It sure seems like everyone  says if you want to get into a top-tier college, you need to:

1. take the most rigorous coursework available at your school and do well
2. retake ACT or SAT until you can score above a 34 or above a 1550. Hire a tutor if necessary
3. Join multiple clubs. But don't just be a participant, become the president or leader of student counsel, MUN, or both.
4. Develop your "spike." Become good enough to win national/international awards in science, math competitions, writing, etc.

Sounds exhausting, doesn't it?

Yet tens of thousands of ambitious teens sacrifice sleep, fun, friends, and more in order to accomplish this feat.

Anyone who has had a family member go through college admissions knows what I'm talking about.

Teachers, college counsellors, parents, and peers all support this message.

But it is a terrible strategy.

Think about it. When you apply to [SCHOOL], your application will be one of some 30,000 or more applicants.

A few thousand of these applicants will be valedictorians.

Several thousand will be valedictorians with outstanding test scores and demonstrated leadership.

And, depending on the school, most of these students will be rejected.
Harvard president Faust said they could fill their incoming freshman class twice over with only valedictorians each year.

Yet only a fraction of them actually get in.

Why?

Because it is not the most qualified student who gets in.

Think about it.

If you had to read through 30,000+ applications to choose a group of less than 2k students, how would you decide who was more qualified?

When everyone is following the same strategy-- do all four steps I listed at the top-- then how will you stand out?

The answer for most teens (and their teachers, parents, and counsellors) is "I'll stand out by doing everything better than everyone else."

Look at that. Your "stand out" strategy is to do the same things everyone else is doing, but you'll do them better?

That is not standing out.

It also happens to be exhausting.

Stop.

Just stop.

Doing those things better than everyone else helps you stand out in your own high school. But not to an Ivy League admissions officer.

I've spoken to the people who decide who gets into Harvard, UPenn, Stanford, Dartmouth, and more.

They have no way of knowing which applicant is truly the most impressive or the most qualified.

They wish they knew, but they have no way of truly knowing.

So they choose the most interesting person.

So sacrificing your fun, friends. sleep, and sanity is not only a terribly high price to pay, once you've paid it, you often end up without the admittance letter you were hoping for in the first place.

When I got my MS at Harvard, I discovered that the campus was FULL of students who did not follow that strategy.

Instead, they spent high school and middle school pursuing their genuine interests.
They cultivated impressive curiosity, and learned how to pursue that curiosity to an unusually high level.

And they cared about something.

They weren't just curious, they also wanted to make their communities better in some way.
They made an impact.

They didn't spend their middle school and high school years trying to 'become' the person who might be good enough to get into their dream school--they didn't care about becoming anyone else.

They were just genuinely curious and wanted to make some aspect of the world a little bit better because of that.

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