In the midst of college applications, extracurricular activities, and school assignments it is important to allow yourself to come to a quiet place and wind down. One thing that can help you destress after an insane day or a never-ending week is immersing yourself in a book.

The foundation of my career didn’t start after college. Instead it started with a conversation with a customer at a grocery store checkout counter during high school. 

The summer is still six months away, and for most high school students, planning it is furthest from their mind. But deadlines for many of the more selective and free programs fall in December and January and early planning will ensure that your summer is filled with a variety of valuable and worthwhile activities.

Many students ask us how important extracurricular activities are in the college admissions process. It is fairly clear that academics are an important part of admissions, but which parts of the extracurricular story are actually important and how do you determine that? Here at Empowerly, we have spent the past 6 years understanding what colleges care about and helping thousands of students through the college admissions process. In this article, we use our data sorting tool to help you determine how important extracurricular activities are.

Being a student athlete in high school is hard because you have to balance school work with crazy practice times. It’s easy to say “well I like soccer more than calculus, so I’ll spend more time on soccer” or “my basketball skills are more likely to get me into a top university than my grades”. What a lot of students forget, is that it’s a lot easier to be a college athlete if you’re also a good student.

Professional resumes are the bread and butter of applications. Whether it be for colleges or for a job, a professional resume is a quick one page snapshot of one’s professional and academic performance.

We’ve all heard the story: “Intel ISEF Finalist gets into (insert top choice school here)!” Common-sense wisdom tells us that elite STEM competitions, like Intel ISEF, are “golden tickets” into every student’s top-choice school. While generalizations like this are problematic and often promote unhealthy behavior, there is something worth considering within it.

Martha Collins, a Stanford alum, shares her Stanford admissions story. She discusses her tips for best approaching the application process and what she feels made her application stand out.

Being a sophomore is often a confusing time in high school. You may be telling yourself that college is far away and that you have plenty of time, but it is much closer than you think. However, you can prepare yourself for college early on by making the most of your sophomore year. 

With applications officially being over, a key part of college admissions has concluded for most students. That being said, the college admissions process as a whole is still far from over. There are still a few ways for applicants to better prepare themselves for potential scenarios down the road.