<p>Nowadays, so many students have good grades and test scores and do clubs and activities. How do I stand apart from this?</p>
<p>Lol, for me it wasn’t hard to stand out… Take more AP classes. Multiple more than everyone else. Join Science Olympiad when no other person from the class of 2013 would. Stick with the Mathletes all the way through high school and get some unique awards… Sure, I’d stand out if you compared myself to my classmates in those areas (that got into all of the good schools privates / top publics etc), but what I did was useless anyways :P</p>
<p>Straight B’s in 9th-11th grade English, a +/- SAT score, yeah. You can stand out, but it doesn’t always help :P</p>
<p>As always, you stand out by doing things hardly anyone else does.</p>
<p>Cure cancer.</p>
<p>I Research.</p>
<p>^Why research if you’re Bill Nye.</p>
<p>I’m the only person in the entire school who is taking 6 AP classes next year…and apparently I’m the only one who’s done this for about 5 years.
I’m also the only person who has self-studied AP tests in our school in the past decade.</p>
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<p>Simple, get a 1 on all AP exams, straight F’s in all your classes, and a 600 (total for all 3 sections) on the SAT. And join varsity lunch detention. It’ll get you noticed, though maybe not the kind you intend…</p>
<p>Something you like. </p>
<p>As for me, I think my involvement in local school council (much different from student council) will get me some attention.</p>
<p>I do something I love (aviation). I fly (yes, real planes, lol), I take semi-professional aviation photography (400K views), I participated in Airport Explorers at CLT, I run HR for US Airways Virtual (500 members) and I had an internship at CLT last summer.</p>
<p>Make sure to do something you like. There are lots of people who who take leadership positions or stick with clubs just so they can have it on a resume. So have a passion for something (that you’re good at) and make sure that something is made clear in your application. Like you said, there are plenty of students with awesome grades and test scores. And there are also students that take tons of AP classes just to look impressive, so do something more unique than that.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t do anything to stand out in college admissions. Right now, I’m just doing what I like, and in the end, if the schools I apply to like what I do as well, then great! If not, well then at least I had a meaningful 4 years that I actually enjoyed.</p>
<p>I don’t</p>
<p>I did things I liked to do and I wrote about my passions, but thaaaat’s about it. It worked for most of my colleges (accepted to 9, waitlisted to 1, rejected to 3), and it worked during several state and nation wide scholarship contests. Just try and develop who you are as a person. That’s all you can do.</p>
<p>I go on CC because that means I’m smart</p>
<p>be native american.</p>
<p>they’re are probably the most URM of any race.</p>
<p>I’m not applying to Ivy League schools or anything, so my test scores should be impressive. Also National Merit status and finishing my high school graduation requirements a year early to take all university classes senior year. Geographic diversity for some schools because I live in the Midwest. My Common App essay.</p>
<p>I read a fantastic article about standing out while relaxing. While it a bit of Catch 22 [I’ll cover that later], try imagining things that you think you couldn’t do. That is the kind of stuff that admissions councils will think [They’ll try to put themselves in your situation and think whether or not they could do it]. However, this is a Catch-22 as if you can do it, then it isn’t good enough, and if it is impossible, then you can’t do it.</p>
<p>But some good examples are:
Interning at the UN. This may lead to you being invited to cool UN Conferences</p>
<p>Making a US Science Olympics Team. This sounds impossible, but several CC’ers have after 1-6 hours a day of studying</p>
<p>Win an Olympic Gold. Of course, you might not even have to go to college then…</p>
<p>Get a pilot’s license. IDK how to do it, but I know it is a lot of effort</p>
<p>Do research. Sounds harder than it is, but contact 50+ researchers asking if you can work in their lab. From there, try to publish the work at ISEF, STS or Seimens-Westinghouse</p>
<p>Good Luck!
-Apollo11</p>