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Deep dive: show schools and colleges who you really are

January 7th, 2020

When applying to boarding school or college, you work to distill your entire life into a several-page application for someone to read and determine your fate. What do you include? How do you stand out against the other piles of applications?

Sure, you include test scores, GPA, involvement in clubs and other extracurricular activities. But what really makes you, you? What do you do on a day to day basis that doesn’t necessarily “earn points” with the admission office but shows what you really value as a person? In the article linked below from Forbes contributor Brennan Barnard, you’ll learn how to take a deep dive into your daily tasks and discover exactly how to reveal what’s at your core to admission officers.

Seniors sending updates to admission offices may glean some ideas, and juniors looking ahead to next year’s applications can certainly benefit from Barnard’s article. Boarding school applicants, too, may find this article helpfulful as they put final touches on pending applications.

Article referenced below from Forbes, published November 20, 2019 written by Brennan Barnard

What Matters In College Admission

A look of surprise and encouragement washes over his face and with earnest he exclaims, “You mean that matters?”

I am sitting in my school counseling office reviewing a high school senior’s college application, and I have asked why there is no mention of the hours he spends at home after school caring for his grandfather.