Jeb White, founder of CollegeAdmissions.com, warns students about self-sabotaging mistakes on college applications. Two big ones: creating a fake one-person club that signals resume padding, and applying to too many reach schools with 4% acceptance rates instead of being strategic about where you actually fit.
Jeb White, founder of CollegeAdmissions.com, and I want to open with a confession. I've read a lot of college applications that were frankly acts of self-sabotage, so committed, so thorough that if the student had tried to fail on purpose, they couldn't have done a more convincing job. There's this idea from Charlie Munger, one of the greatest investors ever to live, called inversion. Instead of asking, how do I win? He'd ask, how would I guarantee I lose? And then he would do the opposite. So today I'm gonna give you 10 tips for a great application. I'm going to give you 10 ways students accidentally torpedo their own application without even realizing they're holding the detonator. Some of these are going to make you laugh. Some of these are going to make you a little uncomfortable because you're going to recognize your own kid Or let's be honest, maybe yourself. So let's go. Number 1, becoming founder and president of a club that has exactly one member. You. This kid. You might be this kid. Somewhere around junior year, a switch flips and suddenly every teenager in America discovers they need to be the founder of something. Founder of the Sustainability Initiative. Founder of the Youth Empowerment Coalition. Founder of a club that met twice, both times to plan the club's Instagram bio. Here's the controversial part. Admissions officers have read 10,000 of these. They are not impressed by your title. They are trained to ask one brutal question: what did this club actually do? And if the honest answer is nothing, but it sounded great on paper, That title isn't padding your application. It's flashing a neon sign that says, this kid resume built instead of doing anything real. The fix is almost insultingly simple. Do fewer things more deeply and let the depth speak for itself. One real accomplishment beats 5 fake titles every single time. All right. Sabotage number 2, applying to 12 schools where you have a 4% chance of getting into any one of them.
