College admissions has become increasingly complex. Students are expected to demonstrate academic readiness, personal character, intellectual curiosity, and meaningful engagement—often within applications that leave limited room for nuance. At the same time, families must navigate changing testing policies, sophisticated coaching services, unequal access to resources, and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence.
Justin Pincar, Managing Director of Achievable, approaches these challenges from the perspective of a technology entrepreneur and education product leader. After beginning his career at Google, Pincar spent more than a decade developing education technology products. His experience using adaptive learning applications to study Japanese helped inspire Achievable, an exam-preparation platform that applies learning science, personalized review, and performance analytics to tests including the ACT, SAT, CLT, and GRE. He currently leads Achievable’s engineering and product development and remains directly involved in reviewing student feedback.
In this interview, Pincar discusses the less visible qualities that strengthen college applications, the importance of evaluating achievement in context, the risks of overcoaching, responsible uses of AI, and the habits students should develop long before application season begins.
Beyond grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, what are the hidden signals in an application that often influence admission committees, and how can students intentionally demonstrate qualities such as resilience, intellectual curiosity, and maturity without sounding rehearsed?
I would be careful with the phrase “hidden signals” because it can make the process sound as though there is a secret code students need to crack. In reality, many of the strongest signals are visible throughout the application. They are simply communicated through patterns rather than through one isolated achievement.
Consistency is one of those signals. Does the student’s essay describe a genuine intellectual interest that is also reflected in the courses they selected, the questions they pursued, the activities they continued, or the way a teacher describes them? When different parts of the application reinforce one another, the reader gets a clearer and more credible picture of the person.
Resilience is also better demonstrated through behavior than declared as a personality trait. A student should not simply write, “I am resilient.” A stronger approach is to explain what happened after a setback. Did the student change their study method, seek feedback, rebuild a project, take responsibility for a mistake, or persist when progress was slow? The most meaningful part of the story is usually not the obstacle itself. It is the student’s response.
Intellectual curiosity is similar. It does not require an impressive-sounding research program. It might appear in a student who reads beyond the syllabus, asks an unusual question in class, teaches themselves a new skill, connects two unrelated subjects, or continues investigating something after the assignment is finished. Curiosity is visible when learning continues without an external reward.
Maturity often appears through judgment. Students demonstrate it when they understand trade-offs, acknowledge other people’s contributions, describe a mistake without blaming everyone else, or recognize that a complicated problem does not have a simple answer.
My advice is to focus on evidence rather than adjectives. Tell the reader what you noticed, what you did, what changed, and what you learned. Specific actions feel authentic. Broad statements about being passionate, resilient, or compassionate often feel rehearsed because almost any applicant could make them.
How do admission officers evaluate a student’s accomplishments within the context of their school, community, and available opportunities, and what misconceptions do families commonly have about what constitutes an impressive achievement?
An accomplishment only becomes meaningful when you understand the conditions in which it occurred. A student attending a school with twenty advanced courses, multiple research programs, specialized counselors, and established clubs has a different opportunity set from a student whose school offers few advanced classes and limited extracurricular infrastructure.
That does not mean expectations disappear. It means the relevant question becomes, “What did this student do with what was available?” Yale, for example, publicly explains that applicants are reviewed within their own context and are not expected to take advantage of resources their schools do not offer.
Families sometimes assume that an achievement is impressive only when it carries a prestigious title, national award, famous institution, or large number attached to it. That can lead students to chase opportunities that look good from a distance but have very little personal meaning.
Depth, initiative, and responsibility are often more revealing than prestige. Consider a student at an average public school who recognizes that classmates are struggling in algebra. The student creates a weekly study group, develops simple practice materials, and continues helping people throughout the year. That may not generate a national award, but it shows initiative, academic engagement, consistency, and contribution to a community.
The same is true of students who work substantial hours, care for younger siblings, translate for family members, contribute to a family business, or travel long distances to attend school. Those commitments may limit participation in conventional extracurricular activities, but they can demonstrate discipline, reliability, and maturity.
Students should provide enough context for readers to understand the significance of what they have done. They should not exaggerate or present themselves as victims of their circumstances. They should simply explain the available resources, the constraints they faced, the decisions they made, and the effect of their efforts.
An impressive achievement is not always the rarest activity. It is often the clearest evidence that a student used their circumstances thoughtfully and made something better than it was before.
Many students receive extensive coaching on essays, interviews, and activity lists. In your experience, what are the telltale signs that an application has been over-polished, and how can students preserve an authentic voice while still presenting themselves strategically?
The clearest warning sign is a mismatch between the applicant and the language. The essay may be technically flawless, but it sounds like a management consultant, a professional speechwriter, or a forty-year-old reflecting on a completed career.
Over-polished essays often contain abstract language without enough lived detail. Every experience becomes a profound leadership lesson. Every setback produces a perfectly packaged transformation. Every paragraph contains a carefully engineered metaphor. The student disappears behind the writing.
Another warning sign is inconsistency across the application. The essay presents one highly polished character, while the activity descriptions, short responses, recommendations, or interview reveal a very different voice. That does not necessarily mean the student was dishonest, but it can indicate that too many people shaped the application.
Institutions themselves consistently emphasize authenticity. Yale advises students to submit thoughtful responses that convey their personal voice, while MIT has warned that extensive editing can remove the very voice an essay is supposed to communicate.
Strategic presentation is not the same as manufacturing a persona. Students should absolutely organize their thoughts, select relevant examples, revise unclear passages, and ask someone to identify confusing sections. The line is crossed when an adviser begins supplying the ideas, rewriting the language, or deciding what the student is supposed to believe.
I recommend that students begin by speaking before they begin polishing. Record yourself explaining the experience to someone you trust. What details do you naturally remember? Where does your energy change? Which part makes you laugh, hesitate, or become more thoughtful? Those moments often contain the real essay.
Students should also read every draft aloud. If a sentence feels unnatural to say, it probably does not belong in their voice. One or two trusted reviewers are usually more helpful than a committee of editors. Reviewers should ask questions and identify gaps, but the student should make the decisions and write the replacement language.
The goal is not to submit an unedited first draft. The goal is to create the clearest possible version of something the student genuinely thinks and would genuinely say.
As colleges increasingly emphasize adaptability, interdisciplinary thinking, and real-world problem-solving, how do you expect admission criteria to evolve over the next five to ten years, and what should today’s high school students start doing differently to prepare for that shift?
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I expect admissions to place greater value on evidence of how students think, learn, collaborate, and respond to unfamiliar problems. Grades and course rigor will remain important because colleges need evidence that students can handle academic work. However, traditional credentials may increasingly be considered alongside richer demonstrations of process.
That could include portfolios, independent projects, research, community-based problem-solving, creative work, entrepreneurial experiments, or other evidence that shows how a student moves from an idea to an outcome. The important part will not always be whether the project succeeded. Colleges may learn a great deal from how the student defined the problem, tested assumptions, used feedback, and revised the work.
Interdisciplinary thinking will also become more important because many of the problems students will encounter do not fit neatly into one academic department. Climate, public health, artificial intelligence, financial systems, media literacy, and urban development all require people to combine technical understanding with communication, ethics, policy, and human behavior.
Students should not respond by adding “interdisciplinary” activities to a checklist. They should practice connecting ideas. A student interested in computer science might explore accessibility or education. A student interested in biology might examine public communication or data ethics. A student interested in literature might investigate how narratives influence political or scientific debates.
AI will make it easier to produce polished outputs, so the ability to demonstrate real understanding will become more valuable. At Achievable, we think a great deal about the difference between completing an activity and mastering the underlying knowledge. Our learning systems are designed to identify what a learner knows, where the gaps are, and what should happen next. I expect schools and colleges to become more interested in that same distinction.
The best preparation is to become comfortable learning something difficult without needing every step prescribed in advance. Choose meaningful problems, build things, document your decisions, seek criticism, and revise. Those habits will strengthen an application, but more importantly, they will prepare students for the kind of work they will actually do in college and beyond.
What structural barriers continue to disadvantage otherwise qualified applicants during the college admission process, and which reforms would have the greatest impact on improving equity?
One of the largest barriers is unequal access to reliable guidance. Some students have counselors, teachers, parents, tutors, and advisers who understand every stage of the process. Others are trying to interpret application requirements, testing policies, financial aid terminology, and institutional differences largely on their own.
That creates what I would call an information advantage. Two students may have similar academic ability, but one understands how to build a balanced college list, request recommendations, describe activities, secure fee waivers, compare financial aid offers, and meet every deadline. The other student may not even know which questions to ask.
Access to advanced courses, testing, extracurricular programs, transportation, stable internet, quiet study space, and application assistance also varies dramatically. Time is another resource people overlook. A student who works after school or cares for family members does not have the same discretionary time as a student who can devote every afternoon to clubs and test preparation.
The most effective reforms would reduce the amount of specialized knowledge required to participate successfully. Applications should use clearer language, explain why information is being requested, and provide more visible guidance at the point where students need it. Fee-waiver systems should be simple, and financial aid communication should make the likely cost understandable before a student invests substantial time in applying.
Colleges should continue improving contextual evaluation so that opportunity is not mistaken for ability. Schools also need greater counseling capacity, particularly for students who may be the first in their families to navigate the American college system.
Technology can help, but only when it reduces friction rather than adding another layer of complexity. A tool should work on the devices students already have, explain the next step clearly, accommodate busy schedules, and provide useful feedback without requiring expensive professional interpretation.
That principle guides much of our work at Achievable. Good educational technology should not reward the learner who already understands the system. It should make the system more understandable and help more people build the knowledge and confidence required to move forward.
Can you describe the characteristics of a personal essay that genuinely changes the trajectory of an application from academically qualified to memorable and compelling, and why do those essays succeed where many technically strong essays fail?
A memorable essay does not necessarily have the most dramatic subject. It gives the reader access to a way of thinking that could not be fully understood through grades, scores, and activity titles.
The strongest essays are usually specific. They contain observations, choices, tensions, or details that could only come from that student. The essay may describe an ordinary experience, but the student notices something distinctive within it.
Reflection is equally important. A student should not simply report what happened. The reader wants to understand why the experience mattered, how the student interpreted it, and whether it changed the way they think or behave. That reflection should be proportional to the event. Not every experience needs to produce a life-changing revelation.
A compelling essay also creates movement. By the end, the reader understands something that was not visible at the beginning. That might be a change in perspective, a more complicated understanding of a family relationship, the development of an intellectual interest, or a decision to approach future problems differently.
Technically strong essays often fail because they are optimized for approval rather than communication. They use impressive vocabulary, clean transitions, and a conventional narrative arc, but they do not reveal much about the person. The student may be trying so hard to demonstrate leadership or resilience that the reader can see the lesson arriving before the story has even begun.
A useful test is to remove the applicant’s name and ask whether the essay could have been submitted by hundreds of other high-achieving students. If the answer is yes, the essay probably needs more specific observation and more honest reflection.
The essay that changes an application is not necessarily the essay that proves the student is extraordinary. It is the essay that makes the reader feel they have met a real person—someone with a recognizable mind, a developing perspective, and the potential to contribute something distinctive to a college community.
Students often struggle with the trade-off between taking the most rigorous courses available and maintaining a high GPA. How should students make that decision, and how do selective colleges interpret a transcript that shows intellectual ambition but includes a few lower grades?
Students should pursue the most challenging program they can engage with successfully and sustainably. That is different from taking every advanced course simply because it is available.
Course selection should reflect several considerations. Is the subject relevant to the student’s interests or future direction? Does the student have the necessary foundation? What other academic and personal commitments will compete for time? Will the course produce meaningful growth, or will the workload become so unmanageable that the student cannot learn effectively in any subject?
There is an important difference between challenge and overload. Challenge stretches a student’s abilities and requires new strategies. Overload creates a situation in which the student is constantly reacting, cutting corners, and retaining very little. From a learning-science perspective, mastery depends on attention, practice, feedback, and time. A schedule that eliminates all four is not automatically more impressive because it contains more advanced course titles.
A few lower grades in demanding courses do not necessarily invalidate an otherwise strong transcript. They may show that the student was willing to move beyond the safest path. The broader pattern matters: Was the performance generally strong? Did the student improve? Was there a specific transition or circumstance? Did the student continue engaging with the subject?
Students should not assume that ambition excuses every poor result, but neither should they believe one difficult semester permanently defines them. When there is a legitimate circumstance that affected performance, the additional-information section can provide concise context. It should explain rather than argue.
Families sometimes treat course selection as an optimization problem in which every decision must produce the highest possible numerical outcome. I think a better question is, “Which program will help this student become more capable, curious, and prepared?”
Colleges are admitting students to learn. A transcript should therefore show not only performance, but a thoughtful willingness to grow.
For international students or applicants from nontraditional educational backgrounds, what aspects of the admission process are most frequently misunderstood, and how can these students effectively communicate the value of experiences that may not fit neatly into a standard US application framework?
A common mistake is assuming that the reader will automatically understand the applicant’s educational system. Grading scales, national examinations, course sequences, school types, calendars, and academic expectations differ substantially across countries.
International students should provide enough context to make their records interpretable. That may include explaining the grading scale, the selectivity of a particular academic track, the availability of advanced subjects, or the significance of a national or regional examination. The school profile and counselor materials can be especially valuable, but students can use the additional-information section when important context would otherwise be missing.
The same principle applies to activities. Students should not force every experience into an American extracurricular template. Responsibilities in a family business, community or religious involvement, national service, independent study, employment, care work, and locally recognized competitions may carry substantial meaning even when they do not resemble a conventional club or varsity activity.
The goal is translation, not reinvention. Explain what the activity involved, how much responsibility the student held, how consistently they participated, and what changed because of their involvement.
Nontraditional applicants—including homeschooled students, students returning after time away, working students, and those who completed substantial online or independent education—should demonstrate structure and evidence. What did they study? How was progress evaluated? Which external assessments, projects, instructors, employers, or community experiences provide validation? What skills or knowledge resulted?
Students from unfamiliar systems sometimes believe they must compensate by sounding more American or by reproducing the activities they see in successful US application profiles. That can erase the very context that makes their experience valuable.
A strong application helps the reader understand the student’s environment while allowing the student’s own priorities and character to remain visible. Applicants should not apologize for having followed a different path. They should make that path legible.
With AI tools becoming widely available for brainstorming essays, researching colleges, and preparing applications, where should colleges draw the line between acceptable assistance and unethical involvement, and how can students use these tools responsibly without compromising authenticity?
The central question is authorship. Who supplied the experience, the reasoning, the judgment, and the language that communicates the student’s identity?
Using AI to create a planning checklist, identify unanswered questions, organize research, practice an interview, or flag a confusing sentence can be similar to using other forms of educational support. Using it to invent experiences, generate the substance of an essay, manufacture reflection, or replace the student’s voice is fundamentally different.
The Common App’s current fraud policy explicitly identifies the submission of plagiarized material or output from an AI platform as fraudulent conduct. Students therefore need to understand that submitting generated prose is not merely a stylistic risk; it can violate the rules of the application platform.
Colleges should publish clear, practical boundaries. Vague instructions such as “use AI responsibly” leave too much room for conflicting interpretations. Students should know whether grammar assistance is permitted, whether brainstorming support is permitted, and whether any use must be disclosed.
My preferred model is that the student does the thinking first. Write the initial notes. Identify the experience. Explain why it mattered. Draft the core response. AI can then be used to ask questions such as, “Which part is unclear?” or “Where have I made a claim without providing an example?” That keeps the tool in a coaching role rather than an authorship role.
Students should also verify every factual statement produced by AI. These systems can sound confident while being wrong. They should never be trusted to determine a college’s current requirements, deadlines, financial aid policies, or testing rules without checking the institution’s official materials.
At Achievable, we view AI as a powerful tool that must operate within a disciplined educational framework. Subject-matter experts define what must be learned, and AI-assisted material must map to explicit objectives and pass pedagogical review before reaching students.
That same principle applies to applications: AI should support a student’s thinking, not impersonate it.
If you could redesign the way students prepare for college beginning in their first year of high school, what single mindset, habit, or educational experience would you prioritize to maximize both admission success and long-term academic fulfillment?
I would teach students to build a regular practice of pursuing genuine questions and reflecting on what they learn.
That sounds simple, but it changes the focus of high school. Instead of asking, “What activity will look impressive?” the student begins asking, “What am I curious about, and what can I do to understand it more deeply?”
The student might keep a small learning journal or project log. Each week, they could record a question, what they tried, what they discovered, where they were wrong, and what they want to explore next. The subject could come from a class, a job, a family responsibility, a hobby, a community problem, or something they encountered online.
Over time, that practice develops several valuable abilities. Students become more aware of how they learn. They become less afraid of not knowing the answer immediately. They learn to break large problems into smaller steps, seek useful feedback, recognize weak assumptions, and connect ideas across subjects.
It also produces a more authentic college application. By senior year, the student does not need to manufacture a narrative. They have a record of the questions they pursued, the projects they attempted, the failures they encountered, and the interests that remained important over time.
Parents can support this by providing encouragement, access, and perspective without managing every outcome. Not every interest needs to become an organization, award, nonprofit, or business. Sometimes a teenager should be allowed to study something because it is fascinating.
That mindset is closely connected to what we try to build through adaptive learning at Achievable. Effective learners pay attention to what they know, identify where they are uncertain, take the next appropriate step, and use feedback to adjust.
College admission is one transition in a much longer educational life. The best preparation is not building the perfect résumé. It is becoming someone who knows how to remain curious, learn independently, and continue developing when the path is not fully defined.
About Justin Pincar
Justin Pincar is the Managing Director of Achievable, a modern exam-preparation platform that combines expert-developed curriculum with adaptive learning, memory science, personalized review, and performance analytics. After beginning his career at Google, Pincar spent more than a decade building education technology products. He leads Achievable’s engineering and product development and remains directly involved in evaluating student feedback and improving the learning experience.
