Not just your resume, but build a story: Urvashi Malik on winning college admissions

Urvashi Malik: Thank you so much, Soundarya. Thank you for having me, and it's great being here with you today.

Urvashi Malik: Soundarya, it's been a long journey. I started off as an IT professional, worked for about 10 to 12 years with an IIT. Education has always been a passion for me. So, from tech education, I moved on to helping students identify what they should be studying in school, what they can explore in college. That was a natural progression of taking it towards college admissions. I'm focusing on admissions, & overseas also came as the need arose from the market. So that's my area of expertise now for admissions overseas and I set up this organisation, we call ourselves CollegeCore Education, and we set it up 21 years ago. So I have a great team of counsellors. We work together and we help students get into the top universities in different destinations.

Urvashi Malik: So this current pause is definitely a pause for concern and understandably so, but what we need to recognize is it is a pause and it's a pause because it's a part of a larger initiative of enhanced vetting procedures for Visa issue, including social media screening, which all applicants are now going to go through.

It's not as if US education is going out of reach for anyone. It is a brilliant education, and why should we give up on that? So yes, keep it on the table, but also recalibrate. And look at creating a plan B right now. You don't want to be left in a situation that you end up taking a gap year with nothing to look forward to.

So, most students we work with, we advise them to always work with multiple countries, and currently the countries which are coming up are the UK, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore. So there are great options which offer good quality education. They're not backups. There are no visa uncertainties. There are clear up pathways for post-study working in those countries, and a very inclusive environment for international students, especially Indians.

So we are advising them to enhance their university portfolio, make it wider, include other countries and the ones who are applying this year, who are still waiting for their Visa interviews. Again, they're looking for backup options for them just in case the visa doesn't come in time. And also, they can always reach out to the university and defer one semester, take that bit of time to step back and join a semester later. So that's another option.

Urvashi Malik: So, Soundarya, AI is definitely being used by universities for evaluating applications. The numbers are so large that it just makes sense to use artificial intelligence to at least do the first level of sifting, as far as the applications are concerned. And what they are checking is the voice of the student. Is that coming through? Is it authentic? They're doing sentiment analysis on essays. That amount of AI checking has already come in.

What we are advising students is to retain their voice, use AI, but use it intelligently. Don't use it to generate their own story. They can't give up on their story just because AI is suggesting something. Stay authentic to your story, but use AI for any kind of editing if you want, or maybe some level of research. AI will give ideas, which will give the same idea to several people.

We happened to talk to a University of Chicago admissions Officer. The University of Chicago is known for its quirky essay prompts. Things like “find X”, “how do you interpret find X?” Really, what he said is that AI always picks up the low-hanging fruit, and that's how the university can tell that it's not a personal story, it is something which is AI-generated.

So our advice to students is, find your own story, express it in your own words. Use AI intelligently. We are not saying don't use AI. It's a powerful tool. Learn how to use it intelligently.

Urvashi Malik: So we always help students first identify their interests,align them with the goals, and then create their application story around it. So we recently worked with a student who was keen on applying for computer science. His project revolved in the use of tech in healthcare. So we helped him create a low-bandwidth mobile application, which they used with healthcare officials from the PHCs, the primary healthcare centres, to be able to track immunisation schedules and maternal healthcare schedules. And since it was low bandwidth, there was real-time logging of data from remote areas.

So it's not just about what you're interested in, but towards what end. Are you making an impact in the real world around you? And this is what he showed through this project. In fact, it went on to competitions like IRIS (Initiative for Research and Innovation in STEM), and he also qualified for ISEF (International Science and Engineering Fair)... Interesting projects our students work with. And we keep brainstorming with them to find out first what their interests are and align that around their passion project. They will be passionate only if they're interested in it. Then create the passion projects.

Urvashi Malik: So please remember, colleges are not looking for resumes. They're looking for real people. And that's what we do. We help them sort of connect with who they really are. If you ask a high school student today,” What do you think yourstrengths are?” He's gonna stumble for a good five minutes before he can even give you one answer. Helping them connect with who they are, what their aspirations are, and what their goals are. Is it a very cohesive, compelling story that they're creating through their profile? Or they’re simply stacking up random extracurriculars and trying to create a resume?

So it's not a resume, it's the person, and that's what we focus on.

Urvashi Malik: So, starting early is imperative. If you start towards the end of high school, all you're going to manage to do is put in applications to college. You start early, you explore your interests. You give them depth, you then start looking at leadership opportunities. You start looking at how you're going to create an impact, and then select the courses and the universities accordingly.

So it's very, very important to start early. Grade 9 and 10 are ideal for any kind of exploration. Grade 11 and 12 can be used for depth and for leadership. Their applicant profile has to be sort of treated like a story. Built up like a story. So there is a beginning. There is going to be a buildup, there is going to be a climax, and there is going to be a reflection. That's when it's a complete story.

So when we start early, as early as grade eight or nine, we don't narrow their options down to one option. This is a stage where the interests are going to change. Their aptitudes are also going to change. It's not as if you're born with something and you don't change. We analyse their aptitudes, their interests, their style of learning, and narrow it down to possible careers. They can start exploring on thatbasis. We get them to engage in activities over grades 9 and 10 when we are actively exploring maybe two or three options. By the time we finish that exploration towards the end of grade 10, we are ready to narrow down, maybe to one area, or maybe keeping to open still! Why must you limit anyone to any one area of academic interests?

In fact, if you're exploring opportunities for higher education in the US, that's the kind of higher education they offer across disciplines. Why should it just be psychology? Why shouldn't it be psychology, political science, and economics? Why should it be just computer science? Why can't it be computer science, data science, AI, robotics, cybersecurity? So, opening up opportunities and areas of interest rather than narrowing them down is what I believe in. And that way, you are never stuck in a corner that, “I built my entire profile towards this, and now I don't wanna study this anymore.”

Urvashi Malik: So, standardised testing requirements are changing across countries. The US was the first country to introduce standardised testing with the SATs. The SATs changed a year ago to digital SATs. COVID sort of really turned things around, and suddenly everything became optional. SATs are now coming back. ACT is changing. You look at the UK earlier, we just had exams like the NMAT, the UCAT for medicine. We had the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams. Other universities did not have any entrance exam requirements or standardised test requirements.

Today, we have exams like the TMUA, SAT, STEP. So many exam requirements have come up from all kinds of universities, Imperial, UCL, LSE. They're all looking for these standardised tests. So our advice to students is, once we've identified possible courses that they might end up applying for, they identify the requirements of the standardised test early and start studying for them in grade 11 itself, rather than putting everything for grade 12 and trying to achieve the best.

Starting early, identifying courses in time, identifying standardised testing requirements in time and starting preparation early. That's our advice to students as far as the UK is concerned.

Urvashi Malik: Look, early application is a very powerful tool to be used wisely. You apply early when you're not committed to a university. If you apply early, if your academics are not in place, your profile is not in place, things are not gonna work to your advantage. So you have to ensure that you're ready for that early application, not just in terms of your application, ie your academics, your standardised tests, your profile, but you're also ready to commit to a college. Because when you apply early, and if it's an early decision application, you are committing to that university, that if you take me, I'm not going anywhere else, then it doesn't play out very well.

Also, if you apply for financial aid and scholarships to different universities, and if you still want to retain the option of comparing these from different universities, then don't apply.

Urvashi Malik: Sure. So like I mentioned, Soundarya, we build aroundthe students' interests and we don't try and fit students into any templates. If it's a student who's going for STEM, the kind of activities they should be looking for, their profile are very different from a student going for a liberal arts course.

So if you're going for STEM, you're looking at coding, you're looking at hackathons, you're looking at research internships, but if you're going for liberal arts, your strengths will come out through debate, through writing, through advocacy. So identifying different opportunities for different students — that's what we do, and create their activities on the basis of their goals and their interests; not a fixed template that, every student who comes to us will do an internship, will do a research project, will do a passion project. It doesn't work like that. It needs to be customised for every student.

So, you'll never find us replicating any profiles in so many years. Sure, let's talk about that. But first, let me emphasise that the grades and the standardised tests cannot be wished away. They are the first thing that the university is going to look at. But beyond grades, a student needs to have a very compelling story around them. They need to show themselves as people who can engage intellectually with the subjects of interest, people who can work in a collaborative environment, people who are ready to push themselves out of their comfort zone.

So someone who's a lifelong learner, a self-learner, someone who likes to collaborate on projects, someone who wants to make an impact on the community. I think those are essential qualities which a student should portray through the application process. And of course, the grades are a given. I don't wanna sort of dilute that at all.

Urvashi Malik: So, Soundarya, we start by asking the right questions and listening very carefully. It's very important for us to help the student identify who they are and to be able to articulate it, and sometimes, asking the right questions is what gets this out.

Something very interesting this morning, I was doing a brainstorming session with a student. You have a personal essay which you write for college applications, which is not at all connected with what you're going to study in college. It's all about you, the person. So we got talking to this high school student, and she kept insisting she wanted her essay to be about her Hindustani music interest.

So we probed. She suddenly comes up with, “Because that allows me to be heard.” So we stepped back and said, “Why do you feel you're not heard?” And the kind of stories that came out thereafter, we realised that she's a person who doesn't like any surprises in life. She's the kind of person who works with a defined outcome. Music, Hindustani, music, the Raagas have a very defined outcome. They follow mathematical patterns. That's the reason why she loves subjects like chemistry, where the equation has a defined result, or math, where the answer is never ambiguous.

It was so interesting the way this story evolved and how she has now realised that the world is not perfect and all outcomes are never going to be perfect and defined, and how she's adapting herself to prepare herself to deal with these kinds of imperfections in life. That's how you differentiate yourself. No AI can pull out the story from you.

So, we worked with a student who was interested in studying history in college, and she was very interested in theatre. So the way we work with her is we create a very interesting portfolio of her performances, which was centred around history. This student got into Yale for a program in history.

Our job as counsellors is to help students find their voice, their true inner voice, find their story, and walk into this process with confidence rather than with apprehension as to where it's going to lead them. And that's what we do as counsellors.