Getting In and Beyond

It seems everyone and their pets are somehow the expert on your own college admission process. Growing up in the community I did, many of our family friends went off to prestigious schools and majored in some STEM field. It's understandable that the people around you have firsthand experiences that they feel the need to share. Some of the advice I've received in my first three years of high school helped me a lot in my senior year. For example, as a freshman, I took the advice of one senior to heart and started my essays really early after she told me of the stress she experienced trying to juggle her senior year coursework with the demands of college applications (she's at UC Berkeley right now). While information can be useful, advice about the college admission process is unreliable 99% of the time. Too much information can seriously clutter your brain. As corny as this sounds, you need to stay authentic to yourself. Do what you think is right. If you don't like ...

If you're fortunate enough to visit a college, you'll probably want to maximize the time you spend there. Here are tips on how to make the most of such a visit. 1. Have a clear plan about what you're going to do there. You're investing already quite a lot of time visiting. Most likely you're not the only one visiting (as in you're probably accompanied by your parents), so take some time (I'm not even suggesting you spend a whole day) to learn things about the college you're visiting. For example, if you're aiming for a specific field of interest, have questions ready about the field of study you're interested in when you visit. The worst thing you could do during a college visit is not engage with the people that you encounter during a visit, so don't be afraid to ask questions. 2. Have some sort of record of your visit. I'm not saying you have to write a journal, but you probably shouldn't depend on your brain to remember every...

Everyone is confronted with rejection at some point in their lives. I underwent the classic college rejection in late January, when I got rejected from the most competitive school of the four I applied to. My initial reaction was one of shock. I had maybe anticipated I would manage to get in, but maybe not qualify for the highly competitive program I applied to. A flat-out rejection stung. I tried to forget about it, but I let it marinate over the weekend, and I would be lying if I said that self-doubt didn't cloud my brain. Was I not as good as I thought I was? What did they not like about me? Was it more about incompatibility or me being not qualified? The best thing I ever did was not let it ruin my life. I thought little of it after that weekend. I had already gotten into my top choice school, and I didn't let the rejection determine what I could or couldn't do. I didn't need to reevaluate my career choices or question my academic merit because I didn't get ...