| Academic Timeline | Applying to College | Paying for College | Preparing for College |
What Can You Do in High School to Prepare for College?
Finding a Mentor
Mentors are important people who teach you to believe in yourself and pursue your dreams. They are usually adults who want to help you accomplish your goals. Mentors can assist and support you in many ways. They can help you request and fill out college applications, apply for financial aid and visit colleges. By being open to looking to others for guidance, you can benefit from the aid of a mentor.
Think about People Who Already Are Your Mentors or Who You Would Like to Be Your Mentor
How can you find a mentor? First, think about the adults in your life who have assisted you. You might already have a mentor! A mentor can be a parent, pastor, high school counselor, coach, relative or family friend who has helped you in some way. For example, your teacher may be a mentor who has helped you improve your high school grades and learn about colleges and financial aid. Your family doctor may be a mentor who can inform you about health careers and opportunities and help you find employment or recommend you for continuing education or a health care position.
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Contact the Mentor
Once you have identified some possible mentors, get that person's contact information (phone number, e-mail address or street address). When you contact a possible mentor, be polite and briefly introduce yourself and your goals. Explain how you were referred to him or her and mention that you would like permission to ask some questions and advice. For example, if you have always dreamed of becoming a doctor, you can tell your family doctor about your goal and mention that you have always admired his or her skills. Be polite but persistent, and don't get discouraged if this person doesn't get back to you right away!
Ask to Set Up a Meeting or a Lunch
Since your mentor may have a busy schedule, ask if you can set up an in-person meeting to ask him or her some questions at his/her convenience. If you are meeting with a health professional, think about what you want to know about this person's job and the education and training he or she needed to get the job. Be sure to write out your questions before the meeting.
At the meeting, first ask about your mentor and his or her background and accomplishments; next, tell him or her about your career goals and school and personal background. If you'd like, you can mention any fears or challenges you face in pursuing further education. By talking with someone who is experienced in the line of work you hope to do, you may learn some helpful tips for accomplishing your goals and realize that you do not need to be so concerned after all.
Thank the Mentor and Ask About Other Opportunities
After talking with your doctor or any other helpful adult who has answered your questions, you should follow up with a polite, handwritten letter thanking him or her for his or her assistance. Once you have made this initial connection with someone, especially a health professional, it will be easier for you to contact him or her again for additional support or guidance. For example, this person may be able to provide you with helpful job-hunting strategies, or possible volunteer or "shadowing" opportunities.
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Keep in Touch with the Mentor
Once you have established a relationship with your mentor, be sure to keep in touch. He or she may be a great contact for writing you a letter of recommendation or for reading your personal statement for your college or medical school applications.
If you do need your mentor’s help with an application, be sure to call him/her well before the application is due to ask for help. Give your mentor plenty of time to respond, at least two weeks, and then deliver him/her a typed, double-spaced copy of the statement in a stamped, addressed return envelope.
How Can You Become a Mentor?
If you are interested in becoming a mentor, you should inquire at local youth organizations about mentoring opportunities. You can also check out this national web site for mentors, www.mentoring.org, to learn about what it takes to be a good mentor.
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Preparing a Resume and Cover Letter
What Is a Resume?
A resume, a brief list of a person’s background and accomplishments, is an important tool to use in applying to college and jobs. This is not included with your college application but it will help you remember all that you have done. It is, however, often included with a job application. Anyone reading your resume should be able to get an understanding of what activities you have already done and what you would like to accomplish in the future. Take a look at this high school student’s sample resume.
What Is a Cover Letter?
A cover letter often accompanies a resume and is a place for you to provide more detail about your past experiences and future goals. You should almost always include a cover letter when you apply for a job, and the letter should be specific to the job you seek. In the cover letter, try to establish the reasons why your interests or experiences make you the best person for the job. Discuss your future goals and how the position you seek will help you reach your ultimate goals. Take a look at this high school student’s sample cover letter.
What to Include in a Resume
You should start a resume when you begin high school. First, write down your educational history. Then add details about your extracurricular activities and any work experience you may have. It is also a good idea to include a "Summary of Qualifications" section that lists any special skills you may have, such as First Aid Certification or computer skills. And to personalize your resume, you should include a "Personal Interests" category near the end that describes activities you like to do, such as read, play soccer and do volunteer work.
Adding to Your Resume
You will continue to add to and revise your resume for the rest of your life, so don’t worry if you don’t have very many items to include now. Your resume will grow as you get more work experience, join more activities and develop more skills throughout high school.
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Requesting Letters of Recommendation
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Letters of recommendation strengthen your college application by providing details about your personal background, character, academic preparation, work experiences, and extracurricular activities. You want to get letters that highlight your background and strengths, but you want each letter to reflect a different dimension of your skills.
Read the Instructions
Your college packet will outline how many letters you can submit and who is eligible to write you a letter. Sometimes colleges will ask for recommendations from specific people, like an English, math or science teacher. Check each college’s application instructions carefully to see if the letters of recommendation should be sent directly to the college or if they want you to include the letters with the rest of your application materials.
Ask People Who Know You Well and Know the Quality of Your Academic Work to Write You Letters of Recommendation
Aside from asking a high school teacher, counselor or principal, you may want to ask someone in your community if they have supervised your work in an internship or job. Remember to read your application carefully to ensure they will accept a non-academic letter of recommendation. By carefully choosing the people who write your recommendations, you can ensure that each of your letters share a different positive quality about you. Taken together, your letters will portray a well-rounded view of you. Consider the following when choosing whom to ask for letters of recommendations:
- Does each person know me well enough to write a strong letter?
- Which set of people can write letters that will best reflect my background and strengths?
Guide Those Who are Writing Your Letters of Recommendation
Once you decide whom you are going to ask, think about the different aspects of your background, character, academics, and activities that you want reflected in your letters. Each letter should focus on things that are not covered in your essay or resume, so the college can get a broad sense of you and your skills. Perhaps you want your chemistry teacher to emphasize your good grade in her class, your participation in the high school science fair and your goal of attending a college with a strong science department. Consider the points you want each of the people who write letters on your behalf to make and let them know. You should also provide them with information about your background, any hardships you have overcome, and your personal goals and skills. Some additional items you may ask those teachers, counselors and professionals writing on your behalf to mention are:
- Your personal background, including your family situation. Are you the first in your family to attend college?
- Hardships you have experienced in seeking higher education. Are you from a low-income background or living with parents who do not speak English?
- Personal strengths that will make you a good college student. Are you inquisitive, motivated, and hard working?
- Your commitment to other students and your community, as demonstrated by your volunteer work, willingness to help other students, and involvement in humanitarian causes.
- Your leadership skills and experiences.
Write to Those You Want to Write Letters on Your Behalf
When you finish your list of what you want each writer to emphasize, write a formal note requesting they write you a letter of recommendation. Your letters should be personalized for each professional and should list the specific skills and attributes you want them to emphasize. Be sure to ask the person recommending you to write the letter on school or personal letterhead and sign the back of the envelope. Also include a suggested date to have the letter completed. Remember, the more detailed your letter, the easier it will be for your teacher or counselor to write a strong letter in support of you. Present this letter and a copy of your resume when you meet with each professional in person to ask for this favor. Make sure that this meeting is at a convenient time for them, and schedule the meeting at least a month before your letters are due so that each professional has plenty of time to write you a great letter. Be sure to take stamped, addressed envelopes that the professional will use to mail your letters. Finally, thank them for supporting you and writing the letter.
Follow Up and Say Thank You
After you meet with each of the professionals who has agreed to write recommendation letters for you, make a note in your calendar to follow-up with them in a few weeks to be sure that they send the letter before it is due. When you know the letters have been sent, write a personal thank-you note to each professional.
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Summary Checklist 1. ___ Read the college admission's requirements to see how many letters of recommendation you can submit and who is eligible to write you a letter. |
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Writing a College Essay or Personal Statement
Information provided by Kimberly Griffith
Your college essay or personal statement is very important because it allows you an opportunity to be yourself and to let the colleges know who you are as an individual. Think about your life experiences and what has shaped you into the person you are today. Tell about aspects of your background and personal attributes that may not be apparent from your academic record. This allows the college to evaluate what they can offer you along with what you can contribute to their academic environment.
Colleges may ask for a general essay or give you specific questions to answer. The suggestions below apply to either.
Who Reads Your Essay?
Each college has a team of trained readers, several of whom will usually read and score your essay independently. These readers are not testing you on your writing ability or English skills. They simply want to learn more about you on a personal level. However, a well-written essay will impress the reader so invest time in editing, and checking your grammar and spelling.
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What Makes a Good Essay?
A good essay will make you distinct from the many other applicants. Readers look for a cohesive piece that reflects your life experiences, intellectual curiosity and achievements, personal characteristics (perseverance, motivation, leadership), service to others, and commitment to higher education. You may describe hardships you overcame, events that had a significant impact on your life, people who inspired you, or your knowledge of certain cultural or ethnic groups. Sometimes a very common experience is influential and memorable. For example, one student wrote about his intelligent parents who were trapped in unfulfilling jobs due to their lack of formal education. The student was inspired by his parents' experience, excelled in school, and thus became the first in his family to apply to college. Review the following writing tips before beginning your essay or personal statement.
Writing Tips
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Check the Rules. Read the instructions for the essay in the college application packet. One of the most common mistakes is to miss requirements about the length or formatting of the essay. Remember, almost all colleges want you to send your essay with your completed application form.
Start Early and Revise Often. Start your essay at least one or two months before it is due. If possible, use a computer or word processor so revisions are easy. Your first draft will be revised many times so don't feel frustrated by the writing process. Instead, it should be a starting point for you to begin telling your story.
You may want to begin by writing down many thoughts and then selecting the most important. Or, you may prefer to make an outline and expand it according to the length requirements. Be prepared to write at least 10 drafts and to have several people review your various drafts.
Once you have read and revised your essay several times, put it away for a week or so. After the rest period, think again about what you want the admissions committee to know about you. Write this down, then take out your essay and read it again. Does it convey what you want to say? If not, you may have to start all over again or cut out large parts of your first draft. This is okay; writing requires flexibility, and sometimes you will have to eliminate things that you liked because they don't relate to your overall message.
Be Clear and Focused. Your essay should be focused and tell a cohesive story. With each revision, your essay should be more focused, have smooth transitional statements, and present a more cohesive story. Every main thought should be followed by a logical transition that connects to the next main thought.
Be Distinctive. Write an essay that distinguishes you from other applicants. Any applicant could write, "I have always wanted to go to college to further my education," or "I have always wanted to be a doctor." The following sentence is more personal and gives insight into an applicant's background: "I first became interested in becoming a doctor when Daniel, my little brother, was hospitalized for an infected foot after he got caught on a barbed wire fence while being chased by a bull." The more personal your essay is, the more compelling it is for the reader.
Be Specific. This will help the reader remember you. Suppose you are writing about a patient you met during your volunteer work at a local hospital. Rather than writing, "One patient made a lasting impression on me," provide more details and write, "A young Latina woman who had been burned in a car accident made a lasting impression on me and influenced my future career goals." Or, if you are writing about a teacher who was instrumental in encouraging you to apply to college, you might write, "Mr. Wright, my high school biology teacher, was the first to suggest that I might attend college."
Avoid details that weigh your point down, such as, "Mr. Wright, my high school biology teacher, noticed my intense interest in science during my sophomore year and took me aside one afternoon to talk with me. He was the first to suggest that I might attend college and encouraged me to take classes in biology, chemistry, physics, and other sciences." By including extra detail in your essay that is not important, you slow the pace down and lose the impact of what you are trying to say.
Include Powerful Experiences. By including strong images, especially ones that have influenced your education or career goals, you make the essay you are writing interesting and relevant to the reader. The experience can be told in several sentences, but it should paint a lasting image. These experiences may be related to a hardship you have overcome or an experience that influenced your life. Students have written about how living in foster care, caring for a parent with a serious illness, or living in a refugee camp contributed to their initiative and changed their attitudes about an issue or group of people. Other students have written about how seeing a young teenager die from AIDS or an elderly patient learn to speak after having a stroke inspired their commitment to pursuing a health career.
Be Enthusiastic, but Reasonable. Show your enthusiasm, passion or commitment about causes, but be reasoned and logical in your discussions. You may feel strongly about a human rights or health care issue, such as the need for guaranteed health care for all Americans. Discuss your personal views, provide supporting evidence, and propose how you would address the problem, but do so without "preaching."
Be Yourself! Most important, be honest and be yourself! Admissions officers want to accept students who will be successful at their school and contribute to its environment. They want to recruit students from backgrounds who will diversify their student body and if you sound like their type of candidate, then it will be an advantageous situation for both you and the college!
Review Your Final Version Carefully. When you have completed the final version of your essay, read it carefully and ask:
- Is there a strong introduction that sets the stage for a memorable essay?
- Is the topic sentence of each paragraph clear and do the rest of the sentences in the paragraph support the topic sentence?
- Are all of my thoughts connected in a logical fashion?
- Is the essay focused and cohesive?
- Does my unique voice come through; does the essay sound like me?
- Is the grammar correct?
- Have I done a final "spell check" on a computer?
- Have I re-read the final version carefully to be sure the "spell check" didn't substitute any incorrect words?
- As a final check, give your essay to an English teacher or someone with a background in grammar and spelling to make sure that you haven't made any avoidable mistakes.
- Be sure to keep a printed copy of your final version.
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Specific Suggestions About Your Essay
Readers look for certain areas of content that reflect your life experiences, intellect, work and volunteer experiences, extracurricular activities, and personal characteristics. The following offers you more tips on content areas, some of which you may write about.
1. Academic Preparation and Scholarly Experiences
Include details about significant classes, research projects, and experiences that have contributed to your intellectual development. Do not simply list your classes, grades, and academic honors since this information can be found elsewhere in your application and resume. Instead, describe how specific experiences led to your future academic and career interests. For example, you may have experienced hunger as a child and then been inspired by your high school science teacher to complete a science fair project on childhood nutrition. You may have then shared your findings with children in an elementary school class by teaching them the importance of eating a healthy diet. These collective experiences gave you leadership experience and led to your interest in nutrition as a field of study.
You can use your essay to explain any academic challenges you have faced and why – and thus provide reasons for any low grades. You might mention how you had limited time to focus on school because you were working to contribute to your family's income. Any example such as this should emphasize what you learned from the experience and how you intend to use this knowledge to help you succeed in college.
You can also use your essay to explain any instances where you have sought educational opportunities. If your high school had a limited number of advanced college preparatory classes be sure to mention this. Because of this, perhaps you were motivated to do independent reading on your own or take classes at your local community college. This shows your initiative and your seriousness about your education.
2. Life Experiences
Take time to reflect on your life, identifying some key aspects of your childhood and adolescence, as well as personal challenges you may have overcome. Some students are hesitant to share their personal experiences, but these are exactly what the admissions committee wants to see. You might begin by describing obstacles or barriers that you experienced to higher education and then describe how these circumstances shaped your future decisions and strengthened your desire to attend college.
One student began her essay as follows: She and a friend were in middle school and leaving school on a hot spring day. As they left the building, a homeless man crawled out of a trash bin and looked at them and said, "you need to get an education so you will always have enough to eat." This was the first time she had thought about college, and it inspired her and became a great introductory paragraph for her college essay.
If you are first in your family to attend college, be sure to mention this, since your path to college has been more challenging and different from a student whose parents are college educated.
3. Intellectual Curiosity
You may be able to remember an experience that demonstrates your intellectual curiosity, maybe an incident that highlights your interest in science and medicine. A simple, ordinary experience may provide an example. Suppose that during high school you became fascinated by the intricacies of the human body and the interrelationship of the organs and systems of the body. You then found a book in your school library that had transparent pages that pictured the various organs and systems of the body. As you laid each page upon the next, a complete human body emerged. This fascinated you, but you were concerned that the mind was not represented. You returned to this book several times, always to wonder about the missing elements and the need for the mental aspects of a person to be integrated with the physical aspects. These concerns led to your interest in both basic and social science classes during high school, and an interest in a college that offers classes on the psychosocial aspects of health.
4. Character
Writing about your personal background gives you the chance to share aspects of your character that have helped you through difficult life experiences. The episodes you discuss should illustrate positive aspects of your character, such as determination, initiative, compassion, or leadership.
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5. Humanitarianism/Caring Experiences
Your essay may mention school and community service, volunteer work, church activities, and any other work you have done to demonstrate your involvement with your school and community. Some examples of humanitarian efforts include volunteering at a homeless shelter, serving as an interpreter at a local clinic, or helping a teacher start an after school tutoring program for low-income youth. Discuss what you learned from these experiences and how you'll relate these experiences to your future plans and goals. If you have several experiences, it may be best to pick the most substantial experience and add details about your involvement, rather than choosing several experiences and not having enough room to provide details.
6. Leadership
Leadership examples can take many forms, and it is helpful to show how your leadership evolved and grew stronger during your high school years. You may have assumed a leadership role in your family, peer group, church, or neighborhood. Have you cared for your sisters and brothers when your parents were at work? Have you been a mentor to a younger person in your community? Have you ever organized a group of students to serve meals at a senior center? Were you a member of a sports team where you led and motivated your teammates? These can all be great examples of leadership skills.
7. Work or Volunteer Experiences
Do you have any work or volunteer experience related to the type of academic and/or field of study you want to pursue? What did these experiences teach you about yourself? Did the experiences lead to classes or other activities that helped you refine your choice? Perhaps you helped a teacher when he or she organized a series of evening programs for non-English speaking parents about their child's college admissions process. This experience showed you that you enjoy teaching and interacting with people from diverse cultures. Whatever your work or volunteer experience, try to show how your time spent has helped refine your current ambitions.
8. Vision
Do you have a sense of what you'd like to do in the future? What is your vision regarding your further academic training or your career goals? Explaining your goals in your essay can be a way for you to convince an admissions committee why their school is the right place for you. For example, if you want to major in science and eventually become a doctor, you should mention that you are interested in a college that has a strong science department and community clinical opportunities. Knowing what a school has to offer can be a way to show that you are a serious candidate who has done your homework.
9. Influential People
When you write about your career goals, you might want to mention a pivotal person or experience that influenced your interest in higher education or a particular career. Perhaps you worked at a local pharmacy and the pharmacist became your mentor and advised you about classes to take and how to apply for local scholarships. A person who was influential in your goals for higher education does not necessarily have to be someone who is close to you or with whom you have had a lot of contact, but the person should be someone who made you think about your potential and your future.
10. Interest In a Specific College and Your Potential Contributions
Finally, you may want to conclude your essay with a statement or two that reflect your knowledge of the college where you are applying, and potential contributions you may make to the college. If you selected a college because of its strong emphasis on the sciences and its volunteer opportunities with local underserved communities you might write, "I am particularly interested in your school because...and believe I will be an asset because...." This statement shows that you are familiar with the strengths of the college and explains how you might make a difference if admitted. Again, you want these statements to flow from your previous thoughts.
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Finding Summer Activities or Jobs That Help Prepare You for College
Think of your summer break from school as an opportunity to add to your resume and make you a stronger college applicant. If you are interested in possibly pursuing a career in healthcare, why not try to get a summer job or internship in a local hospital? If science is your strong suit, why not try for a job in a local science lab like the Environmental Protection Agency? Look around your area for summer opportunities that will give you more real-world experience.
SMYSP Alumni Examples
- Sample Resume
- Sample: How to Request a Letter of Recommendation
- Example Awards List
- Student college essay/personal statements:
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Current or Recent College Students: Talk to any college students you know about how they are financing their education. They may be able to help you find financial aid sources or point you toward someone who can give you more information.
Financial Aid Organizations and Web Sites
There are many resources you can use as you research financial aid. A number of organizations have Web sites that may help you in your quest for financial aid. They are listed on our Helpful Links page. Or you can do an internet search (see eHow.com for tips on internet searches) for sites that may be able to help you find scholarships and other sources of aid.
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