What Do You Want College Admissions to Know About You
In that location is and then much misinformation out there regarding how to get into America's virtually selective colleges, and sadly, a lot of information technology comes from high schoolhouse counselors themselves.
Luckily, by reading on, you volition get some of the best advice that many high school-based counselors are unable or unwilling to give their students.
Here are the 3 Dos and 3 Don'ts to help you lot get accustomed into America's most selective colleges:
1. Don't exist well-rounded. Do be well-lopsided.
Why well-rounded students get skipped
Information technology almost doesn't seem fair. Y'all work hard throughout high schoolhouse, joining clubs and sports teams, focusing on getting good grades, trying to be the most well-rounded pupil you can possibly exist – and so comes time to beginning applying to colleges.
For years, y'all take dreamed of attending some of the more selective colleges in the nation: Duke, UC Berkeley, Michigan, perhaps some of the Ivies, similar Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. You take put in the work, built the resume.
Applying to college tin be an heady all the same stressful time in a high-schooler's life. After all, this is what all the hard piece of work was about. This is why you packed your schedule with extracurriculars. This is why you lot stayed up late studying for those exams.
But before y'all begin submitting those applications, in that location is something important you should know: higher admissions officers are not looking for well-rounded students.
On the surface, that might non make much sense.
Let'due south take a deeper dive into why well-rounded students become passed over and what admissions officers are really looking for in high school applicants.
Well-rounded student vs. well-rounded class
If you are a well-rounded student, don't take this personally. But consider this a fair alert: college admissions officers are not looking for well-rounded students.
If you're going down the path of well-roundedness and y'all take your eyes assail a elevation college, you need a change of grade – before information technology's besides tardily.
Many students might find this confusing. After all, you've been told time and time again past teachers, parents, and counselors that you need to bring together a wide variety of clubs, effort out for some sports teams, volunteer, get involved however possible.
"If I can show colleges that I can do a piddling bit of everything, then surely, I'll set myself autonomously from the rest of the competition."
Unfortunately, this sort of thinking couldn't be further from the truth.
The reality is that admissions officers are not looking for well-rounded students. They are trying to put together a well-rounded class. The error that so many college applicants make is trying to be a jack of all trades, which inevitably leads to being a main of none.
With this in mind, you likely only take one question to ask: then what does information technology take to go accepted to highly selective colleges?
What admissions officers are looking for
The simple truth is that if you want to get to a top college, you can't just alloy in with the crowd—you have to stand up out amid the other applicants. That may seem like straightforward advice, only it'south far more than hard to put into practise.
Virtually anybody applying to the Ivy League has proficient grades. Many played sports. Many were involved with the same types of activities and organizations: choir, National Honor Society, and Pupil Quango. On their own, none of these activities will make your application stand out to top colleges.
To college admissions officers, you must exist able to prove that you are an applicant who deserves their attention, interest, and ultimately, consideration.
And with many top colleges merely spending eight minutes or fewer on any given application, you need to spark their interest – fast.
Brainstorm what sets you autonomously, what differentiates you from the mounds of well-rounded students who also desire ane of the select few spots in the upcoming freshman form.
In ane of his pop blog posts, Allen Cheng, a Harvard alumnus and co-founder of a higher test prep company, notes that there are 2 things that elite higher admissions officers are looking for from applicants; they seek those "who are going to accomplish globe-irresolute things" and those "who are going to contribute positively to their communities while in college and help other students accomplish peachy things besides."
Understandably, neither ane of those traits are a walk in the park. But with your application, it is your job not to demonstrate how much of a well-rounded educatee yous are, simply rather to demonstrate how you are the right applicant to accomplish such remarkable things in the future.
At the end of the mean solar day, being a well-rounded student may atomic number 82 to modest successes in high school, but when it comes to applying to the nation's most sought-afterwards colleges, exist sure you are demonstrating what sets you apart. The members of the side by side generation who will alter the globe are almost certainly not well-rounded – they are masters of their trades.
2. Don't fiddle. Do focus.
Why the all-time higher applicants are the most focused
Focus is key.
You've already learned that the first key to acceptance into schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford is abandoning the image of a well-rounded student, and instead highlighting what sets you apart, and what makes you the type of student who volition go on to modify the world someday.
We know that alumni of many top colleges are oftentimes well-known for their astonishing contributions to the world – Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Olympic medalists…But long before that, while they're still back in high school, working hard with their minds assault attending one of those schools, how do admissions officers pick them out? What is it that sets these time to come leaders apart in high school – and on their applications – that so clearly speaks to what their long-term success will look similar?
The clandestine is that the best college applicants are also the nearly focused candidates. Permit's dive a niggling deeper into what it means to be hyper-focused and what sets those students apart from the balance of the crowd.
The best college applicants don't dabble
Existence a well-rounded student is unremarkably simply another way of proverb that the student dabbles in a multitude of activities, oft without mastering any of them.
Students who detect they have strived their entire high school careers to become involved with every bit many activities as possible to "round out their resume" should mind this advice. The truth is that if you are preparing to send a competitive awarding to top colleges, you need to strop in on a select few skills or pursuits. That's where y'all should be focusing from here on out.
All those other activities, the ones y'all are doing half-heartedly or just for a participation bays – those are just time-wasters. Take some time to place those activities at present and carelessness them.
This is not to say that at that place was no value in dabbling at a younger historic period. After all, you need some time to develop your skill sets and place where your talents lie. Merely as you progress through high school, and particularly as you prepare for college, y'all should be narrowing your focus and eliminating the activities that simply serve every bit distractions.
The best college applicants are hyper-focused
Take a moment to think well-nigh the people who are the all-time at what they do in the world. Think about Facebook founder Marker Zuckerberg and NBA superstar LeBron James. No 1 talks about Zuckerberg's ability to play basketball, and no i discusses James'south web development skills. You know why? Because those things don't matter. Information technology'south not what makes them swell. What matters are the skill sets each of them uniquely garners that make them truly corking.
It's a safe bet to say that these height-performers cultivated their skills through focused attention and work.
That's the aforementioned type of hyper-focus high schoolhouse students should employ to get the most competitive college applicants.
Focus, as defined in a Psychology Today article, "involves the power to pay attention to things that will help avoid distractions that will hurt your work efforts."
Information technology's really as uncomplicated equally that.
Discard the activities that are time-wasters and spend your fourth dimension and energy on your true strengths. Some might call this your "fasten," "pointiness," personal make, or elevator pitch – any the term, it's the overall theme that you lot're trying to convey to admissions officers.
So what does information technology look similar to harness the type of hyper-focus that volition atomic number 82 to admissions success? There are several tangible steps you can have.
One of the most significant leaps you can make is to eliminate unhelpful extracurriculars and instead focus on the ones that highlight your all-time skills. So many high schoolers are encouraged to take upwardly as many extracurriculars as they can – sports, music, clubs, volunteer work. Merely, admissions officers are going to wait at this list and judge you lot based on whether or not they require whatsoever special cognition or skills to succeed, or whether or not you are a leader or just another run-of-the-manufacturing plant teammate or club fellow member.
If anyone could do it but by dedicating some time, it doesn't stand out on applications.
Consider besides auditing your free time outside of schoolwork and extracurriculars, and make up one's mind if y'all're truly spending it wisely. Nosotros live fast-paced lives, and, of course, high school students have social lives to live. The advice here is not to completely disregard your social life or the small pleasures of everyday life.
Instead, it's to exist witting of where you're spending your time, and to refocus when you find yourselves straying from your long-term goals.
This type of hyper-focus is what differentiates average applicants from the "must-admits."
three. Don't give upward. Do exist gritty.
If y'all want to successfully compete for a seat at a acme college, you need a certain mindset. Later all, years of dedication, hard work and high functioning culminate with these college applications.
The college application process, and all the work that leads up to it, is enough to burn out many students. But the almost successful college applicants have one other affair in common: they are gritty.
Why gritty students have the best run a risk for admission
Angela Duckworth is a leading researcher who, literally, wrote the volume on grit and its touch on on success, called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She defines the trait equally "passion and perseverance of very long-term goals."
Co-ordinate to Duckworth's research, the most successful students are not necessarily those with the highest IQ or exam scores. Rather, she notes in her volume, "the highly successful had a kind of ferocious decision that played out in two means. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. 2nd, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not merely had decision, but they also had direction."
Duckworth is someone worth listening to when it comes to grit'south function in being accepted into elite colleges, herself having earned degrees from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Academy of Oxford. Her enquiry uses grit as the greatest predictor of long-term success, rather than talent.
Becoming a grittier person will not happen overnight. Information technology'southward a trait that you develop in the long run, with benefits that you reap lifelong.
This is to say, students who are gritty and can conspicuously demonstrate that dust on their applications have the best chance for admission to summit colleges. There is a long listing of talented applicants on the desks of Ivy League admissions officers. But those whose story is one of grittiness — a relentless pursuit of a select few strengths and overcoming of obstacles — those applicants consistently boss the admissions game.
Source: https://admissions.blog/the-3-dos-and-donts-to-get-accepted-into-americas-most-selective-colleges/
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