Host: What can students do to make themselves competitive for the most selective colleges and universities?
Jerome Cole: What students should be focused on is their academic performance, that is the first thing is make sure you are challenging yourself in the classroom and make sure you are performing up to your full capability, so that is one. Two- your passions, your interest, what are the things that you like to do? Whatever they are, be they music, sports, arts, what have you, make sure that you are maximizing those interests, make sure that you are participating in both school and out of school activities that are related around that particular entrance. The last thing, go visit, go into the admissions office, make contact with those folks who are going to be making the decisions on you. Then, the very last thing that I would caution students and families on is to look at the numbers for the school and when I say numbers, I am specifically talking about the grade point averages and the SAT scores, that medium 50 percentile of students who are admitted and then look at your numbers. Do not amuse yourself. Be honest with yourself. If you are a C student and you are applying to a school where the bulk of the students admitted are B students; that is going to be a reach school for you.
Go ahead and apply to one or two reaches but you want to minimize those. So, it is great that you want to apply to this really selective school, but are you a candidate that is going to be really attractive based your academic profile, based on your outside interest?
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