<p>I like that blog post by Andy Doctoroff a lot, and also the “Applying Sideways” blog post. Both have a lot of good advice.</p>
<p>A lot of people on College Confidential will tell you that eighth grade is too early to be thinking about college generally, or Harvard in particular. I don’t agree with that. I think if you might some day be Harvard material, now is an excellent time to start strategizing, so that your college options will be as good as possible four years from now. </p>
<p>A lot of people on College Confidential will also tell you not to fixate on Harvard (or Yale or Stanford or MIT or Swarthmore), because whether you’ll get in is largely beyond your control. I agree with this advice completely! These highly selective colleges get applications from so many highly qualified applicants that they could fill their entering classes several times over without ever compromising on their academic standards.</p>
<p>A friend of mine, who has done alumni interviews for Harvard for many years and who managed to pack her own kids off to Columbia and Harvard, gives two pieces of advice that go together in my mind: “let your extracurriculars tell your story,” and “begin with the end in mind.”</p>
<p>“Let your extracurricular activities tell your story.” If you’re a musician, besides being in the school orchestra, play in a jazz trio or a klezmer band or whatever fits your instrument. Do something over the summer that involves either performing or becoming a better musician. If you’re an outdoorsman, do a wilderness adventure program during the summer, or volunteer on a conservancy project in a state park, or something like that. You can, and should, still do the things you like, or the things that you find otherwise meaningful or valuable, but you should take some steps to make sure that the time you spend out of school lets people know what makes you tick.</p>
<p>“Begin with the end in mind.” By the time you’re filling out the Common Application in the fall of senior year, you want your extracurricular activities to show some kind of significant accomplishment. So, at the outset, figure out how you’re going to make that happen. Whatever you choose to do, whether it’s track or music or volunteering with little children or working in your family’s florist shop, make sure that year after year, you can show that you’ve acquired new skills, or taken on more responsibility, or somehow achieved some kind of demonstrable personal growth. Exactly how you do this will depend greatly, of course, on what you choose to do, and also on what you’re capable of doing. But have a goal and a plan, even if you have to adjust them along the way.</p>
<p>All of this, of course, is in addition to taking serious, demanding academic classes and doing well in them, and doing really well on standardized tests.</p>