ALISON: Thank you. I went ahead and ended our poll. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. The bulk of our conversation tonight will be led by James Crawley, and I’ll let him introduce himself in just a moment. We’re so happy to have you here, James.

Thank you so much again for joining us.

ALISON: This is going to be an amazing conversation. Before we begin, a quick introduction. My name is Alison, and I’m an enrollment manager here at Prepory. I have a decade of collective experience in college admissions and high-impact college counseling. When you book a consultation with Prepory, and we’ll share more about how to do that later this evening, you’ll meet with me or a member of our team to discuss your student’s specific goals, your academic background, and your long-term plans.

Our role is really to help you determine a winning strategy with an expert level of support for you and your family. Tonight’s focus, of course, is going to be on building a highly competitive pre-engineering profile and what it takes to get into a top engineering program in 2026 as a high school student, specifically for those who are really targeting selective and highly exclusive undergraduate institutions. We’re going to be discussing a lot of things tonight, thinking about how Prepory students can position themselves early, develop academic depth, cultivate those leadership activities, and really build a highly compelling narrative that stands out in this process. That said, some of our attendees tonight may also be thinking about long-term graduate admissions.

We do provide graduate-level advising as well, but tonight’s webinar is focused on pre-engineering pathways specifically for high school students. So this topic has definitely been top of mind today. I’ve personally had many incredible conversations about it, just this morning alone. So I’m really excited for you all to hear James’ insights. He’s such an incredible source of information.

And as we go through this presentation, I really encourage you all to please feel free to drop your questions in the Q&A. We have so many answers for you all, and we have several admissions experts and team members behind the scenes who are answering your questions in real time. I’ll also be moderating, and James will also be taking some questions live as well. With that, James, I’m going to turn it over to you. Go ahead and introduce yourself.

JAMES: Yeah. Will do. Thank you, Alison. And, again, thank you all for being here. Whether you’re a student, a parent, this is a career field that’s very near and dear to my heart, and you’ll understand why in a second.

But it’s just— it’s truly— this can be a very stressful process, and one of my favorite things in the world to do is to help illuminate it and make it seem a little less hectic than it is. So my name is James Crawley. I’ve been a Prepory coach for about four years now. And before that, I was a senior assistant director of admissions at Purdue University, my alma mater. That’s where I graduated.

That’s where I got my master’s. And I had the pleasure of leading the team that reviewed the engineering applications that came in, which, of course, is what Purdue is often known for. And in that time, with probably close to 40,000 applications under my belt, I was very privileged and very passionate about being able to help students really understand not only what it takes to get into an engineering program, but why engineering is actually the path they want to pursue, which seems obvious. If you pick engineering, you should know why you’re pursuing it, but that is actually quite difficult for quite a few students. Right.

And we’ll get to that in just a second. One thing I will say, Alison, as we’re going through this, as I’m talking through some topics, if there is anything that you see coming up in the chat that often, that relates to what we’re chatting about, feel free to pause me, stop me, throw something heavy at my screen, my face on the screen, and get my attention. But with that—

ALISON: Amazing.

JAMES: Turn it back to you real quick just to get a sense of who we are just so you guys know who’s talking to you.

ALISON: That’s right. So who is Prepory? Well, for a lot of things, we are a college admissions counseling firm with over a decade of experience, nearly fifteen years in this space, helping students and families navigating every grade level of high school really strategically from 9th grade all the way through senior year. And in that time, we have guided more than 14,000 students successfully towards their highly competitive college goals. We consistently rank as number one in this industry with excellent admissions outcomes to show for it.

One stat that we’re really proud of is 94% of our students are admitted into one or more of their top five choice schools. And when we say top five, it’s about aligning with each student’s goals and aspirations. It’s not just a number. Our work really is about turning your competitive dreams into results during the most competitive time in admissions history. And with that said, for students that are targeting highly selective schools with under 15% admit rates, which is crazy to think about at this point in time—

our Prepory students are 3.38 times more likely to gain admission over the general applicant pool. We’ve spent so many years helping students stand out in the admission cycle. And one area where we really see huge impact is in how students can really develop a compelling pre-engineering profile that will really differentiate them. We can go to the next slide, please.

JAMES: Yeah.

ALISON: Alright. With that said, last admission cycle alone, our students were accepted into every single Ivy League school, every single UC school, and every school from number one to number 50 on the U.S. News & World Report list. And with that said, it’s important to point out, we’re not only seeking to support your student in gaining entry into the top programs nationally as well as internationally, but the program that is of best fit for you. With that said, I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to you, James.

JAMES: Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

ALISON: Of course.

JAMES: I’m already seeing some great questions coming in. Absolutely. Yes. We love the work we are doing here, but tonight, really wanting to help you guys get a sense of how to get into the right engineering mindset as you’re applying and how to really evaluate these schools to understand if they meet and fit your needs, what it takes to be a compelling applicant for all areas—grades, activities, essays, of course. We’ll talk a little bit more as someone who does coach people and who did, you know, very proudly get some students into those top universities this past cycle.

We’ll also talk a little bit more about just what Prepory does to help students become these seemingly rare unicorns who can help get into these top programs. And then, of course, we’ll end with a little Q&A, little conversation. I’ve already— looking at our Q&A, I’ve already seen a couple questions that I think I’d like to answer live and hopefully will throughout this. So without further ado, let’s get into it. Before we get really into the specifics of engineering, a very brief crash course in admissions 101. Most admissions processes on the back end as a reviewer are holistic.

And what that means is that universities— AOs, as we often call them, admissions officers, university application reviewers— are looking at a dozen different factors to make a decision on whether or not you are a good fit for that school, for that program. This is half a dozen academic factors, half a dozen non-academic factors ranging from, you know, the time of year that you apply, the major you apply to, potentially, letters of recommendation, the grades, the course selection, the rigor, the relevant courses, academic trends, test scores. Say nothing of the essay, that little thing that, you know, everybody loves. There’s so many different things that are looked at, but it is also very important to understand engineering admissions in particular. One of the biggest differences, I think, that really helps to maybe divide the river here at the source is whether or not the university you might be applying to is what we call a direct admit to discipline.

This is where you pick a specific major. It could be biomedical engineering. It could be mechanical, nuclear. I saw somebody in the chat talk about nuclear. It could be entertainment engineering if they have that.

If they are a university that has a direct admit policy in the admissions process, that means you will be applying directly to that engineering major. In that case, there are going to be certain majors that are typically more competitive than others within the world of engineering. I think maybe it’s really helpful at the very beginning to talk about the elephant in the room, and that is the program of computer science, which is often, but not always, held within the college of engineering at some of these top universities. Purdue University where I worked and where I went, they were actually the first university to offer a computer science sort of major, and within the college of science is where that lived. And after that, a lot of things evolved.

And, of course, universities now kind of split where some will have computer science as a major you can apply to within the college of engineering. Some might have it in the college of science. So be aware of that as you start to think about the universities that you’re interested in applying to. If you’re applying directly to admission to an engineering major at a school that does that kind of structure, some of the majors like, of course, computer science, if they have it as an option, going to be one of the most competitive. Aeronautical engineering, mechanical engineering, simply because it is usually the most popular.

Some of you in this chat, parents or students, you guys might be thinking, well, I don’t really know what kind of engineering I want to do, but I want to do engineering. What’s the major you’re likely going to choose? It’s going to be mechanical. So that is one of the reasons why that one is so competitive— is because it is often so general in the number of people coming to it. Biomedical, I might have already said that, is also very— it’s very niche, but it’s also usually very small in terms of the number of spots.

And beyond that, like I said, electrical computer engineering, sometimes if that’s mixed with the more software side of CS, that can be very competitive. But those are some of the top ones that typically are more competitive if it’s direct admit. For the other type of structure, and this is actually where I came from at Purdue, they will have what’s known as a first-year engineering program, or they might even just have a generalized admit process where, like, Stanford, for instance, they will just say, what are your top three interests as far as programs? And they won’t limit it to engineering. They’ll just say, what are your top three that you’re interested in?

But they genuinely are using that as a general guide frame. They’re not going to pigeonhole you into one or the other. They’re just curious. For others like Purdue, Texas A&M, Rutgers, all students applying to some sort of engineering discipline will come in as a first-year engineering student. They’ll take a uniform general engineering curriculum that first year, and then at the end of their first year, they will apply to and look to get accepted into a direct specific engineering discipline.

That is setting the table for what we’re going to get into because that is, I think, one of the most misunderstood things about engineering programs— is that when you’re applying to them, they’re not all set up the same way. So really make sure at the beginning, you’re looking to see if it’s a direct admit to your specific discipline or if it’s a more general first-year engineering program. These are trends that I think have been going on, I mean, since I was at Purdue a few cycles ago and for the universities I still review applications for since. There is no way around it that even if you’re looking at an admit rate for a university, the engineering college, especially if it is a direct admit university, is just going to be much more competitive. UIUC, which is, for those that don’t know, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, one of the best engineering programs out there and a big competitor to Purdue— they are looking at, you know, a pretty sizable 16% difference in terms of admit rate.

Just for the general admission, some universities who already have a sub-15% admit rate, they might drop down to single digits for their engineering admits. You can just rest assured that anytime you’re building a college list— and, of course, this is something that our counselors and our coaches love to go into with students— is just because you look at an admit rate for the overall university, if you’re going into something STEM, engineering, or possibly CS, it is going to be a much more competitive admit rate. That’s not to scare anybody away. That’s just to, again, show reality as it is. It is going to be quite competitive.

And they are looking for multifaceted profiles. I know that sometimes the phrase “well-rounded” gets thrown out there for students to be well-rounded. They just want to know that students are really trying to become better individuals in many different ways, whether that’s through their academics, through their activities, showing growth through their writing. So it’s no longer just technical expertise. Who knows the most?

Who’s getting the most A’s in math? It really is a multifaceted profile that they are looking for. And just some, you know, general acceptances here to show from the past cycle, for some top engineering programs. On the right-hand side, just kind of a testament to our coaches and our program that we have set up at Prepory is sort of the multiplier for how much more likely it is because we go through every step of what we’re about to dive into individually with students one-on-one. We’ve been really blessed to have some incredible coaches that work here and who have helped our students get into some incredible universities and engineering programs.

Alison, just want to pause real quick before we go into a compelling applicant. Any questions that have come up that you think worth answering for that?

ALISON: There definitely are some that we’ll be answering at the end. Cool. But we do have a unique question that I think you can answer this really well, James. When you’re a pre-engineering student and you’re interested in highly competitive programs, but you don’t know where to start— obviously, we would love to have you at Prepory to really support you in that. But how would you recommend a student think about how to find great mentorship or the right mentorship?

JAMES: Oh, specifically within engineering? Within the world of engineering?

ALISON: They didn’t specify, but—

JAMES: That’s fine.

ALISON: I think as a whole.

JAMES: It applies in general. Yeah. So I’m also a dad to two young kids, a five-year-old and a one-year-old. And don’t mind me. I don’t hear them screaming for bedtime outside the door.

They’re very loud and fun. But— you know, mentorship takes on many different forms. That’s right. And I think with this, I would encourage you to do— again, I don’t know if that was a student that asked that or a parent. What I would encourage you to do is to find passionate people who are willing to be honest with you.

Because so often— and this is actually a really good segue into this next section. So often, what I would see in applicants when I was reviewing for Purdue is I would see students who seem to check all the boxes. You know, they’re taking the most advanced classes in math. They know six different coding languages, and they’ve built all these things. But their underlying passion for engineering, what they may want to— how they might want to impact the world afterward— didn’t often come through.

Usually— and this is a very common occurrence— usually, what some students are told early on is if they’re good in math and science by a well-meaning uncle at that holiday, or by a friend or by some weird quiz online, they’re told, oh, you’re good at math and science. You’ll be an engineer. You make a lot of money. People think it’s great.

That’s not enough. And those aren’t objectively bad reasons, but it’s not enough to just think that, oh, well, I’m good at these things, and I can make money. You really need to have some intentionality in your application. And so bringing this back to mentorship, I really think that finding people who can, you know, give you honest feedback and tell you how you’re doing and what it takes to continue growing and give you ideas for how you might look inward first before then growing outward, growing your passion for this particular area or for this particular technology. That can be a really strong thing.

Look for passionate people who are willing to be honest with you as far as mentorship. And you can start in local firms. You can— I mean, if it’s engineering specific, contact local firms, universities if you live near them, see if professors would be willing to just talk to you. You never know what can happen from reaching out and just saying hi.

ALISON: And, you know, something I think that Prepory really is excellent at is when students are looking for different opportunities and thinking about the right programs and the right summer opportunities, the right research opportunities, even the right passion projects and how to make the correct impact within your community as an engineering applicant. It’s really excellent having an admissions expert on your side alongside a full team that has done this for a very long time and can really guide you in the right direction, whether it’s your outbound reach, your cold outreach, things like that that can ultimately build the right pathway for you.

JAMES: Yeah. And, yeah, that’s so well said. As far as the things we’re going to be going over, these are high-level pieces of information, high-level categories here that we’ll dive deeper into. And just so you all know, my style— I don’t like to read every word off the screen, so I will not be— you’re more than welcome to. But I will just hopefully be leading you with these five axioms, I guess, to put it that way.

These are the five areas that we’ve seen not only through the great work we’re doing at Prepory, but just through the combined expertise of our coaches, former admissions officers, many of them who have been able to study this and see this firsthand when they’re reviewing applications. Like, these are, in many ways, the things that are helping students stand out, especially engineering students. And I think we should definitely start, first and foremost, with— I think the most obvious. This is where it gets— I think I’m a big believer that clear is kind, and being clear is a big kindness. And quite clearly, if you are trying to apply to a top 10, top 20 university for engineering, the grades and scores have to be there.

They just do. Now I could take a whole other webinar. I’m not going to do this, but I could take a whole other webinar to talk about intentionality with choosing universities and how— especially, this is our philosophy at Prepory— finding your fit, finding the university that fits your goals, your needs academically, socially, professionally, campus environment-wise, that’s so much more important. How you go to college is so much more important than where you go to college in many instances. But especially if you are targeting some really competitive engineering programs or competitive universities, these just really do have to be there.

JAMES: Some of the strongest things that are being looked for— obviously, very high test scores. We’re looking at relevant coursework quite often when we’re reviewing engineering applications. So that means math and science right out the gate, taking the highest-level math you can. “Friends don’t let friends take AP Stat” is sort of a little tongue-in-cheek euphemism in the world of admissions. So if you are getting up to senior year and you’ve taken precalculus or Calc AB, if you can take Calc BC, highly recommended.

I mean, truly, just that is going to be a baseline to help you stand out. If you can go above that and go to Calc 3 or Calc 4 through a university, if you’re early on— if you’re here as a freshman or here as an 8th grader even, welcome in. If engineering at one of these top programs is something that’s on your bucket list, you have a— I don’t know. Maybe a poster of MIT or something up on your wall. Then really start to challenge yourself and try to get ahead in math if you can.

Maybe even trying to jump up a level over the summer. That’s an option. A lot of our coaches work with students to do that. But those things— your relevant coursework, math and science— physics is going to be another huge one for science. If you can take AP Physics C: Mechanics, not AP Physics 1 or 2, that is, again, going to really help you stand out in an engineering applicant pool or even just kind of be what we call “standard strong.”

Like, just to be able to kind of fit into the general pool, having those strong math and science courses is going to be something that just helps you not even think it’s a question. That also goes with the grades. Getting great grades in very strong classes, that is going to be one of the things that I just can’t stress enough, is going to help you really get through some of those first filters. Doing well across the board, but especially in your relevant coursework. Because it’s not just scores and grades in math that matter.

They’re also looking for how you are doing in those other non-math, non-STEM-related coursework. Those humanities: English, history, communications, government— those show communication skills, the fact that you’re able to talk. I know there’s often a stigma that engineers can’t talk to anybody. They can. They just sometimes need to practice it as they go throughout high school.

And there’s also other classes too here. I saw somebody in the chat a while ago talk about PLTW. For those that don’t know, Project Lead the Way. These are supplemental engineering courses. There’s a biomedical engineering course you can take, some CAD courses.

Those are great supplemental courses. I loved my PLTW classes in high school. I would never ever encourage somebody to use those to replace their core math and science. You should be taking the most rigorous math and science courses afforded to you by your high school, or the homeschool program potentially that you might be in. So that is overall just grades and scores, what we would expect and what we would encourage you to be doing, whatever grade level you may be.

If you can get up to calculus, that is, again, the preferred, the recommended. For test scores, SAT, ACT, really getting up above that 1,500, above that 34. These are for those top 10, top 20 programs that we’re talking about, not just general admissions. Top 10, top 20 for engineering in particular. Along with that, we want you to be able to stand out not just from a grade perspective, but also as a person.

Believe it or not, these universities are employing people— AOs and admissions professionals— to read every single one of these applications. And as we’re reading that, we want you to— we want to feel like we’re having a conversation with you. We want you to stand out as a human being. It’s not fun to read what feels like a book report or homework as a person. That’s— some— I think some students, especially engineering students, think they have to have the most technical skills, and they have to be the most of every sort of tech or engineering or coding axiom possible.

We want to see personal interests. We want to see some color to your application. That could be a standout projects. You know, I helped a student a couple years ago— he’s at UC Berkeley— who made a cooking aid for the blind and was able to read, like, different recipes from a book. He was in a kitchen so that they could still cook if they had that passion.

He had a huge passion for cooking, and his grandmother was the one he kinda based it off of because she had lost her eyesight. So there’s really a great value to showing what you’re passionate about and connecting that to the type of engineering you may want to go into or just engineering in general. It’s not just about technical skill. That is very important.

But what you guys have to remember is that the people reading these applications are very often not engineering professionals. They are not deep into the world of STEM. They’re great at what they do. They know how to evaluate engineering students. But I’m a communications major proudly two times over.

I don’t have an engineering PhD, so you can’t just rely on technical expertise and technical writing to stand out as impressive. You have to be a person. Authenticity beats uniqueness or skill every time. Speaking of just how to apply those tech skills, again, they are going to want to see that you have an interest and passion. You should have an interest or passion in, be it coding or building or creating.

Engineering is problem-solving, and there’s a lot of listening and empathy involved as well to understand the problems that you’re working on. But they want to see that you’re really building your skill set, building your passion for engineering for a purpose. So one of the best things that you can really hope to do here with your time as you’re building your activities is just start thinking about, okay. Well, what does my community need? How can I really affect the people around me, the people in my local area or in my school in a way that combines my passion for engineering and service?

So this could be, you know, yeah, starting some— maybe starting small by improving some websites if you’re passionate about design and coding, building something in your community, maybe getting involved with some of your local engineering organizations in the community. There’s so many opportunities in that regard. And if you can show that service and giving back and thinking outside of yourself is just what you do and what you’ve done since maybe the beginning of high school or halfway through high school, that, again, is going to help you stand out as an individual in this review process. One of the things that I really want you guys to think about is that when it comes to how we review engineering applications, you know, we go through a pretty— it’s often through a very similar track of looking at your academics first and foremost. And then right after that, typically, we look at your activities.

And what that is showing us after— after admissions reviewers are like, okay. Academically, this person is there. They’ve got the stats. But how have they spent their time? Maybe sometimes even before they get to the writing.

How have they spent their time? What have they dedicated themselves toward? And that is very telling. We’re going to get into some activity stuff in a little bit, but really just showing that you have commitment to not just growing your technical skills, but doing it for a purpose or a cause, that can be a huge boon to helping you stand out and showing you’re not just in your room all the time, you know, going down all these rabbit holes on GitHub or doing projects. Like, it’s gotta be more than just that.

You want to be able to go out there and do this with other people. And this kind of goes similarly hand in hand— leadership as well through these different activities.

JAMES: We often use the phrase “passion project” in this field of admissions coaching, and that passion project really can be a lot of different things. It is, in the name, though, based on your passion. We want it to be something that you genuinely have an interest for, not something that just feels like you’re doing this because you want it to look good on a college application. Admissions officers who are worth their salt, they know. They can tell oftentimes because it doesn’t fit into the overall narrative that you’re telling on your application.

One of the best things that AOs love to see is when you create an opportunity. So whether that’s in your community, you’re creating an organization, you’re creating an initiative, maybe creating a school club. Here’s an example here of aerospace engineering. Maybe you’re that kid like me who loved planes. I’ve got— I don’t know how many SR-71 Blackbirds. None in this room right now, but I’ve loved, you know, planes since I was a kid.

And if that’s you, if you love aerospace engineering or you have a, like, rocketry passion or whatever it may be and you don’t really see a niche or see a need for that being met at your school, start a club. If there’s well-known engineering activities, don’t just join them. That’s great. Of course, that shows that you’re really getting involved and spending your time. How can you make a difference at a higher level?

You don’t have to be just the president or vice president of a club to show that you’re willing to lead. Maybe you started an initiative for mentorship. Maybe you become the mentorship manager. I don’t know. I’m going for the alliteration.

But maybe you’re just the person who— you love giving back. You love working with others, and you’re like, hey. I’m a sophomore. I’m a junior, but I know it’s really hard to be in this robotics club as a freshman. It’s a lot, you know, VEX or FIRST, whatever it may be.

I want to implement a mentorship program, and I want to be able to have older individuals interact with younger individuals to make sure that they’re feeling on, you know, on top of it, that they’re growing their skills, growing their passions. That is also a leadership initiative or position. You don’t always have to just have those titles. You are showing that you made an impact and often with other people. You know, collaboration is huge in engineering. So showing that anywhere in your activities, to say nothing of your writing, is definitely a must.

ALISON: James, you make a really great point here, especially when we think about leadership. This question actually came up today with a family I met with during an initial consultation. Yeah. And they were talking about, well, my student is a bit shy, a bit quieter. How can they be a leader?

How can they get into a top-tier engineering program if they’re on the quieter side as an underclassman? And something that I think is really important to point out is you’re able to be a leader and show impact without being the loudest person in the room and without having to be student body president. When we think about the extensive work that we do with these passion projects, especially for engineering students, you’re showing impact not just on systems, but on people too. And that’s a really important component of this pathway— is that impact.

For Prepory, we support students at every stage of the passion project. It’s end-to-end guidance, and it goes from brainstorming and ideation— not just a good idea, but one that’s actually sustainable and it’s authentic, like you said. Not just unique, but authentic. It’s true to who you are. You clearly enjoy it, and it’s clear to admissions.

But in terms of how you are going to sustain it, we work with you and walk with you step by step and break it into small and manageable pieces. But on top of that, we think about how do you talk about it? How do you write about it? How do you interview them? These are all important components of displaying on your profile.

JAMES: Yeah. No. That’s a great example, and I think it leads really well into this concept of— yeah. And that is one of the best parts, I think, of the activities aspect of admissions, at least for me in this coaching, is getting to sit with students and say, okay. What do you love to do?

Like, what gives you energy? What gives you sort of that spark where you could talk about it for three hours and you’re worried most people would think you’re weird, but if you had somebody listening, you’d be like, oh, let’s go. Yes. That is the kind of curiosity. That’s the kind of passion that universities are looking for.

You’ll often hear this. And if you’re early on in the cycle, if you’re a freshman or 8th grader or maybe a parent who— this is your first kid and you haven’t had to think about this— the why. What is your why? I know that that phrase gets used a lot, but, really, this whole exercise of applying to college admissions, especially to something as competitive as engineering, this whole exercise is showing these human beings, these admissions officers, that you can craft— that you have the ability to craft a vision for how you might want your life to be and what kind of life you might want to live, how you might want to make an impact on the world. Remember that nobody’s holding you to— if you say you want to do, you know, some very specific niche nuclear engineering problem for the rest of your life in your application, if you decide to change your mind in college, which— that’s kind of what college is for, is to figure things out a little bit more— no one’s going to look back at your admissions application and say, hold on.

Hold on. You said you were going to do this specific thing. The point here is to craft a vision and show across these different areas— your grades and the coursework you choose, you know, AP, IB, all great— that you’re challenging yourself in many areas academically, that you are getting involved and spending your time, that you’re writing with introspection. All of that can add up to this idea of intellectual curiosity that shows that you are doing more than just following the line on the ground that says that this is what I have to do to get into a good school, which will then get me into a good career, which then will probably mean I have a good life. Right?

Because I’m making a lot of money there. I should be happy. That’s not how it goes. You have to be intentional about it. So in terms of intellectual curiosity, having different organizations and different activities that show what it is you love and why can really be a difference-maker and make you more authentic, especially when it comes to things like summer.

You know, summer programs are great. There’s some very selective ones. RSI, MITES— those are two from MIT. Conducting research, creating your own passion project or community project. But just utilizing your summer to show this intellectual curiosity, that’s one of the best ways to do it.

And it’s not on here, but definitely look into part-time jobs. If you’ve not thought about this, this is such a slept-on piece of college admissions. Part-time jobs are amazing. Parents, I’m assuming many, if not all of you, work in some capacity. Oh my gosh.

The things you learn and show in a job— the values that you build and have and have to display— are innumerable. You know, responsibility, leadership, dedication, teamwork, collaboration. So part-time jobs, highly, highly encouraged— and just for life, but also for engineering admissions. This is just a little graph kinda looking at the makeup of our students. I kinda put engineering and computer science.

These can often go together because so many CS programs are in the college of engineering. But we are looking at about a fifth, if not almost to a quarter of our students, are specifically looking at engineering of some kind, and that is only growing every year. So this is definitely something that we are big nerds for, myself included, but it is something that we are very proud of as well for the outcomes. We really are wanting students to see that they are worthy of these top universities, and we help them build that story not only on page, but within themselves as well as we work with them throughout whatever year you might be, 8th grade all the way up through seniors. Every engineering student’s favorite topic— the essay.

Yeah.

ALISON: Let’s get into it.

JAMES: Let’s get into it. There’s a lot to go over here. And like I said, we’re going to get you guys out. We’re going to get you to destination here in about ten minutes or so. I feel like I’m a little bit of a pilot sometimes when I do this because I’ve talked about engineering so much.

But just really want you guys to know because I— I love this— I’m so passionate about this aspect of engineering, college admissions, and engineering. I’ll stay on after as well for some extra questions. We’ll give a little bit of extra time for the Q&A. If you don’t see your question getting answered right now, please keep putting those questions in the Q&A if you have them. But for now, my favorite part of the engineering applicants, but often engineering applicants’ least favorite part— the essays.

For those that don’t know, before I go to this next slide, the essays for university admissions are often divided into two different types. There is a personal statement. If you’re applying through the Common Application, which is the most common application— no pun intended— across the country here in the States. About a thousand universities use the Common App. There’s a 650-word Common App personal statement that you will write.

There are also supplemental essays. These can vary from university to university. Sometimes they have one or two. Sometimes if you’re Stanford, you have nine— or eight or nine. So it really does depend, and those can range anywhere from 50 words to 350 words.

The University of California— you use one application, the UC application. They have four Personal Insight Questions, or PIQs, that you’ll answer, very similar to the Common App personal statement prompts. You have to pick four from a list of eight. So all I’m saying here— you don’t have to worry about these numbers. All I’m saying is that there’s a good amount of writing that you might have to do, and you should not fear that.

Hopefully, after these next ten minutes or so, I’m going to help illuminate how we do what we do with students and how we help them to understand that narrative writing and writing about who you are, what’s important to you, and what kind of impact you want to make on the world are so much better at showing you as a person on the page than just the technical expertise. And one of the best ways to do that is to cut out all the topics that you should probably try to avoid. Now this is not an exhaustive list, and some of these are tongue-in-cheek, specifically the first one, because there is a way to write about most all of these in a positive way. And, again, we could spend a whole webinar, just the— what is it?— 400 of us just here in this little room talking about essays and how to write them. But some big things to avoid for engineering students.

First of all, I love LEGOs. Y’all can’t see it, but I have a little bench behind my desk here with every LEGO botanical set. I’m a huge LEGO fan.

However— and I know it got a lot of you interested in engineering potentially if you’re doing FIRST Robotics or if you had LEGO Mindstorms back in the day. They’re coming out with a new smart brick this year. There’s a lot of ways in which engineering and LEGOs are tied, but a lot of people write about it. And so often, it doesn’t help to reveal you as a person underneath that interest. Some of these other ones, you know, maybe an Eagle Scout project if you’re in scouts, or the details, the nitty-gritty details of coding an app, or some technical research that you’re doing, a robotics competition and how it went and how you lost junior year— but— or sophomore year and then came back and won junior year, mission trips sometimes, sports injuries, trauma dumping— which, if you haven’t heard that phrase, is essentially talking about something incredibly hard.

A lot of students think that they need to have some incredibly hard thing that has happened to them in life to stand out in an essay— very much not true. And oftentimes, if you let that traumatic event, you know, death in the family, you moved, you got injured, you got sick— if you let that be the star of the essay, it’s likely going to get skimmed because we read a lot of hard things as admissions officers. We sit with students in a lot of really tough places as we read over them, but we want to get a sense of who they are in spite of that trauma, despite that trauma. So there are so many things to go into with this. But, really, at the end of the day, what you should remember is that we are trying to get a sense of you as a person, and we want to understand through your writing, especially, what your voice sounds like.

One test that I often employ— I run a lot of our review processes here at Prepory where we oversee— you know, we essentially review all of our seniors before they ever hit submit. We do a holistic review as if they were getting reviewed by an admissions office. I often give the feedback of what I call the “coffee shop test,” which is if you read your essay word for word out loud to a friendly stranger, like an AO, at a cafe over a cup of coffee or tea— if you’re reading that essay word for word, does it sound like you are talking and telling a story, or does it sound like you’re giving a book report or giving a TED Talk? Because if it’s the latter, they’re probably going to slow-walk their way away from the table just out of awkwardness. We want you to be able to speak like people in these essays.

And one of the most common pitfalls— I think the very first one here— is focusing on the experience itself, the details of the story. First, I did this, then this, then this, then this. That’s not the point. There are some basic storytelling elements that have to come with, you know, chronological order, but you should be making sure that whatever you write about, you’re demonstrating very clearly and showing very clearly why it matters, not just that you did it. The technical jargon— y’all, I know you guys combined are so much more incredibly intelligent than I am, and I’m in awe.

Every time I’m working with a STEM student, I’m in awe of how lost I am when I ask them to not hold anything back and tell me everything they’re doing. But remember who you’re writing for. You’re writing for people. And often people who are not trying to prove you missed this one little formula or this one little tenet of computer science wrong. They want to get a sense of you as a person.

Right. You’re really trying to give a sense of who you are, not just in this passion of engineering, but beyond that as well. I want to give you guys a quick example of this. We’re going to kinda move through some of these. But when I did writing workshops for Purdue, I would often put up two essays on the screen.

One of them was 650 words exactly, and the other one was maybe around 500 words or so. And both related to why that student wanted to go to Mars and be an aerospace engineer. The first one, 650 words, the most technically jargon-y sort of essay. I mean, I felt like I was reading a Wikipedia page on thrust-to-weight ratio and, you know, things about terraforming and all these great things I’m personally interested in, but didn’t give me any sense at all about the student— talking about how hard it would be to get to Mars and why we should go. The other one started with the phrase, “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to dig holes.”

Would always get in trouble for digging in my mom’s garden in the backyard, the local sandbox. Didn’t matter. I always loved digging holes, which led me to geology and how, you know, geology, when you study rocks and you study different areas, is actually storytelling. You’re learning the story and the history of that area. And what better story to tell than that of another planet like Mars and diving into geology as a work into that, for wanting to go?

And that second one, even though it was much shorter, it was so much more real. Like, I still remember it to this day. That was probably a decade ago. So really getting a sense of what it is you’re passionate about and who you are— not sounding like AI because you’re being super general or trying to write an academic book report. This is really meant to be more like a journalistic diary, potentially, that just shows who you are, what you value, and why certain things matter to you.

So as for the personal statement— I’ve kinda covered some of this already, but we don’t want this to be about your interest in engineering specifically. There’s a whole essay for that typically at most universities. You can touch upon it a little bit, but don’t make it the point of your essay. This really should highlight your values and show how you move through the world, and that can be about any topic. Some of the best essays I have read have nothing to do with their major.

It has everything to do with what drives them as a human being and the kind of impact they hope to make on the world. That’s what your personal statement is all about. As far as the “why major” essay goes, which is about why do you want to go into your major, that’s also a great question to answer. But, again, you need to bring it back to showing this reader why, not just what you did. And, well, I discovered programming as a kid.

I love making mods in Minecraft. And then from there, I did this thing, and that got me into robotics, and then that got me into this, and so— engineering. I cannot count on a thousand hands how many times I have read that “why major” because that is so common. But, again, going back to the whole digging essay, you know, somebody who has a very specific niche way of looking at it that just feels authentic and shows, oh, okay. I can see exactly how they might want to make an impact on the world?

That is so much more revelatory of why you’re pursuing this very strenuous and difficult program. This isn’t necessarily an essay you write. None of you should be writing your own letters of recommendation. So if you are, stop it. That’s not it.

But, typically, just some general advice as a STEM student applying to engineering universities. We do recommend getting a junior year— we often suggest junior year. It can be maybe a sophomore year teacher, but, generally, junior year or senior year is when you are having more advanced classes depending on how your school works. So, yes, junior year STEM teacher makes total sense.

Highly recommend junior year humanities or social science teacher as well because— or really any teacher who’s— it could be a language if you’re doing a world language. Any teacher who has seen you struggle. I know I’ve given a lot of, you know, high-level— you need to have high-level grades and high-level scores and impact in different organizations and different activities. But you’re not perfect, and nobody’s expecting you to be perfect. And if you have a teacher or a trusted adviser or somebody, a mentor, research supervisor, who’s able to talk about you not getting it right and failing and still persisting and going on, that is, again, so much more revelatory of you as a person than just, yep.

She’s really good at math. She’s got an A+ in my class all year. She’s doing great. Like, they know that from the grades. Find somebody who knows you well, who can speak about some of those other values outside of what’s already being shown.

Before I go to this final slide here, I just want to say that as you’re looking at your application— again, this is one of the joys of getting to do this work. I came to this side of the desk to be able to do what we’re doing at Prepory. One of the things I want you to think about is you should construct your application like a book. Every chapter should flow well together. But if you’re suddenly halfway through the book and chapter two comes up again, you’re going to skip over it.

If you talk heavily about something in one area, don’t repeat and talk heavily about that thing in another area. And letters of recommendation, I think, is one of those where if you have a teacher who’s writing a letter of recommendation for you, make sure that you have a diverse set of other pieces to your puzzle through your activities and your grades and your transcript and your writing. Make sure that all of these pieces are fitting together and not just saying the same thing over and over again. So overall, here, as we kinda come down, I’ve covered a lot. There’s a lot of great questions that I’m very excited to get into.

These are some of the key takeaways. And, hopefully, again, these all address or kind of relate to the three main legs of the three-legged stool of admissions— the academics, the activities, and the writing. You should show yourself as an individual. I know it’s very tempting, especially for engineering and STEM students, to use AI programs to write their essays. I didn’t talk about this before, because, again, I think I’m now up to, like, four separate webinars that we can have— AI definitely being one of them.

Overall, it’s not even just the ethical side. Like, we talk to our students all the time about AI, and there are some fantastic uses for AI, especially when it comes to doing research and compiling large datasets. But finding your voice with AI, especially as a high schooler, is just near impossible. And it comes off as a general, well-written, but very sterile, the-color-gray, generalized middle-of-the-road essay that sure is near the word limit and helps you get it done fast because you waited until a week before the deadline, but it doesn’t help to show you and what drives you. So highlighting your individuality, being brave to start things if you don’t see them elsewhere, and being brave enough to fail and try something in engineering and then realize, oh, this isn’t it, because it can lead you to the thing that you actually do want to pursue.

And having passion-based activities, whether they are engineering or non-engineering related— you should have a, hopefully, a mix of both. You know, showing those communication and critical thinking skills through some of your humanities— those are all on top of the sort of just necessary strong academics. Those are all things that are absolutely going to help you all stand out in the admissions process. So— That’s right. We’re at 7:55 here local time Eastern, fifty-five after the hour.

So it’s about forty-five, fifty minutes. I want to close out here with Alison, please.

ALISON: Alright. With that said, James, really, really excellent and very helpful insights. With that said, let’s talk a little bit about how Prepory can help you get admitted. We discussed a good portion of the last couple of slides on your passion projects, your impact, your leadership. How you talk about your activities, your profile is very, very important.

And I want to point something out. It’s one of my favorite components of Prepory at every single level— is that you are going to have unlimited writing support from our writing specialist team. This matters a lot for summer program applications, your essays, your scholarship essays, your resumes, and even down to the written aspects of the passion project. It really matters. And we talk about this a lot, but being authentic and humanizing yourself within an engineering pathway is very, very important.

You will have hour-long one-on-one advising sessions with your dedicated college admissions coach, who is an expert in this industry and truly knows the ins and outs of this field and your pathway. They are dedicated to you, and you’ll also have offline ongoing guidance via text and email in between every single video session. For mom and dad, as well as family guardians, you will have parent check-ins. That matters a lot because— while it’s the first time for students to go through this process, or if you have an older sibling who maybe went through it a couple years ago, we want to keep you up to date on this process as well. You will have thorough parent notes after every single session and access to see everything that’s going on and organized through the GradBoom platform.

You’ll have our full team support, which includes our admissions team coming from predominantly Ivy League schools, and understanding institutional fit is very, very important. For scholarships, you’re also going to want to think about— in addition to our admissions team committee reviews, we have interview specialists that can really help you walk through every component of what is expected of you— for part-time jobs as well, for internships, for highly competitive summer programs. Interviews are going to come up, and we want to support you with that. Our program aims to be comprehensive, whether you begin with us as a 9th grader, 10th grader, 11th grader, or you are a senior—

JAMES: —month before application.

ALISON: That’s right. We want to see you as soon as possible, and I encourage you all to book your free one-on-one strategy session with me or a member of my team so we can really hit the ground running. And we’re going to be answering your questions within the Q&A. With that said, we have a couple, and I’m going to go ahead and kick us off.

I encourage you first, of course, scan that QR code, book your— Yeah. —consultation. But with that said, James, I’m going to throw some out there to you with the time we have left.

JAMES: Yeah. I just want to say before you do, thank you all for coming. I know we’re two minutes here before our time. And just because there’s obviously so much to cover, I’m already seeing, like, some of the great questions coming down the pipeline. If you guys are able to stay, we’re going to be sticking around.

If not, thank you so much for being here. Alison, is there a recording of this session?

ALISON: Yes. There is. There is a recording of this session. You will have it, and we are really excited for you to review it. And we’re also excited to meet you face to face.

You all ask very thoughtful questions. Thank you for joining us, and we’re excited to answer your questions. So—

JAMES: Come talk to us. If you have very specific questions that are very, very, very, very specific to your situation, that is the perfect reason to schedule an IC as well. We’ll do our best to answer it here, but it might just be better in that one-on-one conversation. So with that, please, Alison, take us away.

ALISON: Alright. So, this one came up. When you mentioned “friends don’t let friends take AP Stat,” this was a question that came up. And—

JAMES: Yeah. Yeah.

ALISON: I wanted to ask you again to clarify it for our listeners. What does that mean?

JAMES: Yes. That is a great question. So sometimes there are just certain— what I would love for you all to understand is that for people who are doing specifically engineering review, and admissions officers everywhere, we are reading thousands of applications in a season, sometimes a hundred in a day. And we start to see these trends that are happening very quickly in a season. And specifically with engineering students, they’re sometimes— depending on what math they’re in.

Again, it could kinda depend. There’s certain factors, like, depending on their math teacher that teaches calculus. Some might think that taking AP Stat as sort of a fallback still allows them to show another level of math in senior year or in junior year. And to that, I just say it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek euphemism within the world. It’s basically saying, if you are serious about engineering or CS, you need to have a calculus foundation.

You absolutely need to have a calculus foundation. If all you can do is get up to Calc AB, which is college Calculus 1 spread out over a year, okay. Like, that’s— if that is the best you can do, great. Crush it. Go get that A.

If you can get up to something higher like BC, which is Calculus 1 and 2 kind of spread out over a year, or higher than that, then that is what we recommend. So AP Stat is a fantastic class. I’m not trying to downplay that. It’s just if you’re really serious about engineering or CS, we would not recommend that it take the place of calculus if that is the option that you have, if you have the option between the two.

ALISON: That’s right. And, you know, I think that when we think about course enrollments. You want to take the right things at the right time. You know? Yeah.

Don’t stack APs really meaninglessly. And you also don’t want to sacrifice your GPA for course rigor alone. You’re also thinking about your school’s profile. Does your school allow certain APs? Are you expected to make use of supplemental rigor?

These are all things that we think about at Prepory and really developing not just a plan for next year, but the remainder of high school. And like you said, James, it’s important to think about not just getting into college, but how you go to college. What is your plan going to be? How are—

JAMES: Yeah.

ALISON: —you going to be the best possible applicant in your pool? And— Yeah. You’re going to be stacked up against your peers, and many of you are coming from highly competitive locations.

JAMES: Right. What I— and this might cover quite a few of the academic questions. I see a lot of them pouring in about, should I take this? Should I take that? But, really, you know, should you get a B in an AP or an A in a regular class?

If you’re really targeting one of these top universities, an A in the AP is what we would recommend. You don’t have to take every single AP or IB course or dual enrollment course under the sun, but you really should be challenging yourself, especially in math and science, if you’re applying to a top engineering program. And it is all in an effort to prepare you for the rigors of college. These universities want to make sure that the students they admit are the ones that are going to be here— that are going to be there for four years and not necessarily be inundated or underwater with the curriculum. So calculus, highly recommend over Stat for engineering if there’s— Totally.

Yeah. What else we got?

ALISON: We got a couple ones. We’re seeing things like, why should I avoid an Eagle Scout project that takes me a hundred to two hundred hours? Can you speak a little bit more about— or even when you think about sports, is being a varsity athlete a disadvantage to my profile? Can you talk a little bit more about the things that may be taking a lot of time and sacrificing other important components of the profile? In what instances would you caution students that are thinking about this and they’re thinking about their activities?

JAMES: Again, this is going to be my made-up webinar 2.0 with just us, all of us here, talking specifically about essays because I would love to get into the specifics. I’m very glad you asked this, though, whoever that was or the several of you who asked. The reason why I would suggest not writing about an Eagle Scout project is, number one, with the amount of time that these people have to read your applications, which is often minutes, then if they see that it’s about an Eagle Scout or a LEGO, especially for a prospective engineering applicant, they’re going to skim it. They’re likely going to skim it because they see so many of them. And the reason why they’re going to skim it and the reason why so many people write about it is for that exact thing that this writer said— is that it takes up a lot of time, or it is a very big passion.

I saw somebody in the chat— I love my nerds here, and I’m also a big nerd— somebody who’s been into Beyblades, and, like, that’s my biggest interest. Should I talk about that? It’s that you’re focusing too much on the what you did, and you are so much more than just simply what you have done.

They’re going to see that you spent however many hours on your— because, hopefully, you’re putting it in your description. You’re working with a coach to put it in your description in your activity section. But then to, again, talk about just how long it took and everything you did without revealing the deeper aspects of who you are— there’s a way to write about that that is very compelling. The problem is that so many people don’t, and so you run the risk of admissions officers or application readers just kind of thinking, oh, okay. Engineering student, here’s another Eagle Scout project.

Here’s another LEGO essay, and they might skim it. So that’s why— if you’re— here’s a general tip for all of you. Use the experience or the topic, whatever you choose for your essays for the personal statement— use that as a vehicle for deeper introspection. Right? The fact that you did the Eagle Scout project should be the least interesting thing in your personal statement.

ALISON: That’s right.

JAMES: If that makes sense. It’s focusing on— it takes the focus away from you and makes the event or the sports injury or the sport you did the star of the show when you show just how much you’ve done in it. It doesn’t necessarily say anything about you. Yeah.

ALISON: We agree. That was really well said. And, you know, we’re seeing different questions, of course, about AP classes. Would dual enrollment classes be better or worse for applications? And something that, of course, we’re touching on— is I want to share that for all of you who haven’t yet booked your free consultation.

I encourage you— book with me and members of my team, and we’ll talk more about your specific profile in general. But with that said, James, I have a feeling of what you might respond to this. But when we’re thinking about— from your perspective as an admissions expert, what do you think when you see dual enrollment classes being better or worse for applications in comparison to APs?

JAMES: It’s— I use this word a lot. Intentionality is big in the admissions process. We want to see intentionality across the themes of your application, across the narratives that you’re talking about in your writing, in your essays. But we also want to see intentionality with you challenging yourself, taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to you by your high school or possibly exceeding it, if possible.

And some schools— I mean, we have— I worked— I’m based in Indiana. I’m based here in Indianapolis. We have a lot of rural students that were applying to Purdue. And a lot of those rural schools don’t have a ton of APs. They might have three.

So if a student took three APs, they took the most rigorous things they could, or they might have a dual enrollment plan with a local community college, a local college, and that was their way of challenging themselves. Universities love to see dual enrollment. They want to see that you’re challenging yourself. Just, again, going back to what I had said before about Project Lead the Way— it matters that you are taking the most advanced core classes in high school. The extra sort of supplemental coursework, like Project Lead the Way or anything else that is engineering-focused— if that’s all you’re taking is dual enrollment, that might not be as competitive.

But if you’re taking a dual enrollment calculus course or a dual enrollment physics course, that would be something that shows you’re trying to go above and beyond and really prepare yourself for the rigors of these top engineering programs.

ALISON: That’s right. Of course, very insightful as always. There was definitely a question in our audience that asked, did you say focus more on why it matters rather than just simply listing what you did in the essays? What do you feel is most important within your essays?

JAMES: It all comes back to why it matters. You know? So this may sound— I’ll explain this very briefly, but it may sound harsh. But sometimes, and we go over— I do this in my coaching all the time here at Prepory, and our coaches do this as well— where we’ll use the phrase “so what” in our editing and our feedback. Always.

And that’s not to be a jerk. That’s not to be like, ah, so what? Who cares? But it’s to highlight the reality that when you’re reading this many applications in a day as an AO and you have all of these applications to get through in a relatively short amount of time, you do become an expert at getting the gist of what is being said in an essay. You’re not reading every word extremely carefully and thinking about the exquisite sentence structure.

You’re trying to get a sense of, like, okay. So what? Why does this matter to help me understand who this person I’m sitting across from is? So just explaining the details of an Eagle Scout project— because that was mentioned before— I would read all that and be like, okay. So what?

Why does that matter? Like, there’s a lot of people who do incredible Eagle Scout projects. I only got up to Webelos, which is a much lower rank in Boy Scouts. So I did not do an Eagle Scout project, but I know how much time it takes. Yep.

But it doesn’t tell me anything about you specifically. Why does that matter in helping me understand the deeper values that you’re coming to my campus with and giving me some kind of indication, vision of you walking around the same halls that I do on my campus and making a positive impact there. So that’s why it matters to go much deeper into that “why” than just here’s what I did and all the steps. Be impressed.

ALISON: Totally right. And great answer to that. Of course. We’re getting some unique questions about. Different students, different student profiles, different experiences.

There are some questions about ADHD. There are other questions thinking about when do we contextualize different grades, different grade outcomes, different test scores. And this often comes up a lot during initial consultations too. Gotcha. Because, of course, we work with so many students, over 14,000 students.

And we want to make sure that we are talking about you and your case specifically and uniquely during your consultations. But from your perspective, James, when are you thinking about students that for one reason or another have a low test score or have a low grade in a specific course because they ran out of time on exams.

When and how do we think about those things? Do you talk about them?

JAMES: Great question. Early. Talk about them earlier? Yes. You talk about them, but it depends on where and how.

I’ve seen a couple of the questions coming in talking about ADHD specifically, and that’s something very near and dear to my heart because I also have ADHD and have since I was a kid. So I’m seeing a lot of the comments and thinking, oh, I’m quite familiar with that. Yeah. When it comes to something like that, whether it’s dyslexia or dysgraphia or ADHD or anxiety or if there’s some sort of neuroatypical challenge that you have been facing or that gives context on something like a low score or lower grade, absolutely tell us about that. The place to do that is in the additional info section.

They now have two additional info sections— two additional info questions that you can answer just giving general context for your lived experience. If there was something like a challenge, maybe ADHD, the goal of that section is not to excuse a bad grade. Never. It’s never to excuse. It’s to explain and expand upon the context of what happened.

I know— just— it wasn’t necessarily ADHD, but sometimes I would see great grades freshman year on an applicant, great grades sophomore year, increasing the rigor, again, straight A’s, and then, you know, mostly B’s and a couple of C’s first semester junior year. And nine times out of ten, I would go right to the additional info section and see something written about, I got into an accident, or we had to move, or mom passed away, or I got diagnosed with something, or had a challenge in my life. So giving that context— there is a place for it. It’s the additional information section. But, again, I want to stress the importance of— it is about explaining and giving context, not excusing anything.

Because we’re going to see the grades. We’re going to see the scores. If we have no context to help us understand, then, you know, we’re not going to know. We’re not going to be able to make a value judgment.

ALISON: That’s absolutely right. And, you know, we’ll wrap up with— Yeah. A final question or so with a quick note from me at the end about—

JAMES: Awesome. Rapid fire— if we can. Let’s—

ALISON: do it. That’s right. Let’s think about— with a school like MIT, obviously, some programs of theirs are a bit more impactful on student profiles than others. How much would you say an MIT student needs to be participating in during the summertime as opposed to the school year? What are some different things that you look for given that you’ve provided so much feedback for so many students at Prepory that have been accepted into top-tier programs like this?

What would be your advice on these types of programs?

JAMES: You’re talking specifically about the summer programs like MITES or RSI— things at MIT.

ALISON: Yes.

JAMES: Those— so those are obviously very— for those that might not know, very competitive summer programs. They often have a research component to them where you’re working specifically at MIT, and they are extremely competitive to get into. I mean, single-digit, if not lower, acceptance rates. And those can be incredible activities and incredible experiences that help you understand yourself better and your place in the world of engineering. But just as importantly, you could be working and doing research locally at a local community or local college by reaching out to a professor.

You know, one of the things I’m working on right now with some students is reaching out to professors to talk to them about research opportunities. It’s not just about getting into these big brand-name programs. Those can be incredibly beneficial to you as a student, and they are obviously a feather in your cap to put on. But you can spend your time just as wisely being intentional about using summer to work and grow your ability to work in an environment and also to maybe conduct research by reaching out to a ton of professors in your area or getting a big project or initiative off the ground that is making an impact in your local community. There are quite a few buckets that you can spend your summer doing.

And one of them, of course, is these very competitive programs like MIT, but there’s a lot of those programs out there that we refer to as “pay to play” where the sole goal is to just get something listed on your activity list. Yep. But then there’s not a lot built underneath it. It’s very hard to talk about it because the whole goal of it was just to go, and, like, I’m on this campus. It’s got an impressive-sounding name, but I’m not necessarily learning with intentionality.

It’s very fun, but I’m not really, you know, qualitatively growing in a lot of ways. I’m just taking some fun classes and meeting some people and getting to experience the campus, which is early on— 8th grade, 9th grade, or 10th grade even— that can be a really great experience to help you understand what kind of programs or career paths you might want to pursue. But I would say, if I’m understanding the question correctly, I would say that those kinds of MIT programs over the summer— they are not required to help you get into top programs. Okay. Many of the students that I have worked with have not gotten into those and gotten into incredible schools for engineering.

ALISON: And it’s all about making sure that you are participating in the most worthwhile opportunities within a landscape where there’s so many non-impactful pay-to-play programs. And we provide you a lot of research and recommendations for the best things to be a part of at your grade level within your stage of admissions. That’s an important part of working with Prepory. You’re not expected to do the research on your own. We’re an expert team that’s here to guide you.

This is one of many topics that we would love to cover together during your free strategy consultation. I encourage all of you who are truly serious about this pathway to book a free consultation with me or another expert member of my team to get your questions answered and receive a lot of guidance, and we want to help you and enhance your probabilities of acceptance at these top-tier schools as much as possible, and we’re excited to meet you.

JAMES: Yeah. We are so excited. Thank you all for being here tonight. We’re going to probably end it there just because we could probably go another hour. If you did not get your question answered, please don’t take it personally.

It was definitely not us ignoring it. Reach out to us. Scan this QR code— Yes. —and have an initial conversation with us. We really want to meet you, and we can’t wait to kind of help talk about how, especially, Prepory can help you— or if you’re a parent, your student— really grow to become the best version of themselves to not only succeed in getting into a college that is incredibly impactful and well-known, but also to graduate successfully and have an incredibly impactful life.

That is really the core of what we do. So thank you all for joining us. I hope this was informative. Reach out, book an IC, and we’ll talk to you all soon.