College Admissions Success Story – Carrie K.

STUDENT PROFILE – Carrie K.

  • Public high school in Boston suburb
  • Carrie didn’t think she had any academic interests – more focused on service work in third world countries
  • First born so family wasn’t comfortable with admissions confusion and also worried as Carrie wasn’t top of her class
  • B+ student

TOP TIER PROGRAMS USED

APPLICATION STRATEGY

Rolling: St. Andrews (Scotland)

Early Decision: Vanderbilt

WHAT WE DID

We worked with Carrie to develop an academic component to her service work. She took religious studies courses at Harvard Divinity School through the Extension School. She began a much read blog for other spiritual teens, became an active voice for teens around the topic of world religions and crafted summers with a slant towards this scholarly area. Through her program with us and our SAT tutors, we helped Carrie to:

  • Go above and beyond the courses offered at her large public high school and take classes outside of school in her area of interest
  • Put her plan of graduating early senior year into action so that she doubled up on courses to make it possible and petitioned her high school with her clearly laid out plan to teach in West Africa from December-June her senior year
  • Create a Personalized Testing Plan that included self studying for some Subject Tests including: Literature, French with Listening, Biology, US History.
  • Worked with Top Tier’s tutors and determined that the ACT with Writing was her stronger test. Pushed from 620 range to a 740 range with focused tutoring.
  • Wanted schools in the South so crafted a strategy to leverage the early round. Vanderbilt was her top choice given the Divinity School. Crafted a plan to visit and meet appropriate faculty

RESULTS

Carrie was accepted to St. Andrews just weeks after applying, and was accepted to Vanderbilt in the Early Decision round. Her brother Jim joined us two years later as a sophomore and was accepted to Dartmouth, his first choice school.

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