Austin Scholar #112: My complete resource list for crushing your college applications
& the story of my college application process
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: The story of my college application process
My complete resource list for crushing your college applications
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to…
This last weekend was absolutely incredible. To kick it off, my mom held her annual gala for The Kindness Campaign and I got to dress up like Audrey Hepburn to present some of the gifts (what a dream). It was just so lovely to see everything she’s accomplished over the last year. I’m so proud to be her daughter <3
And then, I attended a Stanford admitted students event here in Austin, which was so cool. I got the chance to meet some of the people I’m going to spend the next four years with (which was so inspiring… and intimidating). The day showed me how close I am to leaving for college – to starting the next chapter of my life.
Which was also inspiring and intimidating.
Austin’s Anecdote: The story of my college application process
On that note…since I’ve had some time to cool off after college admissions and get some distance (definitely necessary), I thought I’d take this newsletter to tell you my story of applying to college.
It will (hopefully) give you and your kid some resources and help in your own process.
I suppose my journey started the summer before my junior year when I did a two-week “study at Oxford” program.
From the very moment I stepped foot on campus, I had a new dream: to go to Oxford and write like my favorite authors.
When applying to college started to get real the next year, I immediately put Oxford, along with four other schools in the UK on my list. Any time someone mentioned applying to a US school “just in case,” I grimaced.
But still, I grudgingly decided to work on my application to Stanford, despite my adventurous spirit.
The work commenced: freshening up my transcript, making sure I had a challenging list of courses for my senior year picked out, getting my SAT score up to par, creating a list of the activities I’d done over the past few years, and drafting my essays.
While the US application – as we all know – gives students a big chance to showcase their non-academic achievements and skills, the UK application does not.
UK schools do not care about anything other than your academic capabilities.
And keep in mind – I’m a pretty solid student, but my real value and color show in what I do outside of school: from my newsletter, to Learn and Earn, to publishing writing, to being on podcasts.
The UK application doesn’t allow any of that to be shown.
So anyway: I’m putting my application together, and by September, college applications are pretty much the only thing on my mind. I’ve got my SAT score and know I’ve done cool things, but how can I curate them into a cohesive, engaging application that stands out from the tens of thousands of others?
Since the UK deadlines were first, I finished my essay about my love of reading and writing (which was literally so good, if I do say so myself) and sent off that application. As a whole, I do have to say that the UK process is a million times easier than the US process – every school uses the exact same application (grades, one teacher recommendation, one essay, all about one academic subject) and they’re all sent at the same time.
I actually received three acceptances within the first few weeks for my UK schools, which was so cool and made me more sure that going overseas was my path. But as y’all know, while I got to the interview stage for Oxford, my two interviews did not go too hot and I didn’t get in.
So it was time to turn all of my attention to the US applications.
I still wanted to apply to some good schools in the US in case the whole “overseas” thing didn’t work out.
In the US, I actually could include all my non-academic projects, but I had to find something to keep my application cohesive. I tied all of my activities to my “using my alternative educational experience to help others” theme to make the value of all of the activities clear.
And of course, I wrote ten different versions of my college essay before settling on one that talks about how I found my passion – something I was willing to struggle every day to work on. I thought it turned out really great.
And then there were the supplemental essays, which a lot of colleges use to make sure you’re actually a person and actually have interests. Here, I talked about ice skating, my love of baseball, different musicians I listen to, and other random, weird, memorable interests.
When I finally sent in my Stanford application, it managed to encapsulate who I am as a person and the value I’d bring to that campus – a whole lot more than my UK application ever did.
In the end, as y’all know, I was accepted, and Stanford was my decision.
For a few reasons:
It was the best-ranked school I got into
The people will be amazing
I can experiment more because of the flexible academic environment
I can be closer to my family
The things I dreamed of about Oxford and the UK ended up being the very reasons I didn’t want to go to those schools – you only study whatever your major is (I now want to experiment and try new things) and it’s a completely fresh start somewhere completely new (I’m already missing Austin; I can’t imagine having to worry about missing the entire country).
So the moral of the story: make sure your kid has options. They don’t know what they want when they’re seventeen. Give them space to figure it out.
My complete resource list for crushing your college applications
Because of all of the 75% chance (of getting into an Ivy League) work I’ve done, I have a lot of resources to help your kid out.
Below I’ve collected all my top recommendations for your kid on their college application journey: from advice on how to build their transcript, to resources they can use to up their game.
I’ve separated them out into the different parts of a college application: academics, AP courses, SAT/ACT, Olympic-level project, audience building, other extracurricular activities, college essays, and miscellaneous.
Academics