I’m looking at these common app prompts and I just feel so lost. I’ve spent the last few days self-reflecting and I realized how pathetic I am.
I try to think of something that’s important to me, I can’t remember anything. I think about one of my traits that define me so I can start from there and all I can think about is how incompetent I am: i’m lazy, irresponsible, unmotivated; I never follow one thing for a long time, always switch from one “interest” for a few months to a new one later.
I was looking at some past CC posts, and one person mentioned taking a few minutes to write down any ideas that come to mind for topics: my paper stayed blank and my pencil did
I ask myself why any college would want someone like me on a campus, let alone the selective, t20 colleges I was thinking of applying to. I feel like a failure who doesn’t deserve to apply to these selective colleges. Yeah my grades are high, I’ve done nice science-y stuff, and won some awards like a ton of other asians, but inside I’m a complete loser who only does things because other people have done it, and doesn’t like anything.
I’m not quite sure where to go.
Do you have anybody who knows you well who could sit down with you and look over the prompts and be like “What about the time you…”
It can be hard for people to see what’s interesting about their own experiences, because to you it’s just what happened. To someone on the outside, it looks different.
Write about your experience in your “science-y things”! Colleges don’t care about a flashy story, they want to hear about you!
Good luck!
First of all, you have the same questions posted on three different threads. You should try to stick to one. I decided to reply on this thread since you already have a couple of other replies here.
I also see on another thread that you have really strong stats and are from Texas. As such you have very good in-state public universities. Don’t you have automatic acceptance to some of them based on your great stats? There will be other very smart students at UT Austin and other Texas public universities and you could do very well there. While you might have the stats to have a chance at MIT or Stanford, you don’t need to go there to do very well in life – and they are long shots for everyone.
With a 1570 SAT, you are probably significantly more intelligent than the average student at your high school. This can make it difficult to make friends and find a group where you are comfortable. In university there will be significantly more students like you. Over time this will be a big improvement and make it easier to find things to do that you find interesting and find people that you can relate to. Life definitely gets better after high school for very smart students.
One of the point of university is to give a student a chance to try out multiple subjects and find what they are interested in. Most students change their major after then get to university. A lot of “lazy unmotivated” students get a lot more motivated and become a lot less lazy once they find what they want to do.
Why are you looking at the common app now? Are you really late for this year, or really early for next year?
@bodangles Not really, I’m not really comfortable with anyone that much
@jsimon9 Yeah but i’m not really interested in any of them, just doing it for the sake of putting on my application
@DadTwoGirls Yeah I realized I posted too much, that was an accident bc I posted in the wrong place. I’ll stick to this one too to avoid creating a mess.
I DO have auto-admit to UT and other in-state schools.
I realize that MIT and Stanford aren’t necessary and places like UT are just as good but I’ve run net prices for a lot of these schools and Ivies are just so much cheaper for me and good, basically a win-win situation. (20k/year vs ~5k/year). Plus there’s just a lot of pressure on me to go to these top tier schools bc well I’m asian.
(UT has become competitive these days too; one of my seniors these days w/ autoadmit, a 35 ACT, and similar great stats and good ECs didnt get into the ChemE program at UT…so that’s not exactly a guarantee anymore bc I need good essays probably)
I’m also looking at the common app prompts for 2018-19 (so very early)