University Consultants of America services students living in the United States as well as international students who seek admission into U.S. universities for undergraduate and graduate programs. We offer comprehensive, goal-oriented services that have proven to be effective for U.S. college admissions.
The Comprehensive Admissions Matrix (CAM) Protocol™ is a three-phase program that addresses not only essay writing and interview preparation, but also personal profiling and pitch development. Every one-on-one session, and every task and training UCA provides, has a discrete purpose, value and goal.
All of our work is guided by the real evaluation methods and scoring sheets used by admissions representatives at highly-selective colleges. With decades of experience, UCA knows what they’re looking for and how they grade applicants. We translate each student’s strengths into the language of admissions.
Guided Self-Analysis
Who are you? If you can’t answer that question coherently, the college and graduate admissions process will be challenging.
UCA believes that students should understand their personalities, competencies, tendencies, and preferences before trying to sell themselves via essays and interviews and even before trying to find schools that offer the right fit.
Each session of UCA’s Guided Self-Analysis is goal-oriented and directed. GSA uses the Socratic Method to perform personality profiling, using standard personality dichotomies as well as our own proprietary evaluative criteria. After the first session, students are given simple “homework” – such as a memory inventory and an interest inventory – designed to corroborate our initial findings regarding “who are you” and also to identify student preferences in subject matter and in the learning method. Then, we turn towards strategy, assisting students in developing a Personal Marketing “pitch” or thesis and overall plan for the applications, followed by a “storyboard” in which students know where they should emphasize individual points to support a coherent and harmonious admissions effort.
When it comes to college fit, UCA believes that post-secondary education is an evolutionary moment. College is the first time that most students leave home, determine their own schedules, and make life and career decisions. UCA recognizes that college and graduate school education involves four factors: academics, activities, student diversity and architecture, and locale beyond the campus. Whether actively or by osmosis, all of these factors influence and develop young people. UCA wants each student to achieve their best within an environment that both teaches and inspires. To that end, we have created our own database of colleges based on 4-year graduation rates and other important criteria.
Essay Writing
Unfortunately, most high schools and colleges don’t teach writing properly. Even students who write well don’t understand what the admissions essays are seeking. UCA helps students solve both problems.
Our Client Managers and essay protocol sheets illuminate the proper direction for essays as well as the personal concepts that each student should include within the essays. Then our professional Editors work hand-in-hand with our students to write using our proven and effective writing method.
It is content, not style, that leads to winning admissions essays. At UCA, essay writing follows our CODE™ method: Concept, Organization, Drafting, and Editing.
Once the ideas are selected, we focus on helping students write detailed outlines for their essays, focusing on specifics and narrative, not commentary. Then students use their outlines to draft quickly and efficiently: we ask that students draft a timed “speed essay,” with rules such as “no backspace or delete” to ensure that students focus on flow and voice. Our Editors then perform a Content Edit, deleting unnecessary verbiage, after which students perfect the entire essay, using their stylistic discretion to emphasize and enchant. Finally, our Editors perform a Polish Edit to ensure convincing and genuine prose.
Interview Preparation
UCA’s Interview Preparation module is proven to be highly effective. Developed based on decades of admissions interview experience, our Interview Preparation includes three forms of instruction.
Students start with an in-depth tutorial explaining everything one needs to know about admissions interviews. Then, after identifying their own personal “talking points,” students undergo an intensive Q-and-A session to adjust their timing, vocal inflection, and body language. Finally, each student engages in a realistic mock interview with an experienced UCA Interviewer who they have not met. Our mock interviews closely mirror what real admissions interviews will be like.
With UCA, students don’t worry about what they’ll be asked. Rather, they control the flow of their interviews and converse naturally. While most college applicants fear admissions interviews, UCA students find the interviews to be valuable and fun!
