Applying to foreign universities when you’re an international student is probably one of the scariest things you’ll ever have to do. The process is opaque and uncertain, making it hard to navigate. By the time you realize what mistakes you can make, you’ve already made them.
In some countries, there’s entire industries set up to help you through this process… if you can pay a hefty cost, of course. I have a problem with these companies that claim they can help you put your best foot forward. They argue that there is an ideal college applicant, and that they can help you achieve this ideal, and I categorically disagree with this claim. I argue that their process is counterintuitive — they paint all students with the same colors, instead of helping you stand out.
Instead, this article is going to teach you to optimize for what’s unique about you, then learn to demonstrate it. It attempts to be as honest as possible about this entire process.
This article is written for people who are going to apply to colleges soon — likely within an year. If you’re in eleventh or twelveth grade, this is targetted to you. But I believe that our younger friends— those for you entering or just having entered high school— will also get value from reading it.
As an aspiring college student, there’s a few things you care about when applying to colleges: - You want to get into a reputable college whose degree holds value in the industry you’re planning to pursue a career in. You’re looking for this university’s degree to help you signal to employers that you are capable. - You want to find a college that would help you grow into the kind of person you want to be, and have the resources to do so. - You want a college where you’ll be surrounded by like-minded individuals, where you feel like you can fit in.
The college you’re hoping takes you also cares about a few things: - It wants to be able to earn a profit on you. Colleges, even public ones, are for-profit organizations.* - It is trying to find the best talent for your university. It believes that if it invests in you right now, your future successes will increase its reputation. - It is trying a space of like-minded individuals at the campus, such that the community is tight-knit and feeds into each other.
Notice how this arrangement works when you put these incentives together: - Colleges are looking for quality people. You are looking for a quality university. Both of you are making an agreement that you are going to help maintain, and eventually, increase each other’s reputation. - You’re both looking to see, as with any good relationship, whether you suit each other.
If these two things are true, you’ll pick each other. This is the ideal for college admissions.
College application readers don’t have much time to give to each application. They read more applications a day than most of us would see in our entire lives. They are therefore, excellent, at cutting through your bullshit and getting to the facts.
Your application needs to be straight-forward, clean and compelling. There’s a few things that need to be true for this to happen: - “Who you are” should be clear and obvious from a cursory reading of your application. - Everything should have evidence. If you don’t provide solid examples as evidence of your claims, they have no reason to believe you and no time to check. - They’ve seen all the tricks. Using them doesn’t help you. - You can’t fake excitement or passion, not to them. They seen hundreds of students faking it every single day. You have to be honest through this application process.
Now that you hopefully understand the need for honesty, it bears asking — how do you be honest and yet compelling?
A big part of college applications isn’t that you need to be amazing. If universities were maximizing for amazingness, they would end up with a cohort of exactly the same type of person. There isn’t one singular way to be amazing, and a university is looking for all kinds of amazing.
The way to figure out how you are uniquely amazing is to be insightful. College are looking for people who have the potential to be impressive, and in the meantime be a positive influence on their campus. The easiest way to measure a person’s ability to grow and have a positive impact is their thoughtfulness.
To write a truly impressive application, you need to get thoughtful about your actions, your history, your mistakes, your successes and your future.