Maya’s Map to Western Ivey AEO & Law School

When Maya first hopped on a discovery call with us in Grade 11, she was equal parts poised and pressed for time. Her résumé was already humming—student-council executive, mock-trial captain, founder of a brand-new business club—but a single worry kept surfacing:

“The grades are there. It’s the supplementaries and interviews that scare me.”

Western Ivey with AEO status was the dream, and she knew the competition. What she didn’t yet know was how to turn a mountain of sticky-note to-dos into a strategic march toward that white envelope.

Turning Chaos into Cadence

Our first job was to tame the calendar. Together we laid out a backwards plan—OUAC submissions by August, Ivey essay drafts by September, mock interview blocks every other Friday, scholarship sprints slotted between mid-terms. Maya filled her wall with colour-coded notes; we filled the gaps with one-to-one coaching. The result? A rhythm that made 12-hour days feel navigable.

“Time management was my biggest fear,” she admitted later, “but once AdmissionPrep broke it down, the staircase appeared.”

Finding the Story Only She Could Tell

Maya’s first draft for Ivey read like a bullet-point memo—impressive, but it lacked depth and a clear story. We challenged her to dig deeper:

Why does law fascinate you more than televised courtroom drama?

What drove you to raise school-supply funds for 15 low-income families?

Every round of edits peeled another layer until her voice emerged: a leader who builds platforms for others to shine—whether that’s assembling care packages for Toronto’s unhoused or creating the very business club she once wished existed.

By November, she could condense those motivations into crisp, confident answers on camera. Rehearsing with her mentor, she learned to breathe, smile, and punch her close—skills that turned the real Ivey interview from dread to déjà vu.

The Acceptance Cascade

Then came the run of notifications:

• Laurier BBA — accepted.
• McMaster DeGroote — accepted.
• Western Ivey (BMOS + AEO) — accepted.

Three out of four schools, and the one that mattered most, all in the win column. Entrance awards stacked on top—plus the $20–25 K she pieced together from external and multi-year scholarships. “Supportive,” she said when asked for one word to sum up her journey. We’ll take it.

The Skills That Stick

Scholarship money is nice, but the lasting dividends are harder to quantify:

• A to-do system that turns any colossal project—be it case comps at Ivey or 1 L readings in law school—into bite-size tasks.
• Interview reflexes that replace filler words with purpose.
• A sharpened personal narrative she can wield in every internship pitch to come.

Maya called these “transferable skills” during her interview with us. We simply call them proof of what structured mentorship can unlock for bright and ambitious students.

Looking Forward to Goodmans Hall

This fall she’ll step onto Western’s campus with a seat reserved in Ivey’s HBA cohort, a stack of scholarship letters, and a roadmap that already stretches to corporate law. Somewhere between University College Hill and Goodmans Hall, a first-year will wonder how she pulls it all off. Maya’s answer will echo the advice she gives every younger student:

“Start early, research hard, and write the to-do list before the day begins.”

Because when ambition finally meets its match—clarity, coaching, and a cheerleader in your corner—dream programs stop feeling distant. They start feeling inevitable.

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