Selecting the right schools and altering your application to entice their admissions committees isn’t just sound advice – it is ESSENTIAL to admissions. As I’ll soon show you, failing to select the right school or tailoring your application to match them will result in a giant pile of rejections and a miserable Senior year.

Doing this takes time. Start now. When you rush your college preparation process, you rush your college selection process. BIG mistake…

Deadly Sin #3: Failing to Craft a Story and an Area of Expertise

If you read the first report I sent you, you already have a hint at one of the main keys to getting into a great school: being a specialist.
Remember: colleges don’t want well-rounded students – they want well-rounded CLASSES.

No college is interested in a student who is “pretty good at lots of different things.” Colleges want to stuff their rosters full of EXPERT SPECIALISTS who can dominate their own fields and add to the college’s renown.

Colleges want superstar athletes, award-winning writers, head editors of school newspapers, class presidents, mathletes, renowned instrumentalists, patent-owning scientists, and any other type of student with a clearly identified area of mastery and a story to match it.

If you’re a “pretty good athlete” with “decent grades and test scores” who is on a couple of different clubs (but doesn’t run any of them), does community service some of the time, and is “somewhat interested in both business and computing” (but has never actually done anything to pursue those interests), you have a roughly 0% chance of getting into a top college or university.

Zero.

Colleges aren’t looking for mediocre “Jacks of all trades” – they’re looking for a dream team of “Jacks of one trade” that they can assemble into an all-powerful graduating class full of millionaires, celebrities, and big donors.

Here’s the really big issue: developing a specialty takes time. You can’t just “decide that you’re a specialist.” Actions, experiences, and qualifications speak louder than words. If you fake a specialty, colleges WILL sniff it out, and you WILL NOT get in.

You need to start developing your specialty TODAY.

This isn’t optional.

If you can’t fill this blank, your chances of college admission are virtually non-existent:

You should accept me because I’m an excellent ________________________.

One word. What is it? Writer? Mathematician? Businessman? Author? Leader? Philanthropist? Athlete? Instrumentalist? Scientist?

Here’s the other issue:

Even if you do have a well-developed specialty, you are going to fail unless EVERY facet of your application reflects that specialty! This is where “crafting a story” comes into play.

Extracurriculars. Essay and supplementary essays. SAT 2s. Awards won. Recommendations. Liaison recommendations (explained shortly). Grades. APs. The list goes on.

You can’t just say that you’re “an excellent writer” – you need to prove that you are. You do that with As in English, published papers, experience on the school newspaper, fantastic essays, writing awards won, and an application to a school with a fantastic writing program.

***If you’re not sure how to select the right schools for your specialty, pick a specialty in the first place, or create an application which reflects it, The 60-Day SAT Prescription’s Parents’ Manual, bonuses, and buyer-only materials will show you how to do it step-by-step, with advice from some of the most renowned college consultants in the country.  I highly recommend forwarding this page to your parents so that they can buy you access – it’s guaranteed to improve your SAT score by over 300 points, and it’ll also show you what to do with your great SAT score once you get it!

A lot of people hope that their applications are simply “good enough” because they have “a lot of things going for them” – that won’t do. You don’t need “a lot of things going for you” – you need ONE thing going for you non-stop.

This is what separates winning applications from losing ones.

By this point (and especially if you listened to my parents-only webinar), you should realize that there’s a significant amount of work to be done if you want to craft a strong application that appeals specifically to your target schools.

You can’t just pick schools because they’re “good” – they have to want your type of student.
Yet we’re not done. Just because you prove that you’re a good fit for a school doesn’t mean that they’ll accept

you, for one very important reason:

Schools won’t let you in if they don’t think you’re going to attend.

Which brings us to the next (and perhaps the most common) application mistake:

Deadly Sin #4: Not Proving Interest in the Schools to Which You Apply

When I applied to college, I got into both Columbia and Cornell, two Ivy League universities. However, I also got rejected by multiple schools that weren’t in the top 50 US universities.

How does that happen? How did schools so much “worse” than Columbia reject me while Columbia and Cornell let me in?

Because they didn’t think there was even a 1% chance that I’d attend.

Colleges are selfish. They care about their statistics and their rankings, and they care about them a lot.

Arguably the most damning college statistic is a bad ratio of admittees to attendees!

Why is Harvard Harvard? Because they reject practically everyone who applies. They’re very selective. Selectivity and applicant/acceptances is one of the most important college metrics, and the one that everyone seems to focus on. But there’s another incredibly important ratio that no one seems to pay attention to:

Admittees / Attendees

If this number is too large, college rankings will drop. Additionally, it’ll cause massive administrative headaches for the college.

Think about it – if a school lets in 10,000 people, and 5 of them decide to go, what does it say about the school? That it stinks, that’s what. Harvard is Harvard not only because they let in very few people, but because almost everyone they let in attends. Schools avidly try to avoid letting people in who they don’t think will attend. Therefore,

IT IS YOUR JOB TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERY SCHOOL YOU APPLY TO THINKS YOU’LL GO IF YOU’RE ACCEPTED.

Even if you’re a really strong applicant, no school will let you in if they think it’s obvious that you won’t be going.

In my case, I was a nationally ranked crew recruit with near-perfect SAT scores coming from one of the top prep schools in the country. I knew nothing about the “lower tier” schools I applied to, didn’t make mention of them in my applications, and never went for visits. Guess how likely they thought I was to attend? And guess what happened?

Again, let me repeat: if you don’t sell your desire to go to a school, they’ll reject you out of pure self- interest.

A lot of people are “me, me, me” on their applications, and in many ways, that’s a good thing – if you’re not selling yourself, you’re not going to get in. However, that’s not enough. You also have to be “you, you, you” when it comes to the colleges you’re applying to.

If you’re really into philanthropy, contact the heads of the school’s biggest charity organizations, share your plans with them, and then see if they can put in a good word. If you’re really into computer science, see if you can chat with the head of the Comp-Sci department.

This is why extensive research is so important. If you don’t know anything about the schools to which you’re applying, you certainly won’t know anyone at the schools to which you’re applying, and that’s a big disadvantage.

If you give a great interview, and you have your interviewer, the head of a certain department, and even the head of an intramural sports team all go to the admissions office and ask them to give you an extra look, it is an enormous advantage.

Colleges like to maintain that “who you know doesn’t matter.” That is a hilarious bunch of rubbish.  If you think that who you know doesn’t matter, then I suggest living somewhere other than under a rock.

Get the grades. Get the scores. Specialize. Then, do your research and find a liaison.

***Buyers of The 60-Day SAT Prescription get free access to my guide, co-written with some of the best college consultants in the world, on how to secure a liaison and use him/her as leverage for your application.

Before we get into the biggest sin of college applications, there’s another thing I can’t forget to mention that you absolutely MUST not do:

Deadly Sin #6: Including “Fluff” (i.e. Bulls$%&) in Your Application

Let me make something clear right now:

College admissions officers have seen it all.

Do you have some sort of “sneaky” way of “padding your application?” Well, like everyone else in the universe, admissions officers don’t like the feeling of being lied to and deceived, and if they feel that there’s even an ounce of BS in your application, they’re going to kick it to the curb.

When I used to run my tutoring firm, I’d get multiple applications a day from aspiring tutors. Many of them would start off well – the applicants would have near-perfect SAT scores, extensive experience, impressive educations, etc. But then, I’d see something like the following under the “experience” column:

Job #3: Starbucks Barista. Learned how to approach and demonstrably exceed the expectations of others, fulfill customer demand, manage an intensive workflow situation, overcome obstacles….

COME ON.

Lines like this in a resume make applicants look foolish and ridiculous. More importantly, and far worse, they make the applicants look like LIARS and BULLS&%$ERS.

Lines like this insult my intelligence. There’s nothing wrong with being a barista – it’s good work experience, and I personally believe that everyone should experience working behind a counter at some point in their lives – it builds character. However, barista experience isn’t going to help you be an SAT tutor, and suggesting that it is just makes you look like (A) a liar, (B) a jerk, or perhaps both.

When it comes to your college applications, PLEASE do not include BS qualifications and “experiences” and think that the admissions officers won’t notice.

As I said above, you need a specialty, but you can’t just say you have it. You need to prove it. Joining a club 1 month before you apply to college does not prove your interest in that club (and in general, club membership is totally useless unless you’re in a leadership position).

Furthermore, colleges don’t want Jacks of all trades – they want specialists. Adding a random line item onto your application won’t help you, but it does have the potential to make you look foolish.

Want some examples I’ve seen in actual applications?

Exhibit A:
“Community Service: Habitat for Humanity, Barbados – helped the poor, learned key skills in teamwork and cooperation, and gave back to the human race (sic).”

Translation: My parents paid for me to go to Barbados on a spring break trip, and I spent an afternoon hammering a few boards together while I talked to my friends.

Sorry….your lavish vacation-masked-as-community-service is fooling nobody. You’d be better off just writing, “Habitat for Humanity, Spring, 2012” with zero explanation than to try and “sell” this experience as something meaningful.

Exhibit B:
“Extracurriculars: Model UN. Dates: [2 months earlier-present]. Attended multiple meetings – learned diplomacy, debate, and international relations.”

Translation: My mom/counselor told me I needed to join a club, so I went to Model UN a few times before I applied so that I wouldn’t have to leave this field blank.

If you’re not in a leadership position, clubs don’t mean much. Furthermore, if you joined 2 months earlier, the transparency is painful. This is why you need to start early – so you can build an actual track record of meaningful activities in the specialty to which you aspire.

Colleges want SPECIALISTS – trying to “add spice” to your resume by throwing in ridiculous stuff like this just waters everything down and makes you look ridiculous. If you want to join model UN for fun, by all means, go for it – but don’t try to sell it on your application.

Exhibit C:
“Sports: Manager, Girl’s Soccer Team (writer’s note: this was a boy’s application). Gained leadership skills, inventory management abilities, and learned to mediate disputes (sic).”

Translation: I am a highschool boy who likes watching girls play soccer, feeding them oranges during halftime, and relentlessly trying to get a date with one of them because I can’t play football.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with doing extra activities here or there, but don’t try to sell them as if they’re actual qualifications!!!

Remember, again: schools want specialists, not “well rounded” people who do lots of random junk all the time. Just follow my golden rule for extras like this:

When in doubt, toss it out.

“Giving blood one time” in the Community Service field won’t get you into college, but it will make you look like a desperate applicant with nothing going for him.

If community service is your thing, then by all means, play it up! Talk about the money you’ve raised, the help you’ve given people, the organization you’ve helped to bolster, and the community service organizations you plan on joining at the college. But if it’s not, don’t make pathetic excuses for community service just so you have something to say. Leave the field blank – you’ll be better off.

Now that that’s off my chest (phew), there’s one more thing I need to address. It is, without a doubt, THE biggest mistake that everyone makes when applying to colleges, and could be the single largest factor in admissions:

Deadly Sin #7: Forgetting That Admissions are About COMPARISON, and NOT about Absolute Value

When you apply to college, you’re not applying in a vacuum. You are competing against every other applicant.

Imagine applying for a job with 5 DWIs on your record. You might think, “Hey, you know what, I might have been drunk behind the wheel a couple of times, but I mean, who cares – I’m still a pretty great applicant.” Just one thing you’re forgetting:

There are going to be plenty of other applicants WITHOUT DWI CHARGES that you need to compete against. Someone even 90% as good as you without a DWI will be a heck of a lot more appealing than you.

The same goes for college admissions. Just replace “DWI” with “bad grades” or “bad test scores” and you get the picture.

“Oh, Johnny might have pretty bad SAT scores, but he’s such a good kid – once they take a look, they’ll let him in anyway.”

NOPE.

Remember: This isn’t about you. It’s about you vs. everyone else.

Think of applications as a “scaled test” – if you have weak applications, but so does everyone else, you’ll be okay. However, if you’re competing against a strong pool of applicants, and you have a glaring weakness, you’re cooked.

To avoid this mistake in full, you need to know just one thing:

Comparison is strongest in terms of grades and test scores. If you don’t have strong scores and grades, you’ll be comparing yourself to people who do – and your application will end up in the trash basket.

If you have bad scores or bad grades, don’t expect to get in unless you have an all-powerful liaison (and even then, he or she might have a lot of trouble.

There’s nothing more to it than that. Remember: colleges review grades and scores BEFORE they review entire applications. If you don’t have good grades and scores, colleges will NEVER EVEN LOOK AT YOUR APPLICATION.

Sure, you might be awesome – but if your grades or test scores don’t stack up to the competition, you either need a liaison, or you need to apply somewhere else.

Rather than panic about this, just improve your grades and test scores!!!

Without the fundamentals, the college application process is a nightmare. Trying to write an application on top of poor grades and test scores is like trying to build a skyscraper on top of quicksand…

When you have strong grades and test scores, you have a foundation strong enough to build a powerful college application.

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