The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this episode, we perform a case study analysis on acceptance and matriculation data from one of the top private high schools in the U.S. and a well-known Ivy League “feeder school.” We cover the following:

• Most Recent Year and 5-Year Ivy League Matriculations
• Ivy League Acceptance Data for “Unhooked” Students (i.e. non-legacy/donor, recruited athletes, etc)
• Hooked vs. Unhooked Student Acceptance Rates & GPAs

Drawing upon this data, we argue that alluring college track records at many top US high schools—particularly top private high schools—often derive not from the school’s “name brand” but rather from a disproportionate number of students with other well-established admissions advantages. 
Finally, we discuss the highly limited applicability of overall high school track records to individual cases—particularly to “unhooked” and overrepresented minority students (e.g. Asian/Indian)—and the harmful effects of relying on school track records or any type of peer comparisons in the admissions process.

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

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Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
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IG: @greatmindsadvising

In this deep dive episode, we analyze the profile and application of a current high school senior applying to Stanford. We pinpoint many critical strategic mistakes affecting the quality of the student’s presentation across both the Common Application and the Stanford supplements––errors that are very often committed by top academic students in general and students targeting Stanford in particular.

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

In this episode, we respond to real questions in the popular online forum Reddit from students across the country. In particular, we cover answers to the following:

• Which letters of recommendation do I send?
• How important is course rigor freshman and sophomore year?
• How do you come up with your college essay topic?
• Which GPA do colleges use?
• What are my college chances?

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

Many students and families heavily rely on the college acceptance data (GPA/test scores vs. college outcomes) of past applicants from their high school to make high-stakes decisions about their school list, selection of early decision colleges, and likely overall college outcomes. 

In this episode, we break down how past college acceptance data is reported at many high schools, and the significant limitations and shortcomings of using such data for students applying to the most selective colleges. In particular, we cover the following:

1. The Limited Predictive Power of GPA/Scores When Applying to Top Colleges
2. The Necessity of Only Comparing to Past Applicants Who Applied Under the Same Decision Plan (ED, EA, RD, etc)
3. Why Graph Averages Can Be Misleading
4. How To View Outliers and Avoid Wishful Thinking
5. Data Expiration: What HS Graduating Classes You Should Be Using
6. The Imperfections of Self-Report Data and Various Inaccuracies/Missing Information
7. The Importance of Sample Size and the Tradeoff With High Quality Comparison Cases
8. Complexities of Test Score Reporting: Test-Optional, Superscores, and Beyond
9. Limitations of GPA, Accounting for Senior Year Grades, and Why The GPA Admissions Officers See Is Often Not The One Reflected in HS Data Systems

Final Takeaways: Best Practices for Analyzing and Using High School Acceptance Data

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

In this episode, we review the profile and applications of a premed student who was rejected from both of their early decision schools, roughly top-25 to top-35 national universities. This student attended a top-1% US high school, possessed a 3.9 unweighted GPA, 99th percentile test scores, took 15 AP/honors courses, and had what many would consider an excellent resume filled with many “leadership positions” and “service activities.”

In our case study, we break down several of the student’s application weaknesses and errors, including the following:

• The Difficulty of Premed Positioning
• The Importance of All HS Grades, Not Just Overall GPA
• The Importance of Relevant Coursework (e.g. Premed = STEM course rigor/grades)
• Analyzing Test Scores by Subject/Section vs Overall Scores
• Awards That Matter/Don’t Matter for Admission
• Resume Analysis
  • Why Leadership & Service Aren’t Enough
  • Highly Common/Cliche Activities That Don’t Separate Students
  • Branding of Activities
• Application Mistakes
  • Poor Essay Hooks/Endings
  • “Kitchen Sink Syndrome” (too many themes)
  • Poor and Non-Unique School Knowledge/Details
  • Failure to Show Intellectual Promise
  • Misplacement of Information and Voice (Narrative vs. Analytic) Throughout Application

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

In this episode, we cover many factors—including costly mistakes, myths, and traps—related to students’ school selection. In particular, we address the following:

School Visits

• Why it doesn’t make sense to visit highly selective colleges before mid-11th grade
• Prioritization of best and best-fit colleges for visits, especially schools that offer binding/restrictive early plans (such as Early Decision)

Decision Plans

• Different types (ED1/2, REA/SCEA, EA, RD) and how much each improves your admissions odds

How your decision plan may improve/hurt your odds of admission more than any merit-based factor (GPA, course rigor, test scores, resume, etc)The Myth of School List “Balance”

“REA/SCEA” Schools 

• 7 schools whose early plans are the highest-risk
• The “top college with the worst decision plan”

How ED and Decision Plan Selection Can Make or Break Your Candidacy

• Measuring risk vs reward

Admissions Traps

• Yielding: how overqualified students get rejected
• Shell Plans: decision plans used by colleges to lower acceptance rates/increase prestige and under which students have no real chance of admission

The “Game” of College Admissions: How Colleges Outmaneuver Students Via Targeted Marketing, Tracking, & Forecasting Intent to Enroll

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

In prior episodes, we’ve determined that top colleges seek not only students with excellent grades, course rigor, and test scores but also students with compelling admissions “stories” or “hooks” related to their academic/intellectual passions and how they will contribute to their future college—and hopefully, the world—in some specific, unique way. 

However, just as with students’ “metrics” (grades, rigor, scores), a focused resume is still not necessarily sufficient for gaining admission to highly selective schools. And many students build their “hooks” in areas that are the most competitive, highly common, and may lead admissions officers to question whether the student is perhaps just using the college as a stepping stone to a “prestige career.”

In this deep dive episode, we dig into the strategy of how students should go about building their hooks, how to make them more unique, and how to analyze evidence for students’ passions while also considering the practicalities of time, competition, and more.

While students often build their focus in areas that minimize their chances of standing out in top applicant pools, we hope this episode will help many have a better sense of the considerations that should go into picking optimal candidacy-building paths and how to “course correct”—or reposition—one’s hook as needed over time all the way up until final presentation in the applications to ensure the best odds of admission.

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising
TikTok: @greatmindsadvising
YouTube: @GreatMindsAdvising

——

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

She was the Valedictorian of her high school. Perfect GPA in over twenty advanced classes, taking Calculus BC by 10th grade and college math courses by 11th grade. All perfect or near-perfect test scores, tennis captain, multiple leadership positions, a scholarship to a prestigious math program, and state math champion. To boot, as a female applying for math/engineering, she was an underrepresented applicant and hailed from a U.S. state that might be seen as contributing to campus diversity.

Yet, this student was rejected from each and every Ivy League school to which she applied, Stanford, and other highly competitive colleges. So what went wrong?

In this episode, we do a deep dive into one of the most critical “soft factor” components top schools use to differentiate candidates: the essays. In particular, we analyze this student’s Harvard supplement, revealing the mistakes she made—from writing about cliche topics many students discuss to including content that would have been more effective if placed in other components of the application.

By revealing these costly—although highly common—application errors, we hope to shed light on why this student failed to gain admission and how you can avoid making the same mistakes.

——

“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

Summer is upon us, and many rising seniors—if they haven’t already—are turning their attention to college applications. Among the most important components they will be tackling is the Common Application “Personal Essay”, often simply called “the college essay.” For almost all students, this will be the most important essay colleges read, and for some, it may even be the only one they read.
But there’s just one problem: almost every student writes the wrong type of essay.
In this episode, we break down why the title “Personal Essay” is itself misleading and fails to tap into what many top colleges seek: students not merely with personality but those with a purpose.
Students who show promise as future scholars and leaders capable of impacting their college—and ultimately, the world—in some singular, hyper-specific way.
Merging both the “personal” and “intellectual” qualities colleges seek, we discuss how students should go about tackling this essay, illustrate with examples, and argue that the much more strategic, proactive approach we introduce must be adopted across all application components.
Finally, for students earlier in the college process, we motivate the importance of building the kinds of candidacies—and reference experiences—from which stand-out essays will ultimately be formed and without which many essays will fall short regardless of how well they are crafted.

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising

College admissions has never been more competitive: high GPAs, strong test scores, and a well-rounded resume—once sufficient for an acceptance—are now common features of most applications to highly selective colleges. 

In this episode, we reveal what top colleges nowadays seek: students with compelling admissions stories centered around a focused academic passion, or “hook.” Using the process we’ve employed with our own students to help them gain admission to top colleges, we break down how students need to go about identifying their own unique narrative, how to build and continually re-shape it over time, and how their approach should differ depending on how close—or far away—they are from actually applying to colleges.

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.

Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2024–25 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).

Contact Form: https://tr.ee/contactgma
Web: https://linktr.ee/greatmindsadvising
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: www.facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising