The Uncomfortable Truth about College Admissions
Jack Beecher here
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: College admissions is hard and no amount of planning can make it easy.
I’m sure every high schooler feels the same dread I felt right before admissions season. The feeling that very soon it will be time to take standardized tests, write essays, and still maintain a high GPA. No amount of strategizing can remove these pain associated with doing the hard work needed to succeed in admissions.
At CollegeConsulting.us, we do our best to help ease this burden on your family. However, we know that some of this stress will always exist, so to help counter that, we empower your family to take accountability and succeed despite struggle. To help serve that mission, I’m going to recap a recent book I’ve read: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
In The War of Art, Pressfield details the internal battle with "resistance" that everyone faces as they begin a project. Although mainly discussing projects like building a new habit, starting a book, or founding a company, his ideas apply to college admissions.
Here are some of my favorite ideas from the book to help your family:
On Essays:
It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
For the juniors out there approaching the time to start writing essays, don’t fear. Things are often worse in expectation than in reality. Once you begin the process, you’ll find it’s not as bad as you once thought.
On Finding Activities:
We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.
One of the things we stress as most important in college admissions is finding your showstopper activity, the one activity unique to you that will blow the admissions officers away. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges for our students is "How do I find my showstopper activity?" (Note: If you have 15 minutes, here's an exact, step by step video from our Founder, Jack Delehey, walking through EXACTLY how to do this...all accompanied by our 100% free worksheet your child can do today).
Pressfield explains that we should search out this "Resistance", the force acting in opposition to starting, to guide us. Do you have an idea for a blog but always seem to procrastinate starting it? Good, that’s your showstopper. Chase the things that resistance leads you away from. Do the things that will be hard.
On Difficulty:
It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.
I lived the warrior’s life last year as I battled through college admissions. Now, it’s your turn. We will do everything in our power to help you along the way, but ultimately, you are the warriors. You are the ones accountable for your success.
On Fear:
The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
Do you have fear about college admissions? So does everyone else. Use that fear as an advantage as everyone else succumbs to it. Pressfield’s idea of a professional is someone who does the work every day regardless of the circumstances. Let that be you in college admissions.
On Finding Help:
Tiger Woods is the consummate professional. It would never occur to him, as it would to an amateur, that he knows everything, or can figure everything out on his own. On the contrary, he seeks out the most knowledgeable teacher and listens with both ears.
As your family is busy with activities, essays, grades, friends, and everything else life throws at you, our coaches are here to help you plan and succeed. Professionals know they need help. Amateurs, the ones who will ultimately fail, think they can do everything on their own.
Although it will be hard, and I won’t be able to rid you of your fear, I’d encourage you to embrace the dread surrounding admissions. I know for me it was one of the best times of my life. I look back on it with great nostalgia. The hardest grinds lead to the best rewards.
I wish you all the best of luck,
Jack Beecher
P.S. - Have a high-performing high schooler w/ a 3.7 GPA or higher? We'll help get them into at least one of their top 5 dream colleges...and if we don't get them into at least one of their top 5 dream colleges, you don't pay us a penny. Seriously! You can learn more about our world renowned all-inclusive, start-to-finish college coaching here and to see if your family qualifies for an introductory call.
P.P.S - Our most common question is "When should we start?!" The answer is, if you truly care about giving your high schooler the best chance of college planning success, you should start NOW. 9th grade is not too early to start! 10th grade is certainly not too early to start! And 11th grade is far, far too late! (supporting data here to show just how much of an advantage you give your child by starting the process early).
