Summer before Senior Year: Resumes

Advice for Resumes:
If you don't have one already, then you'll definitely need to make a resume before your senior year. A resume should have the following things:

• Education
• Work experience
• Extra-curricular activities
• Volunteer work / Community service
• Awards and recognition
• Skills

Education includes high school, dual enrollment, high school grades or AP/IB courses, educational camps you went to, and any academies you might attend. Work experience is any job or internship. Extra-curricular activities are things you do OUTSIDE of school such as any sports or musical orchestras. Community service is ANY volunteer work you do. Awards and recognition include any scholastic, athletic, musical, artistic, or volunteer awards, any officer positions held in any clubs, any scholarships you've received, or anything you were academically and officially recognized for. Skills are just certain things you can do that would seem beneficial to the person you're sending your resume to, such as instruments you play, languages you speak, etc. Everything should be organized by most recent to oldest. Any activity that continues to the present should be the first one. 

Organization is key. Make sure everything on your resume looks neat and consistent before finalizing it.


If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the Comments. 

Summer before Senior Year: College Applications

Advice for College Applications:

Write out anecdotes about yourself. Write individual ones of different themes. Look up past college app essays and write your response. Writing is Rewriting. If the college(s) you want to apply to uses the CommonApp, you should go check that out right now. In fact, I just did, and found something incredibly helpful for all you incoming seniors! The CommonApp has already announced the new essay topics for this upcoming school year! To look through them, go to https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/CA4.aspx and click "Essays topics announced."

If you have multiple colleges you plan on applying to, I suggest you begin a College Status Report. Here's mine from my senior year. That's all for this post. If you want additional advice, to ask any questions, or to take a look at my own essays, leave a comment below, and I'll respond as soon as possible. You can also leave a college you plan on applying to, and, if I applied to the same school, I'll reply with my essay and if I got in or not. 

Summer before Senior Year: Scholarships

Scholarships, resumes, or essay-writing. Any or all of those should be the first things on your mind.

Advice for scholarships:
Apply to all the scholarships you can! Make sure to keep all your essays. I myself have a single document that's filled with all my essays along with their respective themes. Common themes among scholarship essays are leadership, community service, hardship, work ethic, etc. Sometimes, scholarships are more specific such as if you've ever worked in a Toyota car dealership, stayed in Ecuador for more than a month, or made an elaborate Prom dress using duck tape. Write out some personal anecdotes to jumpstart your essay-writing.

Here are a few websites where you can find scholarships:

• fastweb.com
• cappex.com
• scholarships.com
• smscholarships.com
• scholarshipmonkey.com
• collegeboard.com
• collegenet.com
• zinch.com
• collegeprowler.com

I recommend Cappex and CollegeBoard. 

Introductions!

Let me begin this blog by mentioning what inspired me to start it. A friend of mine just finished his junior year in high school and is concerned about scholarships and college applications. I've been seen by my college counselor to be very diligent and somewhat knowledgeable when it comes to these two things. But there are some things you readers need to keep in mind when going through any of my blog posts.

First, this blog will be about basically my journey to and through college. This includes topics like scholarship applications, college applications,

Second, my credentials? I was told I applied to the most scholarships in my class, resulting in more than 50 scholarship applications. Also, I applied to 11 colleges. I'm not really a college counselor, but if any reader needs some college counselling, I will be here for any questions! Many public high schools have too many students that college counselors don't get the chance to discuss the future with each individual student, and hopefully this blog will help.


More about the author!
I am not a college student YET. I, and 34 other students, recently graduated with High Honors* from the 3rd best high school in the nation, beating our sister school by 4 places, according to Newsweek. And let me just say, this high school has been incredibly helpful by preparing me for college--with teachers who have office hours at least 3 times a week, peer tutors who help every weekday, a college counselor who really does everything she can to help each and every high school student get into college, and a small, supportive student body. If you want to know more about this school, I would be happy to answer any questions which you can leave in the Comments.

I will be starting my freshmen year in Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, in Fall 2013. I plan to major in Biomedical Engineering, and I may minor in Mathematics, depending on how my undergrad goes... I am actually aiming to complete my Bachelor's in 3 years by having a few classes credited by my AP tests and taking some summer classes in between school years.

*High Honors: Students from BASIS Schools who want to graduate with High Honors have to enroll in 4 certain Capstone classes and complete a senior research project.