Career Choices – Following Interests vs Following Others

For many students, career choices can be just as overwhelming as major and college choices. In the midst of pressure and confusion, the external influences of others can creep into our brain and make us second guess ourselves or change what we are thinking altogether. It’s human nature that what people say impacts how we think. However, there are downsides.

When it comes to career choices, this phenomenon happens all the time. Your parents are doctors, so they want you to be a doctor. Your cousin is a successful programmer, so now your dad says you should be one, too. Let’s face it: living up to someone else’s dream is not only hard; it’s also insincere. And believe it or not, following the path someone else has laid out for you usually hurts your chances of getting accepted to the best colleges.

If you don’t believe the last sentence, take a look at some of the reasons why following others can hurt your chances of getting accepted into colleges. 

Poor Application Essays

“Why are you interested in your major?” or “Why are you interested in this topic?” are common prompts for application essays, whether you’re applying to college or a competitive summer program like COSMOS. So whenever students answer with “My parents taught me to…”, that’s a red flag that reader interpret as “My parents told me to.”

Ivy League schools, top universities, and selective summer programs are looking for independent thinkers and genuine learners. There’s a HUGE stigma out in admissions against the helicopter mom who forced their kids to do something, be it medicine or engineering. Even if you did gain inspiration from your parents, relatives, or friends, you MUST have be able to express a genuine personal passion that transcends that influence. Your story needs to speak more to your own curiosities and aspirations rather than those of others.

Make Your Career Choices So Colleges Don’t View You Negatively

Colleges, especially the top colleges, like Harvard and the Ivies, or even UC Berkeley and UCLA, look for students who are genuine in their intellectual pursuits. When we follow others, we start doing general things like starting a club because “it makes you look good” or participating in a sport or instrument because “it shows well-roundedness.” Following myths like these make you just like everyone else and read terribly to colleges.

Why? It’s clear that the interest that led to those activities wasn’t genuine. Whether you’re describing purposeless extracurricular involvement in college application essays, the activities section, or alumni interviews, top colleges in the US can tell whether you branched out and explored a real interest or simply did as you were told.

Choosing Your Career Path to Avoid Stress and Unhappiness 

When we follow someone else’s dreams and aspirations, we don’t get a chance to live our own. As a result of this, we see students (and their parents) make bad decisions with their time, all the time. Consider the following examples:

1. Taking way too many AP courses.
2. Taking weighted coursework not relevant to your interests, and not relevant to your major.
3. Applying to 15 summer programs, only to find yourself enrolled in a ridiculously hard class that’s not interesting.
4. Constantly searching for internships when college admissions don’t even care.
5. Volunteering 200+ hours because you heard that it’s one way to stand out for college.
6. Spending 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the entire summer on a “boot-camp” test prep course that only gets you to 1400, not the 1500 you were hoping for.

Get Personalized Help with Career Choices and Colleges to Apply to 

Chronic stress is an epidemic for high schoolers and their parents. It’s easy for kids to stay at home over-studying (when they should be out exploring the world and their interests), and it costs a lot of money to fix (from mindless SAT prep programs that barely raise kids’ scores to countless therapy sessions that kids seek out to counteract the pressure).

By providing good information and a smart way of living and learning, ReadyEdgeGo hopes to zap this stress. If you feel like you may be a victim of following others, please reach out to us so we can help you find your own interests. 

We hope that this provides some valuable insight into how to release some of the stress you may have while making your college application profile even stronger.

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Maximizing Your Activities Section Common App

Want to learn about maximizing your activities section Common App? It seems simple enough: just list out all of your extracurricular activities, sports, honors, and accomplishments and trust that the information will speak for itself… right? Well, like any aspect of college applications, using a little strategy can maximize this section of your application and boost your chances of getting into the best colleges in California and across the nation.

Tips for the Activities Section Common App

List It

Your first step should be to create a list of everything you have done outside of class. In this step, do not leave really good experiences off your list because you didn’t spend a long time doing it. Generally, if you did something that lasted longer than two weeks, as long as it wasn’t video games or a YouTube binge, it’s probably worth noting.

Describe It

Next, write a two-sentence description of each activity. The first sentence should describe what you did. The second one should be about the effect this activity had on you. In other words, describe what you learned or gained from it.

Organize It

After that, it is time for you to organize and order your activities into the following categories:

• Leadership
• Learning
• Other

Listing your activities in this order will make your involvement easy to follow while communicating to admission readers that you are both well rounded and organized. So how do you decide how to categorize each activity?

Leadership is defined as any formally recognized experience that required you to help or empower others. Typically, titles associated with this category have to do with club involvement, leadership class, school events, sports, or band. If you had a leadership title, it counts!

Learning includes both formal and informal academic learning experiences that were part of your high school experience. If you were a general club member, for instance, of a Robotics team, then this would be a good place to put that. However, if you were part of the leadership of that Robotics team, you’ll want to put that in the Leadership bucket. Note that personal projects and internships also fall into this category.

Other, of course, includes any experience that doesn’t meet the prior definitions. Popular entries here include sports and recreational activities, such as music or crafts not pertaining to your major.

Now, here are some more tips tailored to the UC Application.

UC Best Practices for the Activities Section

For the most part, you’ll fill out your UC Activities Section similar to the Common App Activities List. For example, you should still include meaningful activities even if they were short-term, and you should list your activities in the same order (leadership, learning, other).

One core difference is that the UC application gives you more opportunities to elaborate elsewhere. Elaborate elsewhere. If you find yourself needing way more words than the character count allows, that probably means you should consider writing a PIQ on it. At the very least, describe the activity in further detail in Additional Comments at the end of your application.

Here are a few tips specific to the Common App Activities Section.

Activities Section Common App Best Practices

First, use the Awards Section.  Don’t take up valuable space in Activities when you can highlight your awards elsewhere.

You should also choose the right category. Select the option from the dropdown that best reflects the nature of the activity. If the activity was largely career-oriented, then designate it as such. However, if it was more of a fun learning experience, then be honest. Lastly, don’t stress if you’re not sure which category is best. Chances are you’re thinking way harder about it than your reader will.

Lastly, combine. If you had different involvements or positions within the same organization, then put your highest earned title when asked for your position, and provide a description of your changing roles in the description. This allows you to highlight your greatest accomplishment while saving you space for more activities.

As a bonus, here’s a list of some of the activities that you are most likely forgetting about.

Commonly Forgotten Activities on the Common App Activities Section

• That sport you only did for one year in 9th grade (but had to stop because school got busy)
• The club you were a general member of (but the club wasn’t always active)
• The volunteer experience that lasted only a day
• The self-taught Python course, or any Coursera/edX/other course, you decided to take
• The personal project you undertook – whether it was designing your own computer games or that electric skateboard you tried building. Even if you “failed,” it reads well on paper that you did it.

For more details about putting together your Activities Section, check out our YouTube video about it.

We are always posting more helpful tips and tricks to help reduce the stress of college application season. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Then, sign up for a free consultation!

See you soon!

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How to Choose the Best Summer Programs for High School Students

Do you how to choose the best summer programs for high school students? Summer is about rest! After a long year of hard work, a break is well deserved. But even rest can get excessive or boring. Adding productivity to summer is a great way to have fun, learn, and improve your overall standing towards college. Here’s a look at how to choose the best summer programs to help you maximize your time and learn in-depth material while helping you get into great private colleges and the best public universities in the US.

Find the Right Price

Summer programs range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $10,000. The ideal range is somewhere between $500-$3000. Anything past that warrants close scrutiny; what exactly are you paying for, and are you actually getting extra quality for all that extra cash? Unfortunately, many private (for-profit) summer programs don’t offer high-quality education—and colleges know that.

Choose 1^st Party Programs, Not 3^rd Party Programs

1^st party programs are those run by the university directly. Examples of this include UC COSMOS, UC Berkeley ATDP, and John Hopkins Pre-College. When it comes to bang for your bucks, 1^st Party Programs are undoubtedly the best. Not only do they look better for college admissions, but they are also usually less expensive relative to 3^rd Party Programs. The overall quality control and depth of experience is better and more enjoyable for students.

Many 3^rd Party Programs exist, so be careful! Not all summer programs are created equal. If given the opportunity to attend a 1^st Party Program, this should absolutely be your first choice.

The Best Summer Programs for High School Students Represent Your Student’s Interests—Not Yours

Rather than starting the conversation with the summer programs you think your student should do, start by asking your student what their interests are. This may seem counter-intuitive, but parents are often all drawn to the same trendy subjects, like computer science, which then become overcrowded majors leading to extra low acceptance rates. Why set your student up for failure by pushing the exact same program and subject that everyone else is already studying?

It’s not just about which program your student is enrolled in; how well they do there is just as important. Listening to your student’s input in choosing a topic that fascinates them will lead to more engagement, better learning, and a stronger college profile.

Also consider combining your student’s various interests, like finding a niche program that combines business and the arts or signing up for more than one program or course.

Ask What Problems They Wish to Solve

This can span from social issues, like homelessness, to scientific challenges, like genetic diseases with no cure. Starting conversations about the real-world problems your student would like to solve is a sure way to find the best fitting programs for college. 

Pro-tip: A common mistake parents make is pushing their students to do programming in the summer. Rather than telling your student to learn the skill of programming, base your conversations around problems that programming can solve.

This way, the conversation won’t lead to a disinterested student whose only takeaway from a boring summer program is that they don’t like to code.

Choose the Program You Will Likely Continue Afterwards

Going to a summer program itself isn’t very helpful unless the student either learns a lot or enjoys the program. You can achieve both of these goals by choosing a program that relates to your student’s interests, goals, and past education. This way, they will likely use what they learned from the summer program in their other endeavors, fostering an ongoing journey of both learning and doing. 

Personalized Educational Counseling for Your Needs

Ask your students what problems they would like to solve or about the interest they have. Once that is clear, prioritize your search for university hosted programs like those from the UC’s, Stanford, Johns Hopkins University, etc. Lastly, encourage your student to use what they learn towards other endeavors.

Remember, these programs are what you make of them. Go with a positive mindset to learn, grow, and enjoy.

Schedule your free consultation today to get started with our mentors, who come from university admissions offices and have 12+ years of experience in getting students into Common Application colleges, plus top UCs and CSUs.

See you soon!

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