Katie and I just wrote a guide to the University of Washington application. It’s 39 pages and covers all 12 sections of the application, including the essays and the journal of activities and achievements. As of today, it’s free. You can download your copy CollegewiseGuide2011-2012UWashApplication.
Here’s what we ask in return. If you find our guide helpful, please share it. Email it to your friends who are applying to UW. Post it to your Facebook or your blog. Print up a copy and show it to your counselor. Everyone—students, parents, and counselors—can use some extra support during college admissions season. Sometimes that means we all have to help each other. We make the guide free to you, you use it and (if you think it’s great) spread the word. That’s the bargain.
Here are some excerpts from the guide:
Discuss how your family’s experience or cultural history enriched you or presented you with opportunities or challenges in pursuing your educational goals.
Here’s how to think about this prompt. If you weren’t given the chance to share anything about your family life on a college application, would you feel like colleges didn’t really know the whole story about you? Would you feel like your application was missing something? If the answer is ‘Yes,’ this prompt was written for you. If the answer is, ‘No,’ no problem—just choose the other prompt.”
Tell us a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.
A lot of students see the word ‘character’ in this prompt and immediately think it refers to morals, ethics, principles or something else that inevitably leads to an essay like, “When everyone else cheated, I was the only one who resisted the temptation,” or “It was difficult to face my fear of the unknown, but I went river rafting anyway.”
The University of Washington seeks to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints. How would you contribute to this community?
Some UW students chose the school in part because they knew that they’d be able to find their niche in such a diverse environment. Some enrolled because they knew they’d be able to find other people who celebrated Vietnamese culture, or were proud of their homosexuality, or planned to go to church every Sunday while they were in college. And even those students who didn’t specifically enroll because of the diversity still see it as something that makes UW a great place to go to college. Are you excited about those things, too? What life experiences have you had that make you want UW’s diverse environment for your college experience? What could you contribute to, and learn from, your fellow UW students?”
Describe an experience of cultural difference, positive or negative, you have had or observed. What did you learn from it?
One of our former Collegewise students was the lone liberal in an AP government class. She talked about how dismissive she was with the opinions of people she initially dubbed as ‘ignorant conservatives,’ but acknowledged that while she never did agree with their politics, the opportunity to debate with those students made her a better analytical thinker. Looking back, she appreciated how her experience improved as a result of being in class with people who were very different from her. The key here is respect. Talk about an experience that strengthened (or initiated) your respect for differences and be open about how it did so. The fact that you can identify such an experience and appreciate what made it valuable will be good evidence that you’re likely to do the same thing once you get to UW. “
Journal of Activities and Achievements
An admissions officer will know what “Varsity soccer” is. But if you list “ASB Director of Sales and Marketing,” or “Internship at Harty Media Group,” or “Cosmos Award,” you should lead off with a description, like:
- ‘The ASB Director of Sales and Marketing is in charge of selling ads for our student body newsletter, as well as for publicizing all our student government events.’
- ‘Harty Media Group is a public relations firm in Washington DC, and I was one of two high school students they hired to intern at their offices last summer.’
- ‘The Cosmos Award is given to one member of the junior class who is selected by the faculty for outstanding achievement in science.'”
How does the Honors Program fit into your imagined future at the University of Washington?
Try to imagine yourself studying and learning at UW while you’re in this program. Do you see a clear picture in your mind? Have you really investigated your chosen major? Have you looked at the classes you could take, what will be expected of you and what types of students seem to flourish there? And when you’re answering those questions, how much of what interests is specific to the Honors Program? Don’t just rattle off a description of why the Honors Program is, or why you are, great. Describe why you would be great together.”
Stanley Nelson, filmmaker of Freedom Riders says, ‘The lesson of the Freedom Riders is that great change can come from a few and small steps taken by courageous people. And that sometimes to do any great thing, it’s important that we step out alone.” What steps will be taken by your generation, and how might you step out alone?’
One way to think about your future goals and work backwards by first describing something that you’re doing today that shows you’re already planning on taking those steps. For example, if you want to be a teacher and you hope to work with students in a low income area, what are you doing right now to prepare for that? Who are you helping? What are you learning about yourself? And what will you need to do both during and after college to achieve that goal?”
Go here to download it. Enjoy. And remember, let’s all help each other–please share.
Rob Humbracht says
Awesome. I will certainly spread the word. Thank you for sharing!
Siri says
Hi,
I didn’t print out the free copy of husky hopeful. Is it still too late to get a hard copy? If not, would you please email me a copy. Thanks,
siri
Kevin says
Siri-
It’s still available. Just download it from our blog and print it on up!
UW hopeful says
For the The Journal of Activities and Achievements section, the recommended length is now 100-200 words , not 300-400.
Very nice guide!
Kevin McMullin says
@UW hopeful, good catch! Looks like they changed it in the last month from “300-400 MAXIMUM” to “100-200 RECOMMENDED.” We’ll update that in the guide. Thanks for pointing it out.
UW hopeful says
You guys should also provide tips on how to write about a general category (eg. Drama, Art, Dance) for Journal of Activities since some applicants group activities together. So far this has been the most helpful UW guide I’ve seen!
Jocelyn Lee says
Wow, I wish I had discovered this much sooner, this is really helpful feedback for me.
Chomka says
This is gold! Thank you very much for helping high school seniors like me on the UW application. Almost all websites I visited wanted money for their help but you guys did not. Thanks allot and keep up the great work!