5 Tips on College Apps

To all my rising seniors: it’s getting to be that time of the year: when your parents start nagging about college touring trips and stressing about the importance of winning all the extracurricular awards while maintaining your grades. If they’re really hardcore, they already made a Common App account for you too.

Whether you’re wishing that all the fuss would go away or if you’re even more freaked out than your parents, here are some of my pieces of advice -- after being through the ringer and back -- for getting through this grueling process.

Honestly didn't think I'd make it this far...but I guess I really am a senior headed off to college soon :')

Disclaimer: These pieces of advice stem from my personal experience with the college application process. It’s important to get multiple perspectives on what worked and what didn’t, and eventually, you’ll be able to find your own way as well.

1. Start over summer.

While this summer may be filled with going to programs like GHP or obtaining last-minute internships, starting your essays (especially the long Common/Coalition App one!) over summer will be immensely helpful later on. Even if you end up scrapping your essay four times (cough, me) or crying for an hour because you put all your information on the Coalition App before realizing that you actually needed to do the Common App (cough, me again), you’ll be grateful that you made these mistakes earlier in the process.

I interned here over summer! It was really cool learning about sports medicine and interacting with athletes with disabilities.

If nothing else, familiarize yourself with the applications and their essay questions and start looking into potential colleges. Once school starts, it’s easy to push off starting a college essay in favor of homework with a sooner deadline, but it takes time to write an essay well. Personally, I wrote an essay all during summer, showed it to Jake in August, then rewrote the whole thing multiple times before finalizing it in October. This doesn’t mean starting the essays for all 12 (or however many colleges you decide to apply to) applications, but more specifically for the school you choose to apply early to. Since this is the school that you (theoretically) want to go to above all others, allot the greatest amount of time for its application.

This is what I actually look like writing essays...notice the look of utter despair in my eyes.

2. Use YouTube to find information about colleges.

Looking at stats and rankings might be beneficial for deciding which school is best for the major you’re interested in, but there’s no better place than YouTube to learn about student life and what’s it’s truly like to live on that campus. Many college students are vloggers and have channels giving advice to prospective students, so YouTube is a great platform to hear from actual students. There are all kinds of college-related videos there, from past essay readings to college comparisons and campus tours, so definitely take advantage of all it has to offer.

3. Stats. Aren't. Everything.

We spend 90 percent of our high school years worrying about the next test or if a teacher has the leniency to curve a B to an A, but really, stats aren’t as important as they’re made out to be. For Ivy League and other top-tier schools, there’s a surprising amount of people who get in that have mediocre stats, to put it lightly. The difference between a 1580 and a 1600 typically isn’t going to determine if you’re accepted or rejected, so if you’re planning on spending the next month grinding for a second attempt on the SAT, don’t do it. There are so many other things you could do with that time that can actually differentiate you from the crowd, and an extra 20 points most definitely isn’t it.

People who have a B on their transcript aren’t automatically barred from Ivy League schools. Heck, people who have multiple B’s on their transcripts don’t get automatically rejected either. To summarize, stats are important. But they’re definitely not everything.

4. The first semester of your senior year is going to be filled with incessant college talk.

This isn’t really a piece of advice, but more of a heads-up. The conversations within your friend are inevitably going to center around college for a few months, and that’s just something to put up with until applications are finished. You may have that one friend that seems to know everything about colleges, and maybe you also have that one friend who’s fiercely secretive with all things college-related. Either way, don’t feel pressured to do something with your application just because someone else is, and don’t be hurt if other people don’t share information with you. This is a stressful time period for everyone, and we all have different ways of coping with it.

That being said, I encourage you to share your progress and your essays with your friends. Having a healthy, non-competitive environment and a support group is so essential to maintaining a good mental state, which is even more critical to remember during college app season. I’ve found that reading other people’s essays can teach you something new and fascinating about them, something that might’ve never come up in the last four years of being friends. So send your essays to people, and ask them for their honest opinions.

Of course, the competitiveness and toxicity of the environment varies widely, and I’m grateful to say that my friend group was absolutely amazing with encouraging everyone and helping each other out. Even if your typical friend group isn’t completely non-toxic, find people who are to help you write the best essays possible.

Literally my favorite people in the world <3

5. Plan your college visits intentionally.

Visiting colleges is one of the best ways to become acquainted with them, but only if done intentionally. Don’t go without checking tour times and dates, and try to go at a time when students are still on campus. In my experience, it’s extremely helpful to find people who can take you to their classes or the dining halls or even to take a look at the dorms. These places are where you can truly see the diversity of the student body and how they interact, and that’s invaluable when deciding if you could see yourself living at a college for four years of your life.

Visiting Stanford with Jake!

So that’s five tips on college applications for you all! Of course, it’s still very early in the process, but I hope to turn out some more articles about this since it’s such a hefty topic. If there’s anything in particular you want me to write out, definitely DM me on Instagram! From interviews to dealing with parents and how to actually pick colleges, I’m excited to reflect and analyze this teenage milestone.