Know Thyself, Know Thy School, Know Thy Cohort

This past cycle, I worked with a student I’ll call S—an international applicant at one of the top boarding schools in the U.S.

Here’s what S had:

Near-perfect SAT

Six APs, all 5s

A humanities-leaning profile with strong STEM courses and ECs

One B+ in a small, passion-based elective

Here’s what S didn’t have:

A top class rank. Not even close. Somewhere near the 50th percentile.

And here’s where most people would panic.

The parents wanted the B+ erased. They pushed to drop the course entirely.

They wanted a “safer” school.

Instead, we went ED to UChicago.

Was I crazy?

No. I had seen this before. Same school, similar profiles, lower ranks. Students had been admitted. Because at schools like this, rank lies. A 50th percentile student at a hyper-competitive boarding school might outshine a valedictorian at a regional public school.

More importantly, UChicago doesn’t care about class rank as much as you would expect. Their Common Data Set lists rigor, essays, and recommendations as very important. Class rank and GPA? All under “considered.”

S took advanced courses and followed his curiosity, even if it left a blemish or two on his transcript. He wrote about this tension early on, but the first draft read like a defense. Eventually, we leaned into his intellectual weirdness and his interdisciplinary drive. That’s when the voice clicked. That’s when it sounded like him.

His creative essay? We tested drafts on Bob Dylan, group identity, and slang. Eventually, he submitted a version that tied pop culture and epistemology and mathematics. The essay was quirky, sharp, and unmistakably UChicago.

And it worked.

S was admitted.

Here’s the truth: College admissions isn’t just about raw stats. If it were, S wouldn’t have had a chance. But S knew his school background helped and that his story was quirky and memorable. He knew would stack up well among his cohort and would impress the admissions committee at UChicago.

S and others like him know what I offer.

Not cookie-cutter strategies. Not recycled templates.

But precise, curated positioning, built from the inside out.