It’s Arya Diwase, co-founder and student mentor at Application Ally. Today, I’d like to share the inspiring story of our client Aditi* who has secured admits to every single college she has applied to, during the 2020-21 application cycle, including the prestigious Ivy League Columbia University.
Here’s listing down her grievances:
Aditi* came to us in May 2020, hoping to apply for public policy and law programs abroad. She was in the final year of her Indian law degree and was in two minds about pursuing policy or law.
She wanted to join graduate school immediately upon graduation instead but was worried that no full-time experience would limit her chances of being admitted to a top program.
Here’s how I tackled the application:
- We recommended the Best Fit Package to help her with her college research and strategy, our Writing Package to help structure and edit essays as well as our Scholarship Package to help her research and target funding opportunities.
- Our first task was to help her achieve clarity on her schools.
- After multiple one on one brainstorming sessions, we helped her understand the flexibility and opportunity that a policy degree provided as opposed to a traditional LLM.
- We then adopted a 3-pronged approach of shortlisting Dream, Target and Safety universities to put her in the best position to secure an admit and approach the application cycle with confidence.
- When we began working on Aditi’s* essays, I used my own experience of applying to public policy and law programs to help her highlight relevant extracurricular and work experience to create a compelling narrative. We held one on one brainstorming and editing sessions every week to ensure that her essays were completed several weeks before the deadline. Keeping Aditi’s* fears of lacking experience in mind, I crafted a strategy to place additional emphasis on her internship experience, her religious background which was embedded in service and her additional volunteer work.
Here’s how it played out:
- Aditi* eventually applied to 6 top policy programs that have been ranked top 10 in the world. She has heard back from 5 and has been accepted to all 5. She is currently waiting on one more acceptance, but we are confident that she will be accepted to this program as well.
- Now Aditi* has the difficult task of picking between:
Columbia University Tufts University
University of Chicago The Hertie School Sciences Po – a sweet dilemma to find oneself in.
- With our help, she has also received over 25 lakhs in scholarship funding. We will now be working hand in hand with Aditi to help her make a decision on the college that would be the best fit for her.
Do you want to target some competitive programs but are having second doubts about the strength of your profile or application? Schedule a free preliminary consult with us where we can guide you through the application journey: https://www.applicationally.net
** Client names have been edited to protect identity.
