College Applications (or rather... life) Advice (long post)

Advice

One of the most common questions I get asked by underclassmen is:

“I want to do [X] but [Y]”

Usually, X is research, and Y is something along the lines of "I have no prior experience/knowledge".

Other times, X could be olympiads, and Y is "I'll be behind compared to everyone else" or "I'm struggling in my classes" or "I've only taken the AP class before".

However, I believe that this mental obstacle to trying new things is prevalent in many people beyond just research and olympiads.

Often, I think that this mode of thinking comes from what I'll call a "achievement first" mindset. You go into an activity expecting success of some kind (medals, resume items, mastery of a skill, etc), and don't go into activities where success is not guaranteed. However, this mindset is highly risk adverse, and doesn't help to push you to learn outside of the distribution (i.e learn to learn).

As a young adult, you have the absolute advantage in learning new skills, and you should take full advantage of this while you can. Getting a wide variety of experiences and skills really helps you to develop a sense of self. Furthermore, exploring these interests can really help guide you on choosing a career in the future. Remember, you won't always have this much time to explore new things.

Additionally, only doing activities where you expect success is a highly unhealthy mindset. One day you will need to take a class you haven't got extensive prep for (think of those summer "pre-AP" prep classes many of you take), and the sting of a bad grade will be quite painful because you've never made yourself vulnerable to failure before.

I get it. Opening yourself up to the possibility of failure is extremely vulnerable. Maybe people will laugh at you or you'll think you "wasted" time.

Let me tell you that neither of these things truly matters.

Sure, maybe people will laugh at you. But you did something that you wanted to do. How many people do you know that simply go through the motions in their lives, doing what they think others will like. The mockery of others is in no way a poor reflection of your character. In fact, it shows that you are willing to live your own life and do what you enjoy.

Maybe things don't pan out in the end, you just can't learn that instrument, language. You try your hardest but you can't get that research paper published or ace that one test. (There is no such thing as absolute failure, but I'll come back to this later). Things happen, but let me tell you that you absolutely did not waste your time. If all else failed, you gained the experience of failure, which is worth far far more than you may think. In the end, the abstract skills that you pick up are far more valuable than your raw output. I made all kinds of stupid gadgets when I was little that either never worked, got buried somewhere in the garage, or are forever lost from my memory. Despite this, I still believe that these small projects I worked on were immensely valuable because while their physical forms are probably lost to time, the skills that I picked up were not.

Of course, I believe that you should still carefully pick what you do. There is an opportunity cost from not succeeding, as you could have spent that time on something you care more about. The solution to this is simple: Only do the activities that you truly, genuinely, care about. This might mean you don't do 50 activities, but this also minimizes your opportunity cost. Sure it might not work out, but that was truly the best use of your time because it was what you cared most about.

Going back to the belief that you just "can't" learn something; this is also entirely untrue. Do you really think that learning say, calculus, is so incredibly difficult that it is an unattainable goal in your lifetime? The answer is no. Hundreds of thousands of people have done it before. Do you really think that not a single one of these people before was ever in your shoes?

Please don't take this to mean: "I'm so dumb, hundreds of thousands of people have done it and I can't." That is entirely untrue, and not what I am trying to tell you. The problem is not that you are too dumb, or intrinsically too incompetent to learn. The problem is likely to do with how you are learning. Maybe you don't have a good foundation, or you're doing too much reading and not enough problem solving. Maybe you aren't asking enough good questions (More on this later). Maybe your books or teacher just aren't suitable for you. There are so many variables here that don't involve your intrinsic ability to learn, so don't blame yourself. Learn to look at your situation and figure out what is going wrong in the learning process. Saying that something is impossible to learn is not only untrue, but entirely counterproductive because it assigns blame to something outside your control.

Learning to learn is one of the most important skills in life, simply because it yields massive returns from being so broadly applicable. You should be spending your young adult years developing this skill, as it will pay dividends every day for the rest of your life.

So… what activities should I do?

So far, what I've talked about is largely philosophical and big picture.

Here is the one central piece of advice that will help you in life (Beyond, but also including college admissions)

Identify what you show genuine interest in, whether it be a little or a lot, and chase it down relentlessly until you either lose interest or find a new interest that would be a better use of your time. Pick activities that reflect this interest

This should be entirely independent of your doubts (This is too hard / I can't learn this / I'll be behind everyone else / etc).

Yeah its a little vanilla I guess, you might've heard it before. I really want to emphasize the "chase it down relentlessly" part. I don't just mean passively work at it, I mean go buy some books, get a job to pay for anything you need. Spend as much time as you can dedicated to this. I won't tell you to only go as far as comfortable, because I think you should absolutely be a little bit uncomfortable, tired, or stressed at times (Within a healthy amount). True dedication doesn't come from only staying in your comfort zone.

Here are some adjacent pieces of advice I would also offer:

Learn how to ask good questions.

  • There are no dumb questions, but there are definitely bad questions. When you learn something, try to really understand it. Ask hard questions that you really have to think about. If you have any doubts or points of confusion, learn how to articulate them into a clear question that you can either google or ask somebody. A lot of this comes down to understanding yourself and being able to sift through the confusion to find exactly what you don’t understand. Always try to understand the “why”.

Learn the value of your time

  • You don’t have infinite time, and you can’t pursue every activity as much as you might want to. You’ll have to triage a long list of activities you might want to do. First think about what activities are the enriching for you (hit skills that you might not be that good at, new experiences, etc), which ones you like to do the most, and are practically necessary. After this, you should pick the highest rated activities, but don’t pick so many that you begin to resent doing them. Its alright to drop activities, but you should only do this if you have something better in mind.

Pick activities that enrich specific life skills

  • I talk about these life skills later down. Think hard about what you aren’t so great at, and try to pursue activities that develop these skills.

But Ryan… What if my interests aren’t “good” for college apps

Nonsense.

There are interests, and there are activities. These are not the same.

Your interests are intrinsic to you. They are abstract and they are best understood by you.

Your activities however, are a physical *reflection* of these interests. I do chemistry olympiad because I am interested in chemistry, not the other way around.

Also, you need to understand what exactly you mean by "good" for college apps. I believe that any activity that is a true reflection of your interests, that you put significant effort into to improve and develop, is "good" for college apps.

The activities list for colleges is quite literally just that. A list of your activities. They want to see how you spend your time, so it is in your best interest to show them that you spend your time doing things that you find fulfilling and challenging.

Awards are a different matter, but related. Search hard enough, and you can definitely find some kind of activity that gives you recognition of some level. You don't need awards for every activity you do though, so don't worry about this too much. Awards are more fitting for interests that either care a lot about, or are more academic / major-related. Don't fall into the trap of chasing activities that demand significant time for the sake of an award. There is never a guarantee that you'll get an award, and you do the activity because it reflects an interest, not an award. If you are interested enough and dedicated, the awards will come naturally.

This is a valid concern, not everything you do is going to be related to your major, but be careful about how you interpret it.

It does not mean: Don't do something simply because its not related to your major.

I would assume that you are trying to major in something that you are interested in, so you should already be doing activities that reflect this interest. If this is the case, then its absolutely no problem for you to pursue other activities that reflect your variety of interests.

If for some reason you are trying to major in something you have no interest in, then you need to either change your major or become interested. Start doing as many activities to immerse yourself in this major as possible, you really need to hope that you'll become interested, because this will be your life for the next 4 years. Otherwise, I would really recommend thinking about any other majors you can do. I get that you might not want to major in your primary interest for some reasons, but you really should at least be interested enough in your major to have a handful of strong activities related to it.

Any specific activities you would recommend?

Yes!

If you are interested in STEM, you should look into doing both olympiads and research.

Why both? Because they train you in different aspects of science.

Olympiads will push you to develop a strong foundation, theoretical knowledge, and extremely useful problem solving skills / logic. Additionally, they will really push you to learn on your own, training you to be proactive and perseverent.

Research pushes you to think about how to solve problems in the real world. How do you design an experiment? What will you do in a pinch in the lab? You will build actual projects that teach you to think like an engineer and fix practical problems. This on the spot thinking is extremely useful in life. Bonus points if you're interested in an academic career, as you can learn all about how academia actually works here. You also learn how to *communicate* your ideas and work to others, which is lacking in Olympiads.

If you are interested in engineering. PLEASE start building projects at home or school if possible. You can buy anything you want online: screws, arduinos, raspberry pi's, sheet metal, lumber, etc. Learn to become resourceful and build all kinds of projects. You don't need to be original here, if you see something interesting online, you can try to build it yourself. Your projects don't even need to work, you just need to put forward your best foot. Building these projects really pushes you to be resourceful, solve problems on the spot, and think for yourself. Youtube, instructables, and the internet in general is your best friend here.

Also do some activities that push you to interact with others and become part of your community.

  • Teaching, volunteering, working on a team, etc.</p>

This is so so important, because these social skills are useful in every second of your life beyond just college, and into your entire life.

About cold emailing professors

A lot of people get pretty anxious about cold emails, so I decided to include this here. If you're a high school student trying to get into research at a university, you really need to start sending cold emails. I believe that it is essentially a numbers game, and that you should not take rejection as anything personal.

Let the professor know who you are, what you're interested in, and any background if relevant. Above all, make it abundantly clear that you are willing to put in the work and look forward to learning new things. The professor isn't looking for somebody who knows everything already. In their mind, they are offering you a learning experience, not a job. They are looking for somebody who will be willing to do what it takes to learn something new, not somebody who will resent everything they are asked to do.

I would recommend looking around at local universities, and finding the department pages in the subject you are interested in. Look at the faculty of that department, and see any specific work that they do. This might take a while, but really spend time looking for a group that does work you find fascinating (Don't worry too much about if the specifics go way over your head too). Once you do, you should definitely mention this to the professor in the email.

You might get a "manual labor" position, especially if the lab for something like biology or chemistry, but thats honestly fine. You can learn how to use lab equipment, run experiments, etc. In your spare time, definitely ask all kinds of questions about how they do research or most critically, *why* you are doing what you are doing.

Once you send your email, don't worry about it anymore. You'll probably get a couple rejections, but its fine. They don't really know you, and you don't really know them. They aren't laughing at you or anything, so just accept it and move on to the next email.

General life skills to develop

When thinking about my life, I like to split it into different "genres" or "fields". If you like video games, these are kind of like your different stats, which you want to maximize for the sake of your life, health, and wellbeing.

The first stat is your health.

  • Regular physical exercise
  • Healthy eating
  • Healthy sleeping

The second stat is your mind.

  • Problem solving
  • Curiosity
  • Perseverance / Grit
  • Mental health

The third stat is your social life and social skills:

  • Teamwork / Working and planning with others
  • Being able to tell how others are feeling (emotional intelligence)
  • Being able to make conversation with anyone
  • Knowing how to deescalate conflict

This is a very small and incomplete list of some extremely general life skills that you should work on developing. To be more specific, you need to think hard about what kind of person you want to be, and identify what attributes you want to work on.

General college apps anxiety

There will always be a bit of anxiety surrounding college apps, and this is totally normal.

Something to really think about and hold onto for your whole life, is that the universe can be split into two parts: Things that you control and things that you don't control.

You can control what you do, the activities you pursue, the way you treat others, etc. In my opinion, these are single handedly the most important things in life, because you have essentially full autonomy over them. They form an extremely small yet meaningful subset of actions out of everything else in the universe.

All other things in life you can not control, and this might be extremely unsettling for many of you. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, you can not absolutely control your college admissions. You are not the one deciding, but do carry incredibly strong influence through the things that you do actually control.

Essentially, you should work as hard as you can, given your current situation. Not because you think it'll guarantee your admission, but because you will be certain that you did all that was possible. Even if you are rejected, you will never have to ask yourself "could I have done better?" or "what if I tried harder?". I believe that these "what if" questions are extremely difficult to ask yourself, and in my experience, knowing that I did the best that I could given my situation helps to alleviate my worries.

You might find it really unsettling that such a huge part of your life is outside of your control, but maybe instead think about how you only have to worry about the small set of decisions that are actually within your control.

Work hard, put your best foot forward, and you can rest assured that you will get the best outcome possible given your situation, even if that means a rejection.

Additionally, I would highly discourage "idolizing" some specific college. These are essentially corporations that don't actually "know" you. Their evaluation of you is incomplete at best, and is not a reflection of who you really are. Your obsession over them is not reciprocated, and it can be quite unhealthy.

Finally, you might feel as if you just don't have enough stuff for college. This isn't *as* big of a deal as you might think. There aren't an infinite number of slots for activities and awards in the portal anyways. I know MIT is quite limiting (4 activities). The bigger concern would be if you don't have enough experiences to write about in your essays. If this is you, you should spend a few days really thinking hard about yourself. Maybe you can even ask your family members or friends for ideas, since they might see something about you that you don't. I'm sure you can come up with something at least.

Life doesn't always offer you the luxury of picking favorites. Sometimes, you'll have to pick the lesser evil, whatever minimizes your losses. Sometimes, the choice isn't between "good" and "great", but rather "bad" and "worse". Just always put your best foot forward and dedicate yourself to your work, and you'll be able to always get the best out of what life offers you. The nice thing is that life is quite transient: things don't ever quite last that long. Good times are special because they don't stay forever, and bad times can be waited out because they too will pass.

Know that you will pass through the college-apps season soon, and that you've done the most you could given what life threw at you.

Finally

I think that while you could get into a great college by being ingenuine to yourself, chasing the approval of others through generic laundry lists of ECs, I don't think it's worth it for your own personal development.

College is 4 years of your life, while your life is well, your entire life.

I think that you should spend your time being genuine to yourself and developing yourself for your own sake, not for anybody elses.

Essentially: Figure out what you love to do, and go do it to maximize your happiness. Don't try to match yourself to a college, when it should be the other way around. Take ownership of your own life.