STUDY HALL COLLEGE CONSULTING - Our Advice Blog

UC Berkeley's direct admissions policy - transfer ramifications

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 02:11:57 GMT

UC Berkeley’s new direct admissions policy will have a large effect on incoming freshmen, but they will arguably affect transfer students even more.

To recap, the new Berkeley direct admissions policy means that for many of the popular majors within the College of Letters and Sciences, incoming students will no longer have to go through an application or GPA cutoff process during their first semester/year to get admitted into the major. Since majors will be determined before you start your first semester, students will no longer have to stress about making a decision to commit to Berkeley without knowing if they can major in the subject they want to. But how will it specifically affect transfer students? There’s two main ramifications, one huge positive and one potential negative.

Let's start with the positive. As a transfer alum, I know firsthand just how stressful it is to go into your first semester without knowing if you’ll be able to declare your major. The process for being admitted into the Economics major as a transfer was relatively simple in my case (GPA requirement for three classes taken in my first semester), but I felt an immense amount of pressure to declare because studying in Berkeley’s Economics program was the primary reason I even chose to commit to the school. This added pressure in addition to the very real challenges of adjusting to a new academically challenging community can and has led to a lot of transfer students not finding their footing. This new policy is an immense help to the mental health of transfer students, and will help them to join clubs, find community, and thrive at UC Berkeley much easier.

It does come with drawbacks, though. This new policy means that students must mark their first choice major on their application, and don’t have the flexibility of adding or switching to another major if that major is a “high demand major,” such as Computer Science. Let’s say for example, that you are a transfer student currently at a four year university who wants to apply to Haas as a Business Administration major and add the Computer Science major in the School of Letters and Sciences after you get admitted. That is basically an impossible task, since as a high-demand major, Computer Science essentially requires students to put down that major as their first choice. If they don’t, then they have to go through a separate application process with the department that they don’t recommend. Tough.

Even with this potential drawback, I strongly believe these scenarios are mostly edge cases and that this new policy will help thousands of transfer students find a home at Berkeley. Being a transfer is hard enough as is, and I’m glad to see that the University is taking steps to alleviate some of that pressure.

David

David is a Consultant on the Study Hall College Consulting team and currently works as an Associate Consultant at Adobe on the Data, Insights, Personalization & Activation team. David transferred from UC Santa Barbara to UC Berkeley in his junior year of college, and graduated in 2021 with a major in Economics and minor in Data Science. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

Time-Saving Tips for Students Applying to Both the Common App & UC Application

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 13:47:27 GMT

With just over a month left in the UC Application window, and Common Application deadlines fast approaching, you’ve likely got a lot on your mind. While the application essay portion requires a lot of attention and care and can really set you apart, students often underestimate the importance of a well-thought-out activities section. Here are some of my best tips to ensure you put your best foot forward.

I recommend filling out the UC Application first - The UC Application allows for 350 characters per section and allows for 20 activities to be listed, while the Common App allows 150 characters per section and 10 activities to be listed. That way, you can get out everything you want to say in a succinct yet complete way, and you can work on editing down from there. This will also help you avoid putting entries you don’t need on your list.

While both applications have an upper limit to the number of activities you can include, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to, or should, fill them all.

Don’t list something just to list something - ensure that whatever you are choosing to present on your application, you could write at least a paragraph about. Could you answer these questions? If yes, consider including the extracurricular in the activities section:

What did you do?
What problems did you solve/impact did you make/lessons did you learn?
How has it impacted who you are/your passions or interests?

Don’t feel the need to use complete sentences. Much like a resume, the activities section entries can be more simplified and stripped down in order to get the message across. You’ll want to avoid the superfluous wording, and ensure you are telling your reader what you did, what leadership positions you held, any awards, and also any important lessons you learned/impacts you made.

Consider combining any activities and awards into one entry (i.e. if one was a leadership position you held in a club and another is a notable award you won in that club, save space by combining them both into one activity).

Use “action verbs” in your activities section. Action verbs are words that elicit more of a response from the reader, and are also more descriptive themselves. These words often pack together both WHAT you did and the IMPACT it made, all in one word! This can not only save you space later on trying to clarify what you mean, but can also:

Use strong verbs & phrasing that is more specific & puts you in the driver seat.
Ensure that these words fit your writing style and the context.

SARAH

Sarah is a Consultant and Social Media Marketing Manager on the Study Hall College Consulting Team. Sarah graduated from UC Berkeley in the class of 2020 where she majored in Architecture and minored in Spanish Language and Literature. For more college application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

Common College Application Essay Ideas

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 21:03:22 GMT

For high school juniors and transfer students, it is time to start thinking about your college application essays! In today’s blog, I am going to talk about a few overly common college essay ideas that I’ve seen when I was working as an External Undergraduate Admissions Reader with UC Berkeley.

This is not to say you shouldn’t write your application essays about these topics, but hopefully through this blog it will get you to reflect and think about your essay ideas in order to stand out amongst the sea of other students applying to college.

1. Creativity: Art, Dance, Music, Playing an instrument, Cooking/Baking, Playing a Sport, Fashion
These essay ideas are very common because a lot of students seem to write their essays about these topics in the same way. This kind of essay usually revolves around telling the reader about a topic or interest that you are passionate about. Put yourself in the shoes of an admissions reader or admissions team who may be reading hundreds or even thousands of essays about these topics. If you choose to write your essay about one of these topics, you may consider framing your essay in a unique way in order to help yourself stand out from those who are also writing about these same topics.

With this, you should not be dissuaded from joining clubs or organizations surrounding these topics just because they are common. A great way to stand out depends on your involvement and your impact in the common activities you join. For example, if you are interested in music and play an instrument, a common essay idea would be to talk solely about your involvement in the school band. A more unique essay idea from this music topic would be to delve deeper into your involvement. With this music theme, maybe you write your essay about how you create your own music and post your original creations to online sites like SoundCloud. From this example, you can differentiate yourself even if you are doing a “common activity.”

2. Talking Negatively about Yourself/Others
You should probably steer clear of writing negatively about yourself or others in your college application essays. Saying things like “I was always quitting tasks until I found X.” Or “I was forced by my parents to participate in X, but I ended up loving it.” Or “My teacher was a bad teacher, that’s why I have a C in Math.”

Personally, I would not mention anything negative about yourself or others because this information can easily be removed from your application essays. You don’t need to qualify your love for an activity by starting off with your disinterest in it. You don’t want to put yourself down even if you are going to build yourself up later on because it is still written in your essay that you hated school or hated an activity. You don’t know how the reader may interpret this part of your essay and you don't want anyone reading your essays to have any glimpse of negative thoughts about you through these negative comments. Be careful of your word choice when drafting your essays!

3. Shy to Not Shy Theme
Finally, a common essay idea is the shy to not shy theme. I even wrote one of my college application essays using this idea where I wrote about how I was a shy student until I found my voice through student government. Personally, if I were to rewrite my college application essays, I would not use this theme to exemplify my love for student government. I don’t think it gets my story across. Instead, I would want to edit this essay and instead of making it about the shy to not shy theme, I would focus on some other aspect of student government that I can share with the admissions team. This could be similar for you where the shy to not shy theme isn’t what would create the best essay for you, but some other theme or aspect about the activity or personality trait would be what you want to share in this college application essay.

Hopefully this blog will help you when you are brainstorming your college application essays. Good luck!

RACHEL

Rachel is the Founder of Study Hall College Consulting. Rachel graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2020 where she double majored in Cognitive Science and Legal Studies. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

What to do in your gap year(s) before medical school

Tue, 10 May 2022 13:57:11 GMT

If you look at the trends of first year medical students, you’ll notice the average age has increased over time. This is because more and more students are choosing to take “gap years” between college and medical school. It is such a valuable time and really, the opportunities are endless. Here are some ideas for what you can do in your gap year!

1. Clinical Experience
College can get incredibly busy with classes and extracurricular activities so a gap year can be a great time to expand your clinical experience. You can be a medical scribe, medical assistant, patient care technician, EMT, or even shadow physicians. Some students even use the time to get a certificate in any one of those roles.

2. Research
Full time research, whether it be in a wet lab or in a clinical setting, can be a fantastic way to make a more meaningful impact to the project. Depending on how much you contribute, it could even lead to publishing a research paper! You can continue any research you did in college, venture out to different university labs, pharma, biotech, the NIH, or even clinical research.

3. Post Baccalaureate Program
There are a number of post bacc programs across the country geared towards students who may want to strengthen their science background before entering medical school. Your application will populate a “science gpa” so if you didn’t have great grades in college, a post bacc can be your ticket to improving that specific gpa. Plus it shows a lot of commitment to medicine given that you are retaking some of the hardest classes you’ve ever had to take!

4. Get Another Degree
While there are some dual degree medical programs, gap years can provide a focused environment to get an additional degree. This includes Masters of Public Health, Masters in Biomedical Sciences, Masters in Global Health, or Masters in Business Administration. Don’t feel obligated to stay within the “science” world. If there is an area that you are intrigued by and want to dive deeper into, pursue it! This is a unique opportunity to stand out on your applications. Plus be sure to research any programs your undergraduate institution may have because this will often give you preference for admission.

Remember, this list is just a start! You can also take time off and travel the world. You can focus on your family and do what you need to do to support them.

Take the time to reflect on what areas of your application need strengthening and choose your gap year plans accordingly. Perhaps you didn’t have enough clinical experience in college but now you have time to be a full-time medical assistant? Or maybe you had a difficult time with your premed courses and want to pursue a post bacc program to improve your GPA? There really is no wrong answer! Take advantage of the time because once you’re in medical school, you’re in it for life!

NAVYA

Navya is a consultant on the Study Hall College Consulting team. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2021 with a double major in Molecular Cell Biology and Public Health. She is currently working as a medical assistant and applying to medical school. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

5 Questions to ask yourself before you commit to a college

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 20:09:52 GMT

With the National Day to Commit fast approaching, you’re probably feeling a mix of excitement, nerves, confusion, and maybe some bittersweet emotions all at the same time. While many students may have already finalized their next steps and committed to their choice college, many of you might still be unsure what decision to make. For those of you in that confusing position, look no further! Here are some tools to really think about what college will be the best fit for you, and help you feel confident in committing to a new place for the next 4 years!

1. What is my financial plan?
For some of you, your parents/guardians may largely be involved in the decision process for college, mainly because of the question of affordability. Can you and your family afford to go to the college you want? Are there scholarship opportunities to help alleviate the burden? Will you be taking out student loans or looking for alternate payment plans? Will you be working while also going to school in order to pay for food or supplement tuition? Are you an in-state or out-of-state student, and how does that impact tuition and boarding?

It’s important to talk about your plans with any monetarily invested parties. If you’re paying for college on your own, what is your plan, and have you investigated all of your financial aid options? Some colleges may even offer a certain amount of immediate aid outlined in your acceptance letter, so be sure to take that into account.

Think about this decision carefully - don’t judge a university solely by its price tag. Remember that there are many colleges that can give you an incredibly rewarding and challenging experience, but also come at a lower cost. College is what you make of it, and “reputation” can only take you so far, so remember to look beyond the prestige.

2. Does this college fit the person I am today AND the person I want to become?
It’s important for a college to support your growth: to not only have opportunities to suit the interests you have now and the person you are when you graduate from high school, but also change and grow as you do. If you come right out of high school into college, by the time you graduate you’ll be 22-23 years old - which might feel light years away at this point. At that point, you’ll likely have new dreams and a host of memories and experiences behind you shaping who you are. The world and college has a way of changing you, and you want the college to which you dedicate the next several years to match your shifting ambitions and support your ability to change your mind.

3. Do you feel at home?
Having a college that is accepting and welcoming to all is incredibly important for the mental well-being and academic growth of all students. You want to be able to change and grow during college, and embrace new interests and ideas. Make sure that there are adequate support systems to find care in the hardest of times, and carefully seek out communities that you could see yourself calling home. Do you feel drawn to certain communities already? The way that current students feel about their college and the extent to which they feel comfortable speaking their mind or being themselves can be an important indicator for how you’ll feel once you’re a student there.

Do the values and opportunities for exploration align with yours? Do you feel challenged and able to contribute in an academic environment? Does the university allocate financial support to groups and events that matter to you? Think about how your dreams align with the pillars of the college you’re looking at, and ask yourself if you get a gut positive or unsure feeling.

4. What kind of environment is most conducive to my learning style?
How do you learn best? Do you prefer to get a detailed overview in a large lecture hall and then have a chance to reconnect in smaller groups and discuss? Do you learn by doing/conducting experiments and seeing ideas play out in the real world? Do you prefer all small, tight-knit classes? Thinking about the way in which you learn best, and aligning that with the standard day-to-day of the college you ultimately go to is important. The university has already decided that they think you’re a good fit academically, so now it’s your turn to decide if you feel the same way. You want to feel challenged, but you also don’t want to feel like there’s not enough academic support and opportunities for you to get the most out of your years there.

5. Do you like the campus and its surrounding environment?
Realistically, you’ll likely spend the next 4 or more years at this college, so you want to make sure that you feel excited by the physical locations where you’ll be spending most of your time. What is the nightlife like around your college? Are there music or art venues you could go to on the weekend? Are there sports games or nature areas to explore? Think about the kind of social and extracurricular experience you want, and think about the actual campus on which you’ll be living. Ask current students about what there is to do in town, and find a place where you could see yourself being happy.

Overall, there’s no easy way to tell you exactly what college will be best. You should go with your gut feeling, and send yourself somewhere that you are excited to call your home - somewhere you are excited to grow and learn, and somewhere that will not put you in dire financial straits to go. Ultimately, find a college that gives you a good balance of academic challenge, social excitement, and brand-new exploration - college is meant to push you and enable you to learn the most useful life skills. Ultimately, go somewhere you think could help you be happy.

SARAH

How to become an undergraduate external admissions reader

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 22:20:19 GMT

Ever wondered what it is like to be an External Admissions Reader at a university? Rachel recently had the opportunity to be an Undergraduate External Admissions Reader with UC Berkeley. Interested in learning more about this position and how to apply? Keep on reading!

1. How to Apply: The website higheredjobs.com has many different kinds of positions that you can apply for at various institutions. You can search jobs by category (Administrative, Faculty, Executive) and by school, type, and location. If you search by the Administrative Category under Admissions and Enrollment, you can see all of the admissions-related positions.

You should check the higheredjobs site throughout the summer to see when different universities' External Admissions Reader positions open up. The Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions Reader position went live around July/August. To apply for Berkeley’s position, we had to submit a resume and cover letter. Afterwards, I received an interview invitation.

For Berkeley’s External Admission Reader position, candidates may not be: concurrently enrolled as a UC Berkeley undergraduate, concurrently employed by the University of California, concurrently employed by another college or university, concurrently reading applications for another college or university, and working as an independent admissions counselor. These restrictions are probably similar for other college’s reader positions to reduce conflicts of interest.

2. How Many Hours a Week: This reader position is a part-time job. I was working around 15 hours a week reviewing applications. Other readers, like me, were also working full-time jobs, so they would work as their schedule allowed. Some readers were retired so they could work up to 40 hours a week reviewing applications.

3. Training: There is training provided! There was a week-long virtual training that all readers participated in. In the past, they have said that training was in-person, but it was online this year due to the pandemic. In addition, there were online modules that we had to complete before training began. Training consisted of bias training, going over how to review applications, and reviewing practice applications. You are able to ask questions weekly in office hours, meetings with the entire team, and meetings with your smaller team.

4. Pay: The position is a bi-weekly paid position. The job description posted had a pay range of $21 - $24 per hour. I was paid $23 per hour.

5. Would You Do It Again: I would 100% be an undergraduate external admissions reader again. Having the opportunity to review applications and help create an incoming college class is an honor. It is such a unique experience. For others, I highly recommend you look into reader positions at your alma mater or other colleges!

RACHEL

so you've submitted your UC College application, now what?

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 01:06:01 GMT

First of all, congratulations! You’ve submitted at least your first college application - maybe you still have more to go, or maybe you turned in everything at once. No matter where you’re at, you’re looking at a few months of limbo in between the time of submission to the time that you actually get results. So, what should you do in the meantime?

Check your email regularly:
Generally, college admission decisions will come in the form of an email - whether it discusses your admit status through the body of the email itself, or it sends you to your individual portal with an “admission update,” you’ll want to make sure that you are seeing any important emails that come in. Oftentimes, colleges will ask for letters of recommendation or additional documents if needed, so you want to be prepared to answer them with a timely response. This will also be important so that you know any deadlines or cutoff dates for declaring your intent to register or reject their offer.

Finish your Common Application essays:
The Common Application generally entails a bit more than the UC Applications, mostly because some colleges require shorter supplemental questions in addition to their main Common App questions. See if there are parts of your UC Application that you can reuse (making sure to not include the wrong college’s name in your essay) - most college application prompts are generally asking the same thing, so you can use the ones you’ve already written as practice! And, our team is here to help!

Apply to Scholarships!
Whether they be based on merit or need, or be associated with your university or not, scholarships can be incredibly useful for paying for college. Many that you can apply to only require a written submission, and they can range from a couple hundred dollars, to thousands of dollars. Education is expensive, and every penny helps. Try browsing college websites to see what scholarships they offer, or do your own research! I always found some good options through niche.com.

Check out this blog by SHCC Consultant Katia about starting your scholarship search: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/starting-your-scholarship-search

Prepare to brainstorm your LOCI (Letter of Continued Interest):
This can be a difficult step to jump into right after submitting your application - however, it could benefit you in the long run to start thinking about a scenario in which you were waitlisted, and what you would say if you had a chance to change their minds. What should you keep track of in the next few months so that when it comes time for you to write your LOCI, you feel more prepared? How are you going to better yourself over the next few months (for the sake of your own development primarily), but also so that you can reflect on how you’ve grown when it comes time to reevaluating your fit with those schools? Our team also offers in depth reviews on these LOCIs, so we can show you the basics, share our strategies, and set you up for success if that time comes.

Do not contact the admissions office unless needed/requested:
After you’ve submitted your application, let the admissions representatives do their jobs and evaluate your application on an equal basis as everyone else. Feel confident! You’ve prepared yourself for this moment, and you’ve done all that you can to make your application speak truly about who you are. Calling the admissions office will not help your chances of being admitted. In all honesty, submitting documents and making calls that are not requested may only hurt your chances - so let it be!

Think about summer:
Start thinking about how you might want to fill your time between high school and college. Are you looking for a job/internship? Are you going to head off to your yearly summer camp for the last time? Are you enjoying a much needed trip with your friends or family? Are you going to start your own passion project to fill your time? Whatever it may be, focus on taking this time to better yourself: whether that means making lifelong memories or learning new skills, use your summer to do more than just hang around waiting for college. However, do make sure that you take some much needed time to relax.

Last of all, enjoy your last semester in high school - it will fly past you before you know it, and soon you’ll be on to a whole new life in college. For now, think of these next few months as a fun limbo period - where you get to enjoy high school and the friends you’ve made along the way, without knowing what your futures may hold. Enjoy the excitement of possibility!

SARAH

Pre-med students, it's time to start thinking about your summer plans

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 21:59:42 GMT

You’ve just about finished finals and are heading home for winter break! I personally loved those few weeks to not only spend time with my family but to reset with my life plan. Classes for the next semester are more or less finalized so the next major thing to think about is SUMMER!

For pre-med students, it can be a bit confusing to know what you should or should not be doing over the summer. Three months is substantial time to do something that will add to your resume and consequently, your future application to medical school. Here are some options for what you could consider!

1. Summer classes: Although I didn’t love the idea of taking more classes during summer break, I actually found that summer classes were a great way to get ahead in my requirements. This is especially helpful as a double major! Plus, summer classes are often graded more favorably.

2. Research: Whether you already work in a lab or are looking to do a summer fellowship, doing research over the summer is such a productive way to keep on track as a pre-med student! I have a whole blog post about this so feel free to check it out. Read this blog here: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/finding-research-opportunities-plus-example-email-template

3. Internships: This is such a broad category but explore your options here! You could work for nonprofits, health tech companies, medical consulting, public health/policy, or any position that excites you! You don’t even have to do something that feels “pre-med”. Often the most unique experiences will help you stand out!

4. Volunteer: Racking up volunteer hours during the school year can be challenging so summer is a great time to devote to community service! You can look into hospitals, clinics, food banks, shelters, community centers, etc.

5. Study Abroad: If you are able, study abroad can be the experience of a lifetime. Although the pre-med lifestyle can feel all consuming, there are absolutely ways to work study abroad into your schedule. Chat with your counselors/study abroad offices to see what options there are.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of what you can do over the summer! I highly recommend taking this time over winter break to explore your options and see what might be of most interest to you.

As for what I did, my first summer, I did a research internship at Sandia National Laboratories and took an online English class at my local community college. The next summer I took an introductory biology course at my university while conducting research through my research lab. The third summer before senior year, I had originally planned to study abroad in Scotland but had to shift my plans when that was cancelled due to Covid-19. Instead, I took two classes, worked on my public health honors thesis, and studied for the MCAT!

I’d love to chat through any and all of these things. Wishing you all the best luck in summer planning!

NAVYA

College Acceptance Rates - What do they really mean?

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 22:11:39 GMT

When applying to college, you know as well as I do that acceptance rates tend to stand out - colleges often brag about their acceptance rates in an effort to show their prestige. The lower the rate, the more coveted their college experience is - apparently. But when it comes to acceptance rates, there are a few things to keep in mind that culminate in this shockingly low number you see.

Why are the Ivy League schools so selective in the first place? Does a rejection from the college with the lowest acceptance rate say something about you as an applicant? Here are my thoughts on acceptance rates, prestige, and the value of a college education:

1. Low acceptance rates require a college to receive far more applicants than they can accept. CollegeVine: “A low acceptance rate indicates inputs, not outputs.”

Upon first glance, this first phrase seems obvious - the acceptance rate is calculated by taking the total number of acceptances and dividing by the total number of applicants. Easy. But what does this applicant number really mean? Some schools put a ton of resources and money into achieving this rate in a variety of ways. A lower acceptance rate increases the public view of the college and makes people think there’s something extremely valuable to be coveted at that college, but it says nothing about the quality of education that students are graduating with. They may advertise more heavily than they have in years past, offer a free application, or set aside money for hefty scholarships that will attract more applicants. Even the arrival of the internet caused college applications to skyrocket, as it became much easier to send out multiple applications online without needing to print out and manually mail each one.

All in all, the Ivy League schools and colleges around that same size offer far fewer spots than most colleges, which means that they are more easily able to achieve a shockingly low acceptance rate (which is weirdly seen as a good thing). They can increase advertisement and publicity year after year, with their acceptance pool growing only marginally as needed for funding. This causes somewhat of an “inflation” in acceptance rates - only in the other direction. Rates continue to be smaller and smaller, as the demand grows larger and larger - this begs the question: how is our “elite” college system sustainable if it does not serve the majority of our society? This segues rather well into my next point:

2. Education has become selective:

Unfortunately, education has become a selective privilege - only the best of the best deserve their shot at graduating from a small prestigious college (according to the numbers). In reality, the majority of our society does not come from prestigious Ivy League schools, and the majority of life-changing innovations/successes do not stem from an “elite” education. In reality, college is what you make of it, and with the right initiative, you can find brilliant growth anywhere you go - so why the obsession with prestige?

Oftentimes, colleges rely on their brand to receive recognition - this is not to say that top universities like the Ivy League schools do not deliver a valuable education, but sometimes it turns into a cycle of apathy once one is accepted to the best of the best. Once they get into a college like this, they’ve done the work needed to earn them a degree with a prestigious name. No matter what they study or how hard they work, as long as they graduate from a coveted university, the idea is that the name will speak for itself. While this certainly does not apply to all students and many who go here do not take their education for granted, this kind of cycle incentivizes the wrong thing: prestige and reputation over actual personal growth and exploration. You could get admitted into an Ivy League school and ride out the next 4 years with the least work possible, or you could go to a cheaper, less selective option and utilize all resource around you to make the most out of your opportunity - prestige is, many times, just a mindset.

3. Affirmation or rejection from a selective college does not determine your self worth:

Since acceptance rates at these universities are so low, many students with perfect grades, impactful extracurriculars, and inspiring life stories end up getting denied. You could be completely qualified and have amazing grades, and still not get in! On paper, you may look exactly like someone who DID get accepted, yet you may have a different outcome. Don’t let college rejections (the opinion of ONE team at ONE university) determine your self worth - college applications are about finding the right FIT: this means finding a community that not only excites and challenges you, but WANTS you to be there and supports your growth. You should feel equally sought after by the college you apply to. Don’t get caught up in the idea that a prestigious opportunity is the only good opportunity - success in life comes in so many different forms, and affirmation from a selective college will not mean much 5-10 years down the line - your work ethic, curiosity, passion, and resourcefulness will mean more, and that’s something you can develop anywhere with the right attitude.

4. Smaller colleges may have less academic paths - is the university really RIGHT for you or are you attracted to the prestige?

When applying to college, always ask yourself why. Why do you want to go there? What stands out about that university in particular? Do they have the field of study you want to go into? Do they offer flexibility when it comes to changing your major? Is it financially feasible for you to pursue an education there, or will it ultimately set you back in the long run? It can be hard to stop yourself from getting caught up in wanting to be part of that 5% acceptance - but make an effort to really list out true pros and cons, and don’t be swayed by prestige alone. Prestige ultimately will not make your college experience more memorable - it will be your academic journey, support from the community, and opportunities for growth.

Sources:

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/colleges-with-the-lowest-acceptance-rate
https://blog.collegevine.com/what-do-acceptance-rates-really-mean/

SARAH

creating a college final exam study schedule

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 00:18:07 GMT

Exams in college are notoriously difficult. But if you’re anything like me, then final exams are a whole new level of pressure. After months of studying hard for your midterms, you have to essentially start from the top and review the entire curriculum. With endless pieces of study materials piling up from the semester, it can be challenging to know where to start but let me tell you a little bit about how I approached studying for final exams.

First step is always content review. Course content “snowballs'' and if you don’t understand the previous week’s material, then it is unlikely you’ll be able to grasp the next week’s material. Throughout the semester I tried to make one page review sheets for every lecture. When finals came around, I used these one pagers and my longer lecture notes to make one giant study guide. This is single handedly the most important part of my study routine! Making the study guide in itself will help you remember the information but it is also critical for the next phase of studying.

Practice! Practice! Practice! Once I've mastered content review, I compiled all of my old homeworks and class examples to really apply the information I had learned. Often you’ll see many of these questions pop up on the exam so it can be very helpful to review them beforehand! Plus you’ll already have the answer so even if you’re stuck, you can try to work backwards.

After you’ve burned through lecture notes and homework, you can test your knowledge with a practice exam! Most professors will give you access to their old exams but if not, you could always check for external exams on the internet! Take the practice exams honestly, which means timed and completely on your own: this is one of the best ways to gauge readiness for the real exam. I remember so many times when it took taking a practice exam to realize that I didn’t fully understand a concept.

Across this entire study process, I also made sure to attend office hours and review sessions. YouTube videos, such as Khan Academy and Organic Chemistry Tutor were also super helpful. Make sure to get plenty of rest, drink water, and eat good food!

Everyone learns differently but hopefully that gives you an idea of what my final exam study schedule looked like. Good luck to you all as finals approach!! You got this!!

NAVYA

The Importance of Finishing Your College Applications Early

Sat, 13 Nov 2021 19:39:37 GMT

Getting through all of your college applications takes time - whether you applied to an excessive number of schools like I did, or only a few carefully chosen options, you want to give yourself time to work in a stress-free environment and really let your creative juices flow. Now - even though we all struggle with time management and procrastination, it’s important to try to finish your college applications early (for a variety of reasons). Although this can be easier said than done, using some of these reasons to motivate yourself to get your applications done can be useful.

Ability to Enjoy the Holidays:
Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, you name it - the holidays just HAVE that feeling. You have less motivation to do work and stay on the grind, and everyone starts gathering (friends, families, or whoever you consider to be part of your close circle) to see one another and enjoy some much needed relaxation time. Starting around late November, the holiday breaks start coming, and the year ends with a pretty long chunk of time (1 week, 2 weeks, sometimes even a month) without school or a ton of responsibilities. The last thing you want to have to do is stress about finishing your college applications at the last minute - waking up on Christmas morning to your laptop and the Common App instead of a warm breakfast near the fire - no fun.

Luckily, the UC Application is due at the end of November, which forces you to at least get a big chunk of your work done before December rolls around. However, I’d encourage you to set a deadline similar to the UCs for all of your other applications too. Set an early deadline so that even if you find yourself not making it, you are still ahead of schedule and can have some buffer time to perfect your essays exactly how you want to.

Last Minute Reviews:
And this brings me to the second point - finishing your college applications early can leave time for essential last-minute reviews (including spelling, word choice, grammar, etc.). Do the big-picture edits first, and focus on getting your story down: figure out how to arrange your paragraphs and what topics to focus on, and hone in on finding creative ways to paint a picture for your readers. If all of this is tackled early on, you have time to really focus on the surface level mistakes that people often neglect to correct. These corrections are extremely important because they demonstrate your attention to detail and your ability to tell your story in a clear, professional manner. After all, how embarrassing would it be to spell the name of the college you are applying to incorrectly, just because you didn’t leave enough time to do some in depth spelling and grammar checks?

Additionally, this can leave you time to hone in on the perfect word choice. When rushed, people often end up just pulling out a thesaurus to find fancy-sounding words, which is really obvious when the admissions office reads your essay. You want to give yourself time to find imaginative words that actually make sense in context, and use them as inspiration to rewrite some of your sentences if needed.

(Sometimes) Colleges Admit on a Rolling Basis:
This is not the reality for most colleges, however pay close attention to any schools you are applying to that have a “rolling” application window. This means that applying earlier can get you admitted earlier, and could raise your chances if you apply while the acceptance pool is still small. For these schools, you really do not want to wait until the last minute.

For colleges that do not admit on a rolling basis, this is not the case, as they review all applications at the same time beginning only after the submission window has closed (such as the UCs).

Post-Application Growth and Enjoying High School:
After you submit your applications, your brain has a chance to shift its focus towards other things: maybe that means pulling your grades up even more in the last semesters to show growth, or maybe that means finally taking that leadership position before you head off to college. Or, maybe you simply want to be able to wholeheartedly focus on the last months of high school and make memories to last a life-time. This is so much easier done when you don’t have the burden of college applications hanging over your head.

Generally, I found that the longer I gave myself to do my college applications, the less productive I was. Giving yourself an early deadline can help you be more efficient when you sit down to work on your applications, and can ultimately leave you more time in the end to finish out the year doing things you really care about.

Boost creativity:
When you are stressed, sometimes you can be resourceful and motivated, however working in an environment of anxiety and being rushed can lead to you cutting corners and having a lack of creativity. When it comes to your college application essays, it’s important to be creative and imaginative in finding eloquent ways to tell your story, and when you’re stressed you tend to do whatever will help you finish as quickly as possible. Therefore, your words might even sound rushed and straightforward, while someone that started earlier can stay in a more creative, patient headspace and find colorful ways to show who they are.

Being stressed about your application timeline can ultimately impact your word choice, your attention to detail, and your overall brainstorming techniques/topic choices. Don’t sell yourself short! Give yourself the calming atmosphere needed to brainstorm and find the most creative and unique way to tell your story - don’t settle for the most straightforward topic just because you don’t have time for anything else. Allow yourself to go through all the steps of brainstorming, writing, editing, polishing (multiple times), and give yourself ample time at the end for the surface level edits that can really tie it all together.

Lastly, no matter what, never wait until the last day of the filing period to submit your application! You never know what technical difficulties, internet issues, life challenges, or random circumstances could come in the way of you crossing the finish line. You want to eliminate all possibilities of something happening that is out of your control, since there are no colleges that will be forgiving about a late submission. You will not be able to apply for that upcoming academic cycle, and will have to either choose another college to attend, or wait until the next year to apply - no one wants to be in that position just because they waited a tiny bit too long! You’ve done so much work leading up to this, so make sure that you give yourself all the time in the world to have a stress-free submission process in the end.

SARAH

Managing your time in college using google calendar

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 15:04:34 GMT

As a freshman in college, I had no idea how to manage my time. The line between school, home, library, and extracurriculars all blurred together and I struggled to find a way to efficiently do it all. I tried keeping track of things in my head or writing them down on sticky notes and a planner. But what really worked, and what I still recommend to every student to this day, is Google Calendar! Seems simple enough right? Just block off everything on your schedule? Let me tell you, there is so much more you can do.

Each semester, I spent about an hour before classes started to create my weekly template on Google Calendar. I added lectures, discussions, office hours, club meetings, research lab times, volunteering times, etc. They actually have a great feature where you can use different calendars for each of those categories instead of overlapping all on one template. I also found it helpful to color code different categories: classes in one color, extracurriculars in another, and fun events in a third color.

As the weeks went by, I also added in review sessions, coffee chat meetings, hangouts with friends, gym times, and really anything else that I needed to do. During busy weeks, I would also add an additional calendar to map out where/when I would study different subjects or complete different assignments. At UC Berkeley, we had an entire week before finals where there was no formal instruction. I carefully mapped out all my final exam review sessions, group study hours, and personal study blocks. It was honestly fun to find different places on campus and add them to my calendar as something to look forward to. That week especially can get very overwhelming so I made a point to also include break times and scout out any de-stress events held at my school. Something as simple as “dinner with roommate” gave my brain the mental check to stop studying at a particular time.

For the tasks themselves, Google Calendar also has a task feature where you can create daily task lists that are attached to the calendar schedule for that day. Crossing things out on that list is so satisfying! Another favorite feature of mine involves inviting people to your events. Say you and your lab partner want to schedule a time to work on your lab report. You can find their Google Calendar and compare it to yours to find a chunk of time where you are both free. Next, you can make the event, invite them, wait for them to accept, and then you both can have the event on your calendar. That small step really helps to keep one another accountable. You can even use it to schedule club events, meetings, or friend hangouts. Over the pandemic, Google even added the option to include a Zoom Link in the calendar invite!

Some of what I included in my Google Calendar might not work for you! Admittedly, mine was a bit over the top but I had a lot of fun with it. Having things to do on my schedule made me feel more productive and consequently, more likely to get things done. Here’s an example of what one week of my calendar looked like! Hopefully these tips can help you get started on managing your time a little bit better. I’m happy to chat further and find what time management/organization tools might be best for you!

NAVYA

Joining clubs in college: competition WORSE THAN college admissions

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 14:18:20 GMT

Many colleges, especially big public schools like UC Berkeley that focus heavily on professional development, have a bustling culture centered around student-run organizations. There are clubs for everything ranging from consulting, pre-health, to putting on speaker events. Every year the competition to get into these student orgs becomes more and more ridiculous since there’s so much interest, and as a result the application processes becomes longer and longer.

While the prospect of a written application, resume, two interviews, and social round seems quite daunting, there are common themes that every club will look for in applicants, two of which I hope to share with you that I believe are the most important. It’s not about the number of organizations you apply to that determines whether you’ll get into a club, but the amount of time and quality in the ones that you do submit.

Genuine interest in the organization
This sounds quite simple, but as somebody who has been on the evaluating side of club apps, it is painfully obvious when the applicant copy-pasted the same template for each of their student org applications. Having a real interest in an org doesn’t mean you glanced at their website for a couple of minutes and wrote down some vague answers about how they do non-profit consulting. Even though there are a lot of clubs on campus who do similar things, you’ll find that each has a specific mission statement that guides everything they do.

For example, TEDx and the Berkeley Forum are both huge clubs on campus that put on speaker events (I am involved in both of these clubs - ask me about them!). The two orgs couldn’t be more different though — TEDx is about planning one major multi-speaker event every year with a centralized theme while the Berkeley Forum is huge on non-partisanship and multiple single speaker events spaced throughout the semester. Each org has different values, social cultures, and professional development tracks. You need to make sure that you know these subtle details. Come prepared for the written application and interviews with a deep understanding of what kind of events/clients/social culture the org is all about, and you’ll have a much better chance of getting in than if you just used the same template for multiple orgs.

Engaging Current Members
Every student org will have info sessions before their applications open to let people know what their club is all about, after which there will always be time to ask questions to current members in the org about their experiences. Use this time and any other chances you may get (ie: coffee chats) to speak to as many people in the org as possible and to ask really creative and specific questions about the work that they do. It’s so important to make yourself memorable during these kinds of opportunities since there aren’t very many of them. Also always remember to be respectful and conscious of how your actions may appear to members. There have been many times where I have watched applicants get cut because they use micro aggressions during interviews or ignore members during information sessions. First impressions matter, and make sure you’re prepared to give everyone a great one.

If you have any questions about club recruiting, Berkeley organizations, or interview tips for club interviews, definitely schedule a College and Career Coaching Call with me. Good luck!

DAVID

David is a Consultant on the Study Hall College Consulting team. David is currently a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley studying Economics and minoring in Data Science. Going into his junior year of college (Fall 2019), David transferred from UC Santa Barbara to UC Berkeley. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

How to Pay for College: Jobs and Internships

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 20:43:47 GMT

In my last blog, I talked a little bit about how to fund your college education with scholarships, but another great way to offset costs is by working part-time while you're in school! It can sound so unmanageable to both work and be a student at the same time, but it is a reality for a lot of us who need to make a little extra to pay the bills. Here is my overview of working in college.

I worked for Berkeley’s Housing and Dining Sustainability Advocates (HADSA), which included sorting the waste at all our home football games. Go green!

Before you even search for a job, consider how it will fit in your schedule. University is very rigorous and very time intensive, and it is quite possible that even a part-time job could just push you past your limit. I found that my days were so so full already just from going to classes, my research lab, and my clubs, that it was pretty hard to squeeze in even 10 hours of paid work a week. Although it would be awesome to make money to offset your college costs, it might be better to take out loans (or apply for scholarships: see my last post, linked at the end of this blog!) if you have no extra time to work. Remember, you need to also have a social life and sleep, and there is a lot to balance in college!

Find out if you qualify for Work-Study. Work-Study is just a special program based on your financial situation that offers student jobs to help pay for educational expenses. Many on-campus jobs are only available to work-study students, and they are very convenient because they acknowledge you are a student first, with academic commitments and exams. If you are looking for work, I would definitely start with these options.

I interned one summer at a national lab which gave me great insight into the world of materials and chemistry research.

Look for relevant jobs in your field, if applicable. In college you have to maximize experiences whenever possible. Oftentimes, this means students get internships during the school year or summer to gain real-world experience in their future career area. Better yet, these jobs generally pay more than the typical minimum wage you would get in a service job or work-study position. For me personally, I saved a lot of money by doing summer internships throughout college. I also tried to intern part-time during the school year, but I quit when I realized I was way too busy!

I applied for a grant to get paid for my time in my organic chemistry research lab!

Find ways to get paid for things you are already doing. This kind of goes along with my last point of getting work experience, but there is a current dilemma with high school and college students doing unpaid work or internships. It is unfortunate, but young and ambitious students are often taken advantage of as cheap labor for universities or companies. For example, I spent one summer doing unpaid research for my university just to gain lab experience, but the following summer I realized there were grants and scholarships available so that I could get paid for the work I was doing! It really never hurts to ask or inquire, because your time is valuable and you deserve to be compensated for your hard work.

I worked at several companies during summer internships, had various part-time on-campus jobs, and also participated in a couple paid research lab positions throughout my four years at Berkeley. If you have questions about making a little side money in college, I would love to chat about how we can set that up for you in a way that can sustainably fit into your busy college life!

Read my last blog about starting your scholarship search, here: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/starting-your-scholarship-search.

KATIA

Katia is a consultant on the Study Hall College Consulting team. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2021 with a B.S. in Chemistry and a minor in CalTeach/STEM Education. Katia is also a Regents' and Chancellor's Scholarship Recipient. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

Starting your scholarship search

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 17:16:31 GMT

It’s that time of year to wrap up your college applications! Or maybe if you are a little behind, you’re just getting started, and we’re here to help if you need any assistance along the way. If you’re either a high school senior or a college transfer applicant, you’re probably juggling a lot already between schoolwork, applications, and commitments, but I think there is one incredibly important thing you should start to consider now in the month of October: scholarships!

Every year, students get billions of dollars to help fund their education, whether that be money from grants and loans, work study, or scholarships! I love scholarships because they are often huge sums of money that you can earn for just writing a couple of essays.

One huge taboo about scholarships is that they are only available to the most high-achieving students! This is totally wrong, in fact, there are three main kinds of scholarships:

merit-based scholarships are based on your grades and achievements.
need-based scholarships are typically only for students from low-income households.
minority* scholarships typically have some eligibility criteria that you come from a certain race or ethnicity, religion, ability/disability, or other affiliation. I use the word minority, but some of these scholarships might just come from a certain cultural group that is not necessarily underrepresented i.e. scholarships from Christian faith groups.

This means that no matter your background or financial situation, you are probably eligible for some scholarships out there and you just need to find them. I’ve heard it said time and time again that many scholarships are left unclaimed, or very few students apply. I totally surprised myself when I just took a leap of faith and applied to some really popular national scholarships, and became a semi-finalist!

Many scholarships start at $500 or $1000, and they only go up from there! I was extremely fortunate to have a wonderful college advisor free at my high school, and an online system that helped me with my scholarship search. In case these resources aren’t available to you, here’s my best advice to start:

1. Check out some of my favorite scholarship search engines that have thousands of options available to you. These sites have a bunch of filters so you can make sure you fit the eligibility criteria.
https://www.niche.com/colleges/scholarships/
https://www.careeronestop.org/toolkit/training/find-scholarships.aspx

2. Reach out to local community groups, especially non-profits or philanthropic organizations! In my hometown, the Rotary Club, Elks Lodge, and Kiwanis Club are some of the most generous donors that set up yearly college funds for their community. I didn’t even have to approach these organizations as they did a great job of advertising their scholarships, but it can’t hurt to ask! I especially recommend these smaller, local scholarships because you generally have a higher rate of winning the award given a smaller pool of applicants.

3. Familiarize yourself with FAFSA (Federal Application for Free Student Aid) and your financial aid status. It’s quite possible that you might already be eligible for a fully or partially paid tuition with state or federal grants, which will already drastically reduce your college costs! However, these grants will never cover your housing situation, and this is still a significant cost (in the case of UC Berkeley, living in the dorm costs as much as your tuition). Luckily, if you start searching for scholarships you can start to lessen your college costs before you even enroll.

In total, I personally applied to over 25 scholarships before my freshman year of college, and earned about half of those. I truly believe earning all these funds changed my college experience and alleviated a huge burden on my family, so I hope you can earn some money as well and I’m here to help.

I have so many other tips and tricks for helping fund this exciting chapter, so please feel free to book a College and Career Coaching Call with me if you want more advice. Happy scholarship hunting!

KATIA

Last Minute College Application DO'S an DON'ts

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 00:57:47 GMT

As Early Action and Early Decision deadlines quickly approach, make sure you follow these important college application DO's and DONT's!

“Add Additional Information” Section:
DO use the “Add additional information” section to explain circumstances or events that don’t really fit into any other place in your application. This could be a great place to explain a gap in schooling or sudden grade change, to a familial issue or learning difference - really anything that might give ADDITIONAL context into who you are and what journey you’ve gone on throughout high school or community college.

DON’T use the “Add additional information” section to reiterate a point you already made elsewhere, and DON’T feel like you MUST write something in this section in order to be admitted. This is not a place to add superfluous information that doesn’t add important context needed to understand your situation. This is not an additional space just to continue to expand on why you want to attend the school - this should already be covered in your other college application essays.

Professionalism:
DO make sure to use a professional/simple email when applying to colleges. If you’re still using your barbiebunnyxoxo@gmail.com childhood email from 10 years ago, think about starting a new email for your professional work. You’ll eventually need this for when you apply to jobs/internships in the future anyway, so why not get started now and try to secure a professional email? Whether you get a domain yourself or just use Gmail/Yahoo, try making something that includes your first and last name, and maybe some underscores or numbers to make it unique if needed.

DON’T use colloquial phrases or risky/controversial jokes in your application - humor is particularly hard to communicate through writing/through a professional college application, and you never know what humor the reader has. It can be risky to assume certain beliefs or use dark humor, because you never know how it will be taken on the other end. Balance this with being yourself and expressing your own beliefs - just be aware that readers come into this job knowing nothing about yourself, so jokes and informal speech could be taken out of context.

Is this YOUR work?
DO take the time to fill out your application activities section yourself - this should not be a job that you pass on to anyone else (i.e. your parents) just because you want to focus more on the essays. This is YOUR college application, and therefore it should reflect YOUR work and your work alone. After all, your parents do not know your work/extracurricular experiences as well as you do anyway, so they wouldn’t be able to help your activities section pair well with your application essays.

DON’T seek out essay help from services or mentors/peers that offer to write your essay (either large parts of it or the whole thing) for you. As mentioned above, this application should reflect YOUR work, so having someone else write your story will not only fail to portray who you are as an applicant, but will also drift into the territory of plagiarism (which is a really serious offense). Intellectual property is something that universities take incredibly seriously, and submitting anything as your own that you did not actually create is dishonorable.

Application Details:
DO create a separate Google document with not only the essay prompts, but also the short answer activities sections that you need to fill out. Sometimes, these question blurbs can be taken from a resume if you already have one - prepare all the materials that have information you’ll need to enter OUTSIDE of the application portal, and then you can simply copy and paste your drafts when you are ready. This also helps ensure that you do not accidentally lose your work if you forget to save or if the portal times out.

DON’T leave the activities section/application forms until the last minute. Oftentimes, these sections will require you to write short descriptions about your activities, and they may have other questions somewhere in the application that you don’t want to be surprised by at the last minute. Finish your essays as early as you can, polish everything before pasting into the entry fields provided, and review all application questions well ahead of time. Make sure that if given the option, you save your application frequently before submitting it so you do not lose any work you’ve already entered.

As you finish up your applications and prepare to submit them, reach out to us with last minute questions! We’re always happy to take a look at what you’ve done and offer essay advice, application tips, and best practices. Happy application season!

SARAH

How to develop a student - professor relationship

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 21:23:39 GMT

Back in high school, there were roughly 30 students in every class, so getting to know my teachers was nearly an automatic experience. But once I started college at a public university, where my lectures had anywhere between 30 to 500 other students, that task became a lot more difficult.

It was hard to get a professor to even notice me without making an effort. Not only that, it was intimidating to approach the professor when so many of them were world-renowned leaders in their respective fields. So here is what I learned about developing a student-professor relationship and perhaps it will help make the experience a bit less daunting for you!

The easiest technique that I learned to do was sit in the first few rows of the lecture hall or classroom. When you sit in the back, there are all sorts of distractions that can pull your mind away from the material at hand. Students will be shopping, on Netflix, or working on other course material. But when I sat in the front, I found that I was more motivated to stay focused, take diligent notes, and have better eye contact with the professor. Another perk of sitting in the front is that you can easily volunteer for any demonstrations that the professor needs extra hands for. This is especially true in chemistry or physics classes! In the same way, you can answer questions more easily when the professor can see you raising your hand in the front row.

In fact, that’s another tip. Ask and answer questions! It’s impossible for professors to check on each and every student when the class is 300 students total. So it’s on you to make the effort. Raise your hand in class, offer your thoughts when the professor poses a question to the group, and ask for clarification after class.

The absolute best way to develop a relationship with your professors is by going to office hours. These are blocked hours during their schedule when students are invited to ask their questions either 1:1 or in a group setting. The facetime you can get from office hours is exactly why it is the key to doing well in the class. And that commitment to learning is something I know professors appreciate seeing. You can talk to them about the homework, ask for clarification on an example from the lectures, or even ask about their career paths. Many of your professors will be willing to mentor you or offer advice about your career aspirations. You just have to actively seek it!

Hopefully these tips can help guide you in the right direction! It can be intimidating at first but trust me when I say that getting to know your professors will MAKE your academic experience. I gained so many mentors and received invaluable advice that I can now carry throughout my life. And you can too!

NAVYA

Navya is a consultant on the Study Hall Consulting team. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2021 with a double major in Molecular Cell Biology and Public Health. She is currently working as a medical assistant and applying to medical school. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS FOR COLLEGE

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 19:56:16 GMT

While productivity should always stem from your personal motivations and desires, having tools that can help to organize your thoughts and assignments can absolutely help you do your best work.

In this blog, I want to share what I used throughout college to help keep me on track. I primarily used three pieces of software for my productivity needs: Google Calendar, Trello, and Notability.

Google Calendar:
Since I go to UC Berkeley, using Google Calendar is almost a necessity. There’s a massive culture here around using Google Calendar, or “bCal” (Berkeley Calendar), to organize everything from club meetings, homework sessions, and even lunch hangouts. As soon as I know what my class schedule looks like, it goes straight into my bCal so that my weeks are fully planned and mapped out. While it sounds so simple, putting everything into Google Calendar can save you so much time and possibly save you from accidentally missing a class. I know a common alternative to this is just taking a screenshot of your classes schedule and referencing it for the rest of the semester, but using an actual calendar app allows you to input things like the locations of your classes (which will integrate with the Google Maps to give you directions if you don’t know where your class is) and Zoom links you can directly access through the app.

Trello:
Trello is a web-based project management tool that I love to use for its simplicity and flexibility. I primarily use it as a way to keep track of all of my tasks, whether they’re homework assignments, work for my student organization, or even grocery shopping. Trello lets you make different “lists” that let you separate out your various workflows, and then within those lists you can create different “cards” that can act as tasks that you can knock off if you finish them. You can also add important information to these cards such as dates, locations, audio clips, pictures, and even other people if you want to make it a collaborative effort.

Notability:
Finally, I use Notability to take notes on my iPad with the Apple Pencil. I used to think that getting an iPad just for school was totally unnecessary, but after I got one and started centering all of my school work around the app, I just couldn’t go back. Notability is extremely easy to use for note taking during lectures. I will usually download the lecture slides ahead of time and then write on top of them so that I’m not just rewriting information that’s already there. Since I’m an Econ major, a lot of my work revolves around drawing complex graphs and doing some math, so being able to take these kinds of notes on top of my lecture notes is extremely helpful. There’s a ton of different pens and highlighters that you can use within the app that make the virtual note taking experience as close to the real thing as possible.

The organizational tools in Notability are super helpful as well. You can create separate folders for your classes, and within those class folders create different sections like “homework” and “lectures”. Once you finish assignments, it’s super easy to export the pages as PDFs and send it to your computer so that you can submit it. There’s also a desktop app available that automatically syncs the work you do on your iPad to your Mac. While getting an iPad and purchasing the app can definitely add up to a steep price, I would happily recommend making the investment. I promise I’m not sponsored. 😅

DAVID

David is a Consultant on the Study Hall Consulting team. David is currently a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley studying Economics and minoring in Data Science. Going into his junior year of college (Fall 2019), David transferred from UC Santa Barbara to UC Berkeley. For more application and essay tips, check out our Study Hall College Consulting website at: shcollegeconsulting.com.

Biggest college application essay mistakes

Sun, 05 Sep 2021 20:02:37 GMT

As it is the beginning of September, school is starting back up again and that means we are getting back into college application season. As you are drafting your college application essays, be sure to keep these common mistakes in mind so you do not fall into the same traps!

I have compiled this list of common college application essay mistakes through reviewing your essays via Study Hall College Consulting. If you would like a current UC Berkeley student or recent graduate to review your application essays, definitely check out our website and services: https://www.shcollegeconsulting.com/services.html. Good luck drafting your essays!

Biggest Essay Mistakes:
1. Typos, Misspellings, and Grammar Errors: This seems like an obvious tip that you would fix before submitting your essay, but students have actually submitted essays to us for review where they have these errors prevalent. You do not want to submit a college essay with simple errors like this because the college admissions officer may think that you did not spend a lot of time on your essays, are lazy, or even that you do not know how to write at an academic level.

To help catch these errors, you want to proofread your essay before submitting. Additionally, you may want to try reading your essay out loud. As the writer, you have probably spent hours and hours working on your essay, that when you proofread your essay in your head, your brain fills in the next words and sentences. Reading out loud will help you focus on each word on the page and not allow your brain to fill in the gaps. This will help you to catch grammar and other English-related errors.

To help catch these mistakes, you can also ask a friend, family member, or an outside resource like Study Hall College Consulting to review your essays. Having a fresh pair of eyes read your essay will help you catch sentences that do not make sense.

2. Actually Answer the Essay Prompt: Read the essay prompt carefully and make sure that your essay idea and final essay actually answer the question at hand. If the essay is asking you to write about a time you overcame a failure, but you never actually share an event from your life that relates to this topic, then your essay is not really answering the prompt. Similarly, make sure you are not writing about an idea that is off-topic.

3. Picking a Bad Topic: This tip is related to my last point - a good essay topic will help you answer the prompt. If you have a bad essay topic, like an idea that is off-topic or doesn’t answer the prompt, your essay will feel forced because you are stretching for details or information. You do not want your essay to drag on and on with a topic that does not make sense with the specific prompt at hand. Maybe this essay idea would be better suited for a different prompt or a short answer question rather than a full essay.

Additionally, if you are stuck on essay ideas, check out my blog about College Application Essay Brainstorming: https://www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/college-application-essay-brainstorming.

Sarah also has a blog about this topic which would be helpful to check out as well: https://www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/college-essay-brainstorming.

4. Repeating Parts of One Essay in Another: I have reviewed essays where the student repeated the exact same sentences and paragraphs across numerous essays for the same college. Repeating essay ideas and topics can be helpful when you are applying to many colleges that require supplemental essays, but you should not be copying and pasting the same essay multiple times for one school. For example, your UC Application will consist of four Personal Insight Question essays - all four of these essays should be sharing new information. You can have a similar topic or theme in your essays, but do not copy exact word for word phrases across every essay.

5. Using the Thesaurus too much: Try to refrain from using large words in your college application essay that you are not familiar with or do not use in your everyday life. I’ve had to look up what words meant because the student was using words in their essay that I have never heard of. If you are using words you are not familiar with, along with being confusing for the reader, you increase the chance that you use the word incorrectly in your essay. Keep your writing simple, if you wouldn’t use the word in your daily life, using the word in your college application essays can come across as fake and the reader can tell you found the word in a thesaurus.

Using a thesaurus is helpful if you find your writing to be repetitive where you are repeating certain words like “passion” or “interest” over and over again throughout your essay. If this is the case for you, then use a thesaurus to find a replacement word, but just make sure you use the word correctly in your sentence and that the word is common enough that readers will know the meaning of the word.

6. Threatening, Ultimatums, Condescending Writing: Similar to not having typos in your college application essays, this tip may seem obvious, but I have read various essays where the student effectively threatens the admissions team or writes in a condescending manner. For example, saying something like “I have dreamed about attending this college since I was 5 years old, so if you do not accept me, my dreams will be crushed” comes across very negatively. Similarly, a phrase like “once accepted, I know I will thrive” comes across very presumptuous as you are not accepted to the college yet. When writing, be careful how you come across with your words. It may not be your intention, but the reader may assume or understand your words in the wrong way.

7. Writing an Entire Essay about a Time/Moment/Person: A lot of colleges have an essay prompt that asks you to reflect upon a significant time, moment, or person in your life. When writing this kind of essay or using a time/moment/person as the main focal point of an essay, make sure that you are not telling the reader more about the event or person than about yourself. Be sure to always bring the focus of the essay back to yourself and how you learned, grew, or navigated the situation. Briefly explain the time/moment/person, but do not spend the majority of your essay explaining the circumstances that relate to another person.

8. Starting the Night Before: Finally, you do not want to start writing your college application essays the night before they are due. Essay writing takes time! I had to write and rewrite my essays so many times before finalizing and submitting them. I even wrote drafts for prompts then scrapped those ideas and rewrote the essay using an entirely different idea. Starting your essays the night before they are due will rush you and potentially lead to the mistakes I’ve listed in this blog.

Hopefully you found this blog helpful! Good luck writing your college application essays!

RACHEL

balancing college and your mental health

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 02:10:15 GMT

Maintaining your own mental health can feel like a full time job - especially because it’s something that not a lot of people want to or know how to talk about - particularly in college.

For me, it’s been a journey to figure out what brings me joy and that journey is certainly not over, but I’ve found that my best moments, my most sustainable bouts of happiness and productivity come when I find a balance between 5 things and make sure not to let one of them overshadow everything else:
1. Organization
2. School/Employment
3. Creative Outlet/Passion Project
4. Social Time
5. Relaxation Time
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1. Organization:
Take time in your busy schedule to get organized each week. This will help you lower your levels of anxiety later on during the week, and will ultimately set you up for success. That way, you’re more prepared to be resilient when life throws you work that you didn’t expect, and you are less likely to forget important deadlines/details.

Personally, I like to actually write down 30 minutes - 1 hour into my schedule each week to get settled and think about what I have to get done that week. I often even set a timer and hold myself accountable, ensuring that I spend that time planning for the week ahead, but also I don’t just drag out my “organization” time indefinitely to avoid getting the work done altogether.

Some ways to get organized:

Write down all of the long term deadlines for your classes that semester/quarter.
Make a list of tasks/projects you need to finish that week, and what their due dates are.
Bookmark the readings you’ll need for the week, and write out realistic goals to break up the work into daily sessions.
Clean up your desk/room so that you have less clutter around you - this will help you stay focused and feel less overwhelmed.
Set up your notebooks/binders so that you can .

2. School & Employment:
When you sit down to do your homework, study, or start a shift at work, make sure that you try your best to fully switch gears and focus completely on the task at hand. This will help you be more productive and efficient with your time, and will ensure that you are not just wasting time. Fun-fact: actual multitasking is biologically impossible - your brain cannot focus on multiple tasks at once, as much as you think it can. In the end, you’re actually just quickly switching from task to task, not allowing yourself to fully commit to something, understand it, and ruminate on it. You are actually pulling your brain in a million different directions, which will keep you from really getting anything done. If you try to split your brain between multiple tasks, you are actually being less efficient. You’ll quickly see your quality of work deteriorate because you are not giving your undivided attention to your work, and are therefore not even giving yourself a chance to do your best work. It will ultimately take you more time to get less done when you keep trying to switch back and forth between tasks/thoughts.

When you are at work or you sit down to do schoolwork/go to class, give your undivided attention to that topic - otherwise, you’re just going to have to spend more time catching up later on what you missed because you were distracted by something else. If you need, you can use your phone to set a timer for every 30 minutes or so. Stay focused for shorter periods of time, and give yourself frequent (timed) breaks to breathe/reset so that you can re-focus afterwards.

3. Creative Outlet/Passion Project
Most of the time, college students get so wrapped up in work that they neglect the things that truly make them happy outside of academics. The importance of hobbies and extracurricular passions is often overlooked: they are often seen as non-essential. In reality, our minds need time to switch gears and focus on tasks that branch beyond classes and technical academics. Find at least an hour or two per week to do something that makes you happy - whether that’s a passion project, exercise/sports, walking in nature, writing, you name it! Reserve this time for something that is productive and active (mentally or physically), and don’t let yourself feel guilty for taking time to yourself (productive could simply mean that it makes you happy - it doesn’t have to be WORK). This is the best way to nurture your own creativity, and develop skills outside of your academic/career pursuits.

4. Social Time
Whether this entails a group of friends or just your 1-2 best friends, human contact and relationships impact our brain chemistry and are important to making us feel valued and loved. Even for introverted people, it is really important to build strong connections with others, because you always want friends or family that you can lean on during the hardest times. Make sure to give yourself time to make memories - during college and beyond. After all, these are the moments that will stick with you the longest, and will impact you more than anything else.

For those that are more extroverted, this can be a very necessary time to relax and just have fun - forget about the stressful deadlines and worries that you have, and just embrace the joy that comes with those you love. Surround yourself with positive people that make you feel good, and challenge you to be a better person. Social time helps you feel fulfilled, and can help fight a lot of negative emotions that come with isolation and loneliness (this is so important, especially as the pandemic continues to make gatherings hard to have).

5. Relaxation time
Lastly, take time to literally do nothing. Don’t feel bad about relaxing and giving your body/brain time to breathe - your worth is not contingent on your ability to live in a state of maximum efficiency and productivity. Instead, find joy and find purpose in the moments that are not directed in your life. It gives you time to be retrospective, take a much needed nap, or just enjoy your favorite TV show. Your brain cannot be productive 100% of the time, and it’s only natural to give yourself a physical, emotional/mental break.

Try to stop yourself from feeling guilty for relaxing (after all, stressing about relaxation is not relaxing at all). After all, if you work hard to find a balance between relaxation and the other points I mentioned earlier on, you should view this time as much needed and rightfully earned. Make sure to limit this time and hold yourself accountable in order to not let relaxation time take over all of your life, but keep in mind that having down-time is completely natural.

Ultimately, finding a balance between these things can help you reshape what it means to be productive. Sustainable productivity/happiness is a balance of all of these things, not just one - and it’s a continual journey. Now, find ways to apply some of these ideas to your daily life - what does balance mean to you?

SARAH

Getting Ready for the UC Transfer Season

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 16:31:35 GMT

With the filing period for the University of California (UC) transfer application quickly approaching (November 1-30th), I wanted to share advice from someone who has successfully gone through the UC transferring process! Even though there are quite a few similarities between the transfer and regular freshman application process, it’s still good to have everything ready to go so that there isn’t a mad scramble during November.

Make Sure Your Course Requirements Are In Order
This is particularly important for people outside of the community college system. Making sure that all of your class requirements are taken care of can be a difficult process. Try to have all of your coursework verified in advance so that you’re not left with a hot egg on your face if you realize that you needed to sign up for a class on deadline day! Also remember that all of the UC schools give you until the end of your second year to complete all requirements, so you’ll have either one more semester or two more quarters to wrap up those course requirements at the time you apply. Getting in touch with the schools’ admissions office to clarify any other questions ahead of time is also always a great idea. For those of you at community colleges, ASSIST.org is the way to make sure that you’re fulfilling all of the course requirements for the schools you want to transfer to. For UC to UC transfers, it gets a little more complicated.

Typically, course requirements for transferring are split up into two sections: general education requirements and major requirements. To split it up even further - for most schools, you can fulfill the GE requirements in two ways: College Requirements and UC to UC Reciprocity. College requirements (ie: College of Letters and Sciences, College of Engineering) can typically be found on the college’s website, and usually consist of a combination of various subjects. This can be a bit annoying to fulfill though, since the requirements can be quite broad and confusing to transfers outside of the community college system. The more simple, guaranteed way to fulfill GE requirements for students looking to transfer from a UC to UC is to fulfill UC to UC Reciprocity. This means that fulfilling the General Education requirements at your current UC within your two years there will let you fulfill the GE requirements at any other UC campus.

Depending on the major, there are different requirements for classes you must take to transfer. You can check the department websites to find these specific requirements or check ASSIST.org. Unfortunately, similar to the college requirements, there isn’t a surefire way for UC to UC transfer prospective students to “check” if their classes line up with classes at others UCs before you get admitted like you can for community colleges. That being said, it’s quite easy to tell if you are fulfilling the major requirement classes, as they are relatively straightforward. For example, they might ask you for a “linear algebra course”, which is relatively universal across schools.

Start the Application Ahead of Time
This seems like such an obvious tip. But trust me, just because you might have been through this process before in high school doesn’t mean that you can leave the application until the last second this time around (I may or may not be speaking from personal experience…). The application isn’t just a matter of filling in your classes and other quick information, there’s also plenty of important factors regarding your financials and scholarships that require a lot of prep time.

Make sure this is done several weeks before the deadline so that you can focus all of your attention onto the most important and time-consuming portion of your application: the personal insight questions.

Starting your essays ahead of time also means you can spend more time really curating your application’s “story”. One of the most helpful pieces of advice I got when I began writing my college application essays was to not leave each of my essays in a vacuum. While they should all tell a unique part of your story and personality, that shouldn’t mean that they need to all be completely separated from each other. For example, I tried to weave my experiences of living as an immigrant in the United States throughout all of my essays. I wanted to help the readers understand why I participated in certain extracurricular activities and how my immigrant background contributed to these motivations. I really recommend creating a visual map of how your essays can work off of each other and really connect so that readers can get a comprehensive understanding of who you are.

If you have any questions about UC to UC transfer advice or application essays, schedule a College and Career Coaching call with me!

DAVID

Extracurriculars You should do as a pre-med student if you want to apply to med school

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 13:48:11 GMT

There is definitely no easy answer to this. In fact, maybe there is no real answer at all. But from a fellow premed, I thought I could give you some tips.

Medical schools really want to know that you are a well-rounded person. While it is important to have good grades and good test scores, what you do outside the classroom is equally as valuable. Personally I think it’s more important, because this is really when you can shine as a unique candidate. Let’s talk about the types of extracurriculars you should definitely pursue first.

Community Service / Volunteering
Medicine is a field of service and as such, schools expect that you engage in some level of volunteering during your undergraduate career. Long term activities are especially valuable, so remember, quality over quantity! Some examples could include volunteering at a local hospital, in nonprofit organizations, or at your local soup kitchens and food banks. You could also tutor and teach younger kids to play your favorite sport or play your favorite instrument. Really, the opportunities are endless here so really find what is most meaningful to you.

Research
Academic research is a huge feature of the medical school curriculum and many schools will expect you to have some level of experience. This could be something as simple as a summer internship at a local laboratory, or a long-term commitment in a research group at your university. You could even do a thesis project as part of your school’s honors program. Research can be a very daunting experience as many early undergraduate students have never done anything similar to it. I highly encourage you to take your time to find a project or an opportunity that you will really enjoy. And who knows, maybe you could even become a published author because of it!

I write a whole blog post about how to find research opportunities, so check it out here: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/finding-research-opportunities-plus-example-email-template.

Clinical Experiences
These are typically the most difficult opportunities to find as undergraduate students. Before you apply to medical school, it is imperative that you reinforce for yourself that you really want to pursue this career path. This is how schools will know that you are committing to a life-long career in medicine. Some examples include shadowing physicians, working as a medical scribe or medical assistant, health advocate, emergency medical technician (EMT), or pharmacy technician. Many students even choose to get a certificate in nursing or phlebotomy! Definitely do some research about what opportunities may be around you and be patient.

Other Common Extracurriculars
A lot of students choose to get involved in premedical groups such as the American Medical Students Association, American Women’s Medical Association, Premedical Honors Society, or even premedical professional fraternities. Another common activity is teaching. This could look like tutoring for a specific subject or working on the core staff team for a class that you have taken in undergrad.

In addition to everything I mentioned above, doing some non-traditional activities is also highly recommended. Again, medical school applications are all about standing out. So maybe you want to get involved in student government, continue a sport you did in high school, be in an Acapella group, work as a dance instructor, be a photographer, etc. Often, these are the experiences that will help you develop leadership and communication skills. Personally they have been some of my most formative experiences to date and definitely proved to be an asset when I was filling out my applications.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the requirements and recommendations for medical school but I really hope this gives you a place to start. Take your time finding activities and opportunities that are genuinely enjoyable for you. Try not to worry about what others are doing and just focus on what YOU can do to become the best medical school applicant, and the best person all together. If you need any guidance or would like to hear about my personal experiences, I would be more than happy to chat through one of our College and Career Coaching Calls at Study Hall College Consulting.

Good luck!

NAVYA

College Application Essay Brainstorming

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 17:27:38 GMT

With the Common Application and UC Application portals opening on August 1st, now is the time to make your portal accounts and draft your application essays! If you haven’t started drafting your essays over the summer, don’t worry!

In today’s blog, I’ll give you some ideas of how you can start brainstorming for your college application essays. This brainstorming activity may be best utilized if you have not read the application prompts yet, so that your mind is not held back by the prompts you have already seen. Also note that brainstorming for your college essays is not a task that will take only 10 or 15 minutes, but you should really set time out of your day to sit down and brainstorm.

Write Freely: When you are brainstorming, you want to write freely. Do not edit yourself or make changes at this stage, but write down everything that comes to your mind. Allow your stream of consciousness to flow. Big or small, you never know if an idea that you wrote down in your brainstorming stage could become a great basis for a main or supplemental essay.

During the brainstorming stage, it may be helpful to gather materials such as your resume or activities list so you can remember all of the things you’ve done so far in your life. Take a walk around your room to see if any of your trophies, art, or memorabilia spark ideas or feelings within you.

The next three points are the topics you can brainstorm about:

1. List Things Important to You - hobbies, activities, volunteering, social justice, goals, experiences, your background, people. Write down some important activities or aspects from the categories listed here. You can also create additional categories that have significance in your life. Take some time and really dig deep on the ideas you are writing down here.

2. List Qualities/Traits that you have: With this point and the last point, you want to spend time on brainstorming in order to dig past the surface on what you are writing down. With listing qualities and traits, you don’t want to be too vague or abstract in this area because it can be difficult to write good essays about those topics.

An easy way to find your top qualities and traits would be to do the values exercise! I did this exercise my freshman year of college in the student government club I was a part of and it really opened my eyes to what traits I really value.

You can look up any list of “value words” online so that it can help spark your ideas. Here is a list of 50 core values that I found online: https://jamesclear.com/core-values.
On separate snips of paper, write down your top 10 values, qualities, and traits.
Then, narrow that list of 10 down to 5. You can crumple up the pieces of paper containing the traits that are not in your top 5.
From your top 5 traits, narrow that list down again to your top 3. This is where the exercise starts to get more difficult because you really need to think about what is truly important to you.
Finally, narrow your top 3 down to a top 1. You could use this value as a basis for an application essay or theme throughout your essays. Additionally, you could use any of the values you’ve thought about during this exercise in your essays.

This exercise is a great way to start thinking about the values that are truly important to you because maybe you have never thought about these before!

3. List some Stories, Senses, Settings that Relate to your Stories: With points one and two where you listed things important to you and qualities/traits that you have, now you want to use this session to come up with some stories, senses, and settings that relate to the ideas you have already come up with. Through writing down stories, senses, and settings, you will start to fill in some of the background information of your potential essays that will give your essays more voice. This will help to give your writing a human aspect so that your essays do not sound robotic or emotionless.

Finally, when brainstorming, writing, and editing your college application essays, you want to have the following questions always in mind:

What do I want the admissions officer to learn/know about me through reading my essays?
What will the admissions officer get out of reading my essays?
What will the reader learn when reading my essays?
Why would the reader care about my essay and the information that I am sharing?

Hopefully this brainstorming session can help spark some ideas to get you started! Good luck brainstorming, drafting, and editing your college application essays! If you want a Consultant on our team to review your college application essays, definitely check out our website at https://www.shcollegeconsulting.com/ to see the services that we offer! Happy brainstorming!

RACHEL

How to prepare for college applications as a high school sophomore

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 19:16:11 GMT

When you’re a sophomore in High School, college feels so far away: how are you supposed to know what you want your college years to look like? How are you supposed to even begin to evaluate what makes up the “perfect fit” university? How are you supposed to know what you want to major in, let alone do when you get out of college? Thinking about starting the college application process can feel daunting and distant. So, start small!

During your second year of high school, you don’t have to have it all figured out. In all honesty, most people get all the way through college and STILL don’t have it all figured out. Actually, I’ll take that a step further - most people, no matter where they are in life, never have it all figured out. You can make as many plans as you want to, but life has a way of changing things. So, the good news is, you’re not behind, no matter how much you might feel like you are.

That being said, there are a few things that you can do your sophomore year to ensure that you are on track to apply to college, which is an amazing and unique educational opportunity to explore new things and find out a whole lot about yourself. You don’t necessarily have to KNOW what you want to do and where you want to go: the college application process and college itself is all about finding yourself, and discovering passions you never thought you had.

So, you’re a sophomore in high school; what does that mean in terms of college preparation? What should you be focusing on?

1. Keeping up Your Grades: This second year of high school is the first year that you can start to demonstrate upward trajectory and growth: keep your grades up or even raise them from your freshman year and you’ll set yourself up for a really promising transcript when it comes time to actually apply. Find classes at your high school that challenge you (whether that be AP/IB/honors courses, or just new/challenging topics) and explore new avenues that you are interested in. Stay focused on your classes, but also remember to still have fun with your education and use this time to explore what you MIGHT want to pursue in the future.

2. Deepen Your Extracurricular Involvement: During your freshman year, you may have joined a bunch of clubs or student groups that you were interested in (to make friends, explore new activities, etc.). During your sophomore year, you can focus on finding new passions or narrow down your involvement to things that truly bring you joy and also deepen your connection and involvement in these groups. Start to think about taking up a leadership position in one of them, or explore other opportunities that branch off of what you’ve already started. Remember that when it eventually comes to college applications and listing your extracurricular involvement, it’s not about quantity, but quality and demonstrating your passions. Additionally, college aside, you should be spending the most time in extracurriculars that bring you joy, give you energy, or make a difference in a field you are passionate about.

3. Summer Job/Involvement Brainstorming: After your sophomore year, it can be a great idea to start thinking about (and applying to) internships or summer activities that demonstrate personal passion, professional growth, or philanthropy work. Whatever it may be, staying busy during the summer (while also prioritizing time to relax and recharge) can demonstrate initiative and maturity. Additionally, it can be a great time to start saving money if you have not already - start to build up some spending money for college, or put away a chunk of cash to help you pay for college itself. Professional responsibility is a huge part of growing up, and it can teach you so many lessons that will ultimately stand out in your college application, and also get you a little closer to figuring out what it is you want to do in life.

4. Keep Your Ears Open/ABSORB Information About College: Although it feels a little early to really ACT on anything regarding college applications, it’s never too early to be open to learning about colleges, or more generally about the college experience. (Hey, you’re already doing much more than most sophomores by reading this blog!) Read student blogs, attend virtual campus visits, talk to friends, you name it. Whatever gets you more comfortable with what the college experience will look like and what kind of environment you want.

5. Start to Think about the Academic/Social Environment you like: Although it is so early to know what makes up the perfect college “fit” for you, you can start to think about what environments bring you joy, and what you might be lacking in your life. Do you attend a small high school? If yes, do you appreciate the tight-knit community where everyone knows each other, or do you long for something much bigger where you can meet people you don’t know every day? Do you attend high school somewhere with sunny weather and warm temperatures? If so, do you find yourself enjoying the sunshine every day, or do you wish you could frolic in the fresh snow and snuggle up next to a rain-covered window? Start small, and think about the tiniest factors that bring you joy. This can help you start to craft an idea of what environment you mind find desirable in college, before you even know what you want!

6. (Optional): Start Thinking about the PSAT: Sophomore year, in all honesty, is on the early side for thinking about standardized testing (additionally, many colleges are moving towards not even asking for standardized test scores in the future). This is something to keep on your radar, and investigate lightly if you feel ready to do so. Most of the preparation for SAT/ACT testing will come in the fall of your junior year, where you really start to think more about the college application process.

Overall, as a sophomore in high school, you should stay primarily focused on enjoying your high school experience and exploring your education and social options. However, you can always start preparing by starting small and taking it step-by-step - don’t feel overwhelmed! And remember, it’s totally normal not to know what you want to do right now - that will come with time.

If you want more advice on how to start preparing for college as a freshman sophomore, or junior in high school, check out Rachel’s blog: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/how-to-start-preparing-for-college-as-a-high-school-freshman-sophomore-or-junior.

SARAH

surviving communal bathrooms in college

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 14:57:13 GMT

For incoming college students, college move-in is right around the corner! Something new that a lot of incoming college students will experience is living in the dorms and sharing a bathroom with roommates and potentially 30 to 40 strangers!

When living in the dorms, there are a few different popular styles of bathrooms: traditional, suite, and apartment. The traditional-style bathroom is where 30 to 40 students are living on a floor and everyone shares a communal bathroom that is located on the floor. The suite and apartment-style options are similar where there will be three to five students (and sometimes more) sharing their own private bathroom. The suite and apartment-style bathrooms have a lot more privacy than the traditional-style bathrooms. It depends on the college and the bathroom-style, but most colleges will have custodial staff cleaning the dorm bathrooms periodically.

Living in the dorms at UC Berkeley all four years of college, here are some of my tips on how to survive communal bathrooms:

1. Bathroom layout: In the traditional-style bathrooms, you would have a handful of showers and toilets in a row with separate stalls. There will also be a row of sinks for students to use when washing their hands or getting ready for bed. This layout is probably very similar to the bathrooms you had in high school, but now there will be more stalls in the restroom as all of the students on the floor would be using the same facility.

In the suite and apartment-style bathrooms, these will be more similar to the bathrooms at your house - with a toilet, sink, and shower with one door that locks. If you are sharing the suite or apartment with more students, then you may have a separate stall for the toilet and shower so that numerous students could be using the bathroom at once rather than waiting in line.

2. Buy Shower Shoes: This is a must-have for college! In these communal bathrooms, even if they are periodically cleaned, you should not be walking in the bathroom barefoot or with socks. Purchase some shower shoes, like slides or flip flops, that you can easily put on when you leave your room to use the bathroom. This may be new as you might not be used to wearing flip flops in the shower, but wearing shoes in the bathroom can prevent fungus or other diseases. Plus, you don’t want to walk barefoot into the bathroom and then you go back to your room and hop into your bed - gross!

3. Shower Caddy and Locker Lock: Two other things to buy when dorm shopping would be a shower caddy and locker lock. For the shower caddy, a mesh shower caddy is better than a plastic one as the mesh caddies are more flexible, can be stored away in smaller spaces, and dry out quicker if they get wet. A shower caddy is useful if you need to transport all of your bathroom materials, rather than carrying everything in your hands, you would put everything into the caddy to carry. This makes carrying all of your bathroom essentials easier!

At some colleges, they may also provide little lockers in the bathroom for you to store all of your bathroom items. If this is the case, then having a shower caddy is still useful so you can transport your items from the lockers to the shower or sink. If these lockers do not come with a lock, then you will need to purchase a locker lock. Keeping your items secured will help to prevent theft or others touching your belongings.

4. String Bag: Last on this short list of items to buy for the college dorm bathrooms would be a string bag. I used a string bag to store my dirty clothes after I showered. If you didn’t have a bag, then you would be carrying your dirty clothes and underwear down the hall back to your room in your hands, which then you may accidentally drop your items! Having a string bag makes it easier to carry your clothes and other items back and forth.

5. Change in the Shower Stall or Room: When you go to college and start using the dorm bathrooms, something to think about would be whether you are going to change into new clothes in the shower stall after your shower or go back to your room and change. In my experience, the shower stalls are really small and after your shower, everything is wet, so it is uncomfortable to change into new, dry clothes directly after showering. Especially if there are lines for the shower, then you won’t have a lot of time to fully dry off in the shower stall before putting on your new clothes. Because of that, after my showers, I would wrap my towel around myself and walk back to my room to dry off and change. This was a lot more comfortable for me because I could fully dry off and had a lot of more space in my room to change versus the small shower stall.

With this, you can see what a majority of other students are doing on your floor. After the first few weeks when everyone becomes comfortable, a bunch of students usually walk around in their towels and everyone minds their own business.

6. Find the Best Shower: A trick in the dorm bathroom is to test out all of the showers in order to find the best shower possible. In my experience in the dorms, I always found one shower that was way better than the rest of them in the row in terms of shower pressure and water temperature. I would usually wait for my favorite shower to open up in order to use it because the other showers could not compare. You can test out all of the showers your first few weeks of school to see which shower you like the best!

7. Don’t Forget Your Room Key: In many dorms, if you leave your room, your room will auto-lock. When going to the bathroom, you never want to forget your room key because then you will be locked out of your room when you come back. This is especially awkward if you are locked out after your shower and then need to go all the way to the front desk in a towel to get a spare key. Very awkward! I always made sure I had my room keys on me. When going to the shower, I would throw my room keys into my string bag so I would have them.

8. Know when Custodial Staff is Cleaning the Bathrooms: This is something handy to know so you can plan your bathroom times around when the bathrooms are open. When the custodial staff is cleaning the bathroom, they usually close down the entire bathroom in order to make cleaning easier. For example, if the custodial staff cleans the bathrooms in the morning, then maybe you have to wake up earlier to use your floor bathroom or potentially shower in the evenings. If you wanted to use the bathroom when the custodial staff is cleaning, then you would have to go up a floor or down a floor in your dorm to use another floor’s bathroom.

Remember to talk to and thank your custodial staff! They are the nicest people and it is so sad to see when students disrespect them.

9. Don’t do Gross Things in the Shower: Please do not pee, poop, or relieve any other bodily functions in the shower. Doing this makes the custodial staff’s jobs infinitely harder. It is your responsibility to respect your dorm bathroom space, so please clean up after yourselves and do not do gross things in the shower.

If you’re currently doing dorm shopping, definitely check out two of my other blogs:

What to Bring to Your College Dorm: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/what-to-bring-to-your-college-dorm-room
What Not to Bring to Your College Dorm: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/what-not-to-bring-to-your-college-dorm-room

Also check out Sarah’s blog about pros and cons of living in the dorms: www.shcollegeconsulting.com/our-advice-blog/living-in-the-on-campus-dorms-pros-and-cons

If you’re interested in learning more about what dorm-life is like and surviving communal bathrooms in college, schedule a College and Career Coaching call with me!