A Comprehensive Guide to Applying to College: How to College

A Comprehensive Guide to Applying to College: How to College

Table of Contents 📚

1. Introduction
2. Choosing the Right College
3. Understanding College Selectivity
4. Creating a Well-balanced College List
5. Researching Potential Colleges
6. Evaluating Campus Culture
7. Writing a Personal Statement
8. Tackling Supplemental Questions
9. General Writing Advice
10. Submitting Your College Application

🎓 Introduction

So you’ve decided to apply to college. Fantastic. Now you just need to condense your entire background, your qualifications, and the whole story of your life into like 3 or 4 very specific types of documents. Luckily, this is actually not as hard as it sounds. By the end of this article, we’ll have broken down the college application into a few steps. While colleges do ask for a lot of information, it’s easiest to understand what you need by taking a bird’s eye view of the process.

🎯 Choosing the Right College

The first step to apply to college is to figure out where you might want to go and why! Your preferences will be personal. Maybe you’re looking for a match that’s close to your family, and if it’s not… things just aren’t going to work out. Or maybe your deal breaker is cost. Remember though, there might be room for compromise. We’ll talk about how to pay for college in an upcoming section, and we discussed how to find the right school for you earlier. When you’re ready to apply, you’ll want to think about how competitive it will be to get into each school by looking at their selectivity, or rate of admission.

💡 Understanding College Selectivity

To ensure that you’ll be able to attend college next year, include some “safe” schools that you know you’re well-qualified to attend and that have a high admissions rate compared to others on your list. In general, community colleges and trade schools accept more students, so you won’t typically have to worry about categorizing them by competitiveness. However, getting into college is no guarantee. Every year, students receive admissions decisions that surprise them, so it’s best to choose some schools that are a safe bet. Sometimes though, students receive admissions decisions that are a more pleasant surprise. That’s why many students choose to include “reach” schools, that they would love to attend but are more competitive. If you make a good case for yourself and submit a solid application, you never know, so don’t underestimate yourself! Applying to a school that might be a stretch could pay off, so it’s a good strategy to include at least one on your list.

📋 Creating a Well-balanced College List

The core of your list of colleges should be schools that match your level of achievement and meet your most important criteria. Thinking about whether a school will want you is important, but it’s also important to think about whether you want the school and whether these are places where you feel safe and where you’ll be able to learn and thrive. It’s hard to get a sense of a campus's culture as an outsider, but seeing how a school talks about themselves on their websites or talking to current students can be really illuminating. Ask students what activities they are involved in and what they like about their classes and their professors. It’s also a good idea to look for opportunities to meet with representatives of the colleges that interest you. One way to do this is to attend “college fairs,” which are often hosted at high schools. Some schools offer ways to connect with alumni or current students, sometimes called “admissions ambassadors,” so you can get a personal perspective from someone on the school’s academics or campus culture. You might not know what types of schools you prefer until you see them, so consider visiting a campus in person or virtually as you make your list.

✍️ Writing a Personal Statement

Once you have a list, the next step is to collect documents related to your qualifications, which you might have organized already if you watched our previous episode on preparing to apply to college! First, you’ll need a transcript, which is an official record of all the courses you took and the grades you got from any high school or GED program that you attended. This proves that you’ve met your school’s and state’s requirements for secondary education. Second, some schools also require standardized test scores, like SAT or ACT scores, which demonstrate how much you've mastered general knowledge concepts. Check out our previous episodes for more information, but it's important to remember that while we're in this global pandemic, many schools have waived the SAT or ACT exam entirely. So be sure you know what the school you're applying to expects before you make plans.

📝 Tackling Supplemental Questions

The third, and most open-ended aspect of your college application, will be your own personal writing. Most schools require a personal statement or college essay. This is usually a 1-2 page essay that will give you the chance to show the admissions committee who you are outside of test scores and grades. This is when you get to talk about yourself, show your personality, and contextualize all the little bits and pieces of your application. It's your chance to show who you are as a person, and why that person is a good fit for this college. In addition, you may have supplemental questions to answer or a writing sample to select.

✒️ General Writing Advice

Let's go to the Thought Bubble. Say Ana is thinking about going back to college after working for a few years after high school. In her personal statement, she’ll want to explain what sort of student she’d be and what she might bring to the college. It’s her first time writing a personal statement, and that can be a little uncomfortable. It’s a new experience, since so far she’s mostly written essays about novels or historical events for her teachers. Ana has probably written tons of emails, text messages, and social media posts, and maybe even some journal entries. A personal statement will be somewhat similar to those things, because it’ll be written in the first-person, but it will also be a bit different because Ana will be using her statement to pitch her best qualities. Since this time it’s all about Ana, it’s okay for her to brag and explain why she’s proud of herself.

📮 Submitting Your College Application

By the time you finish your college applications, you’ll probably be very tired of filling out forms. But you can be proud that you’ve done some hard work to present yourself in the best light, and there is nothing quite like the feeling of hitting that submit button once your application is done.

Even the most organized person will likely find applying to college to be a cumbersome project. With so many application documents to juggle, it can be easy to lose the forest for the trees. Submitting your application will be the end of a long process, but it’s also the beginning of something new. Everything in your application will serve as your springboard for a college experience that suits your goals and your vision for your life and career. Filling it out takes some time, but once it’s done, you’ll be well on your way.

FAQ

Q: How many colleges should I apply to? A: It's a personal choice, but experts recommend applying to a mix of reach, target, and safety schools to increase your chances of acceptance.

Q: What should I include in my personal statement? A: Your personal statement should highlight your unique experiences, strengths, and aspirations that make you a great fit for the college.

Q: Are college applications expensive? A: Applying to college can be expensive, but don't be afraid to ask about fee waivers or seek ways to avoid paying for every application.

Resources:

• youtube.com/studyhall (Study Hall channel by Crash Course and Arizona State University)