If You Could Go Anywhere, Where Would You Go? Umich Students Answer

if you could go anywhere in the world where would you go Costa Rica probably the place of travel to Dubai go to Colombia I think I’d go to Milan Italy trailers of Bahamas it’s a good Australia I humbly choose to go in the Mafi Coast and Chile I would definitely go see Paris what is up guys thanks for tuning into my 12th video if you could go anywhere in the world where would you go now today we’re going to be answering that very question as many of you know one of my lifelong goals is to visit every country in the world experience all these cultures meet new people but when tasked with the the question where when I start then it becomes a little bit tricky if you could travel one place anywhere in the world where would you go and why. I asked some UMich students their thoughts here’s what they had to say I’m Chuck and I definitely have to say that Costa Rica probably the place of travel to or surfing the beaches and warm weather thank you go anywhere in the world I haven’t probably choose to go in the mathy Coast in Italy just because it’s beautiful there and I love Italian food like I could eat it for every meal okay. I go to Australia because of the Kangaroos exotic animals there I’m go to Colombia and break some stereotypes about nations don’t first drug-dealing if I could go anywhere in the world I think I’d go to Milan Italy because I’ve always wanted go to nilly fall sick as my boyfriend lives there. really fun. if I could go anywhere in the world I want to go to Thailand especially kook axel looks really beautiful I would go to Haiti because I love the culture there and I like helping my kids I’m part of it I’m thinking about all these amazing places that people choose the Wat to go I couldn’t help but wonder does social media influence that decision I asked these students check out their responses I feel like social media does influence my decisions a little bit on that because there’s always like no thought about photos and videos all types of media coming from. in locations that I’ve beaches resorts or just like local housing into seeing videos of locals and and photos in the area no the only thing that’s influenced my decision is my stomach because I really like to tell you I’ve seen a lot of images and a lot of people who have been there then it looks really cool.

I probably want to go there I see a lot of pictures of people there on social media and get pretty cool very historic place. yeah that’s right yeah and I would say that social media has affected it because I’ve seen a bunch of like animals of life. far as on Instagram not only social media but when I was traveling in hand about last summer and the Turner family people we ran into travel for a living really recommended is that it’s beautiful spot and sometimes we have to check out I think partly yeah cuz I know because I grew up living overseas. a lot of people that I know are like always traveling and Italy and like places around Europe or like always on Instagram and things like that. I’ve definitely jealous of people that are always there and it’s just like a place that no there’s not much about Haiti on social media now you guys are all probably wondering where would I go if I could go anywhere in the world and why well I would choose Barcelona Spain for the beautiful beaches and a lovely architecture as well as given me the opportunity to practice my Spanish now if you guys remember way back in my weekend video and noted that I got accepted to study abroad in Spain I got accepted to study abroad in Spain well I’ll be heading there in just over a week. now I turn it over to you if you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why leave your answers in the comments below I’d love to hear from you guys hey guys thank you. much for watching I’m really excited to show you my videos of Europe in the upcoming days stay tuned

Stanford Gsb Essay Analysis 2020/2021 Season – Write Like An Expert

hello this is dr. shell wats from mba at mipcom and i’m here today with beat the gmat as part of the right leg and expert series I’m happy to be taking part today to help you understand good tips for approaching the Stanford Graduate School of Business 2014 mba admission essays. let’s get started here you’ll see today a list of our table of contents this one second there we go and this is a structure today’s talk. we’re going to quickly go for some company information then go into the context for the stanford application one of the first things that we want to go over our admission statistics to get that context and then understanding the uniqueness factor that you need to be successful at stanford and admissions to the business school it will also review some success stories we’ll talk very briefly about the application form and resume and how those bear on what you will include in the SAS and then of course we’ll spend a big chunk on the Stanford essays and on the additional information section and finally we will let you know how to get in contact with us. MBA admits calm just to introduce us to you we have been we’ve had 24 years of advising experience we really enjoyed focusing on the mba admissions marketplace we have had success with all the top 20 mba programs and unique about our companies we have a team of advisors from that includes folks from Harvard Stanford Wharton Columbia Georgetown Yale and the UC systems I’m always happy happy to lend my expertise to each of our clients I have experience of Harvard admissions as well as business experience with mackynzie and Morgan Stanley and that allows us to give you a whole lot of support in your admissions process and of course we have expert writers who are Harvard and Oxford trained to guide you in the process this is our website we invite you to come by and visit our website and take a look at some of the free information as well as get in touch with us about services and you know we offer very little pricey but we pride ourselves on brilliant excellence with that local pricing. we have very comprehensive services everything from the strategy sessions to the NBA SAS a development and editing you can see the full range here with more information on our website and our successes as we’ve said it’s been all the top mba programs and we greatly enjoy working with candidates we know all the specifics and nuances of each of these schools and would be happy to help you one thing that we really want you to do is to sign up for our newsletter which is a free meal user that goes out periodically and will give you information and tips with regard to admissions oh and by the way you can sign up for that on the far right-hand side of our homepage. let’s go into the admissions contact for stanford now stanford in my opinion is the hardest school to get into in terms of graduate admissions full time and why is that let’s take a look at some of these statistics 7.1 acceptance percent acceptance rates that is extremely low of a better way to look at it is ninety-three percent of all candidates applying are rejected and. that’s a rather staggering figure we can compare that to Harvard which has an 11.5 percent acceptance rate and Wharton that has a 20-percent acceptance rate the overall student body of Stanford is 803 compared with 1824 at Harvard 1685 as warden another daunting statistics two-thirds of all new students are the only persons attending from their organizations the gmat average is 7 29 which is actually only slightly higher than Harvard important and the average GPA of 2.69 which is only slightly higher than Harvard important as well and. what these two tissus tell you is that something beyond the Jima and the GPA dried admissions and that something is uniqueness of the candidate fit with Stanford and several other factors that will go over in a minute. what are the distinguishing attributes that help define this the coastal Stanford applicants again are you unique do you stand out and that means several things do you have a very strong personal backstory and you have notable professional achievements beyond what even a very high performing professional have do you have really notable extracurricular achievements there are only. many schools where extra creatures actually weigh extremely heavily enough to determine to make a difference between the final admissions or not admissions decision and Stanford’s one of those schools another thing that distinguishes a successful Stanford applicant is do you have the potential for high-impact career and other post MBA contributions do you fit with Stanford that’s very important given how small the classes and do you have an ability to contribute to Stanford that is very important again because with only 400 plus students in each class the every seat allocated is extremely important and they Stanford wants to know that student that gets the seat can make a tremendous contribution. another way of saying this is even a stellar applicants someone who have outstanding GPA at your point 9 7 50 GMS for work experiences with company that’s considered one of the industry best even that candidate may not get into stanford if they fail to present an application that shows that uniqueness that fit with stanford the ability to have an impact. today’s talk is going to Center some arm how do you establish that has the best way to approach the essays and then of course have you work with the rest of the application to give to stand up for what it’s looking for in terms of uniqueness and these other facets one way to start thinking about this is to look at what Stanford emphasizing through its curriculum if you go to the website you go through the actual curriculum itself and the special programs that they have put in place you see these sorts of things references to helping the cultivate professionals who will invent the future who will reshape or shape and industry who will capture opportunities and they talked about innovation entrepreneurialism thought leadership you should be seeking to convey that about yourself to this is a degree that you you truly have that in your background and that would go quite a long ways to demonstrate the fit with stances another way of saying that an ideal candidate is someone who shows that they not only have the threshold amount of what stances looking for which is excellent professionally academically and in extracurricular activities but beyond that that they have a passion and talent to make a truly distinct and enduring positive impact through work and by work I mean that necessarily professional the professional and philanthropic work work in the communities I want to walk you through some success stories simply because it’s it gives you a context for understanding the difference between an outstanding candidate in terms of academics and professional achievement and the truly unique candidate who is very attractive to Stanford. I’ve got three examples for you here candidate a this candidate is an example of one of the most dramatic turnarounds in terms of the admissions process with Stanford he was a candidate who was from Europe and had actually applied to Stanford two years in a row along with the other top school of Harvard Wharton Colombian MIT he had been rejected two years in a row when applying on his own and many times with mayo school and without an interview whatsoever. he came to MBA at Macomb and I reread his credentials and in my opinion he was clearly a top choice candidate but what had gone wrong is he just felt to present his candidacy effectively in the applications. the outcomes after we highlight of his strengths and told his story in a very compelling way is that he was admitted to all five of those schools however Stanford Wharton Colombian MIT and. part of what we would like to discuss today is you know what reviews to be that attracted to Stanford let’s see there we go candidate a. let me give you some his background age 28 years old from a European country he was actually a doctor who left a medicine and he did. because he had traveled to a developing country and after serena has a doctor for a while found himself in the midst of a notable health care crisis and chose to use business as a way to dress it his GPA was very high both in college and in medical school his gmat scores 68 ESO notably below the average for Stanford and. his story is a story of the fact that you don’t have to hit all of their averages in order to be successful his full time work experience three years after transitioning from medicine to business and he had most definitely had the uniqueness factor his personal story he had wonderful stories in terms of growing up with a single mother and overcoming economic obstacles about developing strong personal values in the midst of trials and then also of developing this passion to make a positive difference and then that eventually shows up in taking the risk to make the transition to business and through his entrepreneurial work assessment of his profile and outcomes he was extremely unique for the fact as I just mentioned he clearly had a record of true leadership as an initiator as an innovator because he was in a developing country and originally from Europe he had proven that he could work at mid diversity which was a big plus for him what had gone wrong before simply that his application had failed to present the right information fell to use business relevant terms and on the whole were very poorly written his recommendations were weak and his long-term vision was not well defined after retracting the application and focusing on the strength again he had a completely different response and Stanford in what should have been the interview actually called him up and said you’re admitted and we won just talk to you about why you should choose Stanford over Harvard can it be another example this candidate had been rejected from Harvard and Wharton the year prior when applying on his own and he decided he wanted to try again and he apply to stanford in at Wharton with MBA at Macomb and he again with someone who to me had that blend that made him a very strong candidate for Stanford 26 year old he came from a developing country a very promising developing country came from Investment Banking and one of the most respected banks in this country his academics were not the top that they were very strong at one of the best universities in his country he had a 700 GMAT score and four and a half years of work experience with promotions interestingly enough his extra pictures were rather weak when he came to our company however we were able to build up in really important ways that were high impact before he applied our overall assessment of his candidacy was that he was a clearly a true leader and that you get that since front for him because of this strong personal story he had in terms of overcoming extreme poverty getting admission to a top college in this country doing well there and going from there to a very established large company and excelling he had actually gotten work experience beyond what is typical first tenure and by the time we have finished helping him augmented extracurriculars his extracurriculars look very strong going into Stanford we made sure that he presented a very strong long-term vision which again spoke to the the fact that he was clearly on route to be a very strong future leader not only in his industry but also in this country and we highlighted that tremendous leadership potential in his post NBA career again the outcome with that he was admitted to Stanford and then the last I’ll give candidates see a 24 year old male from Latin America he had really strong academics of top 10% of his class and a average and a gmat of 740 this is a candidate who when he first came to me I did not see the uniqueness factor but after we did a very deep strategy session I emerged from that thinking he would be a pretty clear shot at Stanford. what gave me that impression the fact is that he was strong in all the threshold categories that I focus on when i’m looking at stanford’s a professional academic and extracurricular and he was also very unique what made him unique is that he had gone to one of the top companies in his country he had excelled there but he had a passion for work in a very niche area he took a risk after having proven himself in the big company context and launched his own company and while the revenues were not yet impressive it was being acknowledged in the community for impact. we were we were able to focus on the impact in the community we were able to focus on the entrepreneurial spirit that he had the passion that he had for using this company not only to impact in the industry but also the impact to philanthropy we presented a very strong long-term vision he we helped make sure that his recommendation writers knew how to convey information about him that would be well received at Stanford and we again the overall picture was one of us someone who was already making an impact passionate very talented and very intent on making a difference in the future he was accepted to Stanford. let’s go with those examples in mind and start to talk about how you as a candidate would approach Stanford I want to touch on the actual application form and resume simply because you need to bear in mind what you’re putting in these sections as you consider what you should be putting in the essays Stanford offers an extremely thorough application that is a really important main point when you look at if you get into the online application sections you’ll see that the resume favorite suggests the one-page resume but it doesn’t restrict you to a one page. should you choose to go to two pages that is an option and for many candidates that might be a good option if they have really strong extracurricular activities and they want to showcase those a little bit more it means that you can put information into the resume and not feel you have to try to touch on everything in the essays also on the application you have with each job description a lot of space to devote to describing your responsibilities your most significant challenge your most significant accomplishment and again 320 characters to each of those three aspects means that you’re able to really showcase any advanced responsibilities you’ve had impact that you’ve had. again you don’t need to try to touch on everything in the essays the College Sector activities and the vid post-college activities in the community you have two separate areas where you can list for different types of work with organizations or activities. again that is quite a lot of space relative to what other schools offer and you’re able to give the content in the application form itself and then of course it also covers honors and awards. they’re all of that in mind and use it strategically Stanford says itself that it’s looking at your application is trying to see have you been cultivating your leadership have you been making a difference the application form itself allows you to start to establish that the answer to both aspects are yes. prepare that online application very well and consider what you’ve put there before you actually write the essays in depth now moving on to the essays the main ask given what we saw before in terms of the sophistic and how difficult it is to get into Stanford with a seven percent admission rate your task is to move beyond the threshold of the basic threshold of what Stanford expects and successful candidates which is excellent professionally academically and in the extracurricular camp move beyond that to shine a light on those experiences that make you unique distinguish yourself an end to do that there’s multiple ways different things that you can do to get this doing thing as yourself as a unique candidate who can have an impact both at Stanford and beyond you would make a present a compelling blend the past achievements you can draw attention to winning attributes your innovation your leadership your creativity your willingness to take risks you can discuss your passions and where they came from present a very strong vision of your future demonstrate your commitment to making a positive impact you can refer to how you’ve done that in the past and how you intend to do it in the future you’re a very strong fit with Stanford which we will discuss in greater depth in a few minutes and then also in the process of writing these essays make sure to acknowledge not just what you will gain from Stanford but what you can give to Stanford in what ways will you be a great students and help them envisions that. SI number one what matters most to you and why this question causes many candidates a lot of anxiety is. open-ended they they. they don’t know how to begin to approach it I would say that what you should be doing is first of all looking at what Stanford advises we have the the actual website link at the top gives you guidance in approaching essay 1 and f 82. read that over first and understand what it is of their advising they want to have a vivid image of who you are they want to understand the values experiences and lessons that have shaped your perspective and they want to hear about events people situations that have influenced your life that should be a part of F a number one. consider things like what are you passionate about what is your philosophy of life and what drives you and one of it where do those things come from the where do they come from helps us to start to delve into experiences events and people that have shaped the person you are what achievements have been the fruit of your passion we should hear not only about what’s important to you in terms of what drives you but also why that’s important how has it shown up in the past and then how how will it show up in the future why is it important in terms of what you achieve in the future. you’re painting a picture about yourself you’re telling your story bear in mind what Stanford itself says we have the link at the bottom that we believe the past actions usually are the best predictor of future performance that is a very powerful statement that they want to sort of see what you’ve done in the past and in the implications for what you say you’ll do in the future Stanford also says we believe that how you have developed your towns is as important as what you’ve actually accomplished. the Y becomes a very interesting and important questions not just what you’ve done but why and where they’re going they want understand you the person one way that might help you as you’re approaching this I want us to think back to the candidates we profiled in Canada a B and C and think about how that would have manifested in their applications we had candidate a the doctor working through business on addressing a pressing health care crisis in a developing country we had Canada be the banker who had overcome extreme poverty to achieve professional success and is now committed to impacting not only his industry but his broader community in the future and then candidates see the entrepreneur who was already making an impact through his company in the community and his determined to expand not only his corporation and his impact in the industry but also the community work that’s a part of that company it would be easier for each of these given their stories to write if they want tell us about their passions tell us where it came from tell us the experiences that brought that passion about and then tell us not only what they’ve achieved as a result of that but also what they intend to achieve in the future si tu what do you really want to do and why Stanford and go to the website at Stanford take a good look at what they advise and this is from the Stanford website they’re asking you to explain your view the future they actually don’t want you to recount the past which is why for the resume it’s important that you are able to give some depth to your past professional achievements in this essay you should be forward-looking you know what are your goals in the future and then they again they are specific and they say your future career aspirations and your rationale for earning your MBA at Stanford well you really want to do. answering the first part of that question you have latitude to write about short-term medium-term or long-term career goals make sure to give definition to your bowls that’s a very important part of the process particularly for Stanford and I’ll talk about that more in just a second and then use this t’kul the goals essay to distinguish yourself and. you do that two things such as your specific interests your passion and the impact you intend to make when I say give definition to your goals an example that doesn’t work as well particularly for school like Stanford is a very broad big view of your future such as I want to be an effective leader or I want to start my own company you can imagine that those are very broad that it doesn’t allow the tweenty to envision you have a future leader there’s nothing there to really paint a picture and for those candidates who are coming from very over-represented backgrounds. save the IT for a national engineer person if they say i would like to start an IT company will make themselves one of thousands and thousands of other candidates saying the same things. what you want to do instead is to use a long term goal to distinguish yourself and. to the degree you have more clarity about your long-term or medium term or short term goals you should present that. better examples things that give definition would be I’ve always been captivated by electronics in the long term I seek to and then explain a little bit or even more specifically I intend to start an electronics company that improves greatly the quality of life among mass consumers by producing high-quality low-cost tips for the Latin American market that’s very specific not all candidates will know in that level of depth what they want to do but if you do then you can consider that for definition it helps to distinguish yourself and then the second part of this essay number two is you know why Stanford this is a very important aspect to answer. even though you don’t have very much space in the essay itself you should really focus on giving them a detailed understanding of why you think Stanford this is best for you Stanford wants to know that you need their curriculum and resources to achieve your goals there are. few seats that that’s a very important thing for them to to get an understanding of that you in particular need their resources and then Stanford wants to know that you can make a distinct and valued contribution to your peers and to Stanford radical business. you should be seeking to convey those aspects in the essay response how will Stanford enable you to achieve your goals you have an ability to establish that or explain that through details you want to move beyond the issue of why you want to NBA to why you want to stand for an NBA and the details that can matter there would be curriculum faculty teaching methods special programs the Silicon Valley setting the nature of the student body the culture in the clubs as well as the LMI network and recruiting options. details help you to establish Stanford is at the right place for me given what I need and then what can you give to Stanford and. make sure you touch on that in terms of what is it about your background professional achievements academic successes academic training that will allow you to make an impact at Stanford what experiences you have in the extracurricular arena and what sort of personal attributes will make you someone that inspires your peers. make sure to touch on that in this essay as well that is all a lot of information means that you need to stay very on point as you’re writing but this essay in particular can help to establish what is very important to Stanford that there’s a really good fit between you and the school and then siii it’s essentially a leadership question they give you three options and very specifically asked that you write about not just what you did but what was the outcome and how do people respond you’re restricted to experiences in the last three years and the options are option a focuses on when you build and develop a team whose performance exceeded expectation option B focuses on a time you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization and option c talks about a time when you went beyond what was defined or established the biggest concern most candidates have about siii is not really choosing between the three options because in some ways they overlap and. you can take an example and you know keep looking at what you response what the details would be in which of those it fits most specifically but the bigger concern is what type of example do I present do I preserve a professional example or do I present a personal example younger candidates tend to be much more nervous about trying to do a professional example because I think I haven’t let a team. how can i talked about one of these topics happen i talked about improving an organization if I in three years into a company and I haven’t led a team yet and then the order candidate it may seem to have more of a broader sense that they can choose professional or extra particularly but they don’t know which to do the complication is that whether you should do personal or professional is really a candidate specific issue in the context you of your own candidacy you need to think about what does your application most need if you’re someone who needs the professional experience to overcome maybe a slightly lowered gmat for a slightly lower GPA then even if you’re younger it may be to your benefit to focus on a professional example and like why is someone who’s very accomplished professionally and is able to convey that on the resume and in the application form itself if they have something really notable in the X chracter camps they have latitude to choose that without that taking away what would have been great strategic content for a professional example. each candidate will need to look at their their candidacy and the needs of the candidacy to know which to choose whether it’s professional or personal and then look at the range of different topics you have and look at the layers of things that you can talk about in answering the questions about impact and opportunities and going beyond what is defined the addition information section this section is one where they very carefully detailed what sorts of things should be in this section the most common and this is directly from the Stanford instructions on the essay part of the website. they can look at this again very specific about what should be in this section and the most common question is well can I use it to write another essay that has exclusively positive information one that takes for example one that takes the reader more deeply into my personal backstory my opinion on that is because they were very specific about what sorts of things should be here and most of it is extenuating circumstances that you actually should not take the opportunity to use it for just another essay that takes them more in depth about your candidacy you can make you can present plenty of positive information in this area but I believe it should be restricted to the source of information that they were requesting specifically in the instructions here there are other schools for whom I think you can use optional for and a save your choice but this one is pretty specific and does not seem to be encouraging and an additional essay that is not focused on this information. for those of you who do have something to talk about in terms of weakness that has to be dressed for the instructions of the additional information section what are some best practices I would say remember these things if there is a weakness don’t give a prolonged discussion of the of that weakness we just highlight this more. you should be you should acknowledge the weakness and be short and sweet acknowledge it and then if possible redirect the attention to positive things at my offset that weakness and most importantly don’t make excuses there’s a difference between explaining a weakness and then trying to excuse it through factors that may not excuse it and. keep that difference in mind and also bear in mind that let’s go back to this page that when you are discussing something. say in college you had some crisis that happened and you have one year very poor grades again acknowledge it explain what happened point two positives that offset it but don’t dwell on it because you don’t want to over emphasize something that may not have been a major factor for the school for Stanford of it was looking at your candidacy okay. the last part here is how can you contact us we’re more than happy to work with folks who are interested in Stanford. this is our contact information I know that we’re now about to move into the Q&A and.

I’m more than happy to discuss questions that you have about the Stanford application I do also want to remind those of you listening that there will be a chat after this on the Stanford wall. make sure to visit that chat and get more of your questions answered after this webinar series. that will conclude this presentation I’m happy to take you a you thanks Shelley I’m as usual a great job for everyone this is Beatrice Kim from beat the gmat and you’ve been listening to dr. shell wats from MBA admin breakdown this year’s Stanford GSB essays for our beat the gmat right like an expert series as dr. Watts mentioned if we don’t get a chance to answer your questions in today’s webinar please do go to the comment wall on our MBA watch page and we have people there standing by as well as well as dr. Watts I think you’ll get a chance to swing by at some point to be able to answer your questions there. dr. Watts first question for you I’m how important is age when applying specifically your European candidates usually apply later like 28 to 30 do 30 years old and plus have a lower possibility of getting accepted into Stanford Stanford there are certain schools that are known for skewing lower as I call it in with age and Stanford as one of those. i would say Stanford Harvard important our schools that tend to generally favored slightly younger candidates over older candidates I don’t think 28 is old i don’t think 29 is old from their perspective either i think that once you hit the 30 year old range that is where age may start to kick in as a factor but every candidate is different some candidates were in non-traditional careers and then came to a different career which is why they’re older some candidates got master’s degrees and that’s why they’re older. it depends on the candidate and what was the reason for the fact that they’re 28 I’m sorry that they’re 30 or older at the time of applying if someone for instance has been in private equity and stayed in private equity since they were 22 then they’re now 31 the school may think well that person really has worked their way out of the medium in mba and. you’re going to have the job of trying to explain to them why you actually need it what you’re lacking or knowledge asking that you actually need. it can’t affect outcomes of Stanford over the age of 30 but there’s no hard and fast rule it is it is really a function of the overall candidacy great thanks dr. watts and I know that’s a question that comes up quite a bit in our communities to appreciate answering that question we have another question here asking about how long does it take on average to complete a Stanford application and specifically how long does it take to complete the Stanford application through MBA admin well we’ve had that candidates come to us literally like three days before a deadline Joe the process and one of my biggest long shot success stories he had a 2.8 GPA did that he was like three days before the round two deadlines and he wanted to apply and. I asked you thought in spite of the 2.8 that he had he had a good shot at getting in and. I was are you sure you want to try to do this in three days we did it in three days and he actually did get in that’s possible but you know if you want to manage your stress levels well I would say a comfortable amount of time is three weeks that gives you the time to mobilize your recommendation writers to do you a strategy session where you go in depth and think about you know the story that you want to present. three weeks is comfortable two weeks is brisk and three days is doable just depends on the circumstances well I would’ve mat gosh three days well I would imagine that people who come you know in a shorter amount of period two weeks or. they’d still need to have a better a pretty good sense of of their story and and the types of credentials that they want to make sure is is kind of available through their application correct well you know what we do at NBA Abbott we’ve been doing this for. long isn’t once you know we send out a questionnaire it’s a nine pages long once we get that back it’s very clear to us what things should be emphasized. we can definitely direct the client very well and give them really good stretch from guidance. I would you know a lot of time for the Canada is trying to do that by themselves they go to the wrong topics and. normally someone has already written their essays and they come to us it’s the wrong topic for the most part. so I just think you know if you get with a very knowledgeable consultant and you know just references are important for that just trying to figure out who you think is good that they can help a great deal is shorten the time you actually need to figure this great. you’ve got quite a bit more questions here let’s see if we can tackle some of these how helpful is it to get a recommendation from a Stanford alum well I don’t think that that to take priorities it’s like a nice extra thing if that happens to be the case but what’s most important is that it’s a combination of the person being superior to you and then willing to write a truly extraordinary endorsement of your application and a view as a candidate. those two things are more important than being a Stanford alumni if the person happens to be an alumni member also then that’s just an added plus but truly Stanford wants to hear from someone who is objective and which that normally means somewhat superior to you that you are a star that you are outstanding that your head and shoulders above your peers and that you have a very promising future and. getting that sort of strong endorsement is more important than getting a letter that may not be as enthusiastic but that person is a member of the Stanford community and we hear it. many times here on beat the gmat where people ask you know where our members say how important is it to get a recommendation from the CEO of my company or how important is it together from someone who’s associated with that business program and exactly as you answered you know make sure your recommend recommender knows you and knows you really well and can speak to your credentials. I I really appreciate that answer yeah um. a couple of more and I know we’re already at time but if you don’t mind Shelly um if we could just stay a little bit longer since we’ve got a bit of a late start with that work for you but yeah we started later. I’m more than happy to take more questions fantastic. we have a question a couple of questions around the same theme you said we should talk about our past experiences and how they shaped us on the first essay but we should also talk about on the second essay as well is it okay if we repeat some of the information or should we keep both essays very different in content well you don’t want too much repetition because I mean you don’t the schools keep reducing the amount of content you have and. normally you need to write essays you need to actually write the whole set in Stanford’s case one two and three together because you need to make sure that there’s not too much overlap and because otherwise you’re taking space that could have been used to introduce more new information and you’re depriving yourself at that space. I would say right all three the essays and then where there is repetition see is there a way to get it more in one essay and less than the others that you save that space for other information okay great probably have time for maybe two two more questions. one is to what extent is the brand of your institution and I’m assuming this person is referencing their undergraduate institution a matter for admissions into Stanford GSB well I’ll answer both in terms of college and in terms of company because there are two different answers in terms of college is really important how you did where you went not where you went. you know Francis in India a common question is why didn’t that I IIT. can I get into Stanford its IIT goes a long long way to helping you access the top schools but if you did extremely well at another school which is you know just not iit but you’re the top of the school then you’re going to still have a really good chance of accessing schools and that applies also to united states cool. wonderful you went to Yale and did well but if you went to a state school and had a 3.9 and had a magnet from a day or a summa laude you should still in the academic realm be seen as someone who has achieved excellence. in that way the college doesn’t matter. much as long as you did well where you went in terms of the if that question was applying to a company. there’s a prestigious a company matter in terms of admissions I would definitely say yes it does and more importantly for people who are abroad. for nationals because all the top schools seem to favor p candidates coming out of the multinational companies when they are foreign nationals and. does it does not mean that you cannot get into these schools if you are at a small company that they don’t know never have heard of before but it doesn’t mean that you have challenges that you have to dress in the attic content to make sure the school understands the value of your work experience great thank you dr. Watts. we have one last question before we end today’s session and this question is one that probably rings true for quite a bit of our members and this one is can you give any specific advice for reapplication well the biggest thing for re applicant is to really look and understand what didn’t go well. we had in the stanford today’s examples ken is a be isn’t see to those are really Constanza you had they had to take a good look at why did i not succeed what was the weakness in the application and the school’s most of them you know we’ll look at you a totally fresh eyes if you fix the problems in the first step is to figure out what the problem was for some people the gmail was just too low. they had to retake it and that was the only major flaw. they may get gain admission the next year. other candidates the entire application was weak and. they need to actually do an overhaul of the essays and how their recommendation writers be more effective in what they’re conveying in others it may have been a lack of work experience and. putting another year or two of work experience before the next application could be useful. you know identify the problem fix the problem and then hopefully you would have a different outcome great well thank you dr. watts as always it’s just been a pleasure and as as mentioned this is you’ve been listening to dr.

Watts from MBA admit if you have any more questions feel free to go to our Stanford comment well also if you enjoy dr. shells information that she just presented here today please sign up for her newsletter to get all these types of great information on NBA admit calm it’s a great website great resource for you for those who are applying to Stanford GSB and then also a check out dr. Shelly’s blog mb admit calm / category / MBA admit blog topics. thank you everyone for a great session this again is right like an expert for Stanford GSB GSB essays and I’ll talk to you soon thanks thanks for having me

Applying To Michigan State University’S Honors College

Good afternoon, welcome to Michigan State Meetups. We’re gonna be discussing the Honors College today. We’re. happy that you’re with us this afternoon. My name is Adam Davis.

I am the Admissions Counselor here in the Office of Admissions,. I will be facilitating the presentation today, but you’re actually gonna be hearing from an expert within the college, within the Honors College, by the name of Charles Cotton. We are excited that you’re here today. We’re gonna make sure that you have all the information that you need when it comes to the Honors College, and also make sure that any of your questions are answered. I want to take a second to introduce Mr. Charles Cotton, he is going to be the individual who works in the office of the Honors College, but specifically works for admissions.. he’s gonna actually be running through the PowerPoint with you and will make sure you know everything you need to know about the Honors College,. I’d like to introduce Mr. Charles Cotton. All right, well, thanks for joining us today. One of the things I always like to chat about before I begin rambling about all the different benefits of the Honors College is I always like to start off by talking about what the Honors College isn’t. What we aren’t is we are not an addition to college. What I mean by that is we don’t tell students, "Hey, come to Michigan State, study whatever it is that brought you here, whether that was a Human Biology degree, or a Music degree, or History degree.

And by the way, while you’re doing that particular thing, do all this other random stuff that has nothing to do with your academic area of interest." We don’t tell students, "Come to Michigan State, study that major, but by the way, you need to do 400 hours of community service. You’re required to take a leadership development course, or you have to take three years of a particular foreign language." The reason we don’t function in that sort of format is because what we know results from doing that is that we actually eat up more of your space,. we actually operate the complete opposite of that. Instead, what we do in the Honors College, is our biggest goal is to figure out how Michigan State and through the Honors College at Michigan State, we can help you shape your lives. Primarily how we operate is off of flexibility. We’re a hub for flexibility.. if you forget everything else I ramble to you about today, the main thing I would want you to remember is that pretty much the Honors College equals yes. If you ask that question of, "Hey, can I be in one of those residential colleges at Michigan State?

Can I major in this thing? Can I study abroad and double major in these two particular different things? Can I do that stuff and be in the Honors College?"The answer to those questions is always yes. The Honors College doesn’t make anything that you would want to do academically more difficult, but actually, we free up some space to make those things a little bit easier for you to do, if that makes any sort of sense.. how we go about doing this is primarily by providing a lot more opportunities of flexibility within your realm of academics. All students at Michigan State have to take general education courses, for example. At MSU, we traditionally call those general education courses Integrative Studies Classes, which are pretty much an introductory to courses of natural science, social science, humanities, writing. As a member of the Honors College, you don’t actually have to take any of those Integrative Studies courses at all, but instead we allow our Honors College students to pick from anything that’s available at the university in those different areas.

An example of that might be maybe you decided to come to Michigan State and you are studying Spanish as a formal major, but maybe you always had an inkling in the back of your mind that you could be a great psychologist. Maybe when you’re exploring some of the psychology curriculum, you realize that Intro to Psychology doesn’t really seem like it’s that class that’s gonna answer that question for me, but Cognitive Psychology seems pretty interesting. It seems as though if I could take this course, I might be able to figure out if this is something I actually want to do. Well, a traditional student might see that in order to take that particular class, that it wouldn’t count maybe for a general education course for them, whereas if you remember the Honors College, we might be able to allow it to do so. Another benefit to the Honors College is that Honors College students get to bypass most prerequisites that are in place,. anything that doesn’t follow a required linear pattern. In this particular example, a student might also see that in order to take that Cognitive Psychology course, maybe they also have to take Intro to Psych. Maybe they also need to take a statistics class, maybe they also have to be a sophomore. These might be a few too many barriers for you all to jump through just to take this particular course, one class that you’re interested in. As a member of the Honors College, you likely can go right into that class just by simply meeting with your Honors College advisor. What they’re going to be helping you do is to make sure that you aren’t bypassing any sort of prerequisite that would actually be necessary for you to be successful in that class.

An example of where a student wouldn’t traditionally bypass a prerequisite might be mathematics, right? You wouldn’t take Calculus 3 without taking Calculus 2. I have no idea why somebody would want to try to do something like that, but that would be that sort of exception to that rule. Another major benefit for Honors College students is the opportunity to dabble in graduate coursework. One of the things that we found is that a lot of our Honors College students are interested in pursuing some sort of advanced degree, whether it’s directly after finishing a bachelors degree, or maybe after going to work in the industry for a couple years. What we found is that our students really like this benefit. We allow Honors College students to take up to nine graduate credits at the undergraduate tuition rate, meaning you don’t pay an extra penny more than what you’ll be paying for a traditional upperclassman rate course while at Michigan State.Nine credits, on average, is roughly a semester of most masters programs. One of the benefits of this is that these graduate courses are real graduate courses with actual graduate faculty members and other graduate students in that class,. there’s no special exam that you have to take at the end of the semester to count it as a actual graduate course when you start your masters, like those AP or [IB 00:06:04] classes might have for you. But a benefit that might be somewhat similar is if taking these graduate courses while working on your bachelors degree would allow you to demystify graduate school the same way that advanced coursework in high school allows you to demystify the undergraduate work level a little bit,. a lot of different benefits available for you there. We have students in the Honors College who start dabbling in graduate coursework as early as their sophomore year in undergrad, right? Once again, you can go to your Honors College advisor and get a sense of how soon or when you might be ready to take some of those particular courses if that’s something that interests you.

Another benefit of the Honors College is Honors coursework,. some of you today might even be on the fence between going to a big school or a small school. The nice thing about being a member of the Honors College is that we try to figure out ways to make MSU whatever you need it to be, whether that’s making it a more intimate community in your academic classes. We have ways for you to do that through Honors courses. We offer between 160 and 180 Honors courses each year, and I always say that there’s two pretty clear benefits of Honors courses, and one is that Honors classes are traditionally a much, much smaller than maybe a traditional section they’re replacing. For instance, Intro to Chemistry at Michigan State might have close to 300 students in that section, whereas the Honors section of Chemistry will for sure have under 50 students, maybe 35 or 40 students in that class,. much smaller than a traditional offering. Another major benefit of formal Honors courses is that they’re great for students between classes, where you might come in to Michigan State maybe with some AP credit or IB credit, or maybe you took an Honors section of Chemistry in high school, and your advisor’s gonna ask you, "Well, do you want to take Intro to Chemistry again, or do you want to jump straight into Organic Chemistry?" Maybe you’re on the fence about whether or not you really feel prepared enough to jump into that next level of Chemistry, and maybe that Honors section of Chemistry is the ideal fit because it will kind of place itself in between those two sections.

Or, maybe you’re confident that you can take Organic Chemistry, but maybe you want to take that in the smaller atmosphere, whereas you feel as though you might have a little bit more academic support.. maybe taking an Honors section of Organic Chemistry is actually the right fit for you,. a lot of flexibility there. Honors college students also have the opportunity to dabble in what we call Honors Options, which is a very popular opportunity for students in the Honors College. Honors Options is the ability to turn any non Honors course into an Honors course simply by forming some form of a contract with that faculty member in that class about some level of additional work that you’re interested in exploring. What that might look like is that maybe you are taking a personal finance class, but you are actually interested in also learning a little bit about nonprofit management before you graduated, and you found out this faculty member has an economics background.. maybe you decide to do an independent research project with that faculty member the first month of the semester on that particular topic about nonprofit management, and then continue on the rest of the year like everybody else. Or, maybe you were interested in getting involved in some form of community service at a nonprofit organization and wanted to pair that with that particular class. There’s really no limitation to what Honors Options can be, nobody really dictates those to you, but it’s something that’s just like a completely optional opportunity for you to craft out in a traditional class at Michigan State, how to get something more from it that you’re really hoping to learn about. A lot of academic flexibility, right? We have thousands of courses at Michigan State,. I always say that with all of this opportunity to substitute out general education courses, to bypass prerequisites, to dabble in all this different curricula, that can be quite overwhelming if you don’t have some form of support to help you navigate that. All students in the Honors College are gonna have an Honors College advisor, in addition to an Honors departmental advisor in the college of whatever your major is housed in, okay?. your general Honors College advisor is your go-to person for a bigger question of what do you hope to accomplish before you graduate? This is that person who really wants to know what are the things inside of the classroom and outside of the classroom that you’re interested in exploring in whatever time allotment that you’ve set for yourself for your bachelors.

They want to know if you might want to double major, triple major while you’re here. If you might want to get involved with three different internships, or join a fraternity, or sorority, or if you found three or four different clubs and student organizations you want to get involved in. They want to know if you might want to take advantage of dabbling at some graduate education while you’re here. The reason they’re going to ask you all these different questions is because they want to make sure that you’re doing the best to maximize those opportunities. They want to be able to make sure they can let you know, hey, you don’t actually need to take this particular course. If you’re planning to do this, we could substitute this other class in that’ll allow you to double dip in two particular areas, but they can help comb and craft out the ideal program for you which is nice to know. In addition to some of those traditional classroom opportunities, we also have some additional opportunities for students to get involved in undergraduate research. One of the options that you’ll see on the screen here is called our professorial assistantship, which is an opportunity for Honors College students to do paid research their freshman or sophomore year and pretty much anything that student wants to do research in, which is quite nice. In order to be eligible for this though you have to have a 1500 on the SAT, or a 33, on the ACT or you would need to be a National Merit semi-finalist in addition to being invited to the Honors College. If for some reason, you’re super interested in undergraduate research but you don’t happen to have any of those particular test scores, we do offer what we call honors research seminars for students during their first year and second who are members of the Honors College. This is a very similar opportunity to get involved in undergraduate research under the umbrella of a particular academic topic. But instead of getting paid for this work, your actually get academic credit,. that’s what the trade off looks like in that particular instance.

In addition to that, international engagement is very big at Michigan State in general, and then it’s also something that we really value here in the Honors College.. not only might you be eligible to participate in particular study abroad programs through your college, which might relate directly to your major, but you might find that your really want to go to a particular country and maybe your academic major doesn’t have a program that runs to that place, but you found something. As a member of the Honors College, once again, this might a particular way that we could count that study abroad program for some general education credits for you where you could still make a little bit more sense of why this is beneficial to you outside of just that experience from that particular country. In addition to that, maybe that study abroad program goes in Antarctica.

Maybe you’re a zoology major and not an environmental studies or environmental science major, but you want to figure out how to do some form of zoology research while you’re in Antarctica for a few weeks. What’s nice is that you can do Honors Options on study abroad programs as well. We had a student last year who went to Antarctica as a zoology major and actual did research on penguins while she was there.. she was able to maximize not only getting some additional natural science credits for going on that program, but she was also able to get some additional benefits that look amazing on her resume when she goes to apply for graduate programs in the near future. Service learning is something that’s pretty big in the Honors College. What we want to make sure that’s available for students is that if you have something that you’ve been involved in in high school that you might want to continue at the collegiate level that there’s ways for you to connect that work that you’re doing outside of the classroom back to academic [inaudible 00:13:50]. There what we call Honors Service options, which is an opportunity in a particular course to combine that work that you’re doing outside of the classroom with the work in the classroom, connecting with that faculty member in order to bridge that sort of curricular gap that lies there.. in addition to all of those things, there some other fun stuff that we do within our Honors College community.. not only do we have several of our own clubs and organizations for our Honors College students, but we also have optional housing for Honors College students as well, eight floors and a whole bunch of different residence halls spread out throughout campus. In addition to that, we have honor suites in Wilson Hall, which is a hub for a lot of our first year engineering students.. initially, it was was broken up into a neighborhoods [inaudible 00:14:34]. I’m not sure how many of you all may be have been to a formal general MSU presentation or program, but what’s nice about our residential structure or setup is that we have five different residential where you know that within a five minute walk of the building that you live in you’re going to have a nurse available to you. You’re going to have multiple dining halls available to you. You’re going to have tutoring pretty much around the clock.

You’re going to have opportunities to go to [inaudible 00:14:58] convenience stores, and that advisors are going to come visit you in that space, and study abroad advisors are going to come over that way. But in addition to that as an Honors College student, you know that there’s going to be an Honors community embedded within those areas as well.. about 50% of our students elect to live on Honors floors. The other half don’t for whatever particular reason, and this is not a requirement at all. Often students ask what’s the main benefit to living on the Honors floors and what I typically tell them is that the primary benefit to living on those Honors floors is this allows you to be in an environment surrounded by other students who have that same sort of flexibility that you do. Otherwise, it might be quite difficult to identify other Honors College students.

You’re not required to walk around with Honors College sweatshirt on every day.. knowing that these students all live in a particular environment is kind of nice to be able to go hang out on that floor and find out about an awesome study abroad program that you could go on as a freshman that maybe is traditionally reserved for upperclassmen or graduate students,. those flexibilities play out in our Honors community. In addition to that, we have honors RAs, resident assistants, on those floors.. these are traditionally upperclassmen students who are also in the Honors College who serve as that key mentor on that floor to make sure you might be attuned to some of the Honors college programming that we’re doing in our main building and other resources that you might be interested in.. what does all this mean? You might say, "Charles, some of this stuff sounds like fun. Some of it sounds like more work, and why would I want to do more work when I get to college?" You might say I have an aunt and an uncle. They both went to college, and my uncle studied engineering. I’m pretty sure he barely graduated from some of the stories that he told us. He did nothing extra when he was in college and he got a great job,. why would I want to do all those additional things?" What we often tell students is the reason that Honors College students really appreciate the Honors experience thts they were able to culminate amongst the four years traditionally that their here is that they see those results after graduating. On a given year between 50 and 65% of our Honors College students elect to go directly off to graduate school after finishing their bachelors degree. Our students are not only getting into graduate programs, but they’re going to some of the top ranked programs in their academic area of interest. In addition to that, a lot of our students are finding academic funding for those masters and PhD programs because of that unrivaled level of undergraduate research that they’ve been able to involve themselves in, that unrivaled approach to opportunities outside of the classroom, whether that be internships or other volunteerism. Other students who don’t like to go to graduate school, we have about a 97% placement rate within career field of interest in about six months after graduating.. again, that’s something else that’s kind of nice to know.. in addition to all that, we have some opportunities for students to obtain some scholarships if you’re admitted to the Honors College. One of the things you’ll see listed there is our alumni distinguished scholarship competition, which takes place traditionally in the last Friday and Saturday in January and also the first Friday and Saturday in February.

This is an opportunity for students to come to campus for a full day on Friday, get probably one of the best visit programs that we offer at the university where you get a inside look at Michigan State, where you get to meet with faculty members and students from all different academic disciplines and ask them whatever questions that you all might have. But in addition to that, you get to compete for a full ride scholarship, full tuition scholarship, and about 120 other different awards that are available to students who come and participate in this competition.. then you might say, "Well, Charles, how does one go about joining the Honors College?" And we try to make this process as seamless as possible. Simply by submitting your application to Michigan State, you’ve also submitted an application for admission to the Honors College.. we don’t have a separate application on the front end. What’s nice about that though is it requires a little less work from you all.. if you’re doing great things in high school right now, there’s nothing additional that you’ll need to do to indicate interest in the Honors college.

There’s not check box on the application that you need to be marking off. But the bitter portion to that is your wouldn’t find out about your Honors College invitation at the same time that you found out you’re admitted to university. We don’t get your application materials until after you’ve been admitted to Michigan State,. it typically takes about six to eight weeks from that date before you would hear back from the Honors College with a decision if you were admitted. We also don’t send a whole bunch of denial letters to students either. Since you didn’t actually apply to the Honors College, it would be very rude if we told you you didn’t get in to something you might not have even been interested in. But if you are interested in the Honors College, which I’m going to assume you all are and you haven’t heard back in that six to eight week time frame, you simply just need to email our office or give our office a call and say, "Hey, still interested in the Honors College. It’s been about six to eight weeks, and I haven’t hear anything." At that point and time, we can let you know. Maybe we’re a little bit backed up and your invitations in the mail or maybe there was something in your application that was a red flag where maybe your program wasn’t quite as challenging as we was hoping for.. at that particular point in time, we might ask you to submit your first semester senior year grades in addition to maybe a short one to two page essay pretty much explaining why you’re interested in the Honors College for us to then do a little bit more thorough of a review.. what you’ll see on this Join Us slide are some averages.

You’ll see our average ACT score listed, which is a 32, our SAT, which is a 1420. There’s some wiggle room to standardized test score,. don’t fret if you have a test score that doesn’t quite meet those averages. Your test score makes up about 15 to 20% of our review process. But about 65 to 70% of our Honors College review is actually based upon your academic program, and your grades, and your classes in comparison to what’s available at your high school.. you all aren’t competing against other people from your state, your home state.

You’re not competing against other students from your home high school. But instead you’re actually just competing against the standard of what’s available at your school.. if you go to a school with about 20 advanced placement courses or international baccalaureate courses or dual enrollment opportunities, then we’re going to be looking for a decent chunk of that within your academic transcript. If you got to a school that doesn’t offer any of those things that maybe just has Honors courses, we’re obviously taking that into consideration when we’re reviewing you for that rigor.. we’re looking for students going above and beyond what that standard level of curriculum is at your school. The main reason we do this is because we offer a lot of opportunities at the Honors College. And a lot of those things are optional. We only ask students to complete eight honors experiences before they graduate, which is any of those different opportunities I explained earlier. But our big goal is to make sure that we’re finding those students … They’re just not trying to make the minimum and their maximums.. with that, any of y’all who are seniors, hopefully you got your application in already. And if not, you’ll want to get that in as soon as possible.

After that time that you hear back from MSU welcoming you to our MSU community, MSU family, it’s about a six to eight week timeframe, but you need wait before you hear back from the Honors College. After that, you would want to be coming back to campus for our scholarship competition.. with that, you’ll see my contact information as well as our assistant deans contact information the slide. Please feel free to reach out to us whenever you all have some questions that might occur after our session today. But at this point and time, I do want to open it up to any questions that you all might have and Adam’s going to swing back to join us as well. All right,. really good stuff. And it looks like we already have a question.. the first question is my son is accepted in engineering college, and he’d like to know what it takes to apply to be accepted to the Honors College if there is one for engineering.. yeah, that’s a good question.. basically how the Honors College works is we are a big umbrella for the entire universe.

The reason why this question is. important is because depending on what institutions you all are applying to for your undergraduate degree, you might find that some schools that they don’t have an honors college, but instead, maybe they have honors programs that are housed within the different academic colleges at that school.. maybe they have a particular honors program just for engineering students or just for business students or just for music students, et cetera. Here our Honors College works for every academic program on campus. If anything, it’s that glue that allows students to dabble in a whole bunch of different curriculum without feeling as though that that’s going to be a little bit more challenging.

There’s nothing special as an engineering student that you’ll have to do to be admissible to the Honors College. We actually have a big percentage of our Honors College student population who are engineers. Another one from Hannah. Do I have to commit to MSU to get invited to the Honors College?

That’s a great question. No, you do not. You obviously have to commit to MSU to be a part of the Honors College in the fall, but there’s nothing that you need to do after you’ve received your invitation to MSU in order to be considered for the Honors College. With that also being said, if you get an invitation to the Honors College, you can most definitely accept that’s right away if you know for a fact if you decide to come to MSU, you want to be a part of the Honors College. You don’t have to wait. We obviously know if you decide to go study somewhere else for your four years that you’re not planning to be a part of the Honors College here.

I think this is a question that you probably get a lot. And then this one is from Kevin. If you’re in the Honors College, can you room with people who are not in the Honors College? If so, where could you room together? I love that question. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. First part to that, Kevin, is of course. You most definitely can room with any other Michigan State University student, but if that student is not in the Honors College, then you wouldn’t be able to live on the Honors floor with us.. this once again goes to why honors housing is completely optional. You wouldn’t want a student to have to pick between the Honors College and not being in the Honors College simply because of some form or fashion regarding to housing. But what’s nice is as an Honors College student, you’re going to know where all of the Honors floors and Honors suites are located.. as a Honors College student, you can still hang out on those floors and still go to programming with students on that floor if you want to be a part of that living, learning community for the Honors College, but you don’t have to live there if you are planning to live with somebody else not in the Honors College.

Right. They’re rolling in.. next question from Ryan. I was accepted into Lyman Briggs, and I was wondering if you can do both. Right. Yep, great question from Ryan. Once again, that nature of the Honors College ultimately equals yes. You most definitely could be a part of the Honors College and Lyman Briggs.

We actually have an Honors floor in Holmes Hall. Which is where Lyman Briggs is located on campus. For our Honors College students who are a part of Briggs. So, you can literally major in anything that Michigan State University offers. You can double-major in anything that Michigan State University offers from the Honors College. and the Honors College isn’t going to make that more difficult. But through that academic flexibility, it’ll make it easier for you to do those things. How many students are in the Honors College? Yeah, we actually are a little over 4,000 students in the Honors College, which is about 10% of MSU’s undergraduate student population.

That equates to about an incoming first year class of about 640 students right out of high school. And if anybody’s good with math, that obviously doesn’t equal 4,000.. at the end of first semester on campus, we have what’s called a campus admission process.. any student not invited to the Honors College directly out of high school who either didn’t complete that appeal application I referenced earlier can also join the Honors College at the end of their first semester on campus simply by finishing within the top 10% of first year students in the college that your major is housed.. basically if you do well your first semester on campus, you’re going to get an automatic invitation to the Honors College to start your second semester. All right. Sophia asked, "Could you talk a little bit more about this scholarship competition? How does it work exactly?" Yes, the questions on everyone’s mind. How does that competition work? People love that. Good question, Sophia.

As I referenced briefly, that full Friday is just a visit program where you’re going to meet with us. I’ll give you a breakdown of the schedule. In the morning, you’re going to get some bigger presentations about the university, about the Honors college. You’re going to hear from some current students presenting about what they think is unique and what some faculty members also think is unique. After that, you’re going to have the opportunity to visit different academic colleges around campus and get a good insight for is that the ideal fit for you academically for your major. Then you’re going to eat on campus a couple times.

You’re going to break bread with other perspective students from all across the country over dinners, as well as a whole bunch of our current Honors College students and then some more opportunities to mix and mingle with faculty and staff members in the evening. This program is also for your parents as well. Then Saturday morning you wake up very early and you’re going to take the alumni distinguished scholarship exam. You cannot study for it. Don’t attempt to study for it. I often tell students it’s more of an interview than it is a test.. you really been preparing for it your entire lives. And that you do Saturday while your parents go through another program. All right.. Hannah wants to know if you do skip the prerequisites for a certain class, would the credits for the class still transfer to other colleges? Yes, that’s a great question.. when you referenced if you skip a prerequisite for a certain class, are you then also saying … Going to just try to just answer it in two ways.

Like if you had taken the AP course or an IB course, and you decided, oh, I’m going to transfer those credits in, those would obviously count. But if you, for instance, decide, well, I don’t want to take intro to chemistry because I don’t have to and I decide to take organic chemistry, that’s organic chemistry course that you actually take will count as credits for the academic program that you wouldn’t get a credit for intro to chemistry if you hadn’t taken the course if that makes sense at all. I think we covered this. If you weren’t invited to the Honors College, can you get invited during your freshman year? Which you can.. the answer is yes.

End of the first semester. Then do you have to come to all of the dates for the scholarship competition or just one? That’s a great question. That’s good to know actually.. no, you just have to pick one of the weekends. We just offer two back to back weekends because we know you all are busy folks and maybe you have some conflict with one of the other. Somebody else asked, "Are the slides to this presentation available somewhere?" If you email me, my email address is adavis, A-D-A-V-I-S, at msu.edu, I can get you the slides to this presentation because there’s obviously a lot of great stuff in there. Got some more questions here. Are the 200 word responses reviewed for Honors College consideration or is it completely merit based? Yeah, great question.. yes, we do look at application in full Garrett when you apply to Michigan state and then for the Honors College. You do not need to try to tailor your 200 word responses in anyway, shape, or form towards the honors college, but we’re going to use that one. We might see that there’s some additional information we need to know about you beyond what we see from an academic program and test scores. Hannah’s got another great question.

What’s the process of becoming an RA? Oh this is great.. another benefit to that scholarship competition is that we’re going to have a resource fair for you in the evening on that Friday. We’ll be bringing a whole bunch of campus resources to you all in a big reception room that we see that a lot of Honors College students either get involved in or that they would love to have Honors College students involved and residence life is one of those.. they’re going to come and present and have students available to talk to you about specifically how to become an RA. But simple form and fashion is that there’s going to be an interview process that’s going to be advertised everywhere where you can apply to become an RA.. you’re going to interview for that similar to the way you would interview for a job. And if you are hired, you’re going to get a nice incentive, which is free room and board, and an iPad, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. And you’ll then have the opportunity to figure out where you might be placed, and as an Honors College student, would you like to get you place on an honors floors? All right, this is a good one from Justin. To attend the scholarship competition, do you actually have to be committed to Michigan State.. no, once again, you don’t.. that’s scholarship competition like I mentioned on Friday is a visit program.. this is an opportunity for us to realistically give you MSU in our most vulnerable state.

We want you to see the nitty gritty of all these different academic departments. you can make a good sense to see if it’s really going to be able to support you in the way that you want it to.. you don’t have to make any decisions until that May 1st deadline. Great. Can you talk more about some of the requirements to graduate within the Honors College? Yep,. to graduate within the Honors College, there is three things that you have do. One, you have to complete eight honors experience.. a honors experience is maybe dabbling in graduate courses, maybe taking a form of honors class, maybe doing some honors options, but pretty much any combinations of those or just eight of one particular thing, doesn’t really matter.. you need to complete at least eight of those. In addition to that, you need to maintain a 3.2 GPA while you’re on campus. We don’t find that too difficult for our Honors College students. The average student in the Honors College GPA is a little bit north of 3.7,. we don’t find the students taper towards that. The reason we don’t move that GPA threshold is we don’t want you to be fearful of taking on opportunities that interest you. I wouldn’t want you to come into my office saying, yeah, I totally wanted to take this graduate course last semester, but I decided not to because you’re scared you might get a B in that class. The third requirement is that you have to submit a academic progress plan online every year.

It takes about five to 10 minutes, but it’s literally entering the classes that you plan to take this year and what your academic goals are still. It’s only a requirement because if it wasn’t people might forget to do it. All right. Hannah coming again. What extra things does an RA do? Yeah, resident assistants and this is a great question for multiple reasons. One, if you’re interested in becoming an RA, but more importantly, as a first year student, it’s awesome to know what your resident assistant on your floor is there for as you might want to better utilize them.. your resident assistant is an upperclassman with a lot of lived experiences and a lot of training about where academic resources are.. this a person that you can go to maybe if you’re struggling in a class, and they’ll know exactly where to send you and who you could working with to get some extra support there. That’s the person you go to if you happen to have any sort of roommate troubles or roommate conflict. It’s the person who’s going to coordinate a whole bunch of fun social events for the students on that floor, maybe a group lunch once a month, maybe some visits to maybe a Broadway show on campus, but pretty flexible in nature what they do. But they’re pretty much just the hub of that community center on that floor. All right. Here’s a good one from Madeline.

Does being in the Honors College help with major admissions, specifically within Broad, but obviously any major?. that’s a great question too.. it’s a double-sided answer. The answer is yes and no. The Honors College is going to give you more flexibility to make sure that you’re tailoring your academic curriculum to whatever those needs are for you.. if you know that you’re trying to get Eli Broad School of Business or another limited enrollment program, having that additional flexibility with what you can pick and choose from in your first couple years on campus is great because you can make sure that you’re taking all the classes you need for Broad while still being able to dabble in other things that you just have another strong passion, which is nice.

What about options for work study or maybe just other work opportunities on the campus as well? That’s great.. MSU prides itself in knowing that we have more job opportunities on campus available to students, pretty much more than there are students.. if you want to work or find work on campus, you’re not going to have any difficulty doing that, whether that’s working in a particular academic departments office, working in our dining halls as maybe a supervisor at some point, working in the research labs.. it’s pretty limitless where our students can work.. the Honors College in our weekly digest posts about some of those unique working experience. In fact, two members are looking for students to work in their particular offices, et cetera. All right. There’s two questions, but they kind of go a little bit together.. this one’s from Jackie and Garrett.. do the Honors College invitations come by email or do we have to check our accounts online? And then the second part. On average, how long after receiving an MSU acceptance letter will a perspective MSU student receive an Honors College invitation?

Yeah.. Honors College invitations come by US mail,. not either email or your online account.. you will get that to your home address.. if you need to update that with the Office of Admission, you would want to call them to get your general address updated with the university. Those letters typically arrive six to eight weeks after you’ve been admitted to the university as a perspective student.. that kind of answers Garrett’s question there too. All right, perfect. Okay, well that was a lot of great questions. You guys had some fantastic questions. We look forward to hearing from you again. We appreciate it and Go Green.

Go White.

Bu Community: Diversity At Bu (Hd)

Multiculturalism here at Boston University is something that’s part of our DNA, I like to think. I definitely think that BU is one of the most diverse campuses in the United States. I found. much more than I was anticipating in terms of meeting different types of people. Being and surrounding myself in a diverse environment really… …helps stimulate and helps you grow as an individual. Ethnic diversity is important. I think that having people from different geographic regions is important. You’re looking at diversity in terms of the career paths that each person is leading. You have people ranging from doctors to engineers to business people. I just feel really comfortable here. I like have a community and I feel really at home. I feel like I belong here.

Coming here to BU, I was looking for that circle of latinos and latin friends. I went to the Howard Thurman Center and they had a latino student gathering there and I fit perfectly. My mom and dad actually met at Boston University. When I talk to my parents about BU, they talk about the effect… that Dr.

King had on the University. We’re the ones that see the legacy left by Dr. King. We’re making our own legacy everyday, with UMOJA, for instance… which is the Black Student Union. My parents were members of UMOJA. You’re definitely going to be able to find some sort of club or group where you can finally feel at home. I never would have thought that me and somebody from Japan or from Italy… …would ever have anything in common. It gives you a new language for seeing the world when you are able to experience that through your friends.

In a university environment, an environment where we want people to think… …we want people to confront big ideas. It’s important that people from all walks of life come into those classrooms. Having classes with people from different backgrounds, different perspectives… …helps give you a richer experience then what you could get in any other location. My son’s search for a university began with his idea that… …he wanted to be in an urban setting. He wanted to be surrounded with a number of different types of individuals. In my mind, Boston is not a very diverse city. Needless to say that he’s here now and I’ve been here a few times for orientation and I’ve truly changed my mind. Multiculturalism and diversity are very, very important for a university to thrive… …and to move forward and to have vibrancy.

People that you never expect to see me with are my best friends. I’m from Puerto Rico. I have a very strong Latin, like Caribbean background, but at the same time one of my roommates, she’s from New Jersey. she was raised in the United States, but her parents are from Wales, England…. she’s got this really different like taste and style to her. Then we have another roommate that’s from Singapore… …and another one that’s from a small town in California.. it’s really interesting just to see how it all kinda blends together. I have a mixture of friends and they all have different personalities but they all mesh really well. There’s no question that a multicultural campus creates… a more diverse and rich learning experience, and also shapes the individual. It’s helped me look at things from different perspectives, but it’s also helped me define my own sense of culture and my own sense of heritage as well. I’m loving it, it’s an absolute blast. Going anywhere for college is a huge life-changing decision. And I feel that I mean the right one. It has been definitely one of the most enriching experiences I’ve ever had. Oh my God, I’m. happy to be here.

Honestly, I love the entire experience. BU is probably my favorite place on the planet right now. I’m probably going to cry at graduation, I really will miss this place.

It’s an environment that captures many different perspectives and tries to mold them into one unified world and international perspective. This is a place that is about grand remix. This is a place where it going to be important for you to find your passion. Get ready, because this is awfully exciting.

You’re about to engage in the ride of your life.