It’s that time of year again: Summer is over, class is in session, and high school seniors are filled with dread. Yes, it’s college application season. The formula required to get into many colleges these days involves striking a delicate balance between highlighting personal and academic accomplishments, outlining future interests and aspirations, and painting a picture of who you are versus who you want to be.
The prospect of documenting an entire high school career while also selling your personality can be daunting. It’s normal for aspiring undergrads — and their parents — to feel overwhelmed. But you can manage it, whether you’re applying to five schools or 15.
Vox’s guide to college application season
This is what admissions officers really want to read in college essays
I talked to the people who are most familiar with how high-stakes it can all feel: seven current college students who successfully navigated the process for themselves. Here, they offer their best advice on staying organized, quelling anxiety, and the mistakes they wish they’d avoided.
Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
“At first, I only applied to one school, and then got wait-listed. I ended up applying to more after that. I wasn’t really thinking about college as much as I should have, and I was dead set on this one school. I just assumed the application process and acceptance was going to be a lot easier than it was. I put all my eggs in one basket. I was so overwhelmed and I wanted to get the application out of the way. I wish I would have applied to more schools from the start. I wish I would have relied more on support and help from other people, like my school counselors and friends who had already applied to colleges and got accepted.”
—Alani Sage, 19. Applied to five schools, accepted to four, wait-listed at one. Now attends the University of Alabama.
Trust that you can turn heartbreak around
“I was one of those students who didn’t get accepted into a dream school, and you feel like it’s the end of the world, like you have no other hope. But now that I look back, I honestly think every single thing that happens, it’s for a reason. If you adapt and accept things head-on, you’ll thank yourself. I’m really happy now. I think that this experience was better for me, better for becoming more mature, more independent.”
—Amna Ahmed, 19. Applied to 22 schools, accepted to 10, wait-listed at six. Now attends Wake Forest University.
Use social media (but don’t let it discourage you)
“Reddit is a great resource. Subreddits r/CollegeResults and r/ChanceMe are great resources because people post their admitted profiles and you can see what their extracurriculars were and you know what they did to get into X school. r/ChanceMe, you post your own application and people say if they think you’re going to get in or not.
“Create a story for yourself that is so authentic and unique to you that anyone that reads it would be like, ‘That is so you.’”
Take what people say about your application with a grain of salt, because at the end of the day, they’re not the admissions officer. It’s okay to compare yourself and your application to other people, but it’s not the be-all, end-all. Use it as inspiration but don’t think, ‘This person’s just better than me. I’m never going to have a chance.’”
—Dylan Ott, 18. Applied to 15 schools, accepted via early decision to the University of Pennsylvania.
Focus on authenticity
“College apps are very tricky if you haven’t previously heard advice or if you don’t have other family members that have gone through them. I struggled a lot, because my family is from India, and they weren’t accustomed to the American college admission process. For example, a lot of my peers could afford college counselors when my family didn’t even know what those were.
I struggled with selling myself and knowing how to tell my story in a way that was unique to me, because from a very young age, I felt pressure trying to be more like people around me. Whenever I was writing my essays, I would try to frame myself as someone that had this background that my peers did, even though I didn’t. Create a story for yourself that is so authentic and unique to you that anyone that reads it would be like, ‘That is so you.’ Pick one angle about yourself to go with. For me, I talked about my self-growth and development, from being pretty shy to being super confident, starting a TikTok, and being in debate.”
—Tanu Tripathi, 20. Applied to 11 schools, accepted to six. Now attends the University of Texas.
Just keep writing
“I spent a lot of time finding my story and writing down my life, asking my parents about things through my childhood that I couldn’t remember that I could draw connections to right now. It was me dumping much of my life onto the page, and then rewriting it and rewriting it and rewriting it again for a long time.
Those 250-word blurb answers were the hardest for me. I wrote about all my interests first and then saw what would match the essay questions for each school. Then you can edit them and change it to match, so you’re not really writing as many essays as you need to. In all, for every single school, there were over 50 essays. But I didn’t write 50 essays. A lot of these are reused, and a lot of them were also 150-word ones. For those questions, I always tried to answer them very creatively and in a way that most people wouldn’t just to show another side of myself.”
—Jeremy Hsiao, 21. Applied to 11 schools, accepted to six, wait-listed at two. Now attends Stanford University.
Stay organized and have an emotional outlet
“I figured out a system of organization that worked for me. Making a drive on Google was huge. I called it ‘college.’ Within that drive I had different folders for scholarships, supplemental essays, and then my Common App. Once you have those folders, make a huge spreadsheet for all the colleges you’re going to apply to. Divide out your spreadsheet into three different sections: early action, a November 30 or December 1 deadline, and then your regular decision colleges. Having it all in one place helped a lot.
Everyone’s going through this at the same time, and it’s really important to talk to your friends and family throughout the whole process for your mental health. Make sure you’re not keeping all the stress and all the overwhelming feelings inside of you. Make sure you’re ranting to your friends, ranting to your mom. Getting it all out is generally going to help you so much more in the long run.”
—Chahat Kapoor, 20. Applied to 15 schools, accepted to nine, wait-listed at two. Now attends University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Highlight the commonality in all your activities
“I talked to a lot of my admission officers and interviewers after I got into these schools and they told me what stood out about my profile was it was so clear what type of student I was going to be. All my activities, my awards, my essays, even my extracurriculars, touched on my leadership and value of community service, specifically in the health field. My junior year of high school when I started thinking about college, I sat down and I wrote out all my extracurriculars and all my awards, and I saw that so many things I did were involved in the health field, and I also had a lot of leadership positions, so that naturally became what I would present in my profile.”
—Olivia Zhang, 19. Applied to 26 schools, accepted to 20, wait-listed at two. Now attends Harvard University.
