How Did InGenius Prep Help?

Candidacy Building: 

• Counselor Pairing: After getting to know Student J’s ambitions, personality, and working style, we paired her her a Former Admissions Officer and Graduate Coach.
  • Meeting Agendas: Prior to each meeting, Student J’s Graduate Coach sent agendas to keep their discussions on track, and ensure they covered all objectives and recent assignments.
  • Meeting Notes: Following each session, Student J’s Graduate Coach sent notes which summarized what they accomplished, goals for the next meeting, as well as assignments for both Student J and her counselor. These reports helped make sure that Student J moved forward productively.
  • Getting to Know You Exercises: To start building their relationship, Student J’s Graduate Coach and Former Admissions Officer wanted to learn more about Student J’s interests and background. Their first assignments included having Student J take a personality test, receiving more information about her school, seeing her writing skills, and understanding all of her extracurriculars.
• Extracurricular Enhancement Plan: Student J's counselors pushed her to reflect on which topics within the social sciences appealed to her most. Student J’s passion for immigration issues became clear. Rather than have Student J pick either social science or computer science, her counselors advised her to combine both interests and engage in digital humanities to study immigration. Student J’s counselors created an extracurricular plan to guide their work together, establishing the goal of creating a digital humanities project that shares immigrant stories. This would showcase her primary interests in a way that would stand out from other high schoolers.
• Volunteer Work:
  • Researching Opportunities: To develop Student J's interest in immigration, her counselors wanted her to gain hands-on volunteer experience in the field. They created a bank of opportunities for Student J to pursue, which included a summary of each group's work, volunteer application details, as well as contact information for the organizations.
  • Narrowing Down Options: As Student J learned more about the volunteer options, she and her Graduate Coach discussed the pros and cons for each opportunity. They would unpack every organization’s mission, the responsibilities for the various roles, and Student J’s personal preferences to ensure she would be spending her time strategically.
  • Volunteering Outcome: In the end, Student J volunteered with an Immigrant Resource Center and highlighted this experience on her Common App.
• Oral History / Digital Humanities Certifications:
  • Certification Research: As Student J began her digital humanities project, she and her counselors had thoughtful discussions on what she hoped to achieve and how she could accomplish her goals. Her counselors advised that she earn an oral history certification. While getting certified wasn’t essential for This would help her become an expert in the field. Her counselors provided a list of oral history programs that would help her get certified, including the program details and dates for Student J to keep in mind.
  • Certifications Outcome: In the end, Student J completed oral history certifications from Harvard and Baylor! These showcased her knowledge and were later featured prominently on Student J’s activities list.
• Leadership Incubator:
  • Nomination Process: Because of the initiative Student J showed with her
    volunteer work and oral history certifications, her counselors thought that she was a strong fit for our Leadership Incubator — a program that selects high-achieving Candidacy Building students to work on capstone projects. This would be a great way for Student J to move her digital humanities project forward alongside her peers.
  • Outcome: After the nomination and interview process, Student J was admitted to the Leadership Incubator! The assignments and discussions throughout the program allowed Student J to work on interviewing immigrants in her local community. She would then share their stories on a digital platform.
• Capstone Project:
  • Reading Resources: As Student J compiled interviews for her capstone project, her counselors sent readings to help contextualize her work.
  • Website Logistics: During Student J’s website launch, her Graduate Coach walked through all of the logistics with her, including website domains, layouts, and more.
  • Networking: To assist with the technical side of her project, Student J's team connected her with another InGenius student with similar interests. His coding expertise helped Student J develop her website!
  • Capstone Project Outcome: By the time Student J applied, she had completed her extracurricular plan and developed her own website to share collections of immigrant stories. This was the first experience listed on her Activities List, and she shared the website link with admissions officers!
• Academic Profile Development: In addition to developing Student J's extracurricular profile, her counselors wanted to make sure she was making strategic choices from an academic standpoint. Because Student J was not at the top of her class,  this guidance was particularly important.
  • Course Selection: When it came time for Student J to pick classes for the coming year, her Former Admissions Officer always provided an analysis of the choices, making sure that Student J enrolled in courses that admissions officers like to see and that aligned with her interests.
  • SAT Planning: As student J considered whether or not she should take both the SAT and ACT, her Graduate Coach and Former Admissions Officer suggested taking practice tests to help determine which test best suited her.
• School List Exploration: 
  • School List Questionnaire: During Student J’s junior year, her team wanted to consider more actively what schools would be the best fit for her. Student J’s counselors assigned a school list questionnaire so that they could get a sense of her preferences and must-haves for colleges on her list.
  • College Visits: Student J’s family planned to take a road trip over the summer for visiting colleges. Her Graduate Coach wanted to maximize the opportunity and created an in-depth guide with profiles for each school on Student J’s route. Every section provided detailed information on each college’s academic profile, campus environment, curriculum, and more.

Application Counseling: 

• Timeline Creation: As Student J completed her digital humanities project and started her college applications, her counselors made a checklist to ensure she stayed on track with assignments.
• Curriculum Through Google Folders: To keep their college application work organized, her Graduate Coach created folders for each component, which contained curriculum to guide Student J’s work. They would also use these folders to keep track of all drafts throughout the process.
• Application Counseling Spreadsheet: After every meeting with Student J, her Graduate Coach continued to provide notes on Student J’s progress in an Application Counseling spreadsheet. This allowed the entire team to stay updated on Student J’s status with each aspect of the admissions process.
• Application Persona: 
  • Student Reflection: Throughout Candidacy Building, Student J and her team worked to craft a clear angle in digital humanities that would be at the heart of her Application Persona: the central theme that would tie together each application component. When it came time to finalize this theme, Student J’s counselors had her reflect on additional characteristics that she wanted to be evident throughout her application.  
  • Former Admissions Officer Strategy: Keeping in mind Student J’s reflections and Candidacy Building work, Student J’s Former Admissions Officer conceptualized a persona that focused on how she explored intersections of STEM and humanities throughout her pursuits. Emphasizing this combination focused Student J’s application theme, while also providing flexibility for applying to both engineering and liberal arts programs.
• School Research: As Student J and her team put together her school list, they compiled a spreadsheet with details like the application due dates, academic thresholds of admitted students, and school-specific statistics from candidates who previously applied from Student J’s school. They used this information to ensure that Student J had a balanced list of reach, target, and safety schools.
• EA/ED Decision: 
  • Selecting a School: When it came time to pick Student J’s early decision school, she was torn between applying ED to UVA and Cornell. While Cornell was Student J’s top choice, her parents were worried about her chances given her ranking within her competitive high school pool. While UVA would have been more in reach for Student J, her team strategized utilizing the ED round to show Student J’s commitment to Cornell – her dream school.
  • Alternate Programs: Student J’s parents wanted to understand if it would be strategic to apply to the College of Human Ecology within Cornell, as that specific program has a higher acceptance rate than Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. Student J’s Former Admissions Officer advised against this, as Student J’s experiences did not align with the Human Ecology program. Not only would the
    College of Arts and Sciences be a better fit for Student J, but her background would not make her competitive for Human Ecology.
  • College and Major Choice: Student J ultimately applied to Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences with the major of Science and Technology Studies. Pursuing a STEM major through a liberal arts lens was a strong match for Student J’s interests.
• Letters of Recommendation: 
  • Curriculum Resources: Since Student J was not at the top of her class, having strong letters of recommendation from her teachers was all the more important. Student J’s counselors provided resources to guide her through writing personalized cover letters to each recommender. Not only would crafting cover letters show Student J’s initiative and professionalism, but it would also help tailor the content of her recommendations to her achievements.
  • Line-by-Line Edits: Student J’s Graduate Coach provided in-line feedback to make Student J’s phrasing clear, and to encourage inclusion of specific details about her extracurriculars and the work she had done in the classroom.
  • Final Cover Letters: The cover letters Student J sent her recommenders were personalized, expressing her gratitude for their time, and outlining characteristics she hoped they could highlight.
• Personal Statement:
  • Brainstorming: Student J was intimidated by the personal statement and was not sure how to begin the writing process. To get the ball rolling, her Graduate Coach sent a series of questions for Student J to answer. Her responses would then serve as inspiration for potential topics. After this reflection, Student J and her team decided that she would write her essay on Cyberpunk (a subgenre of science fiction that often centers around
    strong, female protagonists). Her counselors appreciated the topic, as it would draw upon the connections Student J made between technology and the social sciences in a personal, unique way. Plus, we had never read a Personal Statement on this topic before!
  • Outline: Once the team settled on a topic, Student J and her Graduate Coach got to work creating a thorough outline, which detailed how Student J would open the personal statement, anecdotes she should include, and how long each portion of her essay would be. Creating this outline made sure that Student J’s drafts had a strong foundation.
  • High-Level Feedback: Once Student J had a working draft, her Graduate Coach and Former Admissions Officer provided comments to guide the narrative. They wanted to make sure Student J’s theme captured both sides of her Application Persona in a clear way.
  • Line-by-Line Edits: During the final drafts, Student J’s Graduate Coach provided in-line edits to polish all parts of the essay.
  • Final Version: In the end, Student J’s personal statement featured her Application Persona in a memorable, personal way.
• Activities List:
  • Template: Student J’s counselors wanted to make sure that her activities list captured all of the hard work she had done throughout Candidacy Building. Her Graduate Coach made a template to guide the creation of her descriptions. This template simulated the Common App by outlining all of the content Student J needed to provide, but also gave strategies on the strongest details to include.
  • Line-by-Line Edits: Once Student J had fleshed out each entry, her Graduate Coach provided edits to make the most of the 150 character description limit.
  • Final Version: Student J’s final activities list was impressive and unique, showcased her Candidacy Building achievements, and captured her Application Persona.
• Supplemental Essays:
  • High-Level Feedback: Throughout Student J’s first drafts of her Cornell supplemental essay, her counselors provided comments to strengthen her response. They encouraged her to be more specific by including classes and professors who would help support her goals, and advised her to cut language that could be expressed about any college.
  • Line-by-Line Edits: As always, Student J’s counselors provided in-line feedback for word choice, clarity, and grammar to make her Cornell essay as strong as it could be.
  • Final Version: The final version referenced specific professors, extracurriculars, and resources that would be ideal for Student J’s ambitions, clearly outlining why Cornell was a perfect fit for her.
• Final Review: As Student J prepared to submit her Cornell application, her Former Admissions Officer conducted a Final Review, reading Student J’s application as though she was in the admissions office. She provided polishing edits to ensure everything was all set!