COLLEGE ADMISSIONS MASTERCLASS Week 5 Video 1- No Extracurricular Prerequisites

All right, welcome back. Week five, video one. We're going to talk about extracurricular activities. It's a fancy word for the things you do outside of the classroom. So you go to sleep, you go to school. Anything in between there is the focus of extracurricular activities. Anything you do between those two is where you need to focus your attention on when it comes to your extracurricular activities. That includes work, includes volunteer activities, includes community service. But there's no prerequisites to what you have to do to apply to college. And the story I tell about this one is this father who called me not too long ago saying that his daughter was heading into her senior year and she had no lab experience. She had no experience working in a laboratory. So he didn't feel like she had a shot at any of the more selective schools in the country. That he knew that she needed this lab experience. He had been telling her that she needed this lab experience, but she insisted on doing some kind of art project that he didn't even understand and that he didn't know what to do. Now she's not listening. Maybe that I could talk to her and let her know how important that lab work is. He was dismayed when I told him that. She's right. There is no prerequisites to extracurricular activities. Okay? There's nothing that says that you must do certain activities in order to get into college. One of the things we have right now is a lot of confusion about what you must do and should do. Ultimately, it comes down to letting the world know that you're different. It's a point we reinforce throughout this course. When it comes to extracurricular activities, it's about future casting that you are here in high school, okay? Your goal is to get into a college, and in between is the admissions committee. And what they're doing is they want to see that what you're doing in high school, they want to try to see is this something that you're ultimately going to do for them on college. You're trying to future cast based on where you are today. How are you going to show up on their campus if they let you in, that if they allow you to pass through, what kind of student is going to show up here? And one way they do that is by looking at your extracurricular activities. What are you doing outside of class? You have to go to class, but you don't have to do extracurricular activities. So if you're doing extracurricular activities, what are you doing and why? So if you're doing activities that are like everybody else, you're going to be viewed like everyone else. If you want to get different, you must do different. If you want to get into a selective school, if you want to get into your dream college, you must do activities that other people are not doing. And you must do it at a level that delivers impact and change and improvement upon your community. Okay, there's 40. I think the last number was 46,000 and change high schools in the country. So we're looking at like 46,000 high schools. The number is changing because the number of charter schools are coming online. There's a lot of high schools, which means there's a lot of high school football captains out there. There's a lot of presidents of the senior class out there. There's a lot of people who are doing a lot of things that are viewed as stereotypical. Okay? So what you have to do is you have to figure out some other way, some other niche that you're passionate about that makes them think, oh, that's different. That is somebody who could do that for us here. If you're doing this activity here, the admissions committee is thinking, oh, I wonder if that's something we could have here or we have here, and that's something we need filled here. Right? So if you're thinking about what activities freshmen, sophomores, I'm especially talking to you. If you're thinking about what activities you want to do at school, outside of school, thinking about activities that are a little bit outside of the mainstream can only help you. Now, I was a football player, and I love football. And I'm not discouraging people or encouraging people to give up their passions for activities that a lot of people do. But what I am doing is you must add something to it that you're going to need some plus factor to show that you're different in some other way. A lot of people in this 46,000 are going to have good grades, good test scores. So it oftentimes is going to go to this X factor. What is your X factor that's different from other people in the extracurricular activities? What thing have you done that's so different from other people that allows the school to say, you know, this is somebody that we want to have here? My example is a young gentleman by the name of Colin, who I worked with a few years ago. Extremely bright individual who has been very successful since leaving high school. And in high school, he had this interest in computers, but his school did not have the best computers. Around they did not have the most reliable Internet, even. But he had this desire to start a computer club, and he went to the principal, and the principal offered up some financing for it, and they started up a computer club on campus, the small group. And it allowed him, even though he started this in his senior year, it allowed him to talk to the admissions committee about the initiative he started and used to get this computer club going. This computer club was one of the things he talked about to support his statement that he had this love for computers and computer science and all things Internet became part of his storyline, but it also showed his initiative and showed that he was someone who was a founder and who showed that he was someone who was going to make things happen. And in his essay, he talked about how he had this love of continuing it forward into college future, casting it to the school and saying, in effect, if you let me in, I'm going to start something similar and even better at your school. He got into Johns Hopkins, and then he started the same thing, but for entrepreneurs. Okay, so here he is in high school. He started a computer club at a high school that did not have really the resources or the Internet even to get it going. But he showed the initiative, got to college, made this part of his story to get into college, started a similar club dedicated to entrepreneurs in college, and now he's applying to jobs. And his storyline is consistent as he uses his opening statement to try to craft his career prospects going forward. See, it doesn't end right. The tools that we're trying to supply you right now. I hope my parents are nodding along with me. Right. Some of the stuff we're doing here, although I'm using these tools to apply to college admissions, are the same tools I used for my clients in cases at the Supreme Court or presenting to Congress that these same tools of trying to identify your story and making it a storyline and persuading people through your consistent story is a tool that you can use throughout your life. But this in the college application step is all about letting people know who you are, how you're going to show up at their school. And you do that by showing how you've shown up in the past. So in Collins example, he did it through the computer club. In other people's examples, it's showing up how you've shown up for your family. So the stories about my family, I'm supporting them by working after school shows initiative and responsibility far surpass your age. Right? And colleges love that maturity. Everybody has something. Everybody has something that they can do if they're a freshman or a sophomore, there's some problem they'll talk about in the next video that you can solve. And we're going to try to make you try to figure out what that problem is or issue is or opportunity for you as you move forward. But one of the things you need to do as a senior, and I know a lot of people are joining us right now who are seniors, and you're thinking, okay, it's late in the game for me. I can't really start a club now. My essay is due in a few weeks. What do I do? What you do now is you look back over your last four years and as we did with the essays, you want to thin slice something. There was something. Even if it's very narrow, some narrow area where you made an impact, where you improve things on your campus, you want to spotlight and spin. Spotlight and spin. Some area where you made an improvement, however small. Make that part of your storyline in your extracurricular activities. That it's not just that you were president of your sophomore class or junior class or senior class, but you were a president that led to certain improvements in the school as evidenced by. And then providing the details. Okay? So if you're a senior, you're not too late. It's just a matter of thinking back and identifying those issues or doing like Colin did. Fall of a senior year, starting something, starting something, anything. Initiating something in your senior year is not a problem. It shows growth, it shows maturity. It shows that you're moving stuff forward and you're not sitting back on your laurels and just applying to college. Make it happen. Make it happen. All right, so the last point that I wanted to stress is, how are you different? Are you getting that point? Every single video you need to think about, how am I different? You're all different. You got to find a way to make that come alive for you. And in the next video, we're going to talk about how you can do that in the extracurricular activities. Next video.