University Application

Choosing the right university and career path can be a daunting task, and one that is made all the more challenging without the right support. At ISNS, we understand the importance of making informed choices about our students future, which is why our University and Careers Counsellors are dedicated to providing comprehensive services to students and families. From personality assessments to university and residence applications, our experienced Counsellors offer every available resource to guide you through the complicated and time-consuming admissions process. 

In this article, we dive deeper into our university application cycle with insights from Lisa and Eleanor, giving you a 360-degree view of our services and how they can support our students achieving their dreams of higher education.

In grade 11 and 12 we really start focusing on the university applications themselves. So the first half of grade 11 is spent doing research about universities, requirements, admissions processes etc. Once we get to the middle of grade 11, that's when the application process really does start.

In February, we usually start meeting with students and their parents one on one to discuss their plans, like what countries they want to study in; what specific universities; what programs. It really is a team. We want to make sure that everyone's on the same page right from the very start.

After meeting with the students’ families, we will put the students into two groups, mostly like North America group and Europe and Asia group to start working on their personal statements. Because the requirements for these two locations are different, we put them into two groups and it is more like a workshop. In this case, we can guide them one on one to work them through how to write their first draft of the personal statement.

We start off with workshops that focus intensely on the United States or the UK on their personal statements. Following the workshop, students are given time to go off and brainstorm ideas, and then they come back to meet with the counsellors one on one to filter through their ideas and select the strongest options and at that point they would be writing their first draft.

From April to May, the students continue to work on their personal statements as well as filling out reference letters, recommendations, asking their academic teachers to write reference letters for them. And there will be a lot of one on one meetings with university counselors to give them more guidance and to help them to refine their personal statement.

These meetings about the personal statement continue all the way through the spring with the final copy of their personal statement being done before June. We do that because it gives the kids the summer then to focus on portfolios if they are art students or working on other extracurricular activities or attending summer camps or doing other things to build resume and preparation for applications.

After they come back from the summer, it's the first term of grade 12. Since we prepared everything in their grade 11, we would gradually start to apply for universities in September. We will have two days in which students are cancelled with their academics and classes, they are only focused on their university application. One day is in September and another day is in October.

The two application days are something that's really unique to ISNS. We have two days in the fall, one on September 26th and another on October 18th. We focus largely on US and UK applications because there are earlier deadlines for EE(Extended Essay), ED(Early Decision) and the students are applying to Oxbridge or to medicine in the UK. 

We really walk the students step by step through every single part of the application process. Because something we've noticed in past years is that when students are doing these things outside of school, they get really stressed, they get really frustrated. It's taking their focus away from their academics, so we really want this to be a smooth and supportive process for the students the whole way through.

On our second application day, we focus on Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and other world schools that they'll be applying to. We do have a limit of ten applications per student. It has been a little bit flexible in past years because of Covid with students applying to many more countries than normal. The ten applications that we have a limit for it does include things like UCAS which is five schools, that only count as one application or the University of California system where students can apply to as many schools within that system as they want and it counts as one. Even though the official limit is ten, there are some considerations that make it a bit more flexible.

Our internal deadline for university applications is December 15th of any school year. One of the reasons why we do that is because we don't want students waiting until the very last minute to apply for universities. We do want this to be something the students have thought about a lot beforehand. They prepared for this for a year at that point, so they really are ready to submit everything by December.