It’s difficult to dramatically improve your college admissibility in one day. But there are roughly 180 days of school in an academic year. What if you committed to doing one simple but effective thing each one of those days? By the end of the year, you’ll have a lot to show for your daily small efforts.
Here are a few suggestions.
- Send a personal thank you email to your counselor, teacher, tutor, friend, parent, or anyone else who helped you when you needed it.
- Commit to turning off (and tuning out) all distractions for at least one hour of focused studying or homework.
- Teach someone how to do something.
- Be nice to a fellow student people usually aren’t so nice to.
- Congratulate, encourage, or otherwise acknowledge someone at your school who deserves it.
- Help a local charity or non-profit.
- Take responsibility for something that will impact one of your activities.
- Learn about a college that you aren’t currently familiar with.
- Go the extra mile in one class even if no extra credit policy exists.
- Cut out all the time wasting during the day and reallocate it to an extra hour or two of sleep that night.
- Abstain from the gossip and other high school drama that makes life harder than it needs to be.
- Take 30 minutes and write down as many ideas as you can about how to do more of what you really enjoy and are good at.
- Write a blog post about a topic that you care about.
Don’t try to do them all on one day. One per day is all it takes to make a difference.