Back in the early nineties, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was a mammoth bestseller. At times a little hokey and tough to get through (for me), the book still has some really useful concepts. One that’s particularly helpful for college admission involves two circles.
Imagine a circle that contains all the things you care about (this is your circle of concern).
Inside it, imagine a second circle that contains all the things you can actually affect or do something about. That’s your circle of influence.
Effective people spend their time focusing on:
1. Shrinking the first circle. They stop caring about some of the things they can’t change.
2. Getting more done inside the second circle.
When you do those two things together, your first circle keeps shrinking, and your second one keeps growing.
A lot of the angst and frustration I see from kids and parents going through the college admissions process comes from their focus on the first circle.
If your family is spending thousands of dollars repeatedly trying to morph an average test–taker into a great test-taker, if you’re arguing with your teacher and counselor that you should be let into AP English even though you didn’t qualify, if you’re spending all your time trying to find an angle or connection or back door of admission into your first choice school, you’re focusing on the first circle. You don’t have the power to exert great influence in those areas.
And even if you are able to influence them by sheer force of will, how much more productive would you have been if you’d spent that time focusing on the second circle?
The effort you put into your activities, your attitude towards learning, your excitement about college and the ride to get there, how you treat people, whether or not you limit your focus to schools that reject most of their applicants—all of those factors are smack in the middle of your circle of influence. You can directly impact all of them. And those things are much more important than anything you can’t affect in the first circle.