Truth or Dare? Does a strategic profile really matter for top university applications?

As an experienced profile builder and strategist, I always meet students and families who have misunderstandings about their profile. SCORE INFLATION in recent years already collapsed most of the previous admissions mechanism. Keep pushing the score to the flawless point no longer gives you an advantage to any top school applications since it has become just an essential component to the profile. I heard a lot of parents telling me that some counselors requested their child to score 1570 in SAT then they would allow them to apply Ivy League. I tell you the truth now, my students got in Ivy League with 1480 SAT score! Again, score isn’t the only factor deciding your fate! PROFILE DOES!!

Talking about profile, a lot of counselors are still using the old model consisting of academic, extracurricular activities and personality. It doesn’t work anymore! Why? The answer is “too simple”. While some counselors try to introduce the concept of “passion”, they don’t really know what they are talking about and keep telling the parents and students to follow the passion. Parents and students simply say, “how I can follow the passion when I don’t even have clues about it?” Therefore, passion isn’t the most recent trend anymore since it is also the essential part of the profile now!!

That’s the reason why we should try to start the new age of “strategic” profile building. While scores and passion has been the essential parts of a profile, what can help a candidate to stand out from the crowd? The key here is to be the odd, so that you can catch the attention of the admissions officers to look at your application form. You may want to ask a question on how to start. My suggestion is to look at your surroundings, including your peers. Figure out what they are doing and then avoid doing that if more than half of your friends are already doing as it won’t give you any advantage!

I won’t try to tell you to follow your passion anymore as it is useless, build up your profile from your interests! Constructing a strategic profile requires a super detailed time management. So, we need to start with re-constructing the weekly timetable and assessing the performance of all subject tutorials. Next we will need to analyze your study habits and patterns to determine whether it is the most effective one or not. Then we can start to look at the mixture of both in-school and out-school activities. Remember! CAS from IBDP cannot count as your extra-curricular activities when applying universities since it is a compulsory requirement for IBDP.

I still have so many things to point out for your profile building but there is not enough space for me. If you want to know more about your current standing and how to build a strategic profile, don’t hesitate to contact me, the only true strategic profile builder in Hong Kong!! Looking forward to talking to you soon about your story!

With an in-depth understanding of what students need to learn and demonstrate in an outstanding college-ready application, the Aspirers designed our signature Aspirers Profile Advancement program.

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Want to learn more? Come visit the Aspirers at 19A Midtown, 1 Tang Lung Street, Causeway Bay, during office hours or Whatsapp/ call us at 9880 7315! Or initial a meeting with The Aspirers.