full image - Repost: The best college advice you're ever going to get. (from Reddit.com, The best college advice you're ever going to get.)
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I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet, I’m hoping that someone will read this and change their outlook slightly. I’m a college freshman who ended up in a pretty prestigious/competitive university. But I made a lot of mistakes in the college application process, especially with how I managed my time and planned my AP classes. I got a lot of bad advice from my high school’s college counselors, and I was badly influenced by the competitive academic environment at my school.I think anyone who has been on this subreddit knows the kind of aggressive shotgunnning college applicant I’m talking about. 99% of colleges care so little about all of the “stats” that people are obsessed with that in hindsight it seems so ridiculous for people to put any kind of importance on them. I know the statement that you don’t have to kill yourself studying for SATs or 5+ AP classes a year sounds too good to be true. But really it is.I figure that most people will not want to read this whole thing, so in the interest of brevity, here is my main advice (I’ll put the reasoning behind it below):-Don’t take more than 4-6 AP classes a year. Only take 1-2 if that’s what you feel comfortable with. You should push yourself in school, but there are ways to do this other than taking a bunch of APs. They’re usually a waste of time. They should ONLY be on things you’re interested in, and you should ONLY take them on if you think you can comfortably study them and get a 4 or 5 on each. One exception: if you happen to be a sophomore or junior who already knows that you want to go to a liberal arts school with a lot of core requirements, TAKE AP SCIENCE CLASSES so that you can transfer those credits and not have to take college science unless you want to. You can rarely transfer AP humanities classes for core requirements, but STEM classes you can. Having fewer core requirements means more cool classes for your major!-Don’t apply to more than 7-8 colleges. Doing that perpetuates the really harmful situation that colleges find themselves in. They prioritize demonstrated interest more than ANYTHING else because the chances that admitted students will actually enroll gets lower and lower every year. If you start a trend of students applying to fewer colleges, then colleges will start prioritizing things like your holistic academic experience, whether you’re a good fit for the school, etc. All you’re doing with shotgunning is screwing over the kids in the year after you. Every single response letter you’re going to get from a college in the spring will say “this year, we had a record number of applicants…” And that’s no coincidence.-Apply to mostly colleges that you’re absolutely sure you can get into. This generally means between a 40% to 65% acceptance rate. Anything more competitive than that is more or less unpredictable, and you should not count on a shot in the dark. If you apply mostly to reach colleges and get rejected from all of them (which I have seen happen a LOT), then you’ll end up in a safety college that you didn’t research well enough before applying to. Worse, it will change your outlook on freshman year and make you the bitter student who thinks you’re too good for the school. Everyone says it, but do your research. That doesn’t mean looking at a college’s website to memorize their stats or what they say their values are, then regurgitating that onto an application essay. It means looking at course catalogues. Looking at what professors are there (at my school, a lot of my professors here were already my idols, and I didn’t even know they taught here). Looking at what exact resources the school WILL give you, rather than what they generally promise to a few lucky students. You have every right to choose a college, just as colleges say they have the right to choose you. You are more valuable than any college. Je te promets.Work hard in other ways. This means two things.-In college applications, it means talking to recruiters, networking and getting people to favor you. This was something I didn’t do at all. But a friend of mine who got really good bids from a lot of schools (despite not being a genius or having a perfect SAT) did so because he was smart about social advantage, built himself a cohesive profile, found the schools that worked for him, and then drilled onto it. He didn’t need serious counselling, and he didn’t need to do 20 ECs. He found the schools that valued his strengths, and thought hard about what he wanted his education/career to look like. Don’t put the work into the things that will make you just another number (“stats” as people on this subreddit want to call it). Put the work into the things that are going to pay off even after you get into college. There’s no one formula that this is going to look like. But you’re at a point in your life where you should be thinking creatively and strategically about this stuff.-In life, be curious and self-driven. Never take a class for the grade. Never write an essay just to finish a class. Be passionate in your schoolwork, and follow what your heart tells you you’re interested in. The greatest year of high school for me was the year when I took an AP class that got my imagination spinning. I researched the topic so much outside of schoolwork that it imbued everything else in my life with engagement and interest. I developed a better vocabulary. I became a better artist and a better writer. I read philosophy, which made AP Gov., AP Comparative Gov., APUSH, AP Lit, and college classes to this day so much easier. Do assignments on the things that give you that passion for learning. If it doesn’t seem like the assignment gives you that mobility, I promise you there’s a way to spin it. Be subversive and interesting. And most importantly, give yourself the free time to do these things. Life is short: don’t waste it on the things that aren’t intellectually stimulating. Life is long: don’t let it drone on into a monotonous search for organizations that don’t value monotony (because nobody ever does).I’ve heard every argument about how needing to be academically competitive ties in with privilege, the need to get financial aid, etc. These are all valid concerns, and I can’t speak much to the experience of international students or students who need a lot of financial aid. But I will say that the people I know who did need a lot of financial aid did much better with college applications when they focused on a few reasonable target colleges (around 60% acceptance rate) and put the work in to get a good fin. aid package rather than busting their asses for Ivy colleges that they end up getting categorically rejected from.People think that getting into “top” colleges means they can make more money later on, and that’s where this cutthroat attitude comes from. I feel pretty confident at this point, having seen how people’s educations are going across a few different schools, that even if money is your main priority in life, there are countless ways to get it other than getting into a competitive school. People say that money doesn’t buy happiness. But the more important point is that being miserable is rarely ever going to get you money.Just like colleges are about ECs as well as test scores, jobs are about sociability as well as degrees. I talked to an upperclassman at my college who had a 6 hour job interview, and 3 hours of it was a networking dinner. There is no AP class on how to do well at a dinner with your future employer. You cannot intellectualize the things that actually end up contributing to financial success in life. So please, PLEASE stop trying.I have a genuine concern for this generation and our priorities. Subreddits like this one encourage a mass mentality that exploits primal instincts and disallows us from thinking outside the box. Colleges can see right through that, which is why it’s hard to get into them. But if we keep it up, colleges will start acting within that mentality too. And then we’re all genuinely screwed. Feel free to ask me anything, I may follow up a bit. And if you disagree, I don’t have a reason to care. Thanks y’all.
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