Lisa Bleich - Surviving the College Application Process: Case Studies to Help You Find Your Unique Angle for Success

SURVIVING THE COLLEGE

APPLICATIONPROCESS

You have to be angular to fit into a well-rounded college. Colleges seek to be well-rounded so they can offer varied experiences to their students. Students who express their intimate relationship with themselves are more successful in communicating their uniqueness to the college. By providing a variety of case studies Lisa Bleich shows how its done. Kudos to this author.

C. Claire Law, MS, Certified Educational Planner,
co-author of Find the Perfect College for You

In this book, Lisa Bleich effectively marries her extensive knowledge of marketing with her experience as an independent college consultant and mentor. Her advice to students is critical in the current admission environment: identify and communicate your unique and authentic strengths, talents and experiences to make you an angular, and therefore more compelling, candidate. By applying the principles of marketing she helps students understand how to represent the best of who they are to the admissions office.

Mark H. Sklarow, Chief Executive Officer,
Independent Educational Consultants Association

Bleich takes the guesswork out of the college application process. Her case studies are easily adapted to fit any students college planning needs. Surviving the College Application Process is informative, easy to read, and fun.

Steven R. Antonoff, Ph.D., CEP, author of
The College Finder: Choose the School Thats Right for You!

CASE STUDIES TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR UNIQUE ANGLE FOR SUCCESS

Lisa Bleich

N EW Y ORK

SURVIVING THE COLLEGEAPPLICATIONPROCESS CASE STUDIES TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR UNIQUE ANGLE FOR SUCCESS

2014 Lisa Bleich.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other,except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing. Morgan James and The Entrepreneurial Publisher are trademarks of Morgan James, LLC.
www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

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Note: Student names have been changed for privacy.

FREE eBook edition for your existing eReader with purchase

PRINT NAME ABOVE

ISBN 978-1-61448-722-7 paperback
ISBN 978-1-61448-723-4 eBook
ISBN 978-1-61448-724-1 audio
ISBN 978-1-61448-884-2 hardcover
Library of Congress Control Number:
2013946288

Cover Design by:
Rachel Lopez
www.r2cdesign.com

Interior Design by:
Bonnie Bushman

In an effort to support local communities, raise awareness and funds, Morgan James Publishing donates a percentage of all book sales for the life of each book to Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg.

CONTENTS

A NOTE TO PARENTS:

WHY I CAN HELP YOUR KID GET INTO COLLEGE

When I moved to New Jersey from California in 2004, one of the first things I noticed was how stressed out most parents were about the college application process. They understood that a college education was a prerequisite to getting ahead, but as the application pool was becoming increasingly crowded and competitive, they werent sure how to help their kids stand out to admissions committees while competing with thousands of other kids for relatively few freshmen slots. Not only that, the application process had changed since they applied to college; now, it was a lot more multilayered and, well, daunting.

I could certainly sympathize, but my own kids were still in elementary school at the time, and college seemed a long way off. Nonetheless, the problem interested me. I couldnt help thinking that my previous experience in marketing (as a visiting assistant professor of marketing at Whittier College, director of recruiting for Ticketmaster Online/CitySearch, and a developer of strategic marketing plans for various companies) might lend some much-needed perspective to the challenge these parents and their teens faced. In fact, by using a strategic marketing approach when positioning students for college admissions committees, I thought I could help them find a good fit between their needs and what colleges desired from successful applicants. In other words, since I had learned how to position products and services to appeal to customers, I figured I could also position students to be appealing to colleges.

To test my theory, I offered to work pro bono with my next-door neighbor, a high school senior applying to college. Isabelle was a strong student but uncertain about which school would be a good fit for her. She was denied at her top choice, Bowdoin, a small liberal arts college in Maine, but she was accepted to several other small liberal arts colleges along the East Coast, as well as McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Something in Isabelles gut directed her toward McGill, a large, internationally diverse institution, but she still felt confused and very stressed about making the right decision.

Since Isabelle was my first client, we took a haphazard approach to analyzing the colleges at which shed been accepted. Ultimately, Isabelle followed her instinct and chose McGill. Thankfully, it was the right decision. Isabelle graduated four years later and is now happily employed in New York City.

While helping my neighbor find the right college, I realized that there had to be a more strategic way to approach this process. So, over the course of the next eight years, I developed a system to help students apply to college. This led to the founding of my company, College Bound Mentor, LLC. My strategic system now includes tools to help students think about who they really are, how they learn best, the types of people around whom they most want to be, the sort of academic social life where they will best thrive, and, most important, what makes them different and unique. In fact, I realized that just as a product or service can be differentiated from other products or services with its unique selling proposition (USP)something that no other product or service offerseach student also has a unique selling proposition: one that will make him or her attractive to the right school. I also discovered, during hundreds of individual consultations, that every student has innate talents, but the ability to identify those talents and communicate them effectively to colleges is the key to a successful application process. Unfortunately, most kids have a difficult time identifying what parts of their background and experiences are most important and interesting.