Avi Swain

College Applications

22 Aug, 2024

When people ask me for advice on applying to college this is what I tell them...and much more!

So far I have…

• Taken courses offered by Columbus State Community College, The Ohio State University and UCLA
• Attended UCLA as an undergraduate student and lived on campus for a year (so far)
• Made hundreds of friendships with students in colleges around the U.S.

In addition to that, during college application season I did the following…

• Completed a college admissions prep program
• Visited multiple institutions in-person (both informally and formally) as well as virtually
• Applied to over 20 colleges
• Wrote and rewrote hundreds of essays

I believe these experiences allow me to provide useful information and advice for people who are thinking about applying to college.

In this post I will share my insights on the important decisions I made during this process along with the hindsight I have gained after having attended college for a year. I will also not waste time explaining what the ACT/SAT is, when application season starts and ends, or even how the Universities of California have a different application system than most other colleges.

These are things YOU should be researching.

Luckily, after reading this, you’ll probably have a good idea on where to start looking. So let’s get started!

Compiling your list of colleges

This is by far the most important step. I suggest doing this as early as possible (during the summer after junior year at the latest!) because it will affect everything else. Even after attending one of my dream colleges for a year and absolutely loving it, I still think I could have done a better job during this step.

The advice I followed during my senior year of high school was to apply to 1-2 safety schools, 3-4 target schools, and the rest as reach schools. But looking back in time, I would have rather applied to 1-2 safety schools, 3-4 target schools, and the rest as anything else.

I’ll make this a bit easier to digest by breaking it down into smaller problems…

"What are safety, target, and reach schools?"

These category names are used to separate the colleges you are applying to based on a personalized acceptance rate. This is not as simple as looking up the general acceptance rate online, although that is a factor. This is more about understanding the type of student a college is looking for along with how well you match that profile.

Safety means you think you will 100% get in with your stats and application. Target means you probably think you can get in because you match the academic profile of most applicants and it’s not a notoriously prestigious school. Reach means it’s literally anyones’ game (Ivy league institutions and prestigious universities).

"How many colleges should you apply to?"

This answer will be unique for everyone but here is my advice…

First, make sure you apply to 1-2 safety colleges no matter what (I normally err on the side of caution, so I applied to 2). By this point you have probably decided that you are 100% going to college. If you plan on applying to only reach and target schools, you might want to get an ego check. There is nothing guaranteed about college applications and it doesn’t hurt to write a few extra essays for an acceptance letter.

Second, you should definitely apply to 3-4 target schools. Most people don’t follow this advice and just go straight to applying for reach schools. The problem I have with this approach is that college applications can be anyone’s game. I applied to many colleges and there were a few that I thought I had a very good shot at getting into, but I didn’t.

At the end of the day, there is always some sort of luck factor to it. The way you combat this is by including target schools.

Lastly, when I say “the rest can be anything else” that literally means you decide how many more colleges you want to apply to (after satisfying the first two requirements). For me, there were a lot more. But for you there might not be.

As a good rule of thumb, I think any amount below 4 colleges is too less and any amount above 20 is too much (and I did this, so I know what I’m talking about).

Imagine you ask someone, “What are your favorite restaurants?”. If they share 1-2 restaurants you can probably tell that they don’t go out much to eat and you should probably be asking someone else for recommendations (or they might be lying and not sharing all their favorite ones!). On the other hand, if they give you 30 restaurants, you should be thinking, does he/she REALLY have 30 favorite restaurants? Or is he/she just listing out every restaurant they’ve been to?

This can be applied to college applications. It’s actually good to have multiple colleges that you are interested in. If you are foodie in this case maybe you want to apply to lots of colleges (10-20), or maybe you did your research and only apply to 5 colleges that you really want to go to (1 safety, 3 target, 1 reach). In the end, do anything you want, but make sure you know the consequences of certain decisions.

For example, lets say you decide to dedicate the next 4 months to college applications. If you start out with 20 colleges, that gives you about 6-7 days for each application. Instead, you could remove 2-3 colleges, and work an extra day on every other application! These extra days will save you...trust me.

Also, before I go to the next section, I want to disclaim a strategy called the shotgun approach. This is where you apply to as many colleges as you can and hope for the best. I did this and it works…but I do not recommend it at all.

Looking back on my experience and seeing others do it too, this is what I think when I see someone do the shotgun approach now:

“This person never took the time to understand the colleges he/she is applying to. He/she just researched the top colleges in X field and made a list out of that. He/she is just like everyone else…maybe they’ll get lucky but who honestly knows.”

Well, now that you know how many colleges you are looking for…

What colleges should you apply to?

This step is the exact reason why I recommend starting this process as early as possible. If I were to do college applications again, I’d spend around 33% of my time working on this step (which is more than the 20-25% I actually spent here).

No one other than you will know what colleges are good for you. Not your parents, not your friends, not your high school. Only YOU.

Many people go to college for different reasons and under different circumstances. Answering the question “Why am I going to college?” will help you decide the college that is best for you.

For me, I view going to college as a job security/insurance decision. I think that if I have nothing else to show for my knowledge and skills, at least I have a college degree. But for others it might be different (maybe you want to go for the experience).

I also had the benefit of my parents deciding to pay for the full cost of my education (which I am truly grateful for and remind myself about every time I head back to college). Others might not have this opportunity and must ask themselves additional questions to narrow down their college search.

Since every person’s situation is different, I cannot prescribe a set of colleges that are best for you. But here are some questions that I’d ask myself if I was searching for colleges to apply to again:

• How well does the college teach the field that I want to master?
• Does the environment in the college make me want to learn?
• Do the staff and faculty meet my expectations?
• Does this university make it easier to achieve my goals?
• Is the university worth the typical cost of attendance?

Refining your answers to these questions will help you decide whether you should apply to a college or not.

I know it’s tough to have solid answers to these questions without actually having college experience so here is what I have learned:

• Visiting a college for me was not the best use of my time. Knowing what I know now, I tell people the best way to find the answers to your questions is by digging deep online. You can find everything you need there and a college visit always tends to be fairly superficial for most people.
• If you are going to college to get better at something (and not party) then having an environment that keeps you growing helps a lot. For me, that meant getting taught by professors who are still curious about the topics they are teaching and being in a competitive, and crazy fast-paced environment. For many others this might not be the case. In general, make sure the environment you are going to be putting yourself in is one that keeps you learning.
• A top college does not replace a strong curiosity. You can maneuver your way around the system and get all the credentials to look great…but if you aren’t genuinely curious about what you are trying to master, no college will prepare you for success in that field. This means you should focus on the programs that actually teach topics you are truly curious about and not the ones that just look the best to everyone.

In the end, a good strategy for considering a college for a spot on your list of applications is asking yourself this question:

“If this is the ONLY college I am applying to (forget everything else) and I end up getting accepted, would I be happy to attend school there?”

If your answer is no, do yourself a favor and cross it off. Don’t waste your time making a whole new application when you can spend double the time on an application to a university you truly want to go to.

Application Details

What I say in the following subsections might be too direct for you. I have done this on purpose. The tips here are golden if you can follow them, because they are the truth. Anything else might not be an efficient use of your time (All of this is based only on my experiences! Always do what you think is best for you!).

School Courses

• Don’t overload on AP classes just for the sake of it. In fact don’t take any classes just for the sake of it. You should only take the classes that you are required to take and then use the remaining choices to dive deep into the harder classes that help you get into the college major that you are interested in.
• As an example, I had a rough idea that I was going to do Computer Science. CS programs around the country favor students who are accelerated in math. So I pushed myself to the point where I was taking Multivariable Calculus, Statistics for Engineers, and Linear Algebra at a local university during my senior year of high school. This helped me out a ton because I could “brag” about it in my applications. This also meant that I could not waste my time taking classes like AP Chemistry, which I had no interest in taking. I know many students in my high school who took the same amount of AP and college-level classes as me but ended up showing no interest in a particular subject through their transcript. This is just stupid to me. Why does everyone take a certain AP because they think a college will like that? That’s just not how it works…imagine if every student took AP Art History in high school…it’s basically the same thing that’s going on nowadays.

Standardized Testing

• Follow the ACT Black Book to get a perfect score on the ACT. My super score was a 36, which means I have achieved a high score in every section of the ACT (but most schools don’t accept super scores so get the highest overall score you can in one sitting).
• I got a 29 on my first try on the ACT. Then I got 31, 33, 33, 34 and then I stopped taking it because I ran out of time. You know what I did every time to improve my score? Revisited the ACT Black Book and practiced more! If I had more time, you know what I would have done? Say it with me…REVISITED THE ACT BLACK BOOK AND PRACTICED MORE.
• If you run out of time and don’t get an overall score that is above the average you need for a certain college, don’t submit the score (if that is an option).
• I never took the SAT so I can’t say much there. I chose the ACT because it matched my strengths better. Focus on whichever one is best suited to your strengths. Don’t focus on both. There is absolutely no advantage in that.

Extracurriculars

• Do what you’re interested in and dive deep into it. Don’t do the popular club in school just because someone on the team got into an Ivy League last year. This is not how it works. Colleges are looking for uniquely passionate students, not “copy and paste-ers”. If you think about it, most high schools have about 20 to 40 students who are very smart, do all the popular clubs, do volunteering, do everything and pretty much just copy each other. Not all of you are getting into the best university. But the person who genuinely followed their interest since freshman year will (I know it and have seen this pattern play out many times).
• If you happen to be one of those students who are just copying others because you don’t know what else to do, my best advice for you is to stop immediately and start exploring whatever your curious about. It’s never too late. It was the start of senior year when I finally decided to major in Computer Science. Before then I had only taken an Intro to Programming class and had no other experiences to show for it. So I immediately started teaching robotics and took 2 CS courses at my local university before I finished my college applications. Just stay true to who you are and everything will work out fine.
• Even if you aren’t applying to become a college athlete, it is still a great idea to include your achievements on sports. For me, it was my second most important extracurricular!

Essays

• Listen to your gut and write exactly how you would answer the question in real life.
• Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. It’s pretty easy to catch when you are doing that.
• Don’t read accepted essays just for ideas. Your best ideas will come from within.
• Don’t let anyone else write your essays. How can someone else know more about you than yourself?
• Make sure you love your answer to every question once you’re finished!

You might be looking for some more concrete advice, especially cause I didn’t say anything extraordinary for extracurriculars and essays. If I was reading this in high school, I would be like, “bro, tell me something I don’t already know”.

But trust me, looking back in time, these are truly best tips that I can think of. It’s almost like I wish someone only told me these answers and nothing else. I promise you, if you can convince yourself to follow these tips, you will get into a college that you are grateful to go to.

Avi Swain