College at His Fingertips Daniel Crowley
A jazz pianist and composer, Daniel wants to be a sound recording engineer and producer, figuring that's more likely to mean a steady income. A public high school student from Northbridge, Mass., he's following his passion to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Daniel applied to 11 university music schools. He got into nine.
SAT scores: 640 math, 600 critical reading, 610 writing
GPA: 3.81 nonweighted
Extracurrics: Golf, painting, snowboarding
Essay topic: Living with juvenile diabetes
Strategy: Applied to three likely schools, three fifty-fiftys, and four reaches, including NYU.
Organization tip: Schedule your time throughout the process, even downtime.
Best coping strategy: Listening to rock and pop music, including John Mayer and Jack Johnson-even AC/DC
Going the extra mile: He sent his target schools a studio-quality CD of his compositions.
Advice for parents of 11th graders: The application process is hard enough. "Don't talk about it all the time; don't nag."
Ace in the hole: Hiring an independent college specialist, who helped Daniel funnel his passion into applying to schools and break an otherwise unstructured task into bite-size steps
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