Episode 8 — School List Mistakes & Myths

The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions

In this episode, we cover many factors—including costly mistakes, myths, and traps—related to students’ school selection. In particular, we address the following:

School Visits

• Why it doesn’t make sense to visit highly selective colleges before mid-11th grade
• Prioritization of best and best-fit colleges for visits, especially schools that offer binding/restrictive early plans (such as Early Decision)

Decision Plans

• Different types (ED1/2, REA/SCEA, EA, RD) and how much each improves your admissions odds

How your decision plan may improve/hurt your odds of admission more than any merit-based factor (GPA, course rigor, test scores, resume, etc)The Myth of School List “Balance”

“REA/SCEA” Schools

• 7 schools whose early plans are the highest-risk
• The “top college with the worst decision plan”

How ED and Decision Plan Selection Can Make or Break Your Candidacy

• Measuring risk vs reward

Admissions Traps

• Yielding: how overqualified students get rejected
• Shell Plans: decision plans used by colleges to lower acceptance rates/increase prestige and under which students have no real chance of admission

The “Game” of College Admissions: How Colleges Outmaneuver Students Via Targeted Marketing, Tracking, & Forecasting Intent to Enroll

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“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.
Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to top-choice schools in the 2023–24 application cycle.

Its students have recently gained admission to Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Stanford, Penn, Brown, Duke, Dartmouth, Cornell, Vanderbilt, WashU, and UC-Berkeley (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).
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