<p>As the entire application process has ended and our college admissions letters have been received, I guess we can now impart our newly found wisdom on the admissions process to newcomers. Basically all I'm trying to do is create a thread where people can rant about what they or others screwed up and give any advice to those who will be doing this next year.</p>
<p>Heres my contribution:
Do no procrastinate, I cannot emphasize this enough. I applied to 13 colleges I waited until winter break to start on my essays. I was not pleased with what I had to go through. It got bad enough to the point where I started to think about essay topics while I went to sleep. So procrastination = pain. Also, review your essay over and over again. Now that I look at my essays, I wince at the glaring grammatical mistakes that I made simply because I was too tired to review them any more. For college interviews, dress nice and be yourself (well a more polite version) and you'll be fine. If you find that you have nothing in common with the interviewer, don't panic. I had excellent interviews and was rejected by most of the colleges where I had the good interviews. If you don't match, maybe it's because you were not meant to be at such a place or that you got unlucky. Either way, be calm and make the best of what you get. Study hard for standardized tests and grades. Remember that there are so many brilliant people in the world and that you are simply one of them. So try your best to make yourself stand out and differentiate yourself from the others. No one said it would be easy, but often you cannot get success without hard work. I mean, you only have one life to live and every second that passes never comes back. I know this is cliche, but think of the impact that understanding this fact can have. If you spend every second trying to be the best you can be, then eventually (it is certain) you will succeed. Its funny how things work out this way. Anyways, back to the college stuff. For the SAT, here's a huge tip: take those practice tests. Standardized tests are kind of like playing basketball (or any other sport in general). You can have the vocabulary, writing skill and a brilliant mathematical mind (comparable to being good at the fundamentals of bball, such as dribbling, shooting, and passing), but you never know how good you are until you play an actual game (taking a practice test). So, take those tests.</p>