The ability to figure things out—and the opportunity to display that trait—is increasingly rare in college admissions.
I’m not talking about figuring out a math or chemistry problem, although those abilities are certainly valuable, too. I’m talking about a student who is faced with a challenge, conundrum, or other circumstance where there is no right answer, and no obvious path to a solution.
When you’re faced with something and don’t know what to do, do you freeze? Do you immediately call Mom or Dad and wait for them to swoop in and save the day? Do you punt ownership of the problem to someone else?
Or do you set out to solve the problem yourself and just figure it out?
I once worked with a student whose car broke down on the way home from a school trip. He was still 80 miles from home, his cell phone had just died, and unfortunately, he knew that both his parents wouldn’t be returning from visiting relatives until later that night. It was time to figure things out.
He spent the next three hours taking two buses and a train to get home. Figuring it out meant reading bus maps, asking drivers for information, discussing the best route with a ticket-taker, and fixing an errant choice when he got on a bus that headed the opposite direction of where he’d hoped it would. Before that day, he’d never taken public transportation. And it made for a great response to several short-answer prompts on his college applications.
There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. If you’re getting a D in algebra no matter how hard you try, figuring things out means recognizing that you simply cannot do this by yourself. Successful students—and adults—ask for help all the time.
But before you send up a distress signal, consider whether or not this is something you could handle on your own. Skills take time to develop. They require experience if you want to hone them. And the only way to make this skill part of your arsenal is to decide that when presented with the opportunity, you’ll take the time and make the effort to figure things out.