The Best College Applications Tell a Story. Here's How to Start Crafting One Early.
The Best College Applications Tell a Story. Here's How to Start Crafting One Early.
A Virtual Mentor Panel, Presented by The FlightPlan, Moderated by Audrey Wisch, Co-Founder & CEO of Curious Cardinals
Tuesday, June 30th at 5:00 PM PT / 8:00 PM ET on Zoom
Your 9th or 10th grader probably has plenty of interests. What they might not have yet is a story that ties them together.
If that nags at you, and you're wondering how the pieces add up to a narrative colleges actually care about, here's the reassuring part: a throughline rarely comes together on its own, and 9th and 10th grade is the time to start shaping it, long before the pressure of senior year.
Top colleges aren't looking for a long, meandering list of activities. They want the thread that turns a pile of interests into a student they remember.
Picture the other side of it. Your kid's activities point somewhere. They can tell you who they are and what they're working toward, and you're not lying awake wondering what you missed.
We're sitting down with three mentors who did exactly that. They wove theater, science, politics, and writing into stories that got them into Yale, Brown, and Northwestern. They'll get specific about the choices they made, what they ignored, and what they'd tell a younger student now. Then, they'll take questions.
You'll leave knowing:
What colleges actually mean by a "narrative"
How students with scattered interests built one story that fit
Which myths you can stop worrying about
What a 9th or 10th grader should focus on right now
How The FlightPlan can help your student find their own through line
Meet the Panelists:
Micah D.: Yale class president, History, Political Science, and Education Studies. Currently interning at the UN. Has spent years tutoring K-8 students and researching public education in rural North Carolina.
Zoe M.: Northwestern, Theatre and Neuroscience. Fulbright scholar who built a theater curriculum in Brazil for kids with autism. Now a working actor and director in NYC.
Madeleine A.: Brown, magna cum laude, Theater Arts and English. Fulbright grantee. Just finished writing a commissioned play for Oregon Children's Theater.
About Curious Cardinals and The FlightPlan
These mentors aren't just impressive on paper. They're a few years ahead of where your student is right now — close enough to remember exactly what the process felt like, far enough to know what actually mattered.
Curious Cardinals has spent six years matching K-12 students with near-peer mentors from top universities. More than 15,000 students later, we've taken everything we've learned and built The FlightPlan, a college strategy platform that helps ambitious rising 9th-11th graders understand where they stand, uncover their narrative, and find real opportunities before the process gets ahead of them.