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Key Takeaways

We see students cram every achievement into their Personal Statements, practically begging to be admitted.

Entrepreneurs do the same when they defend their fees, compare themselves to competitors or rattle off credentials. But the harder you sell, the less appealing you become.

The secret isn’t saying more; it’s knowing when to stop talking, trusting your track record and letting your story speak for itself. Sometimes, the most persuasive sales pitch is no pitch at all.

Every year at Ivy Coach , our college admissions counseling firm, we encounter a subset of students who come to us for PostMortems after being rejected by their dream colleges, having succumbed to the irresistible urge to turn their Personal Statement into a sales pitch.

They’ve earned straight A’s, founded clubs, conducted research and won competitions.…