4
2 years ago
Admissions Advice
[edited]

Projects

Hello! So I am an upcoming senior, and since freshmen year I have been trying to think of projects for me to do and show colleges, especially Harvard, what I am very passionate about.

I am in the Robotics magnet and club at my school. I was the president and my team has competed in FRC for the first time in years we are thinking of competing again this upcoming school year. I don't think it counts as a project, but a project we have is making toys for programs that don't have the money to give toys to special needs kids. Other ideas I had in mind are:

(Community Service)

Feed my starving children

Building toys

Show and present to kids about engineering

Go to Children's hospital and build mini-robot kits with them, or do crafts

Boys and Girls club

Maybe clean parks

Building prosthetics

For me, personally, I had fun ideas I wanted to make like:

Flyable bird, maybe noise compand

Robotic hand

I am also in HOSA, been a member since freshmen year, and I competed in State for Healthcare issue exam my junior year, and I will complete my senior year for Biomedical laboratory science and healthcare issue exam, hoping I'll go to state and international. I am also the 22-23 Service Leader and I had some ideas our group can do.

Canned food drive

Clothing drive

Talent show and/or play games at children's hospital and/or retirement center

Feed my starving children

Show and present to kids about health science

Toy drives

Cards for doctors, hospital patient

Host a holiday meal for senior citizens

Clean up a park

Put together portable first aid kits for distribution in our community

Lastly, I am also into music. I'm in Orchestra at my school and have been for 6- 7 years. I also have been working on and making/composing music. One project I am working on is composing two scores/music for my orchestra concert with either a quartet or my group specifically. I want to also record (with permission of course) the performance and add it with my other solo violin playing for my music supplement.

My main point is that I need to help to find a main project, maybe to help a community, for Health, engineering, and if I have time, Environmental also, so that I can work on this summer.

Also want to mention I might be given projects during the school year, but don't know yet.

Thank you!

project
healthcare
12th
EC
passion-project
harvard
engineering
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@CameronBameron2 years ago

You've just listed a plethora of ECs as your submission which is really a chancing question for Harvard. What is your question specifically? "Do you think these ECs are good for Harvard?" or something else.

[🎤 AUTHOR]@shadow2 years ago

Is it essential to have one big project or have mini projects in each catorigy (Health, Engineering, and Enivormential)?

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3 answers

2
2 years ago

What is most impressive to top colleges is that you are either

1. Someone who has an impressive "spike" narrative evidenced by your ECs and/or intellectual vitality/curiosity. This could be either academic (Intel National winner etc., holding X amount of US Patents) or artistic (music, dance, painting, theatrical, sculpture, etc), or athletic (Olympian, or State champion), or cerebral (level 1800+ Chess master).

2. Some who has depth and breadth of impressive ECs but not 1 significantly more than the other. So if you have 5-10 Tier 1 and 2 ECs, that means you are a not Spiky per se but a conscientious generalist which many successful admits are. You might be a good candidate for a future spike in Architecture, or Business or Law. You just are multidisciplinary but haven't figured out what you want to do yet.

What is not impressive is a dabbler. Someone who joins a lot of clubs but holds no leadership positions nor has any significant measurable impact either through those clubs or community service activities. I'm not sure whether you are American or live in another Country or not. When you apply to colleges in Europe or Asia, its more of a meritocratic process meaning that your grades and test scores define where you will be accepted or not. In the UK you need certain kinds of A-levels, in China you need a Gao Kao test score, in S.Korea you need a high CSAT score. In the US, grades and test scores are still the main component but there are literally hundreds of other criteria that play into the admissions process at top colleges. So it is less of a meritocratic process. Essays, recommendation, whether you are an ALDC, come from a marginalized demographic or not, and have impressive ECs.

There are 10 slots for ECs to fill out on the Common App. Most people have 10 ECs but not all them have Tier 1 and 2 ECs. From your list of activities, I personally can't tell what Tier ECs the fall into however none of them seem to be Tier 1 ECs.

There are also 5 slots for Honors/Awards on the Common App. Again, I can't tell if you have any significant honors or awards associated with these ECs or your academic narrative.

Therefore, my suggestion is that you properly fill out the College Vine Profile and add all your ECs, Grades, Test Scores etc so you have a CV Profile. Then curate a list of colleges that you are interested in applying to. CollegeVine will run their proprietary chancing engine and spit out a chancing % percentage for each of the schools on your list. These are not the same as the official published admission rates. Rather they are a more realistic probability of you getting into these kinds of schools based on your particular data set as inputs into the chancing engine.

Once you do these things, you will be able to study the output and see where your application is strongest or weakest. Only then can you put together some sort of strategy to fix the gaps or holes in your application narrative. It's not a matter of checking off the boxes for ECs either by group or sub-group that matters. It has nothing to do with fulfilling some admissions taxonomy. What's important is that your ECs are genuinely impressive and that you hold some leadership roles and show evidence of your personal impact either in school or in your community.

Hope that clarifies things a bit for you.

Good luck.

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0
2 years ago

I am going to just leave a small comment. Think about running a few summer camps for kids. STEM summer camps with your robotics team for a small fee where you could teach children about STEM, programming, robotics, and the overall engineering/design process. This would be a FANTASTIC way to advance your extracurriculars. You could run it for 3 week in July and with the help of local summer camps (for training and advertisement) you could make a huge impact in your community.

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0
2 years ago

I believe that you have plenty of projects already. Perhaps just focusing on doing your best in these projects will help your choice colleges to see your dedication. Hope that helps!

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Unweighted GPA: 3.7
1.0
4.0
SAT: 720 math
200
800
| 800 verbal
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