THE BRIDGE TO COLLEGE
The College Application Process – It Doesn't Start With Your Application
Most families consider starting college applications sometime before senior year. Maybe it’s around January 1 of grade 11 when New Year’s resolutions come to mind. Maybe it happens in June, right after final examinations finish and families realize “we’re next.” Maybe it’s around August 1, when the Common Application opens, or when grade 12 starts and your high school holds assemblies about college deadlines and their internal procedures.
How do you decide where – and how – to apply? Before you can thoughtfully consider what universities might be good for you, please spend some time understanding the other side of college fit: you. After all, you can’t intelligently pick the best schools for you unless you understand yourself, not just educational institutions.
Who are you? What matters to you? What excites you intellectually? What role do you play among your peers? What kind of environment brings out your best? Without answers to these questions and more, your educational pie will only come out of the oven half-baked. However, with a decent self-understanding, you can identify good options for your next educational home.
From there, the process begins to become a strategic checklist. There will be essays, lists of honors, lists of extracurricular activities, deadlines and decisions about when to file and which of each college’s filing methodologies you should select. Of course, there’s also keeping up with your academics, studying for and successfully completing standardized testing, obtaining recommendation letters … the list feels endless.
But college applications don’t actually start with the applications. By the time a student sits down to apply, most of the things the colleges will evaluate have already happened. Courses have been chosen. Grades have been earned. Activities have been pursued. Experiences have shaped the student. While the application is where you tell your story, the story itself has been years in the making. In the second half of grade 11, there is still time to think, explore and make thoughtful decisions, but you’re getting closer to the point when those decisions will become applications.
Getting started earlier has advantages. If you start considering your college future in grade 9 or 10, things generally work out better, but not because 14- and 15-year-olds should be worrying about college applications. In fact, that's exactly what we don't want. We want younger students to have time to grow. To build the best application, first build the best person. If that happens, your application will build itself organically.
At this stage of life, there are much more useful questions than “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” or “How are you going to build your college resume?” Instead, consider thoughtfully thinking on more universal inquiries:
What are you curious about? How are you spending your time? What do you enjoy doing? How might you challenge yourself? What haven't you tried yet? And perhaps most importantly, what are you learning about yourself along the way?
Grades 9 and 10 provide something incredibly valuable: the freedom to explore without the immediate pressure of an application deadline. Students invariably discover new academic interests; try an activity but hate it, then try another and love it; take on new responsibilities, leadership, or maybe a first job; learn how to advocate for themselves and for others; and begin to understand the kind of thinkers they truly are.
Experiences shape the person who will eventually apply to college.
But please remember: starting earlier isn't about doing more for a college resume. Families should not spend years wondering “Will this look good for college?” As we’ve written over and over and over again, there is no checklist or profile that guarantees college admission. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. In a world where universities value diversity, playing follow-the-leader just doesn’t work.
Instead, ask better questions: Am I interested in this? What might I learn? How can I contribute? What do I want to try next?
College admissions shouldn't begin with trying to figure out what colleges want from you. No, it should begin with figuring out who you are and developing your best self. The earlier you grant yourself permission to explore life’s most important questions, the better.Robert LeVine is the founder and CEO of University Consultants of America, an independent educational consultancy assisting students around the world with applications to colleges, universities and graduate schools. For more information, call University Consultants of America, Inc. at 1-800-465-5890 or visit www.universitycoa.com
FAMILY MATTERS
Communities and Milestones
By Anu Verma Panchal
A few months ago, I had the good fortune to stand by my parents’ side as they celebrated a significant milestone, their golden anniversary. One of my favorite parts of the event was that in addition to uncles, aunts and cousins, we had with us their closest friends, the extended “framily” that had helped my parents recreate a sense of home and family when they were thousands of miles away from the place of their birth.
Circa 1980, with a toddler and 6-year-old in tow, my parents moved to a little town in Zambia called Kabwe. They knew no one and nothing about this new country beyond my dad’s offer letter and one phone call with a relative who had once lived in Africa.
But on their very first evening, there was a knock at the door. It was a young Malayalee couple with two little boys our age. Hearing that a new family from Kerala had arrived, they had stopped by to welcome us. From that one introduction, my parents were immediately absorbed into a group of friends.
The same thing happened every time we moved towns. The news of our impending arrival reached before we did, and we were pulled into existing Malayalee social circles. Our weekends were spent at each other’s houses, uncles in safari suits swilling whiskey, aunties in sarees holding deafening conversations while we ran around and played. As the years passed, my parents grew into the veterans who welcomed new families and organized the elaborate cultural events that gave the community a sense of home away from home.
And all around town – and across the South Asian diaspora – others were doing the same thing. In Tamil, in Bangla, in Hindi, they created communities that served a familial function for each other. Community building seems to be in our genes. Or, as a friend once told me, “We’re like goats ... we can only travel in packs.”
During the college years and in my early 20s, plugging into the local desi community was nowhere close to being a priority; in fact, I reveled in the freedom from it. It was irritating, even, to see the insularity that I imagined permeated those associations. Why move to another country and only hang out with the same people? Why not at least try to assimilate?
It was only when I became a parent that I found myself searching, maybe even yearning, for some small level of connection. I wanted my daughters to learn Bharatanatyam like I had, wanted them to celebrate Hindu holidays and go to the temple occasionally. Does that mean that I want my communities to be restricted by ethnicity, language or religion? Certainly not. I am blessed with close “framily” from many backgrounds, and I enjoy Gasparilla as much as I do Onam and Navaratri.
Yet I am grateful for the generations who came before we did and established everything from the Tampa India Festival to the India Cultural Center so that we now have the option to dip a toe, an ankle or our whole selves in cultural life if we so desired.
A week before my older daughter was due to leave for college, I took her on one of our habitual visits to the Hindu temple here in Tampa. By a happy coincidence, the pujari on duty that day was the same one who had presided on the day that we had taken her on her first temple visit when she was a 6-month-old baby. “You’re the one who carried her to the front of the room when she was born, and now she’s starting college,” I told him. He beamed. “Look at that!” he marveled.
Look at that indeed. That kind of continuity doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of hard work from a lot of people who came before us, many of whom we’ll never even know. The roots they put down gave us the luxury to pick and choose how much we want to hold on to, because some variation of it has been preserved here for us.
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