Alison Cooper Chisolm - How to Prepare a Standout College Application: Expert Advice That Takes You from Lmo* (*Like Many Others) to Admit

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Copyright 2013 by Alison Cooper Chisolm and Anna Ivey. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chisolm, Alison Cooper.

How to prepare a standout college application : expert advice that takes you from LMO* (*like many others) to admit / Alison Cooper Chisolm and Anna Ivey. First edition.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-41440-8 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-70206-2 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-70207-9 (ebk.)

1. College applicationsUnited States. I. Ivey, Anna, author. II. Title.

LB2351.52.U6C45 2013

378.1'616dc23

2013017889

Preface

A t soccer matches and in Starbucks lines around the country, students and their parents are talking about that great kid from their local high schoolthe one with the great grades and the great scores and the great extracurricularswho got denied by all of the elite colleges. No one can believe it. It's D-Day, also known as Decision Day, and the news has everyone baffled and a bit panicked.

They can't imagine how this could have happened. It's especially confusing for the students who are just a year or two behind that senior because they have been knocking themselves out trying to acquire the same kinds of stellar credentials as the great kid who got rejected. Now they want to know exactly what it takes to get into the best colleges. Their parents don't know what to say because left without a better explanation, the parents themselves ruefully conclude that getting into the top colleges must require making a seven-figure donation, having some kind of magic hook, or turning into Tiger Mom.

But they are wrong. It's not about pull or having a hook, and it's certainly not about having better qualifications. The superstar was in fact qualified, and he had all the right credentials. So what went wrong?

The application itself.

When read as a whole, the application failed to make that particular great kid stand out from all the other great kids in the applicant pool. Admissions officers have shorthand to describe these kinds of applicants, the ones with the right credentials who don't submit standout applications. They're called LMOs, short for like many others.

Stellar credentials are great, but without a standout application, they are not enough. It really is as simple as that. So when people ask us, What's the secret? our answer is always the same: The application is the secret.