CASE STUDIES

CASE STUDY 1

Background: Ranjan (name changed) was an reasonably good student with 86% aggregate score in ICSE. In Class 11, he had taken up the Commerce stream but not Mathematics since he had a phobia for it. A good tennis player, Ranjan had been ranked in the Top 20 nationally in his age group. However, he was not involved in any other clubs or activities. He had not done well in his standardised testing (SAT score 1160) and had not taken any other tests. 

Ranjan came to us towards the end of Class 11 with apprehensions about whether he would even get into a good business program at a US university. 

Approach: Our team analysed Ranjan’s profile and put together a detailed plan of action for him that included the following.

• Focusing on his sports achievements and selecting some colleges that might look at recruiting him to their tennis teams. We created separate lists of NCAA Division 1 to Division 3 colleges with a good tennis program and also helped him get in touch with coaches in these colleges to consider him for recruitment into their tennis program.

• We also put together a list of things he may start to plug the gaps in his profile. We advised him to enrol for the AP tests in Micro and Macro Economics to showcase his interest in Economics. Additionally, he spoke to a local supermarket and took up a project of data driven research and analysis on their sales and consumer profiles.

• Ranjan also started volunteering at a NGO and spent about 2 hours each on Saturday and Sunday every week, playing cricket with the kids and teaching them English. He loved this activity so much that he decided to write one of his college essays on his personal growth during this volunteering period.

Impact: With our help, Ranjan was able to create a list of colleges that fit his profile, including some where he could be potentially recruited for tennis, and some that were test optional so that we could negate his average test scores. We helped him script together a strong application that adequately covered all the important aspects of his profile. The Activity list highlighted his achievements in sports and his new found passion for community service. The main personal essay integrated his learnings from the volunteer experience and the research project to trace his personal development during the last year of high school, and his intent to pursue economics or business in college so that he could set up a social entrepreneurship venture later on in life. 

Ranjan was accepted into two of his top three choices. He finally chose to enrol at a medium sized college in Florida with a Division 3 tennis team that wanted him to play for them. He had liked their business program as well as the service learning opportunities they provided to their students. 

CASE STUDY 2

Background: Anjali (name changed) was an anxious student who liked to keep out of the limelight. Her teachers knew little about her except for the fact that she was a quiet and serious student. Anjali’s parents approached in the middle of Class 10 to help with her career planning and college applications. 

Approach: It was important for us to understand Anjali’s personality and interests so that she could be guided towards an appropriate career path.

Our counsellor conducted a few conversations with her to know her better, evaluate her interests, and analyse her personality so that we could chalk out a couple of activities that would lead to her development.

We understood that she was passionate about music and debate, but lacked the confidence to face an audience. We motivated her to enrol for a public speaking course to overcome this fear.

Anjali took to the course like a fish to water, discovering her love for debate. We also chalked out a program for her to slowly start participating in various school events like debates and MUNs (Model united Nations), as well as enrol for a music performance course.

Impact: Anjali was able to use this confidence to start excelling at activities in school. She won two best delegate awards at inter school MUN’s, became captain of the School Debate Club, and also a member of the school choir. She started focusing on her academics and secured a top 5% rank in her class. From a non-descript and unknown student, she needed only a little over a year to become one of the more popular students in the school. Her various interests and achievements also motivated her to consider the US as a destination for higher education, since she wished to major in Political Science with a minor in Music.

With the help of our application guidance program, Anjali was accepted into three of her top five choices and is now a happy double major student at a prestigious American college.