What You’ll Learn:

Perfect math scores and a robotics club are the baseline now, not the case for admission. Join Lucas, who read applications at Caltech, for a line-by-line look at how STEM files are actually evaluated at Caltech, MIT and the Ivies, and what separates the ones that get in.

MEET YOUR HOST

Caltech admits fewer than 4% of applicants, among the lowest rates in the country, and Lucas was one of the people reading those files. He knows what the committee looks for when nearly every STEM applicant has top grades and scores, and he works with families to build the research, projects, and essays that get a student admitted. He has also been the student in that process: he did research at Caltech as a Pasadena high school student, earned a BA in Physics from Carleton College, where he won the Harriet Sheridan Endowed Prize for writing, and is now earning a master's in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

Where Lucas’s Students Have Been Admitted:

Harvard · University of Pennsylvania · University of Chicago · Northwestern · Bowdoin · Haverford · USC · RISD · UT Austin