04:22
Speaker 1
All right, I’m broadcasting. Good luck. Good evening everyone and welcome to this special webinar. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited to have a webinar. Tonight it’s with Crimson Education. My name is Donald Klipp. I’m delighted to be here with you to explore two topics that are hopefully one of them is dear to everybody’s heart and hopefully I can convince the audience for the other one, which is one how to get your kids into top universities. My name is Donald Klipp. I’m the co founder of Global Mortgage Group and America Mortgages.
06:30
Speaker 1
America Mortgages is the, is a US Mortgage lender and the only one that lends solely to non resident overseas borrowers, especially those looking to buy a home while the child is studying in the US So I thought it’d be a good idea to talk about a little bit about my education background. You know, I went to UCLA, graduated in 1992 with an SAT score of 1200. I only took it once and there is absolutely no way in this world I could get in right now. And that’s why it’s a lot harder these days. It requires specialist expertise and hence, you know, why it’s great to have Crimson here. So, you know, joining me today is Matthew Ding. He’s a senior consultant at Crimson to successful admissions to Ivy Leagues. And that’s not to say Ivy Leagues are the be all end all.
07:27
Speaker 1
Although he went to Brown himself. There are other amazing universities like UCLA and he brings a deep expertise and bag on crafting winning applications and strategies for getting your kids into these top schools. From my side, I’m talking about why, you know, it makes a lot of sense, you know, to own a home in the U.S. maybe I’ll bring up some ideas that you would not have thought of. And it’s actually after a four to five year university and God forbid they want to go to graduate school, that’s another two to three years of education. They could sell the property and maybe pay for the university, you know, tuition. But anyhow, listen, together Matthew and I will talk about these things. I’m going to introduce, I’m going to allow Matthew to introduce himself and Crimson Education.
08:13
Speaker 1
Then I’m going to talk about the landscape of international students studying in the US Quickly. And then at the end after Crimson’s portion, I’ll talk about our financing options. But a little bit of housekeeping. There is a Q and A portion at the end. It’s going to be interactive. It’ll be a great opportunity to interact with Crimson and Matthew in particular, to answer questions and of course, me. And more importantly, there are going to be some polls, three in particular, that are going to happen throughout the webinar. I. Please, I, you know, encourage you to answer the polls and take part and participate because the answers are very important to us. So without further ado. Sorry about that, Matthew, for that long winded introduction. Please introduce yourself and let’s kick this off, everybody.
09:04
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you so much, Donald, and welcome to all the families who’ve joined today. I think there’s a lot of value that both of us hopefully can share with you today. A little bit about myself. I’m originally from Hong Kong, and I’m one of the strategy consultants here at Crimson. We help support students on their application journeys to the US Navigating all the different pain points, potential knack of knowledge to really get them to those top elite universities in the US and that’s something that we always support our families with today. So without further ado, I think I will share my screen and then we can begin with our presentations.
09:38
Speaker 1
Awesome.
09:40
Speaker 2
Perfect.
09:45
Speaker 1
All right. I think we did. We went through this part. So, again, you know, we’re. We’re a Singapore company that owns. We’re the only actually Asian company that owns a U S. Bank. And, you know, we’re a very special bank. We only lend to overseas borrowers, and we’re the only U. S. Bank that has loan officers outside. So you get to speak to somebody in your time zone. And again, a little bit about my background. I was an investment banker for 20 years. I went to UCLA. I, I actually got rejected from Harvard and John Hopkins. And actually, you know, if I had Crimson back then, maybe I would have gotten into those schools and had a different outcome. But, you know, nowadays it’s, you know, this is a. It’s. It’s actually trench warfare to get into top schools.
10:26
Speaker 1
And you need all the help you can get nowadays because it’s more, you know, it’s more art. It’s a little bit of art and a little bit of science involved. All right, so here’s an. I mean, this. Everybody should know this. I mean, should, should feel this. But the US Is still by far the most popular destination for international students. Last year it was 1.1 million. That was up 8% year on year, versus Canada slightly under a million. UK 700,000, Australia, 600,000. So the US is still the beacon of higher education for those seeking that route. You know, I Just wanted to focus on Asian nationals because I assume all of you on this call are based in Asia. Asian nationals account for 64% of the total international students.
11:20
Speaker 1
It’s probably no surprise India and China are based on the population size, are the two largest know applicant pools. But you can see, you know, South Korea, 44,000, Taiwan, 24,000 Vietnam, which was surprising to me, 23,000 and the list goes on. So it’s a big number. And I think, you know, many of you know, if they were, if Crimson was available to more of these families, maybe that number would be higher. All right, this probably is no surprise. The top five states for international students, California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, where Boston is and Illinois. And actually ironically, when I was doing this research, I googled top universities in each of these states. And in my mind I probably know 10 or 20, but there are 40 or 50 I never heard of. So there are plenty of universities in these states.
12:16
Speaker 1
All right, top 10 US cities, destinations for international students. This is probably no surprise as well. New York, Louisiana, D.C. houston, Dallas, Austin, Texas, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and San Diego. And turn it over to Matthew.
12:39
Speaker 2
Thank you so much, Donald. And again, welcome to everyone on the call today. I think I spoke a little bit about myself already, but I’ll just give a little bit of an extra overview about my qualifications and then what we just generally here do at Crimson. So I myself grew up in Hong Kong, so not too far away from the Singaporean, the Malaysian or the Filipino families joining on the call today, went to international school there, did the IB program. Kind of similar to a lot of what our students are going through at the moment. I ended up going to Brown University for my bachelor’s studying economics and public health and then ended up across the other side of the Atlantic at the University of Oxford doing a Master’s of Science in Comparative Social Policy.
13:18
Speaker 2
So a little bit of experience on both sides of the UK and the US I know a lot of families are interested in doing the both. But for the purpose of our presentation today, we will very much focus on the US and focus on the particularities and what we do to help US Admissions for some of our very excellent students in the region. So a little bit about Crimson education first. Before I jump in, I just want to explain a little bit more about what we do. We are a global education consulting company with over 10 years of experience, creeping up on 11 actually this year. Now already we’ve offered university consulting services to students from all around the world applying to the top universities across the entire world.
13:58
Speaker 2
So we help students with the US we help students with the UK, with Canada, Europe and Asia as well. We have 20 global offices all around the world and nearly 2,500 mentors and tutors altogether. And from the past 10 years of admissions results, our students are seven times more likely to get into Ivy Leagues or those elite universities in the US recently, we’ve also been featured in some news. Our founder, Jamie Beaton was actually given a headliner on the Wall Street Journal about how to prep students on this rigorous application journey into the us Fantastic. Our results also speak for themselves. It’s not just about what we talk about, but these are the clear data points that we really want to make sure that everyone knows as well in our duration as company, we’ve received very many offers to those elite universities.
14:45
Speaker 2
1,340 to the Ivy Leagues and 540 to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT. So the most elite universities in general. And some of our results from Singapore, specifically for the US and uk, we’ve gotten students into Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, as well as nine students to Oxford and 16 students to Cambridge. I don’t remember the statistic exactly, but something like a quarter of admits from the Singapore Asia Pacific pool into medicine for Oxford and Cambridge came from Crimson students directly. So again, a testament to our experience in both the US as well as the UK side. Perfect. And so I believe here we also have some QR codes for you to scan if you’d like to connect with us. We have WhatsApp groups where we can update you on some of the latest information WhatsApp channels to, you know, really bulk showcase.
15:40
Speaker 2
What are those key admissions trends, event reminders as well as updates. And then also Instagram for some of our student stories behind the scenes as well as generally what we do here in Crimson. And also for those of you on the call today, Singapore is our regional head office. If you’re based in Singapore, feel free to pop down to our office in Orchard Road. And for those of you in Malaysia and Philippines, the Singapore office will be the one who helps support some of your admissions journey as well. Fantastic. So what we’ll cover today after all, that explanation of Crimson will really go through in detail about how US universities evaluate applicants. So what are the metrics they look at? What are the key things that they try and strive for? Similarly, we’ll go through what it means to build a strong school list.
16:25
Speaker 2
So what is the difference between a school like UC Berkeley or ucla, as Donald mentioned, to a school like Yale or Princeton, you know, what students thrive in those environments and what students perhaps don’t. That’s something that we always want to talk about. Then we’ll go through briefly about some strategies for how students can stand out. We’ll run through a few case studies, so live case studies of students that we’ve worked with in Singapore, in Asia, and how we had supported them in this process. So if there is also going to be a quick poll that pops up in your profile, you can please do fill it in as you have time. Perfect. So let’s go over the most important parts as that happens.
17:03
Speaker 2
So first and foremost, I want to go through a little bit more about the overview of US Universities and specifically looking at key requirements. This is often a pain point for a lot of the parents in the region and one of and that surrounds the idea of not knowing exactly what the US Universities require. A lot of parents, sorry, a lot of parents come to me being like, hey, my students have good grades. Is that enough? The answer is no. And we’ll dive into a little bit more about what those actual specific requirements will be. Before I do that, I want to jump into a little bit more of the different types of US schools. These are names that you might have heard of, but we’ll dive into that in a little bit more detail. So the first type are public national universities.
17:44
Speaker 2
So these are universities that have a higher intake of students and a generally larger research and academic environment. The most famous ones are the University of California schools like ucla, UC Berkeley, but also schools like University of Michigan, UT Austin, University of Virginia are all considered within. And here you can also see the typical cost for a university like that. If you’re an in state resident, meaning if you’re from California or meaning if you’re from Virginia or from those particular states, your tuition fees will be relatively cheaper. So there is a benefit to getting some sort of legal status if you are looking to afford those cheaper school fees. Similarly, if you’re an international student, the fees will usually be a little bit higher and you’ll pay out of state tuition. So ucla, UC Berkeley, those sorts of schools are public national universities.
18:34
Speaker 2
And one personal trait about those is that they tend to have a lot of students. So usually each year is around anywhere from 10,000 students. So it’s a very large student population. Then we have the private national university. So the second tab that we see here, these are usually typically more selective than public universities and they usually aim for a large amount of geographic and international diversity. So these include all of the schools that you might have heard of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Rice, all of those schools are private national universities. The cost of tuition there are usually a little bit more expensive, anywhere from sort of 50k, 65k just for the tuition amount. And there’s no residency discount. So for those private national universities, every single student, if you are not applying for financial aid, will usually pay around the similar amount.
19:25
Speaker 2
And there’ll be a little bit more with flights, with residents, with things like that as well in terms of cost. So those are the private national universities. We also have the liberal arts colleges. These are the colleges like Williams, Amherst, you might have heard of them, you might not. They’re typically smaller in size. So each of their class sizes are around 400 to 500 students in total. So compared to UCLA, right. That’s a massive difference. Typically speaking, these are smaller. They’re much more focused on undergraduate education. So they’re focused on students between the age of usually 18 to 22. And they don’t have many research programs. So it depends a little bit on what exactly you’re looking for. Financial aid or financial support for international students in liberal arts colleges tend to be pretty generous as well.
20:14
Speaker 2
So that’s just a very quick level overview between the different types of universities in the US if we break down a little bit more of the key requirements. So this is what I, I spoke about earlier. A lot of families ask me, what are the things that the US is actually considering when it comes to admitting their students? Is good grades enough? Is having a 43 out of 45 enough for a place like Harvard? By itself, the answer, not really. It’s important and it’s very big part of the application. However, there are many other components that are considered, so I’ll gloss over this very quickly. Now, we estimate that usually around 40% of your application to the US is related to your academ. These are things like your grades in school, your class ranking, your curriculum rigor. Have you picked the hardest HL subjects?
21:01
Speaker 2
Have you gotten sevens? Have you gotten A stars and A levels? What are your actual scores in school then? The next 30% is the area that families in Asia tend to struggle with a little bit more. So students who go to elite schools like uwc, like, you know, sas, like Tamlin, they know exactly how to get the good grades typically. But that extracurricular uniqueness, that extracurricular leadership is often the missing piece of the puzzle for a lot of families and students. So showing that you have very creative extracurricular, showing that you have Very impactful extracurriculars. All of these things contribute around 30% of your US application. Similarly, the last 30% is also your application, your essays and interviews.
21:43
Speaker 2
So writing the actual essay itself, applying to the US Universities, the quality of your letter of recommendations, those are all very much considered in your application. So the key takeaway here is that there’s a lot of things to consider when it thinks about, when we think about the US university process, it’s not just your grades, it’s so much more than that. And all of that. We look for personalization, we look for uniqueness, we look for someone that really sets themselves apart from everybody else. Perfect. So I explained that a little bit more. But let’s go through the same detail in, let’s go through this in a little bit more detail here as well. And then we’ll also talk about the sort of secret fourth element that’s often not mentioned. So academics relatively self explanatory.
22:25
Speaker 2
Are you taking the hardest subjects that are available to you? Is there clear upward trajectory? So if you were doing igcse, are you getting better scores as you go along and then you’re getting better scores in the IB or the A levels afterwards, are you showing a good amount of improvement? If you’re a STEM student, are you doing chemistry, physics, math at A level or at IBHL or at whatever your hardest curriculum might be, are you showcasing that you’re able to take those hard courses? Similarly, for extracurriculars, can you show uniqueness? Can you show sustained involvement? So this is also one point that people often mention to me, right? They’re like, oh yeah, we’ve done extracurriculars, but they’re mostly like summer programs for like two weeks at a time. Is that enough? And I’m like, that’s certainly a good start, but.
23:11
Speaker 2
But you’ll definitely need those extracurriculars that you’ve done for a long time. Consistency over time is something that the US really cares about. So if you have, if there are any parents or students on the call today who are in grade 9 or grade 10, can you maintain those activities for the rest of your high school life? That is something that the US will really care about. Similarly, writing, that’s one part that students really struggle with as well. They have questions like, tell me about an example of failure. Tell me about an example of growth. These are essays that students have never written before. And it’s an opportunity for students to speak directly to the admissions officers themselves. And finally, the secret fourth element is fit. So do the students align with the institution’s values and priorities.
23:56
Speaker 2
And this is one thing we always mention to students because it changes so much in the shifting landscape of the US Admissions. Making sure you have that right fit is really important. A school like Brown, a school like Harvard, will look for slightly different people. They will always want the academically very strong ones, the extracurricularly unique ones, but they also want something for the student in terms of their fit with the institution and the actual university. So because of the call today, I really also want to go through a bit more about how residency status might shape potential strategy. So if you’re a U.S. citizen or you have a green card, or you’re as a state resident in a specific state, you can get a big advantage in terms of lower in state tuition for those US Public schools.
24:42
Speaker 2
So, for example, if you’re living in California and you’re applying for UC Berkeley, ucla, you might have the advantage of getting much lower state tuition and much better admissions preference. So your status as a California student will make your application much easier than someone who’s applying from Singapore. Similarly, most students, if you’re domestically applying domestically, you have more admissions quotas than international students. So usually 85% of Ivy League schools. Sorry, 85% of students in Ivy League schools are domestic versus 15% international. So it is still an advantage if you are a US Citizen living abroad with a green card. Living abroad, it still counts as a residence as it means if you maintain some sort of state domicile, so taxes, property. But it’s very much important to clarify that status early as it can cut your costs by tens of thousands.
25:35
Speaker 2
Finally, if you’re a peer international student, we also want to make sure that you’re having the right sort of profile. So are you going to a very reputable school? What is your country like? What is your application area and your region? That will be very much considered. And one thing to really emphasize is that if you’re applying from Singapore, you’ll always usually be compared to the Singaporean pool of applicants, which means your profile is unfortunately, also a little bit more competitive. And that’s one area that we always try and help our students on as well. Like, how do we get them one step ahead of a very competitive and very rigorous Singapore application pool. Perfect. So let’s continue to move on about this a little bit more, and I really want to hammer this point down a few more times on this call today.
26:20
Speaker 2
So why are academics not enough? That’s one question I often get. US Universities are academic institutions. Why are they not just looking at academics. So one thing we like to think about with our families and our students who are thinking about this is that when you think about that elite level of US Admissions, so a place like Harvard, a place like Stanford, people who apply majority have excellent education stats. They have 4.0 GPAs that have excellent APAs, excellent IBs, a really strong SAT, nearly perfect. Elite admissions is no longer about checking the right boxes academically. It’s above how you go above and beyond. They’re looking for distinction. They’re looking for a real sense of purpose and a really sense, a real sense of excellence in your interest in your academics that go beyond everybody else.
27:09
Speaker 2
So what that basically means, right, is that even really strong profiles with very strong extracurriculars still need very smart college lists. So for example, if we look at our own crimson class, so in our crimson class of 2029, even with students who had a 3.9 GPA so nearly perfect, they were denied at some of the top schools when their majors didn’t align across applications. So if you were actually applying for computer science, for example, one of the most popular majors, your major application or your application will be harder than everyone else’s because you’re putting yourself in that limited pool of a very competitive subject. Similarly, on the second point, your essays could be too general. We’ve mentioned earlier that these essays are deeply personal. They’re deeply unique.
27:55
Speaker 2
If you’re not able to produce an essay that is really about the institutional values of a school, so, for example, matching the quirkiness of Brown or perhaps theoretical academicness of Princeton, then you can also be at a disadvantage compared to students who have those essays at that particular level. So it’s very important that personal essay, which is really difficult and very individualized, is specific and resonates heavily with the institutional value. Finally, your early decision strategy might also really play a part in this. So early decision is basically when you apply before everyone else, usually around November 1st, and you’ll be able to attend the university. If you get into the university, you’ll must be able, you must have to attend. So it’s a binding decision strategy. So that is something that is quite scary for families.
28:48
Speaker 2
But it gives you often an extra acceptance rate, anywhere from 10 to 15%. So last year Cornell’s early decision acceptance rate sat around 19 or 18%. Their regular decision acceptance rate sat around 4 or 5. So that is a massive difference maker. So making sure that your early decision school is picked correctly is also really important to maximize Your admissions odds. Perfect. And so my final point for all of this is really here. Right? There’s the U.S. has a lot of schools. The U.S. has an enormous amount of schools, over 4,000 universities. Right. There’s so many questions that families and students need to answer. What schools will open the most doors? What are the biggest priorities for you? Is it internships? Is it happiness? Is it academic pursuit? Is it a job outcome? All of these things matter to each individual student.
29:42
Speaker 2
And all of those things means that it’s about picking the right school list. It’s very important to select the right school list for each individual student according to what their ambitions are, according to what their future hopes are that will really make a sense of your application stronger and increase your acceptance rate into that university itself. Perfect. So how do we build a good school list? Let’s talk a little bit about that today as well. So we’ve talked about why it’s important to have a good school list. Let’s talk about how we build a good school list. So here at Crimson, and most of you will also know this with your school counselors as well, is that we want to separate school and segment them by their average difficulty.
30:23
Speaker 2
So typically we have what we call safety schools, target schools, reach and extreme reach schools. For those safety schools, we usually estimate that these schools are about a 75% acceptance rate. Target schools are about 50%. So strong chance, but still squarely within your range. And then you have those reach schools which are meeting all of your best fit criteria, but it’s still within the range of your academics. Then you have those extreme reach schools. So those really fierce competition schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, these are schools that are reached for even the very best students. So making sure you have a diverse pool of these schools is very important. You must have some safety schools. You should have some target schools, some reach and some extreme reach schools to make sure your school is nicely diversified. Perfect.
31:10
Speaker 2
And so again, my final point here is really to make sure to look for the best fit school. There is no one size fit all when it comes to schools. Look beyond the ranking. Focus on some fit. Look at the specific degrees and programs available to you. For example, Carnegie Mellon has a really excellent CS program, but their other programs might not be necessarily as strong. Look into relevant opportunities. See how it connects with your general purpose and what you’re hoping to accomplish. Perfect. Yeah. So this is again the specific detail of what we mean by writing a winning college list. So making sure that your academics are really Focused. Making sure that you have a smart mix of early decision, early action and regular decision. Make sure all of your deadlines are used for impact.
31:56
Speaker 2
So for example, early decision is really in November 1st. Then you have your UC deadline. So UC Berkeley, UCLA and November 30th. And then you have your regular decision deadlines in January. Making sure you scatter each individual deadline is really important so you have enough time to work on each individual application. Also look for schools that fit. Make sure you have a core and clear admission strategy. One thing that we always say at Crimson is that when you’re so short on time, don’t waste any of it doing things that you don’t need to do. So always make sure you can repeat supplements if you can, make sure you can sort of utilize your time very effectively in that busy grade 11, year 12 and year 13 year perfect.
32:39
Speaker 2
And so what are the biggest mistakes that families make when it comes to US admissions in general? This is one thing I really want to clarify to all of the people on the call today. So typically speaking, families always focus on prestige and they focus on over programming without building a strategy. And the strategy is actually the most important part here. You might think that more is better. So more APs, more volunteering, more clubs. Clubs. Pure volume is better, but that’s actually not necessarily the case. We want to make sure that you have very connected activities. We want to make sure you have a very clear hook, a very compelling story that really separates yourself from everybody else. So what does that mean?
33:18
Speaker 2
If a student comes to me interested in biology, one thing I would always push them to do is find an area within biology that they’re the most interested in. Maybe it’s computational biology, maybe it’s medical biology. Whatever it is, find a narrow small part of a subject and really make that your own. That will separate yourself from everybody else. Connect your activities, connect your essays to that general tight and close knit storytelling of who you actually are to the university. That’s a big difference maker. Fantastic. And so if we keep going on a little bit more about what are some things that are just useful tips at the moment. The first thing I would say is to start early. Make sure that you are planning ahead in time, making sure that you have the time and the process to actually build out that strategy.
34:07
Speaker 2
Students who typically start in grade nine and grade 10 have more time and have more ability to do activities for longer to do activities that are really unique to themselves. So if you’re a student in grade 9 and grade 10 that’s also when the activity list begins for the US so you can report activities from year 10 or grade 9 onwards. Make sure that’s when those high quality, those authentic experiences really begin to come through. And one tip that we have internally is to always keep an idea notebook. So if you’re someone with a lot of weird, whimsical interests, keep them all recorded somewhere. Make sure you have them all kept somewhere because everything helps with the US admissions. But starting early is one key advantage that we’ve noticed with all of our Apps applicants. Second, your application activity list is your narrative.
34:55
Speaker 2
So before a single essay is read, before anything is really judged on your activity list, really tell who you are. They’re an opportunity for the US universities to look into your subjects, to look into what exactly motivates you outside of school. So making sure you have a very strong, very personalized activity list is really important. So focus on deep, high quality activities that no one can. If you’re a student listening in from Singapore, can you focus on a local issue? Can you focus on something that’s really unique to the country that you’re in, that no one else, even if they have the same grades with you, can replicate that? How? That’s how you can show distinction and separation. And again, this is not something that we’ve sort of built up and made up ourselves.
35:40
Speaker 2
This is from our own in house former admissions officers who worked in those admissions offices, making decisions at mit, making decisions at Stanford. We want to make sure that your activity list is incredibly strong. Then we want to talk about how we can help with that. So a lot of families come to being like, that’s a lot of information, that’s a lot of things for a student to do in a four year period of time. What is the way that we can do it? So within Crimson, we have a vast variety of different products and different services to help our students get to that impact. So we have projects like Indigo Research, our Capstone Project, our project Mentorship. So each student needs something different, right? Each student always needs something different.
36:20
Speaker 2
So we shouldn’t just collect activities, but we should really tailor them for what they want to do. For example, if a student is coming to us at a school that has really good academics, but maybe not so many research opportunities, and they’re looking for that additional layer of research, we have an initiative that can help support that student build out the research project that they’ve always wanted to do. Similarly, if they have a project and an idea that’s really interesting to them, but they don’t know how to actualize it. We can also support with that process as well. Perfect. And our final strategy today is looking at essays. So essays is the most human part of the application. We really want to make sure that your essays are impressive. They’re personal and they’re very real.
37:01
Speaker 2
With all the students I work with, this is often the biggest pain point for them. They don’t know how to write a very personal. They think they should write about their love for computer science or the love for engineering. But no, the US is really looking for something different. Perfect. And a little bit more about some of the good essays. A student wrote about hating vegetables. A student wrote about tying their debate work and also needing to be really personal. So these essays weren’t flashy. You don’t have to talk about a really dramatic topic, but talk about something really personal. Talk about something really real and make that a real point of your application. Fantastic.
37:37
Speaker 2
And so that’s one thing that I also wanted to sort of link into a little bit more with Crimson is because we want to make sure that all of the school things that we’ve talked about is supported with in terms of our students directly. So picking the right school list, making sure your majors, making sure activities all support one clear theme. So you’re not, you know, running around think, doing things that you don’t actually know you want to do. And then also that really cohesion and that sort of purpose building really sets our Ivy League and our acceptance rates apart. They really help students drive into those top elite universities. Perfect. So I’m just going to very quickly run through a case study for us because I want us to just to show the example of what we typically do with a student.
38:19
Speaker 2
So this student came to us from ACS during the IB program. So, you know, properly elite school in Singapore. They had a very strong set of academics. They had a 45 in their IBM, an SAT of a 1580. They were a global finalist at a public policy debate. They did the John Locke essay competition. And they also had a lot of extracurriculars when it comes to public policy leadership positions. And they were also a very accomplished musician. So right now they’re planning on. They’re studying at Harvard and they’re majoring in public policy or sociology. So they came to us relatively young. They came to us in grade eight or grade nine. They came to us with a really wide range of interests. So the student was certainly very motivated. But weren’t exactly clear about what they wanted to do.
39:04
Speaker 2
And we wanted to make sure we could narrow that interest. So they did piano, they did drums, mun debate. So some activities, but not really the most sort of cream of the crop elite activities that we saw earlier. So when they were here with us in grade 8 and grade 9, we then looked at what area they were the most interesting interested in. So we wanted to narrow this down to an area that was less competitive. So this became public policy, sociology. Then we also pushed the student to look at different activities in their club. So can they become the leader in their debate club? Can they go to a research internship? Can they volunteer? These are activities that the student had some idea of but weren’t able to actualize on their own time. Perfect.
39:46
Speaker 2
And then we also, when it came to the earlier, the later ages in the student’s application process. So grade 12, year 13. This is really when we put all of the application components together. The student placed top five globally in a debate competition. They presented the research paper that they’ve been working on for the last two years to elite professors in high school, their high school leadership team, and they were voted in for critical leadership positions in high school. So all of that to say students don’t come to us as the finish package. They come to us young, sometimes a little bit confused with a set information of what they might want to do, but also a lot of points that they’re not sure about our process.
40:23
Speaker 2
Our journey is to build on that, really help them narrow their interest, find the area that is the least competitive for their applications and get them to that higher level that they wouldn’t have achieved otherwise. So that segues me very into, very nicely into how Crimson can support families overall. So one thing I always like to say is that no students are the same because none of them are the same. Their personalities, their goals, their ambitions, they’re all a little bit different. And so one thing that we always want to make sure to do in Crimson is that you have a network of people who can support you. So you’ll have someone who’s a university admissions strategist, so this would be the person that will really be looking over the entire application journey for you. Then some additional services might also be added.
41:09
Speaker 2
So if you want an expert tutor in SAT or a course specific exam in IBM, that is also possible. You’ll also have an opportunity to do extracurricular mentoring, if that is what you need. We can look at capstone projects, competitions, research projects. All of those things are available to you depending on what you need. And finally, all of our Students applying to the US will also have application essay support. So alongside my support or another strategist support, they’ll also get in support from an essay expert who’s very trained in helping students develop their English abilities, develop their writing to complement each other. And so behind all of our students, there’s very many people, there’s a team of people basically supporting them on their journey.
41:52
Speaker 2
So we have the strategy consultant overseeing their roadmaps and their big picture, an essay mentor who might be helping them specifically with their essays, a research mentor who’s helping them with one specific area, and then a testing mentor who’s really there to, you know, build out that strong essay. So each individual student is supported by a network and their core team is really revolved around them to make sure they’re best equipped for success behind them. We also have a very strong knowledge pool. So a lot of the times parents come to me today being like, hey, you know, there’s so much movement in the US political scene at the moment. How do we predict what’s going on for universities? How do we know what universities are thinking?
42:30
Speaker 2
And that’s one thing that I think is a big advantage of Crimson, is that we have a team of strategists that have worked in this industries for many years. We also have a lot of former admissions officers, so people who have made the decision at Stanford, at mit, who’ve admitted the students themselves and they are there to also support and inform all of our decision making, all of our knowledge basis on what exactly is the latest trend and latest update. And finally, we also have expert mentors across all of the academic interests. So if a student is interested in computer science or biology, we always have that support there for you. So my final point today, and I really appreciate all of you listening to me today, is how we can support you through our one ones as well.
43:13
Speaker 2
So no student is the same and we want to give you the best amount of detail and tailor it to each individual profile. So we can always offer some free one one sessions. If you just want to sign up after this call, there’s links that will be distributed to you. We can host a free 60 to 90 meeting where you sit down with someone like me, you have a general assessment of your student and your student’s profile, and then we look at what are some strengths, what are some weaknesses, and then we also want to make sure we get an idea of your timeline and answer any specific questions. So all of that hopefully will help you on your education journey.
43:45
Speaker 2
And I hope some of my information today clarified a bit more about what the US Process looks like and what types of things you should be preparing for. And I’ll be handing it over to Donald for the remainder of the call, but I’ll still be around for our Q and A afterwards. Thank you, Donald.
44:01
Speaker 1
Amazing. God, that was super. That was not only was interesting, but it was actually quite overwhelming. It feels like, I guess it’s analogous to like you’re trying to land a, you know, the space shuttle on this tiny Runway. Like, there’s so many variables that you need to deal with nowadays. I will, I will add one anecdote. I think Matthew’s heard this before. So I. My wife went to an Ivy League and went to visit the campus. We took our kids to. To who? My son’s in high school at the moment and, you know, the Ivy Leagues are going through some. A little bit of, you know, uncertainty right now or certain things, social issues. And I went there and it was a record number. And I asked the lady who was hosting the like, where, like, what’s happening?
44:46
Speaker 1
I thought people were worried about, you know, this was in June, so it was at the. The epicenter of all the uncertainty. And it just realized for, you know, that at the end of the day, you know, for every one family that, you know, is apprehensive about US universities, there’s probably 10 others that may think that their child can get in now. So there’s no shortage of demand to get into these schools. So anyhow, that was super interesting. Just a little bit of housekeeping. If you want to contact any of us, the links are in the chat that to. To be able to contact Crimson Education as well as myself. You probably want to connect with me after you hear what I have to say. Okay, cool. The next slide, please. All right.
45:31
Speaker 1
Why do you need to own a home while you’re studying in the U.S. well, as a second home, your child could stay in the apartment. For example, if your child is studying in Boston, you can buy a condo in Boston for them to stay in. It allows them to have security over housing because normally the kids don’t stay for four years anymore. I don’t think that. I think they kind of find outside housing after, you know, the first or second year. You can control, you know, rent increases. There’s peace of mind for parents. If you’re not staying there, you can earn, you know, short term rental income. The parents can stay there when they’re visiting. You don’t have to pay the exorbitant US hotel prices.
46:12
Speaker 1
But most importantly, I wanted to add this because this is an unspoken issue, but you know, your mom wants to come and your mom or dad, you know, wants to come and cook, you know, their son or daughter’s favorite food, you know, when they’re away. And that’s probably the one thing the child misses when they’re studying abroad. Now this can be in the city where the child is studying or it could be in a hub like LA or New York. So if your son or daughter studying in Boston, you can kind of stay in New York and kind of shuttle back and forth. All right, next slide. All right, why is this smart financial move? You know, I was thinking about this when I was going to school.
46:49
Speaker 1
Literally every one of my international student friends, actually, you know, myself included, I came from, my family’s from Hong Kong, but I grew up in Singapore and they went to school in California. You know, they sort of went through the same journey of buying some property there before they eventually move there. But you know, I mean, this is, everybody on this call probably knows this, but instead of paying, you know, rent, you know, you is rent equals money gone. A mortgage equals wealth building. Just a real conservative, you know, example, you buy a 500, 000 condo. Now listen, you’re sending your kids to school in the US or the UK or wherever, you know, tuition’s not cheap. You know, so a 500, 000 condo, okay, that notionally is a lot of money.
47:35
Speaker 1
But you know, as a bank who lends to people like those of you on this call, we can lend up to 75% of the home value. So that’s only $125,000. Home prices in the US have been, been rising, you know, in these big cities, 10% a year. So what that means is you’ve put down $125,000 after four years, right, compounded 10%, that is 455,000. Your equity grows too. So the property value goes up to 800 5000. So that’s almost a four times return on your cash invested. So what do you do with that 455,000? Next slide.
48:17
Speaker 1
You either sell the home and you’ve paid for the tuition or at least a large portion of it or which is a real common experience is, you know, this, your child wants to stay in the US and work for Meta or Goldman Sachs or you know, Amazon or Apple or whatever it is, and they can stay in that home, right? Or they can rent it out and earn rental income while they are living there and improve their credit score. I mean do you need to do a little bit of logistics and changing title and things like that, but you know, that is, that’s a common journey. But with our mortgages we low. We can lend up to 80% as a bank. It’s super easy to qualify.
49:00
Speaker 1
You can sign your closing documents at the local embassy or a law firm and the process takes 30 to 45 days. I think I jumped the gun a little bit on the slides. So when the child graduates, they stay in the home, earn western education before they come back and work at GIC or UBS or Goldman Sachs. And that, that education, that experience is still valued quite highly. You can sell the home and you know, you know, call it a day and you know, pay for the unit, a large portion of the university tuition that you’ve paid or keep the property as a cash flowing investment. Which rental yields in the US are 10 to 15% and increasing in many cities. Next slide. Let’s get into the loan program. So just a quick blurb on who we are.
49:48
Speaker 1
Like I said earlier, we’re the only US bank that has, that’s only focused on overseas borrowers and we have loan off. We’re the only US bank that has loan officers outside the US and another first, we’re a Singapore company, we’re the only Asian company that actually owns a U.S. mortgage bank. So it’s a wholly owned subsidiary. And where we’re positioned in this food chain is we want to be the best in foreign national experience because that’s all we do. And we want to have loan officers closer to the client and not the asset so you don’t have to spend, you know, wake up at 3am Speaking to a loan officer in Atlanta who doesn’t know, you know, your personal situation. All right, next slide. All right, this is a quick snapshot of who we are.
50:31
Speaker 1
There’s a common misconception like, you know, Donald, you know, I don’t have any U.S. credit. Can I buy a property? Of course you can. And that’s kind of the most common myth. No U.S. credit required. We are not a private bank. So you don’t need to deposit a minimum amount and you know, keep it with us. You know, foreign income is allowed. Loan programs in all 50 states, obviously. 75% loan to value foreign nationals, 80% for overseas expats. We can issue a Pre approval in 24 hours. But 72 is conservative. Closings are 30 to 45 days and you can sign the closing documents in most embassies and law firms and the rest is kind of common sense stuff. All These loans are 30 year fixed and we even have loan programs that don’t look at your income.
51:19
Speaker 1
They’re based on the rental income of the property. And we approve nearly 100% of our loan applicants applications. All right, let me go through four of our loan programs. One is our, I guess our most popular which is called the AM rental coverage program. And this is, you know, we kind of developed this foreign nationals. But when we appraise the rent, if the rent appraised is greater than the mortgage, you qualify. And this is particularly for investment property. So not necessarily for those wanting to buy a home or the kids are studying overseas. This is really, if you’re, you’ve rented, you’re buying it to earn rental income, but nonetheless super easy to qualify. Next slide please. All right, and this is for expats.
52:10
Speaker 1
There are a lot of expats of people with green cards or are US citizens living in, you know, living in Asia. You know, they’re working professional services. What we offer is exactly like you walking into a bank. You, but you don’t need your W2s. We look at your US tax returns and if your personal income, sorry, if your income over the last two years is, you know, more than, you know, if your mortgage payments are 43% or less than your personal income, then you qualify. This is a standard debt to income ratio in the U.S. but the issue here is that here we’re here to help you. Nobody only focuses on expats and foreign nationals except us. Next slide. Get into some. Now in some markets, you know, the rental income may not, you know, be sufficient to cover the mortgage payments.
53:09
Speaker 1
But this AM income is really targeted at the second home borrower which you qualify with income and that. So again, you know, you can use your foreign income. U.S. credit or taxes are not required. We can get an income letter from your accountant that says, hey, you know, Price Waterhouse, you know this, you know, Matthew Dang made X amount of money over the last few years and we can lend up to 75% of the foreign nationals. And again it’s a standard debt to income ratio of 43%. So you know, your personal income has, you know, your mortgage payments have to be no more than 43% of your personal income. The next slide. And this is super cool.
53:54
Speaker 1
This is our AM high net worth mortgages because you know, a lot of high net worth Individuals, they have a lot of investments in different asset classes and they’re just kind of busy people in, in general. So in this loan program, what we did was we said show us your investment portfolio like you know, a Fidelity or Charles Schwab or E. Trade or, you know, whatever it is. And we take a five year term in months, which is 60 months. And hypothetically, if you have a $5 million portfolio in liquid assets, you divide it by 60, you come up with a number which is 83,000. If that is greater than your mortgage payment, you qualify. We don’t encumber those assets. We just look at it, check a few boxes to say, okay, this guy has it in his investment portfolio. He qualifies.
54:43
Speaker 1
That’s a super popular program for us, especially for the high net worth segment of the population. The next slide is, I wanted to talk about global bridging loans. You know, this is where, and there’s a reason for this, the slide. This, this particular slide is basically you have an asset that has a little bit of equity, a little bit of debt. It has a lot of equity. We’re able to extract that equity for personal use. Now that could be for investment purposes. You have it, you have something that you need cash flow really quickly. And I only say this because just two years ago somebody called us and said their son got accepted to Yale. And I guess and actually I know the person, so I was actually surprised as well.
55:29
Speaker 1
But the family wasn’t prepared for them getting into Yale and they were suddenly facing down the barrel of this, this. I mean, they made it happen, we helped them. But they had some, they had some unencumbered property in Singapore which were able to pledge and pull out some cash out of OKD to pay for their tuition. But anyhow, it wasn’t really a funny situation. But that’s why I put this here. We can lend up to, you know, we’ve done loans from 1 million to 100 million on Singapore property. So something super useful just to keep, you know, just to keep at the forefront of your thoughts. All right, so again, you know, our kind of, our guiding light is, you know, we’re trying to make obtaining U.S. mortgages while living overseas more accessible, easier and transparent for everybody.
56:22
Speaker 1
If you want to contact me directly, there’s my personal WhatsApp and I will reply to everybody here. And there’s a small, there’s a short poll. I appreciate it if you can answer. Aside from that, you know, that’s really it for me. It’s been a pleasure, you know, having this, this webinar with Crimson Education and Matthew was super interesting to me. It kind of put, you know, my son’s ninth grade. So it’s just the beginning of this journey. And you know, it kind of percolated a few thoughts in my head on the direction that we need to begin our journey on. I noticed a few people on this, on the attendees, you know, so this is a good time to, I guess, kick off our Q and A.
57:06
Speaker 2
Okay.
57:10
Speaker 1
Let’S see. Let me get rid of this screen, which I. This Q and A screen. All right, everybody out there, let’s kick off some Q and A. All right. Oh, already? Okay, so the ones on real estate, obviously I’m going to answer the ones on education, I’ll forward to Matthew. Matthew, what are the biggest misconceptions families in Asia have about Ivy League or top US Universities?
57:40
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think I’ll jump for two really quick misconceptions. The first one is that good grades is everything. I think I’ve mentioned this throughout my application, throughout my presentation as well. But having good grades isn’t enough to get admissions into those Ivy League or top US Universities. They’re looking for extracurriculars. They’re looking for uniqueness. They’re looking for a well thought about profile. That’s what they’re looking for alongside their academics. And the second biggest misconception is that more is more. That’s not necessarily the case. We want to make sure that your activities are lean. We want to make sure activities are really unique and that stand out above everyone else and that a smaller list of high quality activities is better than overwhelming list of low quality activities. That would be the biggest misconception. Questions.
58:29
Speaker 1
All right, well, we’ve got a lot of questions. Okay. Amazing. Okay, as you shared, many students have strong academics. How does Crimson help students find meaningful opportunities to. Great question. How to build their extra, extra curricular profile?
58:47
Speaker 2
Definitely. So we come to them and we look at what particular major or subject that they’re the most interested in, and we look at what extracurriculars they currently have. So, so if the student has a lot of academic extracurriculars, but not a lot of community service, not a lot of uniqueness, we really zoom in on that area. And so, for example, we’ll have a capstone mentor who’s focused on them building a project from the beginning to the end so they’re able to provide them with the resources, if they’re trying to create a website, if they’re trying to create some sort of nonprofit organization with how to register a website, how to create a link to those sorts of things to really narrow down and focus on that extra credit curricular development.
59:26
Speaker 2
So we help them with the overall strategy of looking at what are the gaps in their extracurricular profile. And we have mentors and people who are on the ground who are experts in helping them build that extracurricular profile.
59:39
Speaker 1
Amazing. Well, well said. How do US universities. This is another one for Matthew. How do US Universities use students from Singapore in a wider Asia region? Are they, are there unique opportunities or challenges?
59:55
Speaker 2
Fantastic question. Again, the view from the US for Singapore and the wider Asia region is that their grades for the students tend to be really strong. So academics is almost like a given in a sense. For those elite US Universities, the challenge there is that we want students who are not siloed one particular field. So students tend to be very good at competitions. They tend to be very good at getting good results academically. But their unique extracurriculars or their community service angle is usually the area that is missing. So that’s why I implore students to use that as an actual opportunity. So if you’re from Singapore, can you do an extracurricular that’s related to the Hawker Centers in Singapore or you know, the HDB development blocks? If you’re from Malaysia, can you do something with the different linguistic diversity in the region?
01:00:43
Speaker 2
So segment yourself and narrow down on strong community service and volunteering activities that are based in your local country context. That is both an opportunity and a way to overcome that challenge of being too fixated on academics.
01:00:59
Speaker 1
Awesome. And actually, for what it’s worth, Singapore does have quite a number of charity, you know, programs that you can, you know, you can get involved with. With AI tools becoming more common in education, do you think US Universities are changing how they evaluate applications?
01:01:20
Speaker 2
That’s a great question. Again, and that’s something that I always speak about with my students. That one thing that we’ve seen with the rise of AI is that essay for the students become more and more important. The essays area that the school zooms in very deeply to make sure that you’re someone who can express vulnerability, make sure you’re someone who can express reflection. So from the proliferation of AI, US universities have really zoomed in on the essay itself to look at the language style, to look at what message you’re trying to convey, to see if it’s something that’s genuine enough to see if that’s something that really reflects who you are rather than some broad and generalized AI sort of reflection. So I encourage all my students to not use AI at all when it comes to their writing ability.
01:02:03
Speaker 2
Because US universities read applications every single day. They’re able to tell if some are much more utilized with AI and some that are much more authentic. And so the main trend that we see is that US universities really look for authenticity, and they really look for authenticity in the common app essay.
01:02:23
Speaker 1
Awesome. Finally there’s one for me. All right. Hi, Donald. Two questions. One, on the 450% return example you gave. Is it net after interest payments if mortgages are taken? Or 2, annual gross yield 10 to 15% for most US. Okay, great. So basically what you’re saying is, am I going to get 15% rental yield if they’re in big cities? And the answer is highly unlikely. This isn’t meant. I mean, there’s some of the big cities like San Francisco or Manhattan, there is some rent control element to it. But I can tell you know, it also depends on where you’re going to school. Right? If you’re going to the University of Austin, if you’re going to, you know, going to school in some of the southeastern states, they have higher rental yields. Some of the coastal cities have lower rental yields.
01:03:10
Speaker 1
The return did not calculate mortgage expenses and it actually didn’t calculate any rental income. It was basically 10%, you know, 10 compounded for four years is that number. And this is real. This is, I mean, we, you know, 70% of all of our business comes from people buying homes with some sort of education related outcome. Oh, this is. Matthew, are you ready for the, the big unveiling? What is the cost of Crimson coaching over four years of high school?
01:03:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, so that’s a great question. I wish I could answer it in specifics because each student is actually very different in terms of what they need. And so that reflects onto the package value as well. So I can, if you want, you can have evaluation and initial discussion with our team and our academic advisors. They can kind of look at the gaps in the areas that you need the most developing for and then we able to send you an appraisal from that. I think it really depends on each individual student. And so typically grade nine will have a little bit more, but it depends on each of your needs and what your general ambitions are. So feel free to get in touch with one of our advisors and they can help support you with that process.
01:04:29
Speaker 1
All right, I see a question from one of my overachieving friends and their overachieving daughter, Yogesh folks, how can we club investment interests in good university towns? So that, oh, that’s for me. So that the investment isn’t necessarily tied to the kid going there. Yeah, so I guess you know that’s a, that is a. Okay, so that’s a, that’s a question. That is a topic of US Real estate as an asset class mutually exclusive to education, which is a different conversation. So you know, I’m a serious believer that it’s one of the top three asset classes at the moment because there’s a massive shortage of supply. The reshoring of manufacturing in the US is driving mobility of labor to like five or six states.
01:05:22
Speaker 1
And these guys, these, these, this new labor force is never going to be able to afford a home because the median income is you know, 60,000 bucks and the average home price is 400,000. So that seven times ratio is never going to be achieved. So they’re going to have to rent which is pushing rental yields up. So it’s a great time to be a landlord. You’ve got my WhatsApp number. You can contact me and we can talk about this. Anonymous. Anonymous question. This is for you, Matthew. My son plays for a strong professional football team outside of school for many years.
01:05:55
Speaker 2
Years.
01:05:56
Speaker 1
Do you have experience and if some examples of how you would work with an athlete who wants to do business in a business school and not necessarily Division 1 school. Second part of the question, when is the best time for him to apply if he has to do end.
01:06:15
Speaker 2
Perfect. Yeah. So we actually have quite a few athletes that join our general Crimson support as well. For those of us who are thinking about doing recruitment, us athletic recruitment, we have usually two strategists. So one person that’s just focused on the admissions of the university and another that’s just focus on academic, sorry, athletic recruitment. So you’ll have two strategists for your individual student. That athletic strategist is very well trained in the different recruitment pathways. So football, for example, they’ll know exactly what schools are the best schools for football, what schools have which coaches and how to get in contact with them, what the pathway is to get that sort of D1, D2 or D3 recruitment. And then in conjunction with the regular strategist who will help them develop their profile, help develop their business activities.
01:07:04
Speaker 2
Both of those together will complement each Other for the student to select the school. So for you who might be thinking about getting into a business school, a top business school that doesn’t necessarily need to be division one, we can start the recruitment process. Usually the recruitment preparation timeline usually anywhere from sort of grade 10, year 11 onwards because that’s when you really should be getting in contact with the coaches, with the different delegations that represent those schools. So just put in your answer. Some put to answer your question quickly is that we have multiple strategists for you usually and one is just focused on athletics and usually around grade, grade 10, year 11 is when you should start that recruitment process.
01:07:47
Speaker 1
Cool, cool one for me. Thanks, Donald. 10 to 15% is out of the question. I’m not sure what that means. But what is the fair rental view for residential homes near Ivy League University? So, well, Ivy Leagues are, you know, some are in big cities like Columbia, you know, and Penn. Some are in obscure towns like Brown, like Crimson and Ithac. So it really depends I can tell you know, we have a brand new condo that we’re representing a developer in Boston that has 6% gross yield. So it really, really depends. You know, I think that’s something you can contact me directly and we can kind of walk through it. But in general, rental yields in rental yields that are not in New York or California tend to be higher.
01:08:42
Speaker 1
But that’s not to say you’re not going to get, you know, I mean 10 to 15 is fairly common actually in some of the south states and Midwest states, but it’s not uncommon. And the US has by far the highest rental yield of any country, especially developed nation in the world. When you compare rental yields and it has the fastest capital appreciation nationwide, even faster than Dubai. Many people don’t know that. So yeah, contact me directly, I can walk you through. We have tons of data, tons of research. So, you know, even if your son doesn’t go to school in the US it’s probably a good investment question for Matthew. When is the next time for him to apply to colleges if he has to do national service right out of school? And when should he begin with Crimson?
01:09:30
Speaker 2
Yes, very good question for our Singapore families in the room is national service. So what universities and how we deal with the deferral process. So typically speaking, our best strategy for students who have to do national service is that you still apply through the regular timeline that you would have otherwise if you didn’t have to do national service for those students that would Be their application process will just be in their grade 12 or year 13 first semester. That’s usually when the application process will be due.
01:10:03
Speaker 2
The reason we suggest to do it in the regular pipeline compared to everyone else is that there’s going to be a lot of busy timing when a student is doing NS and you then become considered in a gap year pool, which means that you’re actually looking at students who are relatively more competitive than you because you’ll have to be able to showcase and do your application during ns. And so one thing we always make sure is to typically do the planning for applications while you are still in high school and typically speaking to also make sure you look for schools with the correct deferral policy. So for example UC Berkeley, UCLA usually doesn’t allow a deferral of more than two years or more than one year.
01:10:43
Speaker 2
So a lot of our students who are doing NS isn’t able to apply for that and they typically apply for the private university. So best time is the usual pipeline but with the school so usually typically in grade 11 and grade 12 and then that’s when you should really start that process going. And to join Crimson, we really think as early as possible. So grade nine, grade 10, if you’re going to do that normal pipeline for national service plus it’s usually a bit relaxing when you know where you’re going while you’re doing NS already. It helps the students mentally for not needing to do U. S preparation while they’re doing mandatory training.
01:11:17
Speaker 1
Amazing. Okay, so we’re coming up to the last question, but I had a personal question. What is, what’s your feel of. I have a few questions. What’s your feel of traveling on a gap year? 1. I mean obviously probably good for the kid, but does that is. Does that experience help or hurt a college application?
01:11:45
Speaker 2
Yeah, typically I would say gap years are something we always try and avoid because gap years to the U.S. universities often indicate that the student weren’t able to get into their first choice university universities before 75% or 80% of the students who do gap years are for that reason. And so even if you are not for that reason, typically we recommend to avoid gap years if you can. Traveling is not necessarily a bad idea. It’s a very enriching experience. But for anyone of students who are doing gap years, we always recommend to make that gap year really count, to really portray as a gap year for you, to stimulate your own academic growth perhaps to do a work experience that you’ve always wanted to do. Perhaps to do a project that you felt very personal about that you want to take on full time.
01:12:29
Speaker 2
So gap years usually are risky, but if you do gap years, make sure it is a very enriching part that adds to your application. So alongside traveling, can you do something with the traveling that you’re actually doing? Maybe write for a travel blog or maybe, you know, reflect on different cultures there. Gap years are always an opportunity for you to build and you have to be able to explain it to the US Universities.
01:12:53
Speaker 1
Awesome. Okay, last question for me. Listen. So, you know, this is kind of probably a little more personal. So, you know, when I was growing up, it was, you know, you kind of, you know, study hard, get into a good school. You don’t really, it wasn’t really applying to 20 different schools. I think there was another, you know, and then in banking it was good to get some Asian experience and then go back to business school and get your mba and then you come, you know, you go in as an associate and you come out as a, a, as a vp. But now going to school for an economic, For a, for a job outcome is not, you know, it’s not straightforward now. I mean, it’s hard to get jobs and stuff like that.
01:13:34
Speaker 1
And there’s this growing trend of going to school, going to Vibe schools. So you’re basically going to just for the experience and not necessarily for an outcome come. I mean, you want to make some friends, you know, find yourself, be responsible, but you’re not going there to get a job. Like what, you know, we all did well, what’s your like and I guess if you’re doing that, like, you know, that application is, is less so about, I guess, I don’t know, what’s your thought about that, like, in general and Vibe schools, You know, I don’t know. I mean, Pomona or Williams or Claremont McKenna. I mean, these are all super good schools.
01:14:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I think that there’s sort of a few ways to think about it. I think the big question that sort of underlies it is for each individual student, like, what is the purpose of your university experience, right? Is it to enrich your own mind? Is it for you to explore? Is it to find what you’re interested in, or is it to accelerate your career? Is it to kind of build out where your networks want to be? Maybe it’s a combination of the two of them. So I think it always just depends on the priorities of the families and the priorities of the parents. We’ve seen trends lately of being like, for those who are more career focused, right? They’re like, let me apply to hard reach schools only.
01:14:56
Speaker 2
So Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, those ones that will really yield me a top job in Wall Street, a top consulting role, a top biotech role. But if it’s not those elite universities, maybe the cost of going to those schools are not actually useful. Let me go to a NUS instead or an NTU and you save a bunch of money and still do really good education. The one thing I will say, Donald, and I think to all the families on the call today is that studying abroad is still an experience of value in and of itself. The sort of separation from the familiarity of family, the building of your own networks, the internationalized community that you’ll be exposed to is still very hard to replicate.
01:15:33
Speaker 2
It gives students a sense of freedom, it gives you a sense of independence, but it also builds their network and their priorities a lot bigger. So staying in a place like Singapore isn’t a detriment to where your career wants to go because there’s elite institutions, but you close the door potentially to going to the US and working there for a little bit or going to the UK and working there for a little bit. And so that, I think, is the fundamental sort of question that parents should think about and students should also consider.
01:16:00
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you so much. So we’ve kind of gone through all the questions. This was fantastic. Let’s see if we have any more scrolling down on this chat. Any questions? Awesome. I think we’ve plowed through it. It is amazing. I want to personally thank everybody on this call for joining. It’s a, it’s a very emotional and important topic for all of us, especially with kids that are just beginning their thought process of getting into university cities anywhere in the world. But I want to personally thank you, Matthew. It was really a pleasure learning you really percolated a few thoughts in my head on what we need to start getting, start doing. But again, thank you for your time. Thank you everybody. And I’ll let Matthew say goodbye to everybody and then we’ll log off.
01:16:44
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you everyone for your time. And if you have any more questions, feel free to let Donald or myself know. Happy to answer a little bit more details at some other point too.
01:16:54
Speaker 1
All right. Oh, he do have another box. Nope, all the questions are gone. Great. Thank you so much. Have a good evening, everybody. Thank you for spending the time with us. Take care. Bye bye.
01:17:03
Speaker 2
Thank you.
Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated, so kindly pardon any transcription or grammatical errors that may be present.
