If you’re like many American families, you’re probably dreading the
college application process. And no wonder. All around you, you’ve seen
great kids with stellar credentials get denied by top schools and you
wonder what on earth they could have done wrong. You conclude that
getting into a top college must require making a seven-figure donation,
schmoozing the right VIPs, or turning into a Tiger Mom.
Calm down and take a deep breath. Despite what appearances may lead you
to believe, getting into a competitive college is not about pull, and
it’s certainly not about lack of qualifications. Those great kids who
weren’t accepted are qualified and do have
the credentials. So what goes wrong in the application process for so
many?
“Where many great applicants go wrong is with the application itself,”
says Alison Cooper Chisolm, coauthor with Anna Ivey of How to
Prepare a Standout College Application: Expert Advice That Takes You
from LMO* (*Like Many Others) to Admit (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint,
August 2013, ISBN: 978-1-1184144-0-8, $16.95, www.AnnaIvey.com).
“Read as a whole, the application file has to make that ‘great kid’
stand out from all the other great kids in the applicant pool. Actually,
admissions officers have shorthand to describe applicants with the right
credentials who don’t submit standout applications. They’re called LMOs,
short for ‘like many others.’”
“The key thing for families to realize is that great credentials get you
only halfway to Admit,” adds Ivey. “The second half of your job as an
applicant is showcasing your credentials and telling your
story throughout the entire application. Every single part of the
application matters, even ones that seem basic or look trivial. There
are no ‘throw-away’ lines or sections, and each one is an opportunity
that you can’t afford to squander.”
The authors, both former admissions officers, speak from experience.
Having been able to admit only 10 out of every 100 quality applicants,
they know how students can best leverage their credentials to stand out
from their peers, and they share their insider’s perspective in How
to Prepare a Standout College Application. This practical and
authoritative guide is updated for the latest version of the Common
Application (which applicants will begin using this fall), and includes
information on every aspect of the college application.
“Families are desperate for this advice,” says Chisolm. “With more than
half-a-million kids who want to get into a top college every year, the
application process is brutally competitive.” In fact, Harvard made
national headlines last year after receiving 35,000 applications—but
even the non-Harvards are now intensely competitive. “The top U.S.
colleges could fill their classes just with valedictorians many times
over, and they’re scouting for talent around the world,” says Ivey.
That being the case, it’s not at all surprising that The Princeton
Review’s 2013 College
Hopes and Worries Survey revealed that 70 percent of students (and
67 percent of parents!) gauged their stress levels about the college
application process as “very high/high.”
“Even many well-educated and well-connected parents are bewildered by
the process and find themselves on the edge of panic as they worry about
their children’s futures,” comments Ivey. “And as that stress grows
apace with the competitiveness of getting in, college admissions is
widely experienced as something to be survived.”
If you feel like you’re barely hanging on in the midst of
college-application-hoopla (or even if you think you have
everything under control), read on for six tactics that Chisolm and Ivey
say will make your application unlike many others:
Cut the fat. If you have a lot of academic honors, list only
the most significant ones. Go for quality, not quantity, when filling
out your application. Mixing all of your accomplishments up regardless
of importance will dilute the impact of the most prestigious ones. If
you bury the fact that you’re an Intel Scholar (an honor bestowed on
about 40 high school students per year in the entire United States) in a
list with 15 other honors, like that high honor roll award given every
semester to almost 100 people at your school, you’re not showcasing your
most important honor effectively.
“The same is true for activities,” adds Chisolm. “No admissions officer
is going to care that you go to Zumba class every Saturday morning. Cut
the fat so that you can draw attention to the muscle, like the fact that
you’re an avid fiddler and frequently participate in bluegrass jam
sessions.”
Think broadly about your activities. In the world of college
admissions, activities reach beyond school-related clubs, team sports,
and paid employment, so think broadly about your activities. You’ll be
missing an important part of your story, for example, if you decide not
to list all the time you spend caring for your ailing grandmother, or
the many afternoons you spent trying to write the perfect sonnet.
“What you choose to list here says a lot about who you are and what
matters to you,” Ivey explains. “Don’t let the grid format mislead you
about what belongs there. Admissions officers really do want to get a
complete picture of who you are, what interests you, and how you spend
your time.”
Decode your essay questions. Colleges are getting more and more
creative with their essay questions (“What does Play-Doh have to do with
Plato?” “What does #YOLO mean to you?”). If you feel slightly panicked
as you stare at your computer screen and wonder if you’re about to type
a response to a trick question, you’re not alone. But no matter how
strange they may seem, Chisolm says that all college essay questions are
ultimately getting at the same thing: They’re asking about you.
“Even if they don’t ask directly, these questions want to learn how you
think and look at the world, and they want you to convey those things in
your own voice,” she shares. “Hint: Your voice is not your parents’
voice, your teachers’ voice, or your friends’ voice. You can make any college
essay question serve as a window into your mind, because you’ll be
writing about a subject you know really well: you! As you write, be
honest, and be careful not to let your efforts to be clever or witty
hijack your true thoughts and feelings.”
Nail the “Why College X” questions. Many applications ask you
explicitly why you want to attend their college. These are by far the
most painful answers for admissions officers to read. Why? Because
applicants find so many ways to mess up their answers. If you can’t
answer accurately and in detail why you want to attend a particular
school, you might want to rethink applying to it.
“Believe it or not, some applicants include the wrong school name
through copy-and-pasting errors, or they give an answer that’s so
generic that they could be (and probably are) using it for all their
schools,” Chisolm comments. “This particular type of question is a huge
opportunity to distinguish yourself, and one that many applicants fail
to take advantage of. Remember, admissions officers want to
admit students who are excited about their school’s medieval studies
program, for example, or who are ready to join its ecomarathon team.”
Vet every piece of information you list (and some you don’t). Something
as basic as your email address doesn’t matter one way or the other,
right? Wrong. Think about what impression you’re making if one of the
first things an admissions officer learns about you is that you’re
AbercrombieBabe23.
“First impressions count, and in the case of your application, that
includes your contact information,” Ivey asserts. “Nothing you list on
your application is too trivial to overlook. Also be mindful of
nicknames, and even what kind of impression your social media profiles
might make on a casual observer. You might not put your Instagram handle
on your application, true—but that doesn’t mean that admissions officers
won’t find it.”
Don’t waste the Additional Information section. Are you
frustrated because you feel that the demographic boxes you’re asked to
check on applications—say, about your race or family composition—don’t
quite fit your life? Or maybe you want to say more about a particular
academic honor that isn’t self-explanatory, but wonder how you can do so
with very limited space.
“The Additional Information section is the perfect chance to provide
these optional explanations,” says Chisolm. “Many applicants skip this
section because they’re not explicitly instructed or required to put
anything there, but it really is a great opportunity to convey important
information that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else. Use it!”
“As record numbers of students apply to colleges across the country,
there is an obvious and deep hunger for guidance through the process,”
concludes Chisolm. “The good news is, by taking time to learn about what
college admissions officers want before filling out
applications, you can maximize your chances of acceptance while
minimizing anxiety and family stress,” says Chisolm.
“You can’t make the college admissions process less competitive, but you can compete
smarter and better,” adds Ivey.
