What Living Abroad Really Teaches Students
By Lindsey Kundel, Editor in Chief, InGenius Prep Every morning, I watch my son test out new sounds as he begins to speak. For most toddlers, first words are exciting enough, but for him, it’s an extraordinary challenge. At home, he’s surrounded by English, Portuguese, and Italian. Outside our door, he encounters Mandarin Chinese. Learning […]
Best Books for Fall: Remarkable Reads For September’s Busy Admissions Season
By Lindsey Kundel, Editor in Chief, InGenius Prep September is here, and with it comes the real start of admissions season. Seniors are back in classrooms, deadlines loom, and application talk fills family dinner conversations. In this moment of both excitement and stress, it helps to step back and gain perspective from voices who have […]
What Do Colleges Look For?: How to Align Your Application With Institutional Priorities
By Lindsey Kundel, Editor-in-Chief, InGenius Prep When I first started helping students apply to college, I spent hours reading through course catalogs, admissions blogs, and strategic plans—not just to find the “best fit” schools, but to decode what those schools really wanted. It quickly became clear that a college’s values and goals often had little […]
Elite College Admissions Results Without the Elite Price Tag: The Value of Having a College Counselor
How One College Admissions Company is Consistently Besting the Most Elite High Schools in the World By Lindsey Kundel, Editor in Chief, InGenius Prep What If the Best College Counseling Isn’t Where You Think It Is? When I was a senior at a small Catholic high school in Iowa, we had two college counselors for […]
August Reading List: Back-to-School Books for Parents Navigating College Admissions
By Lindsey Kundel, Editor in Chief, InGenius Prep August is a season of sharpened pencils, school schedules, and—for parents of high schoolers—a growing awareness that college deadlines are just around the corner. Whether your student is a rising senior in the thick of essay writing or a younger high schooler just beginning the journey, the […]
Your Brain on ChatGPT: What MIT’s Research Means for College Essays (and How to Use AI Without Losing Yourself)
When I first started working with students on college essays, the most common problem I saw wasn’t a lack of talent. It was a lack of trust—in their own stories, their own voice, their own ability to wrestle with the blank page. Neuroscience shows that the adolescent brain is still under construction well into our […]
When Colleges Shrink: What Students Should Know About Enrollment Decline and Campus Stability
If you’re building your college list, you’ve probably considered rankings, test score ranges, and perhaps even browsed a few glossy admissions brochures. But there’s a quieter shift happening in higher education that most students and families overlook—yet it could significantly impact your college experience. Across the United States, college enrollment is declining. This trend is […]
Why Narratives Stick: The Science of Storytelling
When I was teaching ninth-grade English in Chicago, I had a student who rarely spoke in class—until we reached the personal narrative unit. One afternoon, she turned in a piece that began in the midst of chaos: thunder cracking outside, her mother shouting in the kitchen, her hands trembling as she tried to calm the […]
How to Write the Notre Dame Supplemental Essays
If you are looking for a prestigious university in the Midwest, it is hard to ignore the University of Notre Dame. You might be drawn to the nationally recognized Mendoza College of Business, or inspired by the fact that 80 percent of Notre Dame’s pre-med graduates are accepted to medical school, nearly twice the national […]
How to Write the UC Essays
As the November 1st deadline creeps closer and closer, students scramble to gather all of their early admission materials together. But even once you’ve hit send on your early Common App schools, it’s not over if you’re applying to one or more of the Universities of California. The UC school application filing period begins November […]