Anyone who works in college counseling has gotten a question about what “looks good” on college applications; if my child takes up fencing at twelve or gives up piano for the oboe would it make them stand out to selective colleges? When I am asked, I usually respond with “it’s possible, but if it didn’t have any impact at all, would you choose to spend so much of your time doing it?” It’s clear that some students (and their parents) haven’t considered this question. They have been playing a game of chess, fast-forwarding to a shining line-item on a resume; they haven’t given much thought to the investment of hours needed to get there.

Far too often the blueprint for “how to get into college” is divorced from the other more important goal of adolescence: growing into a 360-degree person. Getting into college has been distilled into blanket rules like get good grades, take hard courses, score big on tests, get involved, take on leadership. But students often find themselves too tracked, too over-scheduled and too under-rested to have time to reflect on why they do anything at all. With so many responsibilities meant to measure personal initiative, the irony is that students can easily feel detached from what they’ve “chosen” to do.

So how did we get here? Is it because admissions officers collectively decided that students should jump through a lineup of arbitrary hoops to get into college? If we take several steps back, we can see that each ask on the list has a value because it’s linked to soft skills and character. Ultimately, the fact a student was captain of the debate team is a great accomplishment, but—as of matriculation– it was in the past. A high school debater might join the team in college, but who knows? What is more bankable are the skills that someone acquires from leading a competitive team: drive, communication, organization, just to name a few. This is the value to a college. But over the years, the initial purpose of the markers of high school success have gotten distilled, and we forget that they are meant to be reflections of something, not the thing itself. The checklist is the still life, not the bowl of fruit.

Looking at everything through this new lens, it’s not difficult to derive the life skills that match to the admissions criteria and how your college applications are used to display them.  Taking on academic challenge and doing well is not only representative of intelligence, but also (hopefully) of
intellectual curiosity. Building a resume of activities is not meant to be about scheduling every waking hour for the sake of proving you can succeed without sleep, but about fostering a slew of hard-to-measure personal and social skills, like creativity, service, collaboration and time management. A high score on a standardized test was meant to be an honor badge for aptitude and reasoning skills, though debate has raged about whether it actually measures those qualities effectively.

So, if soft skills are the goal, maybe we should flip the question: Not which activity can I do to make myself more admissible, but which activities (and other pursuits) will help me become my best self? Because ultimately, isn’t that a win-win?

Wondering which soft skills are valued by colleges? Here is a selection of some that are the subject of writing prompts on the applications for a variety of colleges.

Before choosing activities to craft perfect college applications, think about how you would answer these questions:

Values: What’s important to you? What do you value beyond yourself?

Community engagement: How do you serve your community and why is this important to you? How do you promote dialogue amongst different groups?

Resiliency: How do you respond when you fail at something? How have you self-advocated in high school?

Goal setting: How do you connect your education to what it is you want for your future?

Collaboration: How do you work with others? How do you incorporate others’ perspectives?

Intellectual curiosity: Which intellectual areas fascinate you? If time and resources weren’t an issue, which questions would you love to investigate more?

Creativity: How do you think about problems in out of the box ways? What are your creative outlets?

Developing passions: What do you do in your spare time that makes you lose track of time?

Looking for a place to start?

Check out our block on ways to explore new (or go deeper into old) passions from home: School’s Closed. Now What?

Wondering how this plays into your college search? Finding a college that fits your answers above can directly correlate to your success at college. Read our blog on college fit to learn more: Thinking About Fit When Applying to College

Still looking for more ideas? Our blog “Exploration and Adventure Pave the Road for College – How to Prepare for College Applications” for more specifics!