3 Bs Junior Year, no good reason why, outside of top 10% of class, no hook, not a nationally rated school, etc…
Got into a top 10 and 20 and had the best college results in my good school.
Advice: Work like hell on those essays for months. Hard work always shows. If one area is imperfect, do well on the others. Show you can handle the academic workload in some way (at some schools GPA doesn’t mean much and colleges know it). Stop worrying and PLEASE stop watching college decisions reaction videos. Stop searching for prestigious ECs and do as well as possible in what you enjoy. Use College Essay Guy for supplemental essay help and ideas.
Congrats on your great outcomes, and your advice is good (I am especially supportive of doing ECs because you enjoy them and not because you think they’ll look good on a colleg application).
If you are willing to share a little more detail, it would be very helpful to future readers if you’d post in this thread:
There is free essay help here on CC. Some of the online advice on essays is not useful. I would add that I am not so sure essays are crucial factors in most applications. If outstanding or terrible, the essay might be a factor but in my view most are “good enough” and most likely neutral.
We don’t know your EC’s or how important your personal references were.
Great advice to “do as well as possible on what you enjoy.” We don’t know what that meant for you so it is uncertain whether your essay was an important contributor.
I will say that with both of my kids getting into their reaches with below average grades and average ECs, it seems likely that their essays made a difference. LORs may have been a factor for my older one, but my younger one’s reach doesn’t accept LORs (admittedly the younger one had an excellent SAT score, but that seems unlikely by itself to sway a decision). The advice in OP to try as best you can to make up for a deficiency in some area by trying to maximize the other areas seems both logical and successful- after all that’s what holistic review is for.
Some essays are outstanding and do make a difference, as I wrote. I think though that many students stress excessively about essays so I hoped to add a reassuring note.
Tbh I don’t think I would have called the essays “outstanding” in terms of what you sometimes see colleges etc post as examples of what impressed them - but I think they hit all the right spots to show the colleges who they were and that they were suited for (respectively, different essay topics) the college and the major. I guess in other words, sincerity and authenticity.
You’re very right! Those college decisions reaction videos always trip me up, but then I remember that everyone is different and we’re all doing our own things. Most importantly, pursuing things we uniquely and individually love to do.