In today’s episode of “College Admissions Real Talk”, Dr. Legatt talks about Concourse and how to utilize it when looking for safety schools.
Transcript
VO: Welcome to College Admissions Real Talk with Dr. Aviva Legatt, a podcast for students seeking to get admitted to top-tier colleges. Each episode will feature an important tip for your college admission success, delivered with candor and love. If you’ve ever wanted to take a peek inside the mind of a college admissions officer, this is your chance. Have a question? Text Dr. Legatt at 610-222-5762. So, what’s your dream school?
AL: Welcome to College Admissions Real Talk. This is Dr. Aviva Legatt, founder and Elite Admissions Expert at Ivy Insight and author of “Get Real and Get In”. Today we’re going to talk about a brand new strategy for your safety schools. Safety schools are those colleges where you apply, and you have a fairly decent shot at getting in. And if you have to quantify that shot, it might be in the range somewhere between 80 and 100% chance of getting in. Of course, there are never any guarantees with admissions, but there are lots of ways to predict safety schools. Colleges in the U.S. like Arizona State University and colleges abroad, like University of Adelaide, University of Auckland, which are in Australia and New Zealand, respectively, Trinity College of Dublin, Queen’s University of UK. All of these colleges are part of this very interesting and new platform called Concourse. The website of Concourse is concourse.global. If you go to concourse.global, you’ll find the chance as a student to register for their platform and essentially rechart the way that you get into your safety school. Joe Morrison, who is the CEO and founder of Concourse, says that their solution is pretty simple and pretty ingenious. Concourse is doing the entire college admissions process backwards. According to my colleague Derek Newton at Forbes, they have colleges apply to students. Can you imagine you don’t have to apply to college? The college applies to you. So instead of asking a college to let you in, a college is asking you to let them in. I mean, imagine that, right? Doing admissions this way sounds like a simple idea. But as the CEO says, it’s a really hard problem to crack. “It’s taken us three years to get there. There are many constituencies with complicated workflows, and the process is very complicated”. So here’s how Concourse works. A high school counselor or administrator will sign on to Concourse. Then you, the student, will create a profile with school verified data, grades, extracurriculars academic interests and personal details such as languages spoken. A profile cost 70 dollars, which can be waived in case a student needs the extra financial support. Colleges in the Concourse system waive their application fees so you don’t have to pay anything extra to be considered out of row of different colleges. Once you provide Concourse with your information, the information that you provide gets sent to colleges without your identifying info. The schools can see your information, including your high school, but they don’t see your name or any other demographic details like your age, your race, your gender, and so on. If the college finds you interesting, you’ll be admitted and you’ll get the whole admissions package as well. You’ll also get a financial aid package if you qualify. Concourse now has 16,000 students– great profile so far–and has about 48 colleges on the other side receiving, reviewing and admitting students. The company says that on average, Concourse gets about 5.8 offers of admission per student. That’s a lot of offers altogether. These offers have come in with a combined $40,000,000 in aid and scholarship packages. It’s pretty impressive considering the number of students applying, the fact that we don’t know what their financial situation is and what the colleges have offered to each individual student. So it’s very interesting. It definitely sounds like something worth checking out. If you join this platform, you can get it offers to schools you might never have considered in new opportunities and places. As I mentioned early on, there are a lot of colleges abroad that are using this platform and really strong colleges abroad with great brand recognition. Once you get the offer, you just swipe right to discuss it with the school or go left to decline. Like a dating platform. No accident. Concourse is to match software only in a very complex environment. Schools want students, students who fit, and you want options, too. It’s kind of like Uber or Airbnb, but far more on the line with decisions that are essential for your future. There you have it! Concourse: it’s a very interesting platform, a new way to think about your safety schools. The plus side of this seems to be that you’ll get some surprising and interesting offers. I think a downside of it is that you have less control and less say over where and how you’re considered. I want to give a big thanks to my colleague Derek Newton for covering this topic so well at Forbes. I was able to glean so much information from his article about Concourse. It was concourse.global. Seems like a very low risk thing to put a profile on there and see what offers you get. Enjoy those new safety school options.
VO: College Admissions Real Talk is hosted by Aviva Legatt, edited by Stephanie Carlin, and produced by Incontrera Consulting. I’m Caroline Stokes and this has been your daily boost of college admissions insight. Have a question? Text Dr. Legatt at 610-222-5762. For more information on Dr. Legatt and Ivy Insight visit www.ivyinsight.com. And you can pick up Dr. Legatt’s book, “Get Real and Get In”, at major retail outlets across the world. Insight out.
