The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions

About The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions

In this podcast series, we break down the complex game that is elite college admissions and the strategies and pitfalls students need to adopt or beware of if they hope to win admission to one of America’s top colleges. “The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising. Sam is a published scientist, having spent four years as a neuroscience researcher at Columbia University. Building upon his work in research and academia—as well as over a decade in educational services—Sam spearheaded the Great Minds Advising program, a premium college consulting service based in the New York Metropolitan Area and helping top students across the U.S. and other countries abroad. Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2025–26 application cycle. Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early). For the first time, in this podcast, Sam and his team reveal the secrets and strategies they have used to help their students consistently beat the game of elite college admissions. Web: greatmindsadvising.com Contact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contact Newsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletter Email: info@greatmindsadvising.com FB: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising IG: instagram.com/greatmindsadvising

Publisher

Great Minds Advising

Category

education · kids & family · kids & family

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 May 2024

Latest episode

12 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

2 of 67 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   12 Sept 2026

   Should You “Start An Organization” For Elite College Admissions?

   Host [Host Name] interviews [Guest Name, Credential] about the pitfalls of starting organizations for elite college admissions, revealing how to build impactful ventures instead.

2. 

   28 Aug 2026

   6 Admissions Truths That Sound Completely Wrong

   In elite college admissions, intuition can work against you—because the most logical moves are often the ones everyone else is making. In this episode, we unpack six counterintuitive admissions truths, from why colleges that are better “fits” are harder to get into to why elite admissions can punish the very pre-professional ambition that attracts students to top colleges in the first place. We explore how unconventional thinking can outperform the intuitive playbook most applicants use...

3. 

   20 Aug 2026

   The Truth About Sports & Elite College Admissions

   While high school sports may provide many non-admissions benefits, for the vast majority of students, they do very little to improve the odds of admission to top colleges. In this episode, we explain why sports are often highly common, non-differentiating, and irrelevant to most students’ case for admission—while also being extremely costly in terms of time. We cover some notable exceptions (e.g. niche sports, sports-related academic hooks) and offer best practices for students trying t...

Inside a recent episode

Taking A Top Student’s Profile To The Next Level [Case Study]

Published 24 Mar 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] I think that will be part of it. And those will definitely be relevant fields. But I think it will be bigger than that and probably a little bit more interdisciplinary to sort of subsume more of the student's strengths and some other interesting creative themes that will help differentiate her from other STEM applicants. And so to that end, we're sort of starting to lean in that direction. This activity, the sound engineer for acapella, I love, right? And why do I love it? Because it's taking her STEM skill sets and her STEM interests but applying it to the more creative part of her background, which is the acapella and the music, right? […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.4 / 5

76 ratings

Spotify

3.7 / 5

16 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 27 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

20

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

84

Contact The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about The Game: A Guide to Elite College Admissions