THE BRIDGE TO COLLEGE
Don’t Check the Boxes
“Common knowledge” suggests that every student who gets into a top university completes The Checklist: a summer program; internship; published research; an NGO; winning competitions related to your major; President of your class …
It doesn’t work!
Dominic will be attending Harvard next year. Please take heed to what he has to say about college admissions:
“After receiving news that I will be spending the next four years at the best educational home for me, I looked again at The College Checklist and noticed that I barely ticked any of those boxes.
“Summer program? Never did one. Internships? Nada. Published research? Nope. Starting an NGO that saves thousands of underprivileged people? Nah, my little organisation helped maybe 30 students. Competitions? I quit doing Olympiads because I didn’t like doing them. School captain? Decided not to run for it.
“What I learned during my college applications process was something that should have been obvious from the start. College applications are wholly, completely human, and attempts to subvert or game the process don’t succeed. All applications are read by people, who later present your application to a bigger team of people. As a team, they debate and discuss different applicants to decide whom they want to accept. Each admissions officer reviews thousands of applications every year and can easily suss out ‘checklist checkers.’ To them, receiving a genuine, human application is like a breath of fresh air.
“After my acceptance, I spoke with my Harvard admissions officer a bit. She told me that she liked how she could see authenticity in my profile. She looked at what I was doing and could tell ‘he’s not just doing it for his resume, not doing things just to impress us.’ They really liked seeing from my essays – and even from my list of activities – that there was intrinsic motivation rather than a need for extrinsic validation.
“Ín fact, here’s a quote from her acceptance email: ‘My colleagues and I think your compassion, thoughtful questioning and intrinsic motivation would be a terrific addition to the Harvard community.’
“So, what did I do? Let’s start with why I did what I did.
“I think what made the most difference in my personal growth was always being questioned by my college consultant. Although my classmates didn’t really chat with their consultants, there was a lot of reflection involved throughout my process. When I first brought up a potential new activity, the first response was always ‘why are you doing this?’ For a bit, that messed with my head, but always being questioned about why I did things forced me to think on my own. I started doing things only when I understood why I wanted to do them. That led to seeing the connections among my interests and discovering new ones as well. There is always a common link between what you like, but sometimes it’s buried. Everything in my profile, I can easily name why I liked doing it and why I continued doing it.
“How did that reflect in my application? It feels confusing looking at everything separately, but colleges look at everything together. I led Garuda Hacks, organising the largest hackathon in this part of the world, but I also I wrote a screenplay for a short film. With my friends, I co-founded an organization that helps students understand how to pursue internships, and while I’m definitely a liberal arts student, I’m deeply interested in Chemistry. And French.
“My closest classmates were very supportive, not competitive, which meant that we helped each other a lot. My school was also very supportive. But my parents … they trusted me, in the best sense of the word.
“My parents never pushed things on me. It was never ‘you should join this club or this competition.’ They didn’t push. They would just listen. They were curious, and they tried to understand me. My parents trusted my judgment, and that gave me more trust in myself, more confident that I could make the right decisions instead of worrying about making a mistake or following what everyone else was doing. By their not pushing me, my resume ended up being me, not a resume.
“My advice? Scrap the Checklist. Return to the simple truth that is buried by all of those convoluted college tips: build a resume that shows you. The one thing that always impresses admissions officers? Authenticity. Be Genuine.”.