College Admissions

November 21

Asey joins College Zone.
Because Asey began so late, our first priority is to ensure the timely completion of her UC essays, which we completed by the end of November.

November 28

UC Application completion and submission
We submit the UC applications and move on to the other 7 schools we’ve discussed – we decide to use a version of the UC essay as the Common Application but still have dozens of supplemental essays to go through.

December 23

Essay Editing and Submission
We work steadily, taking a break to allow Asey to take the ACT during the first weekend of the month, meeting many times a week to go over and finish the essays for all of the schools Asey’s applying to. Her focus is small, liberal arts colleges with a substantial activist presence, so we isolate those and begin writing. Because of Asey’s background in creative writing, poetry, and English literature, the essay process goes by surprisingly quickly.

By Christmas, all of Asey’s essays were submitted and we took a break before beginning interview preparation in January.

January 20

Tests and Interviews
Asey took SAT subject tests in January, to help with some of her applications. In January and February we prepared for her alumni interviews.

April 1

Offers Begin Rolling In
Asey was accepted to several amazing schools, including Brown University and she will be heading there this fall.

June 10

Initial meetings
When Jae came in, we were ecstatic to welcome a very bright and hardworking student. As always, we started by thoroughly discussing his profile and drawing up a detailed timeline. After finishing this, we dived straight into his number one priority: the personal statement.

June 12

The Personal Statement
Jae wanted the perfect personal statement—as well he should. Throughout June and July and even into August, we wrote, edited, rewrote, and perfected his essay until it had gone through over a dozen drafts.

In the end, he was proud to have produced a concise, flawlessly composed and meticulously edited essay about his personal experiences on the road to a illustrious medical career.

July 24

The UKCAT
Jae had also signed up for our acclaimed UKCAT and BMAT test prep courses, to ensure he was optimally prepared for these important standardised assessments. All his preparation paid off: he achieved a score of 3010, while the average was 2505 and the 90th percentile was 2820.

November 5

BMAT and Oxford Interview Prep
After we perfected his personal statement and submitted his application, Jae focused on his IB exams and, with the help of our trainers, the BMAT. He was very driven and excelled in both, obtaining a BMAT score of 5.9/6.9/3A and a predicted IB score of 44.

He soon received his interview offers, including an offer from Oxford. After preparing him for his interviews both individually and through a simulated event, it was all down to waiting.

January 8

Accepted to Oxford!
After three interviews at two separate colleges, Jae was received a letter of admission to Somerville College, University of Oxford to study medicine! He notified his other schools that he would not be attending their interviews, and set out to do volunteer work as he waited to start his medical studies.

September 19

The beginning of the process
Moulay begins working with us — because he started relatively late, timeline, IELTS, and SAT plan are our immediate concern. We make sure that he is on track to take all of the exams he is required to. We also began working on a school list quickly to ensure that we decided upon schools with early deadlines ASAP.

October 1

The essay writing
After having decided that Berkeley was his top choice school, but that we also wanted to work on UK schools, we immediately began working on his personal statement and the two UC essays. Because Moulay already came in with a UCAS draft, we worked on editing that while also outlining and drafting the UC essays.

October 15

UCAS Submissions
We wrapped up his UCAS personal statement and successfully submitted it before moving on to the Universities of California and his 2 remaining regular decision schools.

November 25

US Submissions
At the end of November, we submitted his application to the Universities of California with our fingers crossed that he would get into Berkeley. We finalized his Common Application essay and his supplement essays as well and submitted those just before Christmas break and crossed our fingers and hoped for the best!

January 15

Interview Preparation
Here, we prepped for Moulay’s two alumni interviews and made sure that he was ready.

April 1

Success!
By April 1, we heard back and found out that Moulay had in fact been accepted to UC Berkeley, where he will begin studying Economics this coming fall!

July 30

Initial Consultation
Ming graduated from St. Joseph’s International in 2013. He signed up with College Zone to apply to four schools – NYU Stern, Columbia, Wharton at Penn, and Yale.

September 1

Common Application in Progress
Ming is a perfectionist, so we drafted his Columbia essays and were quickly satisfied, but we were still unhappy with the Common Application, so we just kept reworking it while moving on to other supplemental essays. In September, we finished Penn and Columbia, and began talking about the possibility of Early Decision/Early Action.

October 25

Finalizing Early and Regualr Decision Application
After doing copious research on all of his schools, Ming decided that Columbia was the ideal fit for him and his academic interests and career goals so we decided to apply early at Columbia.

End of October, we began thinking about his two remaining applications: Yale and NYU. We were able to finish NYU by November 15th. Because that still gave us one month to finish applications before Christmas break, we decided to add two more schools to his list.

December 1

Submission and Alumni Interviews
By December 10th, we’d largely finished all of the regular decision applications, just in time to discover that Columbia had deferred his application to regular decision. We then began strengthening his application and preparing for alumni interviews.

March 15

Decisions Released!
When decisions rolled around, Ming was accepted to NYU’s Stern School of Business, was given a full scholarship at Yale-NUS here in Singapore, (for which he applied alongside Yale) and was ultimately admitted to his first choice, Columbia, where he will be studying next fall.

June 5

Getting in Touch
Anisa had applied for medicine in her junior year and she wanted to give it another shot in 2015. She finished her A-Level examinations at Concord College, moved back to Singapore and found us!

July 8

A-Level Results and School List
Anisa got her final A Level results (A*A*A*A) in early July so we started making a preliminary school list based on results – Anisa took AS Biology, which not all schools accept.

July 10

Internships and Trips
Anisa finalized her plans for gap year (research assistant in the anesthesiology department at KKH) and planned some short service trips to Vietnam; we also outlined her personal statement.

September 2

Starting the Tests
For the next couple of weeks Anisa studied intensively for the UKCAT. On September 2nd she took the UKCAT and score 2900 (90th percentile).

September 5

Locking in the School List
We finalized the school list based on UKCAT results and BMAT practice test scores (Imperial, Glasgow, King’s, Queen’s Belfast). Next we did a final revision of Anisa’s personal statement and added in the last section about her recent Vietnam trip.

October 4

Almost done with Applications
We submitted the UCAS application on October 4th and then Anisa started preparing for the BMAT. November 5th: BMAT date. For the rest of November Anisa was busily occupied with the KKH job, where she works full-time.

December 1

All about interview prep
We did interview preparation all through December — beginning with personal questions and working our way through various medical topics and other skills. Since Anisa’s school choices reflect both MMI and panel-style interviews, we were preparing for both.

February 11

Accepted by Imperial College London!
Imperial was Anisa’s top choice and after getting accepted she withdrew pending applications in other universities.

August 13

The Beginning
Bert was applying to both US and UK colleges. He came in with a halfway edited Common Application essay, so we began with that while also talking about our final list of schools.

September 1

Personal Statement
After having finalized the Common App essay, we turned our focus to the personal statement, since Oxbridge’s deadline for Singaporean applicants was mid-September. We finalized the UCAS personal statement by the first week of September.

December 10

Interview Preparation
In early December, Bert was ORD, giving us much more time to focus on finalizing the last of the essays and preparing for the Cambridge interview, as well as many of the alumni interviews for colleges.

March 10

Acceptance to Cambridge!
In January Bert was accepted to Cambridge.

After all his results came in Bert flew off to China to take an intensive Chinese language course before beginning university in the fall. He was also accepted to Michigan University and UCLA, so now has to decide where he’ll attend!

June 11

AP Exams
After taking her 11th grade AP exams in May, we created a list of potential universities based on preliminary eligibility criteria.

September 29

Personal Statement and School List
After preparing thoroughly for the UKCAT with our trainers, Riya took the exam in September. It was now time to finalize her personal statement and draw up a school list based on UKCAT scores. With everything ready a few weeks ahead of time, we submitted her application at the end of September.

February 18

Interviews and King’s Acceptance
Aside from some initial interview preparation, we spent the bulk of the rest of the year on her US applications. On January 24th Riya had a successful interview at Aberdeen. In February, Riya taught at a kindergarten while we also worked on her MMI preparation for King’s, at which she had an interview on February 18.

She was accepted early March, after which we evaluated her offers together. After considering the options, Riya decided that King’s was the medical school for her!