Junior Year Game Plan: What You Can Do Right Now

Webinar Transcription

2025-03-26 – Junior Year Game Plan What You Can Do Right Now

Lydia: Hello everyone. My name is Lydia Hollon and I’m a senior admissions advisor CollegeAdvisor, as well as the co-captain of the essay review team. And I am your moderator for tonight. Welcome to, “Junior Year Game Plan: What You Can Do Right Now,” sponsored by NSLC.
To orient everyone with webinar timing for tonight.

We’re going to start off with a presentation, then answer your questions in a live q and a on the sidebar. You can download slides and start submitting questions in the q and a tab. Now let’s meet our presenter.

Katie: Hi everyone, I am Katie. I am actually a fourth year medical student at Brown. Um, and also went to Brown for undergrad as part of the program in liberal medical education. Um, and yeah, I’m excited to talk to you all today.

Lydia: So to get us started before the presentation, we’re gonna do a quick poll to ask what grade you’re in. So I’m gonna give you all a moment to answer that question. And while you all fill out that poll, I’m gonna open right now. Katie, I would love to know what were you doing when you were in your junior year of high school and how prepared do you think you felt to apply to college at that time?

Katie: Gosh, I remember it being such an overwhelming time. ’cause I understand for you all like juniors, like you’re balancing a bunch of different, like juggling all these different balls and then also figuring out how to move forward. Um, I remember being like it, I was taking a ton of APs at the time and that was really stressing me out.

Specifically I was taking AP Chem and that was not one of my favorites classes. Um, and also started, and I’ll talk a little bit more about, but I was starting write my essays and doing summer programs and so that was a, it was a fun time of new experiences too.

Lydia: Nice. Yeah, I, I definitely remember my junior year being pretty stressful as well.

Yeah. And I’m sure that, uh, the people at home, we’ve got 78% juniors and 22% sophomores. So, uh, I’m sure that the people watching at home are in this, a similar boat. Everyone gets told that, you know, this is the most important year in high school. So hopefully tonight’s presentation can help you feel a little bit more confident about navigating your junior year.

Katie: Alright, we’ll pass it over to you. All right. So I’m glad to hear that a lot of you are juniors out there. ’cause this is what this presentation is, um, like targeted towards. And we’re starting in March, which is right now, um, junior spring. What are some things that we wanna be thinking about? So I’m sure a lot of you, like I was mentioning, have AP tests on the horizon.

Um. Or IB exams or whatever other like major college placement exams you have. I know those are least, they look forward to. And um, I would also say I think are pretty important, especially in specifically AP exams in an area that you might be thinking about majoring in. They’re like, you know, a great, like I’m sure a lot of you understand that like teachers have really different grading scales across, like even within your own school.

And so the AP tests really help colleges assess where you’re at in terms of, especially within like a major you wanna apply to. So when I applied, for example, if I was applying pre-med, um, biology and chemistry or aps that a lot of these programs were looking at, for me the other thing is to apply for summer programs and fellowships.

So I would say now is about crunch time for all of you out there. Um, if the deadlines haven’t passed already, this is a good time to start getting a look at them. Um, you really wanna be thinking, and I’ll talk more about this too in a second, but you wanna be thinking about summer programs that will help you as far as research, as far as getting you connected to different mentors or even just like working on your passion project individually.

Um, I think a lot of people will often say, and I think to some true effect that this is the most, one of the most important summers that you can have. It’s also one of the summers where you have to get the most done. And I have to say, like, whether or not it’s some, it’s a, it’s a summer where you necessarily do something within your own major interests.

Like I, I remember I did a biomedical, um, engineering research program and I did not go into biomedical engineering. In fact, if anything, this summer program reinforced for me how much I hated, um, bio engineering in general. But at the end of the day, it also was helpful, right, in the sense that, first of all, established me as someone who was in stem vaguely, and also on top of that established me as someone who is like.

I mean, it, it helped me kind of get a sense of like the fact that I didn’t wanna do engineering, so I didn’t apply into engineering. And so it was helpful in both those markers in terms of like, hey, it signaled that I was interested in STEM and decent at stem, but also it helped me on a personal level decide that this was something I always wanted to do.

Um, you might also be thinking about researching colleges. I would say now was all the time to get super stressed about that. Um, you still have some time into your senior fall, but if you wanna be thinking about doing college tours with your family, this is also a time where admissions officers might be coming to your high school and do giving little talks and, and those are ones events that you, you definitely want to show up for, sign up for, ’cause it might give you a good sense of what the school is like.

Um, you might also wanna be talking to seniors. I know it’s almost Ivy Day soon, I believe. I think it’s coming, coming up pretty soon. It’s the end of March. Um, and so you want to be, you know, looking out for like, oh, like why did you choose that school to go to, for example? Especially if they’re really happy about it.

What did they do that made them successful in their journey? How did they start thinking about their college list? Um, so this is a good time for that. And then finally, um, if you have the SAT or a CT, look forward to, I would say that most colleges are inching closer and closer to going away from test optional.

So I think we’re gonna see more and more test required schools, um, like as the does time goes on. And so I would say for those of you who can out there to study for and take that test and do the best that you can remember, you have a couple of chances to take it. Um, I would say between two and three times is like a really golden marker.

So if you take it like sometime soon, and then maybe you want another chance during summer at the latest, maybe in your senior early fall. Um, you wanna get a couple of, you wanna get a couple, couple of chances in there as well to get a good score on the board. And finally, something to really be thinking about, I think as you’re looking for the next couple of months, is your letters of recommendation.

Junior year is one of the most intense years. Um, and you might be taking some of the most like, intensive course load. So it’s also a good time to start thinking back like, right, your sophomore, junior teachers, are any of them people who might be able to comment on who you are as a person? And, we’ll, we’ll get into that a little bit later too, as to like what to look for for a good letter of recommendation and why they might be really helpful in the college admissions journey.

Okay. So then looking forward to after that, the summer between your junior and senior years. I kind of addressed this already, but it is one of the most important summers you really want to be focusing on. You wanna make sure you have an extracurricular or passion project of some kind, I think that you’re doing this summer.

I don’t, you don’t want this summer to be a summer where I. You are primarily doing like schoolwork, I would say like this is not the summer where you, you, you wanna have something extracurricular that this, because it is one of those summers where people were gonna be looking towards it to like, oh look, what are you interested in?

How are, what are the ways that you’re contributing to the community? And this can include a number of things I mentioned summer research program, because that’s what I did. I wanted to add in here that um, I know there’s a lot of new programs popping up lately and some of them can be really expensive.

And figuring out whether or not they’re worth the money is definitely something to keep an eye to. I personally am someone, for example, who’s a little bit doubtful of like those two day weekend business, um, events where you’re paying like $2,000 for two days for business like leadership or something.

Um, I think one of the couple things that you wanna be looking for is you want like a four to eight week summer program. Ideally something with the length of time. You wanna be looking for a program where it’s going to be structured in some way, whether it’s like, and ideally structured in a sense that you’re going to get connections to a mentor.

So if, for example, it’s research you want to be, you wanna hear that the program is going to assign you a research mentor or something of that sort where you’re working in their lab or working with them on research, um, for the next couple of weeks. And then ideally you want to hear about something that at the end, like some sort of poster presentation or poster symposium or something like that where you kind of have a little bit of end product that you can show other people.

Um, now that’s one option. The other option is you’re working on your personal passion project, right? Maybe this is a time where you could go volunteer for your local, um, political advocate’s office and you could really get involved with policies in your local community if that’s something you’re interested in, or.

Whatever’s a good way to kind of level up maybe a little bit of something that you’ve shown a little bit of interest in. But like now, instead of like volunteering a lot for beach cleanups, you’re going to be a docent and work, um, on a really big project within, I don’t know, the aquarium, where you’re bringing something that you’re passionate about, like you’re bringing something about recycling to local schools.

Whatever it is, like you can make, make it like that, just that one step bigger. You also would be thinking about essays. I would say during this time I was taking the bus a lot actually, um, from my home to UCLA, which is where I was working. I’m from Los Angeles. Um, and so on that bus I did a lot of brainstorming for essays and we’ll talk a little bit more about what I think is important essays, but I think the main thing is that it’s never too early to start, but I would say your junior summer is a great time to start getting those like brainstorming juices flowing.

Whenever you have time, just like pull out your phone, open that notes app, jot down just things about yourself. And some of those things are completely going to be like not relevant and not make it to your essays. And that’s okay. It’s most important that you’re starting to think about yourself and be very reflective.

Um, I remember, oh, I still have the, the document that I made by junior year, summer, actually, it’s like in my apple’s notes if you scroll all the way down. Um, I remember like talking about like how it was that I processed, getting lost when I was a toddler in supermarkets or something that I was like completely out of left field, never made it into an essay.

Um, and I’ll talk more about essays later, but. It was just something that I was like, I was reflecting on thinking about, oh, like how did I process, how did I think about things? What are things that I thought was unique about myself? And some of those made it, some of those didn’t. I wrote like a whole thing about why I wanted to study.

Biology didn’t end up applying for biology. Um, but it was a good way for me to start processing and thinking about how to explain to other people why I liked and why I wanted to do the things that I wanted to do. Um, final thing is to take risks As you’re brainstorming, I wanna encourage all of you to write, like, do some brainstorming around, um, your extracurriculars.

Like do some brainstorming around like your sports team or about like, different clubs that you’re a part of. Sure. Um, but also take the risk and try to brainstorm outside of that. Try to brainstorm about different stories that you might have in your childhood that you feel like really are, you know, important to how people explain who you are.

Like when you’re a parent or if your family are telling a story like, oh my God, this crazy thing that, that you did when you were little. Like, what are some of the things like that, that really pop out and stand in your memory? Or maybe you’re someone who’s like, I’ll talk like, like you, you have a lot of like big shower thoughts.

Or you, you know, you really love. Courses growing up or something like, or you really loved, I don’t know, like Aquarium Rocks is another one that I remember hearing about as an essay. So take your time to go outside of the typical brainstorming. I think brainstorming confines, I think that’s one of the bigger mistakes that I see, especially early on in the essay process, is people think that they all could only brainstorm within a certain range of things.

And I wanna say, especially at the beginning, especially this summer, to really branch outside of that and try to get as wide and as like as wild as you can imagine. And then we can, you can kind of bring it in from there. Okay, so building your application strategy, really you want to, I think this is a good time because a lot of you guys have done some extracurriculars, right?

Like those things are under your belt. You’ve kind of gotten a sense of like maybe what your interests are. You might be mulling over what you’re gonna apply to as a major. You are looking forward to this summer to kind of help solidify that. I think one of the biggest things that you can do wisely now is to start thinking about how to present a profile.

And what I mean by that is when you’re applying to college, you have an admissions officer who’s assigned to your area, who’s reading through your application. And I always remind people, the admissions officer is also a human. And so when you’re thinking about writing this application, there’s a lot of things that we have in mind.

But really the main thing is that you want to write an application that appeals to one human, and you wanna make them want to fight for you. And so when you’re thinking about the psychology of that, you wanna be thinking about how can I present the fact that I’m. Like all these different facets of a person, but in a way where like when, when they’re reading your application, you feel like they can walk away with a sense of like, oh, I get this kid, like I, I know what they’re about.

I know what’s impressive about them. I know who they are. But at the same time, you don’t wanna be a OneNote applicant where they can summarize you in one person. You want to kind of appeal to their senses in that way. Um, and so one thing that I wanna, I wanna really emphasize to all of you out there is to do a little bit of thoughtfulness and reflectiveness when it comes to choosing a major.

And what I mean by that is you don’t need to change your extracurricular profile entirely. Like I know some people who come up to me and they’re like, Hey, like I heard that the Sanskrit department at Harvard is really looking for students. Should I change my entire, like, profile to be a Sanscript major?

And I’m like, I don’t know. Like if you don’t have anything supporting that, like, I don’t know why you would think that right now, last minute as a junior, now is the time to do that. Rather, what you should be thinking about is, I think people don’t realize is that even within your own interests, there’s so many disciplines out there that you can make an argument for, that you can fill with, like, that you can fit into, if that makes sense.

Um. So, for example, I, someone for me who was applying, you know, I was applying pre-med, I was looking at the medical field, and also I had a background in biology. And I would say I had a really strong humanities background. Like I was able to talk about, oh, I’ve like won this and that essay comp com contest.

I was like the editor in chief of our literary magazine at school. So I had this humanities bent to me, this will be important. Um, on top of that, my personal statement was about, um, my time volunteering in a suicide hotline. And the main focus of the essay was about how important language and words are, particularly when you’re in a really high crisis state and you are trying to evaluate for someone’s safety, right?

It’s really important to listen to what words they’re choosing and also to the undertones behind their words and the stories they’re telling. So that was kind of my, like my second big part of my application. Um, and the third big part of my application was, did I already mention this, that I did a lot of like biology, stem stuff.

So I did, um, science Olympiad as a, as a school member and was the captain of that. And so showed kind of like leadership across these fields. Leadership in general as like a person, but also that I was able to be very organized and pull together pretty tough, like not well-funded teams and do really good things with them and like win competitions.

So had these little kind of like bits of myself. And so what I ultimately applied for, right? I could’ve pretty easily applied for biology, which is what most people like think, oh, if I wanna go into medicine, I should apply for biology. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You want to be thinking about what major you can best make an argument for, if that makes sense out of your application.

What people don’t realize, there’s a lot of majors out there that you’ve never heard of. So for biology alone, at Brown, for example, we have biology, we have human biology, we have, um, applied mathematics, biology, and then off offshoot of that. We also have like public health. We have four different neuroscience majors.

We have neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral decision sciences, which is, um, neuroscience x econ, like a crossover. Um. So there’s so many different majors, like what I’m trying to say is, and you’re like, what? What is the difference between cognitive science and and cognitive neuroscience, right?

And so that’s where you can come in now as a junior to do that research and to figure out, hey, like what are the mighty differences between all these different majors that kind of appeal to me and that I can make a good argument for? So what I ended up applying as is cognitive science with a focus in linguistics.

And so the reason why I said all those things earlier makes sense now hopefully, is that I had this pretty strong, bright biology background, kind of indicated this interest in. Neuroscience and the brain. I had my volunteering at the suicide hotline. So kind of indicate my interest in mental health indicate that I was interested.

Right. And like I particularly talked about my interest in like how children develop, um, in terms of how they develop language and also like, especially if they come from environments of abuse. Um, and then my third part was like, again, like this love of humanities and language and I was able to unite all of that under cognitive science linguistics because I was like, Hey, like I’ve hit all these different markers and I was able to be so specific right to, to the point of choosing a particular track within cognitive science and make that argument given all these things about myself.

Now, I did not end up majoring in that, and that was not a problem. At most of these schools, you do not declare a major until the end of your second year of college and that you’re a sophomore. So that means is that, to be honest, the major you apply for is mostly a strategic thing, right? It’s mostly you wanna be thoughtful about what you’re applying for as a major to help you get into the co, into school.

And then once you get in, you have so much flexibility as to what you end up choosing. Um, I actually ended up majoring in something called Science and Society with a focus in medical anthropology. And so you might think medical anthropology, I didn’t even know that existed in high school, but that actually fit in really perfectly with a lot of the interests that I had.

It’s still about language, it’s about the words we use. It’s about different cultural aspects of, of medicine and of illness and of care. And, um, also still fitting with my, my background I didn’t know about at the time, but also, again, like also another thing that was like would’ve been really cool to apply into.

Um, so hopefully that makes sense. Is thinking about like strategically what major and how it fits in with the rest of your profile. Like how can you kind of pull these different factors, like I illustrated for myself to kind of fit into what you’re gonna apply for. Okay. Okay. Letters of rec. I think that yes, these account for maybe five to 10% of your application if you really ask someone to give them a number.

But I also think, like I was talking about earlier, when you’re applying for admissions and there’s a person on the other end of it, let’s be real, a really good letter of recommendation that really paints a strong image and picture of who you are. Who’s not gonna wanna fight for a student like that?

Right? Especially if I’m hearing about a teacher that I honestly kind like a lot of these admissions officers that might actually be familiar with the teachers at your high school. Um, and they might be familiar with like the letters of rec they write. And so if they really see you, like if you, they really read a letter of rec that is over the top, like, wonderful and really paints a wonderful picture of who you’re gonna be in the co at school, you’re gonna end up at, I think that that can make a huge difference.

And looking back, I will say I got two letters of rec from, one was my English slash psychology teacher and one was from like a, like a teacher who taught me like basically all of my STEM classes. And these were really, like, I got to read them after I graduated, and one of them was like four or five pages long.

They were such great letters of rec. I have a strong inkling they made a huge difference in me getting into the, all those Ivy League schools I got into because, uh, because I think you cannot discount the, the kind of like that humane, the human aspect of having such a wonderful letter of rhetoric about someone.

Okay, so onto the logistics of it, you do need one humanities and one STEM teacher that kind of like, I was just illustrating the way that you wanna think about it, especially as a junior, right? Who are some teachers that you connected with? Like who do you spend your lunchtime with? Like when you’re eating on lunch break, um, who have you taken a lot of classes with?

And you might wanna think about necessarily just teachers who you are, like their top student. Um, I think a, a letter of rec where it just says this person is the, in the top 1% of students that like, or of of students in my class of calculus. That’s a great thing to say, but ultimately I. Doesn’t go as far when it comes to appealing against those human, like, Ooh, I can imagine this person, Ooh, I want this person at my school.

Right? You want it to, to be someone who can comment on who you are. Um, I think one of my English teachers I remember, commented on the way that I process things and the way that I contribute during Socratic teaching methods, whatever it’s called, Socratic, like quite like the teaching thing. Um, one of my maths, the, the, my math slash physics teacher commented on one of the extra credit questions I was able to answer.

And he also commented on the fact that I was a main like, component of keeping our Science Olympiad team together and how I organized like whole trips to different invitationals in Northern California and like was able to really essentially hype me up as far as like how much I contributed and how much I did as part of the team as just a high schooler.

Um, and this last one that I just added today, which I’ve been thinking about, um, I just sat with one of my mentors actually for, for like a coffee, um, after, after match day and. Maybe this a little bit. ’cause I, I’m realizing when you make, when you create mentors, you’re also thinking about who you have shown up for as a student.

Um, when there’s like a big administrative task when there’s like things like, I don’t know, like maybe your teacher was really stressed one day because like everything was going wrong and they spilled coffee on their paper. Like, who have you shown up for in terms of like, getting things done and, and, and doing the tasks that like, need to get done and helping them out in, in their day-to-day lives.

’cause teachers are also human. Um, and they, you don’t realize this, but the people that you show up for, they remember those moments and, and they often will and should write them into, into your letters of rec. And if they forgot, you can like give them a little, like give them a little sheet. Um, I call it a brag sheet where.

You write like three different instances of, of ways that you’ve really shown up for someone in their class or like shown up for the teacher or you know, like how to made up a presence or did something great for the classroom or made a really insightful comment or something. Um, you can write those little instances onto a, onto a brag sheet and then provide it for your teacher before you ask them for a letter of rec.

Um, so again, an ideal letter of record really paints who you are as a person, who are as a thinker, and not necessarily just the fact that you might be like the best student in your class. Okay, next, how do I start writing my common app essay? Gosh, this is probably one of the most common questions I get and I also used to be an essay like editor.

I think I’ve been doing this for nearly eight years now and I haven’t been doing it as much because I’ve been so busy lately. But I did read a lot of essays and so I’ve read a ton, particularly pre-med and engineering related essays. And the one thing I can say is, especially at this stage, the biggest thing that you can do for yourself is to brainstorm.

Brainstorm and reflection. Those are gonna be kind of the two things. If you could like take one thing away, is to drill that into your brain is how important those two facets are. And, and I also like to emphasize to all of my students when I work with them one-on-one, brainstorming does not mean writing full drafts.

’cause I know that we all don’t want to sit here and like be and start writing an essay draft. That’s like probably the worst thing. You’re like, I don’t know what to write. I don’t want to write. Um, I understand it’s one of the worst possible things. Totally get it. It’s not about writing endless drafts, it’s really about jotting down little bullet points or even a like, just like scream of consciousness trying to get like, just like a flick when a, something like flicks through your mind of like, oh, this experience I had does say something about me.

I’m just gonna write it down. Like maybe something will come with it. Maybe something won’t, like I was talking about earlier when I wrote like a stream of consciousness, like why I want to apply for biology. I didn’t apply for biology, but it was a way for me to get a start thinking about deeply about.

Why I wanted to do what I wanted to do and kind of try reflecting on what my interest might be and, and, you know, getting some words out on paper is really the, starting, the whole starting point of it. And again, bullet points really key. I think what’s wonderful is when I have, I love it when I had a student comes to me with a bunch of different bullet points, and to be totally honest with you all, um, I mostly sit there and I eliminate like 75% of them.

I’m like, that one’s not that good. That one’s overdone, that one’s not that good. I don’t know if you have anything more to say about this one. And then I kind of work with them through like, if there’s anything more to say about this particular bullet point, I’m like, eh, not that, like, not particularly unique or insightful.

Let’s, let’s go to the next one. So the more bullet points you get down, the better. Right? That’s the, my biggest, like if you can like force everything that you’ve ever experienced in your paper, like that would be lovely, but that’s not possible. Um, like the more bullet points the better, because the truth is I’m gonna, we’re gonna eliminate almost all of them and really get to the ones that are really thoughtful and unique.

And I’m like, oh my God, that was a great point. Telling more about that. And then we work into write an essay. Um, and again, the truth is because a lot of times students will come to me, if they come to me with a fully written draft, I will often sit there and be like, Hey, I think you need to rewrite this entire draft, but a complete different topic.

’cause this draft, like, it, it’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of falls flat or it’s a little mundane. So oftentimes I like, I’d rather you brainstorm a ton of points so you’re not wasting a bunch of time like choosing and picking the words carefully for this essay that I’m probably gonna be like, Hey, we should start over again.

So, yeah, that’s my big point. Um, and then I also, I kind of mentioned this before, but I want us to get away from feeling like, and I think this is true for everyone ’cause I also recently, if you think about what a personal statement, literally like a couple of months ago for when I was applying for residency.

And it’s the same thing. Like, I was sitting there and I was like, I sometimes we feel like we have to write things about what we’re supposed to write about, um, whether it be like extracurriculars or things that we spend a lot of time on in our lives. And ultimately though, I, it’s important to brainstorm outside of that ’cause you never know, like they might ask you crazy questions.

Um, I remember from when I was applying Dartmouth asked the question of like, Kermit the frog said like, like something about being green is great. Like what does that mean to you? Or something, something, something like that. Um, and I had, I think just gone into like a debate tournament where we bought a bunch of flowers and our flower shop and I was like thinking about flower shops.

And so I wrote a whole essay basically around. Um, like using the flower shop as a metaphor for education for females or something. I don’t really remember. Um, so you can have like some interesting offshoots of essays. You can also package them in interesting ways. Um, some really successful essays that I’ve heard of slash read, I’ve been about like dinner table conversations that they have around the, around the family table.

’cause it tells us something about how you grew up. Um, interesting shower thoughts I already mentioned. One was about a, like this person’s deep love for Disney princesses and how Disney princesses represented, right? Like female empowerment, but also like what it means to be an ambassador and to kind of like be someone who’s between different cultures and, and like what that means.

Like what does it mean to be a real life princess today? Um, I can say that I definitely wrote some, like more riskier essays along with some more like normal essays. And some of those were, I wrote an essay in the form of an autopsy report, but it was autopsy myself, so it was a little less creepy. Um, and I was kind of like walking through how I process information, how I think about things.

I wrote an essay about. Taking voice lessons and learning to sing, which was something that was not reflected in any of my achievements. Like I didn’t take those lessons and then go on to like, get any sort of certification or join a choir. I was taking it purely for my personal joy and talked about what, what difference that made in in my life.

Um. So, right. Think outside the box or, or think outside the box. And then like, give yourself a chance to think about things that you don’t like without thinking about what you feel like you’re supposed to write about. Um, my second big tip I would say is don’t read too many essays. Um, I would honestly recommend, like, read a couple of essays.

Maybe you wanna read like the John Hopkins essays that worked. I think that’s a good one. ’cause it like, it’s from admissions officers talking about which essays actually worked for them. But I don’t wanna, I, I don’t recommend people read too many because I think at some point you start to feel like, first of all, you like, you’re like, I can’t write a unique essay.

I feel like everyone’s written an essay like mine. I don’t know what they’re looking for. And you kind of get bogged down. The second reason is because a lot of these books that they publish where they’re like, here are some college essays, you have no clue like, what got this kid into that school? Right?

Like, you don’t know if it’s the essay that got them in or if like what school they got into necessarily. Right. So it’s kind of like. You’re reading all these essays without even knowing if they’re strong essays. Um, and so I would say like limit yourself to really just reading the topnotch essays. The ones like, again, from John Hopkins essays that work, ’cause those are vetted by admissions officers.

And then let yourself cook like ba like literally like let yourself process, think about what those essays did and how you can kind of mimic the style or, or energy of, of them. All righty. Um, I don’t see Lydia with us, but what I can maybe, oh, she’s here. Awesome.

Lydia: Yes. So we’re gonna open up the other poll.

So I’m gonna close the ones that we already have open so that you all can submit.

So while you all get a chance to answer that question of what stage you’re in in the college application process, I would say, uh, one question that I have for you, Katie, is what was the most stressful or difficult thing about junior year and do you feel like junior year was more or less stressful than actually applying to college your senior year?

Katie: That’s a good question. Um, and I’ll preface that by saying I’m someone who I think I take a lot of pride in, in writing essays and I enjoy writing, and that’s definitely not true for a lot of people. Um, so for me, I would say junior year was way more stressful. I just remember balancing, like I was juggling these extracurriculars where I would stay after school for like hours at a time.

And I just remember that being really, uh, like a. So, and like balancing what leadership meant to me and like kind of learning about all of that. So that was definitely more stressful. Um, but I know a lot of my friends who might be procrastinators out there. Um, please don’t leave your college essays to the last minute because then you will have a very stressful senior experience.

Please don’t do that.

Lydia: Yes, that’s very true. Um, so looking at the poll, we have 33% have not started, which isn’t too surprising. We’ve got sophomores and juniors and 60% are researching schools also Makes sense. And 7% are working on their essays, which also makes sense junior year, especially around this time is definitely a good time to at least start thinking about your personal statement.

All right. I’ll pass it back to you to finish up the presentation.

Katie: All right, so we’ll move on the timeline to senior fall. So I was saying that this was a little bit less stressful, but again, everyone feels very differently. Um, the first thing you wanna decide is, oh my God, all those application and deadlines and deciding on your early admission schools.

So I think really quickly, I wanna walk through EA versus Ed. So early decision means that if you apply and you get in, you have a binding contract that you need to go there. So if you are deciding to apply ed, um, which not every school offers, by the way, every school offers like a slightly different option, but some schools do.

Brown being one of them. Brown actually does have early decision. It does increase your chances of acceptance. And also that means if you get in, you must go. And that’s regardless of your financial aid package. I wanna add, because I think some people, um, don’t realize that it’s like the financial aid actually comes a little bit late.

Um. Uh, so then there’s, after that, there’s ea which is early action. That just means you’re applying early and you hear back early, both of these early things, you, you typically apply around November 1st and you typically hear back around December 15th if you got in or not. Um, so it can be nice getting in early because then you don’t have to apply regular.

Um, and also, um, you can use early action as a way to potentially, you know, signal some additional interest in a school. Um, restrictive early action is just an extra complication of it. A restrictive early action means that you are not bound to go to the school, but that you can only apply to one school restrictive early action.

So, um, let’s say, I’m trying to think, I think, I think Princeton had, or Stanford had a restrictive of early action. And so if you’re applying to Stanford early, then you. You essentially, you can only apply to them early, but you can still go to any other school you get into, um, afterwards. So a quick, quick thing on that, and the main thing about that is it’s new November 1st, which means, I know that feels far away, but I promise you that first round of getting applications done for early is so stressful and so much because there’s, there’s just so many more things that you have to get together than people like, than you ever realize until you get there.

Um, and I would also say oftentimes like that application is still work in progress, right? Because you typically will apply to more schools come, the regular decision deadlines is in January. And so typically you’re still editing and, and for reformatting and, and, and redoing your essays even in the months afterwards.

Um, you might also be wanna be thinking about merit application deadlines as well as BSMD program. So I’ll start with the first thing, which is merit application deadlines. Sometimes these might be earlier. Um, so I remember applying to a couple schools where. If you wanted to be eligible for certain scholarships, you had to apply by December 1st.

So it’s really important that as you’re applying to colleges, you wanna collect a school list pretty early on because the truth is you’re gonna have to do a lot of this, like research individually even. You might have to like really scroll through the common app and look through what additional deadlines there might be.

Um, there might be some schools where, excuse me, if you’re applying to their engineering school, you might have to apply earlier, you might have to write more essays, right? So it’s really important for you to open up your common application early on and get all of that, like, get like just loaded in with a bunch of colleges that you can think of so you can at least look through what the requirements are and what those deadlines might be.

’cause I would hate for anyone to miss out on like a scholarship deadline or you would miss, miss out on applying to certain programs just because they didn’t realize that the deadline was like a month ago. Um, second thing is BSMD programs. I know I didn’t really explain this, but I introduced myself as being going to one of those.

So, a BS/MD program is a program where you are essentially getting a, you’re applying to college and applying to medical school at the same time. So that means that I, as a 17 slash 18-year-old applied to both at the same time and got into both. I had a condition, I had an acceptance that was conditional, but a conditional acceptance into Brown Medical School, um, when, when I came here.

So like, I had this spot kind of like waiting for me, if that makes sense. Um, these are really competitive programs and frequently these are also programs where the deadlines are very much earlier on. So either November, um, or December again. And so you really want to keep an eye out if you’re interested in these programs also for their earlier deadlines and important for you to do that research really early on and like figure out what the deadlines are.

So I remember when I was doing them, I thought of them very much in waves. I was like, okay, we have the first wave, which is November 1st wave. Then we had the second wave of the December wave, and then after that it was like the January 1st wave. Um, so there’s like kind of like sections of the application where you can get a couple, a couple hours at a time.

Um, and the final thing I wanted to add was keep taking those AP classes. If you guys haven’t decided yet on your senior year classes. Um, colleges do see your senior year fall transcript. And so it’s really, it’s important that y’all, um, are still taking like, as you know, the same kind of, uh, rigorous curriculum that you have been previously because at the end of the day, they will see it and it will look weird if you were taking like three APs and all of a sudden you’re taking zero.

Okay. All right. Senior spring. So this is a time that’s mostly waiting and a lot more waiting and maybe you can apply to some scholarships and prepare for the future and, but basically like take time for yourself. I would say. Um, this also is a time where you are doing alumni interviews. I would say alumni interviews.

Won’t make that, that, that much big of an impact in terms of college admissions getting in or not. Um, but they can make some impact. And I think it’s important that if you have the opportunity to do them, that you can do them. Um, but it’s, it’s a good way to humanize yourself and kind of make yourself known and that you’re not like, you know, you’re a normal person.

You’re really excited to go to that college. Okay.

Lydia: All right, so that is the end of the presentation part of the webinar. I hope that everyone found that information helpful. Remember, you can download the slides from the link in the handouts tab. Now we’re gonna move on to the live q and a where I’ll read through the questions that you all submitted and give Katie an opportunity to answer.

And as a reminder, if your q and a tab is not letting you submit questions, just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email and not the webinar landing page. You can also try logging out and logging back in through that link in your email as well. So the first question that we have is, I want to write a science fiction book.

Would that be a good thing as a passion project or would it be better to do something more community service oriented?

Katie: Hmm, that’s an interesting question. Um, I think writing a science fiction book can also be absolutely a passion product of its own. I. Um, I do think right, there’s, I think with anything, like, especially if you’re taking such a big task, that’ll take a lot of time.

Um, the most important thing is to see if it’s something that you can, ’cause people write books like well into their lives during college. I think famously, like Divergent was written, but most people write after college even. Um, but the thing is like, if it’s like, it’s like differing levels of impressiveness as with all things, right?

So the top levels, like if it’s traditionally published, for example, but if you’re writing a book or this also goes to, I hear this a lot like about blogs. Um, people are like, oh, I write a blog. Is that considered, like, if I do research on like Alzheimer’s and then I write a blog post about it, is like, is that, is that research?

And I’m always like, no, because it doesn’t have that same level of like, kind of like traditional publishing where it’s like, if you’ve got it published, that means someone looked over your work, accepted your work, thought it was amazing enough that like it reached this kind of standard versus if you were writing a book and then you just say like, oh, I wrote a book.

Then there’s not really a product like unfortunately the name of the world, that’s how the world works. Like a product where you can like show people or like, oh, it reached like X level of sales or something like that. Then that can be tougher, I think for people, for, for admissions purposes. ’cause like anyone can sit down and write a, not really, no one can sit down and write like a science fiction book and like one day.

But like people can sit down and like write something onto like their Word document. But the question is, is there like a kind of a more objective measurement of how successful or how amazing your book was versus like, you wanna do this in your free time, which is also valuable and can also be talked about, but is less so something that’s like an extracurricular, if that makes sense.

Um, but let’s say you enjoy like a science fiction, like literary journal online or like you, you start a science fiction club at school where you guys read science fiction and discussed it. That would absolutely be something that’s considered an extracurricular.

Lydia: Got it. The next question that we have got is if I haven’t taken any AP classes yet, as a junior, should I be concerned.

Katie: That’s a really good question. Um, and that’s, um, that’s, that’s it’s always thought of as what AP classes are offered at your school. I think I wanna, I always wanna make that clear that schools, or sorry, colleges are assessing you based off of, you know, what your school offers and they have that school profile in front of them when they’re assessing you.

And so let’s say it’s pretty normal for kids at your school to not take APS until their senior year or until the end of their junior year. That’s totally fine. Um, I definitely had classmates who, first of all, some of them took no APS and gone on to grade schools, right? Because a lot of, like these boarding schools or private schools, maybe they don’t offer APS at all.

Maybe they offer IDs, for example, which are also really impressive. Or maybe they don’t, they like, prefer you to take community college credits all fine. Um, but also that I, I, I know classmates who went to schools where they offered like one or two APs and so that’s what they did and they got into grade schools.

Um, and so it’s very much in the context of your school and what’s being offered. I would say if your school does offer like AP IB or any sort of advanced credits, and that’s something you wanna pursue and show that you’re challenging yourself in particularly an area that you want to pursue. So whether it’s like, if you wanna pursue stem, like if you wanna take a calculus class for example, or humanities and you wanna like, I don’t know, go to a local school and take like an English class, local college, a community college, take an English class, those are all optional options that you can take to kind of show that you’re challenging yourself, but very much context of your school.

Lydia: But definitely, um, and there are a lot of schools that I have done, like read applications for, that students attend, um, that don’t necessarily allow students to take APs. Mm-hmm. For example, their freshman year, their sophomore year. Mm-hmm. So. Depending on your school, it may not be that unusual. I think the best way to know if you’re in a quote unquote bad spot with the amount of APs that you’ve taken is to look around at the other people in your grade.

If it seems like most people are taking APS at your grade level and you’re not, then maybe that would be something that reflects poorly on you. But if that’s not very common for the people that you know are in your class, then it probably isn’t as huge of a deal. It’s really about the, the level of access that the students at your school have to AP classes or IB classes.

The next question that we have is, can you apply to college both early action and regular decision?

Katie: That’s a great question. So let’s say I, I’m gonna interpret this question one way and then we can talk, but like, let’s say you want to apply to the same school, like you apply to, um, I need to pick up school really quickly.

That’s really action. Um UChicago, UChicago. Okay. Um, UChicago early action, and you get waitlisted or you get rejected. Um, if you got waitlisted, that means they automatically put you into the pile with the regular decision, and it just means that they are looking, they’re waiting for the regular decision application to kind of think about it and reassess you.

And so they will automatically reassess you for the regular decision, um, deadline. Now it’s, if you were rejected early action, that means you were rejected. And so that means that you cannot reapply for a decision that the school has already made a decision about you as a student for, for that particular college.

Um, hopefully that answers it. Um,

Lydia: yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. So you, yeah, no, you cannot apply early action. Scan regular assistant to the same school. But early action is different than early decision. So if you apply early decision, you’re committing to going to that school, you can still apply to other schools and should apply to other schools regular decision.

Even if you do early decision, it’s just that you apply ED or early decision. You’re saying that if they give you an acceptance, you have to go there. Um, so in both cases you can apply regular decision to other schools. Um, but in both cases also, if you apply early, it wouldn’t make sense or it wouldn’t be possible for you to also apply for the regular decision deadline as well.

Um, the next question that we have is how do you meet the different deadlines for different colleges? They’re all so different.

Katie: Yeah. Um, college applications is a great way to start testing your organizational skills. I think some people are spreadsheet people and like will write down all those deadlines.

I personally am not a spreadsheet person, but I did like, I think I did like have a Word document or some, I think I had a piece of paper like back in my day, right? But like, I had a piece of paper where I wrote down like a college list and a bunch of the reg, the deadlines, um, and very much like I took it like piece by piece.

So the fact that I applied to like, like I applied to some of these merit scholarships, I applied to some of these BSMD programs and then I had like doubled the amount of like deadlines, but I would take it like literally date by date. So I think I took it at a 15 day chunk at a time. So I think about it as like November 1st, November 15th, December 30, like, or November 30th, December 1st.

Like, I literally broke into 15 day chunks and then like worked through like one section of schools at a time. Um, so yes, testing your organizational skills.

Lydia: Yeah, you have to figure out what works for you. Like it’s similar to how people keep track of homework, like Yeah, exactly. When the teacher, when the teacher says that you have a project due in a month, you have the kids that don’t write it down and it just sits in their head and it just, some people like have an agenda or a calendar that they write it down in.

Some people like crumple the instructions in their hand and then put it in their backpack. You know, everybody has a different thing. Some people have a system that works, some people have a system that doesn’t. But you know what works for you. You know how you keep track of, you know, the d the different deadlines that you have in school, right?

Like you don’t have tests all on the same day, or at least I hope that you don’t always have tests all on the same day. Um, but you have a system to keep track of that. So this is kind of like a more intense version of that that requires some advanced planning. I’m definitely a spreadsheet person just because I like to have a central place.

I think that also that’s fair. Like that example that you had Katie of like. Doing a document works really well. Like if you have a Word doc that has all the essay prompts and the deadlines for every school that you’re applying to, I think just having a central place with the most important information so that you’re not gonna forget it, that I think it’s helpful to have it also be digital rather than only having it written down.

’cause then you won’t lose it. Like if it’s in Google Drive or that’s true something, you know, you can, you can get back to it. Um, I think that’s the best. I will also say if you’re writing essays, do it in Google Drive or like one Drive or some sort of cloud. Because I will say that when I was in high school, that was not really a thing.

Like people still use flash drives and I remember writing my personal statement, oh my God, on my. I lost it, so don’t be like me. Had to rewrite it, it worked out. But yeah, definitely use Google Drive or something like that. Just makes things easier. Um, the next question that we have is, is it better to take the SAT or the ACT or both?

Katie: Yeah, that’s a good question. Um, I, there’s not one better, like SAT versus ACT. I know that some people will take both, at least a practice test of both because people often I find have like, uh, inherent like skill that’s like better at one or the other of them. And it depends on who you are. Like you just might be inherently better at one or the other.

And so I would say like, I would encourage those people to take a practice test for both, just to like try it out and see which one’s more your style, but ultimately you only need to submit one or the other. And really you should be submitting like whatever you get the best score in, obviously. And schools don’t view them any differently.

Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really up to you. Um, if you feel like you’re going to be better at one than the other, then just do the one that you’re better at. Yeah. There’s no preference to colleges. Um, another question that we have is, do colleges consider aps or college, like, I’m assuming they mean like community college classes as equal during the admissions

Katie: process.

That’s a really interesting question. Um, so, and it’s also, I unfortunately have like a little bit of a complicated answer. ’cause part of it is how does your high school view those college classes? So I know some high schools will take them into account and it will count as like AP credit for your, towards your GPA, for example, right?

So APs help if you get an A and then they help raise your GPA above a 4.0. And depending on how your school works, that might also change, like if you’re valedictorian or not, right? It might change your rank at the school and it certainly might change the GPA written down on your college trans or on your, um, high school transcript.

Um, and then depending on how your school takes college credits, that might count in, that might not count at all. And, um, so you might wanna think about that in terms of like rank, in terms of like valedictorian and salutatorian and all those things. And also, I personally have, I feel like the, those community college classes are honestly way harder than a high school AP equivalent is in my experience.

And so I do think if you’re taking those community college classes, whether because it’s like not offered at your high school, like maybe you’re taking, um, linear algebra or something, or because you just prefer to take it to community college, like. I do think college admissions, like they, they do take a look at it, that you absolutely do have a place that you can put it and, um, submit it for colleges to review.

And I do think they are considered, like, they’re considered as like, okay, you, you definitely went above and beyond and took a difficult level course, um, to show like more interest and to show your ability to take that class.

Lydia: Yeah. Uh, I would say that from the perspective of admissions officers, like a good rule of thumb is that AP is generally considered more challenging than like a regular class that you take at a community college.

But both would be considered more rigorous than just taking regular math. Math. Mm-hmm. For example, like absolutely ap, AP calculus is considered more rigorous than that. If you took calculus at community college, that would also be considered more rigorous. So it’s really about, you know. What interests you?

Like there are definitely classes that a community college may offer that your school doesn’t offer as an AP course. So there’s no cons, there’s no issue if that’s what you decide to do. But if you’re trying to have the most rigorous course load possible and you’re choosing between comparable classes, one’s community college and one is ap, I would genuinely recommend that you do ap.

Um, I saw another student, I’ll just answer it since I saw it in the chat, which is, um, how do you decide how many aps or what is a good amount? I feel like Katie touched on that a little bit about just, it’s very dependent on how many your school offers and how many you can take. There are caps at some schools where you can’t take all AP classes, for example, one year.

Um, so it depends on the context, but also you have to know yourself. So to know the right amount of AP classes to take, I think the best way is to slowly scale up to it. So let’s say that you’re a sophomore and you’re taking your first AP class this year. You know, start with one or two and work your way up.

And once you get to your junior year, if two years, or if two aps work your sophomore year, then maybe you can go up to four. And if that works well, then maybe you can go up to more than that. But don’t try to go from zero to a hundred, get an idea of who you are as a student. If you’re already not getting the most stellar grades in your regular classes, yes, then you probably don’t wanna go really hard with the AP classes because they are gonna be more time consuming, they are going to be more challenging.

They’re not called AP for nothing. So just really be cognizant of. How you’re feeling in your classes if you don’t feel. Overwhelmed with the regular classes that you’re in, then that’s probably a good sign that you might be ready to take an AP course. So we’re gonna take a quick pause from the q and a just to talk about NSLC.

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Spots fill up fast. So if you’re ready to take the next step toward discovering your future, this is your moment. So I’ll leave that QR code up so that you all can scan that while we continue to answer some questions. So another question that we have is, what is a good number of letters of recommendation?

Katie: Yeah, that’s a good question. And I, I think people often say, so you definitely need two. You need the STEM teacher and the humanities teacher. Um, oftentimes people will add a third, whether it’s someone they work really closely as like, you know, maybe they’re like your sports coach or maybe someone that you did a lot of extracurricular time with can really comment to something that you’re doing Extracurricularly, um.

I would say, I think one thing that I remember hearing a lot and I think remains true, is not to dilute, quote unquote, like your recommendations, right? If you have a couple of really strong ones having more, just because this person like seems cool, but they’re gonna write you like a pretty generic letter of rec, having more does not help you in any way.

Um, and so you wanna ask the people who are going to write personalized code letters or rec for you versus someone who’s gonna like, use a template and be like, this person was awesome. Like they, you know, they are a good student. I’m a good, great fit for your, for your like, um, for your school. You want as personalized as possible.

So I would say like three, like maybe four if you really have like someone really cool that you worked with extracurricularly that you, you know, you have two major things that you wanna comment on. Um, but really I think three is like a pretty good space to be in. Yeah.

Lydia: And I, I think most colleges tend to max out at three.

Yes. Or sometimes just two. So, uh, I, I would say every college is different. Yeah. Numbers too. So, um, yeah. So there, there’s a limit on how many you can submit. Um, but if you have a lot of people that you’re considering and you’re not sure who to pick, um, like Katie said, it’s best to have a humanities and a STEM teacher.

Um, and have someone who has known you for a while. So if you’re applying mm-hmm. Like most people as a senior, and you’re asking someone who has only taught you as a senior, that’s gonna be difficult for them to write you a stellar letter of recommendation, even if you’ve been amazing in their class for the past few months, because they just don’t have that much to pull from.

So make sure that you’ve developed a real relationship with that person and. The teacher, teacher and teacher get an idea of how they feel or what kind of things they would talk about, um, if they wrote a letter rec. So I used to be a high school English teacher and I would have students do that all the time and they would just be like, oh, well I was thinking about having you write my recommendation, but I was wondering like, what would you say?

And I would answer, honestly and very few students, but I say they’ll write anything bad. But you know, the details that I give you can kind of get an idea of if that aligns with how you wanna portray yourself to the college. So, um, those are kind of some things that you can do. Just be aware of the relationship that you have and how did you show up in their class and does that reflect the kind of person you wanna be seen as, um, on your application?

Another question that we have is, what is the difference between the Common app and the coalition app?

Katie: Ooh, this is a good one. Um, I think the common app I, I feel like is still more commonly used. I know when I applied coalition has like just started, I do remember that coalition did extracurriculars in a different way, which is like the biggest thing that I remember.

Um, well, okay, so the essay prompts are different, but to be honest, the essay prompts are like a loose guidance anyway for your essays. And so you can pretty much like use the same essay prompts for both Common and Coalition. Um, but I remember the biggest difference, the coalition, like they wanted you to sit your, submit your extracurriculars in a slightly different format.

And so I think there ultimately ended up being more than 10 and 10 is the number that you would have to do for the common application. Um, and so there’s like a minor difference there in terms of how you submit. Um, I would honestly say like. I, I want the common app is like the default. So that’s the one that I felt the most comfortable using.

And I feel like most people are more comfortable reading. Um, but I don’t if you have any more thoughts on that, Lydia? Like if things have super majorly changed in the past couple years?

Lydia: Yeah, they’re, they’re not super different. Both of them have the benefit. Yeah. Like, like you said, um, the common app has more schools, significantly more schools.

Mm-hmm. Um, and they both have the benefit of you can kind of put together a single application that has the bulk of the things that a college is gonna want and send it to multiple schools. What I would say the benefit of the common app is it has a lot more schools, it’s more popular. So if you. Have a longer list of more selective schools, you’re probably gonna have the majority of them on the common app.

There might be some that are missing on the coalition app. Um, but the common app also has a limit. You can only apply to up to 20 schools on the common app, which for the vast majority of students, that it’s more than enough, but it does have the limit on the coalition app. There technically is not a limit on how many you apply to.

Um, and on the co coalition app, while there are fewer schools, the schools that are in that list have been, have identified themselves as providing significant financial aid to lower income and underrepresented students. So if you’re a first generation student or a student who identifies with a marginalized group of some sort, the coalition app can be a good.

Approach just because you can know that the schools that you’re applying to might be more likely to provide you with more financial aid, which can be helpful to just know that if you get in, you might have a bit more support. Um, and with a coalition, you can start your application sooner than if you were doing it on the common app because they have this thing called the locker where you can upload things about your high school experience from the time that you start high school.

So like pictures of awards or, um, like trophies and things like that. So it makes it easy for you to kind of keep track of everything that you’ve done throughout high school because it’s almost like a Google drive for your high school experience compared to the common app. Obviously you’re gonna have to write about those things, but you don’t have that, uh, account set up from ninth grade and you won’t be able to refer to those things unless you have a separate place outside of the common app, um, that you sort all of that.

But again, they’re pretty similar. I think the main thing to think about is if financial aid is something that’s really important to you and you wanna know that the schools that you’re applying to really value that, the coalition, that might be a good option for you. Just ’cause you know that that’s a curated list.

Okay. And the last question that I think we’ll ask is, when is the right time to start writing your common app essay? I’m a sophomore in high school and I have friends who said that they already wrote theirs last year.

Katie: And I, I think, don’t feel pressure by these, these folks to like feel like you have your essay written done.

’cause I would also say like. To be totally honest, it’s like, so if they did it last year, like in their freshman year, you have so many more experiences in front of you that you have time to write an essay about and you probably should be writing an essay about that. Um, yeah, so basically like you will still grow and learn in the next three, three years in the sense that like, you probably still wanna be reflecting on writing essays about like, versus your, just your freshman year.

And also I think it’s not harmful to write, especially if you are doing things in your life. Like let’s say you had a major incident on your sports team, like you just won the tournament or something, or um, you are doing extracurricular activities in your sophomore summer. I think it’s worthwhile to spend time kind of like a diary where when things happen, like write about them, like jot down some of those things into an essay and you never know what might be useful come like.

Common app essay time. I remember one part of an essay that I wrote in my sophomore year, ’cause I was doing summer program. Um, and I was just like writing an essay. Honestly, it was for a essay competition. So like I, I feel I was like forcing myself to do it and it actually ended up making into my college application like a year later.

So I would never say that, that you shouldn’t, you like, there’s not like a right time to be writing and brainstorming. But I would say that like if you can flex that muscle of practicing writing, practicing reflecting, you can always continue to do that. And also please don’t feel like you have to get it done by a certain time.

And I also don’t feel like getting it done super early is necessarily any better, is what I’m trying to hopefully communicate.

Lydia: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say that the sweet spot to finish writing your comment after your personal statement. Is the summer before your senior year because it’s close enough to college applications that there probably isn’t gonna be anything super major that happens.

There might be, and then you might wanna tweak it, but that’s better than starting from scratch. Um, but it’s also not so late that you’re in the middle of having to write supplemental essays, worrying about letter your teachers getting in letters of recommendation and still trying to finalize your college list.

Like there’s so much that’s going on during your senior year. So if you can get ahead on things like finalizing your activity list to some extent. Having a solid draft of your personal statement and being in a place where those things maybe only need to get tweaked a little bit, depending on, you know, small accomplishments or changes that happen in the next few months, um, I think that that’s a good place to be in rather than waiting until like a month before the deadline.

Um, but definitely, like Katie said, don’t feel like as a sophomore in high school, you should already have your personal statement written. You know, this is probably the most that you’ll change in such a short amount of time, at any point in your life, like you’re figuring out so much about yourself. I have, as a teacher, a high school teacher, I can say that there are students who could become a completely different person in the span semester.

Um, so you may not be the same person. As a junior, as a senior that you are now as a sophomore. So don’t lock yourself into doing that. But I definitely echo what Katie said, um, and writing down what’s happening to you because that can be really great source material for what your personal statement might be.

But if you write it as a senior, you can look at it with a bird’s eye view and track an entire progression rather than just talking about a really specific moment that may not capture who you are at that time as a senior. All right, so that concludes our presentation for tonight. Thank you so much for joining us, and thank you especially to Katie for being an amazing presenter.

I hope that all of you enjoyed, and as a reminder, we will be posting the recording of the webinar and you can collect the handout in the handouts tab if you would like to see the slides for later reference. Have a great night. Bye everyone.