Case Study

In this article, you’ll learn how we helped Agnes get into her top-choice university by providing guidance and support with: 1) summer enrichment programs, 2) curriculum advice, 3) SAT prep, 4) published research, 5) and college applications.

Meet Agnes…

We first started working with Agnes when she was starting sophomore year in high school. She was already a strong student (3.8/4.0 GPA), and she was interested in pursuing computer science, ideally at Cornell’s College of Engineering since it’s an Ivy League university and has one of the best engineering programs in the country. But while she was a strong STEM student, she lacked any impressive extracurriculars in the STEM space, so that’s where we initially focused our attention.

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#1: Summer programs…

The first thing we did was help Agnes identify some excellent pre-college summer programs. The benefit of a good summer program is that it allows students to explore an academic area of interest that they couldn’t study in high school, such as cryptology or data science or quantum mechanics. Plus, it gives them a taste of college life, and introduces them to top professors and ambitious students from all around the globe. Simply participating in a summer program is not enough to impress a top university. But it demonstrates intellectual vitality, it can open doors to unique research opportunities, and it can be an important part of all overall personal branding strategy.

#2: Summer program application help…

Admissions to many of the best summer programs are quite competitive, so we helped Agnes prepare applications for five different programs which ranged from extremely competitive to moderately competitive. Some of the top programs like RSI (Research Science Institute at MIT) have less than a 5% acceptance rate — which is basically like applying to Harvard. Most programs require letters of recommendations, a résumé, and several essays, so it’s best to start planning in December since most applications are due in February or March.

We spent considerable time helping Agnes focus her personal narrative — who she is and what she hopes to study — plus strengthening her essays. In the end, she chose to attend Summer@Brown, an immersive four-week program at Brown University where she had the chance to study “Fluid Mechanics Through Hovercraft Physics,” plus work on a capstone team project, and meet new friends.

#3: Course selection…

We also helped Agnes choose her courses for the rest of her high school career. Specifically, we encouraged her to take all AP courses in science and math, so that she could demonstrate proficiency in core STEM subjects. And we made sure that she included courses in both physics and chemistry, since they are requirements for Cornell Engineering.

Since she was struggling a bit in second year Spanish, and didn’t love languages, we told her that it was okay to take standard Spanish instead of AP Spanish. That would free up her study time to focus on her more important STEM subjects, and keep her GPA close to the 4.0 level. And because many top computer science programs recommend taking computer science in high school (which was not offered at her school), we helped her enroll in a dual-enrollment CS course at a local university, where she received course credit, plus a glowing teacher recommendation.

#4: SAT prep…

Agnes knew that she needed a high score on her SAT. And while some universities are still technically test-optional, for students who want to study math, science, computer science or engineering (or even business for that matter), a strong showing on the math portion of the SAT or ACT is imperative. Furthermore, for the Class of 2026, 60% of students who were accepted to Cornell submitted either their SAT (43%) or ACT (17%).

And this figure is even higher at other top schools like Northwestern (78%), Princeton (85%) and Stanford (72%). The simple fact is that the vast majority of accepted students to elite universities (about 4 out of 5) submit their test scores, and you should too. In addition, many top schools that were once top optional (like Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Georgetown, etc.) are now test-required again.

Agnes signed up for our one-on-one SAT tutoring program where she received 18 hours of personalized Zoom instruction spread out over the course of three months, plus individualized homework assignments between sessions. Unlike most SAT prep programs, we were able to schedule our sessions around her busy schedule, and she never had to leave her home. Before our first session, she took an official timed digital SAT practice test and scored a 1380 (720 Math, 660 Verbal).

That’s a fairly strong score for many students, but it’s well below the 1550 threshold you want for top universities. Towards the end of our test prep program, she was regularly scoring between 1530 and 1580 on her practice tests. For her official SAT test, she scored 1560 (800 Math, 760 Verbal), an excellent score by any measure.

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#5: Publishing research…

These days, top high school students are all doing some kind of advanced research with the goal of authoring or co-authoring a published paper. Either they’re joining an existing university project as a research assistant, or they’re devising their own independent research project, which often involves finding a university mentor, such as a published professor or graduate student. In recent years, this has become an integral part of gaining admissions to top college programs, particularly for STEM students.

But even students who plan to major in non-STEM fields like Economics, History, Psychology, Political Science, or Anthropology can benefit tremendously from publishing a research paper in a reputed, peer-reviewed journal or winning a national essay contest. It’s important to note, however, that not all publications are created equal: some have a very low bar for acceptance, and others are extremely selective. The more selective the publication (such as an IEEE), the more it helps your application.   

Because Agnes had an interest in both computer science and social causes, we connected her with student at UC Berkeley’s prestigious MET (Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology) Program, who merged these interests and mentored her through an original research project that explored racial and gender biases in large language models like ChatGPT. Her research project took about 6-9 months and her completed 7-page paper was accepted to MIT’s Undergraduate Research Technology Conference (URTC), which is one of the very best IEEE conferences for technology. 

NOTE: Our intensive research projects are conducted in partnership with third party companies and come with additional fees.

#6 College Applications…

After two consecutive years of candidacy building, Agnes was ready to apply to college. She signed up for our comprehensive 15-College Essay Coaching package in May before her senior year, and we helped her generate a strategic list of 15 Reach, Target and Safety schools; compose her activities and honors lists; refine her personal narrative; solicit glowing teacher and mentor recommendations; prep for college interviews; and edit all of her application essays, including her personal statement and supplemental essays.

While her final college list included an assortment of top-tier universities like MIT, Duke, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, Case Western and Purdue, she decided to apply Early Decision to Cornell to take advantage of the much better admissions odds. (Cornell’s Regular Decision acceptance rate is only 5%, but its Early Decision acceptance rate is closer to 20%.)

And instead of applying directly to Cornell’s College of Engineering — which is extremely difficult to get into for even the best students — she opted to apply to the more flexible, and slightly less competitive, CS program within the College of Arts and Sciences. This would enable her to take all of the same computer science courses, plus pursue a double major in Economics. She was accepted Early Decision.