Most high schools will be letting out soon for summer.  Maybe you’re one of those super-organized students who applied for half a dozen internships last February and now you have an amazing summer of research/travel/experience all lined up.

Or maybe you’re not.

Maybe you’ve arranged a fun summer job in a restaurant or retail or as a lifeguard at the pool or beach, where you’ll learn practical skills like promptness, diligence and how to get along with people you don’t really like, while saving money for college.

Or maybe you haven’t.

If you fall into the not/haven’t category, don’t worry! You can still have a rich and exciting summer full of learning and new experiences that will (as an added bonus) add depth to your college applications.  

The possibilities, especially with the help of the internet, are almost limitless.  Plan and carry out an advanced science project. Delve deep into a creative art you love. Interview the people in your neighborhood about their opinions on a specific local political issue.  Get involved in a political campaign.  Design a volunteer project to clean up a park or neighborhood.

What you do is up to you.  However, how you do it can make a difference between how colleges will see it and whether or not you should include it on your college applications.

My advice:

1. Commit to the project.  A long-term, continuous project that you work on daily is more likely to produce worthwhile results than something you do at random times.  Drawing up a schedule of what you plan to do and when you’ll do it can be very helpful – it’s fine to revise the schedule, but having a plan makes it much more likely that you will work on and complete your plan.

2. Document.  Keep a record of the hours that you spend on your project and how you spent them.  This record gives you a view of your time and efforts stacking up that can feel very satisfying; it also makes it easy to estimate the hours you’ve put into the project if anyone asks.  If you’re up for it, consider documenting your progress on a blog or social media.

3. Involve others.  As the project advances, it’s not a bad idea to reach out to people who are successful in the field – professors, artists, businesspeople, etc – and tell them about your project.  Asking for advice is fine, asking specific questions that resonate with their own work (and can’t be easily found on Google) is even better.  

Not everyone you approach will respond to you.  People are busy, many don’t check their email, others genuinely aren’t interested.  You’re most likely to hear back from someone you have a personal connection to – a friend or family member, a friend of a friend or family member, etc.  Second best is someone local, who lives in your town or neighborhood.  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reach out to well-known people, especially if your project is something that resonates with their own work or you have a reason to believe they might take a special interest in it.  Just be realistic about your chances of getting a response.  

4. Involve others, part 2.  When someone asks what you’re doing this summer, speak up.   For one thing, it’s not a bad idea to practice summarizing your project and answering questions about it.  For another, you never know who might offer you an unexpected idea or be able to connect you with someone who could help you.

5. Have an end goal.  What would you like to do with your project?  Enter it in the science fair?  Submit it to publishers?  Share it online?  Some projects, especially ones that involve a community, may have a natural culmination – if you’re organizing a neighborhood craft fair for August 8, well, on August 8, there will be a craft fair.  But many others don’t.  Think about the ways your project could be helpful to others, and how you could share it with them.

In a previous post, I noted that reading widely in and about the field(s) you want to study can add depth to your application, even if you don’t actually mention or quote any of the sources. Your response to questions about what you want to study and why you want to study at University X will be much more effective if you can show a) that you understand the complexities of the field and b) that you have a specific rather than general interest.

I plan to compile lists of fun, readable and informative books by prospective major. The books on these lists will give students a sense of what they’ll learn in a particular field as well as how and why that knowledge is useful. Unless otherwise noted, these are not academic books, full of jargon – they are trade books, published by commercial publishers and designed to be read by people with no special knowledge or background in the field.

I’m doing these lists in order of what appeals to me, or what my students ask for, or even what interesting non-fiction I have to stumble across. However, if you have a special request for a particular major/topic, let me know, and I’ll be happy to do that list next.

MARINE BIOLOGY

Braithwaite, Victoria.  Do Fish Feel Pain?  Braithwaite examines the physiology of fish and uses new evidence to argue that fish are smarter than previously thought, as well as having more in common with vertebrates.  Thought provoking book that forces the reader to rethink ethical questions concerning our relationship with fish.

Carson, Rachel.  The Sea Around Us.  Carson is the author of the famous Silent Spring.  Although The Sea Around Us was published more than 70 years ago (1950), it’s beautifully written and insightful, and also (frankly) more wondrous and less depressing than Silent Spring (which you should also read, not for marine biology but because everyone should read that one!)

Davidson, Osha Gray.  The Enchanted Braid.  An overview of coral reefs and their current state.

Ebbesmeyer, Curtis.  Flotsametrics and the Floating World.  I highly recommend this one. It’s a funny, very readable introduction to oceanography (basically ecosystem dynamics), a subject that many marine biology students struggle with.  If you don’t read this one before college, definitely do so before you take oceanography.  

Hardt, Marah J.  Sex in the Sea.  In this informative and highly entertaining book, Hardt examines the various (and sometimes bizarre!) ways that sea creatures reproduce.  Connecting this reproduction with sustainability, Hardt also shows how human activity is disrupting the sex lives of fish and actively damaging the diversity of the oceans.

Montgomery, Sy.  Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.  This is also a memoir. The author explores her fascination with octopuses as she tries to figure out how their thinking process, so different from our own, works. 

Kunzig, Robert.  Mapping the Deep.  Kunzig’s book is a fascinating discussion of oceanography that looks at both how much and how little we know about the ocean.  

Sale, Peter F.  Coral Reefs: Majestic Realms Under the Sea.  A thorough, in-depth discussion of coral reefs and their current state by an eminent marine biologist who’s spent his life on the subject.

Scales, Helen.  Spirals in Time.  An exploration of seashells from both a biological and cultural point of view.

Shubin, Neil.  Your Inner Fish.  This book is more about evolution than marine biology, but since it’s a fascinating topic, linking the human body back to our aquatic ancestors.

Verne, Jules.  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  This one is a bonus – it’s a novel and mostly for fun.  But it’s a well-written and exciting book that gives a good sense of how fascinating and wondrous the sea really is.

Brainstorming Tip #1

My son began reading the Tintin books in elementary school and when he was 13, we took him to the fabulous Herge Museum in Neuve.  Confused by the parking signs, we found ourselves unable to get past an immovable lever in (what we thought was) the museum lot.  Fortunately, there was a button to press for assistance.  Unfortunately, the man who answered spoke extremely rapid and colloquial French, something like, “Madame, vous pouvez blah blah blah.”  “He said to wait here,” I hissed at my husband.  “Madame!” said the man in a louder voice, “Babble, babble, babble…Madame!”  From the back seat came my son’s voice. “Mother, he’s saying that cars are coming from the other direction and if you don’t back up now there’s going to be an accident!”

That moment when my son’s French surpassed my own to save us all has become part of our family lore, a funny but also meaningful story from our past that we share again and again.  It would also make a great opening for a college admissions’ essay, highlighting not only not only my son’s fluency in French and ability to act quickly in highly charged situations, but a key coming-of-age moment when he realized his parents were not infallible and that he could, in fact, step in when necessary.

Every family has its own lore, the stories that come out when you meet new people or the ones you remind each other of so many times that you have a shorthand for them.  “Remember the cowboy boots?” is enough to reference the story of the day my husband fell asleep on the couch while our daughter, then only 2, was taking her own nap.  When she woke up, she walked past him and straight out the back door, stopping only to put on her new boots.  Our neighbor found her on the sidewalk, setting out for adventure in nothing but a diaper and hot pink cowboy boots.  These stories are told and retold not only because they’re amusing, but because they illustrate important truths about us both as individuals and as a family.  My daughter’s irrepressible sense of adventure. My son’s ability to understand and navigate rules and regulations.

What are those stories for your family?  What is the deeper meaning behind them?  What do they say about who you are and how you’ve become that person?  Figuring out the theme of your Common App essay is often much more difficult than finding a topic.  But thinking about and considering your family lore can give you some insight into not only who you are but who you want to be, and how you want colleges to see you.

And who knows?  You might even find that retelling the story is a great way to start your essay!

***Note: We are well aware that we were super lucky that my daughter came to no harm on her cowboy boot adventure and although we laugh about it now, we took it very seriously at the time. My husband was severely castigated (and castigated himself) and took care to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again. (Did other, (much) less dangerous misadventures occur under his supervision? No comment, at least at this time.)

Strike the Write Note is looking for a columnist to answer student questions about applying to college.  Applicants should have enrolled at, studied in and graduated from a T100 North American University.  Successful applicants will have extensive experience with both college admissions and advice column writing.  Names that double as wordplay are not required.

Pay will be commensurate with experience.  Please note that, while we generally pay in cupcakes, we do not discriminate against individuals with food preferences or allergies.  We are willing to work with the right candidate to reach a mutually agreeable treat salary.

Recent posting has been a bit sporadic due to some organizational changes.  For one thing, we’ve been hiring new staff – like Noah Diah, our new college advice counselor.  Noah did his undergraduate work at Harvard, where he majored in Rhetoric and worked in the Office of admissions.  After graduation, he traveled extensively, sharing his adventures on his well known travel blog, Where Did You Say I Am?  He also writes the advice column What’s in the Bottle? on the website FooledAgain.com.  

Noah wanted to jump right in, so here’s his first column.

Dear Noah,

I’m a good student (3.9 gpa, 1550 SAT) with decent extracurriculars – student council and band for 4 years, state orchestra, etc.  But I know if I want to go to a T20 school, I’m competing with a million other similar students, so I need to write an incredible essay to stand out.  But I feel like there’s nothing special about me.  How can I come up with a great topic that will really wow admissions’ officers?

Another Blah Virginian

Hi Blah,

This is a great question.  Standing out on your college applications is really important – colleges love creativity, spontaneity and originality.  For example, I have a friend whose Common App essay was: “Let me come to your school, or I’ll sue.”  Did anyone else write that?  No, they didn’t, he was the only one.  He got into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, all the places.  [This never happened –Ed]  True story.  [This is not a true story! – Ed.]

My advice?  Pull out all the stops, write something no one has ever thought of.  You know what would be a great opening line for your essay?  I was a teenage stalker. [This is a terrible opening line!  Do not use it! – Ed.] 

Now, I know you’re thinking, I can’t do that.  [Finally!  A sensible sentence! – Ed.]  I’ve never stalked anybody.  But there’s an easy solution to that!  You’ve got at least six months before the essay is due – good on you, starting early – that’s plenty of time to stalk someone.  You can certainly go for the typical stalker thing, girl (or boy) you’re madly in love with, but I wouldn’t hesitate to switch it up a little.  And if you can tie it to your interests, that would be even better – do you have a rival in orchestra, for example?  Or maybe you could have a theme, stalking all the trumpet players, for example.  A little more complicated, but think of the details you could include in the essay!  [Do not stalk *ANYBODY*!  This blog absolutely, 100% does NOT recommend stalking of any kind! – Ed]

Huh.  The editor just sent me a text message.  Remember this is a How To Get Into College Blog NOT a How To Get Into Jail Blog!!!  What I say is, why not do both?  What I mean is, if you do get thrown into jail, you could write an even better essay about that.  [Writing your college essays from your jail cell would be very uncomfortable.  You might have to use the sink for a table, and write by candlelight. -Ed]  See jail as a win. [It’s a win for the person you’re stalking, that’s for sure.- Ed.]  And imagine when you have to answer the question, Why Do You Want to Attend MIT?  The answer just writes itself: It’s better than jail! 

This is such a guaranteed admissions strategy, I can’t believe no one has tried it before, to be honest.  I think – 

Transcript of Conversation Overhead in the Editorial Offices of Strike the Write Note:

Editor:  You cannot advise students to do illegal things in order to ‘stand out’ on their college essays. I can’t believe I have to say this!   Not only is it crazy, it wouldn’t work.  No one wants a stalked on their campus – 

ND: An experienced stalker

Editor: That’s even worse!  What did you write your Common App essay on?

ND: (pause)  Well.  The guy who wrote Let me into your school or I’ll sue?  I was too modest to put it in the column, but that was me.

Editor: And you got into Harvard?  With that essay?

ND: The gates were open.

Editor: What do you mean ‘the gates were open’?

ND: I said I went to Harvard, and I did.

Editor: You went to Harvard?  You mean you enrolled there, studied there, graduated from there?

ND: I went there.  I mean, the gates were open and I walked in.

Editor:  But you weren’t a Harvard student?

ND: I never said I was a Harvard student.  You asked where I went to school and – 

Editor: Thanks very much.

ND: Wait – where are you going? We still haven’t talked logistics! When should I send you my next column?

ND: Should I send it to you on Monday?

ND: Expect it on Monday!  This one was a little tame, but I’ll make sure to liven things up in the future.  

READING

To me, to know someone is to know what they read.  The first question I ask my students is, “What’s your favorite book?”  When I visit someone’s house, my first stop is always the bookshelves.  On Christmas, I always make sure that, for each member of my family, at least one present is a book, because what would Christmas Day be like without something to read?

This post is going to come at reading – and books – from a slightly more practical perspective.  From an ‘advice for students wanting to go to college’ perspective.  You should seek out and read trade books on whatever subject(s) you’re interested in.

Maybe that should have been the first line of the post.  Here, let me bold it: Read trade books about the subject(s) you want to study in college.

By trade books, I mean non-fiction books written by experts but for a general audience and found in ordinary (not specialist) bookstores.  

FIrst of all, most of these books are written by people who practice in the field in one way or another.  Reading them will often give you a sense of what forensic scientists/biomedical engineers/ theater designers etc., etc. actually do all day.  This can help to clarify whether this is something you really want to spend your college years and ultimately your life on.  If you have to force yourself to get through the first chapter, maybe you’re not as excited about this field as you thought you were.

Note that, in general, trade books are much more readable and fun than academic books.  Trade publishers expect to make money on these books, which means they need lots and lots of people to buy them.  Dull prose and lots of technical jargon is going to make that less likely.  Of course trade publishers publish plenty of bad books – if you don’t like the first one you read, try another.  If you try half a dozen books and can’t get through any of them, it’s probably not the writer, it’s the subject.

Second, from a college application perspective – these books will give you both a wide understanding of your field and a grounding in various specifics.  They can help you narrow down a specific area of interest.  In interviews, when asked, “Why do you want to major in Marine Biology” instead of just saying, “I’ve always liked animals” you have information and opinions to share.  Many colleges have supplemental essays that ask about your academic interests; even if you don’t quote or refer to any of these books, your thorough knowledge of the field will come through in your response.

And the most important reason?  It’s reading.  And what’s not to love about that?

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to compile lists of trade books for students interested in various subjects.  Most of them will be available at most local libraries (Or you could always get them on interlibrary loan).  I admit, this project is as much for me as it is for students – the opportunity to check out new books is always a treat!  I will link these pages to this post as I put them up.

I generally write these posts for high school students – probably because there’s still a lot of the 17-year-old in me! – but this one is for parents.

Kids are delightfully weird and quirky, and they often think about their future in weird and unexpected ways – or, sometimes, in totally obvious and predictable ways.  So on the one hand, a kid might really like the costume their friend wore for third grade Halloween and decide, Hey I want to be a pilot.  For the next ten years, everytime anyone asks them what they want to do when they grow up, they say ‘pilot’ and the next thing you know, there they are, studying aeronautical engineering.  Or, they might look at the jobs their parents have, or the ones they see in the media – doctor, lawyer, computer guy – and that’s what they say they want to do.

My advice to parents, especially to parents of younger children: ignore what your kids say and pay attention to what they do, especially in their free time.  One of the first questions I ask my students is always that: What do you do in your free time?  Because free time is time spent doing what you like to do – and a career that incorporates, at least in part, things you like to do is going to be much more enjoyable than a career that doesn’t.

Even when your child spends their free time doing things you don’t necessarily think are productive – watching tiktok videos, for example, or sending their friends text messages – when you dig down and discover what they like about it, you may find lots of possibilities.  The tiktok watcher might be obsessed with cute animals, an interest you can encourage by signing up to volunteer at an animal shelter or helping them to start a dog walking business.  The texter’s funny quips that send her friends into gales of laughter might be interested in learning more about advertising – on the other hand, if he’s spending long hours trying to help his friends through neverending drama, he might sign up for AP Psych (or think about a future in politics).   

My main point here is that it’s easy for kids – for anyone, really – to get stuck on an idea and have a hard time translating what they enjoy and are good at into a field of study and future career.  And that’s where you come in, as a parent – to identify their strengths and encourage them to build on them.  

This is my favorite time of the year.  The last time I saw any of my students, it was mid-January, the weather was cold and blustery and dreary.  The students were harried, exhausted and stressed, racing to finalize their essays as deadlines seemed to loom daily for weeks.  Many had dazed looks when they thanked me for the last time, as though stunned by the realization that their fate and their future were truly out of their hands.

Now we are April, as the French would say.  The sun has come out, and so have college decisions.  When my students call or Zoom to let me know the results, everything is different.  They’re fresh-faced and relaxed, bubbling over with news.  How the tables have turned!  For eight months or more, they presented their test scores, GPAs and extracurriculars to the cold eyes of the college admissions staff, hoping their last four years of hard work were impressive enough.  They struggled to find exactly the right words so that their essays would show the hopeful, self-aware, intelligent person behind the numbers.  And now?  Now it’s the colleges who must beg and plead, cross their fingers and hope to be chosen.  

I’m on the side of the students, of course.  I know them all so well by the end of the essay-writing process that it’s clear to me that any school would be lucky to have them.  After the harrowing application season, I’m thrilled that it’s their turn to choose.

Are you wondering – especially if you’re still a high school student with the application season ahead of you – ‘Aren’t there students who are disappointed?  The ones who don’t get into their dream school, for example?’  The problem with this perspective is you’re thinking about the wrong month.  Rejections are difficult and painful, and few students make it through the application process without receiving any – but those disappointments occur in the months of February and March.  By April, the memory of any disappointments are already fading.  No matter how much you wanted to go to University X, University Y wanted *you* and that’s exciting and flattering.  

You’ll buy a t-shirt or sweatshirt with University Y scrawled across it, and you’ll start wearing it around.  You’ll check out the website and start figuring out what dorm you want to live in, or you’ll go on Reddit and check out what current students are saying.  The next thing you know you’ll be filling out housing forms and selecting classes.  I’m not saying you’ll forget entirely about the schools you dreamed about – it’s not like your new school greets you with a memory-erasing lazar – but trust me, it won’t matter much.  You’re heading off on a new adventure, and regret will not be holding you back.

MAIA

Lafayette College, Easton, PA

Class of 2027

Hometown: Cary, NC

Major: Chemical engineering

Schools You Told, “Thanks But No Thanks, I’ve Got Options!”:

Olin College of Engineering

Rensselaer Polytech

Why Did You Choose Lafayette?

For one thing, they gave me the best financial aid package!  It costs me less to go here than it would have to go in-state.  More importantly, I felt that Lafayette was a place where I could grow, getting a rigorous engineering education while still exploring other interests.

What Makes You Happiest About Your Decision?

I’m about an eight hour drive from home and I think that that distance is a really good fit for me – it’s too far to run home every weekend and whine to my parents (Not that I have anything to whine about!)  But it’s close enough that my family can come visit me.  

The other thing I really like is that, going to a small school, it’s very close-knit.  Classes are small, and it’s easy to get to know and work with professors.  At a liberal arts school, there are no grad students, so that means that professors who have research grants hire undergrads – as a first year student, two different professors invited me to work with them.  One recommended me to the Excel Scholars program, so I’ll be staying on campus this summer and doing research on polymers.

Is There Anything that You Would Change about Your College Experience?

People don’t come visit me enough!  Eight hours is really not that far!!  (Yes, J., I’m looking at you!

If You Had the Opportunity to Do Your College Search Over, What Would You Change?

I think I was too hung up on schools having my very specific major – I wanted to do environmental engineering, and if a school didn’t have that major, I crossed it off my list!  And now I’m not even doing environmental engineering!

Also, now that I’m at a liberal arts college, I’m really glad that I didn’t go to an engineering-only school.  I love that the arts and social sciences are taken seriously here, and that I’m being challenged to think in new ways all across the curriculum.

Do You Have Any Advice for High School kids about applying to college?

You may think you know exactly what you want to do, but your interests will almost certainly will expand and grow and maybe change.  It’s really hard to know what you want from a college before you’ve even been to college!  Figure out what’s most important to you in a big picture way – you want to do science, or you want a school where it’s easy to get to know the professors, or you want a place with great research facilities, or a fantastic record of getting kids into med schools – and then look for schools where that thing is extremely important to the school!

Are you a current college student? Do you have fond memories or vivid nightmares about the year you applied to colleges? We'd love to hear your stories - go here to share. If we post your answers, we'll pay you $20.

What should you be doing right now?

Class of 2028: Still waiting to hear from schools OR comparing offers from different universities  OR picking out summer gear at the college of your choice

Class of 2029: Thinking about how you want to present yourself to colleges.  I know – and colleges know this too, actually! – that you are a complex person, with a variety of interests and abilities, some of them unexpected.  However, most students have a better chance of getting into their top choice schools if they organize and curate their applications to highlight an academic passion.  

Important Note: ‘Academic’ does not equal major or even subject.  It’s totally fine to show interest in both physics and engineering, classics and law, or even biology and government.  But if you do that, then your application should show ways that your interests come together – for example, you were a page at the state house where you worked on medical ethics.  If the interests don’t come together, it might be better to focus on the stronger one.

Important Note #2:  There absolutely are ways to highlight diverse interests – one idea might be to look at a common thread that links your different interests.  For example, maybe you’ve volunteered in a hospital, been the basketball team manager for three years and worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA, all of which have involved caring for others.  Then you can tie that underlying theme to a potential area of study – biology with an intent to go into healthcare, say, or political science because you want a career in public service.  

This is definitely doable! Note though that it can be more complicated to illustrate an underlying passion than something more straightforward, like a particular subject area.  

Important Note #3: Your activities and extracurriculars don’t have to exclusively be formal things like clubs or teams or events.  If you’ve independently read your way through all the ancient Greek tragedies, hiked every national park trail in your state or play a weekly D&D session, these are all extracurriculars.  But (in general – there are exceptions to everything!) only include them if they give additional context to your overall presentation.  For example, someone who wanted to major in classics, or had done a lot of theater, should definitely include that they spent a summer reading the Greek tragedies.  Someone who wants to study biochemistry and eventually become a doctor, maybe not.

I was going to talk about Organizing Your Summer, but I’ve added so many Important Notes that I think I’ll stop here for now.