GLEN WATER: Sure. Thanks for that. As Alison said, I’m the learning and development director at Prepory, which means I’m responsible for making sure everything that we do in our sessions matches our desired outcomes. And those outcomes are twofold. Part of it is what many of you have named as your focus — trying to get into these top 20, top 10, top 30, or even top 100 schools, or for those few who are just trying to get in, making sure that we can match those goals.

But the other thing that I’m really focused on is ensuring that you understand who you are in that process and what your long-term goals are. And those two things are intricately connected, and that is deeply tied to this topic of building a winning extracurricular profile for 9th and 10th graders. This is one of my favorite topics that I get to talk about because it’s so important towards those long-term outcomes that we’re looking for.

A little bit more about me. I have worked both sides of the desk. I worked at Notre Dame admissions within their law school and then was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. So in terms of Alison’s alma mater — we are both a better football team and a worse football team. Notre Dame’s the better one, but Wisconsin’s struggling.

Beyond that experience on that side of the desk, I’ve also worked in admissions for fifteen years. I’ve helped students get into schools including Yale and MIT, but also my rivals — USC, Alison’s alma mater, Stanford, and even Michigan, who we all love to hate on.

As I said, this is one of my favorite topics. The key phrase within this is ‘building.’ And for those of you who are studying for the SAT, the grammar choice on that verb is very important — the building — because it’s this present tense. It’s something that you’re ongoing doing, and that is what we want to be doing in this process: something that is not one-and-done, but something that is sustained throughout. That’s how it’s going to show up in your 11th- and 12th-grade applications, but it’s something that builds on each thing and is continuous throughout.

Because this is one of the most important things. This is the stress of 11th and 12th graders. It is harder for those kids to develop the depth that they need in their profiles. So many times it’s like, ‘Oh, this is interesting. I wish we had gotten a chance to get more of the why there.’ But if you’re in 9th and 10th grade and you can identify your whys early, that is what makes a really winning extracurricular profile.

So to explain how we’re actually going to build that, we’re going to answer these key questions. First, why are we even talking about an extracurricular profile when it comes to AOs? Why does this matter? Second, what are these purposeful activities that I’m going to be talking about? How do you develop purposeful activities to enhance your profile and get to those outcomes? And then also specifically how Prepory can help. We will have Q&A at the end, but as you’re doing now, continue to use the Q&A function as Alison mentioned. There is a team of people in the background answering these questions. Alison will also be able to uplift some of these, and we’ll be able to incorporate them.

So with that, let’s get into these first questions. The first one being: why do these extracurriculars matter to the AOs? Why are we even evaluating this thing in the first place?

GLEN WATER: The first thing that I want to frame so we’re all on the same page is this idea of holistic admissions, because there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what they mean by holistic admissions. I know a lot of parents and students are like, ‘I know they focus on this, but what does that actually look like?’

The first part of this is defining what it’s not. Holistic admissions is not just having quantitative academic marks. If you went to school in another country, this is their defining way of doing it — the gaokao, the cultural exams in various places. It just depends on how you do on this test that literally determines your major and how selective of a school it is. It all comes down to that. Super stressful. The US does not do that. They are looking at the whole student.

What do we mean by that whole student? What we don’t mean is that they are just looking for specific activities. It’s not just that you have to have those strong academics, but then that you also have to have certain activities — like you absolutely have to place first in DECA or first in FBLA if you’re trying to do business. Those are helpful, but they’re not necessarily requirements in this way, because they’re not just looking at an activity. They’re looking for what’s underneath or what’s behind that activity.

And the one thing that they’re also not looking for is well-rounded students. That’s often a misconception that we see within families. I think it’s because ‘well-rounded’ and ‘holistic’ share a similar root word — I think that’s where it gets conflated. But they are not looking for a well-rounded student who is good at all these different things. That jack-of-all-trades approach was good maybe ten, fifteen years ago.

ALISON KALESHI: Yes.

GLEN WATER: But in this day and age, with how admissions have gotten even more competitive, they aren’t looking for you to have that. They are looking to have a well-built entire class, with each person having their own sort of focus. But they are looking for shared traits amongst that entire class.

These are the traits that you need to make sure that you are demonstrating in your activities — through your activities — that will then show up in your interviews and in your essays. And being able to talk about those things is going to be one of the most important things. The way that you demonstrate those traits is by having these purposeful activities, because these classes that they’re building — they’re having people with different backgrounds, different interests, and they come together having common traits but unique backgrounds and interests that form a whole cohesive class that can go and do incredible things together. That’s their aim. And when you think about what their aim is as a student who’s trying to get to those schools, that’s important to clue in on to make sure that you’re doing the right things.

ALISON KALESHI: Dr. Glen, you bring up such exceptional points. I want to really emphasize the point you made about the jack-of-all-trades component — it no longer works at this stage. And something I also want to make sure that I share is that for these traits, we are thinking about these students’ interests.

I also want to make sure that we ask — some of our attendees are attending from a bit further away. If possible, some of our attendees are asking to speak as much as possible into the microphone. I can hear you, but I just want to make sure that some of our attendees can hear clearly. Please go ahead and continue with your excellent presentation.

GLEN WATER: Let’s see if I can also — here’s what we’re going to do. For those of you who are already able to hear me, this is going to get loud because I’m increasing my input volume. Okay. That’ll help. And for those of you who can already hear fine, just turn down the volume. Great. Thank you for that.

So we’ve identified their goal. This really begs the question of both: what are those traits, and what do I mean exactly by purposeful activities?

In terms of the traits that they are looking for in holistic admissions, I’ve categorized them into two levels. The top row is nonnegotiable, and the bottom row really shows up through these things.

The first one on the top left — academic ability — this is nonnegotiable. This is not the focus of this webinar. If you are trying to understand what that looks like, I highly recommend you sign up with Alison to learn more or attend a different webinar. This is just your raw academic ability, and it is their first measure.

Once you get through that piece, then they’re looking at the other things. Intellectual interests — what are you curious about? We’re going to come back and talk about that one a lot. Community contribution — how do you impact the people that you care about? That one’s going to be a big one. Dynamism — the key aspect of being someone that they want to sit down and have lunch with. It looks a lot of different ways; we’re going to unpack that. Leadership — how much of an impact do you make.

And those five things all have underlying traits that inform them. They want to make sure that you’re able to show that you can grow. They’re educators — they want to see that you have started somewhere and didn’t end up in the same place. They don’t want you to be perfect from the start. They want to see that growth, which is the ‘building’ aspect of this.

They want to see that you can take initiative — that you are doing things not just because your parents are telling you to do them, but that you care about it and are willing to take that next step. That’ll show up in the essays and the interviews.

This concept of introspection — one of the hardest things for kids to do. It’s honestly your brain development; it’s harder at that stage. But this is what the admissions officers are looking for: the ability to really understand your place in the world and why and how you fit into it. That’s an extremely difficult thing for a 14-, 15-, 16-, 18-year-old when you’re finally applying to do, but it is a skill that you can get better at if you practice. This is what our coaches do best — helping you to develop those skills.

Once you have that, the college intentionality and fit — being able to connect those understandings of who you are to where you want to go to college and why. And then this final piece: showing that it’s not just a one-off. It’s not something that started senior year, but something that started in 9th and 10th grade, had a deep understanding of your ‘why’ that developed and matured into really powerful narratives and activities.

So these are the main ten traits that they’re looking for. I’m curious, Alison — are there traits that you are often seeing that students need to grow in early in this process? When you get them in enrollment, that first step, what do you see?

ALISON KALESHI: Absolutely. Dr. Glen, we talk about this a lot when we think about what makes for a meaningful extracurricular profile or a meaningful passion project. And a lot of times, it really is showing that introspection as an individual. How do I want to show up in the world around me?

Having excellent awards and excellent competitions are very helpful, but what is this tying in towards? I believe that that narrative of understanding — who do I want to be, and what problems do I want to truly solve, and what am I passionate about improving in the world around me — that is something that we tend to have to develop over time. For many students, it is very much a process of growth. You’re understanding not only where you want to go, but who you want to be at these schools and in the world around you.

GLEN WATER: Absolutely. It looks like most of the questions have been answered. One key thing I do want to emphasize that I saw in there: sports. Do sports have a value? Yes. They have a value. We’ll talk about them more, but there’s a reason we put them on the opening. They are connected to this dynamism piece, so don’t just dismiss sports. There’s a value in how to use them.

Which then begs the question: okay, so maybe sports is a purposeful activity, but really, what are these purposeful activities that can demonstrate these traits that the admissions officers are assessing you on?

There are three main types of purposeful activities. These directly connect to those three main buckets at the top of the traits. First, intellectual curiosity — activities that are connected to your long-term career goals and your major. Your major should directly connect to what your long-term interests are, and they should be deeply formulated around an intellectual curiosity: being able to ask ‘why’ about certain questions and certain problems that animate the world, that you have a commitment to eventually solving or answering.

The purposefulness of these questions and problems is going to come into play with its connection to the second part: community impact. This is having activities where you improve a community that you care about. It doesn’t matter which community. They’re trying to bring in different people from different communities, different connections, different cares, but they want you to be passionate about solving something. It can be any side of the spectrum, any side of any issue, but they do want to see that you care about something more than yourself. That is a desired trait that they all index on.

And then this other piece, the dynamism. I will say — if you’re interested in top 100 versus top 20 or top 30 Ivy League schools, this is a piece where it’s not required for the top 100 schools. It’s great because it’s good for you as a person, but you don’t necessarily have to have it for a top 100 application. The first two are required across the board. If you have those, you will do really well within these top 100. You will also do well at the others. But that dynamism piece is what really shows up with the Ivy League schools. They’re looking for people who aren’t just robots who can do one thing really well. They’re looking for people who are going to be movers and shakers.

I’ll name it — there’s still a lot here. If you’re a 9th grader or a 10th grader, you might be thinking, ‘I have to do all these different types of activities.’ Yeah. You do. It’s a lot that’s put on you. But there is a way that you can condense these so that you’re doing things with depth and purpose rather than just doing them randomly and scattered.

This is because the first two — intellectual curiosity and community impact — can tie together in a way that universities are really interested in. This is through the ability to be a problem solver. They ultimately want you to be a problem solver. Some schools are very explicit in saying this, like MIT, but it is across the board something that all universities are looking for. It is rooted in the mission and history of these schools.

As context, I am not a medical Dr., in case you were wondering where the ‘Dr.’ comes from. I did my PhD at Madison — number one education school — and looked at the histories of these schools and why they are the way that they are. This is rooted in their long-term mission. The civic mission and the economic mission of these schools is that they are hoping for you to become problem solvers.

They want you to do this because it’s good for the planet. They’re educators; they want this. They also want it because they’re businesses — they want their alumni to go and do incredible things, and they can say, ‘Look, that’s our alumni. They did incredible things. Look what you can do when you go to Cornell.’ And then there’s also: if you do incredible things, you might donate back, and they can replicate the process again.

So the first thing you need to be thinking about — if you’re trying to be a problem solver — is to connect those first two buckets. Be able to articulate a goal for how your unique academic interests and skills, whatever you’re good at, align with addressing the needs of the world. This is that Aristotelian line: where your vocation is where the needs of the world and your talents align. That’s what they’re looking for. And that’s a very Columbia-coded phrase right there.

If you can do that first — and it’s hard — being able to know what those needs are and what your specific interests are is a complicated process. It is one of the most important things. It is the first thing that you would be able to do with our coaches. That is what we hone in on. So if this is something you’re like, ‘I don’t know where to go with this,’ I highly recommend you scan that QR code in the top right corner to start this process with Alison, so she can start to dig in on asking you those key questions and then connect you to a coach who can go even deeper.

Because once you have step one done, it unlocks everything else. Step two: identify the majors that actually help you to do this, and then the schools that are really good at that and focus on that. Because once you do that, then all the activities you do show it.

As an 11th and 12th grader, our goal is for you to be able to articulate that. But the key thing that the AOs are looking for is: okay, this sounds good, but if you’re trying to apply to an Ivy League school, you have to do more than articulate it. We need proof of it. And that’s where the activities come in — where you show that it’s not just happenstance or created with your coach, but that you have true evidence of it.

GLEN WATER: So let me show you what it really looks like in terms of those activities.

The first thing that we want to see is this baseline intellectual curiosity. All schools are going to need this. And this is where I’ll differentiate between the top 100 and the top 20 schools. If you can have this baseline intellectual curiosity, you’re set for the top 100.

Whatever that problem is and that linkage between the problem and your intellectual curiosity, you have demonstrated that you’re actually curious about whatever the major is. Like, you can say, ‘Oh, I want to do robotics.’ But they’re like, ‘Okay, cool. How do we know you want to do robotics?’ So we need to see that you actually did a robotics club.

We’d also want to see you taking outside courses. This can be the edX courses where it’s just like, ‘I am demonstrating that I want to learn more than what my school offers.’ There’s a real passion and an intellectual curiosity to dive into it. Plus outside activities — this can be an intercity robotics club, community activities that align with this, summer programs aligned to your major. But they need to be making sure that they are major-aligned.

I’ve seen way too many cases where a student says they’re doing robotics, but all their summer programs are in biology. What’s up with that? It looks weird.

Winning honors or awards in this function also helps — it’s not just clearly demonstrated interest, but it’s ultimately going to come up in your reflective writing. This is the most common essay: the ‘why this major’ essay. And more and more, it’s going to show up in interviews. With the advent of AI, you having to be able to talk about this is really important, which is why being able to get lots of reps talking about it with a coach is super useful.

So what does this actually look like? A student joined Science Olympiad in chemistry and won the state competition. They got an honor. They did outside activities — they shadowed in a hospital and did music therapy. These are all real examples. They took an edX course. And then they wrote an essay about the desire to use music to cure Alzheimer’s. This is what showed up in their application. They also — it’s not the first time they wrote that essay. They did that multiple times and refined it throughout the years. It’s something that is built.

GLEN WATER: This is good for top 100 schools. If you’re trying to get to the Ivy League — the top 20 schools — what you really need is advanced intellectual curiosity. That breaks down into two parts: research vitality and innovative spirit.

Research vitality is going to show up at schools that really care about research. Their impact journals are the things that they care about most. This is like Caltech, Chicago, Johns Hopkins. Being part of the discoveries and advancements means being part of research projects where you’re on a full university team — showing that you can do that work that they are expecting you to be able to do in undergraduate, demonstrating that you already have that ability. Or if you’re not on a team, it’s doing it independently. Ideally, it’s best to do it as a team. But often, how you get selected for a team is you start doing it independently. You demonstrate, ‘I can do this,’ and then the team selects you.

So this can look like working in a research lab to study larval zebrafish neurogenetic diseases — that’s a real thing that happened. A summer program at a university in computational physics to assess the accuracy of superconductivity theories. Or winning independent contests like the New York Times contest that show you can write and have intellectual curiosity in the humanities. Being able to do research now is really important for those universities. I rarely see students get into these schools without having done that.

The second part is the innovative spirit. These are schools that are going to be more like, ‘We’re the builders. We’re the people who are going to make the things. We’re less interested in the theoretical side.’ The Cornells, the Carnegie Mellons, the Penns. If they are focused on you being able to do things, showing that you’ve already done this and can do it again is really important.

So these passion projects around prototypes, around creating your own experiments — those backyard experiments where you’re trying to build a rocket and see how high it goes. Creating your own startup. It’s not just ‘I take courses on business, and I like finance.’ It’s ‘I actually have my own company, and I have to do the finances and accounting for it.’ Building a DIY microbial fuel cell. Founding an import-export company that experiments with sustainable business practices. Because then when they have that, they’re like, ‘Here’s what I did. Here’s how it didn’t work, and here’s how I think Penn can fill in that gap.’ So it’s creating these super-aligned activities.

GLEN WATER: The next big bucket is community impact. They want people who can make a difference in the world. We’re going to unpack this more in a later slide, but it’s being able to have community impact projects where you are making institutional or structural changes. It’s not just one-off volunteering — that’s the key thing.

These are all examples of that: starting a club that builds relationships with Alzheimer’s patients, using music to connect to them. Starting a pilot project for commercial composting in their town — they worked with their city council to actually launch this. It didn’t change composting in the entire city, but it’s a pilot project that they can then build from. And then advocating for city council to support the installation of an EV charger in their neighborhood.

You’re seeing these are immediately beyond just the individual, which is going to be a key way that you can stand out — because they’re looking for people who are not just changing individuals but changing the world.

GLEN WATER: And then this piece — again, if you’re looking at the Ivies, you have to have those first two, but you also want to make sure you’re having this dynamism piece. You can’t just be entirely focused on your major and making a difference. Although those still matter — you have to have those — you have to also be more than that. You have to contain multitudes.

This is literally the phrase that Stanford uses. The people that you want to sit down and have lunch with — that’s how their AOs are trained to assess you. If you don’t want to have lunch with this kid, they’re not getting in. Doesn’t matter if you have a 1600. Doesn’t matter if you’ve won your Olympiad. If you don’t seem like you can actually be personable and dynamic on their college campus, they’re like, ‘Go to another school.’ And MIT would also say, ‘We need you to have joy too.’ It’s literally right in their essay.

So these are creative projects, things that showcase how you are beyond just the vocation that you have. One of my students who got into Harvard literally memorized national anthems in different languages. It was crazy. I don’t know how he did it, but he loved doing it. He would just be like, ‘Here’s the Venezuelan anthem.’ And you’re like — he has no connection to Venezuela.

Another student who got into Yale was producing his own music on Spotify. He was not just in neuroscience. He was also a musician and produced his own things. A student who got into Chicago collected keys from all the different places that he traveled. He had an entire essay about the representation of these keys as unlocked worlds, but also unlocked worlds within himself. It was really cool.

And then a Cornell student — his focus was in robotics, but he also just gardened with his mom. It was adorable. That was the topic of an essay. He’s more than just one thing. Gardening is harder at Cornell than it is in California, but he still has this passion for connecting with people.

That’s something that you really want to make sure you are starting to lay the foundations for — to create these things in 9th and 10th grade.

Curious, Alison — after I just named a bunch of these, if there’s anything that really stands out to you, if you had favorite ones of these examples, or other ones that you want to emphasize.

ALISON KALESHI: You bring so much of this to light in sharing that it’s not just one thing that these admissions officers are looking for, but there are different components. And these components take several years to truly build. This doesn’t get built overnight in 11th grade.

What I really value when I meet exceptional students week over week — and what they are ultimately truly building with Prepory — is showing a combination of all three. But it’s very evident. For example, your student that memorized all of the national anthems — that is just such a reflection of dynamism. You’re so committed to excellence in your own time that it’s authentic, and you can really feel the authenticity versus when students mistakenly think, ‘I just have to be number one at everything,’ and something lands. A lot of times, it doesn’t come off as genuine. It doesn’t read as authentic as it could be when you’re truly uncovering the things that make you happy and the things that are really guiding you towards the character that you’re developing.

I think these admissions offices ultimately want to see applicants that they would be proud to have graduated from their institution. And ultimately, that creativity and that joy is something that’s becoming more and more important, but it takes a lot of time to develop because it’s not something you can discover two weeks before your deadlines. And that’s why I really value the guidance that you provide as our learning and development director — establishing this effort as a 9th and a 10th grader.

GLEN WATER: Yeah. It’s critical that you do it. And one thing for you 9th and 10th graders that Alison really emphasized — this word ‘authentic.’ Don’t feel like you have to put yourself into a box in order to make these things. They want you to be quirky.

For you eighth graders — before you feel like you have to fit into whatever the 9th- and 10th-grader high school experience conforms you to — I have found some of the most interesting passions come from people who are in middle school. So hold on to those quirky traits. Colleges want you to be quirky. I know there’s a lot of pushes within society to make you less quirky, to fit into certain ways, AI being one of them — you’re sort of averaging to a middle with AI. But hold on to those unique traits because they are what is going to absolutely stand out in those applications.

They want that authenticity. No AI would ever generate, ‘Hey, why don’t you memorize all the national anthems?’ It’s just so random that it comes off as authentic.

GLEN WATER: So toward Alison’s point about this starting in 9th grade — how do I actually develop these purposeful activities?

For those who are teachers in the background, or parents, or students, your teachers should hopefully use this idea of backwards planning, where they’re like, ‘Here’s my goal. How do I get there with that goal in mind?’

So our goal is that by the time you are applying — this is a senior, so for those 11th and 12th graders who are here, let’s hope you have this already — you should have at least four activities connected to your major. If you’re doing engineering, we want to see at least four things that represent that engineering experience. One of these should be some sort of capstone or passion project that is directly aligned to that problem-solving statement, where you have built both the breadth and the depth to actually do something that answers those questions or solves those problems.

Then you want to have one to two activities that show a community you care about. If you’re trying to get into these top 10, top 20 schools, it is ideal that those two things are connected, like we said in the beginning. If you’re just interested in the top 100, they don’t have to be directly connected. But the more that you thread those, the better.

Then they also want to see one to two activities that reflect your personality beyond your major. This is that dynamism — the MIT joy essay.

I will name this because I see it so frequently: ‘Oh, well, I’m doing piano. I have a job because everyone thinks I need to have a job. I play chess and a sport.’ Each one of those is enough by itself. ‘I am a soccer player in addition to being really interested in neuroscience.’ Cool. I don’t also need to be doing that and chess and a job. If you want to have a job on the side because it makes your family money, you’re passionate about it, or you want to learn that skill — cool, that’s something you’re doing on the side. If you’re a business major, that job would be one of your four. But we want one to two dynamism activities.

Four is too much. I’m seeing way too many kids who are like, ‘Oh, I’m great at piano. I’m great at chess. I have a job, and I play volleyball, and please let me in.’ No. That’s the well-rounded approach that doesn’t actually get in anymore. Fifteen years ago, you would have been fine, but not anymore. I’m sorry that the world has shifted this way. But in some ways, it is kind of cool, because if you’re a 9th and 10th grader, you can figure this out now. You can have that understanding and self-knowledge for the rest of your life, which can be really empowering.

GLEN WATER: So toward the backwards plan — 9th grade. If you’re in 9th grade or looking ahead from eighth grade, what should you be doing?

Right now, you’re trying to explore. This is a critical time to make sure that you are honing in on the right focus. You should be doing a lot of different activities and really honing in on what you want to do. This is going to require a ton of reflection. I think 9th graders are my favorite students to work with because it requires lots of ‘why,’ lots of interrogation, and then lots of, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to work. Let’s shift this,’ or, ‘Oh, I’m seeing depth here. I’m seeing curiosity. Why don’t you try this next?’

It is also going to require reading. There’s a reason Columbia asks about books. There’s a reason we recommend books all the time — because if you can’t show that you’ve actually read a book in your field, it comes off really poorly in the essays. And if it doesn’t come off poorly in the essays, it comes off poorly in the interviews. When you talk to a kid who really lives, breathes, eats, and reads this material, they have the vocabulary and the familiarity that comes across to the AOs.

So that is what you want to be doing. You want to be making sure that you are exploring, that you’re getting a good sense of what that focus is. By the end of 9th grade, you really want to have honed down whether it’s STEM or humanities. That is going to be your goal.

GLEN WATER: By 10th grade, we want to have that intellectual focus statement that links the problem and the interest. Ideally, by the end of 10th grade, that is really formulated. We want to make sure you are fully locked in on what that is.

To do that, you want to be making sure that you are having the opportunity to develop and build that. So it means applying to writing contests where you have to write about these things and then see how well you’re forced to refine and reflect and develop what those thoughts are and why you care about them. You should be applying to summer research programs — if nothing else, because those essays force you to say these things, and then you get to work with a coach to really refine it and get an understanding of your ‘why.’

You should be doing those initial backyard experiments. You should be thinking about what your startup is going to be. You should be taking longer outside courses that really reflect your focus. You might have taken an easy biology course and an easy computer science course, and now you’re looking at a specific EdX course from MIT on something like biomimicry in architecture. If that’s what you’re focused on, I want to see an initial interest in that.

In terms of the dynamism things, you should have ideally already chosen what that passion is — the thing that lights you up — and you should have chosen a topic that you really care about. You’ve volunteered in it before, and now you’re starting to make an impact. You’re not just being a participant or an observer; you’re starting to take on leadership roles.

GLEN WATER: Then from there, 11th grade is that capstone. It’s the culmination. Ideally, there’s a capstone in each of these buckets, but it’s really important that you have it for the intellectual curiosity — where you have these really competitive summer programs that you are getting into. These are the RSIs out there. ASDRP could be one, to a degree. The RMP at UCSB. These are the super-competitive programs that can demonstrate to colleges, ‘This kid can do research. We want them in our program.’

But that’s built because they’ve already started it in previous ways. You have some sort of larger campaign, some sort of larger institutional shift, or you’ve created a project that’s a deep involvement in a hobby.

It’s going from 9th grade exploring, 10th grade laying the foundations with that key intellectual focus, to then executing something really important in 11th grade. For 9th and 10th graders right now, you’re really trying to hone in on that, to reflect and make sure you have a deep understanding, because by 11th grade — basically, that summer after 11th grade — you have to be locked in. It would be too late to shift at that point.

GLEN WATER: In terms of how Prepory can actually help with this, the key thing I think we do really well is this linkage between intellectual curiosity and community impact. And the reason I advocate for Prepory over other firms — I’ve been at many other firms — is because this is our focus. We understand this connection. We want you to not just be volunteering for the sake of volunteering. We understand that universities are looking for this larger impact.

So what we want to help you develop is where you are clearly identifying an important problem you are interested in solving. And the beautiful thing about this is it’s really AI-proof. The problems in the world that you will need to be solving — I wish they would go away in five to ten years. I wish we would solve hunger. I wish we would solve illiteracy. I wish we would solve things around the climate. It’s not happening. So if you have a clear focus of, ‘This is something that I am passionate about,’ you can then use whatever majors. You might even switch majors, but you have that clear focus that will hold you through and be really powerful in the applications and beyond. There’s a reason colleges want you to have this, because it is more than just getting in.

Once you have that clear understanding, they want to see that you are able to make an impact at an institutional or societal level.

GLEN WATER: To give you an example of what this looks like and what we’re trying to push you to do — what our coaches are trained to get you to do — I’ll give you the example of reading.

If you care about reading, you just care about literacy in general — that’s your passion. The individual level would be like, ‘I care about literacy. I want to make sure I’m as good of a reader as possible.’ Cool. That matters. But that’s not enough, especially not enough for the top 10 schools.

The interpersonal level would be: ‘I care about reading. I’m going to volunteer and help other people read at my school. I’m going to be part of an organization that does that.’ Institutional is being part of a larger long-term impact — creating a new initiative that lasts beyond you. That means joining an organization and making a larger impact in it, or founding a new organization. In this case, that would be joining the local library and then being a part of a reading program that brings in other students. It’s not just you joining them and volunteering. It’s creating a partnership between the local library and your school.

And then it’s using that to reach the societal level — using the platform of the library to publish things, using their website, their social media handles to inform larger literacy programs. I saw this once with a student in Saint Louis. It was really cool how they did this.

If you can do this — if you’re getting an entire library to change the way that they are expressing the need for literacy — you’re going to be handling interpersonal conflicts. You’re going to be handling challenges. That commitment, that initiative, that leadership, that growth is all going to be evident in that project — all those traits that colleges are looking for.

And then you’re going to develop this reflective ability to really understand the ‘why’ behind it. Doing it without a ‘why’ doesn’t matter as much. This is where the coach really comes in — helping you to articulate that, because oftentimes we don’t know why we’re doing the things we’re doing. We’re just doing them because we think we need to. But this is where coaches are really trained to help you articulate that, so that you can have it as a truth for the rest of your life and, importantly, for these college applications.

GLEN WATER: Just to give you an even more detailed way of how this happened — this is Nick, not his real name. But Nick is a real student who, when he finally applied, this is what it looked like. He’d been with us for four years. He crushed it. He had that 4.0. He had that 1570. That’s academic ability.

He had all these special APs, especially the ones in history. And we see that he had this strong interest in political science, public policy, and educational equity. So there’s a clear focus. He was a Bank of America Student Leader. He had an internship with the City of Plantation around its historical society, and he had a Little Free Library passion project. He was also involved in other honor societies.

But the key thing beneath this is the ‘why’ and what we did to unlock that ‘why.’ He came in — he was actually applying as a 16-year-old, which is kind of crazy in itself. So he was clearly academically gifted. But when he started at 12, he didn’t have a clear understanding. He knew he wanted something around education. But what about education?

So he had identified the general issue, but he really needed guidance on connecting his academic interests to community impact and then how this would fit into the rest of the application. You’re gifted — but so what?

What we did is we helped him identify that passion project where he joined the local historical site preservation community. He had vague interest in history. We found the connection. But then beyond that — once you join that society, what are you going to do with that impact?

So that Little Free Library was actually the educational content. He went around and used those Little Free Libraries — ‘Hey, learn about this actual historical site.’ And then he did his own research beyond that — ‘I was at one historical site. I’m going to go out and find this lost historical site because I think it’s so important.’

Then we finally tied it all together in his essays so that they could explain that. And as you saw, he got accepted into these incredible schools as a result of having this profile.

GLEN WATER: And then this is Amit — again, not his real name. Here is what he started off with in 9th grade. He joined Prepory. He was part of band, Science Olympiad. He was doing a food bank. We found out that he was really interested in chemistry, so we recommended some books to help him feed that.

He was like, ‘Okay, I want to do food bank. Maybe we can make some connection between future foods and chemistry,’ which is a really interesting topic — what is the future of food? So he volunteered at the food bank. He earned an edX certificate in chemistry.

Then as he was doing that food bank work, he was like, ‘I don’t care about food. It’s not that interesting.’ We said, ‘Cool. Okay. Don’t do it.’ Instead, he was getting leadership in band, continuing with Science Olympiad, and we said, ‘But you do care about maybe something within chemistry. You’ve identified an interest in reading. Maybe there’s something around neuroscience and why kids read.’ He went with that.

The summer before 11th grade, he attended a bioengineering and brain science camp. He got an internship at a library. He produced his own music. He got a summer job but realized he hated business, so he didn’t want to go that route.

Then 11th grade — again, this is the capstone. He won nationals in Science Olympiad. He launched his volunteer organization to really support that library. And then he started to shadow cognitive psychologists, identifying how he really wants to cure dyslexia through neuroscience.

Then he did his research project on that and made all those things come to fruition in that final summer. So we see that there’s a collection — he’s starting. Some things get cut. Some things get nurtured. At the end, he has this final publication, this final capstone. And it helped him get into Yale, which he did.

So that’s what this ultimately looks like. How we do this and how you can get involved — I’m going to turn that back over to Alison.

ALISON KALESHI: Absolutely. This has been so excellent from you, Dr. Glen. It’s always a treat getting to hear your perspective on how we truly support our 9th and 10th graders.

I am an enrollment manager here at Prepory, and I’m excited to share a little bit more about how we can best serve you as students in grades nine and ten.

I am really proud of the work that we do here. We are the number one college admissions counseling firm in this space, with nearly fifteen years of success in guiding students and families in navigating every single grade level from eighth grade all the way through senior year, as well as graduate admissions counseling. In this time, we have guided more than 14,000 students towards their exceptionally competitive admissions goals, and cycle over cycle, Prepory really reflects excellent admissions outcomes.

One stat that we are incredibly proud of is that ninety-four percent of Prepory students are admitted into at least one or more of their top five choice schools. And I really value that when we say top five, it is truly about aligning with each student’s goals and aspirations — not just a number. Those are truly your top five choices.

This work is ultimately about turning your competitive dreams into very tangible results during the most competitive time in admissions history. We have spent countless years helping students stand out in the admissions cycle, and one area where we see huge impact is in the profile that we develop — turning students into truly compelling individuals with differentiated stories to tell.

ALISON KALESHI: So what do our programs include? Given that last cycle, our admissions outcomes included every Ivy, every Ivy Plus, every UC school, every competitive Texas school, and every school from number one to number 50 on the U.S. News & World Report list — this requires exceptional attention to each student.

Within Prepory’s services, you will be meeting with your dedicated admissions expert coach throughout hourly one-on-one advising sessions. You will have ongoing offline guidance via text and via email through the entirety of your program. You will have unlimited essay and resume revisions. You will also be able to prepare for highly competitive opportunities through our mock committee review, which includes our admissions team, as well as interview specialist preparation. And of course, you as parents will be up to date on every stage of this process with parent check-ins throughout, and you will have full access to GradBloom, which is our organizational software to keep you on track at every step.

With that in mind, we have a QR code on the corner of our screen. I am really excited to meet with all of you. Go ahead and scan the QR code to set up a free consultation with our expert team, myself included. I’m very much looking forward to answering your questions during our consultation and talking more about how enrollment at Prepory is going to support you on every step of your admissions journey. And I see we have a couple of Q&A questions remaining. Dr. Glen, I’m going to go ahead and ask —

GLEN WATER: Yeah. I got them. They did get them in before the hour. We know you’re all busy, so we’re going to go for a couple more minutes, but we won’t hold you too much longer.

One of these questions — I think this is going to resonate with a lot of you — your kid is interested in business, but there’s so many different distractions out there. How do we actually help with this? A key thing that we really want to index on is riding the wave. What are the things that are distracting him, and how can we loop those things into the passions that he’s actually interested in? So it’s trying to connect those things so that his interests are aligned and we have as much momentum as possible.

Obviously, some of these are going to be distractions that are beyond that — just things on social media and video games that don’t connect. It’s helping to build the student a strong sense of their identity that can overcome these things. And our coaches are well trained — they’re all former educators — to help students understand how to move away from those things.

Oftentimes, this is going to be useful for the parents on the call: they’re at an age where they don’t listen to you. This isn’t you — this is just them. But they will hear the exact same thing from someone else. It’s not actually ridiculous — it’s just neuroscience. It’s where they’re at in that stage. So that is why those connections are really helpful — for us to understand their distractions, and we can say the same thing and have it actually land because we’ve built those deep relationships aligned to their interests.

In terms of the choir question — absolutely, that dynamism piece can be a huge part of it, unless they’re interested in a music major, in which case it becomes not their dynamism but their intellectual curiosity. It just depends on the full profile. We would need to see the whole thing.

And absolutely, we give ideas for research projects. We don’t do the research for the students, but we give them the ideas, the structures, and the support to start to pursue that independently — because that’s ultimately what they’re looking for with that initiative.

If you have other questions, please make sure you sign up. We want to honor your time and make sure that we let you go. But if you have independent questions you want to get answered, please sign up to meet with Alison or one of our other team members. We appreciate you so much for taking the time. We know you have many other places and things to do, but we thank you for sharing the time with us. Have a beautiful rest of your evening or day, depending on where you’re at.

ALISON KALESHI: Yes. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Dr. Glen. We will see you all during your complimentary initial consultation. Have a good evening. Bye, everyone.