For many, the college application cycle has mostly come to an end. In the coming months, colleges will send out decisions notifying whether students have received entry into their institution or face rejection. This decision gets made based on the application that the university receives, generally in the form of the CommonApp. While the name “CommonApp” may imply a difficulty in making a college application stand out, these techniques will make any application look unique and help students get into their dream school.
The main place where the application gets a lot of its personality falls to the essay. The CommonApp specifically allows the applicant to pick from a pool of six prompts, or alternatively submit an essay that doesn’t fit into any of those. Cal Newport, the writer of How to be a High School Superstar, suggests that for this section of the application choosing the prompt that gives the application a hook. Admissions officers often have to go through hundreds of applications in a day, the essay can help make you into a singular person (I.e “the canoeing accident kid” or “the state fair girl”) that easily differentiates you from other applicants. Admissions officers will always be more likely to pick applicants that have some sort of memorable quality to their essay, and will probably lessen the impact of the test scores and grades when comparing to other applicants.
This doesn’t discount the other portions of the CommonApp. The extracurricular section also shows off a lot of what makes you different from the rest. CommonApp uses a ranking system for students to note their priorities. Use this ranking system to your advantage. Take time to try to spread out the different types of extracurricular activities that occurred throughout your high school career. Don’t put all your sports activities together; try to spread them throughout the ranking to show your wide array of interests. Inputting the activities sports, sports, sports, student gov., student gov., student gov. looks much more monotonous than peppering them in between one another.
Thankfully, the rest of the application comes across as pretty straightforward, so the final tip actually comes after the process ends. Princeton Review highly recommends keeping a write up of grades and classes, as some schools require entering them a couple times in order to actually submit. It makes the process so much easier, and also means you don’t have to keep digging out a transcript that has probably made its way to a place you can’t quite remember. With these tips and tricks, you’ll have those letters of acceptance rolling in, and the only worry you’ll have left would be picking the right college for you.
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