Building your academic profile
Building your extracurricular profile
Courses/Fellowships/Competitions
<aside> 💡 High-school means classes 9th-12th.
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US admissions are holistic in nature. This means that colleges take into account much more than your academic performance in high school or your SAT score. As well as demonstrating a capability to handle rigorous coursework, colleges are looking for students who can grow personally and contribute meaningfully to some field and to the college community. To ascertain whether you are such a person, colleges need to know what you do outside the classroom. They need to see how well you work with others, and how you contribute to the communities you are already a part of. They are interested in how you utilize resources and create opportunities to pursue your interests. Finally, colleges want to get to know you as a person and understand the way you think. For instance, they don't want to admit people who aren't nice to be around or people who respond poorly to setbacks.
To be a competitive applicant, you need to work on all these things throughout your four years of high school. Your academics, activities, accomplishments, essays, interviews, and recommendation letters will reflect your personality and how well you've utilized your high school years. This will reflect how likely you are to make the most of a diverse campus with abundant resources and driven people.
This section of the guide contains some general advice for developing your academic and extracurricular profiles as well as databases with different opportunities you can avail.
It helps to have a clear academic inclination in your application and it’s better if it is more thought out than general interest. The strongest applicants go above and beyond to demonstrate their academic interests and express their excitement in their applications.
During 9th and 10th grade, try engaging in different subjects outside your classroom to find your interests. This engagement may take the form of reading books, attending seminars, summer programs, competitions, internships, talking to students and professionals, or even pursuing independent projects.
If you already have a clear inclination, which is rare and might change in some time, you should focus on getting more experience in your area of interest and less on exploration.
In classes 11th and 12th, you should try and get as much experience in your intended fields of study. Strong applicants have significant experience and achievements in one or two academic areas. The forms of engagement are the same as before, but the difference is that you’re taking it to the next level in a few areas. If you do well in JEE, NEET, or other national competitive exams it will help your application if the results make it in time.