⚡️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

🥲 Okay, so we have a rough plan…

@valeranotes

A student casually passes by a local info-guru. Their eyes coincidentally meet for a few split seconds.

Half a year passes, and the student gets admitted to the Ivy League.

The local info-guru proudly shares his acceptance letter on social media.

Others: But Sophomore Academy team supported this applicant!

Local info-guru: Sure, dummy, but our eye contact inspired him to apply.

[All characters and other entities appearing in this story are fictitious.]

@valeranotes

Yale Removes Its Test-Optional Policy

Unfortunate but predictable. Exam scores remain the best predictors of university performance.

Link: https://news.yale.edu/2024/02/22/yale-announces-new-test-flexible-admissions-policy

@valeranotes

Thank you, ChatGPT!

Being polite to ChatGPT apparently improves its responses because most existing literature uses words like "thank you" and "please" in positive and encouraging contexts.

The opposite can also be true. Feel free to curse your A.I. if you want subpar outputs.

It was one of the many takeaways from my lunch with Vika, my fellow Yale-NUS graduate and the Data Analytics Head at a Singapore startup.

As you know, I am not a big ChatGPT fan for privacy and other reasons. Vika warned me against inputting original essays into the GPT, confirming my existing concerns.

Always grateful to hold informal discussions with people who have nurtured their expertise and passion for their research and professional fields.

Every day learning something new from these incredible people.

@valeranotes