Suyin was taking AP classes and achieving top grades, planned to take the SAT/ACT, and held a stellar 4.0 unweighted GPA when she came to us for help. Although Suyin’s academic achievement was apparent, she felt she had very little extracurriculars to share.
After getting to know Suyin better, we conducted a thorough applicant persona evaluation to gain more insight into activities and experiences she hadn’t yet shared in her application documents.
Through this process, we discovered Suyin had been working in her family’s restaurant since she was 14 and had been designing and making her own clothes since she was 11 years old – two things about her lived experiences that weren’t present in her documents that could add intrigue to her profile.
We also discovered that Suyin had a hidden talent for painting and a great desire to impart lasting change in her community, inspired by her grandmother’s benevolence and years of volunteer work at her local shelter. We helped Suyin cover extracurricular gaps using this interest and passion to help her find opportunities to join an art club and volunteer at a women’s shelter.
We helped Suyin find her unique angle as a self-sufficient, artistic, resourceful, and community-oriented individual. She was later accepted at MIT through early action.
