Mentoring: Profile Building | How to get an admission in an IVY League College

Profile Building

How You Can Get Started to “Be Your Best”

Often, we need mentors or guides who can hold our hand as we uncover layers of our potential. Many-a-times, they come in the form of a friend or a relative. However, increasingly, with the need of specialized knowledge and specific subject matter, professional mentors are occupying pivotal space in this knowledge chain.

This is how our work pans out across different grades:

Grade 9

The focus of the mentoring process at this stage is to gauze an understanding of the student, in terms of his/her key interests, strengths and weaknesses. An initial rubric in terms of key profile thresholds is also prepared at this stage by 1-1 support from the best study abroad consultants.

Grade 10

Mentoring process picks up key initial projects at this stage and profile building starts in earnest. Additionally, a detailed timetable in terms of key activities like APs, SAT tests, other programs and summer activities is also prepared. Accented efforts on existing projects, and further 1-2 projects continue.

Grade 11

Mentoring in this phase of profile building for undergraduate students is focused on building specific projects, and the resulting profile which completes all aspects of the candidates data, voice and talent specifications as called out across a variety of university admission-factors. Key decisions with respect to APs and SAT/ACT continue to be critical.

Grade 12

The thrust in this profile building for undergraduate students phase is to round up all existing projects and fill up key profile-white-spaces, if any. There is a lot of focus on decision-support as the frequency of key admission-impacting decisions increases manifold during this time.

Final
Step

Application Support

Application support activities start off from data-based college selection process, brag-sheet creation, recommendation requests and continue all the way until January until all applications and their respective material requirements are complete. Application process is largely narrative-driven and tells your unique story through your essays, CV, activities and recommendations. The most selective universities also conduct interviews - hence, work continues even after a great application submission as well.

UAH Mentoring Model

The most successful students who have been able to get into some of the best colleges in the world have consistently spent more time on getting ready for those educational programs. They start out early, consciously identify the right courses and professional paths, and start working towards building a natural profile which showcases the narrative of a focused individual who has rigorously pursued his goals.

UAH Mentoring Model© is built on the triad of a) Who am I’ assessments, b) rigorous goal setting and c) focused, natural narrative building activities. The model has been proven across multiple student needs and has delivered highly successful results. Aside from the visible result of getting a successful admit, the model has delivered stark behavioural changes and built a habit of success!

'Who Am I’ Assessments

The first step in building any model of professional advancement and/or educational development is knowing who you are. We deploy a combination of in-house and standardised third party assessments to determine personality types and build a detailed psychographic profiling of the individual. This process is extensively supported by highly trained mentors and accomplished leaders from across multiple industries. In addition to these quantifiable metrics, our in-person discussions help us build a detailed strength-scape of the individual. This obviates confirmation biases and known/unknown blind spots (Johari Window developed by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995) in 1955). A comprehensive ‘Who am I’ assessment is the foundation of the UAH Mentoring Model.

Rigorous Goal Setting

Once you know yourself, you are ready to articulate your ‘asks.’ We start out by building a comprehensive bucket-list and emanating from that a list of short term and long terms goals. These goals are set with a strong inside-out orientation. We try not to say that ‘to get into MIT you need to build deep computing skills and showcase them in equal measure.’ Rather, we tend to focus on your strengths and interests and build them out at the intersection of your goals and the requirements of a particular program. We have had students who had varied interests like bird-watching, origami figure making, baking and high-flame cooking, computer-games and have built out successful goals (and later successful applications) basis these interests. In our context, goal-setting is not a one-time activity. Goals keep evolving as the narrative gets built further.

Focused, Natural Narrative Building Activities

Once you have identified your existing position (Who Am I) and set your goal, we help set you on a path to bridge the gap between the two. UAH Mentoring Model is a bit like GPS – which show the way to your destination. There is no question of capability here. The model is built around your skills and customized to your requirements. It fits you naturally and builds out a narrative as per your interests, strengths and asks. As we go along, we deploy a combination of highly acclaimed videos, tested and researched frameworks and customized activities and workshops s to sharpen your approach and build out your potential, layer by layer.

Our interactions are driven by strengths of the individual and are highly contextualized from the skills and jobs of the future perspective and focus on building the strengths that help the individual succeed in the 21st century. In general, we focus on the 3Cs –

Critical Thinking: The ability to think from different perspectives, think through things a few steps forward, make arguments and counter-arguments, and reason with evidence.

Communication Skills: The ability to use communication to connect with people is a critical element of people management, service orientation, coordinating with others and negotiations.

Collaborative Creativity: As the problems we tackle become more and more complex, individual creativity is not enough. In comes collaborative creativity – the ability to inspire creativity within a group of highly skilled people.

While mentoring is a continuous process, we expect to see tangible results over 18-30 month time-frame. Typical session plan may look like as under.

Session 1: Relationship building
Session 2: Understanding the unique context and needs of the individual
Session 3: Establish strengths and goals for the client
Session 4: Establish success factors (from 21st century perspective) and match with strengths to carve our possible educational and career paths.
Session 5: Generate Options
Session 6: Build a pathway to realize options. These pathways are unique to the individual and draw upon his/ her natural inclination coupled with her capabilities.
Session 7 onwards: Ongoing coaching which shall deploy the GROW model for the specific objectives and pathways that have been agreed on.We shall continue to troubleshoot and develop alternate plans for the client to achieve ‘success’ as defined by them.

Final deliverable from this entire exercise are extremely measurable and individual specific. For most clients and students, the most relevant result is an admission into a top grade college. All the students who have gone through this program have been able to get into one of the global ten colleges in their respective fields. MIT, Stanford, Oxford, NUS, Princeton, Yale, Berkley, Harvard, Cambridge and Wharton are some of the places where students of UAH Mentorship program have been able to secure admits. More notable outcome (at least in our opinion) is to ensure readiness for these programs and building a growth mindset which allows them to explore and be survival-ready as and when the changes from the 4th Industrial Revolution start rocking the world!

"Through UAH I discovered the passion for tinkering and am trying to model a moon-rover. The school’s maker space helps but the inspiration came from UAH!"

Kavita K. Grade 11, Rishi Valley

"UAH helped me find my interests in a very unique fashion. Earlier, I was afraid to venture forth in the realms of English Literature – my favourite subject. UAH helped me explore ‘contact theatre’, ‘spoken word poetry’ and a host of things which gave me the confidence to pursue the discipline that I love. Thank you."

Rachel L. UWC South East Asia – Dover Campus

"The learing experience at UAH was mindboggling. I never thought that I could think of Engineering and Arts together. I always thought that I had to choose one or the other. However, it was interesting to discover topics like Arts in Engineering, Bio-mimicry and give my design muscle energy across these blended disciplines. It changed my life!"

Monesh K. DPS R K Puram

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