How to stand out amongst so many applications?

Applying to College
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<p>This can be answered by anyone: those who have gone through the process of applying and getting accepted to schools, parents, professors, etc.</p>

<p>Many students on this website want to stand out during the time of college admissions. Many will be applying to very selective colleges, I need to be more than the average applicant, myself included.</p>

<p>What can be done to enhance applications? Here are some questions to think about:</p>

<p>What school activities look best to college admissions officers, and in what context?</p>

<p>What activities outside of school do admissions officers like to see (such as community service, jobs, internships)? How can students go about finding these opportunities?</p>

<p>What class appear most rigorous to college admissions? How many AP classes is recommended? Are community college courses looked at more favorably, if given the chance to take them?</p>

<p>What accomplishments, either academic or extracurricular-wise appear most honorable?</p>

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<p>OP,</p>

<p>Wow, you have asked for a lot…the discussion can go on for days I’m sure! </p>

<p>Please tell us about yourself. Grade, type of school, have you taken any standardized tests yet? What are your ECs? Are you looking at the Ivies? Top LACs? Give us more to work with.</p>

<p>I bet other CC members will chime in and help out. CC has a great group of people. You will be able to tell the ones who have been here for awhile and have a great knowledge base.</p>

<p>Consider the book by Cal Newport, How to Be A High-school Superstar. Great read. He also has a blog. Also pick up The Gatekeepers. Another great read. We read those books in DDs freshman year and they helped a lot. </p>

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<p>By the time you apply to college, there’s really little that can be done to enhance your application – your transcript is your transcript, your grades are your grades, your test scores are your test scores, your EC’s are your EC’s. But, you can control two factors:</p>

<p>(1) Recommendations: Although you can’t control what a teacher writes, you can try to get a sense of what that teacher thinks of you – and if they won’t or can’t write a glowing recommendation, like those on MIT’s website (<a href=“How to write good letters of recommendation | MIT Admissions”>http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs&lt;/a&gt;), ask another teacher, even if that teacher taught you in a younger grade! To be accepted to a top college you need stellar recommendations and often times a teacher will write ‘faint praise’ that torpedo’s an application – and the student didn’t even know about it; they thought they were getting a good recommendation. If you haven’t watched this video from Amherst College, please do. Most of the comments being read out loud are from either a guidance Counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR) or Teacher Recommendations. <a href=“College Admissions: Inside the Decision Room - YouTube”>College Admissions: Inside the Decision Room - YouTube;

<p>(2) Essays: When my son and daughter were accepted to college, each received a formal letter of congratulations from their regional admissions officer with a handwritten note complementing them about their essay and how much the Admissions Committee enjoyed them. IMHO, essays are huge for selective colleges and are how Admissions Directors get a feeling for each applicant and what distinguishes one high performing applicant from another. With so many students applying to colleges that look the same on paper, essays are one of the few ways a student can stand out from the crowd.</p>

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<p>ECs- Things that teenagers don’t typically do. I remember reading a book where a student collected ice samples from local restaurants and analyzed them for bacteria and presented her findings to her congressman. Things that most students typically don’t do are what stand out the most. There are hundreds if not thousands of yearbook editors, volleyball players, and key club members. Colleges see hundreds of these kids every day, but the student that does something extraordinary is the one who stands out.</p>

<p>Community Service- Volunteering at shelters, church, hospitals, parks, etc. It’s rather easy to find</p>

<p>Rigor- Most APs are rigorous unless it’s something like Studio Art. It depends on how you do in the context of your school. If you are offered 15 APs and you take 3 for your entire high school career, you are obviously not challenging yourself.</p>

<p>Achievements- Typically anything awarded by a national organization is pretty huge. Citywide, state, regional, and national honors look good. Whether it is as an athlete or in science fairs or in debates. Essay writing contests also look good.</p>

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<p>^^ To have any meaningful impact on an application, a student needs to be thinking of all those things during their freshman and sophomore years. By the time you’re a senior, it’s too late to improve your overall course rigor, enhance your achievements, or do “more creative” EC’s. Admissions Officers understand that when a student applies to college and has been “Volunteering for the past 4 months when they haven’t done it at all in the last four years” that the student just added something at the last minute to try to make their application look better . . . and it just falls flat. </p>

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<p>I think the best way to come across as being an interesting person is to BE an interesting person. That has nothing to do with college. </p>

<p>You want to stand out? Be an interesting person. BE who you want to be. </p>

<p>Stop worrying about what colleges think. Stop worrying about what anyone else thinks and do things with your extra time that you enjoy doing.</p>

<p>We just have that whole thread about how all of these risk averse ivy league students end up miserable working like dogs on Wall St. </p>

<p>You want to be interesting? Take some risks. I’m not talking about irresponsible risks, but risk striking up a conversation with someone, take risks socially. Have a risk blow up, and pick yourself up and do it again. </p>

<p>You want to get into the top colleges, risk not doing what all of standard advice says to get in, do what you want, and become interesting. Get out of your comfort zone. </p>

<p>And I’m taking about extracurricular. Obviously you have to do well in school. </p>

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<p>@NewHavenCTmom‌ here’s a little bit about myself:</p>

<p>I’m currently a junior in high school. I have a 4.0 UW GPA, and a 4.045 Weighted GPA (my school doesn’t offer very much in the way of honors classes. All of the classes are either “regular” or AP, and the AP’s are the only ones given honors credit). I have taken two AP classes (both in my junior year). I attend a public high school, and to be honest, I’m not really sure how it ranks (I haven’t been overly impressed with the class rigor. If I would’ve done high school all over again, I would have gone to a private school).</p>

<p>As far as standardized testing, I have only taken the ACT. I took the April national administration and got a 30 composite, with 34M, 34E, 29S, 23R, 10W (the reading score was pitiful). I’m still waiting on the official score report for the state administered test I took on the 23rd of April, but my English teacher had special access to my English, Writing, and Composite scores on her account. I got 35E, 10W, 32C. I will possibly be retaking it in the fall in hopes of getting at least a 33 (unless it isn’t worth it?). In the fall, I will be signing up to take the SAT Subject Tests in Math 2 and Physics. I’m confident that I can score very high on these since they are my two strongest subjects in school. I also have completed AP Calculus AB and BC along with first year physics this year. My physics teacher was kind of enough to lend me a textbook and a prep book to use for studying over the summer, so I will just be refining skills.</p>

<p>I have some pretty good extracurricular activities, but my biggest flaw is that I haven’t had many opportunities to act as a leader in them. Here is a list of all the ones I can think of:</p>

<p>Choir/Chamber Singers/Madrigal Singers
Band (Marching and Concert)
Tutoring in math (both private and volunteer)
Science Club
Music Therapy (I’ll explain this later on)
WYSE Team (Explanation below)
Math Team
Musical Theater Productions (I play piano in the pit orchestra every year)
Teaching piano lessons (private lessons)
Kolla Voce (an after school men’s choir)
All-State ILMEA Choir (explanation below)</p>

<p>That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Obviously, I’m very involved with the music program at my school. In my senior year, I would like to join my school’s Scholastic Bowl team as well. In addition, I’m hoping to acquire leadership positions in choir and band (hopefully a class officer for choir and being a section leader for band).</p>

<p>One thing that not as many people have heard of is music therapy. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I originally intended to study music therapy as a major in college (since then, I have drastically changed my mind and want to go into either mechanical engineering, math, or physics). With this in mind, I decided to take the initiative to contact my local hospital and meet with the music therapist who works there. Since then, she has been able to set me up with the opportunity to play piano in the surgery waiting room in the hospital, so I spend one hour a week doing that at the hospital.</p>

<p>WYSE stands for Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering. It is a competition that occurs at the regional, sectional, and state levels. Essentially, it is competitive test taking. Each student on the team chooses two tests to participate in that have to do with the STEM area (in particular, I take the math and physics tests). They are timed tests, and we get awards both individually and as a team based on our performance on the tests. </p>

<p>All-State ILMEA Choir is an auditioned opportunity. Each year, I spend about 2 or 3 months prior to the audition date preparing about 5 songs. After auditions, students are selected to attend the District Festivals, where we work with talented directors all day on the pieces we auditioned with, having the goal in mind that we perform a large concert at the end of the day. After attending District Festivals, students are selected from there to go to All-State, which is even more selective. Once selected, students spend 4 days rehearsing for almost 9 hours a day on different pieces, and again the ultimate goal is the chance to perform a concert for a large audience. To put it in perspective, about 20 students auditioned at my school, about 9 were chosen for District, and only 3 were chosen for All-State.</p>

<p>Ok, there’s extracurriculars…finally, you asked about colleges. If I have decent chances, my ultimate reaches (and honestly, dream schools) would be either MIT or CalTech. After that, I plan on applying to Carnegie Mellon University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, University of Iowa, and some other schools that I have yet to visit (that’s my task for this summer).</p>

<p>I apologize, that was WAY longer than I thought it would be…</p>

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<p>I should also note that this discussion doesn’t have to be about my particular situation; I meant for it to be a general discussion for any students planning on applying to colleges soon.</p>

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<p>@ClassicRockerDad‌ that’s why I suggested Cal Newports book. Your sentiments mirror that of his. Be interesting. Be passionate about life.</p>

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<p>Your love of music speaks volumes. There’s a thread that runs through those activities. Especially the Music therapy, it sounds pretty interesting! I bet you can write a great essay about your music therapy experiences. </p>

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<p>Oh, I also forgot to mention National Honor Society for ECs.</p>

<p>@ClassicRockerDad‌ I completely understand what you’re saying. My biggest problem is that there’s so much I want to take advantage of and get involved in, but I don’t know where to find the opportunities. I’d like to find more ways to get involved with science and math and engineering, but the only thing I can possibly think of is being part of a science fair (which my school doesn’t sponsor, so I would have to find somewhere else to do it). </p>

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<p>It sounds like you are doing great. Your ecs are good. I would agree that the essay is important. I think they prefer that you take APs at your school before taking CC classes.</p>

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<p>What stood out: Music therapy interest and actions. Do more with that. </p>

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<p>Any suggestions on how I could expand on that? The main problem is that, being a hospital, it’s hard to get clearance doing much else. In the past, I’ve spent days off of school shadowing the music therapist, seeing what she does, etc. I could see if she would give me a chance to interact with patients under her supervision, but I have a feeling that would be pretty restricted. But if you can think of anything that I’ve overlooked, I would gladly take advice!</p>

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<p>Can you become a volunteer at the facility? Then maybe you can introduce the program through the volunteer dept. Maybe other students with musical talents will join you.</p>

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<p>Another vote for you reading the Cal Newport “How to Be a High School Superstar” book.</p>

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<p>I actually am an official volunteer at the hospital (it’s required if I do regular work there). They always have trouble finding other musicians, unfortunately, but many people there make it known that they appreciate the playing that I do. I originally signed up as a volunteer for a different program (I did a program for a year that was basically an aquatics class for younger kids with disabilities, such as autism, and I was a volunteer helping with the activities in the classes), but I haven’t done that program for a while because of timing issues. Now I do the music therapy work.</p>

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<p>What does this book talk about? It seems like many of you are recommending “How to Be a High School Superstar,” so I’m actually very curious.</p>

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<p>Another thing I should ask, again in general for anybody who finds the thread: if you have a very rigorous schedule (for example, having 5 AP classes in one year), is it looked down upon to take a study hall in order to balance out the work load?</p>

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<p>“How to Be a High School Superstar” — So worth a close reading. Grab it from the library or Amazon. Worth it!</p>