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[quote=Anonymous]The base of its formula is what Command calls the “passion project” — the specialty it helps students develop so they become what counselors call “pointy” kids rather than well-rounded ones. Rim and other college counselors push the message that being captain of the debate team, a varsity soccer goalie, and class president is the kind of gold star that isn’t that special. Schools, they say, are looking for highly specialized students who demonstrate a specific talent or passion. (The oft-repeated quote is that colleges don’t want well-rounded students so much as “a well-rounded class.”)

The theme of the passion project becomes what Cramer calls the “hook” that hangs their essays and lists of extracurriculars together. “You don’t have to play the violin, be the first chair in your state, and rescue the whales. You can just pick one and be so good at it that you want to dare the admissions officers not to accept you and that they will regret it,” says Rim. No matter what, “we will find the story.”

Rim insists Command mentors don’t fabricate a kid’s interests but merely draw them out. Here’s an example offered by Cramer, who says a lot of clients are interested in business or finance: “One of the things that we push them to do is try to understand, What about finance? What about business? What are you trying to do in the world? And if they say, ‘Yeah, I’ve traveled around with my family a lot, I see the natural beauty of the places I’ve been around,’ we start to show them, ‘Well, actually what it sounds like you’re maybe starting to talk about a little is this idea of investing in green technologies and trying to use private industry as a way to be more environmentally conscious, and we should be investing in emerging technologies.’ You don’t know any of this stuff as a 14- or 15-year-old, but you’re kind of talking about that.”

A Command client who is a senior at a private Manhattan high school and was recently admitted to an Ivy League school describes a similar process. She says her mentor helped her start a blog related to her desired major and edited her posts. “All my activities, the internship I did last summer, the blog, what I wrote about in my essays, it was all focused on that,” she says. “It really was what I was interested in and what I probably would have pursued anyway, but I wouldn’t have done so much focus on it if it wasn’t Command saying to me, ‘This is how you’re going to get into college: Make sure you let them know what you want to do.’ ” She says the blog is mostly stagnant now.
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