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Archive for: College Admissions Counselors

College Admissions Counselor


A college admissions counselor doesn’t want to read an essay about your trip to India. Why not? Because a college admissions counselor doesn’t make a ton of money and their schedule may not afford them the chance to travel as well. If you’re seventeen years old and you get to travel the world and see the great sights of India, how do you think it’ll make someone older feel when they don’t have this same opportunity? It’s simple psychology. It causes resentment. Do you think a college admissions counselor is likely to go to bat for a candidate they resent or rather one they like? It’s a no-brainer.

College Counselor, Admission Counselor, Admissions Counselor, University Admissions Counselor

Don’t write about your trip to India. A college admissions counselor won’t want to read about it in your college essay.

Similarly, a college admissions counselor doesn’t want to read your essay about sports. Do you know how many applications they have to read? Do you know how many college essays they have to read? Do you think the vast majority of these college essays are original? Do you think most of these essays inspire college admissions counselors and get them to do a happy dance on their desks?  Most college essays submitted to highly selective colleges are just awful. Parents and students may think they know what they should write about, but in our years of experience they are almost always wrong. Writing a college essay about being down three goals to two in the final seconds and scoring the goal that ties it all up at the buzzer is not interesting. And besides it will only hurt your chances for admission because it is trite.

At The Ivy Coach, we help you get inside the head of a college admissions counselor. We don’t suggest that you write what you think a college admissions counselor wants to read. Because they don’t want to read what you think they want to read. We help you come up with ideas that will lead college admissions counselors to say — this is the best essay I’ve read all day. It happens all the time for our students. Know how we know? One student received a rubber-band in the mail from an admissions office. Her college essay was about a rubber-band ball. One student was pulled aside by an admissions officer after being admitted as a transfer and told that his essay was the most powerful they’d ever read in their careers. It’s these kinds of stories that our students experience quite often.

College Admission Counselors


College admission counselors don’t like thick files. In fact, there’s an old saying in college admissions that predates submitting applications online. Yes, there really was a time when students mailed in their applications via snail mail! That old college admissions saying is: “The thicker the file, the thicker the student.” But what does that mean, you ask?

University Admission Counselors, College Counselors, College Admissions Counselors, College Counseling

For college admission counselors, the thicker the file...the thicker the student.

It means that college admission counselors don’t want to read the extra letter of recommendation from your local congressman. They don’t want to watch the DVD of you hitting a flat on the piano when you should have hit a sharp. They don’t want to receive a book that you wrote as a precocious third grader. They don’t want to watch you play tennis in a forty-five minute video. Rather, college admissions counselors will think if you’re so good, how come you’re not on the coach’s radar?

In college admissions, stick to the real estate you are given. If you’re given 500 words in a supplement, don’t try to put in 800. If an essay prompt asks for five adjectives to describe you, don’t give them nine! The playing field is even when you are given 500 words max so don’t try to give yourself an advantage by writing more. It will do just the opposite to your candidacy. Less is more. Be precise. Succinct. Terse. Add whatever SAT word you want here but make sure you stick to the real estate afforded to you. You’d be amazed how many people don’t seem to get this.

College Admissions Counselors


When crafting college applications and college essays, a student’s audience is college admissions counselors. When you watch “Modern Family” on ABC, the target audience is adults 18-49. That’s the key demographic for advertisers. You’re not going to see ads for prune juice during the baby show “Yo Gabba Gabba!” It just wouldn’t make sense. In college admissions, it’s important to keep your audience in mind when you make statements in activity essays, personal statements, or supplemental essays.

University Admissions Counselors, College Counselors, College Admissions Officers, Ivy League Admissions Officers

Knowing your audience can never hurt when crafting college applications. We hope this profile of college admissions counselors helps!

Does this mean that you should write what you think admissions counselors want to hear? Absolutely not! You should be truthful. You should dare to be different. But knowing who is reading and evaluating your college application really can’t hurt and can only help. So we’re going to try to give you a little overview of college admissions counselors in the hope that it’ll give you a better understanding of the person on the other side of the college admissions process at Ivy League colleges.

College admissions counselors at Ivy League colleges tend to have a passion for higher education. Why else would they take jobs that aren’t exactly the highest paying and happen to be quite a bit of work? Politically, they also tend to be liberal…though you will rarely be discriminated against should you write a conservative-leaning essay (since college admissions counselors value diversity above just about all else).

Many of the junior members of the team (aka Assistant Directors of Admission) are fresh out of college. A good portion of them attended the very school that they’re now working at. After all, who could sell a school better to prospective students than an alum who loved attending that school? Many college admissions counselors as you move your way up the ladder have worked at a variety of schools. Typically, admissions counselors have to move around a bit in order to get to that next coveted level.

So, basically, knowing your audience can never hurt! Does that mean you should adjust what you would write so they will like it better? No. You should absolutely not write what you think admissions counselors will want to read. But just as the writer of “High School Musical” will try to get into the headspace of a teenager, it couldn’t hurt to read your essay after it’s written from the point of view of a college admissions counselor to see what they’d think about it.

College Counselor


With so many students and so few high school college counselors, the Western Association of College Admission Counseling (WACAC) has begun a campaign to support college counseling throughout the American west. According to WACAC, “the national student-to-counselor ratio is 477 to 1. California’s is 945 to 1.” With such a dismal ratio, high school students – particularly those in less affluent communities – don’t receive the counseling they need to succeed in the college admissions process. They don’t know where they can seek out scholarships. They don’t know which universities they should consider applying to. And they’re overwhelmed, just like the college counselors in these states with enormously high caseloads.

College Counselors, College Counseling, College Admissions Counselor, College Admissions Counselors, College Admissions Counseling

The shortage of college counselors in states like California is a problem that the Western Association for College Admission Counseling is trying to combat.

With states like California in major budget crises, it doesn’t seem this disproportionate college counselor to student ratio is going to be fixed anytime soon. And that’s why WACAC has released the following video, to get the word out and to encourage Americans living in the west to contact their legislators in support of changing this broken system. Take a look at the video below and let us know your thoughts about the college counselor to student ratio in your school district. Are you or is your child getting the college counseling they need to succeed?

Check out WACAC’s video on the need for more college counselors.

Admissions Counselors Actually Read


According to an article in today’s “New York Times,” “Applications to selective colleges and universities are reaching new heights this year, promising another season of high rejection rates and dashed hopes for many more students:”

“Harvard said Wednesday that it had received a record number of applicants — 27,278 — for its next freshman class, a 19 percent increase over last year. Other campuses reporting double-digit increases included the University of Chicago (18 percent), Amherst College (17 percent), Northwestern University (14 percent) and Dartmouth (10 percent)… Princeton received a record 20,118 applicants, up 6 percent…”

All too often, we hear from a parent who is convinced that with the sheer volume of applications received at highly selective colleges, there is no way that admissions counselors read through every application, but we would say that in 90% of cases, they do. Last February, when an admissions counselor from Duke University wrote in an acceptance letter (two months earlier than usual) to one of The Ivy Coach’s students that she was very impressed about how the student combined his passion for music with his dedication to community service, it was obvious that Duke looked beyond the student’s less than stellar grades and SAT scores, and read his application thoroughly. In four separate essays, without being too boastful or too shy, the student wrote about different aspects of his life, exhibiting his true passions. In a tightly woven fabric, by taking threads from each of his essays, he gave Duke’s admissions counselors a glimpse into his life and submitted an exceptional application.

While grades, courses, and standardized test scores are always going to be significant factors in the admissions process, the other parts of the application (the essays, activity sheet, letters of recommendation, and in some cases, the interview) can sometimes make all the difference between an acceptance and a denial. So in writing those essays, put in your best effort, and count on them being read.

After the Application Is In


If you have written some powerful college essays and personal statements, then it is very likely you have worked for weeks devoting countless hours to writing, researching, rewriting, tossing out, starting all over again, and now, finally your applications have been submitted. So what do you do now? Most students think they can sit back and wait, but if you want the admissions counselor who reads your application to get to know you beyond all this paper, then it’s important to connect with this person.

One of our students called us tonight to say that the assistant admissions director from ______, (one of the most selective colleges in the country) came to his school to speak with prospective applicants. He claims that he and the other seniors in the audience were made to feel inadequate by this person’s overt arrogance. He embarrassed several of them about questions they asked, he ridiculed one student, and questioned another student about a personal issue. To make matters worse, all of this was done in front of the other students and the attending college counselor.

No matter how egotistical your admissions rep. may seem, he / she is all you have right now, so learn to make the best of it. Try to connect with this person. However, test the waters slowly and carefully, making sure not to muddy them up.