Beyond Acceptance: The Transformational Journey of Applying to Grad School (or Anything Else)

My wife Lauren and I met at a co-working space in San Francisco in our mid-twenties. I was working an entry-level position at a creative consulting agency, at the bottom of the pyramid. Lauren was making $15/hour at an arts nonprofit, living rent-free with her aunt. 

We both saw no pathway to climb in our current jobs and chose two different paths to reaching for more.

I quit the creative agency to become an entrepreneur, designing my first online course. Lauren applied to grad school.

Neither path was easy, but both catapulted us from entry-level jobs to the careers of our dreams. What got us there wasn’t our qualifications, but our courage to go after something bigger than we were ready for.

Those leaps transformed us. We learned that you don’t wait until you’re qualified—you become qualified in the process of taking action. When you pursue something that stretches you, the journey itself develops the exact skills and confidence you need to succeed. 

Since then, Lauren and I have shared a mission of helping others take similar leaps. (If you hang out with us too much, you risk quitting your day job). We love helping people become active creators of their lives rather than passive participants in systems that don’t serve them.

What we’ve noticed is that both kinds of leaps—starting a business and applying to grad school—require the same underlying capacities. People without the ideal background, resources, or pedigree often overlook the soft skills that can propel them over perceived limitations. These leaps require courage and the ability to articulate a vision that moves you and others. 

But there is also a difference in our two approaches.

My work tends to resonate with people who have considerable autonomy—freelancers, creators, entrepreneurs, executives, and others who design their own career paths in the wild frontiers of professional independence. 

But the reality is that most people’s careers don’t unfold that way. They navigate through institutions—companies, universities, governments, and nonprofits. Their success depends on leveraging opportunities these organizations provide and successfully passing through gatekeepers who control access to advancement. This is where Lauren is the yin to my yang. 

While I’ve spent a decade helping people create freedom outside traditional structures, she’s mastered the art of navigating within them—and teaching others to do the same. Through her program Grad App Academy, she’s coached over 500 people from around the world into gaining admission to elite schools including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and pretty much any other top U.S. university you can name.

I’m incredibly proud and excited to share that she’s now distilled all that experience and knowledge into a new book, Beyond Acceptance: The Transformational Journey of Applying to Grad School.

The Hidden Curriculum No One Teaches

Her book reveals the “hidden curriculum” of applying to grad school – a series of rules, insights, and strategic levers that no one teaches you, and yet vastly increase your odds of getting into the school of your dreams. These tactics are crucial for standing out from the crowd of more than 1 million people who apply to U.S. graduate programs every single year.

As a co-founder of our company, Forte Labs, Lauren also weaves in many of the ideas and principles you may have seen in my content or books, but geared toward grad school applications.

Most people approach grad school applications by working harder: taking more classes to boost their GPA, studying endlessly for standardized tests, applying to dozens of schools hoping something sticks. They’re exhausted, scattered, and often end up with mediocre results because they’re spreading their energy too thin.

Lauren teaches the opposite approach: work smarter by being strategic and intentional.

Instead of applying to 15 schools, apply to 4-7 programs that truly resonate with your vision. Instead of trying to compensate for every perceived weakness, leverage your unique strengths. Instead of cramming more credentials onto your resume, craft a compelling narrative that helps admissions committees see the value you’ll bring.

The title captures what makes this book different from every other grad school application guide out there. Yes, it contains all the tactical advice you need—how to choose programs, craft compelling essays, secure strong recommendations, and navigate interviews. But more importantly, it teaches the transformational mindset shifts that will serve you for taking any big leap: 

Curiosity over Conditioning- Learning to follow what genuinely lights you up rather than what society tells you you should do.

Courage over Credentials – Taking action despite feeling unqualified, reaching out to strangers, and creating your own opportunities rather than waiting for permission.

Compassion over Criticism – Silencing your inner critic to see your unique gifts and tell your story powerfully.

Intuition over Information – Learning to trust your inner wisdom when facing uncertainty.

These aren’t just principles for grad school applications. They’re the capacities that allow you to navigate any inflection point in your life with confidence and clarity. They’re what allow you to stop letting gatekeepers determine your worth and start trusting yourself to create the future you envision.

Whether you’re applying to grad school this year or considering any other big leap, this book will help you develop the courage to go after what you deeply want—and become the kind of person who continues pursuing meaningful goals long after the acceptance letters arrive.

Lauren has seen her former students use the same skills she’s taught to win major scholarships, grant funding, and even get into start-up incubators like Y Combinator. 

Start With the Most Important Question

Most books on this topic focus narrowly on the “how,” taking for granted that getting a graduate degree is the right choice for you. Lauren’s process is much deeper, more personal, and more foundational. It begins with crafting a core vision you have for your life and then determining if grad school is the shortcut to that future, or a detour.

Starting with this foundation has so many powerful advantages. First, it may cause you to realize that grad school isn’t the right path for you at all, saving you years and many thousands of dollars. Depending on what you are trying to achieve in your life and in the world, she asks you to consider all kinds of alternative pathways that may be a much better fit, including:

Learning the skills you seek through work experience (and getting paid for it!)Finding mentors in your field you could learn from directlyTaking online courses, bootcamps, cohorts, fellowships, or other programs that more directly target your goalStarting an independent project or even an organization that teaches you through real-life experience

This is such a valuable, crucial step! Lauren often notices that many people go to grad school for the wrong reasons – because they don’t know what else to do, because it seems like the “next logical thing,” or to please their parents. Lacking a compelling vision for where they’re going, they casually walk into this multi-year, six-figure commitment without a plan for who they want to be on the other end.

If you decide that grad school is indeed the right choice for you, then starting with your vision will be just as important, since the lack of one is the single biggest mistake that Lauren has seen in the over 1,000 essays she’s reviewed.

As she writes in her book:

“Instead of “I want to work in renewable energy,” I want to hear “I want to accelerate the transition to clean energy in rural communities that have been economically dependent on fossil fuel industries.” Instead of “I want to get into tech,” I want to hear “I want to develop technologies that democratize access to high-quality film special effects.”

Once you’re clear on your vision, Lauren then takes you through a strategic, targeted, and proven process for developing the best possible application you can, including dozens of insights and tricks she’s gleaned from seeing who gets in and who doesn’t.

For example:

How to reach out to current students to get insight into what it’s actually like to be in the program you’re applying to, and what unwritten rules determine who gets inRevealing essay prompts that help you uncover the stories, milestones, and paradigm-shifting moments that made you who you are todayGuidelines on when and how to use AI to save time, and when to avoid it at all costsHow to prep your stories and examples in advance, so you’re not scrambling during an interviewHow to draft your own letters of recommendation to make it far more likely you’ll get them submitted on timeHow to negotiate your funding with the university you got accepted to, instead of just settling for whatever they offer you

Lauren started her business because she was the first in her family to go to college. She witnessed the many built-in disadvantages for people like her trying to ascend through the halls of elite institutions. At UC Berkeley, she served on an admissions committee and taught as a Graduate Student Instructor, and saw firsthand how unfair and opaque the entire admissions process could be.

She has spent the last year pouring her love and wisdom into this book to make her knowledge more accessible to others, especially anyone who doesn’t have the perfect resume or the most pristine pedigree.

Her mission is to serve those who didn’t go to the most prestigious schools, are applying from outside the U.S., received a low GPA, or are switching into new fields they haven’t previously studied. 

For all these people, applying to schools and programs of various kinds is still one of the most reliable paths to upward mobility, financial stability, and impact. This book contains the best advice I’ve ever seen on how to take that path confidently and successfully.

The reason it’s called “Beyond Acceptance” is that the skills you gain, the story you tell, and ultimately the person you become as a result of applying to grad school, or applying to anything, will continue to serve you for the rest of your life, whether in business, parenting, advocacy, relationships, or in retirement.

Lauren writes that “Your purpose isn’t something you do; it is something you are, a state of being that can’t be taken away by getting rejected from grad school.”

Perhaps the most fundamental thing of all that you’ll take away from this book is how to believe in your vision, whether or not traditional systems of power recognize it or not. What that ultimately requires is learning to listen to your inner compass, no matter what society conditions you to believe.

I encourage you to pick up a copy on Amazon.

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