By Sybil Gohari, PhD

Founder, The Admissions Company

Have you ever really considered key factors in determining success? Granted, skill in your specialized area of expertise is essential to success, as well as experience, education, and perspective. There are many, non-academic skills that also are key components to success.

This NPRed article overviews such skills, which are growing in recognition to the point that field experts are now in search of clearly articulated terminology to describe these essential skills. So while we must develop “life and career skills” as well as the “4Cs of critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity,” studies show that it takes more to stand out and become a great success.

The ability to get along with others, for example, is of paramount importance to one’s future prospects at a job according to this Wall Street Journal piece.  Apparently, something as simple as emailing your coworkers about the World Series could save your career in times of layoffs at the firm.  The fact that being well-liked is an important component of success is not a surprise to us at The Admissions Company.

Our college admissions planning services include hours of coaching our clients on their choices in life.  Be it participating in high school extracurricular activities like lacrosse or a charitable group at college, at The Admissions Company, we believe in making socially intelligent choices and remaining emotionally vigilant throughout the process.

Thirty years ago, the average high school student would apply to 2 to 4 colleges, and be judged among a relatively small pool of applicants.  In today’s hyper-competitive environment where the top ranked colleges receive tens of thousands of applications and command the highest entry credentials, high school students are applying to 10, 15 and as many as 80 schools!  The college admissions process has become a pressure cooker for many high school students and at The Admissions Company, we help the process by providing them with guidance every step of the way.

Most importantly, we believe that developing emotional and social intelligence at an early age is an essential ingredient of success throughout college.  This is why our proprietary methodology is linked directly to each of our client’s personality in order to be able to devise a plan to help them develop the skills they need to not only cope with the stress of college applications but to thrive in the process and become the high performance candidates that elite schools are seeking.

So, hone your academic skills– so that you can advance in your area of interest. It’s also well worth your while to further develop many additional qualities that will be tested throughout your college career and beyond, and which can help you succeed in spite of challenge and adversity.

To find out more about College Admissions Company and Sybil Gohari, come to her free presentation on Thursday, March 30 at 7:30pm.  The topic is the Admissions Company’s free online app – The Odds Calculator.  This presentation is hosted by Inspiring Test Preparation at its office at 1307 Dolley Madison Blvd. suite 4B, McLean, VA  22101.
Click here to register.