COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MASTERCLASS Week 5 Video 2- Passions & Problems

All right, welcome back. Here we are, week five, video two. We're talking about extracurricular activities. And last video, we were talking about how you really want to stand out. And I want to start off talking about a story. One of my favorite people in the world, his name is Paul. And I got a phone call from his mom a few years ago, and she was very worried about him. She was saying that he was very stressed out, that he was in his freshman year. Talked about freshman. Right. That he was in his freshman year and he was juggling all these new activities, and he was trying to keep his grades up, and he just was constantly anxious. And she didn't know quite what to do with him, and they're a family friend. So I said, you know what? Let me talk to him. Let me see if I can try to figure out what's going on. And she was a little bit off. She didn't realize how stressed out he really was that trying to keep up with all of the. What he thought were requirements and responsibilities of a freshman in high school had really made him to the point of almost breaking. He was what's called a serial joiner. He was joining everything he thought he was supposed to be doing. Right. He was joining every club on campus with this idea that if I have this robust resume full of 19 different activities, I can get into the college of my dreams as a freshman. That's what he was thinking, because that's what he was told. That he had to do all these different things. He had to have showed he was an athlete and that he was smart and that he was driven, that he was doing language club and all these different things, these have to's were driving him to the point of being depressed almost. And it's a story I hear often, is that this idea that you have to do everything at all times in order to show up for your college application is not true. The reality is less is more. More. Less is more. And when I work with students and I try to look at what they're doing and I look at their schedule book, I am astounded by what they're doing to themselves. And they do it under this misperception that they have to do it, that that's the only way into college. And oftentimes that's driven by adults who believe that's what they must do. And in talking to admissions committee officers and helping a number of students through this process, what I have seen time and time again is that the students who do less do better in the college admissions process as the students who do more with less. So those students who have a resume of two to three bullet points but make an impact, those are the students who get in, not the students who are serial joiners involved in 19 different activities at a surface level, okay? So it's the power of the right question. What matters to you? What matters to you at a level of contribution? So we think about this in two different areas, okay? And a lot of different people talked about this. Tony Robbins has talked about it. Brendon Burchard has talked about it. That there's a certain point in your life where you recognize that contribution is what drives you at some level. That this idea that you want to give back to others is going to move you forward at a level that's meaningful for you. And that for a lot of people early on, that they're driven by significance, this makes sense, right? That you feel like if you get into the right college, you're going to feel significant. If you get a certain job, you're going to feel significant. And what you find at a certain point, for me, it was late in life when I'm kicking the soccer ball with my son that this doesn't do it for you anymore. That at some point you have to switch over and reach for a life of contribution where you're giving back to others. And what we know from talking to admissions committees and seeing what happens to students, that those students who do activities that show up on the contribution side of the ledger are more likely to get in than those that do things out of significance. Okay? So those that are doing stuff that shows that you're giving back to others, contributing to others, making other people's lives easier. These activities seem to register more on the admission scale. Those activities that are done to some extent for your own benefit. For example, starting a job that's just there to generate money for you as opposed to starting a nonprofit that gives back and help others is one example. And when we talk to people, they talk about the contribution that different activities have had. Certainly you can have a business that contributes, but what we're talking about is this bright line that some of these activities fall down on. And to the extent that your able to found a club or lead a club that contributes to others, it just simply is a reality that admissions committees are going to recognize and view those more favorably. The other thing that we see people fall into is that like Paul, he had this idea that he ultimately needed to join a lot of clubs and ultimately they needed to be the president. So his idea was I need to be the president, the student council. I need to be the president of this club, that club. And what we know is that titles, the title of being president is not going to add a lot to your admissions file. The titles are not going to do it. What is going to do it is what impact you have made. Impact transcends titles. Just because you're a president doesn't mean that you've made an impact. You don't have to have a title to make an impact, okay? You can have a tremendous impact on your community and not have any letters at the end of your name. It's all about what measurable impact can you point to in your application. Now, if you're a president who also makes an impact, that's even better. So saying that you're a president of the student council is a beautiful thing. But saying that you were a president of the student council who did tremendous good, as evidenced by. And then listing those things is an even better thing. So listing the impact, if titles are good, but impact is better. The other thing I wanted to talk about is work experience. And this comes up a lot. We work with a lot of students who are from working class families, right? They're not silver spoons by any means. These are people who are trying to change the trajectory of their life by getting into a college that will hopefully put them on a path to better things. So they are working outside of school hours to try to help out with their family work experience. You might say. Well, Jeb, that's just on this side. This is about money, right? You said work for money is not going to be viewed as much as contribution. The difference here, of course, is that if you're working for money in order to support your family, people are going to view that rightfully. The admissions committee is going to view that as giving back to others. It's going to push you over onto the contribution side. So as much as possible, as you look at your extracurricular activities, you want to try to think of what activities are reflecting that you are a person that gives back to others. Because the campus, the school wants people on their campus to who are contributing to the school. The last thing they want is a student body full of very smart, bright people that stay in their dorm rooms and do not contribute to the school. Right. They would much rather have a student body of people who are interacting with each other, adding to the community and contributing. And the way you do that and reflect that is by showing how you've done it at the high school level. So you need to think about that. What have you done that shows the quality of contribution you've given over the quantity of activities you've done to just pad your resume? So, as you look forward, and we go forward into this next video, we're going to think about how you can do that, how you can identify these problems areas, and try to identify activities that are consistent with your opening statement and how you perceive yourself and allow your passions to move projects forward. So the question I leave you with is, what can you stop doing that will allow you to do what you should be doing? What activities can you take out of your schedule that frees you to do the things you're passionate about that allows you to make the impact you should make? In the next video, we're going to talk about what problems you can solve and how you can move yourself forward.