If you have been forwarded this email, my name is Sunny Jain and I am a university admissions consultant. For 11 years I have helped students build their CVs and get into some of the best universities in the UK and America such as Oxford, Stanford, and Yale. You can sign up here to receive my newsletter on CV-building activities alongside tips and insights on how to succeed in the admissions process. I am also on Twitter and Instagram. And if you want professional help with university admissions, our company website is here.

A few months ago, we helped a student that had relatively low grades in his subjects. Now he is going to King's College London – one of the best universities in the country. This is not a fiction, nor is this some impossible task.

The secret?

Hard work and intelligent decision making. Let me break it down further.

His name is Harry. He was on a GPA of 2.5 but wanted to apply to some famous UK universities. He was clearly on the back foot. So, we knew we would have to get strategic. With the first important choice being...

University Choices

With a 2.5 GPA, you would assume that he would have no chance of getting into the top 30 UK universities. You would be correct. But this is only true if you were going by conventional means. We recognised that targeting foundation year courses would be far better. Not only would it give him a year to adjust, but these courses also have low requirements and would train him up academically. The top 30 universities do not offer foundation years to domestic students, but they do have international foundation years – you just have to go out of your way to find them. We did extensive research and found the following courses:

1. King's – 22nd ranked
2. Warwick – 10th ranked
3. Bath – 8th ranked
4. UCL – 9th ranked

All of them offer the same quality teaching in a variety of courses, just at a foundation level. So, my advice is the following – look more widely. It may seem obvious, but especially if you are international student applying to the UK, there are more than you opportunities than you might think.

Harry was still below the GPA required by these universities, but only by 0.5. So, here's what we did next.

Extra tuition

We gave Harry a lot of tuition, this was able to boost his grade point average enough for him to be considered for several courses. Of course, this is not enough, so we also did the following:

• Provided him with a specification breakdown, so he knew exactly what he had to learn for each subject. No more, no less.
• Created a timetable for him that enabled him to balance revision content with breaks.
• Created an accountability structure with his parents – we would check in on him. If he had not sent evidence of work done, he would not have been grounded.
• Emphasised the balance between skills and knowledge. Harry had a solid foundation of knowledge but applied it poorly. We integrated sessions focusing on skills such as conclusion writing, evidence analysis and critical thinking independent of the content in class.

The final hurdle was personal statement building. Explaining that is worth an entire article itself – so stay tuned to hear more about what we did with him in terms of this.

Deadline countdown (Sep '24 intake):

• Oxbridge or UK Medicine (Sep '24) - 15 October 2023 - 200 days left.

• USA Early Decision (Sep '24) - 01 November 2023 - 217 days left.

• MBA and Postgraduate (Sep '24) - 01 December 2022 - 247 days left.

• USA Regular Decision - 01 January 2024 - 278 days left.

• UK Undergraduate - 25 January 2024 - 302 days left.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, I would really appreciate it if you would forward this email to your friends and colleagues. And if you have been forwarded this email, you can sign up here to receive my newsletter every 2 weeks. As ever, if you have any questions about university applications or CV building, just reply to this email.

In case you would be interested in working with me and my colleagues to boost your chances with your university admissions process you can check out our 3 programmes on our website for more information. Minimum investment for work with us is $15,500.

Have a great Wednesday!

Sunny