Harper

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Chemistry and Band Kid explores his way to chemistry at Tulane

Harper’s Story

Early in junior year at at a large high school in Boulder, Harper and his mom contacted me with the hopes to explore college characteristics. Harper is a charming, accomplished student who loves marching band, chemistry, and subjects in the humanities like English. He has very good grades and while his SAT scores were also good, I encouraged him to take the ACT once just to see which was better for him. He surprised himself by getting a truly terrific score on the ACT.

Harper and I worked on the usual Bell College Consulting “You, Fit, Getting In” curriculum. The “Fit” portion followed our conversational list-building process, and we came up with a diverse list of colleges that Harper truly loved. He rank-ordered the college list, mixing passion and chances for merit scholarships. From this rank-order, we devised an application strategy that mixed non-binding Early Action deadlines wherever possible with Regular Decisions for schools that did not offer non-binding early application options.

As we moved to the “Getting In” portion of the process, Harper and I worked on his list of activities and the various essays required for applications to the 11 colleges on his list. Although, Harper is a good writer, his initial essay process was a little frustrating for him. His personal statement went through three or four significant topic changes and revisions as he worked with comments from Chris and the essay editors on Chris’s team. In the end, after 6 revisions, the personal statement really reflected Harper and presented a side of him that was not apparent in the other parts of his application. For the inevitable supplemental essays required by each school, we were able to strategically re-use Harper’s work. In the end, Harper wrote about 5 total essays and was able to use them to meet the requirements to submit the 15 essays or so required by all the colleges.

 

Student Facts

Interests and Extracurriculars

Band and Marching Band, Scouts, Outdoor Activities, Lifeguard

Academics and Tests

Some AP/IB Classes, very good but not perfect grades, excellent test scores

Descriptors

Idea Generator, Improviser, Quick To Respond, Brainstormer, Decisive, Diagnostic, Problem Solver, Improvement Oriented, Good Instincts, Data-Driven Strategic Thinker, Recognizes Numerical Trends, Numerical Code Breaker, Number Analyzer, Strong Communicator, Large Vocabulary, Team Oriented, Collaborative, Brings Out The Best In Others, Visual Mind, Concrete Idea Generator, Three-Dimensional Thinker, Introspective, Reflective, Internally Energized, Natural Editor, Quick Visual Scanner, Natural Planner, Logical, Solution Oriented, Methodical, Future Focused, Determined, and Motivated

Perfect-Fit College List

Vanderbilt, Northeastern, Tulane, Boston U, Colorado College, U of Denver, CU Boulder, Fordham, Seattle U, Lewis & Clark

Outcome

Accepted in the early phase with significant scholarships to Tulane (his top choice), Lewis & Clark, DU, Seattle U, Fordham and most of the others.  Harper is now happily enrolled at Tulane.

 

Note: This is a description of an actual student-client of Bell College Consulting. All aspects are real and accurate; however, the name and photo have been changed to protect the student’s privacy. The photo is used by permission from Philip Wang’s page at https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com and uses the underlying algorithm created by Nvidia.