We are incredibly excited to welcome Brian Kang to our team!

The college application process can feel overwhelming, but do you really need a college consultant? Many students and families navigate applications on their own, and with enough time, research, and persistence, you might not need outside help. However, before you make your decision, let’s explore some common reasons why people think they don’t need a consultant—and why they might want to reconsider.

Happy New Year, and a warm congratulations to our ILUMIN students who got into their dream schools through the early application round, including Early Decision and Early Action! We're thrilled to announce that some of our students have been accepted to schools including Caltech, Claremont McKenna, Duke, NYU, Princeton, Reed, and Santa Clara University.

We’ll be discussing five main types of supplemental essay prompts, which you can see listed here. Although the terms like “Why Us?” and et cetera are not necessarily the official terminology, it is really helpful for students so that they can learn how to identify the real questions that they should be answering.

Many of you have probably heard of the Common App—really big platform, supports over a thousand colleges in their college application process—and kind of at the forefront of that is the Common App Personal Statement, or the Common App essay, which gets sent to every college that you apply to through the Common App.

We’re going to take a look at some of the PIQs. For a lot of our seniors—definitely if there are any younger students, you are more than welcome to join to get a bit of preview of what’s in store—but this is mostly going to be geared for a lot of our incoming 12th graders who are going to be doing the college essays and applications coming on.

This is a transcript of a webinar from August 2024, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel. Thank you again to Ivy Method Tutors for co-hosting this webinar with us!

This is a transcript of a webinar from August 2024, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel. Thank you again to Samantha Castro-Rico, Ivan Chan, and William Kerr for coming to share their personal thoughts and experiences surrounding their own pathways to med school!

This past summer, The University of Chicago announced their binding Summer Student Early Notification (SSEN) application option: high school seniors students who have previously completed one of UChicago’s summer programs can now apply to the university between September and mid-October—earlier than the ED1 timeline. This development adds to UChicago’s wide range of early application options; the institution already offers ED1, EA, and ED2.

Just to intro our time: I’m going to share some content about college majors. There’s a lot of new and important data to share—some of that is going to be rehashed from the trends webinar, if you were there—so there’s going to be some of that, plus a little bit more specific data to share.

I'm excited to share more about what we're learning about the college admissions landscape, including trends that we're seeing from this past cycle. Actually, I think the greater bracket of time is really from 2020 to now, so I think there's a lot of interesting things to share! Excited to do so.

Are the test-optional tides turning? For some top schools, the answer is yes.

For many students, college is simply one step in their academic journey towards medical school and a career in healthcare. This is by no means an easy step, of course. The standard route for a doctor-to-be takes approximately eleven years: four years to get a bachelor’s degree, four years in medical school, and at least three years in residency.

Getting a solid job with a high salary soon after graduating from college is, for many students and families, the goal of their degree. Tie this in with the belief that majoring in STEM will guarantee both a high salary and a low unemployment rate, and it’s no wonder that 131,500 undergraduates obtained bachelor’s degrees in biological and biomedical sciences in 2021 (the fifth most popular college major in the United States), and that 126,000 undergraduates did so in engineering (the sixth most popular).

Early Decision 2, or ED2, is a second round of Early Decision that comes with the same binding agreement as ED1—that is, if a college accepts an ED applicant, that applicant is automatically committed to attend—but the same timing as Regular Decision (RD), with a later application deadline of early January.

We are excited to welcome Anna Lee to the ILUMIN consulting team!

For juniors, aiming for a top university is no small feat, and preparation for such an ambitious goal begins well before senior year. Now is the time for students to strategize and position themselves well. We’ll dive into the essential aspects that 11th graders should be focusing on this monumental academic year to make their college applications stand out!

Although sophomores may still be a few years away from college applications, it’s never too early to start preparing for the admissions process! From standardized testing and curriculum to extracurriculars and good study habits, there are many areas sophomores can tackle now to prepare them for both a strong academic year and well-built applications further down their high school career.

Ninth graders: congratulations on your first year of high school! There’s a new stage of your academic journey ahead of you. While it may seem far too early, being fresh out of middle school, to be thinking about college, ninth grade is actually the perfect time to start laying the foundation for a rock-solid college application.

I am thrilled to introduce Mr. Giles Eady, the senior associate dean at Emory University (located in the vibrant city of Atlanta, Georgia). Emory is renowned for its commitment to outstanding academics, groundbreaking research, and fostering a community that encourages the pursuit of knowledge and the development of ethical leaders. Giles brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to the admissions process, guiding aspiring students on their journey to joining the Emory family.

Good evening everyone – glad that everyone could make it today to listen to Wendy a little bit from Northeastern!

Students put blood, sweat – and, most importantly, time – into writing their college application essays. Therefore, having fewer essays to write means a faster and easier college application process.

We at ILUMIN wanted to give our warmest congratulations to our seniors this past year! They poured so much time and effort into their academics, extracurriculars, and applications alike, and their hard work is clearly recognized not only by us, but also by all the schools who sent them offers of admission. Now, we send our best wishes for their success as they prepare for the first year of their college careers!

Now that it's August, summer is drawing to a close, and the brand new school year is slowly approaching. While there's no need for students to stress about their incoming courseload and extracurriculars just yet, there are certainly some simple ways students can prepare themselves for the new year!

What does it mean for a school to be a good fit for an individual student?

Good evening, everyone. I’m glad everyone could make it today. This will be the last of our essay series [this year] for webinars – and [of] giving students a sneak peek of topics to come. Hopefully, you've started already. Hopefully, you're finding time to chip away at your essays. (If not, and you're watching this in the fall… good luck to you as well!)

We're presenting a topic that I think is relevant for a lot of our seniors right now: thinking about how to tackle the essays. How to improve their essays, I think, is a big thing. If you've already started it, you'll be in really good shape if you're already thinking about the next steps of how to make adjustments.