Tips on College Selection 08-09

km7hill
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:47:33 +0000

1) To market yourself as an entrepreneur, highlight the entrepreneurship (obv, right)? In case of the lemonade stand, what was particularly unique about it that it would survive competition of run-of-the-mill lemonade stands? What risks and chances did you take? Did you face adversity that you overcame, either through persistence or through creative thinking?
It’s not about business ventures. As a high school student, you shouldn’t be a money grubbing whore, yet. And strangely, business schools really believe that business is fun and challenging and good for the soul and the world–that money is a byproduct, not an end in itself.
Have you founded/presidented a club that has grown exponentially (in numbers or in importance) under your leadership?
Choices you’ve made in personal life that highlight the following factors:
ambition, leadership, perseverance/dedication/commitment, uniqueness/creativity/out-of-the-box thinking, service (giving back to the community => giving back to college)

2) as for USNews, I think they have some stats (like EA/ED acceptance rates) that are hard to find/hard to compile elsewhere. I might be wrong. Use whichever works for you. I haven’t looked at many others–upon flipping through, didn’t seem to have a handy table of statistics like UsNews does

3) as for Engineering pedigree: if you wish to pursue research, you should go to highest ranked IN YOUR FIELD. By “follow rankings”, I was referring to USNews rankings (or preferably, “prestige rankings” but these are hard to gauge)

4) as for cheating in life: there is no cheating happening here. It is gaming the system, and if you find ethical problems with it, feel free not to follow my advice. But in the end, unless you’re an HYPSM candidate, chances are that whatever school that chooses to accept you will choose you based loosely on the factors delineated above, because you fit a “type” or a “need”. No school uniformly accepts students based on GPA/SAT, especially top schools. I didn’t “game” the system, but in retrospect, being Asian definitely helped me get in to Dartmouth, the Ivy that, at the time, lagged behind in Asian enrollment. High SATs helped me get into Cornell, which needed to offset its in-state contingency. I have had the same experience with law schools, where I do not think I would have been accepted to my school had I scored HIGHER–it wouldn’t have helped their LSAT statistic.

Of course, after selection of colleges, you need to learn how to “package yourself”, and maybe that IS cheating at life FTW. If you’re good enough to do well without doing so, hey, you’re a better man than I. If not, well, have fun at ______.