We offer our college admissions expertise to students around the world via phone, Skype, and email.

Parents often call us and ask how we can offer our college admissions expertise to their child in Iowa. After all, we don’t have offices in Iowa and we’re not going to travel to Iowa to work individually with your child. But the fact is, we work with students in Iowa and North Carolina and Texas and Alabama and India and Argentina and Korea all of the time. And we do this via Skype. Skype is an incredible tool. Years ago, this wouldn’t be possible. Back when “The Jetsons” was on the air, speaking to someone in a remote place and being able to see them at the same time seemed highly futuristic. But now, it’s a reality and it enables us to work with students all across the globe.

Do you need to sit in front of us on a couch to take advantage of our college admissions expertise? No. You don’t need to come to our offices. It’s always nice to meet parents and students in person but, the fact is, it’s not always efficient to do so. When we work with students on their college essays, it’s nice to be able to hop on the phone or on Skype to speak with them about ways to improve their essays. Arranging a time to come in to meet wouldn’t allow us to accomplish what we set out to accomplish as quickly as we endeavor to accomplish it!

So do not fret or fear — if you live in South Africa, we can still help you and guide you through the college admissions process. We can advise you on what to do and what not to do as though we’re sitting right next to you. We literally work with students from around the world. We don’t just work with students in New York. Or Los Angeles. Or China. We have offices in these place, yes. But we help college applicants in Switzerland, too! And we don’t have an office in Switzerland!

Contact us for our college admissions expertise today!

Ivy League grads earn more than do graduates of less selective colleges. Also interesting, those who have the chutzpah to even apply to Ivy League colleges earn more on average than do grads of other colleges.

Ivy League graduates make more money than do graduates of just any college. Shocker, we know. The figure is actually that Ivy League graduates make 32% more upon their graduation than do grads from other schools. According to an article on college decisions in “US News & World Report” by Brian Burnsed (an article in which The Ivy Coach is featured), college applicants are looking more and more at output data from the universities to which they’re considering applying. As cited by “US News & World Report,” output data includes job placement rate, average starting salary, four-year graduation rate, as well as the percentage of students who go on to matriculate to grad school within a few years of their college graduation.

And it’s not just college applicants who are looking closely at output data. Business school applicants are examining output data even more closely…particularly since many business school applicants are leaving the job market to go to business school. They want to make sure they’re going to be in a better position after they invest two years in business school – not to mention investing quite a bit of money! So it might well be worth examining that output data with a close eye.

If you’re wondering about how to find out a college’s output data, ask for output statistics directly from either the university’s admissions office or from the university’s career center. And be sure to check out our post on Ivy League Recruiting or on Ivy League and Career. There really is a significant difference in the output data for Ivy League colleges as compared to other universities. Does that surprise you? Let us know your thoughts by posting below!

Applying to film school isn't for everyone. Some people rise to the top of Hollywood by working their way up. Please note that we have no idea why Kenneth has been an NBC page for the better part of 5 years.

Consider this — film school isn’t necessary. Whether you’re applying as an undergrad or for an MFA, you don’t need to attend film school to become a big shot Hollywood writer, director, producer, executive, or star. In fact, it could even hurt you. Many folks in Hollywood look down on people who thought they could rise through the ranks more easily by amassing fancy degrees. The people who work their way up from second assistant to the assistant of the PA (OK, that’s a bit ridiculous) to big time feature director are the ones who get the respect.

But that’s not all. Think about what you’re going to learn inside a classroom. Not to pick on Dartmouth (we happen to love Dartmouth and think it’s one of the very finest if not the finest college in the country) but have a look at what some of the Dartmouth Film and Media Studies professors actually teach. From “Curating and the Microcinema” to “Film as Poetry: Avant Garde,” these classes aren’t exactly useful come time when you’re answering phones for a famous director. What is microcinema anyway? And we promise nobody earning a paycheck calls movies “cinema” in Hollywood anyway. Does that mean learning about this sort of thing isn’t important? No. Not at all.

We understand the value of a great liberal arts education. And nobody does it better than Dartmouth College. But if you want to work in film, you don’t have to study it in college. Study something else. Get another expertise. You can learn film on the job. It’s not exactly rocket science. It’s not like J.J. Abrams or Aaron Sorkin are teaching courses at Dartmouth. And the vast majority of students at NYU or even USC aren’t learning from someone of J.J. Abrams’ caliber either.

Check out our posts on Film School Applicants and The Ivy League and Hollywood. And let us know what you think about applying to film school by posting below!

How do you think Ruth Simmons' planned resignation will impact Brown University students?

Brown University’s president, Ruth Simmons, today announced that this year would be her final one as president of Brown University. Ruth Simmons’ leadership at Brown University has been historic in many ways. She was the first black president of an Ivy League university and she has been Brown’s first female president. Prior to her tenure at the helm of Brown, Simmons was the president of Smith College. She was the first female black president of a prominent college or university. A 2009 Brown University poll also suggested she had an unprecedented 80% approval rating. According to the “Brown Daily Herald,” “Simmons wrote that she ‘recently’ decided to step down, adding that this is ‘the ideal time’ for the University and for herself to move to new leadership.”

Check out the Brown University news release in the “Brown Daily Herald” on Ruth Simmons’ announcement and have a look at our blog on Brown University Students or this one on Brown University Recruits. Brown University students and alumni, what do you think about this announcement? How will it impact Brown?

Let us know your thoughts by posting below!

If you haven't visited all of the colleges to which you're applying, visit schools early this fall. The application season is upon you!

If you’re a senior who hasn’t yet had the chance to visit all of the colleges you wish to apply to, you should be doing that now. Many people suggest touring colleges over the summer. You’re off from school. You have more free time. You won’t have to miss classes and fall behind on your work. The problem is that college students aren’t usually around campuses during the summer months…so how can a prospective student truly get a sense of a university? There are exceptions. Sophomores at Dartmouth College, for instance, are required to be on campus. But Dartmouth is the exception, not the rule. If you find yourself in this predicament, fall college visits are vitally important!

If you made the mistake of not touring colleges during your sophomore and junior years, you should be doing it now. If it means missing a day of school, miss a day of school. Be sure to catch up on your work but visiting colleges so that you can get a better sense of where exactly you want to spend the next four years of your life is important, too! It’s also important because you need to write about specifics in your college essays which you should be writing now…if you haven’t already started (it would have been better had you started earlier in the summer!). When you go to visit colleges, take a notebook. Write down things that interest you so that you can reference specifics later on when you sit down to write your college essays — or even if it’s just to weigh which universities you like the best. You may forget if you don’t write it all down!

Check out our video on College Tours and check out our newsletter on Campus Visits.

More Chinese students are being admitted to U.S. graduate schools than in years past. In fact, the increase has been exponential.

According to “The Chronicle of Higher Education” article on international students and graduate school admission, “Admissions offers to students from India also jumped, by 8 percent, the first uptick in prospective students from that country since fall of 2007. India trails only China as the largest source of international students to the United States. Offers of admission to students from South Korea, however, remained flat, compared to 2010, after four years in a row of declines. Together, those three countries account for half of all non-U.S. citizens on student visas at American graduate schools.”

And what areas/schools have experienced the most growth in international applicants? That would be business schools followed closely by physical and earth sciences according to “The Chronicle of Higher Education.” If you’re a student in China thinking about applying for graduate school admission in the United States, contact us today! And if you’re a college student in China looking to apply to American colleges, check out our blog on U.S. college admissions in China.

Wharton students tend to hail from companies like McKinsey, Bain, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan.

1. McKinsey & Co. 

2. Boston Consulting Group

3. Bain & Co.

4. Goldman Sachs

4. JP Morgan

5. Morgan Stanley

6. Deloitte

6. U.S. Army

6. Booz & Co.

9. Barclays Bank

9. Accenture

9. Oliver Wyman

13. Google

13. LEK Consulting

15. American Express

15. Deutsche Bank

15. UBS

15. Microsoft

19. Procter & Gamble

19. World Bank

19. Monitor Group

19. Bank of America

23. Blackstone Group

23. A.T. Kearney

23. Credit Suisse

23. Huron Consulting Group 

What do you think about the same set of companies supplying MBA programs like Wharton with so many of their students? Let us know what you think by posting below!

Many Ivy League grads end up joining Teach For America.

According to Teach For America’s website, University of Michigan leads the way among big universities with 119 students. U of M is followed by UC Berkeley, UT – Austin, UNC, Florida, USC, University of Wisconsin, University of Virginia, University of Washington, UCLA, University of Maryland, Penn State, Ohio State, University of Pennsylvania, University of Georgia, and Cornell University. Of medium schools, leading the way is Harvard University followed by Boston College, Georgetown University, Duke University, Brown University, Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, Yale University, Stanford University, Emory University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and Tulane University. Among small universities, Spelman college tops the list followed by Wellesley College, Barnard College, Amherst College, and Claremont McKenna College. 

The Common Application recently went live. Rising seniors, start working on your college applications now!

If you’re a rising high school senior, you should know that the Common Application went live on August 1st. So you can now sign up for a Common Application account and begin filling out the application. Fill in the biographical information. Read over the essay prompts. Now is the time to really work on this material as once the school year starts, you’ll be inundated with tests and studying for your classes. What better time than now?

Check out our blogs on Completing the Common Application and on the new word limit on the Common App. And contact us today to get started so that you can gain an edge in getting into a highly competitive college!

The Academic Index is at the heart of understanding Ivy League admissions for athletes as well as non-athletes.

So if you’re a recruited athlete with subpar SATs and lousy grades (let’s say you’re a Band 2 athlete between one or two standard deviations below the campus Academic Index), you may still gain admission to this selective Ivy League college. But the coach may need a Band 4 athlete – athletes at or above the campus Academic Index – to offset the Band 2 applicant’s academic numbers. Those Band 4 athletes may not be quite as good athletically as the Band 2 athletes. Maybe they’re good enough but they’re unlikely to be stars. Nonetheless, these Band 4 athletes serve an important function. While they may ride the bench, they’re putting up numbers for their teams, too.

Check out our post on Ivy League Sports or on College Admissions and March Madness. And check back soon for more posts on the Ivy League and the Academic Index.