 Hi everybody! Lucas next to me. Hi! I'm Francesca. Francesca! What do you do Francesca? I am one of the essay experts and teachers at SCORE and we're here today at the University of Michigan. SCORE is an entirely virtual company and it's a little bit weird operating a virtual company. I mean on one hand you save a ton of money and I can take those savings and make the programs cheaper for people like you. On the other hand though there's a bunch of people that work for SCORE that I have never actually met face to face but I'm just going to walk with one of our essay experts and she happens to be a student at the University of Michigan. Coincidentally my mom lives like 40 minutes down the road and so when I was visiting the United States last year in summer of 2021 I was able to go visit Francesca too because I was like man I'm only like at less than an hour away from the campus. I can go check out the campus. You can show me around maybe we can talk a little bit about what we do here at SCORE and this is that video. So currently I'm a senior at the University of Michigan. I'm studying computer science and Asian studies. My time here has been great. It's really nice being back here on campus and I'm just so excited to have all the opportunities open up once again. So what classes are you taking right now? Like three. All right so I'm taking three Chinese courses because we have really great language options available for us and I'm learning Chinese as my language. I'm taking one computer science course about databases, a course about acupuncture and a course for my major that helps us get introduced to the world of research. How do you like it here? I mean what's the vibe? It's pretty nice. I think it's a really nice thing. It's really nice. I think it's um I really enjoy like the collaborative vibe here. There's like a lot of people here that always want to help out and always want to work together and that was one of the biggest things that drew me to U of M was just like being a part of groups that actually wanted to work together and not having someone you know want to take over the entire group. It's really great when everyone just works together towards one common goal. So I've been really enjoying that in all my classes. How did you end up here? Like did you apply to a few other places? Yeah so I'm from Michigan. So first of all Michigan U of M was in state for me. Um so this was sort of like the top of my in-state list. I also applied to the Michigan State University. Out of state I applied to Purdue University and um Johns Hopkins University. The major, how did you decide to do computer science, Asian studies? It's an interesting combination to me. Alright so I'm gonna give the camera like what I give in my interviews just in case anyone watches this. This is definitely the truth. Okay so essentially you know I first came into U of M actually in the College of Engineering so I knew that I wanted to do something that was more analytical, more science-y but then I actually ended up switching out into the College of Literature Sciences and Arts and U of M is very unique in the sense that you can have computer science as either a LSA or an engineering student and so because of that I chose computer science because it was a great route to practice my analytical skills and just learn more about technology in the world but then I really wanted that you know humanities aspect which is why I chose Asian studies just because of my background as being part Vietnamese and part Chinese. I wanted to learn more about where I came from culturally. What are some of your favorite places on campus or in this area of Ann Arbor? Yeah so this entire area that you see right now and behind us we're on the dyag which is just this really big place on campus that has like a lot of intersecting roads so there's usually a lot of foot traffic here you'll usually walk through the dyag to get through to your classes but right over there on the M is what we call the block M so we sort of have this superstition that if you step on the block M you're going to fail your first exam here at U of M so to this day I have not stepped on the block M. Over there so these two buildings so all the way over there is that's the undergraduate library or what we call it is the ugly it is a little bit ugly but it's a really great place to work so the library is one of my favorite places to work it's set up really nicely where it's like the first floor is like the loudest and there's four floors so in the fourth floor is the quietest so it's been really great so that's really cool we have a new museum that opened up like the natural science museum so you can see like bones of like dinosaurs in there and like people working and like there are actually classes that get held around in that building so that one's always nice to visit I'm a huge fan of movies so we have two movie theaters here one of them is called the state theater that's more of like your traditional movie theater the other one is called the michigan theater and that one I think used to be sort of like a performance hall turned movie theater so like they sort of have like the screen set up on like sort of like a stage um and it's really nice like they have an interesting selection of movies not always like the big name ones but I watched some really interesting movies there like parasite parasite my favorite movie but they have like I want to say like more critically acclaimed so like joker was in there jojo rabbit they have an interesting selection but I'm never disappointed because it's usually pretty good I suppose I should just pause here for a second and go back how exactly did I hire francesca in the first place score was popping off in 2021 and we went from having just like 10 students to about 30 or 40 in just a few months and it was very quickly apparent that I was not going to be able to do all of this work myself but on reddit I put up a job ad for essay experts I was looking for people to help me do my part of the work at score you know help students with their essays and this is a little bit of what that job is like I want to talk about the essay editing that you do with people like what drew you to that and maybe you know how do you feel about doing it so far now that you've been going at it for a few months yeah no I love it um I'm have a huge editing snob like it's gonna sound weird but I really enjoy the process of applying to stuff and interviewing to stuff shows yeah thank you but college applications for me was just like a really great time because that's honestly where I first discovered that I liked writing was because like I feel like it's such an art to be able to write like college applications especially for the US where you have the common application it's very much about telling your life story and honestly these applications really help you throughout um your career bees you'll be doing that a lot so I mean I really enjoy editing those you know it's funny you say that about like kind of discovering that you like writing through that process because that's exactly what Julie told me in the video I made in Cincinnati oh really yeah like we were talking about that and I worked with her you know as her editor for that process and she was you know she got more into it I even gave her a couple of my books oh my gosh about writing and stuff so yeah it's something where I think you can actually discover like maybe you have a talent for writing or maybe you actually like writing and you learn that by doing these essays and things how do you think your own personal experience applying to universities helps you with other people's experience right yeah so I've obviously like I've been to this process before so I think on one hand like I'm very understanding of what students are going through right now like I know it's a stressful time so like I understand that there are like lots of other things go on your life right now but I also know that like you know this is like a very important time in your life right so I can sort of understand I guess like all the stresses that is going on and in a way sort of like help organize like all of your thoughts that are going on during this time and like really dig in deep into what makes a really great common application or just a great college essay in general. Do you have any advice? One of the biggest things that I say is that you want to be telling a story about yourself right because this common application or this personal statement is going to be honestly like the first time that the admissions committee is going to know who you are and let your personality shine through it because that's how they get to know you know what type of fit you are for the school what type of student you are so really tell a great story about yourself that has a great beginning middle and end you want to show how much you've grown during this time and just really show you know your demonstrated capacities as a student in university. If you got somebody who like just can't figure out what to do they don't know what to write they're totally blocked what would you tell them to do? Come talk to us. I didn't even tell you to do that you just did it on your own that's why I like her. No um I mean that's like a great idea so like honestly I when I first started writing my college application I actually wrote an entire essay and then totally scrapped that idea. When you do that you can sort of like think about what directions you want to go so like sometimes if you want to start you can like think backwards like what's something that I want to show the committee like what is the story that I want to tell and then work backwards from that like how has this you know effect in my life what are specific instances I can talk about that and then would that make like a great essay? I always feel like you said something really important think about it like if you're not thinking about it when you're not writing it's going to be much harder to actually sit down and write. I feel like that's really important to do. Yeah like not gonna lie for like all this college application process I think I like lived and breathed like the college application process so yeah. I feel like that even even if I just have to write an important email it's like mulling on it you know during the day thinking about it helps you actually sit down and do it. It really does. I guess I wanted to ask you like what your first impression of score was and how you like working with us so far like I kind of like I might not end up in the video but that's also a little bit me wanting to know. Just like he was off and I'm kidding. Yeah he runs away. Like this college counseling slash like helping other people like write essays and things like that like I knew we had that in the US but I wasn't really aware of it like outside of the US so this was been really interesting. It's been really nice working with students like I think it's really opened my eyes to like different perspectives just working in like another country. It forced me to be like aware of other things that are going on like in their country and not just my own. I really love working with my students honestly like coming out after every like counseling session or my teaching sessions like I'm always super happy because I just love working with students so. Francesca applied for a Fulbright award to go and be a teacher in Korea which is awesome. For those who don't know how Fulbright works in the United States it sends Americans to other countries to be teachers and it also helps people study in the US. It all is about cultural exchange. So Francesca got the award to go be a teacher in Korea which is an absolutely amazing assignment and it also means that you're not supposed to have another job because your full-time job is basically to be an ambassador of the United States. So this is going to be the last year that Francesca works with us for a while because next year she's going to be working on this Fulbright project and I'm extremely proud of her and very happy for her. One of my goals is to meet everybody who's connected to score whether that's a client or whether that's you people or whether that's the people that work for score and regardless of the distance I want to make it a point to at least meet everybody once. I hope I can make more videos like this where I show you more people from score and give you more one-on-one time with them like this because honestly we have an amazing team. I firmly believe that the strength of score is this team. It's this team that makes everything possible and I'm super proud of everybody on it and I want you to be able to see that. I want you to feel that for them like the way I feel it for them. I want you to have that experience as well. I want you to see why I love these people so much and even though I'm going to miss Francesca a ton next year like it pains me to let her go. I'm really happy that she's getting to do something amazing and that's what we're about. We're about helping you do something amazing. Thank you for that and for all your service and all your help so far. It's been an awesome year and a half. I hope that you continue to do some work with us in the future when you're done with your Fulbright stuff. We will be here. The door will be open I guarantee it and for everybody else there watching thanks for checking this out. I appreciate it. I'll see you next week.