Application Boot Camp 2016 Highlights

Post by Brian, Senior Counselor.

We just finished our 13^th year of Application Boot Camp^®, and I’m happy to say our students are all the better off for attending.

Right in the heart of Boston, near Fenway Park, our team helped students revise multiple rounds of essays (over 1,000 drafts in total!), held strategy sessions to dissect and understand how to maximize the Common App, brainstorm topics for our proactive approach to essays, and shed light on the difference between early decision and restrictive single-choice early action. Students came away clear-eyed about the college admissions process, and with their personalized application strategies, took to heart our feedback about strengthening their essays. As one student put it, “Application Boot Camp really is a personal trainer for the mind.”

Each four-day session of Application Boot Camp is demanding, but every year I see the same transformation from our attendees. Students arrive with myths about the “mysterious” Common App and the entire application process. They puzzle over how to best ask for teacher recommendations. They feel muddled about using their academic experiences to create gripping personal narratives and they have no idea how to respond to many random college supplemental essays.

But by the end of these four days, all of our students, and their parents, leave with an empowering sense of clarity and a killer portfolio of essays.

Even more, students receive an individualized college admissions strategy plan and learn how to apply their core suite of essays to an ever-growing list of supplemental questions.

Most of all, our team helps students articulate their interests, to ensure they will stand out during the admissions process. Our goal is not to hide, but to express their dimensionality, to guide them to a honed academic niche.

Take the young man who came with a boilerplate community service essay, but ended up with a piece about his enthusiasm for open-source automotive engineering. Or the student who explained how his Hawaiian background gave him a better appreciation for epic poetry. Or the student who received advice about how to increase her SAT Subject Test score, so she could apply to higher-reach schools.

The gift of Application Boot Camp is that our team of counselors creates a supportive environment in which our students can work; it’s our belief that the true act of writing occurs only in the presence of rapport. We work with students to unspool their personal histories and reveal their most gripping experiences. We guide them to colleges that match their interests and personalities while using a strategy that will increase their odds by up to four times for some colleges. We sharpen their why essays so they show how they will contribute to a school’s community.

Application Boot Camp lasts only four days, but our best indicator of progress is reviewing the first draft of an essay, compared to the final piece. This comparison leaves our team heartened about our students’ college admissions prospects. We’re also happy to see parents leave more relieved about the application process, and students more free to focus their energies on their very important senior years.

We look forward to working with even more families next year.