In the planning stages, studying at your dream university may seem like a distant and unachievable feat, a task too difficult to accomplish. You are two years into high school, still figuring it out, and all of a sudden you have to make a decision that could determine the course of your life. If that isn’t daunting enough, you’re faced with substantial tuition fees, cut-throat scholarship programmes, high grade requirements and low acceptance rates at the world’s top universities. With their first-class rankings, they will take nothing less than the best. On top of the balancing act between academic and co-curricular, preparing for key standardised exams and enjoying a meagre social life from the little time that remains, are the university applications. Amidst the numerous other pressures of high school, this period in every teenager’s existence is life-changing. Are the university admissions excruciatingly onerous? Yes. Do the applications alone make you want to forget the idea of higher education? Yes. Does the prospect of answering the same questions in the form of countless essays time and time again for different universities about why you should be selected – ‘give examples of your time management, proactive attitude and teamwork skills’ – make you want to curl up in a ball and cry? Yes! Can it even be done? Definitely! Cheesy as it sounds, all you need is a positive mindset, meticulous planning and hard work. Don’t believe us? Here are the top tips from students studying at prestigious universities for how to get there (with a few million mental breakdowns along the way, but we won’t talk about that).
1. Select an admissions counsellor wisely. The number of students who fall for false advertisements from admissions advisors claiming to get them a full scholarship to Stanford with minimum effort on the part of the applicant is frightening. Talk to your seniors and make sure that the person in whose hands you are putting your future is legitimate and trustworthy. How long a person has been doing the job isn’t of importance. They could have been doing it for thirty years or just six months – it’s whether they have the information and skills you need.
2. Plan in advance. No good comes from frantically rushing to get everything done the night before the deadline. Start the application at least a month and a half before the due date and meet with your counsellor or admissions advisor at least a month before starting the application. You don’t want to be breaking a sweat trying to submit over a faulty internet connection seconds before the deadline.
3. Research broadly and widely. You know who you are best, and you know what you want from your university experience. Write a list of your requirements from universities, then prioritise your needs. Using information available on university websites and application portals, research extensively to compile a list of universities you wish to apply to.
4. Have back-up plan(s). It can be hard to compromise and settle for less than your dreams, but life doesn’t always go your way. Make sure to have a Plan B for your Plan A, and a Plan C for your Plan B, both in terms of majors and the school itself. Keep open as many options as possible, applying across countries if feasible. It is better to choose from a pool of five universities you moderately like than to have to go to one you dislike because you only applied to two and your dream university rejected you.
5. Consider your means and resources before applying. Apply to a range of universities with a broad scope of tuition fees, depending on what suits you best. If you need them, look into student loan or scholarship options well before the deadlines.
6. Write your own essays. This might sound obvious, but universities want to know who you are and why you’d be an excellent addition to their community, not who your admissions advisor is. It might seem like the easy option to pay your admissions counsellor to write every piece of written work for the application for you, but it’s not worth it and you will be caught.
7. Check and recheck your application. Have your statement of purpose, college essays and other pieces of written work for your applications checked again and again by anyone who is willing. Be it family, friends, teachers or counsellors, ask them to read your work and take account of their feedback when you sit down to edit. Everyone will have different advice which could prove useful.
8. Build good relationships with your subject teachers at school. Even if you don’t like that the chemistry teacher refuses to give you a grade above a B on a piece of coursework, regardless of how hard you’ve worked on it, make sure they know that you respect them. Your personal relations with your teachers will, to an extent, be reflected in your recommendations, whether you like it or not.
9. Give your referee plenty of time. You want your reference to be immaculate, but, again, nothing good happens in a hurry. You might have maintained perfect grades and relationships with your teachers throughout the year, but if you only give them three days’ notice for a recommendation just before the application deadline, chances are it won’t be as good as you’d like. Many people have prior commitments and won’t be able to drop everything to write your reference at the last minute. If your reference is written in a rush, it will show on paper and all your hard work could go to waste.
10. Last but not least, maintain a balance between co-curricular activities and academics. As impressive as a 1550 SAT score and an AP honours certificate for scoring five on five AP exams is, an application based on academics alone could be beaten by one which balances good grades, diverse co-curricular activities, volunteering and work experience. It is easy to forget that universities look for well-rounded individuals, not just straight A students.
