SAM LUBY: Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. Hi, everybody. My name is Sam Luby. I’m really excited to be with you all tonight.

This is my thirteenth undergraduate cycle. I started off working for Naviance doing ed tech, and I’ve spent the past ten years since then working as head of university guidance at a high school. I worked in admissions at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, and now I am working with Prepory on all things admissions. I’m excited to talk tonight about the junior year college prep roadmap — what to do and when. This is a vital year, as Daniel has talked about.

I can tell you — I’ve read almost 15,000 UC applications at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, and the junior year is just — that’s the homework. That’s the thing that’s looked at first. And so you absolutely have to get this right. With that being said, Daniel, we’re good — I’m going to jump in and talk about the agenda and get this kicked off.

DANIEL: Yes, sir.

SAM LUBY: So we’ll talk about why junior year matters, the academic strategy behind that, test planning, all the activities, leadership, summer planning — specifically for summer 2027 — and building your college list and preparing for the senior application. We’ll talk a little bit about junior year mistakes and things to watch out for, and then I’ll make sure to save some time at the end for some live Q&A.

I’m going to start off on this first slide and jump into why junior year matters. Before I do, though, I want to point out the QR code. If it’s on your left or right side of the screen, there is a QR code on each slide. That will be your ticket to scan and register a one-on-one appointment with our enrollment team. This way, you’ll get an understanding of what Prepory is like and what support we can give you, and then we can answer individual questions and get you started in the service registration process. We’ll talk more about that at the very end, but I just want to point out that the QR code is there for you all to get involved with us.

So why does junior year matter? It’s the most scrutinized year of high school because at this point, you’re supposed to be college-ready. You’ve been demonstrating that you have taken some college-rigorous courses, that you have developed activities that demonstrate passions, interests, and capabilities. You’re starting to define what you want to be doing in the future and the kind of person that you are. And the reality is that you’re applying during twelfth grade, and twelfth grade is very unfinished. So eleventh grade becomes the scrutinized year of high school.

That is very different from the rest of the world, but here in the United States, the junior year is the key year for us. And for those of you applying from outside of the U.S., your junior year is still absolutely going to matter in this application process. It’s the last full academic year colleges see. With the senior grades, for the most part, you’re submitting those after you’ve already applied. So your junior year grades are your last full representation of where you are academically.

And really, it’s you trying to show — hey, I’m here. This is who I am. This is what I’m about, and this is the story that I want to be sharing with you. So this year is absolutely important for universities.

DANIEL: And what I want to add here — it’s connected to one of the questions that a family member asked earlier: is it too late to get started now? A lot of times, families think, okay, I’ve got junior year, maybe two more years left in high school. And technically, yes, you do have two more years left. But every year application deadlines move earlier and earlier, with deadlines as early as October 1 at this point. Most high schools don’t start until the first week of September. So really, you’re applying to college about 30 days into your senior year depending on what state you’re applying from. It really is your last opportunity to tell admissions officers why you deserve a seat in their freshman class.

SAM LUBY: Yeah. We’ll talk a lot more about timeline, but the reality is that I’m starting with my junior year students on their application materials around Christmas time. Christmas of junior year. So you absolutely have time to get started now in junior year. But if you’re starting at the very beginning of senior year, it’s going to be a lot of catch-up.

So it’s really important that junior year is at the forefront of getting started in this process. As an AO — an admissions officer — we’re really paying attention to the grades, the rigor, leadership, testing, the summer before senior year, and your personal growth and maturity as evident through your activities. We’ll break down how to do all of these different things.

Big picture timeline — you’re free to take a picture of this or write down some notes. I’m not going to talk about all of these items, but this is — if I had a magic wand for what every junior year student could do — the timeline I would be following. Again, it’s going to be different for each individual student. I will say, if you are aiming for Ivy League or top 30 schools, I would slowly move everything up about a month so you’re getting a head start on everything I’m posting here.

In general, you can see that around Thanksgiving and Christmas of junior year, you’re starting to really think about summer 2027, testing, and your college list. Then in the spring, you’re already visiting schools, putting a list together, and starting to finish your academic year credentials. In the summertime, you’re finalizing those materials. And so, like Daniel said, with applications moving up earlier and earlier, you absolutely need to have these materials ready to go by July and August before senior year.

Taken altogether, there are many different steps and considerations, and it seems like a lot during junior year alongside all of your coursework. I like to tell my students that that’s kind of the reality of becoming an adult. All of us, especially the adults in the room — you have your job, your children, your spouse, your other side projects or club soccer or whatever you do for fun — and you have to balance multiple priorities at the same time. Junior year is absolutely your time as a student to have your academic work alongside all this application work.

DANIEL: And one of the things I really want to call out here — Sam, I know you’re going to talk about this — but part of what makes junior year so important is that the expectation is that at this stage, you’ve solidified what you want to pursue academically or professionally. Ultimately, we are talking about teenagers. It’s reasonable to be 16 and not yet know what you want to do, but admissions officers do prefer that from students. So if right now your student doesn’t yet know what they want to pursue or they don’t have an idea of a major, it’s going to be very hard for them to build a profile that connects their academic interests to professional or career interests.

We need to really start doing that career exploration and major exploration work as soon as possible so we can start building — with what’s left of junior year — a profile that’s more positioned for that. And if it’s still ‘I’m unsure of what I want to do,’ then we need to think about what you definitely don’t want to do, so we don’t spin our wheels in activities that aren’t even connected to a passion you would ever have.

SAM LUBY: Yeah. That’s a great segue into me talking about academic strategy, because that is absolutely key. I have these four questions that the AO is asking: Are they challenging themselves? Is their performance improving over time? Are they taking advantage of rigor? And does the student have a clear academic narrative for college readiness?

I’m going to talk about this from when I worked at UC Berkeley and what our perspective would be. If I’m looking at an application, the first thing I’m going to look at is the academic section. I’m going to see what their eleventh-grade coursework was and the results they achieved. Importantly, I’m going to look at the high school they’re applying from. I will click on their high school, and all of a sudden, it’s going to show me every student that applied to UC Berkeley from that student’s high school. I’ll be able to sort by GPA, so I’ll see where that student ranks in relation to their classmates. I can sort by eleventh-grade GPA to see how they performed compared to classmates specifically in that year. I can also see what courses they took compared to other students from their high school — a side-by-side comparison.

So I can understand and answer all these questions: Did they challenge themselves? Did their performance improve over time? Are they taking the available rigor or not? Because for me as an admissions officer, I’m trying to understand your academic context. What is available at your high school, and did you maximize that?

In eleventh grade, you absolutely need to show that rigor and challenge, because that is what demonstrates college readiness. That’s what tells me as a reader that you are ready to find success once you arrive on my campus. You’ve taken university-level courses — APs, IB, or dual enrollment, whatever you have available — that showcase your readiness for the classroom.

The thing that Daniel was talking about that I really want to make clear is that you do need an academic narrative for college readiness and for the university process. I changed my major three times in college. Daniel probably did something similar. It is common to explore your interests in university, but what you need to do in the application process is communicate a maturity of an idea that you have right now.

This is an academic interest that I’m having. And you don’t have to be extremely detailed with it, but I want to know that you’re majoring in environmental engineering because you’ve taken some courses in economics or AP Environmental Science that are showing you the policies that connect with the environmental engineering concerns — whether that’s what’s happening within the AI industry or the chip development industry or whatever it might be. But what you’ve done for me in your application is signified, through the courses you’ve taken in your junior year especially, what your academic narrative is.

As an incoming eleventh-grade student here at Prepory, one of the very first questions you’ll be asked is about your transcript and what courses you’re taking. If you tell me, ‘Oh, I’m going to do premed,’ then I absolutely need to see biology and chemistry at the highest level. You want to do any sort of engineering, especially mechanical engineering? Then I’d better see the highest level of mathematics and physics at your school. It’s really going to depend on what direction you want to go. And if you don’t know what that direction looks like right now, then you need to figure that out, because we have to make sure eleventh grade is mapped around that.

The last thing I want to highlight on this slide — just because academics is paramount and really important for junior year — is the piece about academic recovery. Ninth and tenth grade can be challenging for students. It doesn’t automatically sink your boat for university. Junior year is your chance to reclaim your narrative and demonstrate that you are a better student than what you’ve been previously. We call this positive progression when we’re looking at you from an admissions perspective.

Absolutely, that can happen. But this is where you have to strategize with your coach. Does that mean you take regular courses in order to have a better GPA and improve your overall academic standing? Do you still take some advanced coursework but maybe choose easier rigor in the other courses so you can show that you’re trying to demonstrate rigor? It’s really going to be very individualized. And then how does that map out for twelfth grade? Academic recovery, especially for those of you that struggled in ninth and tenth grade, is going to be really important to talk through so you can make sure eleventh grade is on the right track, and you’re ready to have that narrative ready for application season in the fall.

DANIEL: I want to talk a little bit more about this academics piece. Sam shared the importance of taking particular courses based on your major interest. Again, junior year is one of these final opportunities to take a look and say, did I make the right decisions as a sophomore or freshman? How can I academically make up for that?

So if you’re in the audience and your child’s interested in engineering or biomed, it’s really important that they’re taking, at the AP or IB level, courses like AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Biology, AP Chemistry. If your student is interested in journalism or social sciences, they should be taking AP English and AP U.S. History, because this is how they show an admissions committee: I am ready for the rigor of your college. If you’re interested in bio but you’ve never taken an AP biology course, it’s hard to believe that you’re really ready to compete at that level.

So if you haven’t done this right now as a junior, this is a big opportunity to work with a coach and say, okay, I didn’t do this when I was a sophomore. Are there dual enrollment courses at my local college? How can I sign up for courses outside of my high school? What kind of summer programs with four-credit courses can I do to signal the right major interest that I maybe didn’t do last year because I wasn’t sure of my interests or didn’t start thinking about this soon enough?

SAM LUBY: Yeah. And we could be on this slide all day because it is really important. The other thing I would say is that you might be asking yourself: Well, I don’t have those APs available to me, or I can’t sign up for them because it’s already past the deadline, or I didn’t do well enough in tenth grade so I don’t qualify for them in eleventh. There are absolutely alternatives to work through — whether it’s an online course, college credit, community college, or whatever it might be. But we have to explore those. It is very individualized in terms of whether it’s going to work for you or not, and talking about what that strategy might look like.

Okay. I want to show the GPA benchmarks. GPA is a very common question that we get. It’s grade point average for those of you who haven’t heard this acronym before. Every high school calculates it differently. I’m putting unweighted GPA up here on the left. Weighted GPA is a made-up thing that high schools created to make parents feel better about themselves — that’s my personal opinion. A little strong on that.

All that said, you need to be concerned with how you’re performing in the classroom based on the context of your school’s curriculum. So focus on that. Whether it’s unweighted or weighted, you’re trying to maximize that number as much as possible. Working with your Prepory coach will help you understand what that GPA actually means in context.

I’ll also tell you that most universities don’t even look at the final GPA number. They look at it initially in the first review process, but a lot of universities will recalculate GPA because they have their own calculation system. UC Berkeley, for example, doesn’t count gym or health credits. Those don’t factor into your GPA. They also drop ninth-grade grades — which parents don’t love me telling you, but I’ll share it here. Ninth grade is not considered in your GPA for UC Berkeley. So there are a lot of nuances with GPA. Ultimately, what you have to do is control what you can control, which is the GPA at your school. Most schools go on the 4.0 scale.

I’m sharing this to give you an understanding of what’s required. If you are targeting a top 30 university, your unweighted GPA cannot be below a 3.9. That is just the reality. If you have some B’s or B-pluses, I really hope it’s maybe one or two. It is hard to make that up. There are considerations we can help you work through, but that’s why eleventh grade is so important — your GPA has to stay on the right track.

This is the beauty of working with a coach. Especially if you’re starting in junior year, almost every session you have with your coach, the first five to sometimes thirty minutes will be talking about your classroom performance. What’s going well? What’s not going well? What are you struggling with in terms of time management or goal setting or study planning? All of those things are things that coaches want to hear about and talk to you about to improve and make sure your GPA is as strong as it can be. Because as we’ve been trying to make really clear, academics is really important, and especially your eleventh-grade performance in the classroom is super valuable. We have to ensure that this is on the right track.

DANIEL: What I always tell families, Sam, is that GPA will never be the reason your kid is admitted to a school. Never. GPA alone cannot get you admitted to a school, but it can be the very first thing to cut you out of the pool of applicants that they would even read. If you’re applying to certain schools and you don’t have a 3.8 unweighted GPA, you might not even make it to a human reader at that stage. So it really is super important.

And another thing that’s also super important is consistency. There was a question in the audience about what if I have a dip in grades during junior year. That is not great. It’s absolutely not ideal. And as we get into senior year, we want to maintain that really high rigor with strong performance all the way through high school graduation, because they want to ensure that you’re going to be ready for that level of rigor in college.

SAM LUBY: Absolutely. Alright — SAT and ACT planning. Testing strategy. There’s a lot we can talk about here.

Let’s start from the beginning. The PSAT happens every fall. Some states in the United States require it as a graduation mandate. The PSAT is used for merit consideration, which you might have heard about as National Merit Scholars. That’s based on your PSAT score. It is useful in the admissions process — it’s an honor you can have, and you can get scholarship money, which is fantastic. But the reality is that your PSAT score is not on your application. It is not reported to universities. If you do really well and get the scholarship and the honor, great — that can go on your application, but the score itself doesn’t show. We include it here because that’s technically the first step in the testing process, especially in states that require it, but it’s not a requirement for admissions.

For eleventh grade, I like to tell students that they absolutely need to have a test done by Christmas. Whether that’s the SAT or ACT, I’m not too particular. We can have another conversation about which one is better for your student, but you should have one of these done before Christmas. Because at that point, we can understand — and your coach will understand — where you’re sitting in the standardized testing process and what that means for you in the spring of junior year.

It says here: determine your strategy based on test progress and academics. It’s really hard to say what makes sense for most students because it depends on so many factors — what your first test score was, whether you’re in a winter sport or a spring sport that changes up your schedule, whether you have five APs that you’re taking in May of your junior year, whether you’re in a program where you go to an exchange program for three weeks in February. There are so many considerations for what the spring looks like, and it’s so valuable to get strategy on what makes sense for you. But absolutely, you should be taking that first exam before Christmas because you need that benchmark and understanding of where you are in order to create a strategy for the spring. Then in the summer, potentially it’s your second time — maybe your third or fourth time. There are also times to take it in August, September, or October of your senior year. I wouldn’t really recommend it. I have a couple seniors trying to scramble with that, but that is something you would decide strategically with your coach.

One thing I will say about the SAT versus the ACT: no, you do not need to take both of these tests. Yes, they are looked at the same. There are even matrices that compare scores — if you get X score on the SAT, this is the equivalent on the ACT. Universities do not have a preference. The ACT is from Iowa, so we commonly see it in Midwest schools and high schools, while the SAT is more of a coastal thing — West Coast, East Coast. They are different exams, and working with your coach to understand which one you’ll have more success on will definitely be beneficial. But regardless of which one you take, you should be taking one of them by Christmas.

SAM LUBY: And then there’s the test-optional piece. As an industry, we flirted with the idea of test-optional for everybody during COVID-19. What we have seen is the majority of universities going back to requiring the exam, or in some cases — like Purdue — saying they prefer the exam. Regardless, what we are telling our applicants is that if you want the strongest application, you need to be preparing for an SAT or ACT. That’s just the reality.

Of course — and again, this is working with your coach — if testing is just not your thing, if it’s not going well, if you’ve taken it one or two times and it’s not there, then of course you would strategize around a test-optional situation and determine which universities would be applicable for test-optional. For my California people — I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the news, but this is all over the place. I am not a gambling man, but if I had to bet, I would say if you are graduating in the spring of 2028, you will be required to take an exam during the fall of 2027 for UC admissions. This is recorded — I think this will be the last year that it is test-blind for the UCs. Maybe they even change it at the last minute. I hope not. But I would imagine they’re going to require the test or some sort of test this time next year. So for those of you in California, I would be preparing for the SAT or the ACT as well.

DANIEL: Yeah, I agree, Sam. I was going to mention that because we did get a question. So right now, all of the UCs are test-blind, but there’s been a lot of debate inside the state of California around whether or not this will continue. And it seems like even faculty members are moving towards test-required, so we’ll see in the next year or so.

Another piece about the SAT and why Sam is sharing that it’s so ideal to have an SAT or ACT done by winter: it helps us and your student really understand, okay, how far am I from my target scores, and what’s going to be my test strategy? Am I going to get tutoring? Do I need outside support? Do I need to rethink my college list? We also want to make sure that ideally all testing is done by — worst-case scenario — July of twelfth grade. We do not want to be in the middle of writing 10, 20, 30, 40 essays depending on how many schools your student is applying to while also testing for the SAT. It’s a lot to put on a 17-year-old.

The earlier we’re able to get the scores that we’re targeting, adjust our list based on that — and also even think about, okay, maybe I was thinking of applying as a computer science major, but now that I got my SAT score, my math section isn’t as high as I hoped. Maybe I’m actually going to apply as an applied mathematics major, or a data science major, or an AI major, because the expectation for an SAT math section score is slightly lower for those majors that are very similar to computer science.

SAM LUBY: This is why we’re saying junior year is so valuable. There are just a lot of nuances based on your individual situation, and having your coach individually prepare you for that is critical. There’s even the idea of superscoring — does that make sense for you? How do you strategize around it? You might be targeting certain schools that accept superscores, but other schools don’t. So you have to ensure you’re taking an appropriate number of tests for the schools you want to apply to.

There are a lot of considerations. And annually, universities are changing their requirements as far as what they accept and what they don’t. I saw some people talking about how science is optional for the ACT — not for every university. Some universities require the science section. So again, you’ll have to see what the requirements are for the schools you’re targeting.

Okay. Activities, leadership, and summer planning.

SAM LUBY: So we’re trying to list off a range of extracurriculars to think about. The main idea I want you to take away from this is that depth is always going to be better than quantity. Especially if you’re in junior year, the reality is that trying a bunch of three, four, five, six new things is not going to be ideal.

If I had my magic wand for my incoming juniors — students who are going to be starting eleventh grade — you already have, from tenth grade or maybe even ninth grade, probably two main activities you’re doing in school. Maybe you did one or two things outside of school. In eleventh grade, we can build on those things. You can find leadership opportunities, become a president, or add some scaffolding to the projects that you’re already working on.

Yes, you can start new things in eleventh grade, but you just have to be really strategic with your time and make sure it’s purposeful and useful. So depth is always going to trump quantity when it comes to extracurriculars.

SAM LUBY: This slide covers the extracurriculars that matter most for you. Again, what I was just talking about: sustained commitment, leadership that’s earned through time, depth in areas of interest. They should be both angular and rounded.

What do we mean by that? Some of you might have heard of having an intellectual spike or an extracurricular spike — like, ‘my thing is research, and I’m going to hang my hat on research, so I’ll have five things related to research.’ Spiking is good. You want to be angular in that way. But you do need that roundness, especially if we’re talking about top 30 universities. Yes, you need clear narrative angles, but you also want to be rounded overall. I need a couple of activities or demonstrations from you that show things beyond just your usual spike, and you want to have authenticity and depth with it.

I want to go to this next slide about what we’re going to do to help you. We can’t change what you did in ninth and tenth grade — that is already done. What we need to do is work with what you have and then figure out what else we need to add to it.

As I was saying, if you have a couple of clubs or things you’ve been doing since ninth and tenth grade, fantastic. We very much want to help you build those up. A common scenario I see: all these business-major students who want to do business and finance. So they joined business club and did the FBLA competition. It’s just — it can feel dry and predictable. It’s good. I shouldn’t be too negative. FBLA competition is a great thing to be doing, especially if it’s big at your school. But you have to add some uniqueness and your own flavor and leadership to it.

Let’s say you can take the business club and take it a step further. The Wharton Finance Competition is going on right now — it’s for the fall semester. It’s a great competition to understand finance, stocks, private equity, and investments. That’s a great addition to your business club involvement. You can say you were involved for a year or two, then took it to the next step and did something different. That is awesome for your profile and your activities.

We also get a lot of premed students or students that want to do sciences or healthcare. So they join the premed club, or Young Doctors of America, or they do HOSA competitions. Again, all great stuff. Something you can do to add more angularity to the clubs you joined in ninth and tenth grade: I’ve had students start first aid initiatives. They reach out to their local Red Cross, have them come in, do trainings for all the students, get first aid certified, maybe even help create an emergency response plan with their school if they don’t have one, or improve on it. That’s a way for you to build on what you’re currently doing.

Your Prepory coach is absolutely looking at ninth and tenth grade — what have you already done, and what do we need to do to build leadership and uniqueness? We can also start from scratch. I don’t want to be doing three, four, or five different things from scratch that year, but trying to build up one or two things for your eleventh-grade profile is absolutely something we would support you on — and frankly, is usually necessary.

Passion projects, summer 2027 programs, scaffolding current projects, identifying potential internships or work opportunities — these are all things we’re helping you build in your extracurricular profile in eleventh grade to show demonstrated interest in a particular academic or professional direction, community impact, or leadership. We’re trying to ensure that going into the end of eleventh grade, you have a really clear plan of how that’s demonstrated and what it looks like on your application.

DANIEL: I really want to emphasize the piece about depth. I think a lot of times students — and we actually got a question in the Q&A about this — are so focused on: okay, I have to have an internship, I have to have a research project, I have to have this. And there isn’t a particular template of exactly what you need to have in order to be competitive. But what you do need to have is depth and sustained involvement.

For any students in the audience, or parents who are thinking, ‘I’m not really involved in things extracurricularly’ — your club rush is probably in the next one to two weeks. You should be going there. You should be working right now with your coach to think about what’s a good use of your time, because you need to kick-start an extracurricular profile that either you don’t have — or for students who maybe really only have one, it’s: how do I get more focused? How do I get more specific? Maybe it’s not just business, but is it accounting specifically? Is it finance? Is it marketing? The more specific — or as Sam said, the more angular — the stronger it will be, and the more believable it is for an admissions committee.

SAM LUBY: And if you, as an eleventh-grader, start here in the next one, two, three months — I would say before Thanksgiving break — on something, it can show a sustained commitment. Ideally, you have other things that you’ve started beforehand. It could be sports, art, or just any involvement. But you can demonstrate sustained commitment if it starts during the fall of eleventh grade, because by the time you apply, it’ll be a year, and hopefully you have some future plans for twelfth grade to build off of. Eighteen months absolutely can look like sustained commitment.

But once you get past the holiday season and into the spring of eleventh grade, and if you want to start then, it gets a little dicey in terms of what sustained commitment looks like. Maybe you’d have to put a ton of hours in to make it worthwhile, which is not always sustainable. Daniel’s absolutely right — go to those club fairs, sign up, put your email down, see which ones you like and what kind of commitment or contributions you can make to those organizations.

Alright, we’ve got to talk about summer. The summer before your senior year — the summer after your junior year — is vital. You have anywhere from five to eight weeks depending on what state or country you live in. Those weeks all need to be used appropriately. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a family trip — sure, go to the Cape for a week or do what you need to do. But you absolutely need a plan for what you’re doing in summer 2027.

The fail-safe, or the one that most students do, is some sort of pre-college program. There are literally thousands of them. We have a whole inventory of how to help you apply. There’s a huge range — from extremely rigorous programs like RSI, which is hosted by MIT and is harder to get into than actual MIT — all the way to pay-to-play programs at various universities where, essentially, as long as you pay for it, you can attend. Those can be valuable — it really depends on your profile and background. But regardless, you need to have something for summer 2027.

What I’m looking for as an admissions officer for what you did during the summer is two things. First, that you have pursued something intellectually or professionally interesting to you — a clear involvement or activity that crystallized or shaped for you what you want to do in the future, because you need to tell that story in the application, the essays, the interviews, your activity list, and your recommendation letters.

The other thing I really want from you in the summer before your senior year is a clear involvement that demonstrates your community impact or leadership. You can define community however you want — it can be your sports team, your school, your city, or even your own nuclear family. But you need something that really demonstrates your value as a community member.

There’s a variety of ways to do this. Lifeguarding over the summer can show professional development. Doing research with a university professor can show academic involvement. Organizing the local county fair through your town council, volunteering and organizing that event — that absolutely shows community impact and leadership. There are a lot of different ways to do this. What we’re going to be helping you with is figuring out your summer 2027 plan.

We can research everything with you — local initiatives, town council opportunities, local internships, helping you reach out to university professors if that’s the route. But the reality is that this starts November 1. I want a clear idea for my junior year students going into Thanksgiving where they’re having the conversation with their family: ‘This is what I’m planning to do next summer.’ Because those applications or preparation steps will be happening in that November–December time period. Some of them will be submitted before Christmas, and a lot will come up quickly in January and February.

If you’re thinking about how to prepare your junior year and think about summer 2027, you need to be having this conversation and thinking about this in September, October, and early November. You identify your plans, and you start working on them with your coach in November and December as you go into 2027.

This summer is vital. You can’t really relax. I like to tell students: this is a really busy summer, but next summer — the summer after your senior year — is fantastic. You can chill, go backpacking, do whatever you want. Not the summer before senior year. You need to be serious. We need to lock in and make sure you’re doing the right things.

DANIEL: Yeah. And I really want to talk a little bit about these summer programs, because there’s so much conversation around them — about pay-to-play programs and about why things like RSI matter so much.

On that second point, some of these summer programs can be powerful. For instance, the University of Chicago has summer programs geared to students interested in economics, in sciences, and programs geared to Hispanic students specifically. Generally speaking, for students who get into a University of Chicago summer program and then later apply early decision to that school, they have upwards of a 50% acceptance rate — which is insane when you think about the fact that UChicago’s regular acceptance rate is closer to about 6%.

The pay-to-play programs, on the other hand, do not increase your likelihood of admission there. And on those pay-to-play programs, like Sam said, this is another huge benefit of starting now as a junior — you have a lot more opportunity to consider programs that will cost your family less and will make your student a stronger applicant. Because I know we’re talking about summer and it’s still technically summer — it’s still hot outside, especially for me being Miami-based — these programs have deadlines in November and December. They’re coming up really soon. We should be building a summer program strategy by the latest end of October so we can make sure we’re distributing this out. Like college applications, we have to brainstorm an essay, create an outline, write and edit until all of those applications are pristine and ready to be submitted.

SAM LUBY: Yeah. Absolutely. Summer before senior year is vital.

Alright, we’re going to keep going. Building your college list. In junior year, you very much want to be building your college list. This is going to be different for every student based on your individual context — how you’re performing academically, what your extracurricular situation looks like, how much exploration and development you’ve done on your academic and professional narrative.

There are a lot of fit factors. The most common thing I get, especially from my most rigorous students, is: ‘I don’t really care about the weather or anything else — I just want to go to the best school.’ Which is so hard to define. The reality is that universities need to understand how their school is a best fit for you. You have to be able to articulate how various aspects of the university fit you, and that’s why building your college list is super valuable.

If you’re just saying, ‘Well, I want to apply to the top 12 schools on U.S. News,’ those schools are all so different from each other in terms of their best fits, the kind of students they want, what they value, what they bring to student life, and the students that get admitted there. You have to learn that, because it will help you create a strategic list. Understanding your college fit factors is really important.

When should you start building this list? We’re really trying to do this before Christmas time. So when you have Christmas with all of your family members and they ask, ‘Where do you want to apply next year?’ you have a great answer. It doesn’t need to be extremely specific, but you should have a good, large list of schools you’re interested in based on those fit factors I shared.

You also have to do demonstrated interest. Demonstrated interest used to be huge in admissions in the early 2000s and 2010s, sort of died off during COVID, but we’ve seen it roar back. I am a believer — demonstrated interest is really important. We could get into this a lot more another time, but wait lists, deferrals, and signifying your demonstrated interest is super valuable. Universities need you. They need your tuition dollars. They need student enrollment. So they absolutely want to know who is interested in them.

That starts with creating that large list. Then, around spring break — that end of March, April time — you should have a solid list. Now you can start sharing with your recommenders where you’re planning to apply. You can look at all the requirements and figure out what you still need to accomplish. Summer 2027, you absolutely need a more solidified list. August 1 is when applications open. By then, you should be able to start plugging in which schools you’re applying to so you know all the supplemental essays and writing pieces. Then September 1, have that early decision and early action strategy.

First: ED and EA — early decision, early action. There’s a lot we could talk about that we’re not going to get into today. But a lot of students come to me saying, ‘I need to know my ED school,’ and it’s October of their junior year. That’s not the case. You don’t even know if that school is going to have early decision the following year. So don’t fret too much about whether to apply to this school for early decision or that school for early action. That will come to fruition as you’re working with your coach, especially over the summer.

You should very much have a school list, and potentially you have five schools you want to apply ED to, and you’re trying to deliberate in June, July, and August. That’s perfectly fine. But come September 1, you need to have that designated. Especially for Prepory, we have committee review where you’ll need to designate which schools you want reviewed by our former admissions officer team — a super valuable process. But for the most part, you’re thinking about your college list starting that November–December time of junior year. That’s when you’re doing research with your coach to understand what fit factors are important to you, which universities have those factors, where your matches lie, and demonstrating that interest throughout 2027. Then you’re ready to write their essays in the summer of 2027.

DANIEL: Yeah. I absolutely agree. And I wish that next time we could do this webinar for two hours. There’s so much we could talk about here.

SAM LUBY: It’s like — oh gosh, there are so many things.

DANIEL: If you’re in the audience thinking, ‘Man, what the heck is demonstrated interest? These guys know way too much. I don’t know all these acronyms’ — really, the best thing you can do is scan this QR code and schedule an initial consultation with our team. We really could be talking for way more than two hours about just eleventh grade. To get an understanding of how this connects with you specifically — what your child’s list or timeline should look like — there’s so much we can get into. Go ahead and scan that QR code to schedule that initial consultation so we can answer questions like what’s ED, what’s EA, and what the heck is demonstrated interest.

SAM LUBY: Absolutely. Last thing on building a college list — this is the likely, target, and reach framework. This is generally what we try to shoot for. Again, it’s going to be different for every student. Some people say ‘target’ and some say ‘match school.’ ‘Likely’ could be ‘safety school.’ There are ‘miracle schools’ versus ‘reach schools.’ There are a lot of different terms, and it’s going to be different for every student. But we’re really striving for a balanced list.

That’s something I’m really happy about working at Prepory — we absolutely want to help you reach for those top schools that you’re really interested in. But I also, as your coach, want to ensure that your likely schools or target schools are schools you’re excited about, that you’re interested in, that might give you scholarship money. Those are absolutely good factors to consider when creating a balanced school list. Yes, we very much want to support you for those reaches — they’re very important. But building out your college list thoroughly is super valuable because admissions is a really competitive process. It’s important to make sure you’ve done your homework, you’ve researched your schools, you know why those target schools are really good, and maybe you’ve identified a couple of likely schools that will give you scholarship money. Then you have a really great balanced list altogether.

SAM LUBY: Alright — preparing for senior year applications. I know we’re getting close on time. You can take a screenshot or write down notes here. Before August of your senior year, we’re trying to have three things set out.

First, your academics have been set in stone. You know what your senior year courses are, what your testing looks like, and what your testing strategy is — including whether you need to do more in senior year. Second, you have that clear college list. You’re working on those 10 to 15 schools. You have some essays going. You’ve really researched everything you need to know about those colleges. You’re starting to set in stone your ED and EA deadlines and what you need to apply for and by when. Third, financial aid conversations are coming up in August. Those are the conversations we’re having with parents about what you can actually afford and what that looks like.

This is the kind of stuff we’re really looking to have ready by August before your senior year starts.

SAM LUBY: Last one I have is mistakes that we see.

First: underestimating first semester and planning to pick it up in the spring. You have to start on the right foot your junior year, because you no longer have an easy course on your schedule. The idea is you have five or six courses, and hopefully they’re all rigorous or at least most of them are. You no longer have that off period where you can do homework for your other hard classes. That’s not going to exist your junior year, and you really need to set things in motion right away.

I tell students that even if you come home and you don’t have any homework that night — 45 minutes. Review each of your classes. Just 45 minutes total if you can go that quickly. What did I talk about today? What were the important things? What are some of the notes that I really need to revisit? Every single day, you should be putting in some time. Your coach is going to be on you to make sure you’re doing this and staying on task, because it’s so easy to slip in the fall of junior year. It’s a big difference from tenth grade to eleventh grade in terms of rigor and expectations.

The SAT and ACT — we’ve harped on this. You need to be taking it at least once before Christmas. Extracurricular involvement — you need to be showing some traction over these next couple of months of junior year. You need to be doing much more than just attending meetings aimlessly. Think about what your contribution is, what you’re going to do to uplift what you’re getting involved in.

And the last one: procrastination. That is such an evil word in this industry, but it is so true. It’s so easy to procrastinate on this because you’re thinking, ‘Well, it’s May. I’m not going to submit anything until October. I have forever.’ I tell students that essay writing is like exercising — you’re not going to see results right away. You have to put in time and effort to build up that muscle. You can’t just pick up some dumbbells and expect to have giant Arnold arms. You have to put in the time.

Your personal statement that you write in May and June — we are not going to submit that in October or November. Absolutely not. But you need to build that muscle. You need to get through the drafts. You need to understand how to work with coaching and essay specialist feedback in order to have a really great essay come August, September, October. Procrastination is a really big challenge that all students have — sometimes even my CEO has it. We just have to work to overcome that as much as we can.

DANIEL: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I always say the same thing about extracurriculars — you cannot expect that by session three with Prepory, your extracurriculars are done. This is something that we’re actively working towards week over week, month over month — continued progress in further developing your profile. And oftentimes, Sam, the hardest part about starting essays is: what the heck do I write about? What is legitimately compelling? And having someone to tell you — ‘Well, my name is Sam Luby, I’ve actually read 15,000 applications’ — someone who can help you understand what’s actually compelling makes a huge difference.

SAM LUBY: Absolutely. Alright. So I’m going to take this time to wrap up and talk about how Prepory can help. I’ll let Daniel take it from here, and then we’d love to do some Q&A with the remaining time.

DANIEL: Yeah. Sure — just a little bit about Prepory. For any families in the audience who maybe haven’t heard about us or haven’t really thought about college admissions counseling: Prepory has worked with over 14,000 students in this process. And while that’s amazing, and we’re so proud of how many students we’ve helped guide through this process, what’s really special is that we have almost certainly helped students from exactly your high school, your school district, your state. So when we’re working with your student, we’re not just giving them advice based on Sam’s 15,000 applications he read, but rather all of our data and experiences guiding thousands of students through this process over the last 13 years.

Recently, Prepory was recognized by Forbes as one of the best college admissions counselors in 2026, and we made it for the second time on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the most renowned and respected education companies here in the U.S.

Since we’re really proud of this: 94% of our students get into one of their top five schools. I share that because, unlike most consultancies, we don’t require or prohibit students from applying to certain schools. We meet your student where they’re at. If their goal is to get into a Big Ten school or an SEC school, we love that, and we’re here to help them. If they want to get into Ivies, that’s wonderful too. It’s really about getting to know your student, their goals, and how we can get them prepared.

DANIEL: In terms of what our support looks like, our program for eleventh-grade students includes one-on-one advising to support them from now all the way through high school graduation — from developing their eleventh-grade extracurricular profile, potentially launching a passion project, helping guide them in selecting specific summer opportunities, and guiding them through their application process all the way through actually applying to college next year.

It includes unlimited essay editing for summer program applications, internships, and research opportunities, as well as unlimited application editing for up to 15 different college applications. They’ll have a personalized coach — someone like Sam — who knows them really well, backwards and forwards, is in their corner rooting for them through every part of the process, making sure that for every decision they make, they have an expert they can turn to.

Parent meetings to share updates on your child’s progress and keep you in the loop without making you feel like you have to manage the whole thing. And mock admissions committees, where we bring together a whole team of other counselors who aren’t working with your student directly, who don’t know them the way their coach does, to review their whole application — providing feedback and broad insights to help your child submit their best work before it really counts.

For those of you sitting in the audience thinking, ‘Wow, this has been really helpful, but now I feel like I’ve got more questions, not less’ — that’s totally normal. The best thing you can do is scan this QR code. Isabelle, who’s backstage, will also drop a link in the chat where you can click to schedule an initial consultation with our team. You’ll meet with one of our enrollment managers to share your child’s goals, learn what they should be doing and focusing on, and learn specifically how Prepory will help your eleventh-grade student.

Sam and I are going to hang out for our live Q&A. If you have any questions, go ahead and drop them in the Q&A. We’ll be here to answer them. Thank you so much for joining us. And Sam, thank you so much for your wonderful presentation. Next time, we’ll do it for two hours to make sure we get through everything about eleventh grade.

SAM LUBY: Yeah. Hopefully, we don’t procrastinate on making that happen, right? Thank you, everybody. Really appreciate all the time and effort — you all stayed along for the ride. Yes, we’ll do some questions. I see one already, Daniel. If you don’t mind, I’d love to take it.

‘How can you ensure that students will for sure get into Top 30 schools that they wanted when we start doing one-on-one sessions with Prepory?’ Right — there’s no guarantee in this business. If a firm tells you they guarantee results, you should run the other way very quickly, because the reality is no one has guarantees to get into any certain schools. What we do have is a decade of experience that we can point to. Here’s our student record so far. Here’s what’s worked for other students at certain universities. We can help you understand how to build your particular student’s profile to really maximize their chances.

I also want to challenge you on the idea of ‘top 30.’ This is such a nuanced term, because top 30 according to what? Are we talking about Niche.com? Are we talking about the QS rankings? Are we talking about U.S. News & World Report? Rankings are a shaky process to go off of, and the schools go up and down quite a bit. We really like to ensure that we’re helping you maximize your application to be the best it can possibly be. We use our results and previous evidence and coaching experience to help you get there and individually prepare you for the best process possible.

DANIEL: I agree exactly, Sam.

SAM LUBY: We’re getting a lot of questions about the cost of the program and how much services cost. Again, we would point you to schedule a meeting with our enrollment manager to talk about that. Daniel, do you want to address that?

DANIEL: Yeah, I can jump in. The fees for a junior starting with Prepory right now, going all the way through high school graduation, are $14,500. That program will include 60 hours of one-on-one advising from now all the way through high school graduation — to support you with everything you need in eleventh grade, continuing to build your profile, summer applications, and up to 15 different college applications next year, plus unlimited essay editing.

The enrollment team can give you more specific information in the consultation about what this means for your child, because what we’re doing in those 60 hours is hyper-personalized to each student. If your child has to be there for the consultation — no, they don’t have to be. Ideally, they are. But what we typically advise is: go ahead and book the consultation. We’ll walk you through our programming, learn about your child, and then you can schedule a follow-up with a specific member of the enrollment team to meet your child around a time that works for them. That way, you’ve got an understanding of our program and can sort out times that work for everyone.

SAM LUBY: I’ll take this next question: ‘Does it look bad if you take similar classes online via dual enrollment as well as in person in order to boost your GPA and weighted GPA?’

This is going to depend on the context of your individual school and why that matters. Online classes are not a bad thing. They can very much demonstrate college readiness and rigor preparedness. The reality is that once you get to university, you will probably take a few online courses anyway. So no, it’s not a terrible thing to take online classes via dual enrollment.

I would say, though, with caution: your regional admissions officers are very much going to know what the common ‘easy course’ tricks are that students use to boost their weighted GPA. So it’s a double-edged sword. There are absolutely instances where you don’t have the course available, so doing online dual enrollment makes sense — or you want to advance yourself. That can definitely work. But you want to ensure it’s done with strategy and that it makes sense for your particular profile. If it’s simply to take an easy online course to boost your GPA, it’s going to come through in your transcript and could reflect poorly.

DANIEL: Yeah, absolutely. Sam, I think that brings us to our last question: should a student take both the ACT and the SAT and see which one they score better on?

It’ll really depend on your student. For some students, we’ll just typically recommend the SAT, but a lot of times it’s perfectly fine to take both and see which one you’re naturally leaning toward. If your kid is a more anxious test-taker and really struggles with time management on testing, the ACT is not going to be a good option for them. If your student’s not super well-read and doesn’t have a really well-developed vocabulary — if they’re not one of these bookworms who speaks like a thesaurus — they might struggle a little with the SAT, because the wording is really complicated, especially those reading comprehension passages.

SAM LUBY: Yeah. That’s a great answer. I would just add: take what’s available in your context. If your school is offering one or the other, roll with that, or go with what’s more available in your area. Because from an admissions perspective, one is not better than the other. It’s just a score that matters.

DANIEL: Thank you again to everyone who was here. Leaving this QR code for you one more time to schedule your initial consultation if you haven’t already. Sam and I had an absolutely wonderful time getting to know you all and helping you understand what your eleventh-grade student should achieve by the end of this year. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you have a beautiful evening. Thank you.