My Private Consultations

As you know, I have not offered private consultations for quite a while, focusing on the Admissions Program and Full Support students.

I decided not to take any Full Support students for Regular Decisions. Freshman had some wild applications, such as a kid with SAT 1570 and three A*s on A-level exams that we postponed to next year.

I am still quite busy. But I will dedicate about 50 hours to private meetings in December.

Why would you want a consultation with me?
—Comprehensive application review
—College or supplemental essay editing
—Brainstorming and ideation

Why should you NOT take my consultation?
—Basic American education overview
—Applying to non-competitive commercial universities
—Do not have an application draft prepared

As for my background and track record:
—Graduated from Yale-NUS College with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
—Successfully finished Yale University's on-campus intensive program called Grand Strategy
—In 2023 alone, my students got admitted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell Business School, UC Berkeley, Babson, NYUAD, Yonsei, and many more

Think twice before signing up. I may cancel the meeting and refund those applications for whom investment in my services does not make sense.

P.S. I will notify you at least two hours prior if I am rescheduling a meeting. You take full financial responsibility for not showing up or attending late.

Freshman Alumni will have 30% longer meetings.

Registration and payment: https://calendly.com/freshmanacademy/consultations-with-valera

@valeranotes

When the motivational essay contains a "vibrant tapestry," you do not need an AI-detector to know ChatGPT wrote it.

100% accuracy so far. Try it yourself. 🥲

@valeranotes

Tiger 🐯

@valeranotes

So Proud of What We Have Built Together

One poster is not enough to include all of Freshman Academy's incredible graduates who reached out to me today.

I consider these guys as nothing short of legends. I felt inspired observing their courage, sacrifice, and resilience as they fought for their dreams.

I am not surprised, but it still warms my heart to know that they genuinely care and are invested in the fates of the new generation of students.

In the days of despair and inevitable setbacks, our community keeps me going. We somehow united some of the most talented, sincere, and determined individuals that I myself have looked up to.

Super hyped for the RD season and the rest of the university decisions!

#GoFreshman

@valeranotes

⚡️Yearly Reminder: University Deadlines are on January 1st at Midnight, NOT TONIGHT

I have back-to-back meetings till 10 pm. Then, I will quickly drop by my friend's party.

Tomorrow, another 12-14 hours of meetings. It is my SIXTH year of not having a proper celebration.

Happy New Year, everyone! 🎉🥲😂

@valeranotes

📌My Three Lessons from the 2023 Admissions Season

The recent application period has been my most challenging to date. Our students produced about 20K words of research papers alone.

Only in the Full Support, Freshman students have written 120K words of essays. And we are not even counting hundreds of hours of Admissions Program meetings and Personal Consultations.

Here are three takeaways I have drawn from this experience:

1) In 2024, we will drastically improve the Full Support curriculum and delegate the tasks to help MORE students in their admissions journeys.

Last year, we rejected a Full Support applicant with 3 A*s on A-levels and 1570 on the SAT. Our limited team and my overinvolvement resulted in Freshman's high selectivity. This year, we will streamline the process and involve our talented Admissions Team.

Additionally, we are working hard to establish a Singapore office where we hope to hire Yale-NUS graduates and other experienced writers and advisors full-time. Working offline with them would allow us to ensure quality and train staff more effectively.

Our vision is to build a virtual and physical space where the world's best teachers will mentor the world's best students.

2) In 2024, I will openly speak up on the crucial questions and topics I modestly omitted and shyly avoided.

I have quite a few points to discuss. One is the repeated use of Freshman's admissions cases by individuals having virtually nothing to do with them. I avoided those discussions because any critically thinking student sees through such laughable marketing.

It has been a few years now, yet false claims persist. And I frankly cannot tolerate them any longer, given how much my team and I sacrificed to assist our mentees on their journeys: THEIR success we facilitated.

We will publicly confront anyone who misappropriates evidence of their Ivy admissions expertise, especially when such does not exist.

Simultaneously, Freshman will continue being transparent about our stories. In our communication, we will highlight students' outstanding efforts in making their wildest dreams a reality.

3) In 2024, we will start admissions preparation as soon as possible.

Our latest clients in China have already joined us 1-2 years before their deadlines.

The Full Support and Admissions Programs' much-anticipated launches will happen as soon as possible. We will set strict spring and summer deadlines and milestones for those joining our admissions programs.

Freshman Academy moves towards disciplined and forward-planning organization, making the admissions process enjoyable and demanding the highest performance from new students.

We face many challenges on the way to becoming one of the world's most creative, academia-driven, well-connected, and accomplished admissions teams. But this is not a distant dream anymore. We see it as a tangible goal achievable in the midterm.

Sooner or later, we get there.

P.S. Read the comments if you are confused about the dislikes below 😹👇

@valeranotes

⚡️Opening Five Private Consultations Weekly

One of my commitments this year is to meet students outside Full Support and Admissions Programs.

For now, I will limit those meetings to five weekly. When we hit five, I will close all consultation slots for the week.

We can discuss:

✅ Undergraduate Admissions
✅ Graduate admissions (essays only)
✅ Summer school applications
✅ Motivational essays
✅ Supplemental essays
✅ EC list development
✅ Admissions strategy
✅ Research papers and other written applications (confirm with me first

My track record:
Students I was fortunate to mentor got admitted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell Business School, UC Berkeley, NYUAD, etc.

Instant Registration: https://calendly.com/freshmanacademy/consultations-with-valera

@valeranotes

🤩 Welcome to Princeton, Sayfullo!

Originally from Bukhara, Sayfullo Saidov prepares to study at the same university as Jeff Bezos, John F. Kennedy, Alan Turing, Richard Feynman, and Michelle Obama.

A Tashkent Presidential School student, Sayfullo received a full-ride scholarship of more than $350,000, covering his tuition, accommodation, food, and flights.

He was one of the most iconic students of the Freshman Academy's Full Support Program, producing 15,000 words of reflections to write his motivational essay.

In the many discussions with Sayfullo, we learned immensely about his outstanding engineering endeavors, early life in Japan, and tourguiding experience in Bukhara.

Having access to Princeton's education and resources, Sayfullo plans to advance the Engineering and Sustainability fields in Central Asia.

The Freshman Admissions Team and Alumni Network congratulate Sayfullo and his family for this ground-breaking achievement!

@freshmanblog

🌋500+ ‘Strong Yeses’. Pretty Convincing

Princeton Reaction Video

🚀 Will need your engagement though to launch our vid!

@valeranotes

“Half day on Hinge, half day on LinkedIn. No longer a child, not yet an adult. Fed up with college, don’t want to graduate. What am I?”

Подслушано в столовой.

🌋 Post-Graduation Life

Received my Bachelor's degree almost two years ago. Half a decade flew by real fast. But I am still 50/50 on Hinge and Linkedin 😂 (Well, not on the former as of lately. It is complicated, but when wasn't it?)

Anyways. Most college applicants assume you see your life trajectory more clearly after graduating. Frankly, it is mostly not the case.

Many of my former classmates were as confused, if not more, about their life direction when they graduated compared to their first days in college.

Yale-NUS alumni scared us of how difficult post-grad life would be. In reality, you tackle all issues eventually: accommodation, work, bureaucracy, etc. I would never trade back the kind of freedom that I now enjoy after college.

It is easy to look forward and get overwhelmed with everything you will need to figure out. I find it helpful to leave the future challenges to the, hopefully, more prepared future version of me. He got this!

For now, trying to enjoy the quirks and worries and hopes and self-perceptions of my current life period. And those do change as time goes by.

@valeranotes

🦉Screw the IELTS and TOEFL exams! Here is the way to know you have mastered the language:

You are watching a captivating movie. And sometime mid-way, it dawns on you that you were watching it in a foreign language all along.

You suddenly become conscious of how the sensory difference between perceiving the world in your native and foreign languages disappears.

Admittedly, it takes time to get there. I first experienced this feeling in my sophomore year, ten years after I had started learning English.

But it freaks me out occasionally when I need to stop and recognize the language of, say, a YouTube video I watch.

@valeranotes