In this series, we spotlight a student from California who worked with Vanguard during her College Application process. Here is our interview with Sanjana, who applied to numerous colleges for Statistics and Data Science with Vanguard for the Fall of 2026. She has been accepted to UC Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Washington-Seattle, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and more!
In what ways did you feel more prepared in your college application journey than your peers who did not seek our services?
To be very honest, I felt more prepared in every aspect of the college application process in comparison to my friends who did not seek Vanguard's services. Their wonderful team helped me narrow down colleges by researching the student body, distance from home, activities, majors, etc.; they also helped me craft my resume from start to end, fill out the general applications (UC's and Common App), and were extremely supportive throughout the whole writing process.
Why did you choose Vanguard to work with you during the college application process? What was the biggest help to you in our process?
I chose Vanguard to work with during the college application process because when I first spoke to them while exploring various counseling services, their communication and knowledge about various parts of the application process stood out to me. The biggest help to me in the process was revising and editing the essays, as I believe this is one of the biggest components that were considered while evaluating college applications.
How did the skills you learned at Vanguard help you after you left the program? Perhaps at school or other areas?
One of the main ways that what I learned in Vanguard helped me with school was making Excel sheets. During the whole college application process, we used a sheet to track which colleges I was going to apply to, which majors I’d apply to, along with any additional comments that me or my parents had. I thought this was really helpful and I honestly started using Excel sheets for a lot of my classes to track missing assignments, pending assignments, upcoming tests and everything like that. So it helped a lot with my organizational skills I would say.
What were you the most nervous about going into the college process?
I was the most nervous about writing essays because I was unsure about how to articulate my thoughts and ideas in a meaningful manner, while still getting across a connection to my major.
Was there anything else Vanguard helped you with during the college selection/college counseling process that you would like to highlight?
I would like to highlight the methods that they used to help me narrow down my college list by carefully researching every component that could possibly matter to me while making my final decision.
Can you tell us about your unique situation as a student on a Visa, and how Vanguard helped you navigate that added component during your college application process?
I think one thing that was really important was choosing majors, which I feel like most people don't understand can impact a lot of your acceptance. Alina [Director of College Counseling] helped my family realize this because she explained, "Because you're on a Visa, you're going to be considered as an international applicant. You need to choose majors that align with your interest and with what you want to do, but one with a higher acceptance rate.” So, most people, for example, with UC Berkeley, would go straight to data science or computer science, but Alina advised us to select Statistics because it had the same courses, and was also in the same college too. So you graduate from the same college with the same Bachelor of Sciences with the same courses—just under a different major. I feel like being able to understand that was really helpful because that's how we chose majors at a majority of the colleges I applied to.
What was essay coaching like at Vanguard?
[Essay Specialist] Amy was really helpful with brainstorming, narrowing down the topics that I would write about and also revising and editing. She also elaborated a lot on the prompts if I had any questions. So, I think that she helped a lot in those ways.
If you are willing to share, what did you end up writing your college essay about and how did the end result turn out? How does the essay you wrote with Vanguard compare to what you would have written about on your own?
I wrote about this incident that I had when I was like six or seven years old, I would say. I’d just had surgery for tonsillitis and adenoids. I didn't write about the actual diagnosis itself, but rather I wrote about the moment I had ice cream for the first time after getting my surgery. After surgery, you can't eat anything, so the only thing I could have was ice cream and that was the first time in my life that I had eaten ice cream after like seven years of watching people do it. So we connected that experience to resilience, perseverance, and courage to put yourself out there, which we connected to my extracurriculars, which were also relevant to my major.
What colleges did you get into? Where did you choose to go and what are you studying?
So far I've gotten into UNC Chapel Hill, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Purdue University, University of Maryland-College Park, North Carolina State University, University of Washington-Seattle, Arizona State University, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, UC Merced, UC Riverside, San Diego State University, San Jose State University, and Cal State Long Beach. At the majority of these colleges, I’d be studying Data Science and in some of them I'm studying something along the lines of Statistics or Computer Science. Right now I'm feeling pretty drawn to UNC because it was one of my dream schools, but until recently it seemed so unattainable. Same with UW as well. But everything just depends on how the rest of the UC's turn out.
UPDATE: After our interview, Sanjana was accepted to UC Berkeley!
What are your future goals with your degree?
I hope to carry over my degree in Data Science to something in the healthcare industry. Whether that be analyzing brain waves in hospitals or creating wearable devices for medical patients. There's just a lot that I want to do in the healthcare field, but I also want to combine that with tech. But before actually going into a job, I want to get my Master’s, but I’m not sure in what subject yet.
What are you most looking forward to about college?
I really want to be involved in research. I feel like that's like a very valuable opportunity where you get to learn more, expand your horizons, and talk to people that are interested in whatever your interests align with. I'm also pretty excited about the social opportunities, because you get to meet a whole new set of people. I've been with the same people for the past 12 years, so I’m excited to meet a bunch of new people and get to know them.
What was your favorite part of working with Vanguard or your most proud achievement during your time working with us? Is there anything else you would like to highlight about your experience?
My favorite part of working with Vanguard was probably in the initial stages where I had to narrow down my colleges. During this time there were several documents, websites and more that I explored to learn more about each college—such as student body size, if it was semester or quarter system, weather, and everything I could possibly consider while choosing colleges. That was probably my favorite part, but my proudest achievement was being able to finish my Common App essay successfully.
What advice would you give to younger Vanguardians embarking on their College Application process?The main piece of advice I would probably give them is to stick to the timeline and to finish all of the homework on time just because everyone needs time to be able to process it, go over it, edit it, revise it. You do it earlier, you also get the buffer time to be able to fill out applications at your convenience.
Specialist Madison L
Hamilton College