What should I do to make my application stand out more?Answered
Hi there! Bare with me throughout this whole post, I am probably going to write quite a bit. I'm a sophomore in high school, 15 years old female and I live in Texas. I am Asian and come from a fairly well-financed family. Currently, my GPA is around 3.8-3.9, mostly A's and low A's. By the time I graduate, I will have around 14 ish AP's and 9 honor classes. For extracurriculars, I am a part of 14 clubs, many of which are academic, volunteering, and supporting cultural diversity. I am a part of the varsity debate team along with doing club swimming as a sport. For volunteering, so far I have around 150 hours of volunteer service and I usually volunteer to work with special needs kids and others with a disability. Along with that, I did a lot of summer camps and internships over the summer. I'm a certified lifeguard and I'm hoping to start volunteering at a homeless shelter soon. Currently, I work with my uncle, who has built a company to help provide education to kids and families who are less fortunate and are in poverty. I am one of the lead associates for the technology unit and I am working on making a new app + website for other associations related to this matter. Other extracurriculars and hobbies out of school are dance, 3 instruments, community service, art, and some other small hobbies I enjoy. Currently, I am aiming for only Universities and colleges within Texas, with an exception of the universities I dream about like MIT, Harvard, UCLA, etc etc. The whole reason I went on a RANT about who I am, is because I was wondering, what can I do to stick out from other applicants? What can I improve or add on to make my application stronger and more unique to help me develop a strong college app to help build a good percentage of chance to get into my dream colleges?
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2 answers
Keep up the good grades because you want to end up top 5% in Texas. Right now the auto-admit cutoff at UT Austin is 6% but that might change because each year they get more applicants and they only have a fixed amount of spaces.
My big advice to you is to focus on Quality, not Quantity. Many Asian high achievers think they have to be busy 24 hours a day until they get into a good college but that can work against their mental and physical well-being and emotional state.
The Quality of your APs is more important than your Quantity. NO ONE needs 14 APs to get into any school. In fact, I would argue that no one needs 10. If you are spending all that time doing AP Homework and projects AP test prep, then you are missing other opportunities that would be more important to your college application. If you are a STEM major then focus on APs that will align with your STEM passions and intended major.
The Quality of your ECs is more important than the Quantity. Just like no one needs 14 APs, no one needs 14 Clubs plus sports, plus community service. Your ECs are all over the place and that's not impressive or good. Play 1 instrument really well. Do 1 physical activity really well (so either Dance or Swimming or perhaps Rock Climbing). Do 2 or 3 school ECS really well and aim for leadership positions in those. Being Editor of the School Newspaper is better than being a follower in 10 Clubs. Curate 1 or 2 "spike" activities not run around doing 20 things.
The Quality of your Community Service/Volunteering is more important than racking hundreds of hours. Again, aim to make a large impact through the role you fulfill. Like instead of volunteering 250 hours, get a seat on the city council, and be a leader of something.
Being Asian female in STEM is the absolute worst demographic to be in for Ivy and Elite colleges because the competition is fierce. There are so many national Intel Science awardees, so many Science Oly. winners, so many 4.0 GPAs, perfect SAT/ACT test scores, so many APs honors of distinctions. So if you are an admissions officer/reader at MIT your eyes get blurry after reading 25 Asian females apps in a week. So you have to look at your competition and differentiate yourself so you become memorable, invoke some curiosity for them to read more, and want to advocate for you.
I'm no AO but if had a file of high-achieving Asian female STEM majors, I would probably pick the girl who did arial dancing vs. ballet, who played club water polo instead of swimming, who tied her love of art to science somehow, who picked community service roles to empower young women with measurable impact (like I helped 1/2 the girls in this zip code get laptops).
Good luck. You need to focus on a much better work/personal joy balance. The most successful students at top schools do self-care, get enough sleep and have a social life as well.
You have a lot that does stick out, especially since you are only currently a sophomore. When it comes to really standing out in applications, you need to really deep dive into experiences that made you, well you. Like for me I could talk about the bullying I received, or the struggles I face at home.
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