Get out your pen or phone because I’m only going to go through this once.
To get into any college in the country, you need to follow these steps exactly.
Note: It is important you complete each task in listed order. Failure to include one of these on your application negates the guarantee.
- Take AP Physics
- Volunteer as a translator at your local hospital
- Use either bucolic or grandiose in the opening line of your essay (ideally both)
- Score at least 70 points higher than your current score on the SAT
Excellent. Now, be sure you say this to yourself every day, and post it on social media more than twice but no more than four times each month, “I will only be happy if I attend (insert your top choice here).”
As you know, visualization is a powerful tool. Athletes, actors, prominent speakers, and other top performers use this strategy in preparation for achieving excellence, and you need to do the same thing in your college admission/application process. So, close your eyes and imagine yourself at your dream school. Think about walking around campus, eating in the dining hall, laughing boisterously with friends, and hashtagging #BestLifeEver on a daily basis. 
You are killing this exercise. Well done. This time close your eyes and imagine yourself at any other college. Think about the disaster this would be. Tears, ruin, and utter carnage should be filling your mind and thoughts. Forget posting on social media in this place. Your fingers will be trembling, internet will be intermittent if functional at all, and all of your friends will have unfollowed you anyway.
Parents/ Supporting adults– I don’t want to leave you out of the fun. Think back on your student’s life to this point. You’ve always known success and happiness to be monolithic. That’s how your life has played out, and it’s what you’ve seen repeatedly in your friends too. One path to success- and a specific college determines EVERYTHING.
Consider when they were little. All of the parenting books said you should only let them pretend to be one thing, and you followed that advice verbatim. One outfit, one sport, one interest to pursue. You’ve spent so long limiting them and pigeonholing them, but now everything is on the line. This is a test of your mettle. Welcome to the show. Their future- and yours hinges on this- college. Don’t falter and DO NOT relent! Keep pushing them towards one absolute outcome.
And for the love of all things holy don’t let others distract you with stories of unexpected joy or alternatives to your master plan for your child’s life. You know as well as I do that college is a zero-sum game. Winners and losers. If your kid does not go to X College, not only will their life be over, yours (which thankfully will be much shorter anyway) will be too. 
Final Advice
- Rankings are the gospel truth. Follow them blindly as you do all other things you read online. Don’t question their methodology or buy the false narrative purporting that they are really only about clicks and marketing dollars. Think about it- if a school went up five spots or dropped three this year, it is because they are fundamentally different places than they were last year. Draw hard lines. This is war.
- Trust YouTube, TikTok, Reddit implicitly. If a kid says she got into Yale because of the essay she wrote, that’s exactly what happened. Listen closely to her advice and subscribe to that channel for sure. Also, share it with your friends and encourage them to like it- they really will.
- There is a direct correlation between your chances of getting into a school that admits 10% or fewer of its applicants and the number of those colleges you apply to. I mean that’s just math, folks.
- Holistic Admission is BS. You need to make a higher score on the SAT, even if they say they’re test blind/free/optional. Go pay a lot of money, spend an exorbitant number of hours practicing, wake up each Saturday at 6 a.m. just to acclimate, and tattoo your necessary score on your wrist. We all know standardized tests are going to help you immensely as a college student. The highest scorers in the NFL combines always pan out to be the best players in the league. Same same.
- Schools in the same athletic conference are identical. Apply to all of them.
Do all of this and you will Win in College Admission. Do it not and…