What Colleges Look For
Greetings parents,
We get a lot of questions around college admissions and I wanted to give some perspective to parents and prospective students. There actually is a formula you can follow to make sure you stand out. Many of these tips also apply to scholarship applications and internship applications as well. Let’s make a commitment to begin with the end in mind. Recommenders typically have to comment on the questions down below. Would a recommender be able to check off the boxes all the way to the right for your child? You can see the characteristics even from right now and begin to develop them in advance of high school.
There are two elements you should focus one when applying to college:
Previous academic success is a great predictor of future academic success, which in turn predicts career success. When you apply for a job, the behavioral interview aims to assess what your past behavior was when dealing with professional circumstances. The idea here is that how you dealt with situations in the past is likely how you will deal with them in the future. The same thinking applies in this scenario. Do you thrive academically? Are you willing to take on new challenges? Do you succeed when doing so? The evidence of these answers based on past performance is the biggest predictor of future performance. So, make good choices in high school
Personality traits that lend itself to becoming a next generation leader are preferred: integrity, leadership, curiosity, creativity, empathy, perseverance, motivation, ambition, collaboration, confidence, and others. You don't need to be perfect in all dimensions, but some of these should apply strongly to you. See below to see an example of what a rating scale could look like. This is what a recommender would have to fill out on your child’s behalf.
One last question to meditate on as you position your child to become the type of candidate that colleges/universities and competitive companies are looking for is this: What are the first words that come to mind to describe this student?
Think about that parents and be honest with yourselves. Then think about what you want those answers to be. See above for the characteristics schools are looking for. Then, think of experiences your child can get involved with and what their role should be that will support them in getting the world to see them in this light.
I get asked to write recommendations for students all the time for admission into college. These are the kinds of questions I have to answer. The except below is taken directly from a recommendation platform where I had to submit on behalf of a student.
We offer the following questions as possible guidelines to your comments:
What motivates this student academically?
How did this student stand out compared to classmates, either academically or personally?
How was this student able to work effectively and respectfully with those with different perspectives or from different backgrounds?
Is there anything else in your knowledge of this student that you would like to bring to our attention? In particular, if this student has had to overcome particular adversity or challenges, or any limitations on the curriculum or extracurricular involvement, please feel free to share that with us.
