The most selective colleges do not admit normal applicants; they admit exceptional applicants. And in order to be exceptional, students must first be an exception—or not like their other high-achieving peers, the vast majority of whom will be rejected by top colleges.

In this episode, we cover six of the most common and cliche activities—sports, music, and more—that continue to fill the resumes of top college applicants, causing their applications to come across as bland, unremarkable, and easy for admissions officers at highly selective colleges to reject.

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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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Want to have us analyze your current profile for top colleges in an upcoming episode? Email us at info@greatmindsadvising.com

Unfortunately, despite possessing excellent grades, course rigor, and test scores, the vast majority of applicants to top colleges lack the type of compelling resume outside the classroom that actually differentiates accepted from rejected students.

In this episode, we unveil the costly and potentially candidacy-ending resume mistakes that tend to beset many otherwise high-achieving students aiming for highly selective colleges.

In particular, we discuss the case of junior year students who very often find themselves in a dilemma whereby their resume is severely lacking and yet they have very little time for the significant improvements required.

We call attention to the limited number of “remaining moves” on the board these students have before the clock runs out and how they need to think strategically about factors such as value, risk/probability of success, and allocation of time and resources to potential resume-builders if they wish to preserve any chance of gaining admission to a top college.

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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).

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Contact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contact
Newsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletter
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising/
IG: instagram.com/greatmindsadvising

Want to have us analyze your current profile for top colleges in an upcoming episode? Email us at info@greatmindsadvising.com

Early decision, or placing a binding commitment, is the strongest possible signal of demonstrated interest at any top college and is often rewarded with a significant increase in a student’s chance of admission.

In this episode, however, we consider how colleges at which a student is not applying early decision view their applications and what other signals a student who is not applying ED should or should not send.

In addition, we zoom out and discuss how various top colleges view common themes and activities in students’ applications relating to service, leadership, and summer programs–-particularly focusing on how students should best tackle their resume-building in a way that actually stands out, versus blends in, at top colleges.

——

“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).

Web: greatmindsadvising.com
Contact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contact
Newsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletter
Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com
FB: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising
IG: @greatmindsadvising