foreign [Music] hey there it's Millie and today I'm going to give you all what you have been asking for The Ultimate Guide to navigating college applications that worked for me personally as someone who's able to get into all three of my top choice schools which were Stanford Yale and UCLA and also a lot of other amazing schools and if you want to see everything that I got into and places where I got rejected from go watch my college decisions reactions which I'll link like today I'm going to share literally everything that I did to prepare for college application season my actual Common App as well as how to prepare for actually going to college and some final words of advice and hopefully this is going to be your singular One-Stop shop for everything college application I'm going to try to cover everything so hopefully this is helpful to anyone who's currently going through the college app process or is going to go through that in the future but before sharing my actual application I wanted to share some pretty important things that you should know before getting started so one question that I saw a lot was when should I start to prepare for college apps and my answer is as soon as possible but not in a way that it takes over your entire life by that I mean try to set aside some time every day and depending on how close you are to the actual deadline I guess more time or less time to just work on the college apps write essays do all of that I know it's not fun but it's definitely easier to budget your time out rather than try to do it all at once and Rush against the timeline and also if you work at it chunk by chunk it'll be a lot less daunting to get started here's my prescribed order of doing things if you're just starting out first I would recommend writing your common app essay or basically your personal statement that's going to be the main story the main core heart of your application and then the rest of the Common App like your extracurriculars your honors grades Etc and then write your supplemental essays which are the essays that every school has specifically for their school right as school starts try to ask for your letters of wreck immediately because you never know how busy teachers are going to be and it's best to just ask ahead of time so they have you at the top of their list personally I started seriously working on College apps in July the summer before my senior year and that timeline worked out pretty well for me but I did write my common app essay before then the second question is how do I stay organized and not stressed during this time so I know that college apps can be like a very stressful time and they definitely were for me and they will be for everyone it's like a universal experience but I would recommend using a college spreadsheet to stay organized that was literally a lifesaver for me and I was able to consolidate all of the information that I needed in one place I recommend using Google Sheets and docs for everything rather than typing directly on the Common App or anywhere like that I would recommend creating a Google doc for each school that you're applying to and for my actual College spreadsheet I use the following tabs the colleges that I was applying to that included the general info on the colleges like the due date the percent acceptance the major I'm applying as the scholarships they offered Etc and then in essays tab which is the links to all of your Google Docs with your supplemental essays on them I also color coded the supplemental essay questions by like the formatting or the type of question and by color coding the essay prompts in terms of similarity I was able to save myself a lot of time because I could use one essay for all of this type of prop for example like a community service prompt or a citizenship prompt you can definitely reuse your supplemental essays in my opinion if you just slightly tweak them they'll seem like an entirely new essay that pretty much fits the prompt this is not true for the Why Us essay though that's definitely not reusable I will say that I also had a scholarships tab to keep track of all the scholarships I applied to and also a letters of Rec tab one of the most important parts of my college spreadsheet which I really really recommend you guys to have because I was able to track who I was asking for a letter from and what schools they were going to send the letter to this is sort of like micromanaging but writing down specifically what qualities I wanted them to highlight within my letter of Rec so I could include that in like my email to them and then the final question I wanted to answer was what do I do if I'm not yet a senior and I want to start preparing for college apps or on the flip side of that what do I do if I'm already a senior like it's the do day is approaching and it's already pretty late so for the first part of that question if you're not yet a senior I would recommend you to First just figure out what you want your story to be in other words what are your spikes as an applicant what is going to make you stand out one thing I saw online that was really helpful for me personally was try to imagine what is the one sentence they're going to describe you as when they're talking about you as an applicant like the actress who is passionate about telling stories of marginalized communities and making sure that we're spreading awareness about their stories that's me but then also if you have the time right now definitely start to boost your extracurriculars try to expand them as much as you can try to increase the amount of impact that you have connect them to you personally and then I cannot stress this enough make sure you're applying for awards the honors section of the Common App isn't something anyone told me about and I don't think a lot of people know about it until it's like college app season and you have to write down five awards that you got if you're in your junior year here go online search for the well-known reputable Honors that you can get for the work that you've done I got a lot of awards for my community service work and if you are currently a senior and it's a little bit late and you're just starting don't stress out just find your central story find your narrative one mistake I think a lot of people make is trying to put their entire story and everything about them into the application but I recommend doing this not on the application but on a master Google doc once you've created that Master dock of everything you've done I recommend trying to group together all the elements to find the common passions that you can use as selling points for your application so many young people do so many amazing things with their time but are not able to get into the colleges that they want to because they aren't able to craft that story that they can sell to the admissions officers which sucks because nobody ever tells you that you have to do this take what you have and make it into something that's going to be a cohesive story to tell because what you have is already enough I cannot stress that enough you are already enough you don't have to try to like get some huge recognition or something in order to get into a college you just have to try to find what it is that sets you apart from other people and then from there hit those points over and over again rather than trying to just spread your eggs everywhere or like leave your eggs over I don't know how to say never mind that sounds weird Okay um okay now comes the long-awaited part of sharing my application details so just for some background info I applied as a double major in theater and performance studies and either international relations or East Asian studies for all of my schools for grades and stats I'm going to keep it short in general I would just say as a rule of thumb it's great it's definitely a plus to have good grades but College apps are a holistic process grades are definitely not the be-all end-all so I graduated from a small Arts High School in LA and I was in the top 10 percent of my graduating class the cumulative weighted GPA that I put in my application was 4.3 and I also submitted my unweighted GPA for some applications which was a 4.0 I took the SAT once the summer before my junior year I recommend trying to do that as soon as possible just to get it over with I got a 1540 I took 11 AP courses and took all the tests and I got all fives except for AP art history which I got a four that's okay though because that was senior year so I also my opinion taking so many APS was definitely not worth it five of my AP courses I took outside of school on my own time I'm literally getting more flashbacks I would recommend only taking APS that your school offers and APS that are related to your major or your area of interest for example if you want to major in theater and Global Affairs you don't have to take AP art history don't worry too much about APS it really doesn't matter that much so on to my honors and awards so the first honor that I put down was the Princeton prize in race relations and the Yale Bassett award for Community engagement which I won my junior year and then the second award was the Cameron impact scholarship finalist which I didn't win but hey that's fine and Coca-Cola Scholars semi-finalist which I did win and then for my third award I had the National Council of Chinese schools multimedia speech competition first place which was a speech competition in Chinese that I did it actually went really well with the rest of my application which was a lot about my Heritage my culture and my fourth award was the 2022 Youth Of The Year of the 27th congressional district which I was nominated by congresswoman Judy 24 the fifth award was the Asian Pacific American Friends of the theater youth actor scholarship for all theatrical Pursuits which was a theater scholarship that I got and if you hadn't already noticed for a bunch of my Awards there were two awards that I combined to one space and I think you can definitely do that I think that's a great method to add a little bit more of your Awards into there because they only give you five slots and now on to my extracurriculars which I think were definitely a stronger part of my application my first extra regular was youth against hate which I was the founder and Lead organizer of and it was a Statewide Coalition that was dedicated to uplifting youth voices to bring positive change we created some youth-led campaigns in various areas of California to sort of call for positive change my second extracurricular was the art hour which I was the head of and it is profit that offers free art classes to cater like five students internationally so I basically got a bunch of students from my school which is an Arts High School to teach online arts classes to students from low income or marginalized communities who might not have access to Arts education my third extracurricular was that I was an actress in school plays commercials and web series and basically I just Consolidated all of my acting work into this extracurricular my fourth extracurricular was a marketing intern at make noise today which is an advocacy branch of the international API Ad Agency intertrend I created social media content sharing AAP IU stories and then for my fifth extracurricular I put down that I was a member of the youth Liberty Squad which is an LA local activism Squad that is run by the ACLU of Southern California I also created a state wide cohort that included more students from across California to get involved and I think it's really helpful for your application if you show that for each extracurricular you did something that sort of took it to the next level or you had some sort of special role within it and then my sixth EC was ASB president which I was involved in ASP for all four years and I was AC president my senior year my seventh extracurricular was the aapi alliance Club at my school which I restarted and it was basically just an affinity group and a safe space for aapi students to advocate for themselves share stories and we held a bunch of different cultural events and then my eighth extricular was all of my museum work I worked at the USC Pam The Getty Museum and mocha La my ninth extracurricular was the blog that I created called with love Millie and I'm sure you guys have heard of it if you have been following me for any time I created my own blog site and wrote weekly Vlogs on things I was passionate about like a identity mental health and self-growth Etc I also wrote like K drama reviews which I put in some of my supplemental essays so hey you can literally use everything and then my 10th and final extracurricular was the founder and executive director of future voters Los Angeles in preparation for the 2020 election we registered new youth voters tried to get the youth voting rates up and basically just promoted Civic engagement one important tip that you should know about the EC and honor list is to order it by the order of importance make sure that you're putting the most important extracurriculars and honors to you at the very top that means that your first EC and honor should be not only the most meaningful to you personally in terms of how much you did how much time you spent on it Etc but also hopefully the most impactful like how many people you reach okay now on to essays which in my opinion is the most important part of the college application I won't be reading my essays in this video yo but I might make a full essay video later on so let me know if you guys want me to do that but I will share some important tips that definitely helped me a lot in my essay writing process so the most important essay arguably is the Common App essay which you will use for all of your applications I used a method that my AP language teacher in 11th grade gave me in order to come to this topic called College sub outlines so basically you split your essay into story and observation story is the story that you're telling and it should be one sequence of events I wouldn't recommend trying to sort of time Jump and include two different stories or something like that just focus on one sequence that will make things a lot easier and it'll actually make a stronger essay because you're not trying to do a ton of things and then the observation is what you learned from that series of events and how you grew from there but it's not just that it's also what this shows about you as a person because at the end of the day the Common App essay is supposed to show some sort of innate quality about you that can't be sort of measured by statistics or shown in an extra regular activity and then also make sure you include a montage between the story and the observation which is basically like a really well written version of a list of all the things you did to get from the series of events that happened to learning the observation so my story was taking Chinese herbal medicine with my mom and I used that as a metaphor for struggling with my cultural identity and how the herbal medicine sort of paralleled my journey to accepting who I was and loving who I was and clearly my observation there is learning to accept my Chinese Heritage so that's all I have for essays for now but I also have one final tip which is don't forget about the additional information section so I used it to put some of the remaining extra peelers that I did and also explain some of the specific situations that I had this can definitely be a clarifying space in an elaborating space Oh and final final tip make sure you're relating everything in your application back to that Central message of who you are everything in your application should align with what you want to study there what you want to do there what extra feelers you want to be a part of at the college that way they can actually sort of Envision you being a student there and that'll definitely lean them towards accepting you that's why your intended major is also very important showing colleges that you know what you want to do once you get there is actually sort of the key to getting in which is so counter-intuitive because we go to college to try to figure out what we want to do but such is the messed up nature of college apps okay now that you've heard way too much about me let's answer the biggest and final question how should I prepare for actually going to college well as I am currently going through that process as a child of immigrants and also the first in my family to attend an undergrad in the US I can say that it can be really daunting and definitely hard to sort of leave the comfort zone of the lifestyle that I've been leading for the past 18 years College apps definitely do not help at all with that transition but one way to both ease yourself into this new mindset and also just get excited about starting a new stage of life is to create a living space that really reflects who you are and brings comfort you can do that through dormify which is an amazing resource that allows you to purchase all of your living space must-haves for college in one place dormify is a website that simplifies the dorm shopping experience for college students by creating exclusive products that are specifically designed for college dorms but also are unique to each person's individual style it's not only really fun and comforting and sort of healing in a way to get to design and personalize your space in a new and foreign environment but it's also really functional and efficient because all of the items that you're buying off of dormify are designed specifically to be used in college dorms through dormify you can easily get all the things you're going to need for college and you won't have to worry about buying things that you won't need or buying too much or 2 little or not having the things that you do need they include all the essentials like bedding storage charging headboards which is super cool shower caddies mirrors Etc I definitely need a charging headboard because I never have enough charging ports I also particularly love their storage options because there are just so many there's something for literally every kind of dorm I also recommend trying out their online tools like the free visual styling appointment which is basically meeting one-on-one with a stylist who can help you design your dorm room and also the bed visualizer which helps you to create your dream dorm bed online like putting all the pillows and the bedding on there to see what it can look like before you actually purchase it you can check out dormify right now at dormify.com or you can click the link in the description below but to end it off I wanted to share some words of sort of wisdom that hopefully can resonate with you and help you during this time in order to properly navigate the transition from high school to college including College apps including moving away all of that it's most important to know that it's okay to be lost and to be unsure and to not know what you want to do I would recommend imagining that the you that you're selling to colleges which is confident knows what they're going to do with the rest of their life is a simplified Consolidated version of you that doesn't necessarily reflect who you really are we are all so multi-dimensional multi-faceted and complicated that it's just impossible to try to fit ourselves in our entire lives and personality into a college application it's just not possible so don't feel like whatever is on your common application your college applications is who you are or defines who you are and similarly don't feel like whatever results you get at the end of the day reflect who you are either I know I definitely let that get to my head and I had a really rough time with trying to reconcile who I was with what I was putting on the page but instead of letting her start to college be marred with self-consciousness and doubt like I did instead do your best to remember that your worth is not defined by any college decision if you want more content regarding college please let me know and don't forget to like And subscribe oh and also I don't know if you guys know where I'm going but uh I'm going to Yale yeah fun fun fact of the day and I know a lot of you might be curious why I chose Yale over Stanford which was my top choice and a bunch of other amazing schools but the main reason why was I really loved Yale's art community and I think that the level and caliber of the Taps program which is a theater and performance studies program at Yale is really just unmatched it also gives me the opportunity to learn other things though which is definitely what I wanted because I didn't really want a conservatory style education I wanted to explore some of my other interests as well I also just loved Bulldog days it was so fun um so yeah I I'm really excited to go and I hope you guys will follow me on my journey there okay bye today I'm gonna share literally everything that I did to prepare for college applications love me [Music]