So, college counselors may have a lot of experience and insight , but that doesn’t make them right about everything. And in particular, if studying engineering is more important to you than getting into “name” university, then you should absolutely follow that (partly as it is often difficult to transfer into engineering, but more because you should be authentic).
FWIW - when my D applied to her 1st choice, her college counselor (who was good on other stuff) hated her “why us” essay and told my D to change it. D felt strongly it was authentic and reflective of why she liked the school (I agreed, but it was her choice not mine anyway) - she stuck with it, and got in. I think it’s good to be open minded and understand why a counselor may be advising something, but ultimately it is your application and should reflect you.
Some consultants help clients find the right fit and help the student build their narrative in alignment with their interests.
Other advisors think the job is to share admissions tricks to secure acceptances to brand-name schools. Sometimes their clients are O.K. with this — mission accomplished! The consultant can then cite this matriculation success as they promote their services.
I find the latter approach disheartening when the “tips and tricks” are detached from the student’s enrichment goals. It’s like a contractor or realtor who gets the job done but leaves you with a house that isn’t really what you wanted, even if it has good curb appeal or a high-status address.
Engineering is a tough admit at a lot of places, true, but there are great engineering schools with varying rates of selectivity. You won’t usually be better off getting into a college and then trying to transfer into engineering. Internal transfers can be tough, and if you miss a year or so of the engineering core, that can be hard to make up.
My son’s AP Lit teacher hated his essays and recommended he submit the essays they did in class that she edited. She said she couldn’t quite understand the point of the essays he was planning to submit (they weren’t done in class).
I advised my son to stick to his plan.
OP, sometimes even experts get it wrong- mostly because while they may be experts in their field, they are not experts on you. You are the only expert on you. You’ve made it this far in your life- colleges want you not a curated version of you.
For what it is worth, I often reflect on how it is very easy for us mature adults who have a lot of life experience to say you need to ignore all the external pressures and expectations and possibly ill-informed advice and just march confidently to the beat of your own drum. We’re not necessarily wrong that would be good in theory, but it isn’t exactly easy to do that at your age and level of experience. I sure know I was not like that when looking at colleges myself.
My point is just that I think you can be generous with yourself about feeling those pressures. And then try to do what is right for you, which may sometimes involve pushing back against people who believe they are acting in your best interests but maybe do not quite know you as well as you know yourself.
But regardless, in the end, if you enroll at a comfortably affordable college with good academics that you are in fact excited to attend, that’s a win. The process that gets you there may not be perfect, it definitely may not always feel worry-free.
But as long as you land there eventually, you did well.
Do not listen to your college counselor! Major has much more impact than school name after you graduate, especially engineering major. As long as the school is ABET certified, you are OK. I would even go one step further. If you know exactly what engineering major you want to study, try to find a school with direct admit to that major.
S24 is attending UC Davis Aerospace Engineering. He is having best time of his life, bowling with friend, attending formula car track day, road biking with other bike club members all the time…No need to fight for top major choice placement at the end of the year like some other Engineering schools.
Your ECs do not need to have anything do to with your major.
Universities often fall into two camps. Some do not consider your major when deciding whether to accept you. Some make it difficult to change majors. Generally if your intended major will make a large difference in admissions, then there will be some way for schools to prevent students from easily changing into a very popular major. University admissions staff are aware of the idea of applying for an “easier for admissions” major and then switching to a more popular major, and they do not want to encourage this.
Our family has consistently used the approach of doing what is right for us without worrying about university admissions. Then apply to a range of schools and find a university or college that is a good fit for you. This approach is partly based on the observation that there are a lot of very good universities. This approach is partly based on the belief that university admissions staff are human, are smart, and have done this before. This approach is partly based on the observation that the world has not yet gone completely 100% insane. Regardless, this approach has worked for us and I think that it will work for you also.
If you want to be an engineering major, then apply as an engineering major. Plan to attend an ABET accredited university. There are a lot of them. Then plan on getting a good job and discovering that as long as you attended an ABET accredited university (or equivalent, I think that other countries might use a different term in some cases) then no one will care which university you attended.
Exactly.
Be you. Be authentic.
If you read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site (a quick Google search should find it) I think that you will find that it recommends this same approach of doing what is right for you, and doing it well, and being authentic. Again my family has used this approach and it has gotten us into 8 different very good universities (one each for a bachelor’s, and a different one each for graduate school). Of the 8, only one of them was MIT. The other 7 were however good schools and a good fit for each of us individually.
I think that there are forces in this world that might feel like they are pushing you to pretend to be something that you are not. However, if you are authentic, if you do what is right for you, if you treat people fairly, and if you do well in your classes, then this will work out in the end. Authentic people find other authentic people and we help each other. In the end this generally works out.
A lot of high school students have an interest that they aren’t going to continue in college like marching band or theater or football. That doesn’t mean they can’t be a good engineer because their interests weren’t math club or robotics. From their hs EC they still learned leadership and how to work as a team and got all the benefits of music and public speaking.
I did a resume consult when I was in grad school. They recommended a short line about your interests and how cool it was, so people put things like 'Beaches, Reading, Johnny Walker drinks." I put it on mine, hated it, and took it off. You have to make some decisions that are YOU. If an employer wants that on a resume, I guess they are the right employer for me.
Thank you all! I think @national_delivery and @NiceUnparticularMan are right, and that I am missing the forest for the trees right now. I guess it is pretty easy to lose oneself in the admissions process and forget what really matters? In the end, if I feel that I am being inauthentic in my applications, who is to say I won’t carry that with me into college, and then into later life?
I really appreciate the kind words and sympathy. You guys have no idea how much this means to me as someone that can’t really talk to my parents about this kind of stuff. I suppose they have the rather narrow view that only certain colleges mean success, but in the end, it is my own life to live, and I think I would like to be as authentic as possible. Though it really is hard to say that one will be happy when everyone around me already seems so bent on condemning non-gilded paths. The pressure will always be there, but I think I will just have to find a way to come to terms with it all.
If that increases your chance of getting into the school, then you may find that changing into your desired major after enrolling requires another admission process.
Yeah, that’s the same as saying “everyone lies on their resume.” Sure, some people do, and brazenly so, but the vast majority of people do not - some simply because they are honest and others because they realize the risk of doing so and getting caught in that sort of lie. The same applies to college applicants.
Agree. And for most kids applying to college there is no need to lie. Being editor of the Yearbook, being promoted to shift supervisor at the pizza shop where you work, and translating medical procedures for a grandparent who doesn’t speak English every time she has a doctor’s appointment is MORE than enough without having to embellish.
Many (most) schools look for some “spikey” and some “well-rounded” students. Having ECs outside of your major can actually be a benefit, especially if you can tie them into engineering in your essays. Engineers need to be able to pull from many experiences to problem solve.
My kid, who graduated from a very good LAC with a degree in Neuroscience, had one single Neuroscience EC - she spent a couple of months one summer as an intern at a neuroscience lab. The rest of her ECs were social activism.
I volunteer as an interviewer for the Posse foundation, and authenticity is central to our recommendations. Moreover, a large number of the other volunteers work in upper management in some of the top companies in Chicagoland (those corporations also provide space and funding). They are looking for the very same things. I know, because we almost always agree on recommendations, and you should believe me when I say that I am one of the least corporate types you can think of.
College should not be about you trying to craft yourself into a person that “the college wants”. You shouldn’t try to match yourself to any college, you should try to match colleges to yourself.
PS. Obsession with The Right ECs is also not something new. If you’ve seen the movie “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, which was released in 1995, you would have seen that the protagonists’ older brother, Mark Weiner (played by Matthew Faber), is obsessed with doing things that will look good on his college application, and talks about it a lot. This was 30 years ago.
Oddly enough, I really don’t remember my daughters getting many (any?) “Why us” prompts in their supplements. Or if they did, perhaps they had a choice of prompts, and they were able to avoid this question. Yes, I remember them writing some essays in which they were asked about what they planned to do at the specific university or how they saw themselves fitting into the college’s mission or culture, but I really don’t think any of the questions had to be answered by explaining why X college was their top choice. Are “Why us” questions really that common?
Only 2 out of my S24’s 14 US college applications required a Why Us? essay. 4 had a required Why these interests/major? question, and a 5th had it as an option. He also applied to St Andrews, where the UCAS-style Personal Statement is sort of a hybrid of both of those.
The UCAS style is most definitely not a Why Us or some combination of why major/why us.
The only way in which it would be seen as such is if the student applies to only one school but in that case, often a student will use a slot on the Common App if available or the school’s own application, both of which are often available for some schools such as St. Andrews.
The reason it can not be a Why Us is because the same application goes to up to five universities all at once. Students do have to discuss their academic interests and how they have pursued or shown interest in them. Extracurriculars in the way that American schools define them should be mentioned rather minimally in this essay but any academic extracurriculars which align with the major can be discussed along with other ways in which the student has shown preparation for their major. This can be difficult if a student is applying to different majors across the different universities. For instance, there is a politics, philosophy and economics major in Oxford but most universities do not have this major. Some students have asked how they can frame their essay to show all three subjects when in most schools they may only be applying to economics so that it’s not obvious to other schools that they’re throwing in an application into Oxford. Not sure how successful it is to try to write about all the topics but yet not make it appear that Oxford is one of their choices but it shows that Why Us is not an appropriate topic for the UCAS - unless again there is only one school the student is applying to which I expect is rather rare.
Yes, that is what I was referring to. You can apply to St Andrews via Common App, which is what my S24 did. They have a supplement, and it is a “UCAS-style” Personal Statement in that it is focused on the course to which you are applying and is supposed to include similar content. But when you do it through Common App you are writing just for St Andrews, and in fact I believe the prompt actually said something about explaining your reasons for wanting to study at St Andrews.
When we talked to the St Andrews rep who came to our college fair, he specifically recommended my S24 apply through the Common App and not UCAS, and among the reasons why is so he could submit this particular form of their essay. However, he also recommended my S24 look at advice on how to write a UCAS Personal Statement, to help understand how it was different from a typical US essay.
As an aside, he also thought it was useful to have it be immediately clear it was a US application (the implication seemed to be it would at least get faster consideration that way, and possibly more favorable consideration too). And in fact there are some other UK universities on the Common App, although I did not get so far as to know what they do, if anything, for supplements.
Anyway, the poster above was asking how common a Why Us essay was, so I was just trying to give an accurate count of my S24’s experience. And whatever you want to call it, his supplemental for St Andrews had that as a component.