WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW before your last year of high school // college apps, senioritis, adulting

first and most importantly if you take just one thing away from this video let it be this do not let college board send you emails during the like survey portion before the start of every ap test and sat exam there's that little question bubble yes if you'd like college board to add you to the student search service or whatever they make it sound so friendly and nice but i promise you it is just spam email after spam email i promise you none of the information is actually going to be that helpful to you and if it is like you can find all this stuff about colleges in your first two minutes of googling without being harassed daily in your email inbox it only takes two seconds to bubble yes but two seconds is enough to be unsubscribing from college email lists for the rest of your life yeah i'm talking to you louisiana state university i'm already done with my first year of college so no i don't want to apply and i regret allowing college board to sell my emails to colleges in the first place sorry if my voice still sounds a little bit froggy i've had a mild cold for the past week so i'm just trying to power through and make these videos for you guys but let's get into some advice for stuff you actually want to be doing i highly recommend taking some time this year to train yourself to read faster and honestly this is not something i can tell you how to do sure there are tips and tricks out there but the real way you're going to learn how to do this is through practice based on the demographics of my usual audience i'm assuming most of you are planning for further education beyond high school and at college and university you'll be doing a lot more reading especially of denser academic works so i recommend you get ahead now and practice reading some more difficult non-fiction books or even scholarly journal articles in your major or your favorite subject another skill i recommend you start learning by doing right about now is talking to adults especially teachers or anybody who may be older and wiser and just have some sort of position of authority over you jump scare warning you are about to be an adult and assuming you want to have a real adult job in the future being able to comfortably and organically talk to people who are in fact real adults is something you might want to know how to do this is how you do networking this is how you effectively communicate in the workplace and just like speed reading it's not something anybody can really step by step instruct you on how to do it's really something you'll have to learn how to do by yourself and develop your own like personal style of communicating the one tip i do have for you though is no matter how scary your teachers or professors might seem they are still just regular people deep down inside and the average regular person does want to connect with other regular people this is not only a helpful skill in like investing in your future self but also it'll probably help you get some better recommendation letters during your college application process and speaking of college applications here are my tips and advice for the whole process first of all be wary of anybody who's like my age who's like selling you something to help with college applications especially if their only qualification is having gotten into a prestigious school themselves i go to a fairly prestigious university i know lots of people who got into prestigious universities and most of us could not possibly accurately tell you what went on in that admission room that caused them to say yes the average college student no matter how elite of a school they attend doesn't know anything beyond rumors and hearsay of what happens in an admissions office only those who have worked in the admissions office or who have done admissions counseling for years and years will actually have the qualifications to help you with this stuff but what college students are qualified to be giving out especially for free is advice based on stuff we do actually have personal experience with and that's what i'll be doing in the rest of this college app advice section first let's talk about putting together a college list how many schools do you want to apply to there are a lot of numbers floating out there on the internet but it's a really wide range from like six to like 35. i'd say there is really no perfect number and i don't recommend putting a hard cap on how many schools you apply to just do as many as you can reasonably afford the application fees for and you can reasonably finish writing applications for without losing your mind for most people i know this tended to be somewhere between 8 and 12. mine was a bit on the higher end just because i could afford a lot more uc applications but yeah since there is no perfect number you don't have to limit yourself with a very strict upper limit if you keep looking at this one school like oh i wish i had applied there i feel like it would have been the one that got away if i don't shoot my shot right now then you might as well apply there because you only really get one chance to apply for college as a first year student so you don't want to waste this opportunity and end up with a lot of regrets but also this means you don't have to make yourself apply to a lot of schools assuming you're applying to a sufficient amount of safe schools so that you know that you will actually get into college like if you could not possibly motivate yourself to write another application because you just don't care about the school that you're trying to make yourself apply to just don't bother why waste the application fee especially if you know that you likely won't go next let's talk about writing personal statements this is also something that is very hard to give advice for because it is personal to you it is literally in the name so instead of telling you what to write and how to write it i'm going to give more advice about how to write like yourself the purpose of this whole personal statement thing is to share something about yourself something about your life story and to share it with your own personal voice it's not just resume part two and it's also not like writing a fantasy novel it's about you as if you were a journalist interviewing yourself getting the details about your fascinating life story and as i kind of alluded to the way i recommend you get this out of yourself is to simulate interviewing yourself you can even ask a particularly nosy friend to actually interview you this works especially well if you actually say it out loud say it in the way you would naturally actually say it in your own voice a problem i feel like i ran into was trying to make everything sound too perfect and too polished when i write i tend to sound very overly academic and when i talk i talk more like a normal person i think i hope please don't misinterpret this next tip but the advice i have for you is whenever possible lean towards embellishing your achievements instead of downplaying them i don't mean lie i mean be honest in the most positive way possible a lot of us have been drilled our whole lives with this value of humility and yeah it's not good to have a big head all the time but when you're putting together an application you want to present the best possible version of yourself like let's look at the example of my friend who was applying for a job this summer this isn't college apps but the way you want to present yourself positively in both circumstances is pretty similar they were like oh i didn't check off that i have job experience even though i do have some job experience it's just not relevant to the job i'm applying for and i was like are you an idiot you literally just told me you have job experience why did you say you have no job experience and this is something i feel like i personally fell victim to when i was writing my college applications like not to flex too hard i literally published a book i was in charge of like every student organization that i was a part of and at the same time despite all these fabulous resume items i felt the need to like downplay everything and only write the like most honest version of all of the events instead of putting forward like the best things that i had done like i kind of felt the need to be like oh i wasn't that important i was just a yearbook head editor instead of saying that i led a staff of 35 people to win two different aspa national first awards which was like the actual truth of it i don't know maybe this is just a me and my friend's problem but don't be overly humble say the most positive possible version of events one more thing to look into especially if you are part of certain underrepresented groups like if you are a minority student or first generation or low income most colleges will have outreach programs especially for these underrepresented groups you might have opportunities to go on a free tour or even be flown out to the college to visit overnight for free so check out the social media and websites of the college's admissions office and any local college admissions organizing groups in your area alrighty enough about colleges talk about something else now the second most important takeaway from this video i think is to have fun along the way and this applies to both senior year and like the rest of your life one of my biggest progress from high school is being too future oriented and never letting myself actually have fun in the present it was always about what can i do to better prepare myself for what's coming next month or next year or in five years what's gonna better prepare me for the rest of my life which is not necessarily a bad thing i've set myself up for a lot of success but i didn't strike a proper balance with also allowing myself to have fun and enjoy life in the present moment i was always so focused on the future that i just wanted to put off my phone until later and yeah technically second semester senior year is supposed to be the perfect later for all of the fun you've saved up but my second semester senior year didn't really exist because of covid i just sat at home for the entire time because everything was cancelled and closed down and i don't want to say the moral of the pandemic is yolo like that is so disrespectful to all the people who lost their lives and livelihoods but it did kind of serve as a reminder like hey there's no point in continuously putting off fun until tomorrow next month next year because the future is never really guaranteed so you want to strike a good balance between yeah preparing yourself for the future but also having fun today and i guess somewhat related to that one my next tip is to let yourself have senioritis i put a question thing on my instagram and a lot of people wanted advice on how to prevent senioritis and i honestly don't have a lot of practical tips for that because my second semester senior year like didn't exist even if i had senioritis i had no obligations so it wasn't a thing and in case you haven't heard this term senoritis is that syndrome where after you've finished all of your college applications there's this desire to let loose just be lazy not care about school work or your extracurriculars or anything at all and i say just let yourself cave into that a little bit obviously you don't want to be failing your classes or anything but most colleges won't really care if your second semester grades slip by a letter grade or so what's happening now that you no longer have the looming threat of i want to impress colleges on my college apps your brain is kind of just letting go of everything that you never really cared about everything that you were only doing because of the threat of college admissions and it's also probably letting go of some things you really do care about because you're probably exhausted from several years of having your nose to the grindstone and it's completely okay and normal that your brain just wants you to slow down take a break and actually enjoy life what i recommend you do now is instead sit back a little bit and take note of what you actually find yourself still caring about because now that you are released from obligations to some outside observer you can start to see what you internally actually do care about and what you don't really care that much about it's a step in being self-aware and helping you decide like what the heck am i gonna do with my future however one exception to letting yourself do whatever and having senioritis is ap courses and community college credits assuming that your college accepts these for credit of course once you have a good idea of what university you'll be attending you definitely want to check out their policies about what types of credits will transfer over and whichever ones they do accept continue studying paying attention and doing your best in that class finishing out these ap and community college classes strong was so helpful for me in my experience at ucla i finished quite a few of the general education requirements and like half of my major's lower division requirements before i ever even got to the school thanks to all these extra credits and depending on if the test will actually like fulfill anything for you they're such a steal depending on the course you'll be getting a semester or a year's worth of one class credit and even though ap tests can be expensive it's still way cheaper than the thousands you'd pay for a single university class one last word on college and university is that you don't have to know your major yet or what you want to do with that major after you graduate there is still a lot of time to change your mind i'm a rising second year and i'm still not 100 sure on what my double major or minor might be and i didn't decide on my actual major until like midway through my first year and a lot of people change their major up until like the end of their second or maybe even the middle of their third year of university you've got plenty of time to make decisions after you maybe learn a little bit more about yourself and your academic interests in your first year of college right now the practical steps you can take for that is don't worry too much about applying to the best school for your major because there's maybe like a 50 chance you're going to change your major anyways and just make sure that when you're selecting the university you go to it does have all of the potential majors you're interested in available for you to study also this year or maybe the summer after i recommend getting some work experience maybe an internship if you can find one hopefully a paid one or just any sort of regular minimum wage part-time job not only does it get something on your resume just so you can say yes i do in fact have work experience it's a great way to start finding out more about yourself and what you like and dislike in a workplace it doesn't just have to be identifying like the specific sector like oh do i like working in like marketing or cafe management it helps you to identify what types of people and environments you want to be around during your career maybe think about do you like working independently or part of a group would you prefer sitting at a desk or walking around standing up do you like facing the public or would you rather not face the public and since it is hopefully a paid experience you can also save up some money for that first year of college since moving out and away from family tends to be a pretty expensive experience speaking of saving and money and finances start your retirement account once you turn 18. okay maybe that is too big and bold of a step especially if you don't have any savings yet but once you turn 18 you are legally able to open all your own financial accounts and therefore you can start getting your finances in order you can open a student credit card and start spending responsibly on it to start building a credit score or open your own savings and checking account i'm kind of a huge nerd about personal finance so i made an entire like beginner's guide to personal finance for students and that will also include some other basic words and terms and next steps for you if you'd like to check that out i will link it in the description below and last but not least time to say goodbye i recommend putting together some sort of goodbye ritual i don't mean rituals like you have to sacrifice a goat or anything i just mean something that kind of makes you reflect on something that is beyond yourself like one could argue that the graduation ceremony in the u.s is a kind of ritual in moving on creating a demarcation point between high school and beyond high school there's a lot of other stuff you have to say goodbye to this year too maybe you're moving out of your hometown or you won't really ever see your friends from high school ever again it's really hard to say goodbye and i find that setting up your own little rituals for everything you have to say goodbye to can help it feel a bit better for me it was saying goodbye to certain places by taking pictures and writing a little memory collage of all of my fond and maybe not so fond memories in a location what you do is really up to you but just setting something up like this can help it feel more like you're getting closure with everything you have to say goodbye to and those are all of my tips for today's video good luck with senior year it's a difficult one and a bittersweet one at the end of it anyways i hope you enjoyed this and i upload new videos about student life on this channel every week you can also visit my tic toc instagram and second channel for some other sporadic content see you next time you

Channel: studyquill

Views: 226,440

Keywords: studying, college, school

Id: _a6M53EIuiE

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 12 2021