Elizabeth Wissner-Gross - What High Schools Dont Tell You: 300+ Secrets to Make Your Kid Irresistible to Colleges by Senior Year

I n writing my previous book, What Colleges Dont Tell You (and Other Parents Dont Want You to Know) , I heard so many college admissions officers comment that the majority of parents of applicants to the top colleges are out of touch with the depth of the applicant pool out there and the strong credentials that other candidates bring to the table.

What those credentials are and how to access them has been a best-kept secret in America for decades. (The relatively few parents who know what it takes to get in dont share their informationto maintain the competitive edge for their own kids.) But its time to spill the beans. So Ive written this booka guide to some of the most outstanding opportunities that build those credentials that dazzle collegesa book that I wished had existed when I was raising my own two sons.

To learn the inside secrets of building the most sought-after credentials over the course of four years of high school, I interviewed teachers, college admissions officers, parents of nationally recognized high school students, directors of some of the most prestigious summer programs, and creators and administrators of inspiring high school contests and other opportunities. So many people contributed generously to the wealth of options provided in this book, and I thank them all.

In addition, What High Schools Dont Tell You would not have been possible without the vision and upbeat approach of publisher Laureen Rowland, the continued commitment of Luke Dempsey and Clare Ferraro, and the thoughtful queries and contagious enthusiasm of my editor, Danielle Friedman. Thanks to Liz Keenan, Marie Coolman, Abigail Powers, Susan Schwartz, Eve Kirch, Melissa Jacoby, and everyone else at Hudson Street Press for their work on the book. I also want to acknowledge Leda Scheintaub, for very astute copyediting. I especially want to thank my literary agent, Susan Ginsburg, for continuing to live up to her image of being the best agent in New York, and Emily Saladino, for all her help.

I express gratitude to my patient friends and family, who were most understanding when I had to tune out for weeks at a time or miss social gatherings, to have this book ready just a year after What Colleges Dont Tell You .

Most of all, I want to acknowledge the hundreds of students with whom Ive had the privilege to workthe young scientists, mathematicians, artists, scholars, journalists, advocates, and leadersfor their willingness to dream and help pioneer paths to achieve those dreams. They are what this book is all about.

W hen people ask me what I do exactly, Im sometimes tempted to tell them that I make kids dreams come true, because thats where clients say my true talent lies. But I realize that people unfamiliar with my work would be suspicious of that claim, so I give them a more mundane title: educational strategist. What I really do, however, is try to uncover kids greatest aspirations and then help them to achieve them. The plan focuses heavily on empowering kids during high school so that by the time they apply to their dream colleges they are so outstandingly accomplished in their fields of interest and so overwhelmingly appealing that every college wants them. I work with kids from 8th grade on, some of whom are able to articulate clearly what they aspire to do, others who claim they have no clue. Within a two-hour meeting, Im generally able to unearth these kids dreams and passions and give them a concrete planinforming them of some of the top opportunities availableto help them achieve their goals.

They tell me: astronaut, rock star, film producer, physicist, novelist, inventor, medical wizard, Olympic athlete, business mogul, or even president. What I do that nobody else seems to do is take these dreams seriously. Together we map out a road to get there, starting when they are thirteen and fourteen years old. Even in todays ultracompetitive times, gaining admission into the most sought-after colleges can become a relatively simple task when a student is filled with energy and ambition and is vigorously pursuing a dream. Just as students have dream colleges, I have found that colleges also have dream students. I help students become those dream students.