I need help honing my brand.
How should I package myself?
Now in my tenth year as a consultant for college admissions essays, I have seen a shift in
the lexicon of applicants, who now want to market themselves with “value-added,” “leverage,”
and other catch phrases borrowed from the business world. Similarly, parents are increasingly
seeking to turn their daughter or son’s college application into a pitch deck for admissions
officers at Princeton, Stanford, and other highly selective universities.
“We get a lot of questions from parents about how to package their kids,” says Stacy
Hernandez, who worked as a director of admissions at Johns Hopkins University before
co-founding TheBestU, a college consulting firm. “Some start talking about branding when their
kids are in eighth grade.”
The rise of business language is the indirect result of the college admissions environment.
This year, Harvard accepted 3.6% of applicants, compared to 5.9% in 2014. During that period
the acceptance rate at Northwestern fell from 12.9% to 7.5%. Indeed, every national university
ranked in US News & World Report’s top 20 showed a similar, sharp decline.
There is no metric for the intensity of the competition to be among the sliver of students
who snag one of the coveted spots at an elite university. However, a plausible proxy is the
growth of the college admissions consulting industry. The income of advisers whose fees range
from $20 to edit an essay to more than $100,000 for a year of advice adds up to a global business
with an estimated revenue of $2.9 billion.
The search for an edge has led high schoolers and their parents to an important
understanding about admissions decisions. Colleges once filled their classes with so-called
well-rounded students who balanced English and extracurriculars, STEM and soccer. These days,
admissions officers favor specialists over generalists; gifted musicians, prize-winning researchers
and published poets all get special attention. Successful students I have worked with included a
young astronomer who discovered galaxies, an entrepreneur whose invention sells at Walmart,
and a nonprofit founder with financial literacy offerings that reach more than 20,000 teenagers.
Admissions successes of these and other outliers contribute to the growing perception
that intrinsically interesting experiences require additional spin to inspire an acceptance letter.
This belief in branding is amplified by consultants who promise to help students sculpt personal
brands and concoct compelling profiles, successful students who share their strategies on TikTok
and Instagram, and media reports that echo popular wisdom. Earlier this year, a New York Times
There are, however, pitfalls to applying marketing to college admissions. Students who
try to distill themselves into a catchy phrase run the risk of oversimplification. Others land on
labels that duplicate those of other applicants; as students gravitate to activities of students who
were accepted to Ivy-plus universities once unique identities become commonplace. Perhaps the
biggest risk for students who sell themselves like soap is that their applications often feel
mechanical and lifeless.
“Colleges scrunch their noses when they feel that someone is trying too hard to create a
brand,” says Deb Felix, a former Columbia University admissions dean who advises privately
through Felix Educational Consulting. “When you do too much marketing you lose what
colleges are looking for: authenticity.”
A better approach is to complement details of a primary academic interest or
extracurricular activity with more personal pursuits. Take the young astronomer who, in addition
to detailing his research, shared stories about teaching himself Japanese and overcoming his fear
of public speaking. The entrepreneur paired an essay about her budding businesses with her
mountain misadventures and collection of trucker hats. The nonprofit founder created a personal
portrait by pairing essays about promoting financial literacy with others about writing restaurant
reviews and his Hindu faith.
Still, authenticity often tips the balance in admissions decisions. “Ultimately, the people
who read applications apply the roommate test,” says Deb Felix. “They ask whether an applicant
would make a good roommate, lab partner, or friend.”
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