Our Story
Not Just For the Ivies
When our founder, Amber Jin, started talking to high school educators, counselors, students, college interviewers, about the college application process, two common challenges emerged that she couldn’t ignore:
The college application process remains daunting, stressful, and confusing for students and families
Many families and students don’t know what to include in their college application or how to approach it. The process has many moving parts, and students are often starting too late and scrambling to meet deadlines to put together compelling essays and applications.
Most students are also functioning under the incorrect assumption that you need to be good at everything, and they haven’t had the exposure to key professional skills like resume writing, interviewing, marketing skills to know how to communicate unique strengths and potential effectively. As a result, applications end up being massive lists of activities, awards, and academic statistics that are hurting their ability to stand out.
Clear resources and guidance weren’t widely accessible
Quality college application resources are not readily accessible. Families typically fall into two camps – some families have the advantage of elite private school college counselors who can provide 1-on-1 guidance or financial means to hire a private consultant that costs thousands of dollars. Most families cannot afford that kind of access and help and are limited to under-funded high school counselors who are working with 300-800+ students. For the latter, there weren’t good alternative options to help their students with the process.
What We’ve Created
Our goal is to create an alternative resource to make world class college application guidance more accessible to more students. We wanted to draw on the insights of traditional sources closest to the college application process – college alumni, interviewers, admissions, college consultants on how to be successful in the college application process. But we wanted to go a step further. We supplemented those insider insights with the expertise and guidance from professionals like marketing leaders and company recruiters on how showcase your strengths to stand out.
We compiled that guidance into online resources to fit the learning styles of students today. In addition, the online format allows us to keep the price low to make our guide more accessible and affordable.
Who We Are
We are a Bay Area company based out of San Francisco, California. Our founder, Amber Jin, is an University of Pennsylvania – Wharton alum and college interviewer for UPenn. She began her career in marketing heading up Microsoft’s US partner strategy for their cloud computing platform. She subsequently worked in Silicon Valley building and growing startup companies before founding Get Into Ivy to help students achieve their college dreams.
As a first generation Chinese-American with limited resources growing up, Amber is passionate about access to education and opportunities for students to pave their own path to success.