You Are the Best Candidate We Have Ever Seen!!! Will it be Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or None of the Above?

This year, top colleges throughout the United States will send hundreds of thousands of brochures to students of all backgrounds and interests. Yale alone will mail 80,000 brochures to students extolling the virtues of one of the best schools in the world. Actually, this number is significantly down. In 2005, Yale was sending out 120,000 brochures. Despite this decrease in mailings, assuming that the pool of students receiving information (an unlikely assumption, but we can be generous) comprises all the students who apply, over 98% of those students are not getting into Yale.

A similar pattern holds true for almost every single competitive college in the country. Bloomberg reported on this story (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/ivy-league-solicits-students-to-boost-selectivity.html), and stopped just short of accusing the schools of systematically boosting the number of students that are applying to raise more money from application fees, and make their schools look even more prestigious by having a lower ratio of students accepted than their competition. Whether or not that is true is interesting, but almost completely beside the point when it comes to figuring out how YOU are going to approach the applications process. Your unique needs, goals and dreams cannot be the number one priority of institutions serving thousands of others, but they should be of paramount importance to you!

So one more time we are reminded that we have to figure out what we want to do with our lives, give it real consideration, put in the research, and then figure out how to move forward with our own, personal plan. Regardless of what the brochures promise, your own best path is never as simple as just going to the "most competitive school", if it is even feasible to go there in the first place. There is no substitute for independent thinking and following your heart. Focusing on the few things that almost everyone else is obsessively focusing on, is unlikely to be the best way to discover your own true dreams, and reach your own goals.

In short, ignore the flash and the pizzazz, and get your own work done! Not sure how to do that? Contact us at oneTRUEzone. We know how and are ready to help you.