Our Standout Strategies

IvySelect Helps You Stand Out From the Competition

In today’s hyper-competitive admissions landscape, standing out from the crowd is more important and more difficult than ever. At selective and highly selective universities, high grades and standardized test scores are the norm. Incremental differences in GPA or on the SAT or ACT do not sway admissions decisions. Rather, top colleges, particularly private universities, utilize a process known as holistic admissions to fill their classes.

Holistic admission is based on the concept that, by considering the whole person and the whole record, the college can put together a class of dynamic and interesting individuals who will challenge and enrich each other both inside and outside the classroom. The most competitive colleges are looking for leaders and students who have excelled at very high levels in a variety of fields.

From our experience, even college counselors from the finest private college prep schools and boarding schools in the U.S. and abroad, do not provide the strategic planning counsel that is critical for the holistic admissions process and that is a mainstay of our practice.

IvySelect Offers You An Unsurpassed Strategic Process

At IvySelect, we consider our strategic guidance to be one of the primary ways we differentiate ourselves from not only school-based college counselors, but from other private college admissions counselors as well. We believe it is one of our most important jobs, and we are excellent at helping you stand out in the process.

IvySelect’s approach is based upon really getting to know our students and uncovering your extracurricular and academic passions. For those students who already have some defined interests, we will help you develop them.

Unlike other school-based and private college counselors, IvySelect’s college counselors will offer you a clear-cut vision of how you will stand out from the competition and ramp up both your academic and extracurricular profiles. Although we guide some of our students down the path toward regional, state and national recognition in a particular area, we help other students create, enhance and demonstrate their interests in a way that appeals to admissions committees.

Packaging vs. Positioning

IvySelect offers you a “positioning strategy.” We do NOT package our students. This difference is more than a matter of semantics. “Packaging” creates an artificial picture of who you are. It is designed simply to “game the system” by showcasing perceived interests in order to gain admission to top universities.

Our strategic guidance is offered to take your true academic and extracurricular passions to the next level. We’re thrilled to help give you direction so that you can learn, explore and deepen your interests. We provide application strategy so that you can present your passions on your application as effectively as possible.

In the end, you will stand out more to top colleges if you follow genuine interests and develop them as much as possible. IvySelect will offer you unmatched counseling in order to expand your perspective, hone your interests and present yourself with authenticity and, most of all, passion.