hi guys um welcome to my very first youtube video um my name is elijah jenkins and as you can see by the title this is how to get to uchicago um there is no particular way on how to get into pacific college but i do think there's certain things that will help you get into a college so through this i'm going to kind of talk about my own personal profile and see if they can hopefully help you guys my auntie was very hesitant on making this video because um i'm sure if you're watching this video you're probably a follower of the reddit subpages applying to college and transmute results college results very toxic subreddits but they are very helpful if you don't know what you're doing i personally use them throughout my whole entire college application process so i definitely recommend it but don't take everything in there so seriously i did a chance me results in the college result thing right after i got in chicago to try and help everyone else and receive some pretty bad comments i'll put them up in here right now but yeah so kind of deterred me away from making this video for a while but i remember when i was applying i really needed something like this so hopefully you guys can get something out of it um just some overview in this video i'll be talking about my own general info my stats my grades my activities please talk about my essays and just give you guys some tips or tricks someone would say to help you best fit your profile when you're applying just a disclaimer this is not a video to brag about anything i honestly really just want to help other fellow first-gen low-income students like me um and hopefully help you guys get into chicago or whatever dream school you guys have so on to the very first thing um some general info so um i live in arizona and i attended a private all boys school [Music] yeah it was kind of bad it's kind of bad but we had around 320 people in our grade we did not rank but um based off my school profile i was in between the 10 to the 20 percent maybe even higher because it's kind of iffy um i actually applied early action so this wasn't a binding agreement and this was back in december if you're planning chicago i highly suggest you apply early most of their slots are filled either ed1 ed2 or early action which is i did so if you chicago is your very first choice apply edie intended majors so i applied actually as a history attendant major or lls which is a law letter society so i was a very social science person and that's what i applied to one thing i would say is that uchicago is is one of those top schools where if you play undecided it's not like a deal breaker they're all about knowledge and learning different stuff so if you plan to decide it don't seem like deterred of you applying early stats so now let's talk about grades so i'm actually gonna put my transcript up here for a second like right here and um i'll just go through it on my ipad right here so as you can see freshman year i had three b's um a lot of people think you have to have all b's throughout your all ace throughout your four years and i'm clearly a case where that was not true as you see uh freshman year i did kind of iffino's first year trying to adjust sophomore year i actually did kind of bad my very first semester i had one two three four b's and two a minuses so for my school anything 93 and below is an a minus by the way um i will say my very first semester of sophomore year i broke my leg and so that kind of messed up my grades a bit so if you have something that kind of messed up your grades i highly suggest writing about the additional info section and um get your counselor to write about in their recommendations so if you have the if you're not i don't have a close personal relationship with your counselor just ask them hey i saw from here i had this mental health going issues going on my father was sick or something along that nature to help the colleges better understand why your grades kind of dipped that year um junior year this was the covered year so my grades kind of go went up a bit i did have one b plus first semester and then that's my senior year only the first semester it really counted um but i had all a's so colleges really like to see you challenge yourself and i feel like my transcripts really did show i challenged myself i took approximately one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven total aps and that was definitely challenging myself so ap scores that i got though um sophomore year i got a three on eight push and i was actually kind of iffy about sharing my a push score because i'm applying as a history major and having a three and eight push doesn't really show the quality of my skills but i kind of like was like no it's passing it was kobe test um i think it was good enough to send i'd rather not not said it and it's just like you're playing the history major why wouldn't you send your score so i sent it anyway ap bio i got a three um i did not send i did send that score actually and i got a three but um biology stem was not what i was applying as anyway so it wasn't going to hurt me i thought because you know stem is not my expertise so they're not going to care as much ap lang i got a five ap macro i got a four ap psych i got a four and ap us government politics i got a five so one thing i like to make known is that my ap psych class i took it online through a program my school offered and my in my additional info section i talked about how i did this program online to show that i was trying to bring out my gpa so if you have like certain instances like this that's not really clear on their transcript on how it's there i highly recommend you explain to your college or university um how you take the class and how is it extra more challenging throughout your year so that's what i personally did to show that i was going above and beyond and then senior i haven't i've taken all these tests i don't know if i'm gonna get four of the fives hopefully at least threes i don't know it doesn't really matter anymore but i took ap english literature ap [ __ ] a b ap environmental science ap european history ap compared to government politics so most of my eps this year a lot of like social science ebay so euro compared to government um english so just like english nature but i did do apes online so i took another class online this year because i felt like i needed four years of a science i didn't want to break it i did drop a spanish class so i didn't i stopped at language this year so i did ap environmental science online and once again in my additional info section i talked about how i'm taking additional class online so as you can see i don't have the best transcript as of most people who get into these top colleges but i challenged myself and pursued classes that i was interested in so i didn't take ap physics i didn't do stats i didn't do computer science or principles i didn't i wasn't interested in those it's like eps that matter to me and i think colleges really like that when you pursue aps that are challenging but also align with what you want to be later on so i don't suggest you just take an ep for significant ap unless you don't have many aps in your school and you need to show your challenging yourself but if your school has a lot of aps like i did i suggest you take the aps that matter to you and help you further your passions later on so as you can see my gpa when i applied to early i had a four 3.79 unweighted gpa and a 4.2 so that was the very first semester a senior year when i was applying um so sat so i had a really loving hate relationship with sats and acts i took the act four times it was a lot and i took the sat four times which is a lot um i honestly don't like standardized testing i as a first generation student i didn't really understand the importance of sats or acts until my senior year so i really had no time to study and i didn't know how to study i was trying to study both tests at once which i don't suggest doing um pick one test and just study for that and commit to it but i was studying for both tests at once and taking tests throughout the year of my junior year and my highest score i got in my ect was a 30 very first test i took was 24 so i took it four times i got a 30 and then for the sat i took it four times and all i could get was a 1400 and the they weren't fitting my profile that much so i didn't really send it to you chicago i sent it to certain schools and i still got in so if your test score is not where it needs to be just make sure you have other stuff in your profile that kind of bolsters it and which i'll get into later so sat is not everything um i highly suggest you still try studying early on so summer sophomore year so you can get ready for the psat get possibly national merit and study throughout your junior year so make sure you study for the set or act early on get potential scholarships early on but yeah but if it's not it's not a deal breaker as long as you have other stuff going on because the college process is truly holistic i will say if you don't have like a 3.7 or above and you're applying to colleges most these colleges are not going to have that much eye focusing on your application so you need at least has some sort of stats to get you in the door which i felt like i had at least so those were my stats grades and stuff um now i'm gonna talk about my activities i actually used all 10 slots i will say you don't need all 10 slots unless you have 10 slots so only putting meaningful stuff that are actually going to help your application so my very first one was a social justice um this was called african-american reconstruction and this was an outside organization i was a part of um we hosted a three-day ut conference and held canada's forums with local and federal politicians to register voters so this was 11th and 12th grade um then for 11 12th grade i was another question philanthropy and this was a student-led organization we helped fundraise money and get back to um minority businesses and nonprofits and as you can see i actually put a description of this organization in the title um most people don't do this but i highly recommend you do if people don't understand what it is in particular for seed philanthropy because it's not really like a well-known organization so i put in parentheses a student-led organization that fundraises money for minority organizations next one is a career-oriented version um this was city phoenix district 4. i was a youth advisory so we helped create programs for the phoenix valley and we launched our first ever 5k run in march to raise funds for youth educational programs my next one was my very first in-school one and this was the black student union i was part of this for 9th 10th 11th and 12th my sophomore year became a historian then became the secretary of my junior year the president of blackstone in my senior year and i said lead club meetings with 50-plus members organizations and liaison through other affinity clubs to co-expenses together then it was another one called culture project and once again i put in parentheses on what culture project is because whoever's watching this you guys probably don't see what culture project is but it's also another unique organization that's only unique in my school and i put a description when it was and i even went further put examples of the specific things that we did which was creating events about daca or for dac students to share about the life stories and creating other events to highlight other mario generalized communities on campus the next one is the president of audio united nation so 10th 11th 12th um help other members with write proposals propositions indian club recruitment let mock conferences and meetings to a competition so and that was three hours the next one was a mentorship program i was a part of my junior senior year so i mentored over a total of 20 freshmen basically helping them understand the campus classes social life in general and kind of just make that just from junior high to high school easier 11 12 i was part of student council and we don't actually have like roles like president and secretary so i just were to call like we didn't even have really name so i just played junior senior representative because we were all like basically representatives of our class and helped creating with assemblies and dances and i gave announcements on the intercom so i put that um 9th 10th 11th 12th this is actually a class but it's pretty involved with it so this is my orchestra class and section help as a section leader 11th and 12th grade i help mentor students with music tuning their instruments help select music and for the classes and competing in like the state competitions and this was five hours a week and my final one was a missions guide so just basically just gave two ways for my school and helped host events so as you can see my um extracurriculars um my big ones kind of happened later on i didn't really have that foundational basis of what i wanted to be into later on but um i pursued what i liked same thing with my classes episode would like so if you pursue what you like on your classes regarding your extracurriculars in the end they're all going to mess up together and create this good profile i'm not that type of person where you have to go do like quiz bowl you have to be on speech and debate that's not what colleges care about they don't like well-rounded people they like people who are passionate about certain topics certain things and so mine was all about social justice and understanding history and being involved in my community and so that was what were my passions i pursued um i guess next i'll share was my honors my sophomore and junior year i received a committed to doing justice award so this was just a school award they awarded to two students of each of their class each year recognizing their efforts of giving back to the community uh freshman year was for gymnastics i feel this one was low-key kind of fake but like it isn't what i received so this was through whoever's watching if you guys know understated gymnastics at a certain point you go to regionals and in this regional competition i placed first place i mean second place so um i put in it i placed second place and explained what the regionals was uh ninth and tenth i i was a poetry out loud runner up at my school so i talked about my passion for poetry aloud and i put in um as you can see hyphenated unable to compete junior year due to covid because i want to show that i was still very involved in this activity but my junior year i was not able to be involved either so once again i utilized that entire space national was just ap scholar with distinction everyone has that it's kind of whatever um and then try a musical honor society and i'll just 12th grade so yeah so those are my honors you don't have to have these amazing honors to get into these top colleges they just want to see if you have anything and if you do just put it on my next thing i will talk about is my comment app okay yeah so for my common app essay i chose the discussing an accomplishment event or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others so um i'm not going to read my whole entire essay in this video i'll do it in a different video but i basically talked about so i was in gymnastics for 14 years until my sophomore year when i broke my leg which kind of caused my grades to dip in my sophomore year and this was a very impactful thing throughout my entire life and i didn't put in my activity because i wasn't still doing it i mean so my essay was about my gymnastics and how breaking my leg kind of inspired me to pursue a passion through social justice people say to not write about sports i disagree i think anyone can write about anything they want as long as it is unique so as long as your topic is unique you should write about it um so i read about how gymnastics affected me and changed me throughout my entire life and how it led me to become the person i am today so i chose option 2 for my uchicago writing prompt which was what's so easy about pie um this was kind of like a whatever type thing it wasn't super duper unique but i talked about my relationship with my grandmother and how she would bake us desserts for christmas and particularly pies and so the whole thing was talking about my narrative with my relationship with my grandmother and it ended with what's so easy about pie is that it's the easiest demonstration of love one can give to another so it was not a quirky essay people say you need a quirky essay for you chicago i personally believe i'm not quirky and i just wrote something that was like very like touching my heart and as i said i was playing a university of pennsylvania and i didn't think i was knocking against upenn i know it's kind of dumb to say but i was head over heels over that school and when i wrote to uchicago my essay was kind of like a backup it's all just writing just letting it flow and i think that's what's it about when you write these college essays people can make it so strategic that it's not yourself anymore so when you write these honestly just have fun with it and particularly your chicago essays they really want to know who you are so that's what i did and i kind of just wrote from the heart my next one was the y chicago essay so honestly looking back at it when i wrote it it was kind of like a gimmick type essay i didn't think was like you're going to see in a second but i kind of just wrote it's like uh i don't know if they're going to think about it but i wrote about my admissions officer who came to my school to talk about uchicago and i wrote about specifically how he wore a uchicago mask and it matched with his outfit so it starts off with me talking about how i was caught off guard by seeing this uchicago officer masked with mask match his mask with his outfit during the damn it during the pandemic and how so use chicago of him and quirky for him to do that compared to other admissions officers who don't do that so that's what i kind of did to get the attention of my admissions officer right in the back turns out i guess it was will smith who read it and i didn't realize that when i was writing it but yeah and then i went on there to talk about the certain classes i want to go take and what i want to do outside the classroom and how you chicago just make me a better person so next video i'll talk to you about that as well all right guys um i hope you guys like this video enjoyed it and learned something new if you have any questions feel free to comment dm me on instagram i will happily let you guys know on anything um but just know this is just not a correct way to get into a certain school and i hope through this video you realize that i'm not perfect and you don't have to be perfect to get there you just have to have a passion to pursue this greater knowledge that you chicago calls and yeah if you have anything else make sure to hit me up or check out my other videos thank you