Ready for the Ivy League Challenge?

Transcript

Speaker 1

Welcome back to season two of the Ivy League Prep Academy Podcast. Equipping you to successfully pursue the college of your dreams. We believe everyone deserves to reach their full potential, and the admissions process shouldn't hold you back.

It is so exciting to be back in the studio and talking to you again through this podcast. Because Ivy League challenge registration is open and is closing soon. I'm actually going to be posting little clips of when I was recently interviewed on debt free degree podcast and debt free degree. Of course, is a podcast that specializes in helping students earn scholarships for to pay for their university. And of course, the Ivy League. Challenge is the program. It is the blueprint that can help you not only get admitted to top tier universities, but it's exactly the same stuff that helps you earn amazing levels of school. And so I interviewed on that podcast and some of the snippets from that podcast were things that I think would be valuable for you to hear, especially those of you who are on the fence trying to decide if you're going to register for the Ivy League challenge this cohort or put it off for some other day, some other time. I cannot say strongly enough. You do not want to wait. Even if you're really busy this summer, even if you've got other. Things, even if you don't think that it's time yet, this is the time to sign up for the Ivy League challenge. This is the time to identify your values become more consistent, more congruent, more authentic to those values, and develop your confidence at whatever stage you're at. Whether you're in middle school or high school, you develop that confidence by going through this process. And so I'm really excited. I'm not going to take anymore time. Here we go without any further ado, we'll jump to the podcast itself.

Speaker 2

When you look at these things though, what what kind of obstacles are teens facing right now that you see in getting accepted into these colleges that they're applying to?

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's that's such a great question. You know, there is if if I were to bring in and and just show you the faces of of, you know, grade twelve grade 11 students who are going into their summer and grade 12 beginning of the year, that age group of students and their parents, you would see. You would see overwhelmed. You would see stress. You would see anything but full engagement in life. These are students who have been worked to the. Bone and their. Poor parents and. What they're trying to do is chase after this strategy and that strategy and they're they're trying to. Oh, what does MIT like? Oh, let's let's get signed up for that summer. You know, robotics course, because they like STEM students. What does Duke like? Let's go ahead and let's do this or that. And and just this. Constant mindset of. Of well, unfortunately some bad advice. You know the the, the, the map to elite University admissions has changed in the last 20 years. It it's changed dramatically and unfortunately a lot of parents and even some high school counselors, college counselors, I I really most are doing excellent work. But there are there, there is some bad advice out there that that you need to be well-rounded that you need to do as many activities as possible that you need to spread yourself so thin. And of course that's creating stress and of course that's. Meaning this you know this. It's a monster, right? It's creating this absolute monster. It's just not right. And so the first thing is the bad advice. That bad advice then leads to activities and overwhelm and stress that is not helpful. It's not helping you get admitted and it's not. Helping you engage in in your life today and it's not helping you identify who you really are so that you can go to university and take full advantage of the resources that are there. And so there's really no upside to this this pathway that most people seem to believe is the right pathway to get there.

Speaker 2

And let's remember one of those. Do it all that I've heard is take every AP course known to mankind. I mean, talk about just complete and total overwhelmed the child comes home from school and literally now has 5678 hours worth of homework to do. And then they're trying to juggle activities and community service and maybe a job. I just don't even see how it's possible.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and and it's, you know, it's not really healthy. It's possible for a short term and and kids are very resilient and ambitious kids can do way more than than we believe they can do. They're really impressive people, but yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, at some point, you've just got to say, this is madness. And and so it is so. So the bad advice, the the overwhelming your schedule with activities that don't don't seem to fit a theme they don't they don't help an admissions officer understand who you are so that they can vouch for. You and they can, they can really, you know. Get you admitted? It's the bad advice followed by the stress and the overwhelm that inevitably follows that kind of a strategy. That's what's keeping kids from engaging in school, and that's what's keeping them from getting admitted to the top schools. They believe that they need to go off and become the person that the universities are looking for, and if they can become that person better than other people, then they'll get admitted and they don't realize that that, that person. Was just one of. Of a number of different kinds of people who were admitted to the school.

I'll give you an example. One of it's now a fairly famous example, but one of the students who was admitted to Upenn an Ivy League school, an outstanding school I have. I have friends who have attended and and vouch for that school, but. She was admitted to Upenn and her college admissions officer, the person who vouched for her and and and got her to the finish line helped her get admitted, said that the thing that we value the most about this. Person was her kindness. And the most valuable letter of recommendation that we got was from her school janitor. The school janitor wrote her letter of recommendation that said early on in Grade 9, when she first stepped foot in the in the school, she learned our names and we spoke to her and we we got to know her and she learned about our back stories and she just talked to us as human beings. And pretty soon she was helping us after school when no one else was. Looking and the kindness of this individual. And so there's this letter of recommendation from the school janitor and the admissions officer reads this and then sees the rest of the resume and reads her essays.

And she says, wow, this person is exceptionally kind. We want that kind of person on our campus. Let's check our grades and and test scores and make. Sure that she doesn't disqualify herself. Ohh look, she barely made it in. Let's get her in here, right? Her grades are just good enough that she doesn't fully disqualify herself. Her SAT scores aren't that impressive, but she didn't disqualify disqualify herself with a poor test score. And she's got something outstanding to contribute to campus. We want her on our campus. And so her big thing was. It wasn't stem or robotics or or any any of the other things that you think you Penn is looking for. Right. And so yeah, it's it's just the obstacles that students face in getting to their dream university is they're getting bad advice. So they're taking bad actions that are overwhelming. Them and stressing them out. And then second of all, what I mentioned just at the beginning of our conversation that you know a lot of students. They are learning from their parents and then their teachers what they should value, and so it's not, it's sad, but it's not surprising that very, very few teenagers know what they value. They know what their personal values are. Well, if you don't know what your personal values are, then you're probably going to. If you don't love school, you're probably going to. They want to escape from school into video games and social media, and that's going to lead to a whole myriad of of this downward spiral of activity and performance and everything else. But if you know what your values are, and you engage those values in authentic ways, guess what? You're not trying to escape from life into video games and social media. You're engaging in life and that extra engagement, that extra spark and enthusiasm will actually spill over into your classes. It'll spill over into your test results you'll perform. Far better, just in general. If you can engage in your values. So the fact that it's so hard for students to identify what their values are, and there are so few venues for students to engage in their personal values and make an impact, combine that with the bad advice that students get. And of course you can understand why. So you know why it's so difficult for students to set themselves apart and and to to get admitted to these top tier.

Speaker 2

Wow, that's I I think a lot of that is eye opening to most parents because you know, like you said, we hear all the time. Well, do this do that. They're looking for that well-rounded student. No, that was 30 years ago. That's not what colleges are looking for today. Well, let me ask you then, Steve, how does your course, the Ivy League?

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

Challenge address some of these challenges or these obstacles that that children are facing today.

Speaker 1

Well, we we addressed them, we we I created the course for this reason, right. So we began right off the bat in module one, we every student who participates commits to the Ivy League Health Challenge. Now here's the thing. If your body and your mind are not, if you don't have the stamina, you're not going to be able to engage the way that that this kind of this kind of activity and this lifestyle demands, right. So students get started right off the bat, learning about waking up and stretching in the morning, which I almost never have a student come into the program. Getting enough sleep, getting enough water, right. And we teach students some very tactical things back from my days of of training CEOs and training elite performers. What's the optimal amount of time that you can focus before you need a break? What's the best way to take a break? What about those days when you really need to put in 1012? 14 hours so that you can be prepared because it's crunch time. What about those times? Well, there's there's things that you need to do long term. And then there's very tactical strategies that you need to be aware. Care of so that you can keep your brain fresh for 10 and 12 hours in a day if you don't know these these recovery strategies, then you don't think that's possible. If you've tried to push yourself, you know at 4 hours in you fall off a Cliff and you can't really get. Back up, you can try to push yourself, but you're at 20-30, maybe 40% efficiency. By the time you finished your first, you know your first four hour marathon, you take a 20 minute break. It wasn't enough to refresh yourself an hour long break wasn't enough and you really have to. Hit the night in order to refresh your brain and. Get back up.

Well, what if you learned some strategies that were just tactical in nature that that kept your brain focused for 10/12/14 hours? In a day. And and we can do that, we can absolutely do that. The neuroscience is there and it's there. So we start off with the having the health challenge. And your body and your mind and shape we learn about, you know, positive affirmations we learn about how to think about yourself and what to do with fear. We learn about impostor syndrome and all of the things that I experienced and I witnessed at Harvard I witnessed on the way in and the way out of Harvard. I mean, we we go through the mindset and those issues. Then, once we understand kind of, we've gotten ourselves in shape. We've commit to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. Then we get into the strategic things around admissions, identifying your core values, which we've talked a lot about today. So I won't spend a lot more. Time. But that's really. The first step once. You identify your values. Then we shift to this. You know this understanding that there are there are events occurring around you that that you care about that are in your sphere of concern that you have no influence over. And so let's shift your focus into your sphere of influence. What are the things that you can control? And and that's again a mindset shift that very few teenagers. You know, this is the kind of thing that parents are are aware of and teachers are aware of and they try to tell teenagers all the time. But teenagers don't want to hear it from their parents. Or from their teacher. But they're willing to hear it from a Harvard graduate who isn't their parent or their teacher who, you know, gives them the exact same advice. And now suddenly their ears are open and oh. That's how you got into Harvard, OK? Let me do it.

Suddenly, they're willing, and they're willing recipients of that knowledge as long as the vehicle is correct. We teach them about their sphere of influence and and focusing their energy and their time on their sphere of control. The things that they do have control over rather than their sphere of concern, which is stuff that's outside of their. Once we understand all of that, then we bring in the impact project, so. What breaks your heart? What makes you angry? What are the things that violate your values? We identify the values, we identify the problems inside your sphere of influence that violate those values, and then let's begin engaging. In life, right, begin your impact project. Start making a difference. Even though when you're 14 years old or you're 15 years old or 16 or 17, your your sphere of influence might be tiny. It might be tiny, but it exists and you can begin making a difference inside your sphere of influence. And as you begin making your difference, two things happen. One you develop new skills because you're going to. Fail and you're going to reflect on your failure and figure out why it didn't work out the way you. Wanted it to. And then as you reflect, you're going to get better at trying again and you're going to try again and and your failure is going to be better than the last failure and you're going to develop new skills. You're going to develop the exact same skills that the elite schools are looking for in students because they know that even if opportunity comes to you and you haven't developed the skills to take advantage of the opportunity, it's just going to pass you by and at most you're going to recognize that there was an opportunity that you didn't take advantage of and you might feel embarrassed, but most likely you won't even recognize the opportunity in the first place. Because you don't have the skills to. See what's happening? And so that's the first thing you develop skills and you develop an awareness.

The second thing is that when you focus your energy and your time on your sphere of influence, your the trust level that people around you have for you and the fact that you're keeping commitments to yourself and to others, your sphere of influence begins to expand. And as that sphere of influence begins to expand, your impact, your skills are developed. Your sphere of influence grows, and so your impact grows as. Well, and we have seen students do absolutely amazing things. They start when they're 14, trying to figure themselves out. And by the time they're 17, they're in national or international media because they've done amazing things I have. A student who? Who created a gender neutral textbook for her economic for economic students? She was so upset that that economics textbooks are so gender biased, and so she had developed the skills and the mindset to recognize when something violates her values. And she took advantage as a high school student and her textbook was good enough that her gender neutral textbook was good enough that middle schools all around her area had already begun adopting her textbook and purchasing her textbook. By the time she applied to Stanford. And of course, was admitted to Stanford.

The impact that you can make becomes real and authentic by the time you're 15/16/17. If you begin and you start just working within whatever you. Not your sphere of influence. Is tiny at. The beginning, but it's it exists and so you start where you are. You develop those skills, you grow your sphere of influence, and you scale that impact project over the years so that by the time it's it's it's time to write your essays. You know what to write about. By the time it's time to apply your letters of recommendation are by far the best, because everyone knows about your impact. Project and they write these glowing letters of recommendation because you engage in life, unlike almost everyone else, you're doing amazing. And you're not faking any of it at any point. None of it is for show. None of it is because you think that's what anyone else is looking for. None of it is going to lead to impostor syndrome. It's going to. Lead to this. High level of self-confidence, a high level of self-awareness and self efficacy and just just this, a life that is far more engaged and. Far more meaningful, and it just so happens that that's how you set yourself apart and get admitted to to these elite schools. To register for the Ivy League challenge, you can go to the show notes, or if you're not able to go to show notes because of the platform that you're listening to this on, just go to tilc.to/register

See you in the class!