(US News) By Courtney Rubin —
As a college admissions officer for nearly 30 years, Diane Anci has grown used to fielding questions from high school students anxious to improve their chances of being accepted. One that bothers her the most: “Would it be better if I took AP calculus and dropped band, even though I’ve been doing band my whole life?”
Anci, vice president for enrollment management at Kenyon College in Ohio, says it makes her “so sad” to think applicants are “manipulating their whole life” to fit what they think she wants.
Every admissions officer invited by U.S. News to offer tips on standing out from the crowd insists that the key is not to reverse-engineer your life to fit some imagined ideal but to instead do the best possible job of presenting your true self. Here’s how to make the best impression.
[Read highlights of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings.]
• Take the most challenging classes you can do well in: Colleges want to see that you’ve challenged yourself and taken advantage of your opportunities. Let’s say there are two students with identical GPAs, test scores, recommendations, and high-quality essays.
Student A took three Advanced Placement courses and Student B took two. Student A looks more impressive, right? Not if she went to a large high school that offered 32 AP classes, while Student B was from a small farming school that only offered two.
“Context is everything,” says Douglas Christiansen, Vanderbilt University’s vice provost for university enrollment affairs and dean of admissions and financial aid.
Colleges work with the same high schools year after year, and they receive school profiles to remind them what classes are offered. That doesn’t mean that you need to take every one; rather, you should be taking the most rigorous courses that make sense given your talents and history. Keep in mind that a B in an AP history class may be more impressive than an A in a lower-level class; a C in a tough class is not.
[See photos of the top 20 National Universities.]
• Show commitment in your extracurricular activities: Most colleges aren’t interested in a lengthy list of activities; they want to see a significant, long-term investment of time in one or two that ideally includes leadership experience by junior or senior year.
There’s also a push for colleges to put more weight on endeavors that less privileged students often have to prioritize, such as working to contribute to household expenses or caring for younger siblings or an ill relative. Erica Johnson, director of admissions at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, suggests including this sort of significant activity as an extracurricular if you don’t want to write about it in your essay, so admissions officers know about it.
Should you do community service? Again, not if you are only going through the motions. Many colleges do value a service ethic and evidence of community engagement. But the bottom line is still to be who you are.
“Who am I to say that writing for the literary magazine is better than running track; or serving your high school community by being in student government is better or worse than community service (or) is better or worse than working at Subway?” Anci says. “What we’re in the business of making judgments about is the student’s ability to reflect on what that’s meant to them.”
• Choose schools wisely: The goal of the application process is to end up at a school that’s the best fit for you. If you conduct your search that way – applying to five to eight schools you truly can see yourself attending – chances are you’ll come across as a good candidate.
As the Yale office of admissions tells prospective applicants on its website: “The more carefully and thoughtfully you’ve considered each possible college, the stronger your applications to those colleges will be.”
Lisa Sohmer, a college counselor for 20 years at the Garden School in Queens, New York, suggests coming up with a list of five attributes you want in a school, like an Italian minor, a rugby club and a change of seasons.
[Find out how to make a college short list.]
And weigh questions like these from Anci: Do you like the idea of being the smartest student in your class, or do you like being surrounded by really smart kids? Are you drawn to a highly collaborative environment or energized by a sense of competition?
One clue that you may not have chosen well: You find you’re struggling to give a thoughtful answer to the school’s question about why you want to attend.
• Reveal yourself in your essay – and start it early: You may have to throw out several ideas or half-written essays before you hit on the right spin on the right topic. Tracy Geng, 19, a sophomore at Dartmouth College from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, started her essay for the Common Application in July before senior year. Her first draft was about her love of writing poetry “and it was really cheesy,” she says.
With time to rethink, she dug deeper. A creative writing workshop she had put on for young Chinese dancers offered an opportunity to weave in both her love of poetry and her Chinese heritage while also highlighting her initiative. Geng, who danced for 13 years, had come up with the idea for the workshop on her own.
• Be thoughtful about sharing your problems: The Common App asks about any behavior issues, and you’ll need to sign and say the application is truthful. “If you leave the disciplinary part blank, you’ve got a problem if one of your recommenders mentions something and then says but now you’re a model student,” Christiansen says. Better to convey how you have grown from the experience.
On the other hand, experts say, only bring up any mental health issues if the knowledge will help admissions understand your experience or transcript, such as why a requirement was waived, or a sudden change in course level. Ideally, you should put out just those facts that will communicate what you’ve learned from the experience and how it’s prepared you for what you might encounter in college.
One common mistake, admissions staffers say, is presenting a learning disability simply as an excuse for a mixed performance. Instead, explain: “Here’s what this condition has taught me. Here’s how I’ve been able to move forward.'” That shows grit and self-awareness – two qualities every college wants.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2017” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
