Packages

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School Selection Stragegy

University Connection will then calculate the probability of admission for each matched school to figure out your “Reach,” “Match,” and “Likely” schools.

University Connection will help students research each individual university, strategize their admissions plan, and revise the list for the most diverse and efficient application.

Students also receive guidance on why and when to apply “Early Decision,” Early Action,” or “Regular Decision” and how to strategically use the timing of applications to your advantage.

Your University Connection counselor will work with you to identify an initial list of colleges that will be the best match based on your academic profile, needs, and interests.

Extra- Curricular Guidance

More than any other factor, the importance of extracurriculars to your college application depends on the school you are applying to. Differences in admissions requirements, class demographics, and campus community all can lead to admissions readers placing a differing amount of emphasis on extracurricular activities.

By curating an especially strong background in one or two disciplines, students clearly demonstrate their passions and desire to learn, as well as give admissions officers a sense of their possible college major(s) and how they will contribute to the academic and campus community.

University Connection will help students understand which extracurricular activities are going to make the biggest impact in their application.

Extracurricular activities are an incredibly important part of your college application. The activities that you choose to do outside of the classroom allow college admission officers to understand a student’s personality in a way that grades and test scores don't show.

Student Profile Analysis

Your admissions counselor will identify areas of improvement that may be red flags to admissions officers, as well as aspects of your profile to showcase on your application.

Our experts work with students to develop a plan that will help them choose courses and activities that they can excel at to standout during the admissions process.

In addition, we discuss admissions positioning strategies, focusing on what you can do to ensure maximum consideration of a student's achievement.

University Connection experts will begin by reviewing your transcript and analyze all of your courses, grades, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, talents, and AP courses.

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Full Application Review

Our experts will identify areas of concern and offer you expert guidance on how to mitigate potential problems before you submit your application. They also flag positive aspects of your application and suggest how to get more traction from them.

During a Pre-Submission Application Review, experts will go through your application line by line, hunting for errors large and small, and will also make sure that all the components of your application are in line with the expectations of college admissions officers.

Using a three consultant panel, University Connection Experts will review the common application and two supplemental applications to identify red flags and problematic content.

Interview Strategy

While applicants can communicate with schools through essays and emails, college admission interviews are especially valuable as a chance to discuss yourself and your prospective school in a much less structured and more casual setting. It’s an opportunity to share your story the way you want it to be heard.

Interviews are used to evaluate the student and supplement information included on the application and essay. Universities aim to learn as much as they can about a student’s academic and professional plan, hobbies, passions, strengths and weaknesses, and high school experience.

In the university Interview Prep Package. students will receive a school interview guide, preparation with a counselor (50 minutes), a mock interview (50 minutes), and a one-on-one feedback session (30 minutes) with your dedicated University Connection Counselor.

The college application process does not allow for a student’s voice to be truly heard.

Waitlist Strategy

While the situation may seem out of your control, there are a number of steps to take now in order to increase your chances of moving off the waitlist and prepare for your back up plan.

University Connections experts will provide students with insight into what comes next and help students develop a waitlist strategy. This strategy will start with a complete review of application materials and provide a strategic plan to help maximize the chances of admission.

University Connection Counselors provide step-by-step guidance on the best course of action, including helping our students draft a deferral or waitlist letter expressing their continued interest in being admitted. Furthermore, University Connection experts will discussing alternative options if a student is having second thoughts about his or her top-choice school.

Learning that you are waitlisted for your top-choice school can feel like a defeat, but it means you still the opportunity to be admitted. The admissions officers were impressed by you, but there just was not enough room in their admission class to accept you at this time.

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Full Essay Service

Our experts will identify areas of concern and offer you expert guidance on how to mitigate potential problems before you submit your application. They also flag positive aspects of your application and suggest how to get more traction from them.

Work with a University Connection expert to brainstorm and strategize topics and prompts, edit content, and close-read your essays for grammar, spelling, and structural issues.

Editors will review your essay in three rounds, and work with you from the very beginning of your essay-writing process until you submit your application to ensure your writing stands out in the applicant pool.

Awkward phrasing, grammar and punctuation mistakes, and unnatural sentence structure in your essay make colleges question your writing ability, not to mention your willingness to properly proofread. And if your essay only repeats the details in your application, admissions officers will wonder whether you lack the creativity and ambition to do more than the bare minimum.

Summer Activity Planning

As soon as you enter high school, every summer becomes about crafting your college applications. Rather than taking fun summer camps or sitting around, students should do a meaningful or impactful activity that will enhance your college applications.

Colleges need and want students who are committed to activities that they are passionate about, and summer is the best time to show colleges that you are more than your GPA or your SAT score.

We work to create a structured plan for your time to cover extracurriculars, SAT/ACT prep, and academic work, while also giving you time to relax and enjoy your time off.

If you want to maximize your probability of being admitted to your reach schools, you need to make maximize the impact of your summers.

Financial Aid Negotiation

You will receive details of your financial aid package along with your award letter. If you are lucky, you may receive the financial aid package you were hoping for.

For some, it could be far lower than you were expecting. Financial aid packages are not inflexible. University Connection’s experts will review financial aid package with students.

If money is the only reason holding you back from attending the college of your dreams, our experts will help you negotiate with financial aid offices for a more generous package.

Colleges and universities typically put together a financial aid package for accepted students based on the information submitted through the FAFSA, as well as the CSS Profile for private schools.

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Recommendation Letter Strategy

High school counselors and teachers can help to paint a better overall picture of your accomplishments, potential, and character with the experiences that they have had with you.

University Connection’s experts will help you develop your letter of recommendation strategy. Our experts will teach you how to write a formal letter of recommendation request. Each request will ask teacher and mentors to highlight characteristics of who you are that you want to implanted throughout your application. Our experts will help you guide your teacher to write a letter that supports your strategic application plan.

Letters of recommendation help provide a holistic view of you as a person and round out your applicant profile. Letters of recommendations from teachers and mentors provide insight into what you are like as a student and person from the perspective of someone who has worked closely with you during your high school career.

GPA Improvement Strategy

Once students start thinking about their future they may feel a sense of urgency about raising their GPA before college admissions. However, many students don’t understand exactly how colleges evaluate high school transcripts or how to improve their GPA before submitting college applications.

Students who are poorly informed about how to improve their GPAs often make decisions that ultimately jeopardize rather than boost their chances of admissions success.

University Connection education experts understand how difficult it will be to make changes based on how far along in high school you are.

Our experts will work one-on-one with students to develop a three prong plan that will help students boost their GPA as well as focus on other areas that will make them standout.

A student's GPA throughout their high school career is often times the most important factor for admissions at virtually every college.

College List Creation

We will work with each student to create a college “longlist.” Their self-developed criteria is then used to research colleges and begin their initial list while also working with their parents to find out their parameters such as budget or location.

Our experts will then help students research appropriate colleges and develop a balanced list of colleges based on your student’s needs and desires that includes reach, match, and safety schools.

To create a perfectly crafted College List students must first define their college criteria. Students define the criteria that are most important to them to use in choosing their initial list of colleges, explore major areas of interest, and take ownership of the process early on.

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Test Prep Strategy

Colleges use SAT and ACT test scores to help them make admission decisions. So it makes sense to prepare and plan so you can do the best on the exam. We work with TestRocker and academic tutors to help our students become familiar with the format of the SAT and ACT.

This extra focus on test prep will give students the confidence needed to preform their best on test day.

While college admissions is a challenging and ever-changing process, standardized testing is an area we can help students prepare for with practice, tutoring, and time-tested techniques so they can take the exams with confidence.

Coursework Planning

Demonstrating to admissions officers that you are prepared to challenge yourself and learn while in college is one of the most important messages to communicate in your application, but you should notsacrifice your GPA to take a full load of honors classes.

Your high school coursework requires a fine balance between being challenging enough to show your academic skills, but not be so challenging that it destroys your GPA. Balancing the benefit of taking AP courses for college credit, as well as overall scheduling issues, can be a nightmare for many applicants.

Your coursework should highlight your passion, and University Connection can help any student put together the perfect schedule.

College admissions can seem like a giant maze, especially if you’re hoping to attend an extremely selective school. Planning your high school schedule carefully is one of the most important steps you can take starting your freshman year.

Scholarship Assistance

However, many of these scholarships have unspecified stipulations and may only reward scholarships to students in a certain demographic (i.e. location, a relative who works at the respective company, etc.).

University Connection has compiled a database of past scholarship recipients to identify these factors and ease the burden of scholarship applications for students.

Your University Connection expert will work with you to identify and vet scholarships, then support you every step of the application process through strategy, essay editing, and final application review.

Each student received personalized searches, individual meetings, and our normal editing service for scholarships. Our graduating seniors in 2020 received nearly $10 million in financial aid with support from University Connection.

Hundreds of thousands of scholarships exist for upcoming college students, and financial aid and scholarships can be a deciding factor in a student’s ability to attend college.

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College Student Mentors

Some of these variables are easy to figure out by visit the college's website, taking a campus tour, or reading online posts. But searching the web and taking a tour won't help you figure out what a class discussion in the subject of your interest is like, and it won't tell you what a typical Thursday night is like for most students.

University Connection has created a network of college mentors to help you bridge the informational gap. Students will get real advice about their potential colleges' choice directly from student mentors attending that university.

Our Mentors include students from Ivy League to competitive Liberal Arts colleges from across the nation.

For many students, deciding where they want to go to college all comes down to whether or not the college has the right combination of academic programs, extracurricular opportunities, community culture, location, and support that they're looking for.

Build a Resume

The format of a student's resume is just as important as the activities and accomplishments listed in it. University Connection will show you how to best showcase those accomplishments and make them a focal part of your college application.

Experts will advise students on what activities and honors to include, as well as how to best highlight them on a resume.

With dozens of unique, professionally designed resume templates, University Connection will help you with every part of your resume, from content to layout, to create the strongest and most memorable resume in the applicant pool.

Resumes are important tools for seeking employment, but most people do not usually associate a Resume with college applications.

Recently, colleges have become more interested in seeing student resumes as part of the within the application package. College applicants should prepare a resume to provide to admissions readers along with their traditional application materials.

Identify Interest

Very few high school students have a clear academic or professional plan, yet all students have varying interests and values that develop as they mature. Students often just need help to identify potential paths that lead them into a fulfilling career and future where they begin to transform the world.

Displaying interests on your college applications is also a major component to getting in, and pursuing your passion should start early on in high school.

Students working with our team start with an in-depth interview. Our experts will help students explore their goals, strengths, values, and learning styles.

This sets the groundwork for helping them discover the direction they want to go in their future. Counselors then work with students to guide them to opportunities to further their interests and help them select a path for future success.

High school students need to identify interests early on to begin exploring the right college, potential majors, and begin applying.

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Pre-Professional Planning

If you’re interested in law, medicine, business, or any graduate school, the best time to start preparing is now. By identifying your goals and working toward them during high school, you’ll have a strong advantage.

Demonstrating eight years of experience and passion for a field far overshadows three or four years of interest shown in just a student’s undergraduate education.

University Connection will work with students to help design a road map of actionable steps students can start today that will put them on the path to achieve their dream career.

Gaining admittance to law, business, and medical school is highly competitive. Many of the nation's top programs have acceptance rates lower than 5%, and tens of thousands of applicants apply each year.

Develop Community Involvement

This makes community service an especially important piece of your college application. Universities show interest in what students are doing outside of the classroom just as much as what they accomplish inside.

While grades and test scores are still the most important factor when evaluating college applications, perfect grades are not enough to be admitted. Colleges want to see students participating in service outside of the classroom and making an impact in their local community.

Our experts will help students find a service project that aligns with their interests in a meaningful way in order to enhance the information already on their college applications.

Community service stimulates personal growth, benefits schools and communities, and even greatly enhances your college applications.

The majority of admissions officers will look for community service as a tiebreaker between two candidates who demonstrate strong test scores, GPAs, and extracurricular activities.

Internship Opportunities

Our experts will assist students in finding the perfect internship for their application and their interests. These internships in high school will help students explore potential careers, gain practical experience, and stand out amongst even the most competitive college applicants.

When a student completes an internship an internship, they get a glimpse at the professional world that many students don’t even think about until college. This provides extremely strong material for a Common App essay that will stand out from all the rest.

Universities receive a record number of applications from outstanding, motivated, well-rounded students. Therefore, students now need to do more in order to stand out and demonstrate a deep commitment to their future goals.