Tailoring College Applications

We’re all about tailoring at Ivy Coach (photo credit: http://www.paintingwithlight.xyz/architecture/).

Taylor. That’s the last name of the family that runs our business. And it’s an appropriate name for a family that helps students earn admission to highly selective colleges across America. Think about it. Taylor. Or should we say…tailor. One of the key reasons why our students at Ivy Coach so often earn admission to the highly selective colleges of their dreams is that we help them tailor their applications, and their many essays, to the individual schools to which they’re applying.

Here’s a refrain we often hear from students who are not our clients: “I applied to 20 schools. So I’m bound to get into at least one great one.” And when we hear that, we start thinking about counting chickens. Before they hatch of course. Because in our experience, when students apply to 20 schools, they tend to cut and paste essays from one school to the next? That Why Penn essay? They repurposed it for their Why Carnegie Mellon. And when students do such a thing, they commit an egregious error in highly selective college admissions.

What do you think a Penn admissions officer is going to think when you essentially use the same essay for Penn that you did for a school like Carnegie Mellon? When you boast about their great education, their small student-to-faculty ratio, and more. They’re going to think that these are vague generalities that can apply to any school in America. They’re going to think the student didn’t do his or her homework on the institution. They’re going to think he or she has no intention of matriculating if admitted. And so what are they going to do? They’re going to deny that student’s case for admission.

So, in the end, it’s all about tailoring applications to the individual schools with their unique attributes. And the Taylors (and the folks they’ve trained over the years) know how to do this exceedingly well. It’s a big part of their secret sauce.