Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
Admissions officers spend a lot of time sorting through raffs of transcripts, standardized test scores, essays, recommendations, interview summaries, portfolios, and lists of extracurricular activities in search of clues of leadership, that prized trait sought by hundreds of American college campuses.
In high school the best students often use to the fullest the resources available to them. There are stories of Bill Gates, along with his friend Paul Allen, hacking into the computer system at Lakeside high school. Tales of students who begin on the school newspaper as freshmen and gradually expand their responsibilities to managing editors are legion. These are the type of applicants many of the most selective schools seek.
“All work experience—even if it’s working in a convenience store—is life experience and involves responsibility. We value all of it…” Karl Furstenberg, Dartmouth College (How to Get Into the Top Colleges, Richard Montauk and Krista Klein, Prentice Hall, New York, p. 282)
If you have gained any kind of work experience over your high school years, broadcast it across all you applications proudly. Why wouldn’t you? Even if, as mentioned above, it is a menial job, it shows that you understand how to sell your service to others, have discipline, time management skills, a solid work ethic, and have learned something about the real world, working with people and solving—in some form or another—real world problems. Few schools discount such efforts; Dartmouth, we know, lauds them.
With tuition costs rising beyond the $40,000 a year level at such places as USC, many college-bound students are ardently searching for scholarships, grants, and work study programs. Some are avoiding the escalating costs altogether by gaining admission to the service academies (West Point, Annapolis, Air Force), where tuition, room and board, and medical are covered. More on gaining admissions to the service academies can be found at: /imported-20110121194859/2008/9/2/attending-us-service-academies.html. The service academies, however, are not for everyone, particularly if you’re not engineering or mathematically inclined. Another alternative is to apply for a ROTC scholarship, which can be used at a range of schools nationwide, and, in conjunction with many different majors (including a number of liberal arts majors).
