Workshop: Filling Out the Common Application

Great Showtime.

Oh yeah.

Here they come.

Hello.

70

We're going to break 100.

Hi everybody.

Hello everyone, we're gonna wait just a minute or two while people fill the virtual room, but thank you so much for joining us. I guess we can probably get rolling with introductions, so my name is Adam Vandersloot I use he him pronouns. I work at McAllister. I'm also know lum.

Of Mac, so I graduated 2005 in generally my recruitment territory is the North East of the United States. On down to Washington DC along the coast, skipping over New York and I will let my friend and colleague Ben introduce himself.

Hello good morning, Good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are zooming in from today, my name is Ben Kaufman. I am one of the assistant director of admission here at Mac class of 2016 graduate. I'm in my 4th year in the admissions profession. My recruitment territory is what I lovingly call the American West. Now, depending on how you define that, it could be a little bit different, but I have the entire Rocky Mountain range within my region, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, pretty much the entire western third of the country.

Except for California, California is handled by another of our colleagues and friends, Ross, but if you're from the Pacific Northwest or anywhere in the Rocky Mountain region or Alaska for that matter. Hello, I am your primary Rep. I also in charge of northern Minnesota, which mostly means anywhere North of the Twin Cities Metro area where we're located.

Looks like we've relatively stabilized participant numbers just under 100 here. Really excited about that.

Yeah.

I think we're ready.

Yeah, I think we can kind of get rolling so this is the last in our summer series of Workshop Wednesdays. Hello Nicholas.

Uh, actually, that's one of the first things I want to talk to you all about is you should see on your screen on the left hand side, a chat chat function, as well as a questions feature. If you could use the questions feature to ask any questions that we might might be able to answer for you as we go along, that would be a great place to go.

We will try and answer questions in the chat while we're presenting, but for the most part we're going to answer them at the end, we're going to leave plenty of time for those questions. As far as an agenda goes, this is kind of what it's going to look like. I know for some of you, especially if you're on your mobile devices, might be a little bit small and we apologize for that. But to start, we're going to talk about COVID-19 as it relates to the common application, as well as some new things to the common app this year, then were to.

Literally just going to go through some screenshots of the common app and the different sections there and talk you through what it looks like in in. Particularly give you a few tips about what to do, or maybe what not to do at the end will wrap up with just some other considerations, and then as promised, do some of those questions before we begin as a way of honoring the land and its people's. I want to acknowledge that McAllister is located in St Paul, MN on the occupied homelands of the Dakota people.

We're going to spend, you know.

A lot of time talking about like the common happen about college and for us we want to highlight where we are. It's an acknowledgement that is part of who McAllister is as a community. We make a similar acknowledgement at the beginning of pretty much any event on campus. So after our workshop today and again will be here as long as you have questions for us. I also encourage you all to take a look at where you are and maybe look at some of the history of the landlord.

Where you are currently as well. So without any further ado COVID-19 and other changes. So the first thing I want to highlight about the common app and COVID-19 is that there is actually new this year and knock on wood, hopefully only for this year there is a question about COVID-19 and the impact it has had on you. This is for we want to hear bout that both personally and academics.

Academically, so obviously many of you, if not all of you had a disruption to your academic experience and we want to know about how that went, but also beyond that it's had an impact on your life in general. So that question is there for you to answer. Your school counselors will also be asked to answer that question, so they're going to provide a little bit of context for us as far as what it looked like for COVID-19.

At school in general, some other changes.

New mobile app. So for those of you who are again on a mobile device right now, you can actually log into the common app through their app app. I don't know if that's not, you know what I mean.

It's kind of funny common app. Common app app. Anyway, sorry, I'm done with that new thing. Also this year is a partnership with reach higher. That's an organization that's working on college access, so in partnership with the common app they have put together.

A list of resources for you that you can access on the common app website, including info about application fees, scholarships, financial aid, etc. So those are some of the highlights there.

And so with that without any further ado, we will move to the common app itself.

Oh real quick. I forgot to mention.

In relation to question. So there are a couple 100 of you out there which is really great. We're excited that you've joined us. You each are unique people and so you have your own unique story that you want to tell through the application. We would love it if you have very specific questions about your situation. If you would email us after the presentation as it pertains to this presentation, we would. If you have any general questions that might be more useful for the larger group. Those are the kinds of questions we'd love to get during the presentation itself, but again.

If you have really specific questions for us that are more related to yours unique situation, we would love to answer those by email.

Alright, so this is the profile page, so here you'll see there's personal info, contact details, demographics, language, your geography, where you are, and then if you qualify for a fee waiver. So this is an opportunity for me to point out that McAllister no longer has a fee for their application. Some schools have also gone that route with some schools will still have a fee when you apply. If that is the case.

Often times they might have a fee waiver for which you could qualify by filling out a pre application form or for other circumstances that you might want to look into.

This is the profile page is where we start to get sort of baseline information about each student, and so things that stand out on this page are for example, I'll highlight it here demographics and this is where we get to find out a little bit about your identity.

And who you are.

Generally, we think about this as diversity and so a counselor. We're trying to think about making sure that we have a class that looks as much like the rest of the country as possible, and this is the page where you would let us know about that.

The next thing that we want to highlight here is other languages spoken, so that's highlighted here in the language portion, you'll note that there are different categories here of spoke like languages that are your first language, but also languages that you've learned in school annual have to self assess your fluency in that those are great things to put down, though, even if you're like, oh, I'm not quite fluent, we still want to know that you've learned the language enough to feel like you're at least conversational, so you can put that in this place.

Geography and citizenship, so that's located here as well. So this is where you tell us, like where you are from in the country, common mistakes to avoid, so make sure you identify as honestly as possible so.

We want to give everybody the benefit of doubt that you would do that in the 1st place, but we do sometimes see applications where students are stretching a little bit to identify, maybe in a different way than they might otherwise, and so we just want to make sure that you know that that's not a great idea, that it'll it'll show up in the application in different ways and it doesn't really always put you in the best light. The second thing is just to highlight again.

A mistake that we see sometimes. The students might not add on those second or even third languages that you speak. We want to know about those. That kind of is part of your story and who you are, so make sure you're adding that when you get to that section.

Next to the family page, then take it away.

Hello, thank you Adam. Alright so we'll talk about how the family section and we realize that there is a lot of information that we're throwing at you. Hear the common app is very robust so we are going to run through this as efficiently as we can and then answer questions along the way. Next slide.

Yeah.

Thank you Sir. Alright, so the family section. This is what the page looks like like in the print is pretty small but you can see the headers there. Basically asked what kind of household do you live in? Do you live with both parents who are married? Both parents who might be unmarried but you still live with both from your parents separated parents divorced is apparent deceased things along those lines and this is where we really get information. Just little bit of information about your family background.

What kinds of occupations do your parents have?

You know what do they do? This context really is important for us, in large part because it's not so much about you know us. Focusing on what your parents do or don't do, but it gives us some context as to the kind of background that you might be coming from. Did your parents go to college? Are you a first generation student? Did your parents immigrate to this country and are you the first generation American in your family? These are the types of piece of information that help us to inform what kind of experiences have you had so far in your life based on.

These demographic pieces, these family pieces and therefore what what might be. What might we expect? You didn't to ask for as far as resources. Some colleges have resources on their campus, for example, specifically for first generation college students. If your first Gen student and you put that on your application that your parents don't have a college degree, that tells us something that tells us, OK, here's a student who you know really might. Utilizzare Bonner Scholars program, which is specifically for first generation college students, for example.

We also can learn about international backgrounds from the family page. Again, are you the children of immigrants? Did you immigrate to this country yourself? Are you an international student? What kind of context do you fall into? Their the context that you provide on this family page really is not going to be used to determine your admission. Where not going to like look at your family history and decide if that makes you good enough for McAllister or any other college for that matter. But it just helps to inform an overall picture that we're trying to get a view as the student. We're really trying to.

Understand your entire journey or entire story, not just the numbers, and understand a little bit about your family. Context can also help us to understand a little bit about what types of experiences you may have and what types of perspectives you might bring to our community as well.

Education page item. You want me to keep rolling with this one?

Yeah.

You're on mute. I can sort of read your lips, but that's OK.

Uh, so.

Yeah.

I forgot how we had split things up so we can roll with it OK?

We're all good we're rolling it will roll their education page. OK, so now this is where we get into some of the data that admissions officers admissions counselors really are going to dive into really are going to look at critically. You can see at a brief glance here. This has you list different high schools you may have gone too. It's OK, I've been to more than one high school. That's totally normal. Feel free to list them all here. This is also self reporting class rank GPA. If your schools do rank and or GPA and also self reporting the courses.

That you'll be taking your senior year now. I do want to make it clear distinction here. Please please, please. And for those who have already started filling out the common app over the summer here, this might be an easy trap to fall into. Please make sure to list your senior year courses here. Sometimes we see a student will list their junior year courses on this education page. Well, that doesn't tell us anything new. We get your junior courses on your transcript. What we're really looking for is your senior year courses. This also might include information if you're part of a campus based organization. The CBO.

If you're part of an organization like avid or trio upward bound or college possible, just to name a few examples, this would be a place to note down these types of organizations that you might be a part of that help you that helps students with test prep or with access to college admissions and to college success in general. So that's an important piece for us to think about. Are you part of one of these organizations? Some colleges and universities do actually have direct partnerships with campus based organizations that might connect to specific scholarships.

For students who are involved with those organizations, so those are things to think about as well. Just make sure you let us know if your partner of an organization like that feel free to tell us. We'd love to know that information, and then apart this certainly under utilized on the education section is there's a place for you to list different academic achievements and academic awards and honors that you have earned during your time in high school. It's very common for us to see in a recommendation letter, for example, from a teacher or counselor. This student is part of this organization. There part of National Honor Society and they have achieved this.

Award

but the student themselves might not tell us about that. Please, please tell us about these amazing achievements because it really does not only highlight you and your academic potential your academic caliber, but it also makes us feel good when we're reading application to see. Here's a student who is a national merit semifinalist as an example, or here's a student who is earned an award for most improved student on their athletic team. For example, we love to read about these things. We love to see these things on an application, so please don't be shy. Don't feel like you're.

Bragging about yourself, you are just telling us. Here are my credentials and we love to hear about these words. These achievements for some common mistakes that we see in the education page already mentioned one about listing, not your senior courses. Please list or senior courses and we do sometimes see that maybe the senior year schedule you list doesn't actually match the schedule on your transcript. We are largely going to look at your transcript as the official document for the classes your taking your senior year, so please don't.

You know, make up a class that you're not taking. Do your best to be as honest as you can. We do understand there are situations where maybe you put down your senior year class list and it is accurate at the time that you submitted it.

And then maybe a couple months later, a couple weeks later your schedule changes a little bit. Maybe there's a class that you withdrew from or class that you added later in the semester. Just go ahead and send us an email at our admissions office and that goes for any college you apply to send an email saying, hey, I know that on my on my common app I submitted my schedule as this. There's been a slight change here. Is the change just let us know. Be as transparent as you can. We want to. We want to put as much faith in you as a student anan. We really do believe that.

The vast majority of applicants are going to be honest on their applications and part of giving us confidence in that is if something changes, just let us know and please do try to report as accurately as you can in the moment and then again make sure to take advantage of the honors and achievements section. That certainly is a piece that we love to see and hopefully you should feel good about reporting these fun things as part of your academic journey.

Alright, now we're going to get to a big piece of the common app, and this is the transcript now.

Is there forever supposed to jump in?

Yeah, so please go for it.

OK, sorry everybody, I messed this up Ben Ben knows what he's doing actually.

You're all good Adam. It's all good.

So related to the education page, kind of what Ben was just talking bout with your classes. We will get a transcript where we will see a list of classes. The reason that there is a place for you to fill out your classes and that we also get a list of your classes through transcript as we just that's a really important part of your story and your academic picture, especially so we just want to make sure that we have it right. As you can imagine with what's happening with the pandemic, classes are changing, some classes are no longer being.

Offered so we just want to make sure that we're getting that full picture, which is why we're going to cross reference those. So this is an example of a train script.

You'll see, so they don't all look the same, but often times they'll have. You know at the top somewhere a GPA as well as a class rank. So that's something that we're going to look at kind of right off the bat and again, for all intents and purposes purposes, you've completed three or four years of high school right now this is all sort of already there. We just want to be really transparent about like what it is we're looking for, and what that might look like for you and different things that you might want to highlight as a result.

I'm also going to highlight here so on this transcript you'll see that we see a lot of aids, but there's also a couple season in a couple like lower be so so lower grades will obviously be noticed. There is a section in the common app for you to talk about any sort of disruption in your academic record, and maybe why that's happened 'cause we want to know about that. Life happens sometimes. A family issue comes up, sometimes mental health makes it really difficult to.

Be a successful in the classroom as we'd like to be, but we want to know that because outside of that context, we don't necessarily have that full story. And then you'll see here on the right again. Apologies that it's so small, but highlighting their AP classes so going back to what we were talking about earlier with the school with your education page later, we're going to talk about your school profile, which is important for us to know, like what kinds of classes are available to you. I know a lot of you are at schools where there are no AP classes. That's totally OK.

Because where we're not going to be looking at your academics compared to the most difficult class load possible, we're going to be looking at what's the most difficult, most rigorous class load available to you at your high school.

So again, the transcript is usually the first thing that we're going to look at. Just because the again, the academics are so important.

Grades, trends and rigor again, or what we're looking at, so overall, your grades. We also are really interested to see if you've had some rough grades. If they happen earlier in high school, that's going to matter to us that you know maybe the beginning of high school was a little bit tough, but since then you've been able to figure it out. And also, how are you doing in some of those tougher classes? That's going to matter as well.

What that means for you right now, just some advice is if you have a chance to enroll in some of the tougher classes in your senior year right now, like that can make a difference for you. We always say that we would much rather see you taking a really tough class load and maybe add a few bees then straight A's where we know that there's some tougher classes out there, but you're not really putting in the work that way. So again, I want to highlight that if any, if you if you feel shaky about anything on your transcript.

Be sure to explain it a little bit in the application. There's plenty of space for that, again through the covid question or through sort of the sort of academic disruption question as been already talked about. Make sure there's your your your listing as your courses matches up with your transcript, and similarly like, be thoughtful about like how your academic performance is going to inform, like what your academic goals are going to be so.

Thoughtful about you know if you want to be a, you know a quantum physicist.

And the worst grade you've ever gotten is in physics. We're going to kind of look at that and think.

I don't know how well that's going to necessarily. Again, always want to highlight if you're avoiding the rigor available to you after school were going to notice that, and again, if that's kind of in your story so far, that's OK. There's still time. Senior year is actually a great place to show us that you want to challenge yourself, in part because it could be a time where it can be easy to take the foot off the pedal a little bit.

Next is the testing page, so some of you have been asking questions about that in the questions tab. So McAllister is test optional. We will be test optional for you know now and forever more.

Lot of schools are going test optional for the long term, but certainly in the in the short term in part because as many of you have mentioned.

It's pretty tough to to be able to take a test right now. You know that AC, T and S80 have been canceling their testing opportunities left and right, and so if you're not able to take the test, you know how can that be held against you. So for the most part, there's a lot of test optional things happening right now. For those of you who are applying to schools that require a test and that you've taken a test, what we would look at is the overall Test score, but also certainly like specific subjects where maybe there's been a bit of a struggle.

And so that's what's highlighted here on on this page.

I will say that at Macalester you know test we are going test optional in part because we have for the past several years been doing a holistic review of the application, which means there's no one thing that either makes or breaks an application and that would still be true. If you're somebody who submits your test score because you know that it's really strong, that in itself won't be what gets you into Macau store. We're going to want to look at your full academic record as well. Here to context is going to be important, so we want to understand it with.

In your school context, an also understanding that some people just aren't very good at taking tests, and that's OK, that doesn't often times necessarily mean that you won't be a great student at McAllister.

Again, larger schools are moving to the test optional option.

Again, to avoid the common mistakes to avoid, don't let the test score sort of drive the conversation. Whether it's again, could be really good test score, or it could be really bad test score. There's a lot more about you that we care about than just your test score, and that goes both ways, so don't let the test score kind of freak you out, especially knowing that it's pretty hard right now to to get a test taken. If you would like to.

Back to you Ben right.

OK, great.

Yeah.

Yeah, alright thank you Adam and I do want to mention before I jump into this next portion we have been fielding a ton, a ton of questions. Thank you so much for those. Keep sending them in. Will try to get to as many as we can answer along the way and answer some. At the end. I do want to point out that we are going to filter the questions a little bit if there are questions that come in that we may answer later in the presentation will go ahead and hold off on those for now and also there are some questions that really would be helpful for the entire group as part of the Q&A at the end.

So there might be some that we hand pick to talk about more extensively in the Q&A portion as opposed to just be of the text box. So with that, you'll notice we sorted, just talked a lot about your academics. We talked about transcript test scores. Before that we talked a little bit about demographic information. Now we're going to move into another part of the common app section, which really talks about extracurriculars, will get into essays a little bit, and this is really going to be where admissions counselors or unpacking some of the Intangibles.

Of your application of you as a person when we say Intangibles, We mean the things that are not as easy to grasp just by looking at one piece of data. So something that would be tangible would be your test score or your GPA. Something that we look at Psych. OK, you have a 3.5, we know what that means. It's a 3.5 weighted unweighted. We know what that means to.

Something that would be intangible would be, well, what kind of personality do you have? What kind of character traits do you have? That's not something that can be easily defined, but can also come through many pieces. Your application starting with the extra curricular activities page that will talk about here. So in the common app you have a space to list the activities have been involved in. This includes work experiences, volunteer experiences, school clubs, projects.

Things that you might be involved in. Internships, opportunities like that as you'll see here, an example of activity would be you're the president of the Chinese club at your high school. Awesome, and there's an opportunity for you to provide a little bit of a description for you to tell us how long have you been involved in this in this activity? Have you done it for multiple years for one year? Have you done it? For how many hours a week do you do? This? One thing we do want to note here is when you're selecting the number of years that you've done this, it only applies to your years in high school.

So if you didn't activity that started in 7th grade and you did it all the way through 10th grade.

We're only going to see here that you did this in 9th and 10th. We're not going to consider what you did in Middle School for your activities, but it's so might be helpful to tell us in the description. I've been doing this for five years, even though I can only list two of 'em just to give us a little more context. And then you'll see on this slide underneath where it says the number of hours per week. There's a line that says continue. You might be thinking, OK, what does that mean? Well, when you fill out the common app and you put in your activity Chinese club number of years, there's an option for you to check a box that says do you want to continue this?

In college, if you check that box then we on the emission side will see continue and be like Oh so this is an activity that this student hopes to continue to do or something along those lines when they get to College in other words, we see. Here's something you've done in high school. That's awesome. And here's how you also might contribute to our community when you get to McAllister or wherever else that may be moving on to the next page, then some more examples. Faith communities certainly an opportunity to tell us about faith. Community are part of, especially if it has deep meaning for you in your life.

Any career oriented experiences again like a job or internship. Something along those lines, a fellowship, an apprentice ship. These are all things that we'd love to see and hear about in the activities list.

And now let's actually talk about some points related to the extracurriculars. We're really looking not just at the titles.

We're looking for the impact that your activity has on who you are and what kind of personality. What kind of community contributions you'll add to McAllister or any other colleges that you apply to. So it's really just. It really is important to add a description to what you're doing within that so that we see OK president Chinese club great. Well, we know what that means, but what exactly do you do? Do you organize the meetings? Do you keep track of paperwork? Do you try and recruit new people to join the Chinese club? Give us a little bit more information about.

What exactly you do as part of that activity so that again we try and get as much information as we can to understand you as much as possible activities like having a job. Again, please put that on the activities list. That's important. Something that some students don't realize is you may have a lot of responsibilities at home. You may have parents who both work late into the evening, late into the night, and maybe you were in charge as the oldest sibling of coming home after school taking care of younger siblings, making dinner, cleaning the house, doing the dishes.

Helping your younger siblings with their homework.

That's a major responsibility that takes a lot of time, and it also gives you a lot of leadership experience in really managing the household. Please tell us that in your activities list, this is absolutely considered an extracurricular activity because of how meaningful it is in your life. You know you may not realize at this moment how important that is to you and to the things that you do, but this is absolutely something that we want to know about. Are you with primary caretaker for your siblings? Are the primary caretaker for a parent or grandparent in the household? These are things that you might not think of as.

Activities, but there absolutely things that you should tell us about as an activity as a way that you spend your time because it helps us to think about.

Who is this person? What are they doing outside of School? What are they doing after class? Are they able to participate in school clubs or do they not participate in school clubs? Because maybe you have to spend so much time at home with these responsibilities. Please tell us that. Please let us know those things again if you're involved in the campus based organization like avid trio upward bound college. Possible many other examples, please put that here as well and then some common mistakes.

Again, please add a description. Please make sure when you're adding in these descriptions and when you're putting your tiles reactivities to spell, check to proofread the number of times just in one application cycle that we pull up and activities list. An nothing is capitalized. There's no punctuation run on sentence is no commas. I, as in I do something. I am the president of Chinese club and you don't capitalize I.

Think of when you write messy.

You need punctuation. You need capitalization. You need it to look good. You need it to look professional. That is how every piece of your common app should look, including the essays which we'll get to in just a second here. But on the activities list for sure, make sure you capitalize. Make sure you proofread, because that is going to give us an impression of who you are. If we look at activities list and nothing is capitalized, there's no punctuation. We're going to wonder if you really took the time to do the application. If you really care about doing this application, we are going to wonder that we are going to ask those questions. So just make sure you put your best foot forward.

And then we get to the essays where obviously you should be proofreading this, of course, but will talk about sort of what essays you can expect to be looking through and doing for those who have already started working on your college essays. That's awesome. Amazing congratulations for those who have not yet started. That's OK. It is not too late. You have time, but it's never too early to start thinking about these essays. So for the common app, you will be required to submit one personal essay. This essay is, I think, about 500 to 650 words or so.

And there are seven different prompts to choose from. Atom. I put a link in our presentation notes if you wanted to copy and paste that link for the audience here. This link for those in the audience will take you to the common app website where they list the seven different essay prompts you can choose from. You only choose one prompt. You write that essay and that essay that one personal statement as part of your common app will be sent to all of the colleges that you apply to through the common app.

Will get some tips and tricks about that in just a couple minutes, but one personal essay. Choose one of the prompts. Run with it. Really make it personal now some colleges, McAllister included. Have a supplemental essay or multiple supplemental essays in some cases where colleges might really want to get to know you specifically and why you're interested in that institution. So the personal essay is sent off to as many different schools as you want, up to 20 through the common app, and that's a pretty general. You know you're not going to specifically say I want to go to McAllister because.

Because that essay is also going to other schools. In addition, McAllister, so schools like Mac, we want to know. OK, so here's your personal essay. Great, we learn about you.

But we also want to learn about why are you interested in Mac specifically?

So that's where some schools will have a supplemental essays. At Mac, we call it a background essay where this prompt. This example here are products used to be along the lines of, you know, at McAllister we value cultural difference. We value multiculturalism. We value internationalism and global citizenship. What experiences have you had that might inform?

The way that you engage with the experience at McAllister the way that McAllister can help you in your journey. So that's what this example shows. Here are proof that we have now. This is our second year with a newer prompt, asks about our location. We are one of the very very few small liberal Arts and Sciences. College is located in an urban area in a city.

So what about our location? Makes you think that McAllister can help you grow can help you be successful. Can help you thrive for your next years in college specific to Mac, we want to know why Mac based on a location other schools might have supplemental essays that are, you know, why do you want to hear some schools go a little more creative route and say instead of asking why are you interested in our college? What we'll do is we'll have a very specific, narrow, creative prompt that.

Specific to our college that we want to ask you when are applying to colleges? There's a college essay question I answered. It was relate Plato, the Greek philosopher, to play to the kids, sort of putty like toy that you play with. How do you relate playdough to Plato, super creative, super quirky, super out of the box these the types of questions that you can expect of a supplemental essay, Max is more specific to our location.

Not every college has a supplemental essay, but more many of the more selective colleges will have some kind of supplemental essay or multiple essays yet different out.

Alright, now we got to some of the tips and pointers related to the essays, whether the personal essay and or supplements as well.

Please answer in these essays any questions that might pop up on our minds, or if there's any inconsistencies in the application. So, for example, let's say you have a straight a record.

Except for 1C Plus in AP calculus.

And maybe you really want to tell us what happened in that calculus class. Maybe there was something with the way that the teacher taught the class. Or maybe there was something about the content itself that really took you awhile to grapple with. If that's a story that you feel like is something that shows determination shows resilience, shows you struggling with this content, and then you grew and became better because of it, that's something you can tell us in the essay. Something about an experience that was challenging for you that maybe now you feel better about yourself.

Because you came out the other end as a better scholar, as a better student is better person. That's something that that those are types of stories that colleges generally might like to hear the personal essay again will be sent to all of your colleges. This is something to be mindful. Love, let's say for example, that Stanford University is your top choice and you write personal essay and it's all about Stanford. It's all about how you want to go to Stanford in Stanford is amazing. Stanford is my top choice.

And that's your personal essay. Great, awesome.

But then that essay also gets sent to UC Davis and the University of Washington and Harvard. Anne McAllister.

We're going to see that essay in the essay is clearly written to Stanford, and I'm going to see that, and I'm going to say, Well, do you even want to come to McAllister? Your essay is about Stanford.

That's where the supplemental essays come in. Supplemental essays are your place to really say. Here's why I want to go to this college.

Whatever it may be, keep the personal essay broad as far as catering it to a specific college. The personal essay should really about be about you. A piece of your story, a piece of your journey as much as possible. Then the supplemental essay will be more specific to you wanting to go to a specific college or University.

So common mistakes to avoid. In addition to that is redundancy at Max. Sometimes we see a really nice personal essay about maybe that one time that you did a trip overseas and open your eyes for whatever. Many reasons. That's a very common essay topic, but we see that an OK great there's. There's an essay.

And then we say, OK, well, here's what you wrote for the personal essay. Why did you write for the supplement? the Mac specific supplement about our location?

And we look at that supplement and it's literally a copy and paste of your personal essay.

That's not going to look great.

If a college asked for an additional essay and their supplement, please write an additional essay. I understand you folks are busy senior years. Incredibly busy. There's a lot going on and.

You are applying to go to college. It's kind of like applying for a job. You want to put your best foot forward so when we ask for another essay, please write another essay. Please put time into that essay and effort and energy in the essay. Just as you do with your personal statement, I think something that I hear from with a lot of students is.

Well, my personal essay my common app essay. We wrote this for English class. It was edited by peers. It was edited by the teacher. It's been workshopped. It is polished over and over again. It's ready to go.

Your supplemental essays should have that same level of quality and that same level of editing and proofreading, because for McAllister and for other schools, the supplemental essay will be just as important as the personal essay that the common app has you, right? So keep that in mind, and the last piece here.

For the personal essay in particular, and also for the supplements is this app this assay? This application? This is about you. This is about you, the applicant. We want to hear about you. We want to hear about your strengths, your weaknesses, your challenges, your triumphs.

And sometimes that doesn't come through the essay. Sometimes we see essays where maybe you write it a story about your grandmother and how influential your grandmother was and how cool she is, and the things that she did with her life. And that's my grandmother.

But what does that tell us about you?

Write your grandmother is not the one applying to McAllister or to any other college. You're the one applying. You can still write about your grandmother and how influential she was, but how is she influential to you? How did she impact the way that you approach your life? How did she and the things that she did really inspire you and the things that you want to do. Make sure these essays are about you because you are the one applying to these colleges.

Who ha lot of information about essays were getting through to the end here? Which is great and then we'll try and get through as many questions as we can other considerations. This will be how we wrap up here. These are other things to think about that are part of the application process that you may or may not have control of yourself that you should be mindful of.

First and foremost, there's something called school context.

Colleges most colleges certainly McAllister and other small private liberal Arts and Sciences. College is at the very least do their best to try and understand the type of high school that you were coming from and try and understand what you have had available to you in your high school journey.

So for example.

The high school I went to had an AP Advanced Placement academic curriculum. There were probably 9 or 10 AP courses that we can choose from. We could not take AP courses until our junior in high school and so most students by the time they graduated had taken no anywhere from 2 AP's to five or six a piece. Depending on how robust you wanted your schedule to be.

Well, understanding that you know student from my high school would take about that many APS and that's that's pretty good. That's rigorous. Well, you know my neighbor in high school in the town over they did not have the AP curriculum.

So does that mean that a student from that high school is is, you know, a lower caliber student? Absolutely not, that's not what that means. All that means is when we in admissions Revere application, we're going to take your school context into account. Does your school offer APS awesome?

We're going to hope that you've taken some of those that you've challenged yourself by taking those, and hopefully done well. Does your school offer IB the International Baccalaureate program? If so, have you taken any of those classes to challenge yourself? If you go to school that has none of the above, we're obviously not going to penalize you for not taking an AP class. If your school does not have AP classes were going to look at your school and really, really think about you in your school context to understand what did you have available and given what you had available, what are you going to take?

Now part of how we get that information is your counselor will be sending in a secondary School Report, which we do ask for a school profile. As part of that, not every school has a school profile, but most high schools do. That will tell us what kinds of courses are available, what kinds of you know GPA rankings are available, or if there's a GPA scale, like how many students at your school have a 3.5 to 3.7 have a 3.73 point 93.9 two oh 4.0 the school profile will tell us. Does your high school use unweighted or weighted GPA's?

Is your school in SAT score and AC T school? Do you not do test scores? Do not give grades. This helps us to understand the school context and therefore understand your journey alittle bit more specifically to your individual level.

Recommendation letters of course are part of the application, and actually these will come directly through the common app. We have a whole workshop Wednesday. There's a recording of it available on our website about recommendation letters and how to ask for one and who you might ask for one. So if you haven't already seen that, please take a look at that For more information on rec letters, but regulators will come through the common app. Most colleges will require counsel letter and potentially at least one teacher rec. McAllister requires two teacher Recs from academic core subjects again.

Look at our web and R4 letters of rec for that.

Then there is a space called additional info where you can tell us things that might be a little a typical that affected your journey.

Maybe you had mono mononucleosis and you were sick for a month of school and you missed him on the school.

That's something we want to know because that informs maybe your grades were lower that semester because you had mono.

Well, if we see your grades are lower and you don't tell us why.

We have no reason to think that there was something out of the ordinary. All we're going to think is, well, they just maybe they just didn't do as well this semester and there it is. But if we, if you tell us you have mono, OK, now we have a little more context to why those grades happened, and maybe we'd be a little more flexible with those lower grades because of that additional information you provide.

That could also include if you had a disciplinary violation in school, or if there's a school interruption. For example, my school shut down in the middle of March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and all our grades were virtual for the rest of the semester.

That's something you can tell us that something you should tell us to help us think about.

What is the context around your academic journey? What is the context around your personal journey as well? These kinds of information to share in additional info? One thing I do want to note with disciplinary violation is these are things that you should be telling us about.

No one is, you know, it's not something you're going to be happy about or or that you're going to be impressed with. You know you might feel embarrassed by disciplinary violation, but these are things that we want to know that you should be sharing with us. And colleges are not going to make their decisions based on if you have a disciplinary violation or not, but it helps us to be informed about what you're doing now. Good example would be a student who maybe got suspended for a week of school.

Because they went participated in the global climate strike.

Well, at McAllister specifically speaking, we support our students going to global climate strikes. So if you do that, you get suspended. We're not going to. We're not going to penalize you for that suspension because that's an issue that McAllister we resonate and we care about. You know if you have a disciplinary violation for something that's a little more egregious.

Yeah yeah, I will think about it, but it's not really. It's not going to make or break necessarily your admission, but please tell us something that you do not want to happen is.

Your counselor tells us there is a disciplinary violation and says, well, student supposed to tell you, but I'm just letting you know here it is because her counselor is supposed to tell us that too. But then you don't tell us that's going to make us unfortunately, wonder? Well, why didn't the students tell us about this? Is the student trying to cover up that this happened? Is a student trying to be a little dishonest about this happen? Just let us know. Be transparent, be honest, and trust that we are not going to have that. Be the final decision maker.

In this process.

You are welcome to submit resumes if you'd like to submit portfolios. If you'd like to. One thing I want to know about resumes if you have a resume and you want to submit it, fantastic.

That does not mean that you should not fill out the extra curriculars list. Please fill out the extra curriculars list because we are going to look there to see your experiences. A resume is not supposed to be a substitute for that is supposed to be a supplement to that is supposed to help to flush out that list but still fill out the activities list even if you submit a resume and then with portfolios some schools will accept arts portfolios, music, theater dance portfolios, things along those lines. Some schools may require them depending on what you're applying for. If you're applying specifically to a music Conservatory.

They are going to require a music portfolio that makes sense and McAllister, we don't require one. But if you want to submit a portfolio and art portfolio, you're welcome to do so. It will be looked at and will be part of your entire application file.

And then we'll end where Adams started the presentation with COVID-19.

We know that things are drastically different this year because of kovid. For any of you out there who are current or rising juniors who are thinking about applying next fall, we know that that's also going to be drastically different because of how covid has impacted your high school journey already.

Please know that we will be flexible with things that happen during Kovid And if you have any questions or concerns about your particular circumstance, your particular situation just send us an email to whatever admissions office you're applying to to let them know. Hey, here's the circumstance I'm dealing with. Here is the situation I was experiencing. Use the additional info section on the common app to tell us a little bit about what happened. Just give us some more background information. Some more context. Don't be shy. Don't be afraid of telling us that something didn't go right.

That's part of life. That's part of the journey. And don't be afraid to tell us that something didn't go right because of kovid or because of something else. Just let us know these things. Be as transparent as you can.

Thank you.

Great job in, I'll give you a little breather and and get going on some of the questions. So lots of great questions as Ben was acknowledging earlier.

Again, a lot of you, I totally appreciate that you have some like really specific questions about your specific context. We're going to try and do our best to answer the more general and I put our emails into the chat there. Also up on the screen right now. So please do feel free to email us if you have specific questions about certain classes or certain activities or whatever the case may be. Couple really good questions about our supplement, so the way that the supplement will show up for you is when you are applying you would. There's actually a place in the common app where you add.

The colleges that you're thinking about applying to.

When you do that, the common app knows which schools have which questions, and it will add it to your application. At that point, it doesn't just automatically show up unless you've put the The College in another question about like, I don't see where the supplement is. It will show up if you added McAllister. There also really good logistical thing to point out. You don't have to fill out the application and submit it all in one go. You can. You can save it as you're working on it and then be able to submit it when you feel totally good about everything that you've submitted there.

Can I pay you back on that real quick?

Yes, Absolutely.

I would say.

Total.

Probably not a good idea to just sit down in one block, fill it all out and submit it. Best practice, fill out bits and pieces at a time. Step away for a few days. Come back, take another look with fresh eyes. Have someone else take a look, a friend, a family member, someone at school to take a look that this should be a multi session process of filling out the comment.

Yeah.

Some, a couple of you ask like wait a second does McCausland three supplement essays or we just want great questions so we do in fact have three additional questions, one of which is required, the other two, or sort of up to you to answer as you would like. So the first one has to do with your identity and we want to acknowledge that oftentimes there are checkboxes an A lot of the time you might not fit within those really specific checkboxes, and so we ask the question.

Is there anything about your identity or your background that you want us to know about that isn't really addressed in the rest of the applications? You can answer that if you would like the other question is just about a significant fluctuation in your grades. So if at any point in your high school career that has showed up, we would love to know about that. And again if that doesn't apply to you, you don't have to answer that question.

I put the text of the third question into the chat, but generally as Ben described it, it's you know, have you thought about how mcallister's location will impact your experience in college? That is the one supplement that we have been referring to as sort of like the supplement question that you'll have to fill out when you're when you're doing that, and then I think we can just kind of start at the top in with questions from here on out. One thing I'll just quickly say lots of questions, we really appreciate the positive feedback about wanting.

More of these workshops and wanting to see the slides or see the recording so there will be a recording made available on the same website where you registered for this workshop. All of the recordings of the workshops from this past summer are available there and we will continue to do some live workshops this fall. We're still figuring out what that schedule is going to look like, but stay tuned. We will certainly be following up with more of that info.

Yeah.

And I do and acknowledge real quick. There are many more questions that have been sent in then we have time to get to when I have agreed, we're willing to go till 4:30 central time. So the next half hour to try answer as many as we can. We will try to get to as many as we can. We promise and we still won't get to all of 'em. But we do appreciate all the questions.

As Adam was just mentioning the demographics page.

Right?

You know check, check what you feel comfortable checking for for race, ethnicity, things along those lines. Will demographics affect you in anyway? That's a great question. That's a bit of a loaded question. The answer might be a little different from school to school. Some schools will take into account your demographic profile when they when they think about admissions, they might. You know schools might be trying to create a diverse community, multicultural community and so that may come into play.

Now, that doesn't mean that you should be afraid to put your demographic information. Not every school will pay as much attention to it. It's sort of does vary from one college to the next.

Yeah.

Some questions about test scores again, really want to emphasize. Don't let the test score be the main part of your story if you're not. If you don't want a college to be assessing you specifically around your test score, find schools that are test, optional, and if you don't feel good about that Test score, you don't need to submit it.

Our schools might take into account the fact that like if you've taken it just once in this core isn't what you want it to be. That maybe they'll give you some benefit of the doubt that the test score would be higher. But honestly, my advice to you would be if you at all worried about that, find places that that aren't going to worry bout that by by the fact that they are test optional. So again, want to emphasize that a little bit. Some good questions also about GPA. Like should I report this? What if my school has a different system? Again, what we get from your transcript?

Is what we get from your transcript, and that's where the school contact piece is going to be really helpful. So whatever your school does, we will take it and we will work on that. Lots of good questions from some students who are outside of the United States wondering like, you know, my curriculum is really different from the US. We especially as a school that's really focused on internationalism. Take pride in having staff who do international recruitment and international admissions. Ben is actually one of those folks who spend some time on that.

And we want to make sure that we're learning about other school, other countries, and what their schools are doing. So we're going to take that into account as well. Other universities and colleges should be doing the same. We can't really comment on that specifically, but we can tell you at McAllister we're absolutely doing that as well.

Let's see, we're going to take next.

To do a school has percentile system, yet that's all part of the GPA. However, your school reports you're placing class, your rank, your GPA will review it based on what they give us. What if you took summer classes during junior year, but they don't show up on the updated transcript? Ah, so.

The common practice is we need the transcript in order to count that class more or less for our review. So if you took a summer class and it doesn't count in your high school transcript, doesn't report it.

Hopefully, wherever you did that summer class, weather store, Community College or some other institution has a transcript for you. If for some reason you're doing like a summer class for your high school and it doesn't end up on your transcript, it should end up on your transcript. If it's through your high school. If not, feel free to send us an email. We can try and work that out individually, but summer classes we do need a transcript, whether from your high school or from wherever you are getting those credits.

Right, and that's different from I think I answered in the chat a question about somebody who said, what if I take a summer class and it doesn't get like it won't show up on my transcript when I'm applying because the semester hasn't finished. That's an example of where it's really helpful for us to actually see it in the common app because we want to know about it, even if it's not going to show up on the transcript again to emphasize what Ben is saying, we have to see it on a transcript to be able to count it. But if there's a lag between when you take in it.

And when it's going to show up on the traps transcript, that's OK. Let us know. Just make sure that it is in fact show up in some official way on a transcript.

Some great questions about. You know what should I put on extracurriculars? Or is this does this count as an academic honor? Honestly, when in doubt, put it down.

Are you know the more the better and actually that relates to some other questions as well about like what if I want to, you know, I know my principle really well and they want to write me a letter of recommendation. The two recommendations are a minimum requirement and so you can. You can submit more material than that. The one caveat I would say is we certainly don't look at applications in sort of always like oh this students admitted 5 recommendations. That means they're amazing. Let them in.

It's not the case what we're looking for is the content of those letters, and so make sure you're being really thoughtful about anything that you're submiting. That's in addition to what is required in the application. If that letter of recommendation that third or even 4th letter adds to your application in some way, and it gives us information that we don't get somewhere else, great, we want to get it. If it's kind of repeating something that we've seen somewhere else, you don't need to send it in again because we just we want to get as full of pictures.

Possible, and we're reading a lot of applications, and so we don't need to see the same information multiple times.

Sort of, in the same vein of activities that you were just mentioned when you're when you're filling out the common app, especially if senior year has not yet started. If there's an activity that you plan to continue senior year, go ahead and check the box that you're going to do it in 12th grade. That's the best way to let us know that.

Lotsof owners, yeah.

Yeah, some specific questions about you know should I? Should I not submit my test score? And so in general what I'll say is what you can do is look at a schools median.

AC T or median S80 and think about how your score compares to that. So if again I want to emphasize for McAllister, it's not going to be a make or break thing. We very intentionally don't have a minimum requirement for any test scores because we don't want to ever say no to somebody just because of their testing. With that said, if you're looking at a lot of different schools and you're trying to figure out where you should submit your test score, if their test optional. If your test score is significantly below the median.

Maybe not a great idea to submit, but again, it can kind of depend. It's just it's really up to you to decide. I'm sorry I can't be more specific about that, but just pay attention to that Medium Test score.

I have a question about that Adam.

Yeah.

What kind of score might be too low for me to not submit?

Yeah, great question.

I would say honestly, if you you know, for example, if you've taken if you've been able to take multiple of the tests and you are able to show that you've improved overtime, we'd love to see that, even if it's your test score is still a little bit on the lower side, I would say again, it depends on the school, but for McAllister.

If you are, you know.

I don't know 10 points lower.

Then maybe not a great idea. Seven or eight points. I don't know. It's hard to say, but basically I think maybe it's another way of thinking about is like if you feel like you worked really hard to get that Test score.

And you're proud of that Test score. We want to know about it again.

And tell aunt tell us why you're proud of it.

Exactly, we need to know the context of that, and you know somebody who's like works really, really hard to get a test score. That's maybe five points below the median. Maybe that's not going to be more impressive than somebody who took the test once and got right at the medium, but they haven't been working really hard in school. Again, we take into account all of these things. The takeaway is we're not going to be able to answer for you. Here's, you know if you give us what your score is, we're not going to tell you yes or no. Whether or not going to be able to submit it.

That's just sort of some general guidelines of how you can think about whether or not you want to submit them.

Yes.

There are a few comments and questions in here about honors, so I want to. I want to distinguish that so.

When we were talking earlier about like awards, accomplishments, achievements, honors.

That's different than honors classes.

So let's take that aside for now. When we say when we say honors and awards, we mean things that you have things that you have been honored to receive, like an award, a scholarship, apprise, you know, some kind of achievement, academic or otherwise. You know, an example. Just share from personal experience. I've played soccer in high school and varsity team and two years in a row. Our team received all academic state.

I mean, we were the most academically.

Highest academic caliber team in the state where where I grow.

That's an award that's an achievement. That's an honor that I received is sort of like a metal like a participation trophy.

That's different than honors classes, which is a designation of your coursework. So when we say honors and awards were not referring to honors, classes were referring to achievements that you that you have been given by the community by your school, and so forth. So that's separate from honors courses when we say honors courses, that's like API be.

So those things we don't expect you to have honors classes if your school doesn't have honors classes. We also don't expect you to have awards and achievements because not every student receives those. But if you do receive an award and achievement, please feel free to let that. No, I hope that clears up some of the confusion. When we were talking bout honors earlier.

A handful of students who are thinking about graduating early, so maybe you're a rising junior and this year might be your last year in high school. The only difference in how you would apply?

Logistically speaking, it's exactly the same. The only difference is we would have one year less of your high school grades, so it would be great if you could talk about that in your application somewhere. Like why was that you wanted to graduate early and will also be able to see that pretty clearly as part of your transcript. Just because that senior year won't be there. But again, that is, you know, a little bit out of the norm, and so it's really helpful for us to know like why it was that you've graduated a little bit early.

Again, some questions about you know your senior year might have might be looking a little bit different than it would have otherwise because of Kovid, or could be something even not related to Covid.

Just let us know what that context is. What like why is it that it looks a little bit different? That'll be really important to us. Don't worry about you. Know if this is going to negatively impact your your your application in general, I would say it shouldn't. I can tell you that at McAllister, that won't be a negative so long as we know the reason why.

For example, if you're someone they asked a question about, like maybe some classes weren't available, and so I have fewer classes.

If we would see that and get no explanation, we would have no choice but to say Oh they didn't take as many classes as they could have, but if we get that explanation then we say, OK, they took everything that they could have given the circumstances.

Some other questions also related to activities that I'd like to address here again, for any activities that were planned that could not happen because of Kovid. Feel free to include all that in the covid question on the common app, that space really can be about any kind of code related experience that that have impacted you, and there's another good question about like the length of an activity or experience, whether or not a one week internship or a one week camp program type of thing is.

Long enough of a span to put on your activities list. Absolutely absolutely any kind of professional experience, like an internship. Or maybe you did a job shadow at a hospital. The local hospital for a week. Yeah, it's only one week, but that's still an experience that you had that helps to inform what you want to do and what you want to study. Maybe that's something we'd like to know as an experience that you did again using my own personal experience, my senior year of high school, I did a one week leadership program in Washington DC. It was awesome.

Great, great program. Absolutely I put that on my application absolutely.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, sort of went out without with the activities. When in doubt, go ahead and put it on there, and if something's been impacted by covid, put it under the kovid question.

There has been mentioned there is space for 10 extra curricular activities on the common app. That's a lot, and so for most of you that should be plenty of space. I know for a couple of year wondering what if I have more activities than I can put there. My first point would be like be really thoughtful about the 10 major putting on that list and whichever 10 are at the most significant. If you put those on that list. If you want to let us know about activities you're doing beyond what you're able to include there.

That's where the additional info or like supplemental attachments can come into play. You can attach a resume, you can attach a list that says additional activities. Whatever the case may be.

And actually related to that. So there were some questions about the portfolio and what you can or can't submit. Pretty much any type of file is available for you to upload, whether it's a PDF and MP3. It could be a YouTube link to a video of, you know, a dance recital if that's fit for you. If you have some physical artwork that you actually like us to see, you can actually send that to the admissions office, and for a lot of schools that is the case. Usually just scans of that. That, or pictures of it worked just great.

But if that is something that's important to you, you can go ahead and do that. I have to say, if I was making some original art, I wouldn't send the original into an admissions office. But again, if that's something important that you go for it.

See a lot about activities. I think we've covered a good bit of those.

Yep.

Supplementals recovered.

So yeah.

Yeah, so the hours that you spend on an activity can be kind of funny. Certainly like an average throughout the year. If like there's a part of you that it's really heavy and another part of you that it's not so much. The description is always your best friend there, so you can say you know in the spring is when I put in a lot of time into this. The rest of the year was more prep.

But the hours per week is about the average also. Similarly there spell check grammar. All that stuff is really important to think about.

The obviously there's a limited amount of space for the descriptions.

I think it's OK to use like bullet points or fragments for those descriptions. Just make sure that it's obvious that that's the case. So if we see that you're using complete sentences and all of a sudden a couple fragments show up.

Then it seems like you haven't done any proofreading. Just be consistent when you're when you're making those lists.

Consistently good though.

Yes.

Exactly, yeah.

Dropping don't have consistent typos and errors and all that jazz.

Sort of in the line of what we Adam mentioned earlier with students graduating early for students who are interested in doing a gap year or currently on a gap year.

There's no additional info, would be a great opportunity for that space. Perhaps if you're applying and you're on a gap year, maybe you want to write your personal essay for the common app about some of your gap year experiences, or one of your gap year experiences to highlight. You don't have to, but you could. There are opportunities for you to provide that space, but you definitely should somewhere on the common app. Tell us about your gap year, how you been spending your time.

And also I should mention for students out there who are going to be seniors in high school and who are thinking about taking a gap year but still applying. Now thinking, maybe deferring if you have an idea of what you might want to do for for a year determine or gap here. Feel free to include that as well. We'd love to hear about some of your ideas and plans for how you might want to spend that time.

Couple good questions about personal essay you know is it supposed to be more facts oriented or is it supposed to be a creative writing piece? Is it OK if it's not related to subjects I want to study? It can be whatever you want it to be.

With the caveat that like you should be thoughtful about what you want to write about, so a question that Ben and I get a lot is like what is the college looking for in that essay. And I always want to turn that around on you and say don't try to think about what a college is looking for. Try to think about what really matters to you and what you want to write about in that essay. If it happens to be related to an area of study right about that. If it happens to be about something that isn't, that's totally great too. If the best way for you to express that.

Is through a creative writing piece. Do so again, make sure that it's something that you're comfortable with and that is true to yourself. So if you're somebody who you know the creative writing thing I think is a great idea for somebody who does a lot of creative writings certainly don't do so. If the first time you're going to go out on a limb with the creative writing pieces for this essay, that might not work so well. Just always be really thoughtful and an intentional about if what you are writing about is authentic to who you are.

Yep.

Yeah, I'd like to add a couple things to that Adam. You covered covered it. Great, maybe this. This might just be my personal opinion Adam. Feel free to let me know if you feel differently, but I think a couple.

Warnings I would put out there for the group with the with the essays.

If you do choose to go for more creative essay, that's totally great.

Please just make sure that it's still about you and that it still tells us something about you. Sometimes we see students think, oh I'm going to do a creative essay and then they submit like a short story. You know, a fictional short story that they wrote for English class.

And it has nothing to do with them as the applicant.

Well, that doesn't really tell us anything about you. I mean, OK, yeah, it's a nice piece. Nice essay, but it doesn't give us that. It doesn't give us the juice that we're looking for. You know what I mean? So if you go with the creative route, that's totally fine. Just make sure that you still are the topic of conversation there. And the other thing is, some students really want to go.

Creative Anne might submit a poem.

For example.

I would I would give a general warning against submitting a poem for your college essay.

Honestly, and maybe this is just my experience. I don't know if I've read a common app, poem, essay that has been successful.

And I think part of it is.

And and I actually don't know what it is. I mean, I don't know if the students are if these applicants are getting too caught up into.

Yeah.

Making it flow like a poem, and therefore they're losing sight of them as the topic or losing sight of the content. But at least in my experience and Adam, I I don't know how you feel about it. The poems that I've read as as common app essays have not been successful at conveying who you are and what you can add to a community. I, Adam, I don't hear anything bad that.

I can think of two that worked really well, but it's because it was very content driven. Again, the the you have so few opportunities to talk about who you are in the application, we get a sense of it from your academics and from your extracurriculars. But for you to actually.

Almost literally talked to us about who you are. That's what the essay is for and so don't pass up that opportunity to like. Make sure it's really.

About the content of like who you are and what is important to you, because oftentimes write a poem will be maybe beautifully written. But when we come away from it and say, I don't know if I learned anything new about you, that doesn't it sort of does it hurt your application necessary, but it's an opportunity missed, if that makes sense, and so in that case it does kind of hurt your app application. Actually, I would say because other students will have been successful in doing that.

Is it?

A couple of questions about the logistics of letters of recommendation, so I think it's good to emphasize that when you are asking a teacher to write a letter of recommendation, they will do so through the common app website when they are submitting that that is going to go to all of the colleges through which you are using the common app to apply.

In some cases it's maybe it's possible that you have a teacher that like attended a specific college or University that you are applying to that letter. If they want to talk very specifically about the college, that letter should come through directly to like the email inbox of that college or University or through snail Mail, but just make sure you remember that anything submitted through the common app is going to go to all of the colleges when it comes to letters of recommendation.

There's an interesting point here about.

The types of.

Yes.

So.

Upper level rigorous courses that students might take leading to a potential major field of study coming from Sarah. I really like this question. This is one that I think I get a lot out of. I'm assuming you get frequently as well.

The question broadly to the audience. The question is more or less.

If I am a humanities person.

Do I have to take the rigorous courses in stem or vice versa if I'm a stem person in math and science person, do I have to take rigorous courses in English and social studies?

Well, the first answer I'd say is.

Take what you are most confident and comfortable in. Take classes you're most passionate about. In most interested in.

And as a liberal arts institution that McAllister is.

We are looking for applicants who are prepared for a liberal arts experience, meaning you'll be prepared to take courses in a variety of different departments, different disciplines and challenge yourself in different areas on campus. So while you don't, you know if your humanities person, we certainly don't require you to take AP bio and AP Calc or or whatever it may be.

And the most competitive applicants to Mac and too many colleges for that matter, the most competitive applicants are ones who will have challenged themselves in as many different subject areas as possible.

Now the caveat there is, if you really think that taking AP Calc is not going to not going to go well, like really not going to go well.

It's OK to not do that, you know. Take on a challenge that is going to be reasonable for yourself. You know your your limits better than anyone you know how to set the expectations for yourself. If you know for sure that AP Calc is not going to go well and it's not going to reflect on your transcript.

Then maybe don't take it.

But would you consider an AP stats class? What do you consider a regular strength calculus class? Think about what you can do to to still challenge yourself without having to do all APS all the time, or all honors all the time.

You know, take what you're passionate about and still keep that piece in mind that you are you are.

Competing to get into these colleges.

Yeah, related to apes and.

I think we can take a little bit of time to talk specifically about McAllister. Some questions about you know, do we accept AP credit and also?

College credit etc.

Yeah, so again keep in general different schools will have different policies, so definitely check with each individual institution for McAllister. Generally, if you're getting a four or five, you'll get general credit for that. If you're looking to get credit for a specific class, that will need to be a conversation with the registrar or with that specific Department so it sort of depends on the content. There's a really great question from Sarah. Thank you for this question. Asking about do I need to take a specific?

Set of courses for a certain major at McAllister we are not paying attention to what your intended major is except to just sort of say Huh? That's interesting. That makes sense given what they're there their interests are. But beyond that you don't have to declare your major until the end of your sophomore year.

One of our colleagues has a a joke, but it's actually kind of true that all students coming to McAlester undecided. It's just only half of them realize it, which is just to say that you will discover something new about yourself, probably, and maybe the thing that you thought you were going to major in is going to change, and so because of that, we're not really looking for a specific preparation from high school for a specific major, so you don't need to worry about that too much. An interesting question from Nicholas, like what is a red flag?

For McAllister

actually I think there aren't too many actually like deal Breakers. As I was saying, like you know, for academics there's no one thing that's going to make a break your application. It goes back and you know, maybe we're being a little bit of a broken record here, but if we see an essay that's not proof read or not edited.

That's kind of a red flag. For example, if you know.

We need.

Yeah, I'm waving my red flag.

Yeah, if we know that your school offers a lot of AP or IB classes and we see that you haven't taken a single one, that's a bit of a red flag too, because we want to make sure you know. Again, this is very specific to McAllister, but we want to know that you are the kind of person that's looking to challenge yourself, and I love what Ben said about, you, know. Make sure your tailoring it to yourself that it is a reasonable challenge for you, but you know that's a pretty extreme example of.

If there are lots of AP is available and you don't take any, that seems to be like that. The challenge is just something that you're not looking for in your academics. Those are two things that come to mind for me, but other than that you know obviously like major disciplinary things. But we very rarely see those, and even when we do, often times there is a story in a context that goes with it, which again want to highlight that that's a really important thing to talk about. I don't know Ben do any any things like that come to mind for you?

I guess specifically on the disciplinary violation stuff, and I didn't mention this earlier, but there is actually an opportunity. If you've had a disciplinary violation too.

Tell us.

What happened? How is it resolved? How do you feel about it and a potential red flag is, you know.

I don't want to give any specific examples and make anyone feel uncomfortable, but there's a particular example I'm thinking of of high school students doing something that is.

Not legally advisable to do, and you know, maybe there's two high school students, and they've done this same thing. They get suspended for a couple days for doing something on campus. They should have been doing and one students.

No explanation about it is.

I did this, I got caught.

My bad.

Now I guess I won't do it on campus again.

Another student says, you know, here's what I did here. Here's how I got sucked into this situation. Let me tell you why, like where I was. Maybe I was having a bad mental health day an I turned to something that I don't normally do. An it really impacted me. And now let me talk about how I feel about how I've changed because of this experience.

Hopefully in the audience can see the difference between those two. The student who just says basically said the only problem is I got caught. That's that's a major red flag. You know we're not necessarily concerned about a disciplinary violation, but will be concerned if you don't show growth because of it.

If you show some growth out of it, here's what I learned. Here is what I understand now that I maybe didn't understand before that is absolutely going to show well, but but be honest, be transparent. Anan really think about how has something like that changed you.

You know other red flags and for me personally, it's the proofreading.

You know?

One of the things that really grinds my gears the most is an part of it is I'm an alumni of Mac Adam. I know you're an alumni as well, so maybe this resonates with you is I know, or at least I.

I I don't assume I would never want to assume this, but for the most part most personal essays are really polished because many students have worked on those for weeks. For months might have been edited by your teachers, might have been edited by your family members, so the personal essay almost always looks nicely polished.

And then when I get to the supplemental essay, which for me is really important, why do you want to come to McAllister an that essay is, you know, three sentences long or it's you know 20 sentence is long, but it's one long block paragraph or it jumps around ideas and it's just it's not polished. It's not edited that really for me. That's something that makes me feel like OK, you clearly care about going to college because your personal essay is great.

But I don't know if you care bout coming to Mac because your Mac essay is not that great. You know that that's something that stands out and that will stand out to any school with a supplement that the supplement is. Again. As I said earlier, as important as the common app essay. And when it's clear that a student has not put enough time into the supplement that really does stand out.

I'm speaking this supplement, so I'm realizing there's good question from Ryan about. I've added McAllister to my dashboard, it's not showing up as there being a supplement, so we're using a so it's I understand how this can be confusing. So on your dashboard of course you'll have your list of colleges if you click on McAllister you Scroll down to the bottom. There's the writing requirements there. There's the personal essay. There's college questions. And then it says.

Writing supplement, so actually it's the college questions link you're going to want to click on. That's where the three optional questions are going to be.

It's not directly called supplement.

That's right, and so then at the bot, once you click on that, at the bottom is a link for background essay. That is what we talk about. This supplement as far as it is a supplemental essay to the rest of the common application. So I'm sorry about that confusion, and this is a good reminder also to say that, like.

As much as the common app tries their best to be user friendly, it can be confusing at different points. Always feel free to let us know if you have any questions or to let the common app know if something is confusing or you're looking for a section and it's not there. It's probably there, but it might be kind of hard to find, and this is a perfect example of that. So right, I hope you're still logged on. Hopefully that answers that question.

There's another great one piece of clarification.

Mercer answer earlier about thought you submit recommendation letters through naviance. Or do you also have to submit it through the common app? So to clarify.

Mabel

If your school uses naviance for their school database, which many high school reviews.

Chances are the teachers and counselor will submit their letters directly through Naviance and then that will be sent into McAllister or whomever else. Not every high school has not yet. So if your high school does not have an audience, there is a space to have the letters submitted directly through the common app.

Instead, and or, I think some high schools even will collect all the wrecks in Naviance and then upload them from Naviance to the common app to then be sent off to high schools. So best practices, ask your guidance counselor. Do we have a way to submit rec letters or is that through the common app? That'll be just the best practice there.

But that's a good question.

Huh?

Some questions about you know how do you indicate what you're going to be involved in this coming year? And so that's just simply make sure you put down 12th grade when you list that activity. Really thoughtful people out there saying, well, it's up in the air. Whether or not this is going to happen in the same way because of Kovit, That's OK. For now, we'll go ahead and put it down. And if you want to just quick note, say.

You know to be like TBD for covered reasons or something like that, but if you are planning on doing it at this point, go ahead and put it down.

Garth, we've gotten under 5 minutes here, will try and see what else we can help out with.

Work.

I think we're getting close 'cause there's a lot of new matters similar.

Close there is a question, what is the main difference between the liberal arts University versus a fourier non liberal arts like the University of Minnesota? We actually have an entire workshop Wednesday webinar about the liberal arts. I'll go ahead and send the link to Our Workshop Wednesdays here in the chat box.

Yeah, in general too. Like I really signing on with what Ben was talking about. As far as like red flags.

And also like with the essays of being a little bit too creative, sometimes we have a whole workshop on that as well, so feel free to you know a lot of what Ben was talking about is what we would talk about in network shop. So if you have more questions on that, definitely we would refer you to those workshops.

And again, that web page has just been submitted in the chat box. All of the workshops from this summer have been recorded and are on their this today. Here is the last workshop of this summer series. The recording here will be up by the end of the week.

Yeah, we've we've got.

Couple in Austria. Last question here from Sarah. Just how do you handle letters of recommendation from teachers who are no longer at the school? That's OK, they can still submit an there was, I think. I also also a question about like a teacher from maybe 10th grade or even 9th grade. Again, we would.

Really encourage you to ask a teacher who knows you best and it a lot of the time that will end up being a teacher who you've had recently. But if it is a teacher from earlier, that's OK. Certainly go for that. And if they've left the school same same sort of thing. If you have a way of being in touch with them and they are excited about writing you a letter of recommendation, they would be a great fit.

And at the same token, if you, the student have changed schools.

Right?

Totally fine. Totally fine to ask a teacher from a previous high school to ask you a rec letter.

Definitely.

And some of that is covered in the letter of rec. Workshop as well.

I am.

Yeah, Mac specific question. If you go and decide it doesn't take longer to graduate. So I was undecided. I took yeah and funny enough Ben and I ended up being measures in the same Department. I ended up meeting a double major in applied mathematics and geography. Even though I did not declare one of those majors until the end of my sophomore year and so true to the liberal arts and sort of the answer to the question of, you know the difference between a liberal arts school.

And like a place like the University of Minnesota is, the curriculum is designed for you to be able to explore and to take classes in a wide range of topics and still be able to graduate within four years. Having really focused in on one or two department's depending on if you do a double major. So yeah, it's a good question, but certainly for years I had squeak it in, but definitely was able to do it. Even having explored for most of my first two years.

Yep.

And I was in complete undecided exploration mode for my first two years. Initially declared a history major in a geography minor and then spring of my junior year with just over a year left of my studies. I flip flop those to a geography major in history minor and that was easy peasy to do because at a liberal arts institution you're not locked in or locked out based on what your major is or is not. I think that's another difference. Just as we wrap up here that you don't have to apply to the be in the geography Department or to be in the English Department at Mac.

You can just say I want to be in the English Department. Great here we go at a place like the Umm you actually may have to apply for their business program or to get into their engineering Department, their engineering major. And if you want to switch, you know it might be too late to do that. But it liberal arts allows you that flexibility to switch as late as I did at towards the end of my junior year.

Hey 4:30 look at that.

Yeah.

Alright, I I put our emails in the chat once again, we'd love to answer any questions that you have going forward, but thank you so much for participating. Really thoughtful questions Ben. This was fun, really good doing this with you.

Right back

An yeah again, thanks for joining everyone. Hope you have a good rest of your summer or if you started school later. Hope that's going well and be in touch and be well.

be well, stay safe out there folks.

Bye bye.