Your College Admissions Roadmap: A Step-by-Step Guide for Juniors

Webinar Transcription

2026-04-15 – Your College Admissions

Roadmap: A Step-by-Step Guide for

Juniors

Lydia: Hello everyone. My name is Lydia . I’m gonna be your moderator

tonight. Welcome to College Admissions, “Your College Admissions Roadmap:

a Step-by-Step Guide for Juniors.” So a little bit about me. I’ve been with

CollegeAdvisor for about four years now. And in addition to advising students,

I’m also on the essay review team and a proud graduate of New York University.

And to orient everyone with the webinar timing for tonight, we’re going to start

off with a presentation. Then answer your questions in a live q and a on a

sidebar. You can download our slides and start submitting questions in that q

and a tab. We’ll also be recording this session so that you can review the

webinar again later.

So don’t worry if you have to get up and walk away for any reason, you can

always come back to the CollegeAdvisor website and watch this back later. And

now let’s introduce our presenter. Hi Katie.

Hello. Katie, are you frozen?

I think Katie might be frozen. Um, but Katie is gonna be our presenter for

tonight. She’s able to rejoin. If not, I may go through the, the earlier slides. Um,

she is a graduate of Brown University. She was in Oh, she’s back.

Dr. Katie: Oh, did I, did I zoom out?

Lydia: Yeah, you disc

Dr. Katie: Okay.

Lydia: You disconnected for just a second.

Dr. Katie: Okay.

Lydia: You’re back.Dr. Katie: I’m back. But yes, I’m Katie. I don’t know how much, what was

missed, but essentially I’m a resident of Mount Sinai and I was a part of the

Brown BSMD program, which means that I went to Brown for both

undergraduate and also for medical school for a full eight year program. Um,

and I’m now a doctor.

Lydia: Great. So we will go ahead and do a quick poll before we jump into the

presentation. It’s just asking you all to share what grade you’re in, and if you’re a

parent, feel free to just click that other category. And while I give everyone a

chance to answer that question, I’m curious, Katie, what was junior year like for

you?

Was it stressful? Was it. Smooth sailing. ’cause you had planned everything

perfectly. What did it look like?

Dr. Katie: I wish it was that easy to plan everything perfectly. I guess the things

that I did, I, I think I was lucky to know was I had thought ahead of time exactly

what classes I was gonna take. I knew what APs I was gonna take.

I knew my electives were gonna be, and I kind of had that all planned out. Um,

but I remember it as certainly the hardest year of high school. Um, you’re

juggling a lot of things. I’m sure a lot of you who are sophomores and juniors

out there might be anticipating, right? There’s a lot of extracurriculars and

oftentimes junior year is the year where things get the most heightened.

I remember, um, assuming leadership positions of clubs and being like very

overwhelmed with the amount of responsibilities I had to take on as part of that

and like what that meant for leadership. Um, I also remember being very

stressed about the summer and what I was gonna do junior summer and also

like when I was supposed to start applications and.

What kind of essays I was meant to write. So those are all the things that I’m

sure are going through a lot of your minds right now too.

Lydia: Junior year was definitely hard for me, but I think it made it easier

knowing, like everyone says that junior year is the hardest year. So I think I was

able to kinda create a mental block on my head of this isn’t gonna last forever.

Um, and I think having that, the roadmap that we’re gonna go over today can be

helpful for those of you who are still figuring things out as well. For the same

reason is things are less intimidating when you kind of know what to expect andyou can plan it out. So looking at responses, 70% are in 11th grade and 28% are

in that other category.

So parents, and then we have one person in ninth grade and one person in 10th

grade. So parents and juniors, which makes sense. So I will go ahead and pass it

over to you, Katie, to get us started with a presentation.

Dr. Katie: Thank you. All right, so we’ll start with the kind of age old question

of why should anyone start thinking about applications and about college

applications in their junior year, because I’m sure there’s a lot of other things

going on in, in your life, but I think it also helps to know earlier on, what are the

things that you should be thinking about and what are the things that you have

to get done so that you’re not scrambling at the end to try to backtrack and

figure everything else out?

So, um. When it comes to senior year, um, if you’re a junior now, or whether

you’re a junior now or you’re going into your junior year, um, I don’t know how

I, I guess the school year’s not over yet, so you’re probably like all juniors at the

end of your year. But, um, thinking about ahead to senior year, right.

A lot of the first applications people don’t often realize are due November 1st,

and that’s actually way earlier than you would expect. So if you think about it,

once you start between when you start school in like August or September,

depending on where you live in the country, you don’t have that much time and

you also don’t have any major.

Holidays typically are major time off in order to work on your college

application, which is why it’s really important to start early. Um, it’s also

important, I would say, to start thinking about essays really early on. And the

reason for this is, and I always say like, if you have ever been to any of the other

essay talks, for example, it’s not about the amount of drafts you write per se, it’s

about the amount of brainstorming you do.

It’s about the how many, how much time you’re spending on ideas and coming

up with both interesting ideas, but also ideas that are reflective upon you. So if

it’s, it takes that time to think and reflect upon yourself, to maybe even ask

people who know you really well, friends, like loved ones, parents, family,

about like, what are the things.

That kind of shine through about you, that kind of stand out about you. And

oftentimes that can be hard to know when you just look up, you look upon your

own life and you’re like, oh, I don’t know. This is just my life. I remember forexample, when I was in junior year, I like complained out loud, oh my gosh,

like I have nothing to write about.

And one of my friends turned to me and was like, what are you talking about?

And like spattered a whole bunch of things. And I was like, oh, that was

something that was useful for me to see, like, what do I look like as an

applicant, even from the lens of someone else who knows me really well and

knows what I do.

Um, one exercise, for example, that I remember we did at my high school was

that we got together a bunch of our, of our closest friends, we did kind of like. A

play date, but it was like a college brainstorm date, I suppose. And we all had to

write down as part of our like, application section for our guidance counselor

actually.

Um, a couple of traits and like words that really best described who we were

and kind of brainstorming with your friends and with people who know you

really well, can actually get a lot of those creative doses flowing for the first

time. Um, if those are people that you feel like no, you’ll, um, the other thing is

that you wanna be planning ahead of time because your junior summer, the

summer ahead of you is going to be pretty important.

Um, junior summer is often time the period where people are doing their most.

What, whether it’s like their passion project, whether it’s like the highest version

of whatever the extracurricular they’re aiming to do is, whether it’s like joining a

competitive summer program. Um, all of these things are ways in which people

often will show off, but often stress also before going into the summer about

what they can do and what they should do.

And sometimes those things don’t come together until the very end. Um, so it is

really important to think about things like kind of ahead of time. The last thing I

would say is for those of you who are currently juniors, I would start thinking

now. Now about who you might be asking for, your letters of recommendations

from your teachers.

Because typically we’re asking right? Teachers from that are teaching you your

junior year, maybe a teacher that you’re gonna have your junior and senior year

potentially, or maybe a teacher that you had also your sophomore and junior

year. Some kind of overlap there. Um, and you wanna teacher that’s gonna be in

the humanities as well as in the STEM field.And typically at this point, right, like you kind of, you’ve made it through three

years of high school. You have a sense of what teachers like you and what

teachers maybe don’t like you as much. And also teachers that know you as a

person better. Like maybe you work on a club with them. Maybe you spend a

lot of time in the classroom during lunch or hanging out, right?

Like you have a sense of what teachers know you best and so you might wanna

start getting in, um, feeling them out, seeing if they’ll write you a rec letter. And

also more importantly, giving them a lot of advanced notice because a good rec

letter takes a lot of time and a lot of the times teachers are not getting paid for

this.

They’re doing this in their free time. Um. Because they care about their

students. And also giving them that extra time means that they have the extra

effort and time to put into your recommendation letter. And also to think about

it like over coffee as they’re breaking up in the morning. Um, so all of those

things sing means that’s why we’re doing this talk about junior year.

’cause it’s a lot of things at once to handle. So thinking about junior spring,

which is where we are now, um, we want to start thinking about AP tests. I’m, I

think at this point, oh my gosh, the fact that I am so far out from high school,

this is really saying something. But I remember a lot of them being in May.

Correct me if I’m wrong. Um, and so a lot of the AP tests that you’re studying

for, I do remember studying really hard for these AP tests. Don’t get me wrong, I

might not remember dates, but I’m good at remembering the tests themselves.

Um, you might be studying gearing up for them. This might be the year where

you’re taking the most number of aps that you’ve taken thus far in your life as

well as AP exams.

And so I remember my junior year, it was like a whole week of testing. It felt

like it was just back to back to back to back testing. And it took a lot of

preparing for me. It took also a lot of me knowing myself, knowing what

classes were going to be easier for me. And by that I also mean what tests were

gonna be easier for me.

I always had a sense of like, okay, what are the tests, the AP tests that I didn’t

really need to study for? I was someone who was always stronger in English

and history. And so those honestly came really easily. The day before a history

exam, I had a particular, like a particular book that I always referenced.Um, there was an AP guide. I would read through it starting two nights before I

would finish it the night before. And then I would call it a day. And I would

usually feel really confident going into the AP test the next day. That wasn’t

necessarily true for my STEM APs. Those took a lot of work in studying ahead

of time.

And so know yourself as you’re going into, right? Possibly the most amount of

AP tests you’re taking, or IBS or whatever other honors you’re taking, you kind

of are, you’re at your highest peak of challenge, if that makes sense for most of

you in your junior year. Um, applying for summer programs and fellowships,

these are things that you wanna keep an eye out for.

Now, I know it’s only April and it feels like summer is very far away, at least for

me. I feel like in New York, the sun literally just hit, um, for the first time. It

feels like it was snowing and windy just all of last week. That being said, you

want to be thinking ahead of time. A lot of applications, um, might have

deadlines coming up.

Um, they also might already, like, they’re sort of imminently. Onboard. And so

you want to be taking whatever free time you have, which I know is minimal.

But also this is a time where you can recruit parents to help out, to help do

research on summer programs, to see what’s out there and to see what you can

apply for that.

Um, you feel like, all right, within your interest, but also feel like a, kind of like

something that represents your interests in some way, um, in your junior year.

So that might be like, you know, something that, a project that you’re already

working on, like maybe you’re a volunteer at the library, but this summer you

have a particularly big project planned out where you’re going to address some

X, Y, Z thing that you’re really passionate about.

Or it might be applying to a competitive summer program, right? Like, these are

all different ways that we can make use of our junior summers without

necessarily, um, like becoming too overwhelmed by trying to do too many

different things, if that makes sense. Um, I remember in my junior summer, the

one thing that I did was a summer program.

Um, it was over at UCLA. I’m from Los Angeles. Um, so on. I would go to this

program and I would experience a little taste of college life, I guess. Um, as I

commuted there and kind of went around UCLA campus, um, kind of

envisioned what life might be for me as, as like a college student. And then I

would also, because I took the bus to UCLA, I would during that hour startthinking or reflecting and brainstorming on my essays, like in my notes app on

my phone.

And that’s kind of, that was my summer. Like I wasn’t doing a bajillion fancy

things right. It was kind of focused energy on one major task. And then with my

additional free time, I was able to kind of spend time on the thinking about my

application, thinking about how I was gonna present myself. This might also be

a good time for you to research colleges.

Um, a good college is a very important part of your application process. Um, a

lot of times I think, and this, I say this for myself, even to looking back, um, I

was from the west coast, so I really didn’t have like a good sense of what. Good

schools, like on the East coast, outside of Ivy League schools. And I wish I had

done better research, but also known more about the diversity of different

schools, of liberal arts colleges here on the East coast so that I would know what

my options were, what’s a good fit for me, but also like what are other good

schools that are not just highly competitive schools?

What is it, the tier right below that? What is like a mid, mid tier school? Like a

a, a what, what’s a reach? What’s a, what’s a target and what’s a safety for me?

Um, and having a good sense of that can be really helpful. Um, especially as

you go into college, creating your college list, but also applying, ’cause each

application does cost money and at some point there are diminishing returns

when you apply to too many schools.

Um, taking the SAT and ACT, um, I wrote this here. I think it’s, um. It’s, it’s I

think, becoming more and more clear to most people. When I talk to most, um,

parents these days that although schools would be, were test optional kind of

during the pandemic and a little bit after that, most schools, especially the

competitive schools, are starting to move away from test optional.

They want to see, uh, standardized tests again. And this is because I think like,

so, so far all of the studies that they’ve done have shown that standardized

testing does not actually. Particularly helped diversity, um, at top tier colleges, I

think they’re still figuring that out and still figuring out how to make colleges,

um, more equitable and the college application process more equitable.

But as of now, standardized tests are, are at least a way that we have to measure

people and for a measure of people, not just up against what their school has to

offer, but also, and or maybe like the biases or not biases of teachers, right? We,

we all have teachers that like us, teachers that don’t like us, really hard teachers,

really easy teachers.Um, but using it as a way to kind of showcase like a student’s baseline sort of

metric and their ability to study for the SAT if they have those resources. Um,

and then last thing, letters, recommendations. I already touched on. Okay, so

what is this summer looking like? Um, I already mentioned summer research

programs.

That’s something that I often get asked about, which is why I mention it here.

And then I also often get asked how to tell if they are legit, quote unquote or

not. I think one thing that I always mention is that a lot of these summers

research programs, especially since I went to high school, have gotten so much

more expensive.

Um, my cousins went through the college application process four years after I

did. And even within that four year span, I watched the same, like the prices

that, um, that I paid for one of my summer programs, like shoot up

exponentially and also get shorter at the same time. So things that I would look

out for, um, look for things where they’re offering you a genuine experience and

mentorship in a lab under like some person who.

Is a PhD or is doing research in the field that you’re interested in, whether it’s

sociology, research, or you’re interested in doing like wet lab research and

getting into the lab and pipetting, DNA, right? Those are all things that you can

actually do within a summer research program, and that’s, that’s something you

wanna look for because you are actually getting exposed to what real life

research looks like, versus there are some programs that kind of build

themselves a summer research program.

Then you look into it and it’s kind of like a series of classes on like what is,

what is research or what is leadership? And then that’s a little bit less, you’re not

as much getting hands on experience as much as staying in a classroom all day.

Um, which is not, I think as, as like. Is is useful of an experience for you as a

high school student to figure out if you wanna do research or not?

Um, so for example, one of the programs that I did that I was mentioning earlier

at UCLA, it was in biomedical engineering. And that’s how I figured out that I

absolutely hated engineering and that I could not do this for the rest of my life.

It was a meaningful experience because of that, right? Like it helped me

eliminate a very genuine career opportunity for me.

Um, but it was really cool. I got assigned to a principal investigator. I went to a

lab. They were doing like research with electron microscopy, and they were

kind of able to explain a little bit, at least about why this research wasimportant. And then ultimately they taught me how to create a research poster

and how to present it.

And that was like my first and like. Dip into like very shallow dip into research.

And since then, now that I am so many years down the line and, um, a resident

and have applied to medical, like, you know, had to do medical school, had to

apply to residency, have to apply to fellowship soon, um, research is still very

much a prominent part of my life.

So it’s kind of like a way of setting yourself up for your future career. Second

thing, volunteering or community service. So for me, actually, I think the most

prominent part of my application was actually my volunteer work. I worked at a

suicide hotline, and so that was something where I just engaged. I put in more

hours in my junior and senior years.

It was something that like I, I started to get engaged with, I think honestly early

in my junior year, and then just kind of upped my hours and got more engaged

and got more experience with, um, it wasn’t something that I could actually seek

leadership in, but that being said. I sought leadership in clubs that I was able to

at school.

And those were all things that made it to my application, made it to my essays,

and also made it into my letters of recommendation. And I think I actually made

a pretty big difference in terms of getting into colleges essays. Like I was

saying, never too early to start. Um, I started brainstorming on the notes app on

my phone and I honestly still have, um, some of those like blurbs that I have

from all the way back then.

And it’s still kind of cringey to read, but I think the biggest thing is to do a lot of

brainstorming versus drafting. The reason why I say that is because for

everyone it’s really hard to get started on writing and people always say like,

writing the first couple of sentences of the essay is the easy part.

I dunno if that’s true or not, but what I can say is writing a draft is hard. It takes

time because you’re like, you’re sitting there, you’re trying to choose your word,

you’re trying to figure out how to word things properly. And then oftentimes in

my experience as a CollegeAdvisor, I’ve been doing this for quite a while now.

Um. Uh, my students will come to me and they’ll present me with their very

first draft. And oftentimes there’s certainly, there’s always like something there

that we can use, but a lot of the times I’m tearing it apart completely. I am

saying, look, we are here together, we’re working together really deeply.Let’s go actually back to the brainstorm stage, rather than editing this graph that

you have so that we can together work on what exactly is it a college essay

should look like and sound like. Because in reality, no English class really in

high school ever prepares you to write a college essay. ’cause it’s all about like

analysis of literature, for example.

It’s not so much about how do you write a story about yourself, right? And so

that’s why I think that brainstorming is so important. I usually spend a lot of my

time in the beginning with students literally thinking of every possible thing we

could write about. And because you actually end up writing multiple essays for

your college application process, none of that is wasted.

You’ll find that different parts of different brainstorms. As an advisor, I’m able to

kind of help students more, like piece it together and figure out what things can

go with what, what cohesive story can we tell? And then all of that time you

spent brainstorming ends up making it much, much easier for you to ultimately

write the essay because I’m able to say like, Hey, here’s like a general sense of

what you should have in this essay.

Here’s how we should frame it, and here’s how we should frame all these

different essays so that you aren’t, don’t feel like you’re writing the same essay

over and over again. Um, my second big tip, um, and I can speak, speak more

about this certainly in the q and a, is just. To take, take risks with your essays.

Um, it’s sort of like a stock portfolio in some senses where because you’re

writing so many essays, um, for Brown, for example, for my Brown like, um,

program in liberal medical education, the Pliny program alone, I wrote, if I

remember correctly, I think I wrote seven or eight essays for this one program

alone.

And so you have a lot of essays in which to showcase things about yourself. So

it’s okay to play it safe on some essays and take risks on other essays. Think of

it in that way, like a stock portfolio. Okay. Those in your application strategy.

So I’ve already kind of alluded to this, um, a couple of things that I like to put

explicitly here because this is explicit advice that often people aren’t, uh, aren’t

necessarily knowing or hearing from other places.

Um, one thing is that most colleges will ask you to choose a major or choose an

intended major. I wanna be. At most colleges, you actually do not declare a

major until the end of your sophomore year. Like you don’t lock it in. In fact,

you don’t even to say anything about your major once you get there until the end

of your sophomore year.There are a couple exceptions to this. Um, for example, if a school has a school

of engineering, for example, at Cornell, um, you have to declare school of

engineering first, or even at UCLA, let’s say UCLA has a school of engineering,

you might have to declare that first. Um, but you’ll find that the School of

Engineering has a very specific subset of engineering.

And then if you’re interested in, let’s say, like quite literally anything besides

engineering, oftentimes it’s in the General College of Arts and Sciences. Um,

but long story short, what I’m trying to say is you’re not really declaring a major

until the end of your sophomore year, which means. That what you put down on

your application is more strategic than it is like an actual, like declaration of

major.

Um, I would also say right at most colleges, like what you decide to major in

can be changed, um, relatively easily. For me, again, I didn’t declare until the

end of my sophomore year, so my major changed drastically and I’ll talk more

about that. Um, would I, my, the advice that I often give, and granted some of

this is slated towards pre-med students because most of my advisees are pre-

med students, as I obviously was pre-med, um, when I first applied.

Um. Is to try to think about ways in which you can actually use what you talk,

you declare as your attended major to show off who you are and your interests

and passions in a unique way. What I mean by that is there’s a limited amount of

understanding I’m getting of you. If you say number one, choice biology,

number two choice, human biology, number three, choice psychobiology, and

then your essay is about how much you love AP biology.

Um, usually that’s like a very classic essay import, um, profile that I get when I

am for like, from the first glance when I get from a, um, a, a pre-med student.

And what I encourage people to do is to look more carefully at the college

website and think about what all these different majors are. People often don’t

realize, like, let’s say you’re interested in, people come to me like, oh, I wanna

major in biology.

I’m really interested in the brain. I’m like, okay, we’ll, have you considered

neuroscience And beyond that, did you know that? I’m gonna use Brown again

’cause I know Brown the best. Within Brown alone, there are five different

majors under the neuroscience branch. There’s neuroscience, cognitive

neuroscience, cognitive science, uh, behavioral decision sciences.

And then one more that I am missing. In this current moment, oh, look, there’s

psychology certainly, for example, all of these things work within the brain,right? Do you know the difference between those majors? And if you don’t,

maybe we should do a little bit more research together and figure out what it is

that you are interested within that, and why that?

Because if you can write a really good essay, specifically addressing why that

major, that’s what makes for an interesting, compelling essay that, um, makes

for an essay That’s not something that I haven’t, that I’ve read hundreds and

hundreds of times before where I can predict what you’re gonna say before you

say it, right?

Um, so one thing, for example, um, I applied as a cognitive science major. Um,

I applied as a cognitive science major with a track and linguistics, and this was a

calculated decision. For better or worse, I was interested in the brain. I had done

science Olympiad and had indicated a lot of interest in the brain.

I’d also, like I mentioned. Worked on the suicide hotline, and a lot of my

application was talking about my interest in the intersection between culture,

language, and biology. And so one of my essays, for example, was at about a

specific pion disease. Um, in humans it’s often called Mad Cow Disease or CR

Jakob.

Um, but my essay was about specifically like this disease presenting in a

particular. Tribe and Papa, Papa New Guinea and like just the interest that I had

in rituals intersecting with disease and the way in which we tell stories about

illnesses. Now, I probably didn’t say it as eloquently at that point in time, but I

still wrote gen, like, uh, I was trying to get at something that I didn’t know the

name of that I was interested in, and that actually ended up being medical

anthropology, which is why I ended up switching into that major.

I simply did not know that was a major when I was in college, uh, when I was

in high school. Um, but you can see how I pulled different parts of my

application together. Um, like I had a writing background as well, a clear

humanities background. I pulled different parts of my application together

trying to form, form a story of what specifically I was interested in and what

kind of college student I would be like, what would I be, what would I be

contributing to the college campus and what profile of a student I would be.

Okay. Securing strong letters of recommendation. I’ve kind of referenced this a

little bit already, um, but. Right. Thinking about who you’ve taken a lot of

classes with, who knows you outside of school, maybe like who is the mentor or

whatever they call it these days when you like the, like the supervisorsupervisory teacher that signs off on your clubs that you do, I also put here, who

have you shown up for?

Meaning? Like who have you gone above and beyond for as a teacher to help

out with them or to really get to know them and for them to get to know you or

that you again, like hang out within their classroom and you kind of like

chitchat about things? Um, I would say that letters of recommendation

historically don’t they count for a small percentage of your application.

That being said, it is a qualitative, qualitative description of you. And so if you

get a really great letter of recommendation, it can make a lasting impact. It can

make you memorable. It can people think about it, people remember you

through your letters of recommendation and I think, I’ll be honest, I think.

Feel like I fell into that category of, of student, and that’s how I als That was

like a huge part, I think, of me getting into a lot of colleges. And the reason for

that is, um, I was able to read my letters of recommendation after I graduated.

Actually. Um, when I was doing this work, I often, I asked my teachers for the

letters of rec so I could show my students and said like, here, here’s an example,

the letter of rec.

And one of them commented, for example, on how I think and how I

contributed in a classroom, um, during like Socratic methods. I hope that’s still a

thing in high school, like Socratic methods of discussion of different books. For

example, we had read a book about Henrietta Henrietta Sachs, um, in English

class.

And then my other teacher commented on the fact that my school was an

incredibly underserved school and how as the captain of the Science Olympiad

team, like he were all the things that I was fighting, like I was. Up against,

compared to other schools who were also competing in California, who were

doing sometimes a lot better than us.

Um, and I think that second essay gave a lot of context to, um, an essay that I

ended up writing about how I feel like I feel as a captain. Um, and that was

something that I remember after I got into like, it was like Yale or Princeton,

that the admissions officer had written me a little note saying, like, it was like

your work in science Olympia was particularly notable, memorable to me.

Um, and so like these are things that again, make an impact of someone, make

it, make you memorable. And in an application cycle where oftentimes

admissions officers are spending maybe 15 minutes reading through your entireapplication, being memorable in a good way can make a huge impact for how

far you go in the application cycle.

Okay. All right. How do you start writing your Common App essay? Isn’t this

the question of the century? And I’m gonna reiterate it over and over again.

Hopefully by the end you’re like, I’ve, you have girls listening to you enough.

But it really is about brainstorming. I think when a lot of high school students,

and this is me too, like I say this for myself as well, having just applied to

residency and written a personal statement again for residency, and we’ll write

another one for fellowship like this is I’m still in the trenches with everyone.

Um, we all get stuck on what we feel like we’re supposed to write about. Like,

what is it that I am supposed to communicate? What is that colleges think they

wanna see in a student, right? We get really stuck on this idea, like what they

wanna see and how can we show them what they wanna see? And that

oftentimes isn’t what people find the most interesting about you.

Um, my personal statement ended up being honestly, a pretty. A boring one and

ended up being about an extracurricular that I did. And it only, I think it worked

because I spent so much time reflecting on the extracurricular and what I loved

about it and being able to write an interesting story about my work at a suicide

hotline, which is inherently kind of interesting.

Um, but some of the other personal statements I read there have been the most

effective were about the conversations that this patient typically had at the

dinner table with, with their family, um, shower thoughts, which if anyone’s put

it on like the Reddit are shower thoughts. That’s like another example of like,

sometimes you have interesting musings and that can tell, tell us something

about who you are.

Um, one that I remember one of my mentors wrote, um, she ended up at

Stanford, I believe it actually think, went to Yale law of course, ’cause she’s a

high achiever. Um, hers was about her love of Disney princesses and kind of

like what Disney or princesses represented to her. Um. In the lens of like being

a peacemaker, being an ambassador, potentially in today’s terms, like what does

that mean to be involved in politics, um, and also have that love of being

feminine and being girly and being a princess.

Um, I would also say it’s helpful to read a couple of really great essays to just

get a sense of like, what is the style, what is the flavor? What kind of writing are

you looking for? What’s good writing look like? What kind of humor isappropriate? How can you be like, add a little element of yourself? And my

recommendation for that is to read some essays, but not too many.

Um, I personally really like the JHU essays that worked, um, website, because

that one is essays that are handpicked by admissions officers that stood out to

them. So you, it’s sometimes when you purchase a book that’s like, oh, like 101

college application essays you have, these are just essays that were submitted to

a publisher.

You have no idea if the student got in because of their essay or because they

were like, I don’t know, stellar on some other category like the cured cancer or

they’re like an Olympic athlete. Right. Versus the, the essays that work website,

it’s admissions officers picking out essays. Speak that specifically stood out to

them.

And I think it’s a really great way to see other successful essays and also kind of

figure out, hey, what are some, like what are some of the ways that people write

about mundane things in an interesting way? What are some ways in which

people are highlighting their personality? Um, I remember two that came out

my year when I was in planning college.

God, these are so dated, but one was about this person and her Costco trips and

how it, like something about her creativity sh show, show shown through in this,

in this essay. Another one was about this patient’s love for venous fly traps. And

those were like essays that actually made an impact on me, not because of their

content.

None of my essays ended up, up being either of those things, but more about the

style and the feel of the essay. Um, you’ll be writing a lot of essays, by the way.

Um, so it’s okay to take some risk of with your essays. I ended up writing one

essay about learning to sing and how that made a huge impact on me finding my

voice and, and, and doing debate later on.

Um, and also I talked about myself in the form of an autopsy report. That was

one of my riskier format essays, um, because I had a love for forensics. Okay,

I’m running outta time, so I’m gonna make sure I speed along. Um, senior fall,

September to January, ah, this is application season, right? So you wanna decide

on what your early admission schools are, whether you wanna apply early

action, early decision.

If anyone out there is interested in BSMD programs, they can actually ask in the

q and a as well, but those also have earlier deadlines for anyone who might belooking at those. Um, so when I was applying, I thought of them as like waves

or. I was trying to think of the sports version of that, but I can’t think of it in the

current moment.

But it was like waves of applications. Like I would have my set of November

1st ones, then I had my November 15th ones, and then I had my December 1st

ones, and then I had my like January like big push, last big sprint section. Um,

and keep taking those AP classes. It looks like colleges still see your senior year

transcript and um, sometimes your senior year, like at least for semester grades.

And so you wanna keep pushing through at this point. And I know it’s rough.

Senior spring, uh, this is the long awaited, like senioritis, you’re kind of just

playing the waiting game, which can be the worst ’cause you just, you can’t

really do anything about anything. You’re just waiting around until March.

Um, take this time to apply to scholarships. Um, prepare for the future, right?

Like see what you could apply to with all those essays that you wrote. Maybe

you can reuse them to apply to some niche scholarships for yourself. And get

you some money. Um, alumni interviews is something that I will mention. Um,

most schools still offer them usually over zoom these days.

Some of them now have switched over to this like video interview format where

you film a video about yourself talking. Um, kind of just like give yourself,

make yourself memorable, give your like, put a face to the name kind of feeling.

Um, these often are done in January or February. They don’t make a huge

difference, but, um, you also don’t wanna do incredibly poorly ’cause I think a

really poor alumni interview can also say something about you.

Okay. Just a little over time.

Lydia: Okay. Thank you so much for that awesome presentation, Katie. Um,

that concludes the slide deck part of the webinar and then we’re gonna transition

over into the live q and a where I will read through questions that you all have

submitted and give Katie a chance to answer. And as a heads up, if your q and a

tab isn’t letting you submit questions, just double check that you joined the

webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing

page.

So let’s jump right in and ask some of these questions. So the first one that we

have is around standardized testing, which isn’t super surprising given that’s

kind of the highlight of junior year, which is do I need to take the SAT if I

already got a high score on the a CT.Dr. Katie: Good question. The answer is definitely no, right?

It’s, it’s SAT or ACT. For those of you out there who might still be preparing for

standardized testing, um, what I would recommend at home, just take, or what

actually what I did was I went to my local library because they actually offer

testing sessions. I don’t know if any many of you out there know this, but at

least in LA they offered like free testing sessions that you could literally just

walk into, take one SAT practice test, take one ACT practice test, see which one

vibes more with you.

Because oftentimes, like people have a little bit of a preference. I know I was an

SAT group lead myself, um, and then you want to drill in and study hard. I think

my biggest tip for the SAT, um, and this was like, you know, you’re building,

this is like early on, building your test taking skills, but something that I had

read was.

Writing down or going over every single question that you got wrong seeing

like what, what did you whittle it down to? Like what were you in between?

And can you really truly understand why it’s not the answer choice you that you

picked and why it’s the other one? Because oftentimes like when you are taking

a test and you’re pretty familiar with it, you are down to two answer choices and

it comes, you’re like kind of debating between the two and you pick the wrong

one.

Remember the test makers, they have to make it in a a, like the test has to have a

correct answer. And so part of it is just like getting into the test maker’s head.

And the more you practice, the more you take questions, you do practice

questions, the more you kind of get a sense of, for me it was like this

amorphous like vibes, but it’s like you kind of get a sense of like what test

make’s looking for or also like how they like to trick students.

And so as you kind of see their tricks, you also get better at identifying the right

answer options. Hopefully that kind of makes sense.

Lydia: Yeah, definitely agree with that. And like Katie said, you know, you,

you’d only need one, but sometimes even if you did do well, I don’t know what

high score necessarily means on ACT.

Sometimes students do do marginally better on one than the other. I know that

was the case with me. Um, just especially like on the math portion, like the level

of difficulty of the questions on the ACT versus SAT can be slightly different

and the amount of time that you’re given per question is different.So sometimes, you know, if you’re someone who can do more difficult

questions, if you have more time to do them versus doing a lot of slightly easier

questions with less time like. Those kinds of things can factor into whether you

have a tendency to do better on one or the other, or even just if you tend to be

stronger in math versus reading.

For most students, it’s pretty equivalent, but it doesn’t hurt to maybe take a

practice test in the SAT if you’ve only ever taken the ACT just to see if maybe

you do have a slight inclination, just because you wanna put your best foot

forward when applying to colleges. Um, another question. We have two about,

um, moving.

So what should a student do if they’ve been investing time and extracurriculars

and developing relationships with teachers, but they are about to move before

their senior year?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, I can see how that can be really tough. Um, and also like a big

change right before your senior year. So I can see how that be tough.

I think one thing to maybe think about are, um, are there any teachers that

you’re really close to right now that you might be, that might be willing to write

letter of recommendation with you even knowing that you’re going to move

school so someone you know well and you feel like would be responsive?

Um. If you were to ask them for a letter of rec down the line when you have like

the common app and you have the link and you can send it to them. I would still

say just because teachers get busy and, um, sometimes people don’t respond to

you in life in general, is to make sure that you have backup options at your new

school.

So still work on trying to build those relationships with teachers so that way

you, you can always have more recommendations than you need, if that makes

sense. Um, so yeah, I would say like, try to ask those teachers nicely if they’re,

if they’d be willing to do it, and then ask them to look out for an email from you

and you know, when it comes time, prompt them multiple times to make sure

that they are aware that you send them the link and that you’re hoping for a

response from them because you can’t remind them in person.

Right. Um, and also. Have those backup. ’cause I would hate for anyone to not

be able to apply to college simply because one of their old teachers, like didn’t

respond to them.Lydia: Yes, definitely agree with that. Try to think of as far in advance or plan

ahead as much as you can and wrap up those relationships and see if anyone is

willing to support you, um, as you prepare for that move.

Um, another question that we have is about essays. So what is an example of

taking a risk in a common app essay?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Um, when I say taking a risk, um,

and I apologize, some of my talks are like only about essays and so I put that

out there as like a teaser almost. Um, but taking a risk, it can be in multiple

different ways.

It can be in terms of format, it can be in terms of writing style, like maybe one

of your essays is written like way more. Uh, not flowery is not, I don’t

recommend necessarily flowery, but like way more literary or may way more

like metaphorically about something, um, versus an essay that’s more

straightforward.

Like, why do you want to major in this? Why do you want to come to Brown?

And that’s like, you know, much more straightforward versus an essay. I

remember I wrote for Brown was like, what does home mean to you? And I like

wrote this like, pretty, very, very short essay about like the orange tree in my

backyard and like what that orange tree meant to me and meant to my family as

someone who grew up moving a lot from place to place.

And finally living in a home that grew this like, you know, like had this like,

like a hundred year old orange tree that grew oranges every year, honestly, year

round. Actually this orange tree works. And like what that meant to me. Um, so

right, there’s like different essays that address different topics too.

So that’s part of the risk taking. And then I would also say the topic of the essay.

Um, I, like I said, I wrote an essay about how I feel, I feel like I failed as a

leader and you can consider that a risk. ’cause it’s not talking about my success,

it’s not really, I mean, in the essay you are obviously communicating something

about yourself and you’re kind of still talking yourself up even as you’re talking

about failures.

Um, but that was like an essay that was kind of a risk. I had an essay written

purely in the form of an autopsy report, which was like kind of bizarre thinking

back, but it was like an autopsy of me, myself. And I put like my death date as

like the application date. And it was like pretending as if the pers we were in the

future and we could do an autopsy and the person could scan my brain.And it was like talking about how I think as a person and how that translated to

my, um, I think I ultimately ended up making it like about how that ended up

translating to my, um, extracurricular work and debate skills. Um. And then like

I already mentioned topic, but like I wrote an essay entirely about singing.

I have no accolades in singing, by the way. Like not really a good singer just

took a couple lessons in singing and wrote a whole essay about it, not a

prominent part of my resume. Um, not an award winner. And so those are also

different ways that you can take risk. Hopefully that makes some sense.

Lydia: And another question we have related to essays is what makes a strong

common app essay? What kinds of things are admissions officers looking for?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, I think again, a common app essay. Someone’s reading through

your entire application span of like 10 to 15 minutes. And so you want to make

an impression.

You are also part of this is like whether to print nice. I don’t know if it’s putting

it too bluntly, but part of it’s kind of a psychological gate and you want the

admissions officer to like you, to want to fight for you and also to remember

you and to like think of you as something notable. And so if that meant that I

was.

Known as like, I don’t know, the girl who worked at the suicide hotline, for

example. Maybe that’s what was effective in my personal statement. Who

knows? Um, and also there are ways that you can write about the personal

statement that should really be about who you are as a person. Like I should

come away from it getting a sense of who you are as a person and ultimately

throughout your entire application.

What kind of student you would be on this college campus. And so I think a big

mistake that I often find people make with personal statements is they feel like

the pressure to write entirely about their academics or their, like, future

interests. So like, I’ll see a personal statement and it’s entirely about why

someone wants to be a doctor, um, because someone important to them.

Um, if their grandfather passed away when they were young, very notable, very

meaningful. I’m not saying that’s not meaningful at all. And also reminder that

you are applying to college and not to medical school. And so you telling me

about what you want to do in the future doesn’t really tell me who you are now

and like why I am interested in who you are now and how, um, and like who

you’re gonna be on the college campus.And so that. I think is oftentimes something that people also find as I, I find as a

big mistake, is people will just write about their professional goals rather than

telling a story of, it’s a personal statement for a reason, right? Personal being the

key factor of like who you are, what’s your context that you grew up in?

What is the environment around you like as someone who didn’t grow up in

your, in your shoes. Um, all of that is what makes a good personal statement.

And if you can have like a tiny element of surprise, I would say, as someone

who’s like, read a lot of essays, especially pre-med and like bioengineer and

those kinds of essays, like that was a lot of my patient, uh, not my patient, sorry,

my, my student population, um, to some extent.

Like I got used to reading the same kinds of essays over and over again, and the

same kind of things that people were saying. Um. And when pe, when people

were able to surprise me, I like whether it’s through like a risk or whether it’s

through, like they were able to be funny in some way, or they were able to say

something particularly insightful or reflective.

I would stop and take note of that. And that to me, what made was what made a

really good personal statement.

Lydia: Yeah, I agree with that. Um, I, I find that, I guess this is kind of touching

on the taking a risk piece as well. Like, um, sometimes students think that the

essay that is going to be the most successful is the SAB story.

Like, I need to talk about the saddest, most traumatic, most dramatic experience

in my life. But there are other ways to create a connection with your. The, your

admissions officer who’s reading your essay. And I think that’s what kind of

defines like a strong common app essay is are you able to create some level of

connection or intimacy between you and the person reading your essay with the

story that you choose to reveal?

And sometimes the best way to paint a picture of who you are, and it makes

someone feel like they understand who you are as a person is by sharing like the

small details, um, or habits about yourself that may not seem super interesting

on the surface, but when you explore them in greater detail, they actually say a

lot about who you are.

Um, and that’s why I, I always tell students like, the details that you choose to

dis include in the story that you tell in your essay are really what helped to

distinguish. Your essay from being just another generic thing about why you

want to major in X, Y, Z, or why you wanna go to X, y, z college. The morespecific you can be about an experience that you had or the way that you think,

or how you became the person that you are, the less likely it is that someone

else is gonna be able to say that.

Same thing like, uh, Katie was just talking about wanting to be pre-med. There

are 1,000,001 students who wanna be pre-med. There are also 1,000,001

students who wanna be pre-med because they wanna help other people or

because someone in their family has been really sick before. But if you can get

into the nitty gritty details of what about that experience made it, what made

you wanna go into medicine or made you wanna go to college, or, you know,

just using that as the continuous example, that is what can make it feel more

unique.

It’s about how you tell it and the details that you choose to highlight versus not

highlight. Um, I’m gonna take just a quick break from the q and a to talk a bit

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editing your essays, and much more. We’re here for the whole process. All right.So, um, the next thing we had as a question, it was, is breadth or depth more

important for extracurriculars?

Dr. Katie: Hmm. I, so I’ll, I’ll answer stuff by answering depth is certainly

important, right? You, when you actually are reporting extracurriculars. I don’t

know how many of the of you out there have looked at the common app yet.

Um, that can be a fun thing to do if you, I don’t know, have a moment of free

time, I guess, is to open an account.

It don’t enter too much in because of, it’ll reset. I think like for, I think it’s like

around August 5th ish when it opens up for the first time. Correct me if I’m

wrong, Lydia. Um, but like, you can take a look at it. There’s 10 extracurricular

sections and you have to talk, you have to give like what your title was.

You have to say how many hours you did it, how many years you did it. And

then there’s also depth in the sense of like, like you have achievements in your

extracurriculars. You have stories to tell about your extracurriculars. Those are

all ways in which depth is so important when it comes to like, like why your

extracurriculars are important.

And also they kind of form a sense of what you’re passionate about, what you’re

interested in. Like what are your vibes like, clear. Like I was never gonna be a

STEM person. You could not tell that from my resume, but you could tell that

from my extracurriculars. Like I was never going to be like a math competition

like that kind of wiz.

Um. But then on my application set I had like kind of sections when I talk about

breath. So not all of my extracurriculars were just like, I volunteered in five,

like five different hospitals or like I did only pre-med things. It would be like,

you know, had different areas of interest I guess. Like I had my like more

sciencey interests that kind of came through in my summer research programs

or like in doing clubs at school that were related to science competitions.

And then I had like more of like my personal writing interests and then like

writing in essay competitions and doing this and that. Like being editor of like

the magazine at school, those kinds of things. Um, and then I would have a

section that was for like. I don’t even know. I would categorize it. I like, I guess

like miscellaneous, like I had hobbies and things on my list.

If you are someone, by the way, who works a part-time job to support your

family, if you are someone who babysits your younger siblings, because both

your parents work, those are all things that are valuable to tell. Uh, if you dosports, sorry, I’m not a sports person, that’s so, I always forget that. But sports

are a huge part of people’s lives.

Um, those are all things that are showing colleges, like how do you spend your

time outside of school? And so they’re all valuable kind of insights and pictures

into who you are as a person, what your interests are, and how you might

translate also those interests into, again, a college campus where you’re doing

extracurriculars and clubs too.

Um, sometimes people are like really crafty people and there’s like amazing

ways to like level that up when you’re in college too. So like these are all things

that kind of come through in your extracurricular section. Um, even if you’re

just talking about hobbies.

Lydia: Yeah, I think it’s always a mix. I like.

Breath in depth are important. They’re not looking for perfect pre-med Patty

who was like grown in a lab and all they ever did was volunteer at a hospital

and do research, like they want a full person. And I don’t think it’s good to try

and manufacture that. Like sometimes people take that and think that that means

that you need to do one of everything.

You know, like you need to do debate club and then you need to do at least one

sport and then you need to do a STEM thing and then you need to do an artistic

thing. Like it’s not about checking boxes of categories, but they just wanna

know that you’re a person who has dimension, right? Like you’re not just

someone who wants to be pre-med, you’re someone who wants to be pre-med,

but also is really passionate about music or really into knitting or whatever.

Like they wanna just get to know you and the multiple layers to who you are.

Um, but also when it comes to the depth piece, like. The reason that depth is

important is for similar reasons, like doing 10 different things, but just being a

participant in all of them doesn’t really give much room for those things to

shape you or for you to really demonstrate how you have shaped those things

while participating in them.

So you wanna make sure that the things that you care about deeply, that you are

investing extra time and pursuing leadership roles. And because that’s how you

demonstrate that this is something that you really care about. And it’s hard to

show that you really care about something if you’re just dedicating a single hour

to a bunch of different things, rather than maybe choosing that one thing that

you’re willing to spend five hours on per week because it really means a lot toyou and you feel like it’s helping you to develop skills, um, that are important to

where you wanna get to in the future.

Um, a question that we have about letters of recommendation is I currently don’t

feel like I have super strong connections with my teachers. What are some ways

to connect with teachers that you don’t interact with as much?

Dr. Katie: Ooh, that’s an interesting and a very good question. Um, I think

oftentimes, like what I did, one of my teachers was my, was brand new at my

school.

Like new hire. There’s a lot of movement of teachers at my school and that

those are things that are right, like completely outside of your control that can

impact your college admissions process. Like, things don’t always work

perfectly. Um, and the way I got to know her, ’cause she was newer, was she

was my AP psychology teacher.

And so, um, I, I’m a psychiatrist now, so clearly I liked ap. Psychology in high

school, even if I couldn’t, didn’t really know why. Then, um, so something that

I, I would like show her like cool things that I, I thought I found that were

relevant to things that we discussed during school. Um, I, she was new, so she

would like be planning sli syllabi, syllabuses syllabi.

Um, and like she, you know, as we got to know each other, I was a really big

reader. And so we would kind of discuss together. Like, Ooh, what are some

books that my classmates would be interested in? Like, what are some

interesting takeaways? Like what are you, maybe you can show by leading, for

example, in discussion, um, and trying to engage your classmates in discussion

as well.

Um, and then sometimes honestly, like we got to the point where we would just

be, we would like, she would recommend books to me and I’d think about books

that maybe she would like. Um, and it’s sort of like getting to, it’s like, it’s not

like making a friend, but I’m like a little old that I’m thinking that way.

’cause when I was young, I definitely didn’t think of it that way. I like, it was

always like, this is my teacher and here are ways in which I can get to know

them, but also show them my personal interests and who I am. Um, I know

some of my classmates that were less like. They were less like maybe like nerdy

as I was, things that they did that were nice where like they would help out the

teacher like when they needed help with things.Like if there was like set up for an experiment and they were like kind of into

science, like they would stay after and help set up. Um, we would sometimes do

like school, like small school field trips to like go see like the stars or planets

with our teachers and like I had no interest in that, but the kids who did would

often go and like do these cool things and like help set up for experiments that

were also cool with like liquid nitrogen.

Those are all ways that are kind of like. Off times where you can help out a

teacher and kind of also like get to know them, but they’re also kind of getting

to know who you are. But also I find that good teachers, uh, first of all,

upperclassmen tend to actually have a pretty good sense of who the good litters

writers are.

The good litter writers are, um, you’ll find that if you keep your ear to the

ground, they often kind of chitchat about it. Um, and also your teachers are

often thinking harder about you than you might imagine. Like, we don’t spend a

lot of time thinking about our teachers except maybe sometimes to make fun of

them be like, oh my God, they keep talking about this thing.

Um, or like they keep talking about the symbolism of windows in this book.

Ugh. Um, but they often are paying attention to you, especially if you are like a

standout student in their class. Um, I remember being surprised after my letters

of rec about like, oh, my teacher was like thinking about how I think, and I was

like, I’m just thinking about how I think.

Um, so there like, there’s something to that as well. Um, just a teacher who’s

who. Who you spend a little bit of time with and get to know whether it’s inside

or outside the classroom, what are ways that you can go above and beyond?

Lydia: Yeah, that’s super helpful. Um, uh, uh, just as a response to a question

that was similar to that about, um, what things teachers need if they do say yes,

just as a former teacher and someone who’s worked in admissions, um, the more

materials you can give to make it easier for teachers to write letters of rec, the

better obvi.

I, I don’t recommend necessarily having teachers write letters of rec with ai, but

I, I would be surprised if most teachers aren’t at least considering it. If teacher, if

students have a lot of, uh, if teachers have a lot of students asking them. Um, so

if you can give them materials to make the letter writing process simpler, that’s

always gonna be appreciated.So I’ve had students give me, um. Like a resume that outlines their

achievements. They’ve given me a brag sheet of like, here are the things that

I’ve done that have been impressive. If you can remind them of specific

moments in your, in their class where you know, I did this thing that

demonstrated leadership or demonstrated that I really cared about your subject

or showed academic integrity or whatever character trait you’re trying to

highlight, that can be helpful.

’cause teachers have hundreds of students that they’re teaching. They don’t

always remember the highlight reel for an individual student. So if you can jog

their memory on that, it just makes it easier for them to write a more

personalized letter of recommendation compared to just a generic, they’re a hard

worker, they’re a good kid.

I give them my recommendation. It goes back to what we were saying about the

common app essay and like detail is what makes a decent essay into a great one.

Same thing with letters of recommendation. If you can give the teacher. Specific

details to talk about, um, between your resume and specific moments in their

classroom that gives them the material that they need to be able to write a great

letter of recommendation.

Also providing context like not, sometimes students assume that the teacher that

they need to ask for a letter of recommendation needs to be the one that they got

like a, a plus in their class. But sometimes the teacher that you got, like a b, if

they were, if you had a really good relationship with them and you worked

really hard for that B ’cause they’re a really tough grader, sometimes that can go

a longer way.

Um, and even providing context on like if there was something that you were

going through that they maybe didn’t know at that time can be helpful, um, to

inform like what was going on. The last question that I have for tonight is just

about, um, what about the kids who maybe don’t know what they’re interested in

or love trying new things?

How do they show. A clear, coherent story or show depth in their application

when it may seem like they’ve been kind of all over the place because they were

exploring different things.

Dr. Katie: Yeah, and I think oftentimes like this ultimately is the story of. Like

you’re being in high school, like being like 17, 18, right?Like no one’s, no one’s truly expecting you to have plotted out point by point the

course of your life. And if you have, I hope that you can have some flexibility

too in what that path might look like, um, and continue to like, pivot based on

what your interests are. So I think, and every time I enter a new phase of my

life, by phase of my life, I mean a new school, unfortunately for myself, um,

people seem to ask the same question.

It’s always like, do you know what you wanna do? Do you even as a doctor,

people are like, do you know what you wanna do? I’m a psychiatrist. Do you

know what you wanna do? Do you wanna pursue a fellowship? And it’s a

constant question that will like drum upon you. And I think part of it is. Trying

to suss out what your personal interests are.

Even if you don’t, you’re like, I don’t know that this translates to any, like, it

doesn’t translate to any one school subject. I think oftentimes, and this is, I’m

speaking for myself here too, when I was in high school, I simply didn’t know.

All the like, just academic subjects that existed out there in college until I got to

college and got to explore and try new things.

And colleges want to see that too. They wanna see that intellectual curiosity.

And also, not to mention when you’re in high school, you also simply don’t

know the amount of jobs that are out there. Like, I’m still just like, moving to

New York. I was like learning about the different kinds of consultants there are.

I’m like, people consult on this. Like someone consults on like how to run the

hospital. I was like, what? I didn’t even know that was a thing. Um, anyways,

point is like, we’re, we’re always learning about like what different jobs are out

there. No one’s expecting you to have your life perfectly plotted out and pay

attention to what you are you’re interested in.

And if that doesn’t work, pay attention to what you don’t like. I like, I was

always one of those people growing up where I eliminated things early on. So

like early on I was like, I don’t like math. And then I did the summer program. I

was like, I can’t do biomedical engineering, right? It’s like even if you don’t

know what you wanna do, sometimes eliminating the things that you don’t like,

kind of point you in the right direction.

And if you following that direction and someday. You, maybe you’ll end up like

me like eight, 10 years down the line and still having to at be. So still having

people ask you what you wanna do in life, but yeah, kind of helps.Lydia: All right, well that concludes the q and a. Um, thank you everyone for

coming out tonight and thank you so much to Katie for sharing your expertise

with us.

If you haven’t been able to scan the QR code and schedule your free assessment

with us, please keep this browser open until the webinar officially ends and at

that time, you should be redirected to the booking page. That is the end of our

webinar. We had a really great time talking to you all about college admissions

tonight.

Thank you for joining us, and thank you to Dr. Katie Chiou.

Dr. Katie: Bye everyone. Have a good night.

Lydia: Bye.