a senior this year who maxed out the math at his high school, including AP, and so he did dual enrollment through Georgia Tech and went to multi-variable calculus. That’s a great use of dual enrollment. Where it can get tricky depending—again, so many variables here, depending on where you’re applying, the major you’re applying to—things like doing a medical class or an exploratory kind of niche class through the college, that can be okay in very small bits, but I would not have that replace some of the core classes that a student could have taken through their high school. So short answer, it’s just an indication that a student is trying to be rigorous. That’s great. As far as comparing it to AP, it depends on the situation. So, hopefully I gave you enough scenarios there that whomever asked that great question can kind of determine, “Is this best for us? Is it not?” AP, all I’ll say is, it’s just a little bit more common at most high schools.

KATIE: Absolutely. I know that it’s one of the first order tasks for our coaches with our students to look at the courses that they’re taking and make a strategic plan for the time that they have remaining to make sure that they’re taking things that are aligned with their major, with their interests and that they’re using all of the opportunities that are available to them, because as you pointed out earlier, of course, the admissions committees are going to see what options there were, and we want to make sure that we’re communicating that they’re taking advantage of that, too.

JAMES: Yeah, it’s one of our favorite sessions. It’s one of my favorite sessions because I almost feel like the guy who’s got the board with all the red strings. Whenever I have that first conversation, I’m like, “Alright, you could take this and that would mean this, and you’d go to this.” It’s a really fun kind of puzzle to put together based on a student’s long-term goals for what they want to study. So definitely something that we’ll dive into with anybody that has questions about it.

KATIE: Awesome. This is a pretty niche question about the SAT: “Given that the test approach has changed from paper to digital, making it extremely difficult to achieve these ultra high scores, do admissions officers still consider scores across the paper SAT and digital SAT on the same scale?”

JAMES: Yes, they do. I mean, it’s just changed to that, and so I think that as we get further and further from that change, which was I believe 2023, early 2024, early 2024 when they switched to—time has no meaning anymore, guys—when they switched from paper to digital, it’s just seen, I mean, nobody’s going to look at that to see did they take the paper or digital. Most admissions offices are not going to look into that. They’re just going to assume that they took the SAT recently and that it was digital.

KATIE: Right.

JAMES: Yeah.

KATIE: Yeah, very helpful.

JAMES: Same for the, I mean ACT is ACT, but yeah, they’ll look at it the same.

KATIE: Great. “Is it bad to apply to college undecided?”

JAMES: No, it is not. You get that out of here, whoever asked that. That’s a great question, but this is, oh man. Okay. Again, what time is it? Alright. Excuse me. I have, I’m going to get my soapbox, hold on let me grab it. I have so many feelings on this subject, but undecided is probably the most misunderstood concept, but one of the most misunderstood concepts about college admissions because I think a lot—especially a lot of parents, and for parents that are here, this is not directed at you—I think that there is a stigma, a big stigma associated with undecided. “Oh, you don’t know what you want to do. Oh, you’re just floating. Oh, you’re rudderless. You’re going in, and it makes you look non-competitive.” Some of the most competitive students that I reviewed when I was at Purdue came in undecided because the ones that look at undecided, and they see it as an avenue to genuinely explore and look around universities, sometimes it’s called exploratory studies, it gives them a chance to look around, cherry pick classes from all these potential paths that they’re interested in, and then make a decision on, “Oh, okay, this is the one. This has what I’m looking for. This is going to help me grow in the ways that I want to grow.”

The way that undecided wouldn’t be a good idea is if you just don’t really care and you just apply and you’re like, “Whatever. I don’t really know. I’ll just apply undecided.” Applying undecided requires intentionality almost more than any other major that a student could apply to. If I’m looking at an applicant—here’s a good, I don’t know if I can go into that so I’ll go into a scenario here for you. If I’m looking at an application and I see that all of their activities are CS related, computer science related, they have internships, they have clubs, they’re part of all these different things, they have all of these. Let’s say they have all the classes that a CS student would typically have, all the high level math, everything that’s geared toward computer science. I’m seeing a narrative thread. They talk about computer science maybe in their personal statement and talk about how it’s been so much to them and that’s all they’ve ever wanted to do, but they applied undecided and in their “why this major” question on the application they’re like, “I don’t know, I kind of just want to look around.” That to me is disingenuous. That does not seem authentic. There’s clearly kind of maybe an ulterior motive to that. But the best students to apply to undecided are truly the ones who are multifaceted in their involvements. They’ve got involvements all over the board, some in medical, some in creative writing, maybe a little bit in engineering and CS, but they’re all over the board.

They have so many passions and they talk about how they love interdisciplinary education. That’s absolutely the perfect student to apply undecided. It’s hard out here. It is hard to know what you should decide on, and we don’t do a great job in this country of talking to young people about how to think about their futures and how to decide on what a successful life is going to look like and what path is going to get them there. So I think undecided personally, and I have many colleagues both here at Prepory on this side of the desk and at universities who believe the same. It is a fantastic way to start college if you’re going for the right reasons, and of course your coach will have that conversation with you very early if you meet with them.

KATIE: Yeah. You answered kind of my follow up question, which was to ask you, “How does writing factor into that?” So maybe you want to talk a little bit more about writing and major, the relationship there.

JAMES: Yeah. Again, it’s all about consistency and authenticity across this application. So, if we’re seeing authentically that you have the clubs and organizations that are kind of all over the board, almost hilariously all over the board, if we’re seeing that you’re taking a multifaceted set of courses, really competitive courses, but you’re kind of taking some competitive courses in a lot of different areas, you’re not just taking AP Math and AP Science, you’re taking a lot of APs or you’re taking a lot of dual enrollments, and then in your writing, if you talk about some really cool interests that maybe don’t relate to each other or some interdisciplinary concepts like “I really like using these skills, but I also really love this area and my heart is really drawn to this.” That’s showing values to an admissions officer that perfectly fit an undecided program. So the writing is pretty big because that again, is one of the only times your voice gets to come off the page, and we would want to ensure that you’re talking about your maybe lack of knowledge at the current time of having a specific path and how you really want to explore, and you’re really excited about that. That to an admissions officer is going to show an authentic alignment and a good fit with an undecided program.

KATIE: Awesome. Thanks.

JAMES: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. We can talk about undecided all day. That’s great.

KATIE: Yeah, it seems like it’s a very strategic point there where you have to decide whether to hone in on something that’s going to draw out how your narrative is cohesive in a different way or to lean in to being undecided or a really intentional way.

JAMES: Yeah. Never something to be ashamed of. I don’t want anybody leaving this thinking that, “Oh, I can never apply.” It’s such a great way to start out. Honestly, I wish every student did. And some universities do that. They make you come in without a major. Even if you express interest on it, they might ask for your top interest. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to push you into that program. It just gives them a sense of, “Okay, where’s your head at? Where do you feel like you’re being led right now?” But they’re not going to necessarily pigeonhole you into that.

KATIE: You answered this first one a little bit at this next question a little bit at the beginning, but I think a few people may have missed it. So just to dive back in on, if you went to a very small high school, but maybe you have a great GPA there, “Will it hamper you in going to a top school?”

JAMES: Yes. Great question. Many universities have, and again, so I’m going to bring up a topic that I know can be kind of all over the board here, but the policies, I was involved in this when I was at Purdue, the diversity, equity and inclusion team of our admissions office, and almost more than anything here in Indiana, which is a very rural state. One of the most sought after diversities that we were looking for was rural students, small town students, who were at high schools with a couple hundred kids. They might have had—some of them even less. Some might’ve had a dozen kids in their class. And so those are the students that a lot of universities are still looking for. They’re looking to bring in a diverse class in every sense of the word, and that often does mean students at small schools. So if you’re at a small school, if you have limited opportunities, if you’re one of those individuals who has a school that might offer two to five AP classes, that college, or excuse me, that school report, that counselor report, it’s going to be pretty imperative for you to send to universities because that’s going to show them the context of your environment. And they also use tools—there are some tools that admissions offices use just to understand the context of your situation of the school you grew up in. What is the access level? What is the sort of socioeconomic background of most of the students that go to that kind of school? They’re really trying to understand what life has been like for you, and if you did try to take advantage of all the opportunities afforded to you by your very small high school and you have a great GPA and you’ve gotten as involved as you could and you have a really good voice and you come off as an actual human person in your writing, absolutely, you can get into those top schools. For sure.

KATIE: I’m glad we went over that one again. It’s so important.

JAMES: Yeah, it’s such a population near dear to my heart because I feel like so many small towns are left behind in this, and so much access from rural areas is hard to come by. So many of the students that we work with, I have a couple in my cohort now that I work with that are from really small high schools in rural parts of the country.

KATIE: Great. I have one more question for you, which is great because it’s 7:56. If we answer that one quickly and we get another one in, I’ll take one more. I put that in the chat as well. Again, if you want to talk about your unique circumstances and how we can help you at Prepory, feel free to use the QR code and book a consultation, and I’ve opened some slots specifically on Saturday for those of you in this webinar.

JAMES: Go talk to Katie, y’all, she’s great.

KATIE: We’re going to have a great time and really dive into kind of your unique situation, which is a lot of fun to do.

JAMES: It is really fun. It’s one of the things, again, that coaches love to do, myself very much included, is just “Tell me about your story.” I’ve worked with dozens, maybe hundreds of students, and like, every single one is different, so it’s very fun. We really love what we do. I like that Katie is here with me tonight, so, anyway.

KATIE: Absolutely. So this last question takes us back to the AI trends. “If you kind of write your essay and then run it through AI to get suggestions on improvement and you sort of rework those suggestions in your own words, is there still a concern that it could get flagged?”

JAMES: Actually, that’s a really good question. I’m happy to go a little bit past 8:00pm here to answer this. I won’t take up too much time, but if folks do have to go, thank you to anybody who’s joined tonight. We’ve loved having this conversation. We hope you continue the conversation on Saturday talking to Katie again, scan that QR code before you head out if you have to right here at the top of the hour. But for AI, this is a great question. I think that that actually can be, in small doses, a genuine use case sometimes for artificial intelligence programs. And, especially for non-native English speakers, that can be a really great way to ensure that their syntax, that the language that the idioms that they’re using and the little kind of word phrases all make sense with each other.

Where it can become a problem—I wouldn’t say that necessarily universities on that merit alone would flag it, but where it would often become a problem—is that AI can really only deal with, these programs can really only really deal with what you put into it and of course what they have been trained on. But, it can’t necessarily ask you questions as follow-ups to then go deeper or go back a step and say, “Oh, wait, hold on. What if you came at it from this different angle because you told me this over here in a different conversation?” Or, “I’ve gotten to know this about you.” There’s just such a heavy lift that AI would have to do that it can’t because it’s not a human, it’s not a counselor, somebody getting to know you, to maybe say, “Okay, sure, this is written okay, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about you that we don’t already know from these other things. It’s written fine. You’ve checked grammar, you’ve changed words, but this isn’t a graded paper. This isn’t an English paper.”

You’re not getting graded on how sophisticated or how AP or IB, this can sound. It is, “Do you feel like a human being? Am I getting to know you as an individual person and can I just envision you here on our campus?” That’s so much harder and in fact, impossible right now for AI to really do effectively, at its current juncture. But, it can do some grammatical things. It can spruce up a few things or maybe ask some clarifying questions here and there. It’s just very limited in its scope and at its current juncture.

KATIE: Can you talk a little bit about, as we turn 8:00 pm here and before we go, just about how our writing specialists have been thinking about this and have been impactful for students in asking those questions that you’re talking about?

JAMES: Yeah. Well, we do have a Writing Specialist team. We’re actually developing a curriculum on how AI can be integrated into their work, into the work of all of our coaches. Even more so as it’s evolving. It’s kind of an ever-changing conversation because newer and newer models are coming out. Claude 3.7 Sonnet is amazing and it has some really great use cases. It’s never going to fully replace, at least I say never, it’s not currently going to replace a counselor because it can’t ask those contextual questions, but our writing specialists are able to use it maybe if they want for small little things here and there to kind of get some context, get some ideas, but generally it’s going to be the writing specialists going through themselves, looking at contextual pieces of documents and pieces of information about the student that they can bring into their feedback so that it is extremely tailored to the student with information outside of the essay itself. So, it is a part of their process here and there where they want it, but it is not something that is currently at risk of taking over our Writing Specialist team. We really want to have people who care, people who will do the extra work and look at the extra document and go into the extra sub folder to really understand who the student is and how they can better tell their story along with their coach.

KATIE: Awesome. So helpful.

JAMES: Yeah.

KATIE: Well, thank you so much, James. That concludes all the questions that we’ve had coming in. We’ve had a lot of people stay for the questions, so I think they’ve been really engaging and questions that speak to a lot of members of our audience.

JAMES: Yeah. Thank you all for being here tonight. Again, final plug here. Please come talk to us. We’d love to have a chat about you, about your student, about your specific situation and needs, and we’d love to work with you. We’d love to have you on our team and help you with whatever goals you might have going forward. This is a crazy process and we want to make sure you have somebody to walk that path with you. I so appreciate you taking some time out of your night, out of your morning, out of your afternoon, wherever you may be joining us, and we hope to hear from you soon. So take care.

KATIE: Bye everyone.

JAMES: Bye.