The Truth about College Admission | Alex Chang | TEDxSMICSchool

[Music] hello okay now you guys can hear me all right high school is super stressful you have GPA you have AP classes or IB classes you have SAT you have a CT you have SAT two you have extracurricular activities yeah internship and then summer is coming so there's maybe summer school and I don't know summer research there's so many things going on there's also friends and if you do all those things you don't have time for sleep but what if I tell you that if you try to go through everything on that list you're doing things wrong this is not really what colleges really want you to do when you're in high school imagine look around think about all your friends do you have anyone maybe yourself maybe someone you know maybe your sibling maybe your best friend who has maybe a GPA of 3.6 23.8 who gets maybe around thirteen to fourteen hundred on the SAT maybe a little higher maybe a little lower who does extracurricular activities in sports in music in maybe Model UN or debate maybe in an orchestra everything that everyone else is doing and if you know that someone else is doing that or you are doing that think about it I hope you guys know or have seen Where's Waldo this is a game for kids in I guess in America where your job is to find this guy Waldo in a picture of many many people and it's really hard for you to find Waldo because there's so many people that looked exactly the same or almost the same you're trying to fit into this list of good SAT score good GPA having extracurricular activities making sure that you volunteer in Cambodia to build houses making sure you learn on instruments making sure you perform making sure you go to Johns Hopkins for cty summer program if you do that it's going to be really really hard to find Waldo over here in this chair this is data that from a website called nish nish calm has data from high school students and college students and a lot of students review on how colleges are and on the website there's this data about how Harvard students are the green points are the students who got in and the x-axis is the SAT or HDD score the y-axis is their GPA and so you can see a lot of students who got into Harvard have really really high SAT or a CT score and they have really really high GPA scores a lot of them are near the top corner which means they have almost perfect or perfect SAT and GPA but if you look at the graph for the people who got rejected that pretty much looks the same because there's more thoughts on it there are a lot of students in the top right corner with perfect SAT perfect GPA and they still get rejected if you put them together you'll see that the data points are pretty much they're just proportional though the green points are less than the red points but the the distribution of the points are pretty similar so I think this data shows that if you just look at SAT GPA a CT this is not really a reliable indicator of where you will end up in college how many of you have seen what I have seen a story of this this is the blind man and the elephant and basically the story is that a long time ago there's this elephant new elephant in town and people don't know an elephant and so they come around and they are interested to find out what the elephant is the first guy touches elephants wrote elephants elephant's tail and said Oh elephant must be a rope the next guy hugged the elephant's foot and said Oh elephant must be a tree next person touches elephant's ear and said oh wait no elephant I think elephant is a fan next person touches elephants nose and say wait no this is a pipe elephant is a pipe and so on if you only look at SAT GPA or if you go down that checklist then you're pretty much like a blind man in this in this story what do colleges really want it's actually really really easy College want anyone everyone anyone who is awesome and awesome people have awesome qualities so if you're really smart you're awesome if you're not super smart but if you're mature and responsible that's also awesome if you are skilled in something that's awesome if you're passionate about something if you love sports or if you genuinely love to play piano that's awesome for you too if you love talking to people love being on stage love to present that's also awesome and so on there's so many things that you can be awesome leadership teamwork and so on many many things make you awesome and this is what colleges are looking for but it's hard to put things into perspective on piece of paper to show that to show what awesome is it's hard to put a number on how awesome you are at communication skill or how awesome you are at leadership and so when colleges are trying to present you or websites like nish comm or websites like us news comm are trying to present you who gets into what colleges they could only use the data that can be presented on a piece of paper and those are GPA and SAT scores but these are the things are what colleges care even more about who you are as a whole and whether you are impressive and whether you are awesome these are all my friends at Harvard in my freshman year my room one of my friend who lives above my in my floor was the Winter Olympic was on the Winter Olympics us ice hockey team there's another guy this Japanese guy in our first floor who missed almost all of high school because he had to perform violin around the world and then there are people who get straight A's but there are also people who gets a minuses but maybe he is from a minority and he's from a very poor neighborhood and he had to raise his own family as a teenager take a guess out of these five people do you think they all received 4.0 GPA and 1500 plus SAT or they all had the checklist they all had clubs and sports and internship been instrument and volunteering and so on or are they all very impressive in their own way and I think the answer is obvious they're all very impressive in their own ways they're not all as the L SAT students they're not all super bright in terms of academic but they all have their own special talent in their own special passion and that's what they end up pursuing and that's how they are special and that's why they all end up at Harvard there are many ways that you can approach this college admission process method one is I think the most common one in Asia is to go down the checklist first you have to make sure that you have the perfect scores to show that you are smart you're awesome in terms of intelligence and so to many people the way to prove that you're smart is to make sure that you get at least a 3.9 GPA at least a 1500 on your SAT and if you don't then find tutors pay a lot of money study a extra hard studying weekends take away your time for your passion and basketball or violin or anything or arts focus on school because school is first right focus on school make sure you get the best grade then worry about everything else and then to get the next point on you know being been your to pretend that you're kind-hearted maybe go sign up for volunteering in Cambodia even though your passion is not in Cambodia even though you don't really like building houses just to pretend no pretend to colleges that I love people I love helping others I'm going to pay a lot of money to go there and build houses and maybe other people will think I am very kind-hearted to show that I'm future ready I'm career ready I'm gonna go sign up for - yeah two week internship or three week internship during the summer so that other people think I'm really good because I'm able to work in this company to show that I'm very good at public speaking and get that extra tag hash tag on public speaking I'm gonna join Model UN because that's what other people are joining I'm gonna join Model UN or debate to show that I'm really really good and then to show teamwork and leadership I'm going to do other things like sports and clubs this is one way to do it but I believe this way is really stressful for many of you because not everyone is built for school not everyone is bill for SAT and GPA and not everyone really genuinely loves building houses in Cambodia not everyone loves Model UN and presenting in front of a in front of an audience if you do this one or two things may happen you may oh that's that's a slide yeah so you get to all these just making sure that you get you get there and show show that you have good grades and you have you have volunteering and all that but to anyone who has come at any common sense they'll know that you guys are not genuinely passionate in helping others in helping others in Cambodia at least and so how is that going to pretend how is that going to show to college admission officers you guys are just pretending imagine a two-week volunteer a two-week internship where you go to a big company let's say Google or Citibank those companies sounds really cool but you guys are really just high school students let's face it it's really hard for me as a Harvard student majored in computer science to find any computer science internship for two months in a company like Google Facebook Microsoft and in a finance job like Citibank Goldman Sachs if it's so hard for me to find a job there then for a typical high school students it's also going to be really hard and if you only have two weeks how are you going to contribute the fact is you're not going to contribute so how is that going to show to college admission officers you're just there you're wasting time you could use that time to do something else that you're genuinely passionate about but you're not doing that because you want to pretend that your college your career ready but you're not leadership teamwork all that maybe if you really enjoy speaking up in front in front of other people you could do model you and you could debate you could be a leader you could present things in front of other people you could do a TED talk these are awesome but if you're not built for that if you don't have that personality to do all these things these will be super stressful and boring and a waste of your time let's say one time when time comes when you're a senior and you're getting your college admission letters one or two things could happen if you get a minute to a good college that you want to that's all all the hard work paid off but imagine if they don't imagine the situation where all of your schools that you want to get in even the fit schools that you want to get in you don't get in you get rejected from it and you only get into your safety schools if you follow this list or let's see if you don't get into any schools at all then you've wasted all the money you wasted all the time you've got extra stress that you don't really need and you failed in everything you wasted four years and you end up with nothing let's imagine another way of approaching this College Admission where you're still trying to get all those tags it's trying to show that you're smart but you'll find other ways find your ways to show that you're smart this could be from GPA and SAT but this could also be from street smart from your skill in basketball your skill in piano your ability to organize things your ability to start your own online company your ability to do a talk your ability to get people together your ability to make other people happy all those things show that you're really smart you could get tags about your passion and your interest from other things think about what your strengths are are you really really interested in going there to do this volunteering stuff or are there other things that you're more interested in if you're interested in piano play more piano perform play in between Ted in between test sessions and in make other people happy make other people enjoy your music these are ways to show your passion do you have any weaknesses if you have then those are things that you shouldn't waste time on it if you can't conquer them if you can conquer your weakness and say US history then go for it but if you can't then don't try to stress or stress yourself out in doing computer science in doing a u.s. history and fail in it that will look really bad lastly to show that your future ready your career ready imagine ten years from now five years from now or sometime in the future what job will you make it will make you happy and make you proud of yourself that should be your goal so let's say right now you might be interested in Tech in architecture or in computer science that's awesome focus on that anything that you do to prepare you to become a really good architect or a really good computer scientist are all the things that you should be doing now using myself as an example in high school I only only had a 1450 SAT to some people this is really good score to my high school I think that was top three but Harvard students that sucked to a lot of Asian students a lot of Chinese students 1400 is a failure score that's that was my SAT score so on my SAT I wasn't the brightest but I was able to show that I wasn't stupid and I'm somewhat smart in other fields like math and science I wasn't able to do everything but I realized I was pretty good at math I was on the New York's New York City math team I was the math team captain for my high school and I helped our school with seven semesters I'll first place in math competitions so I focus on that math and science was pretty much all I did in high school but I realized I really thought in US history and anything that's history related so in 12th grade instead of trying to get into AP US history like all my friends did my teacher advised me and I realized that I really shouldn't be taking US history AP US history because it's too hard for me I should focus my attention on something else like ap Java ap physics and so on and so that's what I end up doing throughout my high school I was pretty I was pretty consistent I knew that I was really good at math and science and that's all I did and so in the end I was able to get into Harvard I think that was one of my reasons because I knew my strengths and I knew my weaknesses and so in general for like any student if you're not academic smart that's awesome think about what you're really good at and focus on that that could be art that could be physics that could be USC so it could be any subject in school or outside of school find your passion know what you like and do it really really well and make other people feel impressed that you know that thing that you're able to do it you're able to do it as a teenager something that maybe adults can't even accomplish but you could do it as a teenager if you love art there are many ways for you to learn all you don't have to pay a lot of money to go to us and take art classes over the summer you can take online classes you can learn how to draw by yourself you can start your own organize and start your own art gallery you can do many many things about art that can make other people think you are really cool and really awesome if you analyze the results of strategy 1 and shout each to charge you one there's good and bad if you end up with good schools and awesome if you end up with bad school then you wasted everything and there's extra stress shortage to the one that I just proposed to you guys if you dare to do it if you end up in a good school which many of my students end up into schools schools like Harvard MIT u Penn Berkeley then that's when win situation for them because they end up in a good school and their career ready and they have a very happy a member of a high school career but even if they end up getting into their safety school I think that's still fine because they are career ready they are ahead of other people all the people in college where they're still looking for them looking for their future finding their passion they've already found it other people are trying to start their own business after college they've started in high school getting the Head Start is super important if you have a head start then there's really no failure in high school everything that you try you'll get to learn about yourself and get better and better and all these experiences make you really awesome for my students or ask them do you think college name is more important or do you think your life after college is more important it's getting into Harvard more important or finding the future job that you want say work at Google or be able to work in bank or start your own company or start your own money making business is that more important if your answer is College is more important there's a way to do that you can fake your application you could buy your test answers everyone knows that you can find people to write your college essays you can find you could pay money to other people to write things for you kit and I'll be in a good college there's a way to do that but there's that's a very bad way to do things or if you think your future life is more important then why not start thinking about your future now thinking about what you love in the future what you want to do in the future and get a head start now so that you're more future ready you're more life ready I think that's more important for everyone and I think that's a main difference and that's why I really got me interested in doing education I wouldn't be really interested in doing education if I'm prepping students for Cal Cal in China because the education system in China is different I did everything before high school there's something that you have to prepare for that college entrance exam everything in college is unrelated to everything before college in college you go through college you take classes you learn stuff you hang out with friends everything after college is the life after college we're in high school you don't have to care about community service you have to care about leadership you don't care about growing up you just have to care about how to get a perfect score on Cal Cal and that's all that matters in college it doesn't really matter what you want to do in the future you think about that maybe in the last month of your senior year in high in college but in college you enjoy college life you take classes you do things in college you worry about life after college when you're about to exit college but I think that's bad and it's risky because too many students they're not ready for a future yet and so if you do this in three different phases by the time when you enter the most important phase of life you're not ready yet and there will be a lot of problems with not being ready maybe you're immature maybe you're hard to get along with maybe you don't know how to take care of yourselves maybe you don't even know who you are but this education system in America which I think it's awesome in high school before high school you have to do extracurricular activities you have to do sports or to play basketball and swim you have to do tracks you have to do violin and piano there's the benefit to that because from doing all these different activities now you know whether you like it or not you know whether you're good at it or not from all the trials and errors in high school and before high school you get to learn more about yourself you know what subjects what fields you are you are better at and then in 10th 11th and 12th grade you can focus a little bit more on it you could play spend more time playing piano you can spend more time swimming you can spend more time studying math that's when you start taking AP and IP classes and that's a time where you become a little bit more focused then in college you have to choose your major but you don't choose your major on to your sophomore year and that's really good a really good thing because that means in your freshman year you still have more chances one last year pretty much one last year to try around different subjects that you think you might be interested and then when time comes sophomore year you focus on it if you're more than one interest that's awesome you can take a major and a minor or it can take two majors or maybe one major and two minors depending the school that you end up with but you become more and more focused and more and more career focus and future focus until the time when you graduate from cut from college you have that job but before you end up with that job in college you have to be ready for that future job and the way to be be ready for that future job is to work and get internships and so if you for for you guys when you guys are in college in America during the summer you don't just hang out you don't just do research you have to go and find a job like a real internship because at the time we get to know how things work in the real life and that's a time for you to be more experience and more future ready so when you graduate from college you will find that job because you're ahead of others so how can you be ahead in high school same thing goes for college and for high school in order to be ready for high school for high school and admission into college you have to be ahead in other people in in this race and get closer to that future life future career that you want it's not like a funnel where you start general and they get more focused and more focused until the time we're in college your focus and your head of other people so if you want a good life College is not the way to do it a big name is not the way to do it Harvard MIT Stanford is not the way to do it if you look at life it's important for you right now in high school in middle school even in elementary school to know who know your interest find out about yourself be who you are there to be who you are and be awesome at doing who you are good college name really doesn't do too much for you thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,045,374

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Success

Id: h21OmjyviC4

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 13 2018