We often hear from parents and students anxious to find the right ways for a student to ‘stand out’ in the admissions process. Sometimes, parents are looking for us to advise students to join more school clubs, and take on formal titles in those clubs and sports. It’s not uncommon for these same well meaning students to believe that their resume or activities list is a matter of arithmetic, that somehow the right number of leadership roles and volunteer hours will unlock acceptances. If there is one piece of advice we can offer, it’s to put down the calculator and get curious –
Read on for our take on how curiosity is almost always at the core of a great application.
The most compelling activities lists evolve over time.
Unfortunately you cannot sit down in 9th grade and map out a “perfect” activities list. In fact, there’s no such thing. What we can say is that the strongest activities lists and most compelling applications tend to begin with a student’s own curiosity and the steps they take to follow where that curiosity leads.
What do you wonder about? What do you fall in love with learning, reading, or researching online? What keeps you up at night? What are the challenges in the world broadly or in your own community that trouble you? What brings you joy? What do you love working on and getting better at? How could your interests, right now, at 14, 15, or 16 years old, be shared with others?
Asking questions, creating the space to reflect, and taking action to explore or seek out answers is usually where a great application begins. Any experience can be a jumping off point for your interests. Let’s take a student who volunteers at a local food pantry. This alone is nice, but not the sort of involvement that sparks awe in an admissions reader. But a student who takes that experience and asks questions will have ways of building on this experience that can become powerful.
Why don’t more people come here? Who are the people in my community who are experiencing food insecurity? What are the barriers to accessing the resources at the food pantry? What laws or policies help or hurt the issue of food insecurity? My town has a food pantry, I wonder what the resources look like in a lower income community nearby? How does food insecurity affect kids? What does my school district do about it? I’ve seen food get thrown away when the bagel shop closes, I wonder why that is and what it would take to get that food donated?
Whether this student is interested in sociology, economics, food science, health care, neuroscience, politics, or business, taking a next step to explore those questions further can be transformative in shaping their path. Teens who ask questions, engage with people who can help them better understand the answers, and then deepen their involvement or take initiative to respond to what they are learning and the needs they are understanding can change the world. They not only have the makings of a powerful application, but they can shape a path through high school that affirms who they are and how they can meaningfully contribute in the world.
Traditional “leadership” matters less than you think.
National Honors Society, athletic captain roles, and even student government leadership are not the make or break of a great application. In fact, these tend to mean very little to admissions readers, because they appear so frequently in the application review process. These roles start to matter when a student can speak to the impact they’ve had in the role – an initiative they established, a policy change they helped shape, the ways their leadership transformed the team or school culture. Powerful leadership can also happen outside of these formal roles. It can also look like following some of those questions or passions to organize a way to meet a need you’ve learned about in your community, or to share the thing you love with others: peers, younger or older people in person or online who would benefit from what you have to give.
Questions paired with action are the most powerful tool in your toolkit.
The most important thing is not to know where you are striving to end up, but to get curious about the first step you can take, and to keep pursuing your curiosity to lead you to the next, and the one after that.
Wondering how to incorporate curiosity into your teen’s summer plans?