Cassidy
Bowdoin College
Class of 2024
What were your goals for college admission? Did you accomplish them?
My goals were to get accepted to at least 5 schools and I ended up getting accepted to 8 of 11 schools and waitlisted at 1.
What was most helpful about working with Hughes College Prep?
Everyone at Hughes was extremely supportive. I like to keep myself busy and was already running around town to get to my activities. They worked with me to find a time that worked best for me and were understanding if I wasn’t able to complete as much as I had anticipated while still pushing me to be better.
What was the biggest surprise, good or bad, about the admissions process in general?
My biggest surprise was that whenever I reached out to a schools admission office, I always got a different response. Some schools were extremely friendly and willing to help while others came across as distant and unhelpful. The admission team’s response definitely ended up shaping how I felt about the schools.
Were you accepted to one of your top three school choices?
Yes! I was accepted into two of the three.
Did you feel supported by Hughes College Prep during the admission process? If so, how?
100%! There were several times I came to my meetings and said “I want to apply for…” and they always helped me edit my essays and prepare my applications. They also were extremely supportive of my extracurriculars and showed a genuine interest in what I was doing outside of school.
What surprised you most about working with Hughes College Prep?
Hughes always has your best interests in mind. They do an amazing job of finding you a tutor who can help you achieve your goals and someone who has similar interests to you. By the end of my time working with Hughes, I definitely felt like I had someone to look up to and could whole-heartedly trust.
Are there any aspects of your time with Hughes that stick out as having carried through to other elements of your life, beyond college admissions, such as college, jobs, etc.?
Working with Hughes made me learn how to schedule and balance my time as well as made me a million times better as a writer. These are still skills I will continue working on but they have already been helpful in my high school classes and I am sure they will prove helpful in college as well.
What is one bit of advice you would give to parents of college-bound students?
Do not hover over your student’s shoulder as they are writing their essays, doing applications, etc. Hughes will be able to help them with the application and it is a lot easier for the student to focus when you aren’t watching everything they are doing.
What is one bit of advice you would give to the students themselves?
When writing your essays, don’t worry about how good or bad your first draft is. You will be able to go back later and clean it up. Just write the first time and get all of your thought out onto the paper.