15 Aug Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre Celebrate Their Tenth Ivy League Offer – Meet Vadin Thadhani
Watch the video! Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre student Vadin is heading to Dartmouth College.
For international students, there’s an acceptance rate of 0.3% for a place at an Ivy League university. Securing the tenth offer for our students is a remarkable achievement.
Ivy League application support for students in private education costs around £20,000 per pupil. Students at Newham Collegiate Sixth Form in East London, receive it for free.
Vadin Thadhani will be studying at the Ivy League’s Dartmouth College in the USA. He has earned Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre in London its tenth Ivy League offer in five years.
Vadin joined The NCS with the aspiration to study at one of the most competitive universities in the UK and a dream of doing something inspiring with his love of maths. With 6 Grade 9s, 2 Grade 8s and 2 Grade 7s he naturally aspired to study at Oxbridge and took full advantage of our dedicated Oxbridge programme. However, he was also able to benefit from our unique US University Programme which prepared him to achieve a high SAT entrance exam score and submit a stellar application to the Ivy Leagues. Alongside this, Vadin’s continued education at one of the world’s best universities will be funded via a $320,000 scholarship.
“I want to be a mathematician, but not just that. I want to be able to teach maths in underprivileged areas. So I’m looking at Latin America or India, and I want to be able to teach to students that have learning disabilities because that’s where it hits hardest.”
– Vadin discusses his aim
Complementing our successful Oxbridge Preparation Programme, our US Ivy League Preparation Programme has yielded spectacular results. In five years it has helped eight students from East London continue their education journeys at the Ivy League, with a total of ten offers. With such a low acceptance rate for international student applications, this continued success places Newham Collegiate as one of the best sixth forms in London for student progression and support for applying to the Ivy League, Oxbridge and Russell Group universities.
Vadin joins fellow NCS alumni into the Ivy League. In 2020 four Newham Collegiate students – Lennox, Catherine, Xuan and Umar – all received offers to study in America. They followed in the footprints of Isuf Mohammed and our original trailblazing student Tafsia Shikdar who recently graduated from MIT and is now working for Beyond Meat, a company in Los Angeles that creates plant-based eco products and food. Our free Ivy League preparation programme gave them all the information, skills and confidence to put in a successful application to these prestigious universities.
“The calibre of teachers is extremely high here. The NCS looks for excellence and even if you aren’t excellent at whatever you do, you can become excellent here. You really can. “
– Vadin on his experience of Newham Collegiate’s exceptional teaching
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Our Ivy League Preparation Programme consists of distinct phases.
In the first term for our Year 12 students, the senior admissions officer from Harvard University visits the NCS to give an overview of studying abroad. Students who want to explore applying to the US further attend a one-day Common Application course. Here they learn about the US application process and receive support in writing their US personal statement and college essays.
To support students with the American entrance examinations (SAT), we fly in an expert SAT tutor from New York to lead a week-long breakout course in understanding and acing the aptitude test. The practise continues throughout the summer holiday and autumn term with regular Skype sessions to fine-tune responses.
“Coming to The NCS has meant that I’ve been able to really gain the skills from a tutor from the US and really be able to apply my knowledge in such a way that I’ve been able to apply abroad. And that means that I’ve been able to gain admission to Dartmouth College.”
– Vadin on our Ivy League Preparation Programme
A group of students then have the opportunity to attend an exploration trip to Boston and New York. The trip allows them to visit MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia universities for tours, application guidance and to sit in lectures delivered by Ivy League professors.
On the trip they also have the chance to meet NCS alumni currently studying at Ivy League universities. All this experience helps our candidates discover more about how the American higher education system differs to that of the UK and get a feel for student life by speaking with current undergraduates and realise that the dream is actually attainable.
“At The NCS you’re able to gain opportunities you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. If I went to the school I was initially going to go to for sixth form. I would have never thought of applying to America.”
– Vadin discusses how attending The NCS opened the possibility of studying in America
A masterclass on the application form with our tutor in New York rounds up the visit and moves them into the final phase of practise interviews. The trip provides many experiences for the students to discuss courses and cement decisions on which universities to apply to.
Private Schools Vs. The NCS
It’s widely reported that students from private schools – including Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow and Godolphin – are now preferring to study abroad at the USA Ivy League, rather than at Oxbridge. To help them prepare for the rigorous application process, parents of private school students are known to spend in the region of £20,000 per pupil for the guidance. All with no guarantee of success.
By comparison, The NCS provides the same high level expertise to our students, including a trip to visit the Ivy’s in America, absolutely free. The programme is becoming an increasingly popular option for our students – many of whom live in some of the most disadvantaged boroughs in London.
Seeing our students continue to succeed on our Ivy League Preparation Programme confirms Newham Collegiate’s position as one of the leading academic 16-19 Free Schools in London and UK.
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