Camila from South America brought a very strong academic record to her search for American universities. But she needed help with the extra elements in the American process.
In our initial consultation, we recommended she build on her passions and start a literary club at her international school, join the debate club run by her History teacher to foster a relationship that would lead to a supportive teacher recommendation, and keep a journal to tap into later for her two dozen college essays – models of which she later referred to on our OWL Portal.
Like many of our international students, Camila came to us originally focused on just two types of colleges: 1) Well-known, large universities like UCLA, USC and NYU; 2) The Ivy trifecta of Harvard-Yale-Princeton. Camila’s love of class discussions, her tight-knit school community, and the outdoors led us to recommend two schools where she was ultimately accepted: 1) Middlebury, a top ‘Little Ivy’ school eager to recruit more international scholars; 2) Dartmouth, the smallest of the Ivies, and the one most excited to attract South Americans.