University Admissions of the Class of 2025
Despite an unprecedented first year in the KGSP due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s cohort of Foundation Year students have worked diligently to strive for their educational and professional goals by fulfilling the requirements of their FY coursework remotely and completing competitive university applications to prestigious undergraduate programs in the United States. Supported by their KGSP Advisors, who provided holistic academic and personal support, the Class of 2025 demonstrated great academic excellence and passion and was not deterred in the pursuit of higher education. The drive and ambition they exhibited will help them achieve great success at the top-tier US universities they will attend in Fall 2021.
The KGSP assisted students in successfully navigating a rapidly changing international admissions landscape, once again surpassing previous milestones for undergraduate placements at elite institutions. Examples of students’ undergraduate placements include one student to Brown University, two to Carnegie Mellon University, one to Columbia University, one to Cornell University, one to Georgia Tech, one to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one to Northwestern University, one to Rice University, three to University of California-Berkeley, seven to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, two to University of Michigan, and four to University of Texas to name a few! Many of them will join KGSP upperclassmen at these institutions — a showcase of the impressive caliber of students in the KGSP.
Even with an atypical year of learning and applying to universities, the overall KGSP student university admission rate has remained consistent throughout the last seven years, though the Program has enjoyed more widespread success at the highest tier of elite institutions in the United States. In the past three years, the KGSP has had 14 successful applications to Ivy League institutions. In addition, there has been 13 successful applicants to MIT, eight to Georgia Tech, and six to University of California, Berkeley. Also in the past 3 years, 100% of FY students received an average of 6 offers of admission to a top-50 school in their major.
As KGSP students submit more applications to more selective institutions, the KGSP provides enhanced robust support for the creation of high-quality applications that include excellent admission essays, test scores, and overall student academic profiles. Compared to last year, the number of competitive applications sent to selective institutions increased from 25% to 35% for this academic year! Throughout the Fall term, FY students met regularly with their KGSP Advisor and their essay coach to draft and refine their admission essays. In a year when most universities adopted test-optional policies, KGSP continued to reinforce the importance of standardized tests and to provide tutoring support. Because test scores are no longer universally required as part of many university admissions processes, strong test scores further set apart KGSP applicants in the admissions pool. Cohort 12 has received the highest average scores in SAT Reasoning and SAT Math Scores, 1400 and 760 respectively, of any previous cohort—a new KGSP record.
An example of a student who successfully navigated the undergraduate placement process and secured an elite admission is Samar Alabdulbaqi, an FY student at the University of Texas at Austin, who will be attending Cornell
University beginning in Fall 2021. After completing her FY studies concurrently with applying to prestigious universities in the US, Samar believed that Cornell aligned optimally with her academic pursuits. “I looked for universities with strong computer science departments. I love computer science for the wide and diverse areas it covers, and so to accommodate for my other interests (Gaming Design and Linguistics) that I wanted to combine with computer science, I searched for universities that have various classes in many areas, which is exactly what Cornell University is known for,” Samar stated.
Samar actively sought support from the KGSP to assist her through the application process, utilizing the support of her essay coach and KGSP advisor to help her write comprehensive and impactful application essays and to improve her SAT and TOEFL scores. With these developmental and academic successes, Samar is ready for her next step in her KGSP journey as a Cornell student. “I look forward to be challenged and excited by the many classes Cornell offers and its various research opportunities,” Samar exclaimed.
As they take this summer to get ready for their first semester as college Freshmen, this year’s FY students have already achieved remarkable success and shown their resilience and ability to achieve in exceptional circumstances. The KGSP looks forward to supporting their future accomplishments as the students progress through the Program.