Avantika Naidu

For the price you are paying, the experience at College Shortcuts is truly not worth it. I did the Mentorship/Research Project experience as well as the Application FastTrack. Speaking from the Mentorship/Research Project side, my mentor did not assist me at all with my project. My project was initially a website/program which revolved around the idea of mental health in adolescence. However, that program did not receive much success because my mentor did not help me on the publicity side. As a result, I ended up writing a research paper (on my own!) and got that published. To be clear, this research paper was solely created by me and had no assistance from the college shortcuts side. Now, I knew College Shortcuts would be a waste of time and money on the college preparation side, but my family and I chose to go through with the Application FastTrack Program (after my awful experience from the mentorship program) because of the ratings and how Neha portrayed that the program would look. When picking your colleges, they do not help you find schools which align with your profile. Specifically, if you are doing any extracurricular activities (or anything outside academics), they do not use those interests as your strengths in finding schools which best match you, or even schools which you have a great shot of getting into. Also, they made me write my essays before the official essay prompts came out. Now, this might have seemed like a good thing because of the practice. However, when the new essay prompts come out, they only go through the essay one time. So, you are left to check and edit the essays on your own. If you want to get another check, they charge per essay. If you feel that you are a good essay writer, you don’t need this program because they don’t really offer you anything. If you are not a strong essay writer, you can practice on your own or use free resources to help improve your writing. The only thing that they might be able to help you with is the steps to apply to college, but you can easily find those steps on Google for free. My family and I did talk to Neha about our complaints, but she would reword the phrases in a way which made the blame ultimately fall back on us. They took no responsibility for their lack of proper assistance in the college application process. I had to figure out how to apply on my own because College Shortcuts was not providing me with the information I needed to create a strong and successful application. Everything you need to apply to college is now on the internet. You really do not need to waste thousands of dollars on programs which will not benefit you in any way.