Applying to college tips
For those with friends who hear back this week, buy a blank cake and an icing pen so you can avoid awkward wrong cake messages.
Not speaking from personal experience, of course
Force yourself to apply to at least one reach earlier.
You better believe you'll be ten-checking that CommonApp essay before it's ready for any other school. Don't be like me and apply to safeties first and consistently find new grammatical errors each time... whoops.
You can't get rejected from colleges if you withdraw your apps.
Now that's some legit yield protection for ya
Ask that girl out.
It will be good practice for flat-out rejection from your top choice.
For your freshman year in college, don't room with your friends from high school. This will give you an opportunity to branch beyond your circle and create new connections. Still stay with people from high school, but focus on building connections. Ultimately, life is about who you know.
Appy to Penn State instead of UPenn.
Penn State is much easier to get into, and since most confuse the two, lots of people will still be impressed at your "Ivy League" education!preety please? i'm so nervous right now.
Get a kid to watch you write your essays.
My 7-year old cousin wanted to see what “college stuff” was all about, so he sat next to me while I was writing a scholarship essay. It usually takes me HOURS to come up with a couple of halfway decent sentences, but I finished that essay in less than an hour to impress him with my typing speed and ~advanced~ vocabulary. Try it!
DON'T RE-READ YOUR ESSAYS AFTER YOU SUBMIT
How to get a girlfriend in college.
Show her your BFS. Big Fortnite Stats
Apply to Colleges Based on Ranking of Individual Programs (Majors), not the overall "holistic rankings" you see in USNWR.
A top 10 math department and mediocre business school can occupy the same campus (it happens). Some elite schools have completely marginal, unranked programs that get no attention or funding, be careful you don't end up in one of those. Schools can have varied, very domain specific reputations. This is something that high school students and parents have almost no idea about, and something most college students don't realize until they are about to graduate.