Sophomores!
When I was a sophomore in high school, my two primary focuses were hanging out with my friends and trying to unlock the unknowable mystery of Geometry (to this day, I cannot manage to transfer leftovers into the proper size containers). But if I’d been planning ahead, I would have started thinking about college.
Beginning the college process as a sophomore will give you time to really consider what it is you’re looking for from your college experience. Engaging with a college counselor (like us!) can help you to plan the exploration process. In the meantime, there are a few things you sophomores can handle on your own:
Academics: The single most important factor in the college admissions process is your high school transcript. This doesn’t just mean earning As and Bs (which you should be working toward), but enrolling in challenging courses, like AP and honors courses. Colleges want to see that you are pushing yourself and taking the most rigorous courses your school has to offer. And admissions counselors are always on the lookout for academic improvement, so if you struggled in something like -- I don’t know -- Geometry, you’ll want to demonstrate improvement in math the following year.
You’ll also want to be doing some SAT test prep. Khan Academy is a free test prep resource and a great way to get started.
Activities: Most high school freshmen spend the year getting their bearings. Sophomore year is the time for you to begin zeroing in on your extracurricular interests. Love sports? Why not think about coaching or reffing younger kids? Love theater? How about becoming a stage hand? Interested in volunteer work? Think about what that means to you. Is it working with athletes with special needs? Organizing a diaper drive for young parents in need? Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity? Remember, you can volunteer anywhere, so you want to think about where you feel drawn to help and how your personality and skills might best be used.
Your activities say a lot about you. By the time you apply to college, your activities list should tell a story about who you are outside of school. Make sure it's a story you feel proud of.
Sports: If you are a serious athlete contemplating college athletics, sophomore year is an important time. College coaches can’t contact students directly until the summer after sophomore year, but athletes can put themselves on a coach’s radar in advance of that date. Depending on your sport, you should consider the following:
Fill out the recruiting forms specific to the colleges you are interested in -- it’ll be located on the school’s athletic webpage.
Attend college-specific ID camps.
Email coaches to let them know the dates and times of specific meets, games, or matches you’ll be competing in in the spring and summer and invite them to attend.
Develop an athlete profile on one or two recruiting websites dedicated to your sport.
Hire a professional or ask a tech-savvy friend to produce a highlight real of your athletic performances to email to coaches and upload to recruiting sites.
While athletics may be incredibly important to you, you want to be able to choose the college that’s best for you, rather than settling for the college that chooses you. Starting early, and casting a wide net, helps you stay in control of the process.
Summer: The summer before junior year should be time for fun and relaxation. And at this age, it should also include a job. Having a job -- even one you do for just a few hours a week -- will show colleges that you are responsible, hard-working, and value the significance of a paycheck. At May First, we encourage all of our students to find jobs that demonstrate these qualities to college admissions counselors.
Your other summer activities will be a bonus, whether that’s babysitting your siblings, driving your grandmother to classes at the senior center, taking a challenging hiking trip, or learning how to paddleboard. How you choose to spend your summer helps tell the story of you.
At May First, we’re ready to help sophomores plan these next few months and then transition into that all-important junior year. Send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com or give us a call (617.851.9975) and let’s get started.
Activities!
For many students, the Activities section of the Common App feels pretty high stakes. And it’s true, admissions officers do invest time in reviewing your activities to help give them a more clear sense of who you are outside the classroom and how you’ll contribute to the college community.
But as with most things we talk about in our blogs, the activities list shouldn’t be cause for stress. Instead, see it as an opportunity to introduce yourself in a cool way: by giving them a peek into your actual life.
Overview
The Common App allows you to list up to ten activities, ranked in order of their importance to you, from among the following categories:
Arts or music
Clubs
Community engagement
Family responsibilities
Hobbies
Sports
Work or volunteering
Other experiences that have been meaningful to you
In other words, whatever your interests are, the Common App has a place for them. And for each activity, there are 9 fields where you can provide some detail:
Activity type (this is a drop down menu, so easy enough);
Position/Leadership description (no more than 50 words);
Organization Name (no more than 100 words);
A description of the activity, including what you accomplished and any recognition you received (no more than 150 words);
Participation grade levels (check box: 9th grade, 10th grade, etc);
Timing of participation (during school year, all year, etc);
Hours spent per week;
Weeks spent per year;
8. Indication of whether you plan to continue the activity in college (yes/no).
If you’re like my own kids, this list can be anxiety producing. How should you rank them? What if the thing you care about most makes you look boring or selfish? Here are some ways to reframe some common worries:
I only do theater.
Maybe...but we bet there’s more to it than that. You may be involved in theater in your high school and in a summer program (2 different activities!). Maybe you mentor younger theater students (and, if you love theater and are a sophomore or junior, you might want to think about it). Maybe one of your hobbies is going to see one professional theater performance a year. These are all activities that tell a story about who you are. But don’t forget about the activities you engage in outside of theater. You may be an avid reader or work in a coffee shop or care for an elderly relative in your home. These help to round out an admissions counselor’s understanding of who you are.
I do too many activities to list.
There are worse problems to have! When you’re a person engaged in a lot of activities, you first want to write them all out in a separate document. Next, group them by type so that you can think about the relationships among your activities, then rank them within those smaller groups. You’ll begin to get a picture of which are the most meaningful to you, and you can narrow the list from there.
Who has time for activities?
If you’ve spent most of your high school years focused on academics or maybe an after school job, don’t worry. You still have room to develop a meaningful list. This is where the broader categories come into play: Family responsibilities, Hobbies, Work, and Other experiences that have been meaningful to you.
Students with family and work responsibilities have a great opportunity to demonstrate that they are able to balance school with other demands. Students with interesting hobbies (kayaking, video game playing, D&D, running, traveling) can use the activities list to show they will be unique members of the college community.
How am I supposed to rank my activities?
Ranking is probably the most tricky part of the activities list, but it’s manageable if you approach it intentionally and honestly. Of course, your volunteer work seems like it should come first, but if you spend 10 hours a week on a TikTok account devoted to cake-making, guess what? Cake-making comes first. And that account says something meaningful about you: that you’re creative, tech savvy, committed, and that you will definitely be good roommate material!
We’d love to help you with everything from your activities list to college list building. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s get started!
Tips for Considering Division III Sports
At some point in their high school careers, many serious student athletes focus on one basic question: should I play in college?
For me, there was only one answer: YES. I loved basketball and I needed any financial help I could get to pay for college. I was incredibly fortunate to earn a full scholarship to a DII program. I was a first generation college student, and that scholarship opened up opportunities I’d never even considered, eventually leading me to a career as a college professor.
But as I noted in a previous blog, athletic scholarships are nearly impossible to come by, making DIII sports -- which don’t offer scholarships -- the most viable pathway to a college athletic career. In a way, this makes the decision of whether or not to play more complicated. If you don’t have to play as a condition of keeping a scholarship, you can really take the time to consider if you should.
The Basics
Playing college sports is a big commitment, so think about the obvious stuff first:
Do you have strong time-management skills? Will you be able to balance the demands of college sports along with your coursework?
You may be counting on an off-campus or work study job -- will you be able to manage that on top of practice, games, and school?
Will you be comfortable missing social activities for games or matches?
Will it be difficult to study abroad or engage in coop while you’re on the team?
But there are some less obvious questions to consider too, and they can be just as important to your college experience:
Do the current players like the coach? If you choose to play a sport in college, your coach will be the primary adult in your life. If you don’t like them, it’s going to be a rough ride. If you have an opportunity to meet the team prior to the start of the season or academic year, pay attention to how the players talk about the coach. Do they respect her? Do they express frustration or anger about her policies or strategies? Players who respect their coaches are more likely to have a positive experience. When players relentlessly make fun of or complain about a coach, it’s a red flag. Be sure to notice.
Do the current players like each other? Again, if you can meet the players ahead of time, pay attention to how they interact with one another. Are they having fun? Do they seem like they respect and support one another? These are the people you will spend most of your time with; make sure you want to. A college team is like a family, and it should feel like one.
How many players on the current team play your position, what years are they, and do they get a lot of playing time? Let’s say you’re a lacrosse goalie and you’ve been talking to a coach who’s really interested in you. If that team had only two losses the season prior behind a freshman goalie who played every minute of every game, it’s likely you won’t be getting time for quite a while. It’s important to ask the coach what he thinks your role will be.
Can you handle being a bench player? If you were a strong high school player, chances are you don’t have a lot of experience sitting on the bench. But neither does anyone else on a college team. Your college teammates will be former high school MVPs and all-conference and all-state players. In other words, everybody’s pretty good, but somebody isn’t playing. It’s hard to sit on the bench. Think about how you might handle it.
The decision to play college sports at any level is a big one, and those are just a handful of things to consider. As questions come up during the decision-making process, ask the coach, the current players, or the athletic director for answers. Don’t leave anything on the table.
At May First, we want your college experience to be challenging, transformative, and fun. Playing a sport can be a meaningful part of that experience. We’d love to help you explore and apply to colleges that are your best fit both on and off the field. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.
College Athletics: Where do I fit?
Nearly 8 million high school students in the U.S. participate in athletics, and many of them hope to compete at the college level. You may be one of them, putting in the hard work every day to beat your personal record in the mile or nail the upper 90 on a direct kick.
I was one of them too. In truth, I spent way more time perfecting my jump shot than understanding Algebra. And I was lucky to earn an athletic scholarship to a Division II college that offered me opportunities I might otherwise not have had.
But as you might have guessed, I’m not giving A’ja Wilson any competition for MVP of the WNBA. So, what’s the benefit of participating in competitive athletics as high school kids if under 7% of those students will play in college? And even fewer will earn scholarships to do it?
Leadership, commitment, teamwork
These are skills that aren’t easily learned in a classroom. Sports teach us humility, confidence, dedication, and perhaps most important, the ability to fail and recover from those failures. While I may have the occasional nightmare about losing the 1991 Connecticut Girls Basketball State Championship (no, that never goes away), I still sleep pretty well at night and am content to spend my adult life complaining about the Celtics.
Even if you weren’t the best player on your lacrosse team, the skills you learned and practiced as a dedicated member of a team will make you an attractive prospect for college admissions officers -- as much as they are looking at applicants’ GPAs and AP classes, they are looking to find students who will be good roommates, classmates, and members of the college community. They’re looking for good teammates.
College Athletics: Cutthroat Intramurals
One spring, after my basketball season had officially ended, kids in my dorm asked me to join their coed intramural softball team. I thought it would be a low-pressure, fun way to get outside and hang with friends in the off-season.
I was mistaken.
My team captain had us practicing twice a week, where I was directed to devote more time to fielding ground balls and improving my swing. It was...intense. But it was also really fun. I met new friends, kept in shape, and didn’t have to lift weights or wake up for practice at 5:30am.
College intramural or club sports can be a great way to continue playing the sport you love at a competitive level. When thinking about colleges, investigate their club programs. You’re likely to find traditional options like basketball, soccer, and flag football, but you might find other activities to try out like ultimate frisbee or squash.
Being a part of a team doesn’t have to end with high school.
NCAA Athletics
Division I and II athletes likely have a good sense of what they’re getting into when it comes to playing college sports. There will be 6am practices, long bus rides, weight training, film-watching, games, oh right, and classes. In addition to in-season work, these students can expect pre-, post-, and off-season work as well.
In other words, being a Division I or II college athlete is a job, and it’s a difficult one. Students should talk with current and former Division I and II athletes to help ease the transition from high school to college and to prepare themselves for the responsibility that comes with this opportunity.
And don’t get me wrong, Division III athletics can be highly competitive and time consuming as well. The difference is that Division III programs don’t have athletic scholarships to give, though most Division III athletes receive some need- or merit-based aid. And at some colleges, admissions officers will take recruitment status into consideration when evaluating applicants. However, this generally means that student athletes must meet the college’s admissions standards and submit a strong application, so that work still needs to be done.
What Division III athletes must consider seriously is their commitment to the hard work of being on a team in an environment that puts less emphasis on athletics than their Division I and II counterparts.
Whether you’re wrapping up your athletic career or looking for a best-fit school where you can keep playing, let us help you develop an application that makes the most of your high school athletic experiences. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat. We would love to help you find your place.
https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/probability-competing-beyond-high-school
https://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/play-division-iii-sports
Asking the right questions.
Who am I and where do I belong?!
If you’re a high school student and questions like these are keeping you up at night, take a long, deep breath. These are big ones. In fact, you’ll be asking them your whole life, so they’re not prerequisites for selecting the right college.
We get it, though. When you’re beginning the college search process, it’s hard not to consider the big questions. But whether you’re a person who’s wanted to be a marine biologist since your first trip to an aquarium or one who hasn’t quite nailed down your passion yet, we believe you should swap out the overwhelming existential questions for ones you really can answer:
What do I love, what am I good at, and what’s out there for me?
These questions can help you begin building a list of best-fit colleges, ones that are ready to support the amazing person you already are, and that will help you realize the person you want to be.
What do I love?
The best way for you to begin thinking about your best-fit college is to consider your interests. These can often lead you to fields of study or careers you hadn’t thought of. Do you love sports? Love the idea of being a member of a school community that rallies around its athletic teams? You don’t have to be a college athlete for this to be part of your college selection criteria or to pursue a career related to athletics.
The same goes for music, film, hiking, reading, singing, video games, skateboarding, and so much more. The things you love can hold the key to a successful college experience as well as a future career.
What am I good at?
Math? Field hockey? Drums?
Sometimes this can be a hard question to answer and so we sell ourselves short. At May First, our students fill out several surveys from which we begin to build a complex student profile. We want to know if actively contributing in the classroom is your thing, or if you’re the kind of learner who prefers to absorb and reflect before speaking. We want to know if you’re a great team leader or a steady, reliable team member. If you work well under pressure, or if you prefer to start early and work slowly.
The skills you’ve developed in the classroom, at work, at practice, in your community, and in your home can be the foundation for life-long success and help you to build that best-fit college list.
What’s out there for me?
Identifying what you love and the sometimes subtle ways in which you excel both in and out of the classroom can be just as important as your GPA in determining the right college for you. It can mean the difference between applying to schools with 80 students to a class or 15, or to schools focused on coop or study abroad. It might be as mundane as applying to schools in a big city or a rural town.
We think the best part -- the most fun part -- is finding the answer to what’s out there for me? Because the answer is, something great. Something that is your best-fit.
Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.
Holistic Admissions?
Lately we’ve noticed some new terms creeping into the already crowded landscape of admissions jargon. Test-optional is probably the most familiar from the recent admissions cycle. Another term we’re hearing a lot is Holistic Admissions. It’s been around for a while, but this year it started cropping up everywhere.
So, what is holistic admissions?
At its simplest, the concept means that admissions offices using holistic admissions are committed to looking at the entire application instead of filtering out students based on GPAs and test scores. (How many of us imagine admissions officers of elite colleges looking at our GPAs and test scores and putting us in the admit or reject piles without even glancing at the rest of our painstakingly put together application?) While GPAs and curriculum still matter--a lot--now the personal statement, letters of recommendation, and activities both in and out of school play a much stronger role in determining whether a particular applicant will be a successful and engaged member of the school community.
There are a number of colleges that went test-optional long before the pandemic: Bowdoin College made submitting standardized test scores optional in 1969 and its neighbor, Bates College, did the same in 1984. The University of Chicago, another elite institution, decided to stop requiring the SAT or ACT in 2018. With increased scrutiny of the implicit bias and inherent systematic inequality in standardized tests as well as rampant cheating scandals (Is it time to finally get rid of the SAT and ACT college admissions tests), these schools have demonstrated that removing standardized test scores from admissions criteria doesn’t affect a college’s ability to admit outstanding students. Beyond that, diversity of the student body has greatly increased at many test-optional institutions and there has been no statistical decline in graduation rates or student GPAs.
Simply put, holistic admissions is working for these schools.
What does that mean for you?
As a high school student thinking about where to apply to college, it means you should still be making thoughtful and informed decisions about what courses to take and you should still be working hard and doing your best in these courses. It means the personal statement is a great opportunity to catch the attention of admissions readers and show why you would be an excellent addition to their student body. It means that asking teachers who know you well and will speak to your unique strengths and interests to write your letters of recommendations matters now more than ever.
And it means we’re here to help.
Give us a call (617.447.0186) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.
holistic admissions - test optional - personal essay - best-fit