Some high school students are so driven to get accepted to selective colleges that they actually morph into full-time applicants. They’re not actually applying to college 24/7. But they talk about their life in terms of GPAs, test scores, activities, accolades, etc. The college applicant displaces the real person.
You’re not a college applicant; you’re a real person who happens to be planning on applying to college. As involved as that process might be, you should still have plenty of areas in your life that have nothing to do with impressing admissions officers.
For example, do you have answers to these questions?
- What do you do for fun?
- What’s the best experience you’ve had with a friend in the last six months?
- When’s the last time you laughed really hard?
- What relaxes you?
- Which of your activities means the most to you, the activity you would miss the most if it were taken away from you?
- What’s the last thing you learned just because you wanted to learn it, not because you had to learn it?
- If you could create your perfect Sunday, what would it look like?
If you don’t have answers, maybe it’s time to find some.
And if this all seems trivial because you just can’t turn off the applicant mindset, you might be interested to know that many colleges ask these kinds of questions on their applications and during interviews.
They’re not just admitting applicants—they’re admitting real people.