I wanted to take a few moments to outline what to expect for your teenager during the next few months.
Core academics: In most cases, the foundation of a high school student's profile is formed by the end-of-11th grade credentials (WGPA, class rank, and special certificates such as the AP Capstone Diploma). Please review our post: What colleges look for in high school students.
Summer extracurriculars: The summer between the 11th and 12th grade can be crucial to demonstrating extracurricular interest/leadership/experience in your student's field. Please visit our post here - we have significantly expanded our summer opportunity list. Many institutions have already closed their application windows, but several are still open. We urge you to act promptly. If you have not received our long-form resume template in which your teenager will brag about all their accomplishments, we will send it to you when we meet for our college selection discussion.
College admission tests: Tests are important because they help confirm the legitimacy of your high school GPA. Beginning in 2024, it has become clear that the test-optional policies at many colleges, instituted during Covid, is finally coming to an end. Colleges are beginning to realize after four years of experimentation with student admissions and performance that test scores better help predict students’ college grades, and their chances of graduation and post-college success. Grades alone are not as accurate a predictor because of issues like grade inflation that make it difficult to assess a student’s work.
Core academics: In most cases, the foundation of a high school student's profile is formed by the end-of-11th grade credentials (WGPA, class rank, and special certificates such as the AP Capstone Diploma). Please review our post: What colleges look for in high school students.
Summer extracurriculars: The summer between the 11th and 12th grade can be crucial to demonstrating extracurricular interest/leadership/experience in your student's field. Please visit our post here - we have significantly expanded our summer opportunity list. Many institutions have already closed their application windows, but several are still open. We urge you to act promptly. If you have not received our long-form resume template in which your teenager will brag about all their accomplishments, we will send it to you when we meet for our college selection discussion.
College admission tests: Tests are important because they help confirm the legitimacy of your high school GPA. Beginning in 2024, it has become clear that the test-optional policies at many colleges, instituted during Covid, is finally coming to an end. Colleges are beginning to realize after four years of experimentation with student admissions and performance that test scores better help predict students’ college grades, and their chances of graduation and post-college success. Grades alone are not as accurate a predictor because of issues like grade inflation that make it difficult to assess a student’s work.
We require you to have at least one SAT or ACT score on file before scheduling a meeting to discuss potential colleges and majors. Our tool relies on Department of Education data about the 25th and 75th percentile cutoffs for your desired college. If you have not taken the SAT/ACT even once, you must at least have the results of one official mock test that you have taken at home before you can meet with us. Review our post here about preparing for the SAT/ACT if you are taking it this summer. Many top colleges, including UT Austin, are now requiring the SAT/ACT. The California universities will continue to be test blind. Fairtest.org maintains a list of schools that are test-optional. We can decide your score submission strategy when we meet.
Task plan: Please review our post that outlines your student's various steps to complete college applications this season. We list our proprietary tools to assist you at each stage - tools that we will share with you as we encounter each step. Many of these tools are designed to limit your engagement with us so that your teenager builds confidence as a do-it-yourself-er and you save from fewer invoices from us!
Essays: Your student's college essays will remain the most critical part of the application package. Please sit with your teenager to review our primer on essays. We have invested heavily in the essay review process and replicate the process that colleges employ.
Each essay goes through a two-pass review. On our team are strong creative writers affiliated with institutions such as Stanford and Duke. Our second-pass review examines every word and punctuation mark for correctness, clarity, engagement, delivery, final presentation, and plagiarism.
I will use my years of experience as a columnist
and 17-years of
management consulting experience to oversee review operations. I currently serve on the editorial board of tippinsights, from America's most accurate pollster, writing 3-4 editorials a week. More than 600 articles of mine have already appeared across various media outlets including TIPP Insights, The Hindu, and ETV Bharat. I bring this writing experience and context to world affairs to each college essay I review.
Results: Our investments and efforts have paid off. Several clients were interviewed at the best schools, including MIT, Caltech, Yale, Columbia, CMU, Princeton, Penn, Brown, Cornell, CMU, and Johns Hopkins. During the Early Decision cycle for the class of 2024, students got confirmed admissions to Stanford, Rice, Johns Hopkins, and Wash U. Many clients reported getting into some of the best public Ivies. UT Austin, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, UCLA, the University of Michigan, Purdue, the University of Virginia, and the College of William and Mary repeatedly made the list. Clients also got into Texas A&M, Arizona State, the University of Washington, the University of Pittsburgh, and Virginia Tech.
Our clients have continued to acknowledge our work through their public reviews - we have been a Google 5-star small business for six years in a row.
Fees
Please review our latest Fees page. Our business model is to provide you with as much public information as you want for free
- via our popular posts on this website, Facebook page, and public
seminars. We only charge when you engage with us for one-on-one help,
either online or offline. But you control how much you want to engage,
down to the hour. This allows you to better budget your spend. It is one
reason we are so popular with our clients.
We have developed new tools that will likely lower your overall hours of engagement, such as reusing essays, distributing detailed notes with action items, or self-managing your task plan. Our college selection sheet instantly predicts your chance of admission to 542 colleges based on your admission test scores. Our library of over 50 original posts dedicated to the 11th and 12th grader is loaded with information. Our Facebook Business Page, operational since 2013, contains a treasure-trove of information about every aspect of college readiness. Our model of encouraging you to limit engagement with us to only those elements for which you need one-on-one assistance may be counter-intuitive. But it is the reason for our growth and positioning in this industry.
All of our essay reviews can now be ordered from a simple menu-driven product list resembling an online store. You prepay for our service using a fixed-price model and get full buyer protection from PayPal.
Next steps: Please begin your engagement with us early. The first or second week of June is the best time to start. ApplyTex opens July 1. The Common App and Coalition App open on Aug 1. But essay prompts are already out. The earlier we complete your part of the admissions process, the better off you will be. Please use our online calendar to reserve your spot.
12th-graders are our most important constituency, given how truly life-changing the Senior year can be. As during previous years, we will shutter our services to all other grades between Sep 1 and Nov 1, the busiest eight weeks of the college admissions season. If you have a younger one needing help, we ask you to book appointments outside this window.
I hope to work with your student in the coming months. Good luck!
Rajkamal Rao
We have developed new tools that will likely lower your overall hours of engagement, such as reusing essays, distributing detailed notes with action items, or self-managing your task plan. Our college selection sheet instantly predicts your chance of admission to 542 colleges based on your admission test scores. Our library of over 50 original posts dedicated to the 11th and 12th grader is loaded with information. Our Facebook Business Page, operational since 2013, contains a treasure-trove of information about every aspect of college readiness. Our model of encouraging you to limit engagement with us to only those elements for which you need one-on-one assistance may be counter-intuitive. But it is the reason for our growth and positioning in this industry.
All of our essay reviews can now be ordered from a simple menu-driven product list resembling an online store. You prepay for our service using a fixed-price model and get full buyer protection from PayPal.
Next steps: Please begin your engagement with us early. The first or second week of June is the best time to start. ApplyTex opens July 1. The Common App and Coalition App open on Aug 1. But essay prompts are already out. The earlier we complete your part of the admissions process, the better off you will be. Please use our online calendar to reserve your spot.
12th-graders are our most important constituency, given how truly life-changing the Senior year can be. As during previous years, we will shutter our services to all other grades between Sep 1 and Nov 1, the busiest eight weeks of the college admissions season. If you have a younger one needing help, we ask you to book appointments outside this window.
I hope to work with your student in the coming months. Good luck!
Rajkamal Rao
A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website. But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.
Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee. Please contact us for more information.
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website. But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.
Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee. Please contact us for more information.
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