I took AP Chemistry in 10th grade and had Miss Cherryl Vorak (now Mynster). Admissions for these selective schools works differently from schools with >20% rates. I ranked at the national level, before the US selected their final team—a study camp of 20 students. What I did might not be as impressive as it used to be. The admissions officer at Princeton or MIT probably didn't care at all that I volunteered at a hospital or founded a high school club. The rest of my honors were pretty middling: At the risk of beating a dead horse, think about how many state medalists there are in the country, in the hundreds of competitions that exist. Unlike some of my very accomplished classmates, I hadn't ranked nationally in prestigious competitions like ISEF and Siemens. Clearly they don't expect everyone to have had immense personal struggle. But I would have done far better by making it more sincere and less overworked. I hope you don't misinterpret this as bragging about my accomplishments. But again in the interest of transparency, here goes: I'm still cringing a bit. The earlier you are in high school, the more time you have to prepare and implement the right strategies to build a strong, distinctive application. Here you have an extra 650 words to add more color around your life and accomplishments—DO IT. Frankly this personal statement is really embarrassing. I'll take you through the application section by section. Interestingly, the prompt for the recommendation has changed. This is the same application I sent to every school I applied to, including Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. I learned a bunch of strategies and dissected the test to get to a point where I understood the test super well and reliably earned perfect scores. 7. Also, I don't think I explicitly recognized this at the time, but I wanted to distance myself from the Asian-American stereotype—driven entirely by parent pressure, doing most things perfunctorily and without interest. Unlike some of her fellow fitfluencers, Instagram-famous trainer Anna Victoria is a legit, certified trainer, so you better believe the weight-based workout programs in her Fit Body with Anna Victoria weight lifting app will help you get seriously strong. There is no right or wrong way to answer these questions: It’s about getting to know your personality, background, interests and achievements in your own unique voice. In the long run, both predictions turned out to be wrong. Your job now is to package your 3 years of work into a cohesive, compelling application. This guide is geared toward admissions into the top colleges in the country, often with admissions rates below 10%. In today's Common Application, all of these Ratings are retained, aside from "Potential for Growth." Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. Along with Activities, Academic Honors is the other major area where you can really shine and develop a big Spike. However, their standards are still very high. At once I acknowledge my Chinese heritage but also make light of the situation. Couple Game - Best Relationship Game App. You want your Personal Essay to be a supplement to your application, not the only reason you get in. All of this flowed down to the recommendation you see here. When you interview for a job, the hiring manager will ask about communication skills, including how you address issues, how you handle challenging situations, what you expect as far as communication from management, and other questions related to your ability to communicate. So you see how the snooze button acts as a vehicle to carry these major points and a lot of details, tied together to the same theme. I received similar successful letters from every college I applied to: Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. Thus, being marked merely as Excellent (top 10%) is actually a negative rating, as far as admissions to top colleges is concerned. In 2005, I applied to college and got into every school I applied to, including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. Again, you have so few chances in the overall application to convey your personal voice—an extra 500 words gives you a huge opportunity. Proofread once more to make sure no odd characters or line breaks have appeared. With that major caveat aside, here are a string of smaller disclaimers. I wanted to focus attention on my most important materials, which for my Personal Narrative meant my research work. Since I was a top student he was probably happy to do this. But this guide is already super long, so I want to focus our attention on the main points. Close. Allen graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude and earned two perfect scores on the SAT (1600 in 2004, and 2400 in 2014) and a perfect score on the ACT. Throughout my application, we can see marks made by the admissions officer highlighting and circling things of note (you'll see the first example on the very first page). If you keep reading to the end, I'll have advice for both younger students and current applicants to build the strongest application possible. Extracurriculars, 2. Remember, the horse leads the cart. A state ranking is probably worth 10x that of a regional ranking; a national ranking 10x that of a state ranking; and an international ranking even more. This early question is still a chance to build that Personal Narrative. If I were to guess, I assign the following weights to how much each activity contributed to the strength of my activities section: In other words, participating in the Research Science Institute (RSI) was far more important than all of my other extracurriculars, combined. (You can tell I love the concept of the vehicle in essays.) Here's the complete list of Academic Honors I submitted. Making a list of accomplishments, activities, awards or work will lessen the impact of your words. Finally, note that most of my activities were pursued over multiple years. Even though the life experiences I'd had weren't distinctive in themselves, I thought I could package them from an interesting perspective. I talk a lot more about the Growth Mindset in my How To Get a 4.0 GPA guide. Colleges don't expect you to stick to career goals you stated at the age of 18. If you don't know about these academic Olympiads, they're like the Olympics for math and science geeks. Now, the dreaded personal statement. What were your responsibilities? She provided me a lot of training materials, helped me figure out college chemistry, and directed me to resources to learn more. For the most part, I assume that whatever he underlines or circles is especially important and noteworthy—points that he'll bring up later in committee discussions. The important thing is expressing who you are, what matters to you and what you want to share with UC. You'll learn what it takes to build a compelling overall application. A middle-aged, veteran English teacher, the best way I would describe her is "fiery." The more unique and noteworthy your Personal Narrative is, the better. You can see how there's so much more information than appears in my brief list of activities. If you stepped into an elevator with Yale's Dean of Admissions and you had ten seconds to describe yourself and why you're interesting, what would you say? What ACT target score should you be aiming for? There are other distinct ways to impress, like: Therefore, DON'T worry about copying my approach one-for-one. The application that got me admitted everywhere is the subject of this guide. But the results are very variable—some readers may love your essay, others may just think it's OK. The 2020 University of California application includes eight personal insight questions, and all applicants must write responses to four of the questions.These mini-essays are limited to 350 words, and they take the place of longer personal statements required on many other applications. What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For? I want to as well. My first research experience was done at Jisan Research Institute, a small private computer science lab run by a Caltech PhD. I didn't even interact with him much at all until junior year, when I got on his radar because of my national rankings. I chose to spend this clarifying my extracurriculars even further. Come senior year I might have talked to him about my difficulty in reaching counselors and asked that he write my recommendation. She was also a younger teacher, and this helped her relate to kids more closely. 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). Sporting a clear and simple interface, Manhattan Prep GRE is a highly rated app, offering strong content and a handy flashcard system. Published on April 16, 2019 by Shona McCombes. If you're hoping to see an acceptance letter like this in your academic future, I highly recommend you read this entire article. This is the application guide I wished I had when I was in high school. Ask advice of whomever you like, but do not plagiarize from sources in print or online and do not use anyone's published words but your own. The RSI just completely dominates all my other activities. It signals insincerity, actually, which is bad. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? This is what I call your PERSONAL NARRATIVE. By pointing this out and showing how my interest took on a life of its own, I wanted to distance myself from that stereotype. Importantly, even though my application was strong, it wasn't perfect. The Strong Body App contains physically demanding programs which utilises weight training and are designed for those at least 16 years of age and older. I'm flattered and grateful to have received this support. Yolo is an anonymous question-and-answer app that links with Snapchat as a way to share comments and questions with others. If you were the first one in your family to go to college, for example, you'd be excused for having lower test scores and fewer AP classes. The most interesting note here is that the admissions officer wrote a question mark above "Music tape or CD." We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. Think about the 20,000+ high schools in the country housing 4 million+ high school students—how many people fit in the top 5% bucket? From your high school work thus far, you should at least be leaning to something, even if that's likely to change in the future. And frankly, I don't think my research work was that spectacular. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom. The idea I used was to talk about my battle against the snooze alarm. I'll also give you in-depth commentary on every part of my application. Ask below and we'll reply! I know, easier said than done. Halfway in the essay, I also explicitly acknowledged the Asian stereotype of parents who drove their kids, and said my parents were no different. This is how an admissions officer should understand you after just glancing through your application. It reads more like a verbal resume than a personal account of how he understands me. This is why I recommend so strongly that you develop a Spike to show deep interest and achievement. The major question for you to ponder as you read is—what is YOUR Personal Narrative, and how are you going to show it through every component of your application? Ask questions; get answers. Your answers should reflect your own ideas and be written by you alone, but others — family, teachers and friends — can offer valuable suggestions. Moreover, in the time I did actually do research, I switched interests from neuroscience to bioengineering/biotech. I was mediocre at competition math because I didn't train for it, and I won some regional awards but nothing amazing. What you see in this guide is NOT what YOU need to do to get into Harvard, especially if you don't match my interests and personality at all. On the micro-level, her diction and phrasing are precise and effective. The main point was to summarize the body of work I'd done and communicate the major results. Here are the most important questions that form the foundation of your application: If you execute successfully on these three dimensions, you will be on the path to getting admission to schools like Harvard and Princeton. (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.). Was there a problem that you wanted to fix in your community? So I have mixed feelings of my essay. Once you are satisfied with your answers, save them in plain text (ASCII) and paste them into the space provided in the application. He talked about my work in leading a research group and placing a high degree of trust in me. At this point, most of your application is set in stone. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. To be fair, all of this is grounded in truth. “I’d suggest downloading the “Strong” app before you return to the gym. 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