Full Interview: Low Class Rigor, No Test Scores & Vanderbilt Acceptance

hello Jack dele founder of college consulting.us here and I think this is going to be a pretty cool YouTube video a little time capsule if you will what you're about to see actually is a video that was filmed way back in the fall of 2023 and the reason that I want to show you this is because as I record this now it is the spring of 2024 and we actually have results from the film now a couple things that I want you to see here the first part is going to be my advice to a high school senior named hope who reached out looking for some insights and tips on not just applying to Vanderbilt but actually because she called out her rigor her course riger in high school was certainly on the extreme low side when it comes to applying to VF you actually see my thoughts in that coaching video that I give her as I go through her application essays Etc but I think she did a really really good job of putting her hand up being authentic and calling out this what some may call detriment and you'll see in that video in the fall of 2023 before she submitted her application to Vanderbilt I say the following words I say they're certainly far from a guarantee but I say in terms of a student who has low levels of high school rigor you've got a shot hope and you'll see I say that well fast forward actually to today I have some amazing news hope is about to go off to Vanderbilt University she just received her acceptance she applied early decision was then deferred and and then accepted so she had a fairly lengthy process and you'll hear her describe that process but in the back half of this video we get to interview hope and hear her thoughts on her application process her search process schools that she was interested why she chose Vanderbilt as her Top Choice and ultimately why she thinks she got in and as you'll see she and I have very similar sentiments on that front so I hope you enjoy this video I think it's really cool because we'll get to see a little time portal here if you're only interested in hearing the interview from hope you can scroll to that segment but I would encourage if you're interested in helping your high schooler set themselves up for Success if you have a ninth grader a 10th grader an 11th grader check out this upcoming stage right here where you're going to see my coaching because ultimately a lot of that coaching can help apply to your high schooler with that said enjoy hello hope I hope you are doing well Jack deah he here thanks so much for your email I reviewed your whole application and my goodness hope you are tremendously impressive I couldn't believe this when I saw this transcript I don't see a single B anywhere and is it true I see one single a minus ever too unbelievable you're amazing I got to tell you this hope you've got a shot at Vandy you certainly do I want to be clear you know I went to Vanderbilt 2010 to 20 4 I would never get in today um I was weight listed as it was back then Vanderbilt's an ultra reach for even valid victorians these days but I'm telling you oh you got a shot this was about as Elite of an application package as I have seen in a long time and you know what was interesting my very first thought when I saw the transcript was H the one downfall is going to be not like the serious rigor in classes that we like to see but then you did what I teach all my students which is if you have a let's say a dip in your profile call it out wave your hand I teach my students this all the time don't hide from it and then I read your essay and look at what you called out at the start this exact fact that here's why you don't see as many AP classes here's why you don't see as many honor classes you did it and anyway I saw that and I had to smile because you did it this is exactly what I would have coached you to do as well I would have said hey call out your deficiencies and and putting deficiencies in quote you're an elite student absolutely Elite right but my first thought was if there's going to be a reason she doesn't get into Vandy it's because the the academic rigor the you know seeing 10 AP classes like I have seen in some students um isn't there and you called it out which is awesome that's what you should do that says that you're you understand yourself you're confident in yourself and colleges love to see that so you've got a shot here to you've got a serious shot couple things that I wanted to highlight um I just I really really liked the essay I liked it a lot something that you could consider and I would I would leave this essay as your common out personal statement right now I really would and if you get into Vandy Ed you're done don't even think about it something that you could consider in your regular decision round if you want this also had the Vibes of a type of kind of essay that I've seen added to the additional information section almost as a like I want to explain something section and what that could possibly do again this is in the regular decision round if you feel that you want to do this is then leave an opening for you to use your common app personal statement for or you know any other type of essay for now I would honestly leave it for the reasons we just said especially on the Vandy front I want this to be front and center that you're calling out the fact that you know your rigor hasn't been as high but also you've gotten two a minuses ever like it's amazing all right so I wouldn't change it I wouldn't change anything about it also you're a brilliant writer my goodness really really good there's not a a single thing I would change amazing um then when it comes to the supplement once again right I brought this up I assume you're answering this question because Vanderbilt has two this year and you have to choose one um and I believe it's answering this one right anyway also fantastic it then brought up in my mind we talk about there are four main categories of admission when it comes to students and what admissions reps in college are going to view you on one high school grades two standardized testing which I'll get to you in a second I assume given everything I saw here you're going test optional totally fine three college essays and four what we call your story right gone are the days of being just a good student and that getting you into the Vanderbilts of the world you need to have kind of a story that you say based on things I've done in high school here's what I want to do at your school Vanderbilt and so My Hope Is that with your activities right and you listed them here right like working as an inclusion Aid I hope that is at the top of your activities list because it aligns with this because it aligns with your supplement and so my question to you hope is what school are you applying to and have you selected a major and the reason that's important is because ideally if you can tie in the college right vanderbel has multiple colleges to apply to with this What You've Done Right it all ties into a story this notion of hi I'm hope I'm the tremendously patient person look your recommend your recommender calls it out right somewhere in here your recommender calls it out I'm incredibly patient I care for others I care for others who are perhaps less fortunate and look I also care for myself see that story we're building and because of all that that you can see Vanderbilt that's why I want to major in at your school I could see several possible Majors aligning with that but that is going to be critical hope making sure that this story this path is clear from this right how much you learned about yourself how much you I mean the summary right here how much you it's this second to last sentence is basically it I learned that while have goals is important they are problematic when achieving the outcome right and success or failure determines self worth that's like the core of you now how can you take that core and make sure Vanderbilt understands why you're choosing the major you're choosing or even if you're undecided which by the way I applied to Vanderbilt undecided you can at least tell Vanderbilt I'm undecided but I'm deciding between this major or possibly this major and here's why and by the way if you're ever like I'm just not qu quite positive vanderbie your app for eight minutes are they going to be able to see this story loud and clear the who hope has been in in Middle School to high school how hope has helped what is going on can Vanderbilt see that story as to now the next stage is what she's going to do at Vanderbilt because if you do all of those things but then you say Vanderbilt I just want to go to your school because like I don't know it seems great and it's highly ranked and D1 Football let's go right that that we can't have that we need to finish it off and so I just want to make sure because I haven't seen your actual comment app that Vanderbilt it's very obvious for them when they review your whole app of that story if you think I could do a little better job explaining this whole background of myself and then transitioning it so it's served up on a platter for the Vandy admissions rep to go it's so obvious what she would do at Vanderbilt she gets here how she would help the additional information section it's sitting there it's waiting for you you can use up to 300 something words and it truly says if there's anything else you want to tell tell that right and because Vanderbilt's your Ed you could actually put it in the Common App you could type it all up and then if you don't get into Vanderbilt Ed you can just like you could make the additional information section 100% Vandy specific since it's the only school you're going to type you're going to apply ed2 and then you could delete it and you could rewrite it in general for your regular decision round that we go to many schools see what I'm saying um don't hold back make sure Vanderbilt knows the story again four tiers of College admission grades test score essay and your story and your story is becoming more and more and more important vander's admissions rate these days is I would have to look it up isn't it like 7% or something and so I bring this up because you you check all the boxes here and I just want to make sure that that CL box is checked where you can look your application forwards backwards and say yep Vanderbilt's going to know my story they're going to know what I went through and therefore what I want to do at Vanderbilt I'd say about three4 of our students do that by choosing a major and then explaining why they're choosing that major or that desired path at vanderbelt you can even call out right like specific classes you can look up the bandb curriculum and call it specific classes inside that major call out specific teachers who teach that to just show how much you care about your story um and I'd say about a quarter of our students choose undecided but you can't just choose undecided and say I truly have no idea of Vanderbilt still take me you've got to say I'm undecided but here are a couple options I have in mind to fulfill this story of mine you've got a brilliant story I just want to make sure it's finished it might be you might say Jack 100% when this gets submitted to Vandy they're going to know my story my path to vanderbild and what I'm going to do at vanderbild I just want to make sure that and again if you're like I'm not sure use the additional information section and be as clear as possible you can look up right Vanderbilt uh education classes if you're applying to the school of education people to college right you can then go in and look at the curriculum you could even call out a class that a specific teacher teaches right be like hey here's my story and at Vander boot when I show up there if you give me the opportunity to attend here's the exact class classes I would love to take and here's why because it aligns with my story that's a really hard student to reject versus the student that's got it all like you but doesn't make that end goal of the story clear okay awesome I wanted to make sure you understand that um it's exceptional now the last thing that I wanted to go over letter of wck awesome you've got all of this again you've got to think on the extracurriculars what aligns with your story this aligns with your story right by the way awesome soccer Captain congratulations these are all great things right you're a leader Etc but you can see why I'm like the story that you just told me that super thoughtful hope who's giving back to those and need like this aligns with that story and if you're you know chosen major at vanderbild is like education or there there are several that you could fit into that mold right all right then the last thing that I want to go over is um standardized testing my guess is you're applying tests optional totally fine just know that Vanderbilt actually in terms of top 25 schools in the country it takes actually a significant portion of their students test optional meaning they didn't submit a test if you were applying to like Princeton I'd say uh oh because they only take about 8% of their admitted class without test scores meaning 92% of their admitted class last year test scores but Vanderbilt only about 2/3 67% of their admitted class submitted test scores that means onethird of admitted freshman did not this is good news for you lastly you can see also good news Vanderbilt early decision look at how much you're increasing your chance you're tripling your chance of admission by applying early decision Vander takes a huge portion of their class Ed some of this rate is inflated because they have athletes who already have guaranteed admission Appliance the early decision window but still Vanderbilt more than most schools really leans into their early decision pool so you've got a Rockstar app here hope you should be really really proud this is amazing um you got a shot you really have a shot and that's about at Vanderbilt these days that's about as good as you can ask really really impressive well done feel free if you have any more questions about kind of this notion of you know you know your story reach back out let me know happy to answer but I think it's just important that you feel Vanderbilt says hey you're going to read my app for eight minutes on average let's make sure you know who I was and who I would be at Vanderbilt's campus all the things that I would do and how that path alins that wraps it in a bow and says admissions it's really hard to reject this student hope that helps well done hope I'm proud of you I'm super excited everybody I am joined here by hope hope is a high school senior in Massachusetts I'm rocking my vanderbild hat because Hope just got the call that she got into Vanderbilt and I thought it'd be pretty cool to do a brief interview because um I've got a video from four or five months back when she had sent over to our team her application and to be honest your applic hope kind of blew me away it was one of the more unique applications and I think I even say in that video I'm like for someone who has very few AP classes believe I say I'm like you got a shot and we'll splice that in and we'll like show me kind of walking through your application but before we do I'd love to hear just a little bit about your background hope anything you want to tell us about us and then I'm going to kind of ask just a few questions about your application since congratulations you're going to Vanderbilt which is like 6% acceptance right um yeah I don't know I mean I like definitely come from a very competitive High School um and I'd say that was definitely like something that I looked for during my college search was like finding a place that was very like collaborative and that's definitely why Vander bolt stood out to me and that's definitely something I like highlighted in my application I think was like why I want to be there um but other than that like I definitely like I play a lot of soccer um that's a big extracurricular for me um I'm one of four so I've lots of siblings um I don't know what else um I'll ask a few uh a few questions here so I'm interested uh you know you're a high school senior at a competitive New England public school which is now like a diamond dozen especially when you're applying to top 20 top 30 top 40 schools in the US I'm interested um talk to me a little bit about your search process like what schools you were considering and obviously then how you ended up on Vanderbilt as your Top Choice yeah I um so I've have two older siblings so I've been on a lot of college tours um I'd say I looked at the IVs as well and the thing that I didn't like about them as much was like the competitive nature kind of I felt on those campuses was really similar to my high school and so when I stepped on vanderville I liked that it was collaborative I liked that it was obviously a really like high ranked good school but it didn't like necessarily feel like that when you were on the campus um I mean other schools that I looked at were like Northwestern um BC Wake Forest Richmond um like safeties like Yukon um Wisconsin Maryland so there's definitely a range um but yeah I love it so you ended up deciding okay Vanderbilt's my Top Choice I'm going to do early decision there and before you applied again the viewers of this will see this you reached out to us we took a look at your application and I mean I remember it to this day and it was many months ago because it was your application was so unique and I think my biggest takeaway that I want viewers to understand is there's something valuable about just being unique and standing out and I would say the secondary thing that was my biggest takeaway of your application when I reviewed it where I say right on the call you've got a shot was that you took what I think some might call detriments in an application your rigor in your high school class was certainly below average for Vanderbilt standards I think we would both admit that and yet you did an amaz it's it was such a mature thing that you did where you kind of put your hand up and you called that out instead of saying uh instead of kind of like weaseling your way around it or trying to talk about other things you said hey I understand that this is probably my biggest detriment and by the way here's why I've chosen to go through high school this way and I thought that was really cool do you mind talking just a little bit kind of about that aspect of your application and how you came to terms with just kind of putting your hand up and saying hey I know I don't have the biggest riger but this is um definitely I mean I only took four APS throughout High School um and like some honors like I would say about two honors one two honors each year um and like I definitely prioritized like having balance and stuff and um like doing well in the classes I was taking rather than like overwhelming my plate which I think definitely I freaked out before I went to college it's like oh I don't have enough APS I don't have enough of these hard classes but I think like you said I it was like one of the first sentences in my common app essay um and like the paragraph was kind of explaining like ACH of like mundane things that like were not impressive at all and I think them like and then I went on to explain it in like my story but I feel like it was definitely like not a lot of admissions officers will have kids like tell them like boring things about themselves or like un unimpressive things so I think I don't know I definitely like took a lot of tweaking with my essay to get to that point um but I was really happy with it yeah and in a way I think what I want people to understand is like unimpressive I'm putting in quotes because well yes some might believe I think what you you put that you uh like to like get on the couch and watch Netflix with your mom I think might have been one of the lines in there but I think what what it did for me when I reviewed it and this was again well before we knew you were getting into Vandy but when I read it I said this is an authentic applicant and I think these days when you're applying to the Vanderbilts of the world vanderbild admissions these days they're they have to reject 94% of applicants they're not looking for applicants who are saying here's my application cuz my mom or dad told me to write it this way or here's my what my interests are because my cousin's friend got into Vandy and so I'm going to just say I have the same interests like your application was one of the most authentic I've probably ever seen and so again I looked at it and I said not a lot of APs but if there's ever anyone who without that rigor still has a shot I think it's you and like will cut to me saying that and it's just incredible that here we are four or five months later we're in April and you're going off to Vanderbilt I'm interested when you kind of think about your application process to Vanderbilt I think you put this in an email to me about kind of your communication with Vanderbilt do you mind just extrapolating on that a little bit for like you know High School juniors sophomores freshman who are whether they're in our formal program or not I think it's important to hear from a senior who obviously just got into their dream school and like what your communication was like with your dream school before you got in yeah so I took a tour spring of my junior year um and after that like I knew that's where I wanted to Ed like it none of my other schools I like loved as much um and so I want to say August or September of like going into senior year I emailed um the local like Regional admissions officer um just being like hey like I'm planning on eding here like I think I gave a few things that I was like interested about the school and what Drew me to it um and then I think I asked like a specific question about I'm planning on majoring in BIO and I think I like asked a specific question about that program just to like show him like oh if I go here this is what I want to do or this is where all I'm headed um and then he responded and was like information about the science program and stuff and I like just responded like thank you and stuff um um and then I before I applied I might have um emailed him again I can look too um and then after getting deferred I sent my continued letter of interest um and I emailed that to him and the like head of Admissions and I also put it in my portal um and then I emailed him one more time before like um the regular decisions came out yeah so for our viewers who don't know so hope was deferred early decision and then actually accepted which some years does not happen this year at Vanderbilt has H happened more consistently um but I think what's important there is if a school is your Top Choice you should let them know that and many ways shapes and forms and yes some schools by the way do have limits they'll say please don't email please don't do this but if they don't actually preclude you from doing that it can only be a neutral or it can help for you to just reach out and let the school in multiple facets know hey this is my top choice and in your case right you not only did that with admissions you also did it with a specific Professor who then it's up to them but there's a chance that that Professor goes back to admissions and says hey by the way this hope student she obviously really cares and like something like that can be the tiebreaker ultimately dealing with humans and Admissions and so I think it's important that people understand if a school is one of your top Choices put in the extra work let them know think about all that work that you've put into your high school for four years all those late nights studying SATs acts everything and it's a little bit more effort to just let a school know with an email or a um you know a call that hey I'm actually really interested this isn't just a throwaway application for me I love it fantastic put in my application in the extra information session this is something you told me to do like I basically wrote another supplement um which is kind of a hack because like there's only one supplement at vanderbelt but um I basically wrote about like my interest in the sciences and like also just like how I like that like they're also have the opportunity to like interdisciplinary education through the different schools and stuff like that so it was something like I definitely recommend at your top like you don't want to do that everywhere but your top schools and stuff yeah and hope you're spot on um and again for the viewers they'll see when we splice into my advice several months ago I put that in there that the additional information section is there as almost a cheat code if you can use it but you've got to use it well and it's a great opportunity to not only tell a specific school that they're your number one but also to kind of identify what we talk about often which is that path what path are you taking from high school into college and how you going to benefit the college and it sounds like with your additional information section you did both of those things right you made it very clear Vanderbilt's your Top Choice you Essence wrote another Vanderbilt supplement there and then you also made it clear what your path would be if accepted to Vanderbilt you have an idea of how you're going to add to their Community I love it awesome and now you're off to to Vandy for four years I am jealous um I will be on campus in the fall for my 10year reunion which makes me feel very old but certainly meet up on campus coffee is on me and I look forward to obviously hearing about your four incredible years there thank you absolutely all right I am going to stop recording now that was awesome thank you