Chasing Dream vs. Chasing Shadow

By Hubert Ho | Head of Admissions Consulting Services, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions

Stepping into March, a new admission cycle for colleges and universities starts again. For both junior students, you should have started to think about your school list no matter for going to US or UK. While compiling this strategic school list, you will probably receive a lot of information from different sources that contains various opinions. Since most of the information available to you may not be accurate, it might affect your decision on your school list. That’s what I refer to “dream” vs “shadow”!

Is Ranking the Real Indicator?

A lot of students and parents use the ranking as the main determinant for compiling the school list. There is no doubt that it is the easiest way to identify a good school or a bad school. However, there will be different results when you use different school ranking platform. For example, you will have different results for researching the ranking for Stanford University in the USNEWS and in the QS even it is an undeniable good school. Why is that? Different schools will put in different level of resources in a ranking that is beneficial to them. As a result, ranking cannot be a main contributor to you school list. It can only serve as a rough reference.

Good School vs. Best-fit School

Students and parents always like to believe good school means best-fit school, but there is no correlation between them. There are a lot of things to determine whether the school is best fit to a student, e.g. academic performance, extra-curricular history, program structure, research opportunity as well as personality and future dream. Entering a wrong school can cause a lot of aftermaths such as unable to adapt the new environment, loneliness and losing motivation, etc.

The above two examples are just a tip of the iceberg to show you how important it is for compiling a school list in a “dream” or “shadow” setting. The very first step for every student is to do a very honest self-reflection to explore your true intention and analysis on your strengths and potentials for consolidating your dream.

Need more information on how we can help you? Come and speak with our Admissions Counselor: https://bit.ly/3teynbI

Mr. Hubert Ho

Head of Admissions Consulting Services, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions
Associate Member of IECA, Member of NACAC and AEE
MCom (Finance), UNSW
BCom (Management & Marketing), University of Wollongong

• 10 years+ of experience in education industry
• 100% of his students got admitted to Top 3 choices & Top 50 US National Colleges and G5 UK Universities
• Proven track record helping students gain admission to US prestigious colleges including Yale University, Stanford University, Cornell University, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, Boston University

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