IMANI IFEDI: Well, thank you for the lovely introduction, Daniel. I appreciate it. And, of course, Daniel is one of the best CEOs of all time.

DANIEL SANTOS: So,

IMANI IFEDI: yes, my name is Imani Ifedi. I love working at Prepory. I completely agree with what Daniel says about how Prepory cares a lot about access. So, of course, this webinar means a lot to us. And for me personally, I started this work because my parents are immigrants from Nigeria, and they are very smart people. They both have PhDs. And even for them, it was a very complicated process figuring out the undergraduate admissions experience. And since then, it’s gotten even more complicated and more competitive.

And so I really wanted to help kind of my younger self when I got into this work. And I love Prepory because they allow that individualized support. They allow me the flexibility to really understand what every single student I work with needs based on their own goals, their background, their interests, what they know, what they don’t know, and the… The myths that they have been told.

So, with that said, I’m really excited to present here and talk about, as Daniel said, a lot of the changes that have been happening in the college landscape. But, also, of course, is this what black families need to know. There are some things about just applying as a black student. And I think a big theme for today is myths versus reality because there are a lot of myths in this space. There’s a lot of information you can get from a lot of places.

A lot of times students come to me and they say, I saw this on TikTok, or I saw… Or I heard this from my counselor. And so I just want to kind of clear up some of these myths and so you guys feel like you have a lot of, accurate information about what admissions officers are actually looking for. So we’ll talk about the admissions landscape. We’ll talk about, what is important for admissions beyond test scores and grades, so leadership, community, cultural identity.

We’ll talk about how to build an intentional college list. I know Daniel wants to talk a lot about AI and how that’s been affecting that admissions landscape, and then talk about the Prepory difference and, of course, leave room for questions. So let’s get started. So I wanna start talking just about the… What has happened in the last few years when it comes to black student admissions in some of these top schools. As you can see on this screen, black student population for incoming freshmen in 2023 was 11%, 7%, 14%.

So not even the highest that, you know, maybe we would like, but relatively high, relatively proportional to the black population in America. And then it dipped in 2025. So even with the dip, Prepory has been able to help a lot of black students get into these schools as you can see with the Prepory advantage. But I wanna talk about why that dip happened, the myths that came from that dip, and what the actual reality is. So as many of you probably know, the end of race based affirmative action was 2023.

So that led to a smaller percentage of black students enrolling at top schools, and then that myth was that, okay. Well, maybe that means that we weren’t qualified enough to get into these elite universities in the first place. But the reality is race was only one of the many factors of admission. And, of course, again, as many of you probably know, typically, black students in America have less access to the same resources, the same information, the same private schooling. And even when they have those resources, there’s other…

We can’t even go into all the factors that leads to that discrepancy. And then the effects of this compounded with the current administration. Quickly, I’ll say that the Department of Education letter in February 2025, said that a school may not use students’ personal essays, writing samples, participation in extracurriculars, or other proxies as a means of determining or predicting a student’s risk or favoring or disfavoring such students. So that had a big impact on how top schools were evaluating their students.

They got a little bit afraid because as many of you know, schools rely on funding from the government, so they didn’t want to be penalized. And even though that letter was struck down by the federal court because, obviously, it doesn’t even make sense and it’s not really constitutional, it still left this lasting effect. That plus an, office of attorney general memo that started to combat the idea of looking at cultural competence and looking at the idea of overcoming obstacles and diversity statements.

They started prohibiting these type of statements because they wanted all of the, admissions to be based off of merit as opposed to everything that makes a student who they are. So there were some actual, like, true, repercussions from this. So, for example, a lot of changes to the diversity centric essay prompts. So when students are applying, essays are a big part of this process, and we’ll talk about that a bit more later.

But before a lot of these changes, colleges would explicitly ask about race, upbringing, background, and they might even use words like diversity and living… Lived experiences. With UVA, they ended up just removing this essay entirely. You can see here, Columbia is another example. They used words like inclusive community, perspective, viewpoint, diverse, and then they changed the essay prompt for 2025 to 2026, and then this year again, 2026 to 2027. Still using words like lived experience, what’s important to you, and Columbia’s multidimensional and collaborative environment.

I’ll show you one more example just to really hone on this point. Harvard is the same. They used words like enrolling a diverse student body, and now they say enrolling a student body with a diversity of perspective and experience. So what does this all mean? It really just means that they… These colleges are being careful about how they present this information, but the myth is that they no longer value or want to prioritize diversity, and that is vehemently not true. They actually really still care about this.

And working with, you know, a team like Prepory who understands that admissions officers care about this, we can kind of point to that language and see, okay. If they’re saying this, that means that there’s all of these underlying questions under that prompt that a student can answer. And a student can still show, who they are, their background, how their background, their race, their identity has influenced who they are and what they care about, so on and so forth.

So, essentially, there’s a lot of decoding going on, and it’s hard to do by yourself. But, you know, that’s why I think working with a team like Prepory is really helpful in this way. Yeah. So

DANIEL SANTOS: I wanna jump in here, Imani, real quick, just on that decoding piece because I think that’s part of what, you know, makes this process difficult. And, you spoke a little bit about, like, right, this decline that we’re seeing in black representation at elite institutions. And I think this type of decoding where even in 2024 and the 2526, right, last year’s admission cycle, these prompts is all… These prompts, excuse me, have always been quite difficult to understand what they’re actually asking you.

And when universities are required to sort of kind of hide the question even further in order to protect themselves from, know, potential backlash from the current administration or what… You know, how their funding is set up, I think it sort of makes the… More challenging for students from, this background to be able to really understand what’s being asked here. And I think part of this work is really understanding these questions and having an opportunity to, like you said, present yourself as a whole student.

While, ultimately, these decisions have absolutely maybe changed how technically certain things are represented in, the… Your Common App portal or throughout the actual application process, it has not at all changed that this is a holistic admissions process. Universities are still, and in the wake of AI, I’d say, aggressively more now hoping to admit whole students. And these really intangible qualitative factors are going to become less…

Excuse me, more, not less important in the wake of the affirmative action decision and then even bigger changes that we’re seeing with the advent of AI and how it’s impacted admissions broadly.

IMANI IFEDI: Absolutely. Thanks for clarifying that point, Daniel. And I think that is a great lead into… Okay. Well, besides essays, what even makes the whole student shine on an application? What does that actually mean? Right? So for most of the world, getting into college is about grades, test scores, maybe one or two essays. And in The US admissions process, it’s a lot more than that. So let’s get into that piece of it.

So because we were talking about essays, I want to hone in on this point a teeny bit more because, again, there are a lot of myths even about essays. Sometimes students come in and, you know, they’ve never really written a reflective piece about themselves. They’ve written research papers or they’ve written fiction perhaps or, you know, short stories, but they’ve really not thought about, okay. Well, who am I, and what is important to share with an admissions officer, a stranger I’ve never met?

And so one myth is that it has to just be like a novel, and it should just capture their souls when true. Like, a lot of stylistic pieces are important. You know? It’s nice to have a good hook. But, really, the biggest thing is the authenticity, and that’s what makes it unique, and that’s what makes it memorable. So, again, I mean, imagine yourself at 16 and 17. It… It’s hard to know, like, who am I?

And so working with someone to help them understand what pieces of their story has really influenced who they are, what moment in their life has created this before and after period, how have they grown from these moments of their life, and how can they communicate that in a specific word count? So that’s a big piece of it. And why do colleges even care about this? Right? So a lot of these colleges have their own culture, their own dynamic, and they’re looking to create this class that will fit into that culture.

So that’s why essays are such a huge piece of this, process. And, personally, it’s one of my favorite things to work on as well, because I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am a graduate of Duke University. And, when I when I, matriculated, I met one of the, people… One of the admissions officers who were responsible for letting me in. And he said that they were a little bit on the fence about me, but my essay is what really got me in. You know?

It wasn’t it wasn’t just my test score. It wasn’t just my grades. It wasn’t just because I was black, which is a huge myth. It was because of the essay and because of how they saw me and my values fitting in with the culture at Duke. So I think that’s because our huge part of this. So I wanna give you a quick…

DANIEL SANTOS: Sorry. Please. Please. I wanna chime in real quick. If you could just go back to that last slide, especially on this authenticity piece. I also think this is a place where, you know, geographical context sometimes really matters. And because we’re talking about, right, the black experience and generally, this process for families, I think it’s also really important that students avoid sort of putting themselves in a box, so to speak, or maybe sharing stories that they feel are really…

That could potentially be quite popular for their region on these, like, essays piece because that authenticity is so important. And even if your story is true to who you are, sometimes when a story is really common and, unfortunately, we see this happen a little bit more with certain minority groups. For instance, I’m Miami based, and I’m Afro Latino who’s lived most of my life in Miami. Oftentimes, you might have a lot of, black students, black Haitian students, black Trinidadian students who are…

Maybe many of them oftentimes are concentrated in the Miami region and are writing, a… Oftentimes, maybe, an essay about their immigrant story. That sometimes can be really difficult because oftentimes, there are many students in your community, right, if you’re just looking at that specific community because you are read in the context of your specific school. So you’re oftentimes read across all, let’s say, kids from your county or your school district.

And it’s really important that when you’re thinking about authenticity, it’s not just authenticity maybe across all the 50 US states or this memorable story across all 50 US states and, but really in your unique experience and being able to kind of pick a more specific narrower story will be really helpful for you getting to that authenticity piece, for you getting to that uniqueness. Because the more specific you are talking about your experience, it’s, a lot more difficult for many people to have a similar experience.

IMANI IFEDI: Absolutely. That’s a really, really good point. I think that this example will probably be helpful to see based on that point of specificity because it’s hard to know what that means, especially for students. You know? They are living in their own heads, and they’re like, well… Okay. For example, they might say, well, I’m black, and I went to an all white school, and that was very difficult because I felt left out. That is an important experience for sure, but it’s not in and of itself necessarily unique or stands out. They…

Admissions officers have probably read that type of story a lot. And so, like, us being able to say, okay. Like, that’s important, but what was your takeaway from that, or how did that affect you, or what did you do with the lesson that you learned from that experience? Kind of pushing them to go deeper and deeper and deeper. So for this example, this, prompt wasn’t even necessarily about, you know, the student’s blackness, of course, but they made it about this.

And it says, how did you manage the situation or challenge that you didn’t expect, and what did you learn from it? So I’ll give you guys a second to just read this so I’m not just reading the whole thing. I’ll just give a moment to look over this. K. So as you see, he’s starting to talk about his reflection on what happened in that experience.

So instead of saying, I went to an all white school and I felt uncomfortable, he’s mentioning a specific experience where someone said something that triggered his thinking and made him reflect on his blackness. Then from there, So as you can see there, again, the conclusions and the lessons are not necessarily what you would expect. You know? Maybe you would expect them to say, well, it’s important for me to accept myself no matter what. Again, that is a very important lesson for sure, in that age group.

But admissions officers have probably heard that over and over and over again. What he says is that he learned about how his blackness isn’t gonna be clear to everyone, but that’s fine. He learned about cultural pride. He learned about how to argue and how to discuss something with, someone from a different background. He learned how to challenge without being, you know, combative.

Like, there’s so much that he got out of that, and there’s so much that an admissions officer learns about this student from an essay that’s 225 words as long as they’re including the right things. So I hope that was a helpful example. Yeah. Great.

DANIEL SANTOS: And it’s also a great way for the student to make the admissions officer aware of a bit more of their background and their context without a checkbox.

IMANI IFEDI: Absolutely. Because it is more than just about being black. I mean, being black is just a fact, but, like, what that actually means to someone differs depending on all of these various factors that are… Of our lives. And so it’s actually better than just checking a box to be able to have these essays to explain what that means to a student. So going beyond essays, extracurricular activities. I’m sure you know that that’s a big piece of the college application process. So, what does that mean? A lot of…

Again, there are lot of myths. A lot of times, students, especially the younger students, I saw that there were some, parents of ninth and tenth graders. They come in and they say, I wanna do this, this, this, this, this, and they’ll list 20 to 25 activities because they think that the more they do, the better. When, really, it’s about leadership. It’s about the quality of those experiences. It’s about the impact that a student has. It’s about the actual engagement.

And so, really, in reality, for the Common App, for example, which a lot of top colleges, use the Common App, you are allowed 10 activity spots. That’s it. So by the time you’re a senior, like, you really have to think about, like, what your focus is and what you want your whole profile and narrative to look like. And so we help students figure out what that might be. You know?

Going from what they’re even thinking about considering being in the future backwards to what they might major in and then backwards then to what sort of activities will represent who they want to become. So we really care about that quality piece because, again, that’s what really stands out as opposed to listing a bunch of different things, but they don’t have that much impact in. And then we also have, like, the commitment. The commitment to these activities is also important.

Of course, they want to maybe have a really, prestigious summer program, or they wanna have research, which we’ll get to. Those things are impressive, which are… Is important. But having a lot of impressive things that you’ve done for a week at a time isn’t as important as showing commitment throughout time. So seeing that someone started something in ninth and tenth grade, and then they’ve continued it throughout their high school experience is actually really, important for colleges to see. Another reason why…

You know, some people ask me, why do ninth and tenth graders work with Prepory? It was because if they don’t work with a institution like this, they won’t know these things, and it’s so important to know it from that age. And then finally, variety is something that… That’s a huge myth. They’re like, okay. Well, I need to show that I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do that.

If you are genuinely interested in a variety of things, that’s great, and we can work with you on what that overall narrative will look like. However, a lot of colleges also really care if you just focus on what you’re focused on. For example, I’m working with a computer science student right now, and maybe eight out of her 10 activities are focused on computer science, and that is not bad at all because it shows that she really cares about computer science.

She’s demonstrating the interest in it in all of these different ways, building her own, tools, joining programs for it, doing computer science research, taking additional computer science classes. So there’ll be no question when it times… Comes time for applications that she is actually interested in computer science, and she’s not just jumping on a bandwagon because it sounds cool. So theme and depth are also really important. And, again, it’s about crafting a strategic narrative around all of these things. Yeah. And then I only

DANIEL SANTOS: Go ahead, Imani. Go ahead. No. You go ahead. I’ll go last.

IMANI IFEDI: Yeah. I mean, just… I wanna mention passion projects really briefly too because that is something that I love I love, love, love helping students with because it’s… It… It’s called a passion project for a reason. So what a passion project is essentially you’re creating something on your own. A lot of things on the activities list are things that admissions officers see a lot of, DECA, debate team, mock trial, science Olympiad, so on and so forth. And those things, again, great.

However, it’s nice to see a student take it beyond what they can do in school, beyond what they can do in an applied summer program, and create something on their own when they see a problem or an issue and they decide to tackle it in their own unique way. So that definitely helps, students stand out in this application process.

DANIEL SANTOS: Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s sort of what I was gonna talk a little bit about. What’s especially cool, and you can do this through your passion project or you can potentially do it, right, through other extracurricular activities that maybe aren’t a passion project, is when you’re able to sort of combine your career or your academic interest with your… The things that matter to you as an individual or a person. I think an example that comes to mind is one of our students that we worked with.

She was diagnosed with PCOS at a really young age. I think she was maybe 14 when she got diagnosed. So we’re pretty isolating and scary. Obviously, I can’t relate, to that. But she really started a passion project about doing data science and data research around the PCOS sort of patient experience and how sort of young teenage girls who get diagnosed with this can, you know, just have a better patient experience. It was really cool because, right, this thing connects to who she is.

It connects to part of her personality, sort of her identity, and it connects to the fact that she wanted to be a data science statistics major. We can sort of take that and sort of combine your academic interest with things that are your personal interest. I think about a different… Well, one of our black students that we supported, he applied as a government major or a political science major to most of the schools that he was applying for.

And as part of his extracurricular profile, he worked on several political campaigns of particularly black elected officials. He was also the president of his high school’s African American Student Union. And so when you’re able to sort of, again, take your academic interest and combine them with, again, parts of your identity in this context, it can be your race or your ethnicity, and it can be a ton of other things because we’re a multitude of different things, that is really, really attractive to an admissions committee.

IMANI IFEDI: Exactly. That’s why I’m just smiling because it’s so fun to just put all of these puzzle pieces together to create something so unique that won’t be on anybody’s anybody else’s application. So that’s the purpose of that. Great. And briefly, we’ll talk a little about research as well. Research has become an increasingly important facet of the application process, especially for the top 20 schools. It almost feels… And I’ll be quite frank here.

It feels almost impossible to get into one of these schools without some level of research at this point and across, academic interests as well. It’s especially important for STEM fields, but even for, for example, last year, I worked with a policy student. So I helped her, create, like, a survey about a policy issue that she cared about so she could label that as an independent research. But then another way to get some research on your activities list is to reach out to your connection.

So that could be professors at local colleges. It doesn’t even matter if that college is super well ranked. You know? For a high school, you kinda take what you can get. Talking along. And then, you also think about your networks. Think about who do you know that is doing something that is, interesting to your student just to enable them to get their foot in the door even if they’re not doing everything as a part of that research.

Obviously, the more involved they are in, the better because then they can have a stronger activities list description, and they can have stronger essays around it, so on and so forth. But it’s just really about getting their foot in the door and having that hands on experience. It’s also important for them because that helps them understand what they wanna do more of, and then they can be more authentic when they’re answering those why this major essay or why this college essay. And then summer programs is the last piece of it.

There are some that are… That have a fee. There are some that are free, and those tend to be more prestigious and thus more selective. So that is also what we work with, with sophomores and juniors especially, is figuring out what of all the hundreds and hundreds of summer programs there are in The US, which ones actually would fit the narrative that we’re trying to build and how they can be competitive. So the competitive and admissions process does not start at senior year. I can’t emphasize that enough.

It starts now, and they get the experience of having to seek out certain programs, apply for them, write essays, get recommendation letters, so on and so forth. So I love the idea of starting to do summer programs kind of as early as possible. Great. So I will get a little bit into how to build that in… Intentional college list. One of the myths here is that every school in the top 20 is good for my student, and we should apply to all of them. That is not true.

They are very different. And, you know, both Columbia and Cornell are great schools, but they couldn’t be more different in terms of the type of students that are going, the environment, the type of research experiences that’ll be there, the type of classes, so on and so forth. So a big part of the college application process too is figuring out which colleges would best fit who I am as a person, my academic goals, my extracurricular goals, so on and so forth.

And when a student comes in and they just wanna apply to every school on the top 20 list or the top 50 list, I really try to help them understand that it’s not only not good in the sense that they might not be happy at every single school on that list if they go, but also because they’re not gonna be able to speak about it authentically. It always kind of goes back to being authentic. Right?

They’re not gonna be able to speak about it authentically when the college asks them, why do you wanna go to this college? So we help with that process a lot. We help figure out what they want their college experience to look like, what the family priorities are, budgets because different colleges have different levels of financial aid. And there’s a myth that if it’s a high sticker price, then it’ll be higher for that student.

Again, that’s not necessarily true because some of those high income colleges also have a lot of financial aid. So figuring out all of these different factors is a big part of the process. Anything to add to this, Daniel? I know there’s a lot on this page.

DANIEL SANTOS: No. I mean, I really agree. I think the one piece I wanna emphasize actually is, like, maybe a little bit of the culture piece and not so… Not necessarily or exclusively rather the culture of the particular student, but the culture of this… That institution and how that connects with the student. I think this is something that’s really, really important.

Part of really thoughtful admission strategy, which a great part of it is, like, it’s not only great admission strategy, but it’s just good for your student, good for your child overall is to go to a place where they’re going to be happy. Right?

And it’s really important that your student understands the community, the culture, the sort of belief system that they’re applying into when they’re selecting the set of schools that they’re gonna be applying for and that the belief system, the mission, the values, the community of that school are sort of a place where they’ll be comfortable and sort of feel at home, so to speak.

Like Imani said, the Columbia student experience and the Cornell student experience couldn’t be more different from each other even though they’re both Ivy League schools in the same state. And the… Like, what Columbia is looking for in an applicant and what Cornell is looking for in an applicant outside of, you know, of course, like, really great grades and a strong extracurricular profile, but in terms of fit are really different.

And it’s really important that your student starts to think about that in this process, and it’ll also really help them again now sort of coming back to that culture piece, ensuring that they’re applying to a place where, again, they’re going to feel safe. They’re gonna feel welcome. They’re gonna feel supported where there’s a lot of other students that, look like them that sort of have this sort of shared life experience that I think make the transition to college really, really helpful because it because it is an arduous transition.

IMANI IFEDI: Yeah. My favorite thing is when a student goes, if I care about how diverse the school is, is that bad? Like, no. That’s not bad at all. Or if I do… Can you check if they have some sort of affinity group? Yes. Absolutely. Because not every college will have that same affinity group. And if that’s important to you, it’s important to me. So… Absolutely. Let’s go a bit into the college timeline.

I mean, I feel like I’ve emphasized this quite a bit about, you know, not just waiting until the fall of twelfth grade when you’re actually applying to get started on this. And so this is a quick representation of the types of, the type of work that we would do with a student before the fall of twelfth grade. So earlier on, we are kind of just looking broadly. What are your interests? What activities have you already started that you really enjoy, and why do you enjoy it?

We emphasize the need to start building those relationships with teachers, not even just for the recommendation, although it’s a big part of it, but also for the help and support that they can have in the activities that they’ll be doing in school and in their work, making sure they get good grades, so on and so forth. When I first started this work, I think the saddest thing to hear with the twelfth graders is, I didn’t know that. Why didn’t anybody tell me that? And so I emphasize that a lot.

I’m like, I’m telling you this now so you don’t have any regrets about not knowing it in the future. And then in eleventh grade, we start thinking about ACT and SAT, making a plan around that, even figuring out the details of which test is better for you, which test actually is easier for you to take, and then focusing on that one. We try to deepen the extracurriculars to make sure they have that leadership, to make sure they have that impact. Okay.

You’ve been a part of this group now for two years. Can you get a leadership position? And even beyond a leadership position, is there any problems that you’re seeing in that activity that you can help solve? Is there any initiatives that you can start? So on and so forth. Then we start to research schools, and I start recommending them visit college campuses, and then we go back, talk about that, and start narrowing that list. And then summer before twelfth grade, we’re gonna finalize that list.

We’re gonna start thinking about the big scary personal statement. We’re gonna secure those recommendations, and then talk about what they wanna do for early decision and early action. And then fall of twelfth grade, that’s when we’re actually doing the apps. This is this is this is the now that we’re in right now. We’re… So we’re all pretty busy right now, but happy to take time to talk about this important topic. But, yeah, this… We are we are in the thick of it right now.

So doing the essays, submitting everything, and it’s really exciting. Great. So I wanna talk to you. This… The last thing I’ll share with you guys today, I wanna talk to you about a student I had last year, Benjamin. He came in with… You know, he was he was already, like, a natural born leader. He was super smart, really dedicated, excited. I think he was even the one that asked his parents to join Prepory. It wasn’t even the parents telling him. Right? But… So he had this profile.

He really liked economics and finance. I worked with him to kind of encapsulate, okay. Well, why, and how do you connect this to your own life? And he was from Milwaukee, and he talked about the housing crisis, so that became a big part of his narrative. But his biggest challenge was that he wrote everything like a research paper. It was really, really difficult for him to understand how to write a reflective piece, understand how to talk about himself. And so… And he just struggled to articulate those values.

Like, he would say it to me, but have a hard time writing it. And so I worked with him a lot on… Again, a lot of what we talked about, like, why do you feel this way? What caused this to happen? What was your thought process in this moment? Why do you care about this? So on and so forth. Extracting those stories and then piecing them together in his personal statement and all of his supplemental essays. And the result was beautiful. He…

And now he’s at Columbia University, And he got into a lot of schools that you see here, and a lot of other students that we’ve worked with have gotten into these schools because of the same process. So this is just Benjamin. Like, this is his particular problem. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes students are really great with writing, but they need help building their profile and selecting good activities, or they need help understanding what they wanna do in the future because that’s become a really important part of the application process too.

Great. So, Daniel, please take it away.

DANIEL SANTOS: Yep. Go ahead. Thank you so much, Imani, for tonight. I do wanna remind folks, that our Q&A is open. So if you have any questions about anything that Imani shared tonight or anything even tangentially related to the topic for tonight or college admissions broadly, go ahead and drop those questions in the Q&A. We are gonna stay and hang back for our Q&A. So if you wanna go ahead and drop those. I wanna share a tiny bit more about sort of what Prepory does. I think Imani’s been talking and teasing.

You can go ahead, Imani. A little bit about sort of, like, what our support looks like, what our team, you know, how we help high school students throughout this admissions process. First, I wanna say that we start working with families as early as eighth grade. A lot of what Imani talked about tonight was the importance of, you know, really starting early and that this is, in so many ways, a reflective self discovery exercise as much as it is like a project management and, you know, really thorough rigorous application process.

And so starting earlier just really allows us to help students do that self discovery work, whether it’s major exploration, career exploration, understanding themselves, decoding this process outside of just essays. Right? So we do begin as early as eighth grade and support students all the way through even graduate admissions. So PhD, master’s degree, medical school, law school. Our programs for eighth through twelfth grade sort of depend on what… Where you’re at in high school. So, right, what…

The kind of work that we’re doing with the freshmen is, of course, different than the kind of work that we’re doing with an eleventh grade student. But by and large, all of them include hour long one on one advising sessions with a really expert and seasoned college admissions coach like Imani. Think he… You know? So Imani, of course, has her own cohort of students that she supports, folks who she’s maybe been working with since they are freshmen or juniors right now or maybe actively applying.

And every student has that dedicated college admissions coach that they’re working without, throughout, excuse me, their tenure here at Prepory. Got one person who really, really knows you in and out in this process. Of course, just by the virtue of kind of who’s on today’s presentation, parents are deeply invested. Right? I’ve got two little kids of my own, a three year old and a 10 year old, and so I really get it in a way that’s so unique now.

So we have parent check ins, which are meetings for just parents to stay in the loop and stay abreast with this progress… With this process, excuse me, without feeling like they’re driving the whole thing. In addition to those, one of the things that Prepory does is we conduct this mock application committee review. What’s something that’s really unique is that we’re not just doing this for twelfth graders.

We’re doing this as early as ninth grade where a committee of former admissions officers who are not your student’s college admissions coach are analyzing, auditing your student sort of as if they were actively applying so that you’re not just relying on their singular dedicated admissions coach who’s incredible, but rather an entire team of folks coming together to really hone in on what can we do to level up, to pressure test what the students and the coach have worked together to build over the last sort of year or so.

Unlimited essay reviews for all of their college applications and any summer programs or rigorous extracurriculars. And, of course, you’ve got an entire team supporting you. So in addition to our mock committee review, there’s other specialists, whether it’s an interview specialist or writing specialist who are involved in really strategic parts of your students’ process so that you’ve got an entire team kind of supporting your child and your family throughout this process. You can go ahead, Imani. For a tiny bit more about us, we’ve been around for, since 2012.

Since then, we’ve supported thousands of students through this process. I think what’s really, really cool about Prepory is that we can pretty safely say that we are one of the most diverse admissions consultants in The US. We’ve worked with students from sort of every walk of life, every nationality background, and we’ve worked primarily with a lot of black students because of the representation of our team.

And like Imani and I shared, this particularly for us is really exciting and sort of honored to be able to have conversations like this one in supporting our students. And so Benjamin is just one of hundreds of students that we’ve guided throughout this process. A tiny bit more about us. 94% of our students get into one or more of their top five schools, and they’re four times more likely to get into any sort of top 20 university.

Been recognized by really big publication like Forbes and Inc. 5000 for incredible work that we’ve done in sort of our education space. And for those of you who are on tonight’s conversation, as I mentioned, our Q&A is open. I’ve seen a lot of questions already popping in there. Please continue to drop those questions in there. In addition to that, for those of you who’ve sort of been here and you’re like, this is really, really helpful, and I have, in some ways, a lot of answers.

But now I have more questions on what this means for my child specifically. You’ll see a QR code on the right hand corner of Imani’s screen. And I think, Imani, if you click to the next slide, there’s another QR code there where you’ll be able to scan this QR code and schedule a consultation with one of our team members where we’ll learn more about your student. We’ll learn about your family. We’ll learn about your goals.

We’ll get a sense of what’s important to you and where your child’s at and work to sort of build a personalized plan for how we’d support them in this process. In that initial consultation, you’ll learn more about our program structure, our fees. If anyone has those questions as well, you can drop them in the Q&A. We’re happy to answer that really transparently too. But it’s the best way for you to get a sense of how we would help your child individually.

You can scan this QR code to select the time that works for you and with one of our team members who’d really get a sense of your child, your family, their goals, and walk you through how we could support you. With that, Imani, do you wanna jump into our Q&A?

IMANI IFEDI: Yeah. Yes.

DANIEL SANTOS: So, oh, I really, really love this question from Holly, which I think is our first question. Oh, no. That’s the opposite order. So let’s start with this anonymous person. Their first question is, to what extent should students emphasize race or culture in their applications, or should this only be done if particularly meaningful in the context of an essay question? So we’re gonna go ahead and answer that live, Imani. The question is to what extent should she emphasize race or culture?

IMANI IFEDI: Yes. So should this only be done if particularly meaningful in the context of it? Yeah. So it really depends. I mean, this is kind of a stock answer, but it’s true. It really depends on the student and their entire application and what makes sense for them. So if their race or culture does actually have such a big impact on who they are, what they value, what they wanna do in their lives, then, yes, we should definitely find a way to incorporate it even if the…

An essay prompt isn’t explicitly asking about it. One example of that was the MIT essay that I showed earlier on in this presentation where the essay prompt was, what challenge have you overcome? It’s not explicitly asking about race or culture, but the student found a way to incorporate that because that was a genuinely authentic answer to that question for that student.

However, I will say that there’s the opposite end of that too where you don’t want to, like, force it, and it and it shouldn’t feel like you’re just putting it there to sound a certain way or because you’ve heard that it’s a good thing to talk about. Admissions officers will be able to clock that, and they’ll be able to say, this doesn’t feel actually very meaningful. It seems like they’re just trying to talk about their culture in a very, like, basic way, if that makes sense.

So that’s something that we, as people who’ve read so many essays, will be able to identify as well. Good question.

DANIEL SANTOS: Absolutely. And I think the one piece I wanna add here is on their question is just, like, it really should be something that you’re bringing up in context of… Right? It’s because this particular anecdote is unique or special or worth introducing when… And then we have actually seen students do this. I think, you know, it’s much more difficult for maybe other advisers to tell a coach like, hey. Is this maybe something that you’re authentically representing, or is this, like, you think the admissions committee wants to hear that because it sounds like the latter? And so it requires a lot of trust to be able to communicate that to a student, but it is important that you’re doing that.

IMANI IFEDI: Exactly.

DANIEL SANTOS: Yeah. I wanna… There was something that wasn’t a question, but it was just so sweet. It was a shout out for you, Imani. It sounds like there’s a public school counselor who joined today’s webinar and said that you’re an incredible presenter, that they’ve joined many, webinars from, I guess, other folks in the space, and this has been the best one that they’ve attended. So

IMANI IFEDI: Aw. Thank you. Thank you so sweet of you,

DANIEL SANTOS: And we

IMANI IFEDI: absolutely

DANIEL SANTOS: adore school counselors. We’ve got a lot of former school counselors on the team who worked in admissions.

IMANI IFEDI: For your work. So,

DANIEL SANTOS: yes, thank you for your work. I wanna address a little bit of questions that we’re getting on, sort of our fee structure or our plans. This should be quick and easy. So we’ve gotten this question multiple times. Our fee structure depends on your grade level. So for our ninth grade students, it’s 5,500. That’s for twelve months. So from now through twelve months from now, for our tenth grade students, it’s $6,500 per student. And our eleventh grade students, it starts at $12,500. That program carries you through the end of high school.

So the very end, if you’re starting in eleventh grade, carries you to the end of high school. In terms of the hours of service, the type of support, they can get into a lot of that detail in that initial consultation, but know that there’s a number of individual advising sessions and support from a dedicated college admissions coach. So, again, you’re looking at lowest for ninth grade, 5,500 to about 12,500 if your student’s currently an eleventh grade student.

The vision is that you start with Prepory in ninth grade, and you sort of reenroll or you, right, you choose to continue with us if you’re having a great experience and moving all the way through. Some of the… I think one more question Imani I wanna answer here just because it’s kind of connected is the question from Holly is how long do your coaches stay at Prepory on average?

I love this question because we’ve been doing really deep research in our sort of human resources management platform to get a sense of, like, a real average. When we looked at this most recently, on average, our coaches are with Prepory for currently about three and a half years. They’ve got really, really strong tenure. Imani, it’s going on her fourth year, I believe, fourth admission cycle, excuse me, here at Prepory.

So she’s had the pleasure of seeing some of her students start in tenth grade and go through the very end of the, right, admissions process with her. We’ve got many team members who have been at Prepory for five years, six years, seven years, and sort of seen so many of their students go from eighth grade, into the, sort of end of the process. We’ve got one coach. We actually helped this kid get into undergraduate degree, then a master’s degree, and finally a PhD, which is really, really cool.

All the same student. So I hope that speaks a little bit to our tenure.

IMANI IFEDI: I also saw a question about… I’m not sure if it was answered, but I think maybe a lot of people would have this question. They said they have a ninth and tenth grader that they don’t know what they wanna do in the future. And so I love this question, like, in terms of how we would help. I personally… I give, like, a career test, but beyond that, I really just try to talk about what type of life that the student wants to have and then go from there. You know?

If you just ask a ninth and tenth grader, what do you wanna be when you grow up? They’re gonna freak out. Like, I don’t know. But I help by asking these, like, particular questions about what kind of life they wanna have, what kind of problems that they are attracted to solving, what type of work do they like to do, whether they like to work with people or not, all of these types of questions to help me figure out what might be a good pathway.

But then beyond that, I also definitely make sure that they know that these things can change over time. So part of the college admissions process is that colleges want to know that a student is able to create a vision, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to stick with that vision. So I definitely reassure the students of that part of this is just like, okay. Let’s do this now, but don’t worry. You can have flexibility in the future. So thanks for asking that question.

DANIEL SANTOS: And one more question that I saw in the audience that I really, really loved is about, does Prepory help students with HBCUs? And the answer is absolutely yes. One of the students… We supported a student from Cape Cod. She applied to a lot of HBCUs last year. Actually, one of our salespeople were sick that day, so I had to jump in and take the call for them. So it was really cool because I got to take them, and I just haven’t taken that in a while.

And she got into every single school that she applied to, Howard, Spelman, UNC. So really, really cool. She applied to a lot of HBCUs. So we do support students in HBCU admissions as well. So we’ve got multiple questions now also about merit based aid. I wanna address this one, Imani, and then maybe we will wrap up, which is does Prepory help students with merit based aid? This is… I love this question because it’s connected to the… Imani’s point on intentionally building a college list. Right? It’s really, really…

A lot of times people think, like, oh, scholarships or merit aid is, like, a secondary part of the admissions process or something separate. Most merit based applications are tied to the schools you’re applying for. This means that if you are not applying to schools that offer merit aid, you’re probably not going to be able to receive merit aid or it’s been a lot more difficult. Right? Because the number of merit based aid applications that aren’t delivered by a school are just really rare.

And so it’s really important that you’re thinking about this when you’re building your school list. Right? Schools like Boston University have their trustee scholarship. Case Western in Ohio has really strong mayor based aid programs. University of Miami has really strong mayor based aid programs. Me and Imani, we can regurgitate that whole list of these really popular merit based aid, programs, but it’s hard to know that if you don’t live and breathe this every day. So it’s so important that you’re thinking about the con…

Your list and what schools you’re applying for if merit aid is important to you. Because, frankly, if merit aid is important to you and you apply to all eight Ivies, there’s zero merit aid available at those schools, period. Full stop. Right? And so you’re probably not gonna get aid, and you’ll be a full pay family if that’s what the college determines.

IMANI IFEDI: And a lot of things that… One more thing that a lot of families don’t know is that when you’re actually applying, sometimes those schools have specific deadlines to apply for in order to be eligible for that merit aid. So that’s another thing that’s like, oh my gosh. It feels like you have to know so much, but at least we know these things so that we can tell you, yes, apply regular decision, but apply before November 1 in order to be eligible for all of their merit scholarships. But, yeah, good points, Daniel, for sure.

DANIEL SANTOS: Yep. With that, that brings us to the sort of end of our webinar. I believe we answered all of the questions that were in the chat. If we didn’t answer your question, the best thing you can do is go ahead and scan that QR code, schedule a consultation with our team. Thank you again, Imani, for this incredible presentation. It was so nice to present alongside you today, and thank you so much to everyone who joined us. We really, really loved getting to know you. Again, scan this QR code, connect with our enrollment team, and reach out to us. Whatever we can do to be helpful, we’d love to support you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

IMANI IFEDI: Thank you, guys. Bye.

DANIEL SANTOS: I’m gonna drop off because I’m doing a parent check-in because I’m jumping in for someone.

IMANI IFEDI: Yes. Okay.