You have to decide and plan out your position before your freshmen year.
The position defines every extra curricular activity you do.
It is way too late to deciding or changing your positioning junior or senior year.
Unique
No premed
Nothing turns a reader off more than a story they’ve heard a million times.
College admissions are looking for diversity.
Artistic Space for Story Telling
Don’t directly answer the question.
Kids are too honest.
This is not how the real world works.
Self-Marketing, Selling Yourself, Self-Branding
Sales, marketing, branding is about what to say, and what not to say.
Brands only show you what they want you see, in order to make the purchase.
Learn how to sale, market, and brand yourself.
Show only what you want the schools to see.
Believable
Chinese kid wants to help poor kids in India.
Asian kid who wants to help inner city kids.
Back It Up
Everything about your application, extra curricular should be crafted around position.
More Than Academics
Academics are just a tool in a machine.
Customize for each college
Each college has strengthen weaknesses, for example Yale is weak in engineering, MIT is weak in the humanities.
Based on the weakness of each college, they have a preference for a specific type of student.
You should be positioning yourself differently for each college so that you maximize the chances that you fit that target student profile.
For example, for my application for Yale, I position myself as an engineering nerd that was also passionate about humanities, which Yale was strong at.
For my application for MIT position myself as passionate about the humanities, but also wanting a strong engineering education.
It is rare to find a student strong in engineering who wants to go to Yale. Likewise it is rare to find a soon as strong in the humanities who wants to go to MIT.
