Admissions committees often look through thousands of college applications in order to decide who will get into their university. In order to make sense of this large amount of information, committee members often try to classify individual applicants based on factors such as their academic performance, major, interests, activities, essays, geographic location, etc.
If you want to get into a top university, good academics are a must and great academics are the norm. However, there are still ways to schedule your classes to optimize for college placement. It is recommended to take the most advanced classes possible (AP or IB), but sometimes schools offer more of these than is possible to take. Therefore, it is recommended to choose ones that fit your intended major or area of interest the most, not just the hardest of a group of AP classes. For example, if you are particularly interested in biology, taking AP Environmental Science would be more noteworthy in your application as opposed to something like AP US History. Additionally, it is important to have a good relationship with the teacher of this class to try to get a glowing letter of recommendation.
Activities are the most important part of your application but the hardest to nail. Although it is important to join clubs at school, quality is much more important than quantity. An executive board position for one club with multiple new initiatives started is much more impactful than just showing up to meetings for a few clubs. It is key to quantify your impact in these school activities when listing them on your application. Numbers and definitive actions go a long way here.
As amazing as school involvement is, it is also very important to try to do activities and extracurriculars that are standardized. What do I mean by that? If an applicant says they were the outreach chair for their STEM club and grew club attendance to 50 weekly members, how can admissions committee members verify this claim? It’s hard to and that’s where this other type of extracurricular comes in. Whether it’s summer programs, internships, national competitions, or even volunteering for a charity, these are all verifiable as you either got into, won, or participated in real events ran by official organizations. This is where Scolaris comes into play. Our hand-picked high school extracurricular database allows you to find the activities that really call to you and help you stand out in the college admissions process.
Think of everything discussed before this as the props given to you for a play. Your essays are the way to use these props and tie them into a cohesive story. Maybe a particular school or summer program experience has deeply affected the way you think. Write about it. It is much easier said than done, but don’t be afraid to show personality. As has been already stated, this is your time to stand out and leave an impression on the admissions committee. They should be able to sum up your application in an interesting and thought provoking phrase or two. Returning to play analogies, you are looking to fill a main character spot in the cast of their university, not just be a background actor.
Those are the most important factors to stand out in the crowded college admissions process. Although there are aspects you can control, luck also plays a role in whether you get into a school or not, so do not lose confidence if things don’t always go your way. With that being said, good luck in the process!
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