Top Five: Steps to Prepare for Senior Year: Advice from Women in STEM

The summer before your senior year is arguably the most important time in high school. Before the maelstrom of deadlines and assignments when the school year hits, you can prepare with a fun but productive junior summer. We met with current women in STEM at universities across the US to hear their advice for those entering their last year of high school. Read on to discover the top five (lesser known) things to do before you hit senior fall.

1. Brainstorm your Common Application essay

The Common App essay is possibly the hardest one you will ever write. How do you distill your personality and interests into 650 words? This problem causes stress for hundreds of thousands of students every year. Taking advantage of free time over the summer, however, eases this process. In Princeton Review’s “College Hopes & Worries” survey, the most significant piece of advice from students and their parents is “start early.” Marina Curchitser, a student in the Molecular and Cellular Biology and Public Health majors at Johns Hopkins University, advised, “Especially with a short essay, it [can’t] capture everything about you. So it’s definitely going to take multiple tries to get it to a place where you want it to be. Even if it doesn’t capture every nuance about you, it sends the messages that are most important to you.” Check in with yourself: what do you do when you don’t have school or work? What brings you joy in your free time? Spend days or weeks brainstorming a list of potential topics. Curchitser added, “It’s good to have time to test out different ways of … approaching the question until you really feel that you’re proud of your work. If you don’t have enough time, [the process] is going to be really challenging because it is going to take time to develop your styles, your ideas, and your clarity. Sometimes it will take hours, even days, to think of the right word.” By writing in the summer months, you make the work of the college essay much easier for yourself and ease the stress of looming deadlines. It also yields a better result, increasing your chances of attending your top university. The idiom is right: the early bird does get the worm.

2. Discuss financial expectations with family

As a student in college, you pay much more than just tuition; dorm decorations, clothing, food, and ticketed parties are some of the expenses university education stipulates. When you’re drafting your college list, it’s important to discuss expectations for college finances. How will you divide payment between you and your caregivers? What will you need to raise before entering university? Will you be applying for scholarships and working during college? What price range of universities should you look at? These are some of the many questions that I suggest you sit down and talk through. It can be an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s necessary so that you have accurate projections while refining the schools you apply to.

3. Find a summer job or internship

Private universities cost an average of $218,004 over four years, according to the Education Data Initiative. The average student pays $35,551 per year, including supplies and daily expenses. To get ahead of the curve and avoid hefty loans, take on a job in the summer before senior year. It can be serving ice cream at your local shop or interning at a media company, but entering the workforce teaches you invaluable life skills that transfer to college. Interpersonal communication, leadership, and initiative are things that Admissions Officers look for in potential students. Curchitser said, “It’s good to be confident in your ability to learn new skills, to work with other people, and to multitask: balance a job, work, and your social life. … You may learn something … that excites you, or you may learn that you don’t want to do something again, which is equally valuable information.”

After participating in lab work during high school, Curchitser gained insight into the concrete exploration of abstract ideas related to her field of study. Plus, working a full-time job over the summer at minimum wage will get you almost $3,000 — even more if you live somewhere with wages set at $10 or $15 an hour. ZipRecruiter reports an average summer monthly earning for teens of $2,727. Finding a professional pursuit over the summer boosts your resume and provides some cash to offset tuition.

4. Create a database of your prospective colleges’ essays

Once you begin the college application process, you’ll see how rise-and-repeat the essay questions are. Princeton Review’s “College Hopes & Worries” report finds that 37% of students apply to nine or more colleges; with most places having two to five prompts, you’re going to be writing a *lot* of essays. Priya Patel, a student in Wellesley College’s Biochemistry department, believes “applying to colleges can be an overwhelming process and, often, there’s not enough time to do everything.” When applying to university, I made a database of every college’s essays and grouped the prompts into categories (ie: why college, difficult discussion, why major). This made it much easier to transfer phrases that apply to multiple prompts. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when you’re participating in such an arduous process. Plus, you can zoom in on important paragraphs and spend more time editing rather than writing, increasing essays’ complexity. Patel said, “Organizing my essays by category helped me to get everything done faster and also made me feel less anxious about the process.” Though essay writing is a necessary part of the college application process, it doesn’t need to be as much of an uphill battle as it initially seems.

5. Leave time for your passions

Senior year is shorter than it seems. By the time all of your essays are submitted, you’ll be in January, with only months until you transition to a new stage in your life. Amidst the rush of essays, interviews, college visits, and seminars, it can be easy to forget to take time for yourself. Whether your passion is embroidering, baking, or photography, intentionally focus on your mental and physical health throughout and after the college application process. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 21% of students felt persistently sad or hopeless. These feelings are only intensified during the period they apply to college. Giving yourself a break from academic work is crucial to both ensuring your well-being and performing well during this time. Beyond assisting with student mental health, pursuing your passions can inspire introspection and even boost your college applications. Brina Zhang, a Public Health major at the University of Illinois at Chicago, agrees about the personal growth creative pursuits bring. “You have a lot more creative room when it comes to self-discovery. … In high school, I got to see what I was truly passionate about and what I wanted to do with my life.” These side quests can also bolster your college application. According to Acceptitas, now acquired by Crimson Education, 75% of current Harvard students included a passion project in their applications. Almost all colleges accept portfolios of music and art, and other enterprises can be included in essays or the “Additional Information” section. Your passions are a great way to distinguish yourself — indeed, you’re the only one to develop them the way you do. Allow yourself time for self-expression, both for your health and your flourishing.

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Harmonie Ramsden is a gap year student at the University of Chicago, where they study Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU) and Global Studies. They are an advocate for gender justice and youth power and a prolific marketing and ESG expert. Harmonie is currently working at BUILT BY GIRLS, JUV Consulting, Don't Waste Durham, Generation Ratify, and Civics Unplugged.

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