To the college applicants in 2025 and beyond,
My hope in writing this blog is that someone from the class of 2025 and beyond will find it, read it carefully, apply it to action, and get admitted into their dream schools. Even if this blog was going to benefit just one person, I would be satisfied and my efforts would be worth it.
This blog was inspired by the many college admission decisions that have been released over this past month, as well as the thought of even more decisions that are to come within the next two weeks. Here, I will breakdown some of my biggest mistakes and realizations while applying to college.
Advice #1:
Start your essays in the summer. I know we all like to procrastinate. Me especially — I am a big procrastinator. But when it comes to writing the essays that will determine your life path for the next four years, procrastination is stupid. I’ll be honest — I started my college essays in November, and my personal statement around 10 days before the ED deadline. I remembered sitting at the library, hands on my forehead, squeezing my little brain for the few words it has in it, and spending over two hours to write a single sentence. When I eventually finished my first draft, I remembered showing it to my friend Kai, who honestly criticized that the ideas in my essay didn’t connect with each other, and I had to ditch that whole draft and write two more.
I turned in the 3rd draft of my personal statement to UIUC and Purdue (I didn’t ED to UChicago as planned because my essays were simply dissatisfactory). But when I revisited my personal statement a week later, I realized that the story did not make sense yet again. I scratched my idea for the 3rd draft entirely and spent another week in December writing three more drafts, finally turning in a satisfactory personal statement to the rest of my schools.
Procrastination was my biggest regret. I wrote about 60% of my supplemental essays over the last 5 days before all essays were due, averaging around 9 essays per day over that time period. As you can imagine, the quality of these essays were not great. And how did I get to that point? I knew that writing college essays was painful and the deadlines were far away, so I delayed it throughout the first semester of Senior year. Everyday, I would prioritize school work, clubs, and games over college application, which should have been my first priority. And eventually, I ran out of time.
Imagine this: you have worked hard for over three years, taking the hard classes, competing in competitions, and earning leadership positions in clubs, only to procrastinate the most important part: putting yourself on paper to be acknowledged by colleges — how pathetic was that?
Now that the admission decisions are coming out, I occasionally found myself revisiting the essays that I turned in. I realized that almost every single one of them — including the 6th draft of my personal statement — could have been improved significantly. Believe me, even when we are not writing, we are constantly thinking. Newer and better ideas are continually formed as we walk through our everyday lives. If you start your essays earlier, you will have the time to capture them in paper. I often thought to myself: it’s been two months since I submitted my college applications, and I have so many better ideas for revision. What if I started two months earlier? How much more competitive of an applicant could I have been?
Therefore, start your essays during the summer. Don’t just plan it, make sure to do it. You’ll thank me later.
Advice #2:
Apply to more colleges. Unless you are a world-class applicant, having national-level awards, and knowing that Harvard will be dying to get you, you are probably in the Crap Shoot. Being in the Crab Shoot means you stand near average among the students applying to your dream school, and whether you get in or not depends more on luck than anything else. Yes, writing amazing essays will help; but it will probably only increase your chances of being admitted to Harvard from 5% to 10%, or from 10% to 20%, depending on how strong of an applicant you are overall. As you can see, when it comes to reach schools, it is almost always more likely that you will be rejected than accepted. Therefore, it is important to apply to many reaches to build a statistical insurance that you’ll get into at least one of them. (Think of the $80 application fee per college as — literally — an insurance. If you apply to 20 schools, you are paying $1,600 for a better chance of a 4+ year education that is potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even if you are applying to schools you know you probably will not attend for financial reasons, $80 is still worth it just in case you were rejected from your main options.)
College admissions are sometimes very random. I never expected myself to get admitted into UIUC’s CS+Physics program (which only takes 25 people) with my crappy, 3rd-draft personal statement and rushed supplements, but I did. While I believed I got very lucky there, luck does matter. I have highly qualified friends who were denied from the colleges they certainly deserved, and I certainly hope that you will give yourself a better chance by simply applying to more schools.
One semester ago, I was just like you — applying to college for the first time in my life, knowing little about the process. Even now, I must confess that I am no expert. I cannot explain to you an optimal strategy for applying for college, for I too am just a learner. I am waiting for most of my college decisions, which will come in two weeks. Summarizing some of my biggest lessons from my own experience and that of my close friends, I wrote you this blog, hoping that you won’t make the mistakes we made, and that your journey through the college application process will be smooth and fruitful. Therefore, I ask you to apply my advice into action, beginning by starting your essays in the summer and applying to a lot of colleges.
Please remember that your hard work will always eventually pay off, whether or not you were admitted into your dream school.
Good luck,
Frank.
I think a lot of us can relate to your blog. I was on both sides of the spectrum during my application process. I had my personal statement written by the end of July, which I think is pretty early. Then I had to spend time at night during my vacation over new years grinding out my last couple essays, and I can admit that some of them could have been improved a lot more had I given my ideas more time to marinate. The topic of procrastination is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. Some of the worst procrastinators are often some of the brightest people. I think we know our work will be up to a certain standard no matter what happens, so we subconsciously can put tasks off until a time where we find ourselves finishing them right as deadlines approach. For example, last year I would always start my homework as late as I could, then usually finish in the hour window between 11:30 and 12:30 no matter what happened. Trying to break away from these habits has been a difficult journey for me, and your advice to future college applicants is well put.
Hi Frank! I agree with all of your points in this blog. I think it’s amazing advice to start college essays during the summer. I actually received that piece of advice, but did not listen and finished my common app essay in late October which caused so much unnecessary stress. It’s crazy that you had to write so many supplemental essays, I probably would have given up on half of them. I had a similar experience with the UIUC personal statement. Mine was so bad. It was written in probably 20 minutes and used maybe half of the word count. But, who cares, it worked.
Frank, thank you for sharing your college application journey as it was very similar to mine and I definitely could have used your advice exiting junior year. I was probably one of the most behind people I knew when it came to applying to colleges and essays. I did not begin researching colleges or writing my personal statement until after the school year started. Do I regret it? Most definitely. My parents required me to create and present to them an excel sheet that depicted all of my college interests, whether they were reach/target/safety, the tuition, distance/location, acceptance rate/major specific acceptance rate, and where my major ranked at that college. I constantly procrastinated but got around to it as well as my essays due to ignoring school work and solely doing those things. I did make the early action deadline for most of my applications yet I still wish I was more proactive.
Hi Frank,
This is great advice! Something that I tell all the juniors and underclassmen who ask me for advice is that they should absolutely start writing essays over the summer. Speaking from personal experience, writing essays the night of the deadline is NOT a fun experience. While it’s true that a person can grow a lot over the course of a couple months and that new ideas are sure to pop up, it’s a good idea to have some sort of a draft to fall back on.
As for your second point of advice, I feel like that only really applies to those interested in going to Ivy League and other super selective schools. That’s one of my regrets about this process- what’s the point of paying so much money if you know you’re not going there anyway? I think if I had narrowed down my list to the schools that I was actually interested in, that would’ve allowed me to focus more on writing good essays and it would’ve been less stressful overall.
Great post!
Anna-Maria
Hey Frank! All of us relate to something very similar with our application cycles. UNC’s deadline was October 15 and man was I not ready for that. My personal statement was a disaster, and my supplements were nonexistent with 3 days left in the deadline. I decided to focus all my attention on my personal statement with my remaining time, and held a general idea of my supplemental. My application was submitted 30 minutes before the deadline. Procrastination on school work sometimes created my best work, but on something like a college application, it had a negative impact. My sister repeatedly told me to stop procrastinating and work on my applications well ahead of time, as she had already gone through the process. Your advice was solid, and I hope next year takes it dearly.
Hi Frank. I enjoyed reading your post. I like you also procrastinated, and I do regret it a little bit. Probably spending more time on each application and getting it reviewed more would have boosted my chances a bit more for the colleges I applied to. But I think I am not too regretful of the content of what I said in my college apps and I think that quantity or time you spend on your college application = quality. Overall, I think maybe trying harder in school and other activities would have boosted my chances more. Whatever college I end up going through and for everyone who goes to college, I think it does matter to an extent but you will still have to work and it’s more about the work you do in college and the opportunities you take.
Hey Frank, I definitely agree with you here. College application season was by far the worst time of my high school career, but I’m fortunate enough to be able to look back on it with few regrets. I made a lot of sacrifices for the outcomes I had, and was lucky enough to have a support system behind me (very insistent parents) that prevented me from procrastinating. But no matter the outcome, there are always improvements to be found in retrospect. For those applying next year, starting earlier is honestly the best advice you could give. As for your second piece, I couldn’t agree more. Of course there should always be an upper bound (I’ve heard horror stories of kids applying to 36 or 48 schools), if you’re applying to that top caliber of universities, the best kind of guarantee is safety in numbers.