I believe that the way most people approach the college application process is somewhat flawed. Throughout high school, students place a massive focus on academics and their GPA trying to outdo one another by piling on APs. Meanwhile, they participate in relatively standard clubs and activities like DECA, HOSA, and Speech and Debate. However, this is not the best way to differentiate yourself. Colleges want to see your grades because they want to know you can handle school once you're there. Going above and beyond the threshold admissions officers need in order to say "you can handle it" is not...

A lot of students use up their summers without much to show for it. Use your summers to explore a passion or to fully realize a technical interest of yours. For example, if you expect during-the-year research to be a fundamental part of your application, try hard to get into a research summer camp. My personal research experience was very different than...

Be strategic about AP exams! At my school, AP classes did not have nearly the workload of AP classes at other, top-tier boarding/private schools. However, I still avoided the ones that fit two criteria: 1) they were a lot of work and 2) I wasn't interested in using them for my career or future. Notice: I wanted to be a CS major, so all of the hardest...