 Meet Joe. Say hi Joe. Hi Joe. Joe has always had big dreams. Joe likes to play guitar. Joe is 17 and a senior in high school. Joe may seem very different from me. I mean look at him, but in reality he's not. Joe is smiling, but is Joe happy? Joe is stressed. Joe is sad. Joe is tired. Why you may ask? Well, Joe is applying to college. In fact, Joe's college applications are due in three days. Joe is just like you. Joe is you and you are Joe, except you're not Joe because you are you and Joe is Joe. Well, if you know me and I know I do, you would agree that Joe may have some very important insight to share with you, whether you have college applications due in three days or not. So let's get to it. What's up guys? Who's going? Shut up. What's up guys it's Josh from Backing In with another video. Today I thought I would switch it up a little bit. Focus. Focus. All right. Today I thought I would switch it up a little bit and bring in scoot over. We're not sitting in the frame. Back up. Won't you scoot up dude? There's no place to sit. Look we're about there. Okay. I thought I would switch it up a little bit this time. Bring in my younger brother. I know a lot of you guys are either seniors in the college application process right now or juniors, sophomores, I don't know, but what are you looking at? I don't know. People that are going to be in the college application process soon. So I thought this would be a little helpful because it's been like over two years since I was in his shoes and now he's there right now. His apps are due in three days and thought he could give you guys a little bit of insight and you guys seem to love him the other times he's appeared in videos. What's up guys? Stop walking with me now. I'm making buffers. In other words he's running out of ideas. I'm definitely not running out of ideas. Ideas are flowing freely out of my brain. All right so let's get it. Can you stop judging me? Yeah. I brought you here okay? Oh I'm brought you here. Okay whatever. So we're just gonna I don't know talk to Joe about his experience so far since he's almost done. You know what he did in high school to get him to this point. What he chose to write about in his essays. What he plans on studying college and what colleges he wants to go to. So without any further ado let's get into it. Hopefully this video can help some of you in the process or going to be in the process soon. Just some tips from somebody who's been there and is currently there and is almost done. All right almost? Almost. You still have how many essays right? Just like three. Just three more. All right he's good. He's one each day. Seven? Actually seven. Seven for Virginia Tech. Three before. Without any further ado would you like to talk about some of the stuff you're involved in in high school and like what were like the biggest extracurricular like sports or like academic interest in high school? Well in high school I've played baseball all four years. JV for the first two years and Varsity for the second two years. I played football freshman year. I started swimming dive just this year. I decided to join the dive team. Rolled a clip? Unheard it? No don't put that in there. Why not? Don't put that in there. You know the normal stuff. Key club, math arts society, chemistry honors society. What else? All kinds of stuff. What are you like main? Oh I play guitar. I play guitar. Yeah I play guitar. What are your main academic interests? Math. I like math and science. I'm really big into the engineering category. Sick. All right so that kind of runs into our next question. What do you want to study in college? Engineering? I see. Yeah I want to go somewhere and study aerospace engineering. All right that's sick. Where somewhere? What colors did you apply to? I applied to the Air Force Academy which is kind of like top choice and I also applied to UVA, Virginia Tech, George Mason, Duke, Yale. You know Yale doesn't have an aerospace engineering degree. Yeah I know but they have I mean like I don't know it's engineering. Pretty much anything engineering I'm cool with and if I could I'd like to minor in music that would be cool. Yeah he's actually a certified soundcloud rapper as you guys know. I'm not a so soundcloud musician. I don't know I'll link it down below maybe we'll just maybe maybe I'll make the background music of this. Maybe you should play it right now. We'll cut that off now we've heard it off. Okay next question. So how did you choose your list of colleges you applied to and like which ones did you apply to early and which ones did you apply to regularly? For me like choosing the colleges I wanted to apply to was just kind of like what I heard like I didn't really do a lot of research. I know people that do but in my opinion I think college is really what you get out of it so I mean I applied to the colleges that seem to like be a good fit for me but I didn't go crazy about researching. Yeah I don't know some people apply like 20-25 colleges it's just it's just a lot. Yeah I don't know. Yeah I don't know I think you would have a good list. Yeah I applied early action to UVA and Georgia Tech. So early action for those of you guys that don't know is the non-binding option for early applications. Yeah early decision is if you bind. Yeah so like some places have open early action like Georgia Tech and UVA some places have like restricted or single choice early action which like Gail and Stanford do where like if you apply to them that's the only private school you can apply to early action and then all the schools with early decision is hey if you get in early you have to come here and it's binding. As someone who's about to finish up the whole college application process what would you say it's like the hardest part or was the hardest part for you? The essays man everything else like literally took like 10 minutes for the common app and everything like the actual application stuff filling it out that's that's easy. Recommendations weren't hard just ask your teacher and I got that done way early. That's the essays that's the only thing keeping me from submitting my applications right now the essays because I know that the essays are the only thing that you know it can differentiate you from the other applicants and so that's that's what you want to do your best on. What's the hardest part of the essays would you say? Beginning it. Once you start writing once you find a good topic that you like and you're able to write about it's it's it doesn't take that long but good thing I have a bunch of videos about choosing an essay topic yeah choosing an essay topic that's definitely the hardest part so check those out if you haven't yet. I think I have a whole college essay playlist so I definitely take a peek at that or I have the ultimate ivy league like guide you guys are interested um want some last-minute tips. What like strategies or like plans did you use to like personally tackle the process? I know that like I tried to impart a lot of information on you and I know you didn't take all of it but like what was your strategy your general like strategy coming into the process? I didn't have a strategy. It's not what I like to do. Yeah risk it harassed me for a solid I wouldn't say harass. Yeah you did all of summer he was like dude you got to start it you got to start it and and you know I he was probably right and that's cool and everything but I'm pretty sure everyone's finishing up their college applications right now and every other kid in college I talked to was like you know like most kids don't really finish it until three days before so I mean so did I. I mean you're definitely not the only one. First of all I I got pretty much everything you can get done early you should get done early um you don't want to miss any deadlines for teachers from recommendations a teacher that knows you for who you are and will be able to distinguish for you from the rest of the applicants and then for my essays I kind of just I uh I got all the prompts from every application and I and I put each one into a google doc and I just um I'd have that on my phone throughout the day whenever I thought of something I type it out into the the google doc and then I'd ask people like my dad and josh about it and um whenever I you know found something out that might be good to write about I type it into the google doc and then as notes and then you know write for real later. Yeah that's a good point like a lot of times when you see a prompt it's not like you just like immediately sit down and start writing about the prompt a lot like I spend a lot of time just sitting in front of my computer thinking about like what I could possibly write about so it's definitely good to like get exposure to like what the prompts are early so they can just kind of sit there in the back of your mind and you can gradually begin to develop like hey like what do I actually want to write about so that's a good point um yeah any other tips or was that about it um there's not much to it yeah I mean yeah speaking of tips and strategies for the college application process if you're one of those freshmen, sophomore, juniors who are like starting to think about the process don't know where to start yet maybe they don't know if the stuff that they've done so far in high school is even preparing them for like applications for some of these elite colleges I highly recommend checking out the sponsor of today's video crimson education crimson education if if you've been watching my channel for a while now I guarantee you've been recommended at least one of crimson educations videos that are created with the student in mind to help them get into their dream school crimson connects students with tejima strategies mentors and tutors to help them create a successful college application whether that be college essay uh topic brainstorming sat prep and tutoring or even leadership and extracurricular help the best part is is that it actually works and they've had over 460 offers to top 50 colleges just since 2015 and if you're an international student don't worry because they have over 25 offices across the globe honestly if you stop dude there's just there's just a squirrel in the window he's getting distracted so honestly if you've ever felt lost in your college applications you just feel like it's hard to keep up with the growing competition these days because it just keeps getting worse year after year the acceptance rates keep getting lower and lower highly recommend checking out crimson they will set up an affordable plan specifically for you i'll leave the link in the description down below check them out you won't regret it and with that let's get on with the video for the most part it's just a bunch of information that you have to fill out um obviously like the extracurricular section is and everything is super important um my video is about how to correctly fill out that and how to like make the most out of the space in the activity section especially for those of you that are like about to submit your application i highly recommend checking out my activity section video because it like it's magical because it basically says like how you can fit like almost an entire essay's worth of information about extracurriculars within that little like tiny 250 character box or whatever highly recommend checking that out because it's definitely hard to squeeze all the information you need to into that tiny activity sections and like also like what activities should i choose so that's definitely an older video but check that out if you're about to submit your application you haven't yet i guess you have any like final advice final things to say any like now reflecting back on the whole process like anything you wish you would have done differently um just any like final thoughts before you click the submit button on your last couple applications i mean i kind of wish i started earlier but in all reality i don't know if i was able to i i definitely looked at all the the prompts beforehand and thought about it a lot um i think that's the bulk of it is just thinking about it make sure it's in your mind and you know what like you have a plan for when you're going to get things done i wish i had had a better plan probably but honestly i mean in all reality you guys aren't the only ones uh everyone's you know waiting to the last second and trying to make everything perfect and uh just make yourself unique you know nothing josh be easily hasn't said all right guys that's about it for this video if you guys enjoy the video if you found it useful if you found anything that joe said useful or you want to see him back again let me know in the comment section down below um and i will try to make that happen i honestly wish you guys the best luck on your college applications for those of you that are about to like submit it's definitely a big step and i know that as soon as you click that submit button you finish you're going to just feel absolutely amazing and i like i honestly wish you guys the best of luck throughout the whole process everything's going to work out you're going to end up at a great college and somewhere where you can thrive regardless of what happens um so definitely try to make the most of the last semester of your senior year i know joe will be and it's definitely kind of especially if you end up going to a college that i'm not all your friends are going to like kind of your last hurrah with your with your high school friends so make the most of it high school is a bunch of special years um so enough with the sappy stuff like i said like comment subscribe whatever you guys do um also i'm trying to hit 30 000 subscribers before the new year i'm at like 29 800 right now so if you're not subscribed do that immediately because i'm trying to hit 30 k and it would be a great like new year slash christmas presents so do that and with that uh i guess i'll see you guys in the next video so