I didn't even interact with him much at all until junior year, when I got on his radar because of my national rankings. He represented passion for the violin—I represented my academic priorities. I ranked at the national level, before the US selected their final team—a study camp of 20 students. If you're part of a big school, this is CRITICAL to distinguish yourself from other students. I've redacted some stuff here for privacy reasons. This letter validates my participation in RSI and incorporates the feedback from my research mentor, David Simon. So state honors really don't help you stand out on your Princeton application. We cover everything from application timelines and strategies to tips on financing your child's education. The higher the level of competition and the more prestigious the award, the more the honor is worth. Ask below and we'll reply! I'm also irreverent and have a strong, direct personality. Finally, SAT Subject Tests are pretty easy if you get a 5 on the corresponding AP tests. This makes me think that the less prepared your family is, the more points you get, and this might give your application an extra boost. I wanted to focus attention on my most important materials, which for my Personal Narrative meant my research work. Why? The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points, How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer. Essay Example #1 - Japanese Puzzle My research work took up the next two honors, one a presentation at an academic conference, and the other (Siemens) a research competition for high school researchers. But this can be shorthand to help orient an applicant's family background. In addition to listing your family responsibilities in the activities section, you may also wish to share more details in your personal essay or the additional information section. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: © PrepScholar 2013-2018. And frankly, I don't think my research work was that spectacular. Frankly this personal statement is really embarrassing. Everything else is unaltered. At Harvard in my class, I knew International Math and Physics Olympiad gold medalists, people who were on their national teams for the hardest subjects AND ranked in the top percentiles worldwide. The purpose of the recommendation has shifted to the specific: colleges probably found that one counselor was serving hundreds of students, so the letters started getting mushy and indistinguishable from each other. First, the straightforward info and questions. You can write about a topic of your choice or about any of the suggestions. The most effective recommendation letters speak both to your academic strengths and to your personality. How could anything I write compare to these tales of personal strength? "What is the perfect combination of personal, funny, heartrending, and inspirational?". Topic Title: Piano. For less selective schools, having an overall strong, well-rounded application is sufficient for getting in. So overall, I believe the essay accomplishes my goals and the main points of what I wanted to convey about myself. You might chalk this up to my not being as standout of a student in her mind, or her getting inundated with recommendation letter requests after over a decade of teaching. Common App, Supplemental Essays. Many students who apply to these schools have top GPAs and test scores, so extracurricular activities are one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from the rest of the applicant pool and make yourself stand out as an exceptional candidate. It's Not Just A Sport. At the time, the RSI students were the most talented students I had met, so I'm also flattered by some of the things the letter writer said, like "Allen stood out early on as a strong performer in academic settings.". I still think it was a net positive. The question will often ask something straight-forward like this: "Briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences." Just like extracurriculars, there's a quick dropoff in value of each item after that. But my mission through my company PrepScholar is to give the world the most helpful resources possible, so I'm publishing it. I cover the most important points in my How to Get a Perfect SAT Score guide, as well as my 800 Guides for Reading, Writing, and Math. The 75th percentile is a 1600, and the 25th percentile is a 1470. There are a few explanations for this. The reason was that I was actually pretty mediocre at violin and was nowhere near national-ranked. Counselors wrote letters for the other hundreds of students in my class, which made my application stand out just a little. More than 70 examples of impactful Extracurricular Activities 18 June 2020. I believe we've created the best prep program available, and if you feel you need to raise your SAT/ACT score, then I encourage you to check us out. Remember, over 40,000 students fit in the top 1 percentile of students nationwide. One notable point—both supplemental letters had no marks on them. NO ONE looked at my test scores alone and thought, "Wow, based on his GPA and test scores, Allen really deserves admission!". Looking for another way to help your application stand out from the pack? I need to make one very important point that stresses a lot of students and parents out. Harvard lets you submit letters from up to two Other Recommenders. Teacher recommendations are some of the most important components of your application. Second, it is important to do things you enjoy. Here are the most important pieces of advice and questions for you to think about. In this sneak peek of next week's episode of, Whether you're a high school junior just starting your, College Coach consultant Kimberly Asselta pulls back the veil and answers the question, âWhat do, © 2020 Bright Horizons Family Solutions LLC, Common App Help: How to Master the Activities Section, How to Complete the 2018-2019 Common Application: Part 2, Helpful Details about the 2015 Common Application | College Coach Blog, Summer College Visits; Common App Prompts; How and What to Research about Costs on a College Website, College Coach Mentionables: News & Events. Unlike my two teacher recommendations, he doesn't comment on the nature of our interactions or about my personality (because he truly didn't understand them well). Because the program was so prestigious and selective, getting in served as a big confirmation signal of my academic quality. At this point, we've covered my entire Common Application. You can see how seriously they take the letter because of all the underlining. Getting very strong letters take a lot of sustained, genuine interaction over time to build mutual trust and respect. And itâs not uncommon for students to spend weeks (if not months) brainstorming their ideal essay topic and then editing it down to perfection. Thus, being marked merely as Excellent (top 10%) is actually a negative rating, as far as admissions to top colleges is concerned. In my complete analysis, I'll take you through my Common Application, Harvard supplemental application, personal statements and essays, extracurricular activities, teachers' letters of recommendation, counselor recommendation, complete high school transcript, and more. Interestingly, at the time I was "absolutely certain" about my vocational goals, which clearly took a detour once I left medical school to pursue entrepreneurship to create PrepScholar... Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? The most notable point of this section: the admissions officer circled Principal here. This might be what you're picturing as you read this Personal Narrative, which is good, because it's distinctive. Everything in your application should support your Personal Narrative, from your course selection and extracurricular activities to your personal statements and recommendation letters. The strategies on how to build a cohesive, compelling application are the same. I'll start first with an introduction to this guide and important disclaimers. This can also mean an international ranking is worth 1000x that of a regional ranking—again, why a big Spike is so impressive. An activity is anything you’ve spent time on outside of class. So you don't need anywhere near a "perfect" application to get in. This is why I say a big Spike makes you stand out clearly among a bin of well-rounded applicants. The trite truth is that colleges want to know who you really are. 3) I was open to admitting weaknesses, which I think is refreshing among people taking college applications too seriously and trying too hard to impress. You really do want to be in that top 1 percentile to pass the filter. The point of this guide is to use my application as a vehicle to discuss what top colleges are looking for in strong applicants. It signals insincerity, actually, which is bad. He was very supportive, but as you can tell from the letter to come, it was clear he didn't know me that well. This guide is geared toward admissions into the top colleges in the country, often with admissions rates below 10%. Page by page, word for word, you'll see everything exactly as I presented it: extracurricular activities, awards and honors, personal statements and essays, and more. First, we'll look at the teacher evaluation page. I didn't get to know the letter writer super well, so he commented mainly on my academic qualifications and comments from my mentor. Now, the dreaded personal statement. Just like Like when writing a resume, you can use “incomplete sentences” in your activity list descriptions to maximize the amount of information you’re able to fit. Despite all that, this essay was WAY overdramatic and overwrought. Replies to: Examples of Common Application Activities- Family Responsibilty and Religious? But the counseling department was still the worst part of our high school administration, and I could have guessed that the letters they wrote were mediocre because they just had too many students. I think I sound too smug and self-satisfied. Thanks for reading this far—I hope you've gotten a lot out of this already. There's no question that my work in science was my "Spike" and was the strongest piece of my application, but my Personal Narrative included other supporting elements, especially a description of my personality. She was invigorating and passionate, always trying to get a rise out of students and push their thinking, especially in class discussions. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe … My second teacher Mrs. A middle-aged, veteran English teacher, the best way I would describe her is "fiery." Once again, the point of my showing this to you is NOT to give you an application to replicate, but rather to talk you through how to craft a compelling, coherent application. You can see how there's so much more information than appears in my brief list of activities. You do NOT need perfect scores to get into Harvard, Princeton, Yale or other top schools. Note that even though I had a strong application, I clearly didn't have the strongest application possible. To set the stage, I applied Early Action to Harvard early in senior year, and this is the application I used to get in early. This is clumsy, contrived writing. At this point, most of your application is set in stone. So I listed both in my Common App to build onto my Personal Narrative. (It's also entirely possible that it's a formality to circle email addresses, so I don't want to read too much into it, but I think I'm right.). Below are a number of links that provide examples of Common App essays. Even if some activities don't contribute as much to your application, it's still fine to spend some time on them—just don't delude yourself into thinking they're stronger than they really are and overspend time on them. This is how an admissions officer should understand you after just glancing through your application. I don't take life too seriously. Even though math and science were easy for me, I had to put in serious effort to get an 800 on the Reading section of the SAT. This is especially true when your list of activities exceeds the limit set by the Common App! (And there were students with similar level accomplishments in other arenas, from music performance to writing.). There are now two more prompts that weren't previously there: "What you would want your future college roommate to know about you" and "How you hope to use your college education.". I meant it as a nod to my Chinese heritage, but it's too sudden to work. As much as I wish I could say it was trivial for me, it wasn't. I can empathize with them, because having 500+ neurotic parents pushing for advantages for their own kids can get REALLY annoying really fast. These tended to be teachers I vibed more strongly with, and typically these were teachers who demonstrably cared about teaching. The way I saw it, the personal statement was a vehicle to convey my personality and my interests. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(360031, 'c8b8e502-c285-4182-9589-5f8ae230e78a', {}); Drilling down into more details, here's an overview of my application. There's not much you can do here besides report the facts. Again, with one test score, you have already passed their filter. I talk a lot more about the Growth Mindset in my How To Get a 4.0 GPA guide. I'll take you through the application section by section. I got straight A's in my coursework, so this wasn't an issue. For most top colleges like Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and so on, you will need to complete a supplemental application to provide more info than what's listed on the Common Application. Next, we'll go over the Harvard Supplemental Application, which of course is unique to Harvard. For the most part, the Harvard supplemental essay prompt has stayed the same. It's far easier to grasp onto three strong points about a person than ten different thin threads. Teacher recommendations are incredibly important to your application. Overall, a strong recommendation, and you get the gist of his letter without reading it. Regardless, I thought these additions would be net positive, if only marginally so. Important Note: the foundational principles of my application are explored in detail in my How to Get Into Harvard guide. I was mediocre at competition math because I didn't train for it, and I won some regional awards but nothing amazing. We'll be covering each of those below). #1. Do you also think it doesn’t make a difference? Plan essays The second was from the head of Jisan Research Institute, where I did Computer Science research. But once again, let's focus on the positive first. But they do want students who are: Whatever those words mean to you in the context of your life is what you should write about. Your teachers have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of students pass through, and it's much easier to detect insincerity than you think. You want your Personal Essay to be a supplement to your application, not the only reason you get in. The most important point here: it is important to be ranked "One of the top few encountered in my career" for as many ratings as possible. Emotionally she was a reliable source of support for students. If your Other Recommenders don't fulfill one or more of these categories, do NOT ask for supplementary letters. There are probably some cases where a well-rounded student writes an amazing Personal Essay and gets in through the strength of that. According to Common App, “activities may include arts, athletics, clubs, employment, personal commitments, and other pursuits.” In other words, pretty much anything pursued outside the classroom qualifies as an activity. You'll see these supplementary materials later. These three elements were the core to my application. You'll see what items were critical in getting me admitted, and what didn't end up helping much at all. I say "nearly" because, even if you're world-class, schools do want to know you're not a jerk and that you're an interesting person (which is conveyed through your personal essay and letters of recommendation). I mean, come on. Prior to joining College Coach, Elyse worked as an admissions officer at Barnard College and Bennington College. Notably, the letter writer didn't underline anything. Remember, there are thousands of orchestras and bands in the country, each with their own concertmasters, drum majors, and section 1st chairs. ", Now, it starts with: "Please provide comments that will help us differentiate this student from others.". Along with Activities, Academic Honors is the other major area where you can really shine and develop a big Spike. hbspt.cta.load(360031, '4efd5fbd-40d7-4b12-8674-6c4f312edd05', {}); Have any questions about this article or other topics? Don't worry if you're taking a different number of AP courses or have lower test scores or do different extracurriculars or write totally different personal statements. This is the application guide I wished I had when I was in high school. Throughout the rest of my guide, I will keep referring back to my Personal Narrative so that you'll see how strongly each piece of my application reinforces it, from my extracurriculars to personal statements and recommendation letters. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(360031, '3610fec0-89f4-433d-b59d-98211baa42b1', {}); I had the space to list some additional honors, where I listed some musical honors that didn't make the cut in my Common App. College application checklist. 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