<p>DISCLAIMER: All of the following is merely my personal opinion, and others are perfectly free to disagree. I have been through the admissions process, and came out fairly well (several Ivy acceptances), but have no other relevant qualifications.</p>
<p>I was thinking about my own college admissions experience today, and I realized that nobody had ever bothered to tell me a whole lot of important stuff. So, I felt that it was my duty to share what I had learned with future generations of students. I am, of course, less experienced than the talking heads on TV (not graduated quite yet), but on the other hand, my personal reputation is not at stake, and I have no reason to lie to you. Take from this what you will.</p>
<p>1). Apply to the most elite colleges you have a reasonable shot at getting into, and focus most of your energy on those. Going to an elite college, for a whole lot of jobs, is REALLY IMPORTANT. If you want to write novels, or play sports, or learn a trade, or if you have some other passion that really, truly makes you happy- please do go ahead and follow your dreams, the world will be all the better for it. But if you want to make a lot of money, or rise up the corporate ladder, or become a doctor, or a lawyer, or get a Ph.D., or get a really secure job that you won't be laid off from, or start your own business, or any of ten thousand other things, you'll want to go to that elite college. It will help you a ton later on.</p>
<p>2). As a corollary to 1)., if you get accepted to two colleges, one more elite and the other less elite, only go to the less elite one if you have a real, strong reason to (eg., the less elite one is giving you a free ride).</p>
<p>3). As a second corollary to 1)., lots of people may tell you that it doesn't really matter which college you go to, as long as you go to college. They are lying. Lots of people may tell you that people who go to a more elite college don't earn more. They are lying (in fact, a study on that showed the exact opposite of what people said it did: Half</a> Sigma: Attending an Ivy League school results in higher income). Lots of people may tell you that a top ranked college is expensive. They are lying. The tuition is high, but pretty much nobody pays sticker price. Even if your parents make $150,000 a year, you won't pay sticker price; see Harvard's financial aid page at Fact</a> Sheet. Going to a top-ranked college will almost certainly be cheaper than going to a lower-ranked private college, and may even be cheaper than a public college. </p>
<p>4). Apply to LOTS of places. The standard recommendation is 6-8, but 10-15 is probably a better bet. Remember, applying to more places can't <em>possibly</em> hurt you (assuming that it doesn't make you do a sloppy job, of course, but that really should go without saying). And the work you put in, although it may seem like a lot (ten or so hours each), is really insignificant compared to the four years you'll spend at college, and the forty years you'll spend in the workplace.</p>
<p>5). The most important thing for the SAT/ACT, assuming you can't afford a private tutor, is to actually study for it. Buy a study book. Take practice tests. Study with your friends. Go over the vocabulary lists, and check to make sure you know the words. Go over the different kinds of math problems, and practice solving them. What trips people up here is, there are lots of companies who will try to sell you stuff, by claiming that it will help you get a higher score. The truth is, no matter <em>what</em> you buy, it isn't going to help you unless you sit down and study, and the more studying you do the better your score will be.</p>
<p>6). For the essay section: always remember that, no matter how good of a writer you are, and no matter how many times you've checked it, an essay can <em>always</em> be better. JRR Tolkien's novels had the crap edited out of them before they were published. So were JK Rowling's. And Stephen King's. And every other famous writer you've ever heard of. Don't go crazy, but always have your essay checked over and edited- in detail- by several other people, in addition to your own edits. It helps a lot here to do one round of edits, and then wait a few days without looking at it, and then do the next round; this helps keep your mind fresh. </p>
<p>7). Everyone knows that colleges prefer to admit athletes. However, most colleges admit less than 15% of their freshman class as part of their athletic program, and so the odds are pretty good you won't be one of them. The thing is, if you aren't one of them, colleges care more about <em>whether</em> you play a sport than how <em>good</em> you are at that sport. So, you should probably move towards a less popular sport, like tennis, lacrosse, badminton, swimming, crew, etc.- rather than one of the big famous ones, like football or basketball, that will suck up all your time. Have fun, and use your time for other things- like keeping up your grades!- rather than trying to be "the best" at a sport (unless you're good enough to get in as part of an athletic program, but you'll know if you are).</p>
<p>8). Grades during the last half of your senior year don't matter, so use your time for college admissions stuff (you'll be pretty busy as it is), or just having fun. Colleges won't see them, at least until after you're admitted. Employers won't see them. Nobody will ever see them, or care if they do; when I was applying for internships after <em>four months</em> in college, I left high school off my resume completely, because nobody cared about it. Don't get Ds or Fs or anything, because your college may revoke your acceptance, or your high school may stop you from graduating. But do worry about other, more important stuff first.</p>
<p>9). Take Advanced Placement exams in whatever subjects you're best at. Try hard to do well, but take the exam anyway, even if you don't think you'll do well- if you do badly, you can always have the grade canceled. You can still take the exam even if your school doesn't offer the course, in which case you'll probably want to buy a textbook on the subject and work through some of the problem sets to learn the material. As a corollary to 8)., however, don't worry about AP exams during your senior year if your college doesn't offer credit for it, because nobody will ever see the grades.</p>
<p>10). No matter how much you procrastinate on everything else, always submit everything AT LEAST 24 hours in advance of the deadline. Once you get into college, you'll find that some administrative deadlines are OK to miss, and others are really important; this is one of the latter. Most submissions nowadays are electronic, so if you're one minute late, the computer still counts you as "late" and your hard work probably gets tossed out the window. There are ten gazillion things that can go wrong. The power could go out during an ice storm (happened to me). You could have forgotten that one college required a separate essay (happened to a friend). The Common App website gets bogged down right before the deadline and may not let you log on temporarily (happened to me and at least five of my friends). You REALLY don't want to be screwed over because of some stupid little thing, so give yourself some breathing room.</p>
<p>So, to all the members of the class of 2015: Good luck, and godspeed.</p>