What Leadership Looks Like for College Applications

Top universities want their students to be leaders, but what does that really mean? Unfortunately, many high school students fall into the trap of thinking that leadership is just a title. If you become president of some club, or founder of some random project, you're in! This is actually not the case, and admissions officers are trained in sniffing out these hollow leadership roles and eliminating students who try to fluff up their resume with them. Today we will be discussing what leadership means to top colleges and how you can start applying it to your own activities.

Real leadership often falls into three main categories: founding and impact, teaching and progress, and change making and results. The final words in the pairs are what you want to focus on, because anyone can found a project, teach one student, and make some change. However, including these demonstratable metrics in both your activity section and discussing them in your personal insight questions will really set you apart.

Founding & Impact

As stated before, simply starting one thing is not enough to impress top colleges. The key is to found something with impact. This could be a club that starts competing at the national level and wins awards eventually, starting a volunteer project or fundraising initiative that raises several thousand dollars, or starting a website or other platform that amasses a large following. Be sure to keep good records of where you started, and have biweekly or monthly check-ins to see how much you are growing. You can also try to do something specific, like set a fundraising goal and meet it, do something tangible like renovating an underprivileged school over the summer, or start some other project that has a set deadline and time frame. On the other hand, you probably do want to leave some kind of a legacy with what you found instead of letting it wither after you graduate high school, so do pick something that can either continue without your involvement or that you can run continuously with a smaller time commitment.

 

Teaching & Progress

Many high schoolers tried to exhibit leadership by teaching in some form, whether it be tutoring, teaching younger kids, or even teaching English to newly arrived Americans. However, what these students fail to do is track and reflect on the progress that their students are making. It is one thing to say that you taught five students English for six months. It is another and much better thing to say that you taught five students English for six months, after which they took the test of English as a foreign language, and all passed. It is also good to check in directly with your students and ask them what they feel like they are learning, and where they feel like they are improving. This boosts their confidence and lets you know what you are doing right. Try to show both how your students have progressed, but also mention how you learned different teaching methods or saw better success with one way of doing something than another to show your own personal growth.

Changemaking & Results

Lastly, you don't have to start something or be the only teacher or tutor for a student in math in order to have leadership experience. Many students come into leadership roles in existing organizations simply due to their own seniority. To stand out amongst this crowd specifically, you want to make some kind of a change to the organization which you are leading, and you must discuss the impactful results in your activities section and in your personal insight questions. For example, I personally took over a publication that's similar to a school newspaper. Instead of just relaxing and enjoying the ride, I decided to make new orientation materials and set up a welcome seminar for our new writers and editors whom we recruited every semester. I also decided to revise the guidelines on what content was allowed on our page, because I had seen a significant dip in content quality over the recent few months. Our readership improved, and our writers and editors felt more confident starting their engagement with us. Making these positive changes can benefit not only yourself, but can be beneficial to the group community as a whole, and hopefully people will continue editing and refining the processes that come after your time in that group.

Final Thoughts

You do not have to be a complete dictator to lead well, in fact, quite the opposite. The best leaders, make positive impact, lead progress, and make lasting changes that improve the quality of the group or project they have been leading. By making sure to regularly update your own personal notes and records to be able to show the progress in your activities section and personal insight questions, you will set yourself up for success in senior year when you are writing your applications. You also don't have to have the most impressive metrics ever; if you make a deep personal impact on a few people or create a meaningful change even in a small community, people are going to understand and respect that more than the person who has five different leadership titles but nothing to show for it. Be sure that you can honestly show these positive outcomes and attribute them to your leadership, and you will be set to have a strong application. If you would like some help finding out what activities you should try to approach leadership in, or if you want to develop your leadership narrative in your application, you can schedule a call with one of our counselors today!