 Okay, salamu alaikum everyone. Insha'Allah this is the second part for seniors mostly, insha'Allah, finally your students. You're underway sort of thinking about colleges already in the application process. So we thought we would first start out giving our takes on the personal statements and the essays because insha'Allah that can be helpful. I'll go first on this one. So my personal statement, the main one for the common application I did. So you know the UC application you choose for essays to do out of eight. And the common application, there's sort of a general essay that you can do. I think it's around 650 words. For my common app personal statement essay I wrote about my interests in human rights work and sort of my experiences in high school working for like a volunteer organization on campus that does human rights issues. And it was just a way for me to sort of present a side of myself that I didn't feel like other aspects of my application kind of brought across. So for the human rights organization I was a part of we did like a fundraiser for the box on floods. We also did a few events on campus where we brought in outside speakers and sort of we were quite involved. So it was like a really important part of my high school experience that I think I was able to use a personal statement to showcase. I really do think you should make sure you spend the time you have now even though I think for common app it's not due until December 31st. Spend time now sort of editing your essays, wrapping them up, finalizing them because you will be sort of asked for the same sort of generic questions like speak about an extracurricular activity you really liked being a part of or sort of those sorts of questions will appear no matter which platform you're using to apply. Why don't I give it a go to you guys? One thing we have as the fourth point there I know for me personally when I was like and I imagine a lot of you at this stage you know if you're a senior you've gotten a good chunk through the writing process you know especially for the UCs you know to do end of the month and then after other schools you know to some extent you've been able to kind of get through a lot of it. At this point you know some of it is just the editing, the finalizing the final touches you know maybe rephrasing things I know for me some of it it was just it's sometimes a little difficult and maybe just be a personal thing why don't at least a few friends I've talked to had the same issue where it was it's difficult to have like oh like give it to your dad give it to your sister like oh can you read my essay and edit it like so there's some things that have gone through the process it might be a little more useful but still sometimes it's nice to have like a outside, I don't say third party but essentially you know I completely like you know a person that's never it doesn't know your life experience that you know hasn't you know seen what you've gone through like firsthand read it helps because then it's like okay I know I have no previous information I can I can see what I know we'll talk about in a second and you know we've been doing this little program in the last few weeks and the shot will make sure you all are have access to it as well we've been pairing up students with like current Berkeley students like that are and will help with the application specifically so you know if someone and what we try to like pair it up as close as we can in terms of majors like oh interests like oh if you want to go to computer science we try to compare you up with someone computer science just so if you have any questions after as well it's helpful but I think that's been something really helpful that works for me having like people that weren't my direct family read my essays and you know look at them like okay this doesn't make sense or you know this maybe you explained a little too much or I guess that different perspective really helped and the last thing I just want to reiterate come around and talk about but just telling a story you know the essays if you look at the application generally you have you know your numbers your stats you know the test scores you have them or GPA you have your activities you know there's actually sections most of the applications to describe your activities so that's another portion but then really like your essays are the essays in like your description of your activities are really where like the college admissions committee is able to like see who you are you know what kind of person you are I get to know you a little bit other than that it's just like numbers on a page and so really telling a story you haven't already shown making sure you are like don't I don't feel like oh I've got to like tell my whole life story but giving them like a glimpse of like okay these are some of the things I'm involved in this is what you know like this is what piques my interest this is a little bit of who I am it's important it's like a it's avenues away for them to kind of get to know you and in like a way that's not really like accessible in the rest of the application especially because most schools don't have interviews either no I know some do so you know interviews school even better and I face to face is really a good way but you know at least for the UC's you know for most programs there's no interview process or anything so the essays are like where you you know where you get to show who you are a little bit so that I think is important to to realize and to note and something to think about too when you're writing your essays like okay this is kind of the only personal touch that they get of me I think something to like really keep in mind is that when you're writing these essays it's really not about what you write about but it's really about how you tell your story and that's what it really comes down to and like how you can narrate what they're looking to answer how can you narrate to answer their questions in the best way possible I can share like one of the one of the you know questions I had to answer it was I forgot which question it was but essentially at my I was talking about how it was like years ago I went to Amra like with by myself technically but I went with like a message like my group so my family didn't come with me and on this trip they had asked me to like kind of just help with like logistics and getting people around everybody else was like old uncles and aunties from our masjid and then there was me and what happened is during this trip there was there was I would say probably like 70% of the people got really sick and I'm like everybody was fine and dandy afterwards but you know you traveling and you go to third world country almost and I talked about how at that time like I was then I went from just like you know traveling by myself to being on this group so now like being the person who was in charge of logistically making sure everybody was okay and safe and well and doing all these random things and being there for so many different people in my community and I explained this as like a form of leadership and it seems like a very untraditional form of leadership usually when people explain leadership it's like oh I was the president of this club or I helped organize this that and the other but in that moment I explained and I tried to like narrate how how this was was was like a very on demand like necessity of leadership that I had to apply and how I did it and keep in mind like the person reading my application doesn't know what the Omra is they don't know what like much about spam in that sense but it's very important to kind of add that flavor into it as well and I felt like that was a very like strong essay I had so again it doesn't matter what you write about I remember there was one person like who they wrote about like Costco hot dogs and their relationship with Costco hot dogs or whatever they were like Jewish and it was like kosher and whatever and you can you can write about whatever but you want to make it interesting but it's really about your storytelling at the end of the day. So general application strategies so right now we're kind of in the moment where students are really working on the personal statements and their essays like you know you have your letters of rec you know by senior fall you have them basically confirmed that you're done with your standardized testing you're now sort of in full swing with your classes and now it's just your time to kind of get your personal statements and essays together I would really advise you know apply for the UC like through the UC applications to the UC that you're interested in and I really say like don't be shy about UCs and SoCal as well like you know I think there's a lot of great schools in the UC system that are really awesome I would also say you know try and submit if you can a day before the deadline you know a lot of people you know think that their best work is going to happen on November 29th on it's due November 30th but I say honestly give yourself some peaceful time the people who are reading these statements just want to answer the questions like who are you as a person what can you contribute to our incoming class like you know do you have you taken your studies sort of SoCal have you enjoyed your curriculum have you made a good impression on your teachers so don't feel like you have to be working on it until December 31st or until November 30th for the UC system it's a general application for all the UCs there are four essays you can choose so it's really sort of in your best interest to start you know if you can start you know this week or next week and for everyone here who's a senior will be pairing you up with UC Berkeley students who can inshallah help you so we'll be getting your emails afterwards to connect you in that way in terms of school list I think having around you know anywhere from 10 to 15 schools including like and maybe when you can talk about like the school is maybe a little more and I'll just say writing about activities really write about activities that you really love so I was telling when he's in the car ride over here part of the and rights committee I was involved in my high school we did a really cool thing where we got the school administration to like work with us so for lunch one day as part of a theme on economic inequality we had 90% of students having like rice and beans and then 10% of students who are just chosen from their last name they got to have like turkey and mashed potatoes and like apple cider and they had like a really nice lunch and my school one of my statements talked about this because there were like some students who were protesting like the inequality they felt and they're like why do we have to eat rice and beans like we have to do sports activities after this and it was part of this commentary we were trying to make in the human rights committee that like wow this is actually what most people have on the day to day and so that was like part of my personal statement so writing about activities in a way that sort of speaks to your interest that can be unique that can be different I know one of my friends she wrote about growing up in the muskets like you know growing up in Ramadan during tarawi and like hanging out at iftars and just so you can really write about so many experiences that are meaningful to you but the main point like Shum said and also like Wendy said is like writing about things you may not have had a chance to sort of showcase things that can give a different depth of character to you and things you really like and finally majors I think I wrote biology going in and I ended up majoring in social science so you can definitely write majors you're interested in but I don't know should they not write like STEM majors or is that an urban myth I guess and we had a few people kind of ask this like during our little question thing in the last section but like one thing with the majors before we talk about anything else too is and it's something it's very school specific sometimes but like a lot of schools have like a you know there's different colleges within the school just confusing when you're not in the school but like you know there's a college of letters and sciences is a college of engineering usually is a college you know like for example at Berkeley there's like a college of national resources which is all like the environmental stuff goes there's a bunch of different colleges within the schools and like the great majority of schools like changing majors within a college is usually pretty streamlined it's like very simple the most part there are I guess some case you know like we had someone talk I was giving some example of like engineering as well like you know if you're in the college of engineering it's considerably easier to kind of switch between other engineers but like there's still like and something that's very competitive is still going to be a little bit of a difficulty for example at Berkeley the easiest example is EECS which is like Electrical Engineering and Computer Science like the most competitive major at the school really hard to get into it's great and a great program and the people I get into you know they're good at work and they're able to do a lot of good work it's hard to if you're like a non-engineering major it's like nearly impossible to like switch into that if you're an engineering major then it's like okay you're footing the door like I know many friends that were bioengineering as a freshman applicant coming in and they accepted bioengineering and then after a year or so they switched to you know electrical engineering so that's possible but I think so if you're not fully certain on what exactly you want to do it's not like a debt sentence I know we talked about going in this undecided to that's definitely like you know as the undeclared or undecided major definitely like an option as well but if you know if it's something that you're like oh this is something that I could do you know for example if you're interested again in like some version of engineering for example you don't have to be fully like completely set on what exactly you want to do you know you have some flexibility there and so there is some but you know I think it's always like don't it you know if you're outside of like the very if you want to get into a very competitive major and you're unwilling to want to do anything else it's a little risky to like go in as something completely unrelated and try to expect to switch in but for most majors you know if you're biology switching to chemistry you know not very easy within most engineering's very easy and so yeah most majors you know it's still very feasible like very competitive things it's a little bit difficult and before that Shums maybe elaborate on that as well you know on the transfer side if you want to as well one thing with the activities I guess school is we talked about like having the three you know having your reach having your target having your safety schools you know having that like the hierarchy making sure you're applying to like a variety of schools like I think of it as your goal is to not get into every single school you know if you get into every single school like oh I could have gotten into like an even better school I didn't try for because I was scared you know like oh what's the point and so you know finding those schools that oh man my shots my shots are tiny but you know it's like try my luck I think it's definitely very important at the same time applying to a lot of schools that are kind of right in your zone and then applying to a few that you feel okay my at least the numbers and of course numbers not everything but like are should be solid and then over the activities and a lot of the UC's and other applications have a little section where you write out like activity descriptions like not even in an essay just like oh these are certain things today I think like activities awards or whatever it's the most people like I don't have any awards we're just talking about your activities and that's actually it's a very small section to write about it I imagine a lot of you if you're applying you've already filled it out or you already have like draft like it's kind of what you're writing about and that is nothing too fancy you know you're really describing what the activity is one thing that I got some advice on which is good was like using like powerful words it sounds weird but like instead of just like I can't give you an example right now but like strong like words that show like what you did instead of just oh I you know I made a club of 15 people and we did this oh I you know I even just simple oh I led and organized and facilitated discussion between you know sometimes using these like more like because you have a limited like work in those descriptions using a little more like strong language instead of just like oh let it's sometimes easy as going into like using a word oh this is very I've used this a lot it's not that cool you finding some synonyms for that and like okay pasting that in 90% of the time that works so that's one thing that helped for me makes your activities it just makes you feel a little more official and like who knows and if you really make a massive difference but it makes you feel a little more official and that helped me maybe like feel like I was putting together like the description of what I was actually doing a lot better yeah so I can't really talk much about senior years since I grad I graduated high school like a year earlier took the Chesape so I didn't really have a senior year and then I went to community college for three years actually for transferring to Berkeley but I think where I can really kind of hone in is in terms of like majors there's a few things to consider so as like Juan Eason had mentioned like the major you apply as if that will make it over thinking like so there's this idea of like does the major you apply as like determine your admissions and that really depends on the school so like I know for example like Stanford like they don't care what you apply as you don't like you like you just a recommendation of what you want to end up doing and that's how they do their admission system at Berkeley it's a lot different because not only do we have so many different schools but we also are admissions so when you submit your application to Berkeley they don't send it to like the admissions department they have people from each school reviewing applications through the admissions department so they have someone from the school of engineering with all the pile of engineering applicants and that's the way they do their admissions so your application is determined based on the school at least and I know for transfers it goes all the way down to the major right so like you if you're applying as a computer science major it's you versus everybody else you know applying as computer science and that's how they allocate their admissions officers there's like this whole tree I found online on how they do that but ultimately something to keep in mind what you apply as just do the best you can to finding what you feel like you might want to do they all like these admissions officers also understand there's a very high chance you're going to switch and that's like this percentage I don't know what it is off top of my head but it's very high that people switch majors but keep in mind that like what you study in college does not directly connect to what you end up doing as a job unless you end up going into academia and getting a PhD most people for example who study electrical engineering computer science at Berkeley and also most people who study cognitive science at Berkeley end up with the exact same software engineering jobs at the end of the day and the same thing goes for other majors that I've seen so people who study business which is a very competitive major that you have to like apply into like after your sophomore year at Berkeley people who study business and also people who study economics and also people who study political economy and environmental economics all end up with the exact same jobs they end up with the same company same place at times so just keep that in mind that your college major does matter to some extent of what you learn and how what like category of information you're going to be thrown into but generally speaking there's so many similarities within universities with different majors for example our computer science major which is in the school of letters and science is facilitated by the electrical engineering and computer science department within the school of engineering it's kind of weird but when you study computer science all your classes and the buildings you go for all your paperwork is going to be in the school of engineering we also have another major it's called industrial engineering and then within a school of letters and science we have it's literally the exact same major just in the school of letters and science called operations research and management science it's a weird name but essentially it's the same major retranslated into something else within a different school at the same university and people end up with the exact same jobs at the end of the day so keep that in mind like it's not the end all be all if you have to end up I know people who like you know just because of the way they're you know they did in a certain class you know a lot different than what they anticipated but again they're able to you know get into the career goals and academic goals that they wanted to achieve from the beginning so it's not as like hardcore as it may seem in some situations it might be so if you study chemical engineering the only job you can really the most direct job you can get with that is to become a chemical engineer and if you don't study chemical engineering you probably cannot become a chemical engineer that's just for that particular like subset so everything with like electrical engineering like you're going to become a electrical engineer but for other jobs like if you're going to law, you're going to medicine, you're going to other jobs in tech and software engineering as well it's pretty much like you prove yourself in those careers in other means other than your major so some just like this side now one last thing there we had a few people come with like questions about like grad school looking ahead which is great getting those questions and for those absolutely like if you want to apply to law school, medical school, PA school and any like most of your four year or three year you know your post grad, post undergraduate things like your major does not matter at all so which is you know you have to take certain classes that they require but your major can be anything so even more to the fact that you know because I know sometimes you get like I get into this school but not in the major that I want like don't let that be a deterrent to like going to that school that you really like we had this little slide here but inshallah we'll get through any stuff that we want to present and at the end you know we'll like we'll like do questions and everything but like definitely think about any questions that you guys might have about like high school and versus college and like something that we want to talk about if you have any questions about like I guess we talked about this in the first session but just like you know your first time away from home for most people and okay that's it you know we had this I guess think about those two you know like both questions about high school versus college if you have any or like even about the these last few weeks about the application process and about like I guess you know like practicing Islam and you know university being on your own having to kind of take the initiative on your own if there's any questions or I know personally that was you know a big thing that I had like okay is this school I'm going to have like a strong Muslim community that can kind of give me support and still make me feel like part of a community so to talk about that I guess the one thing we wanted to mention before we do that and notice the open questions like we did similarly before we mentioned it a few times but we we've got like this program going through the last few weeks that we've been pairing up current students that are applying to college with UC Berkeley like current undergrads or current students and just really helping like essay editing helping I guess like posts like planning like with majors with this that and so we're just trying to pair students up with help and I know you guys are you know just as the UC is just two weeks away but for after that it's still the end of December and so there's only you know there's not much time I know left but if anyone that's like an opportunity that anyone wants to be paired up with someone just like okay you know maybe some help these last couple of weeks we can definitely inshallah you know like provide that and pair you up with someone that's in a similar field or wants to do something similar that you're trying to do and we're going to use the same inshallah will be the same link but we'll put up the link again just so everyone has it have your emails if you already put your email there like fantastic but you know so this is a little list just keep track of anyone that wants to be paired up with a student and inshallah you know after this we'll be sending our slides with all the resources as well and so when we send that email out you'll have our email as well so feel free to reply to that email and let us know hey I want to be paired up with the students or I have a question or even maybe not help with like college apps like oh I have some questions about the certain major that I want to do is there a current student there that I can I can be paired up with to ask any questions you know if you want to do econ and you have some questions about how the major is in college or how you know someone's experiences we can definitely pair you up with someone in that aspect as well other than that inshallah we just will be the same thing as last time if there's any questions that anyone had obviously details of like okay college essay help anything we can like in the reading essays you know inshallah we'll get two of these next few weeks and we'll be pairing you up with somebody but like even if there's like more of a general question on the application process on the transition from like high school to college or anything in between we'd be happy to inshallah for the next 10-15 minutes to be able to hopefully answer them. Yeah so the question was what's the difference between the UC application essays and the common application essays so basically the UC system has its own separate application kind of portal so they have I think they have eight essays and you choose four to answer and the kind of themes are quite similar like you know what are important life experiences that you've had or what's an activity that you do outside of school you'd want to talk about but it's sort of like a separate thing the common application it has also a list of sort of questions that you can answer similarly like you know what's a life experience you want to share or what's unique about your story or tell us about a time when you kind of overcame challenge or something like that so the essays are actually quite similar but it's just two different platforms common apps go to public and private universities like across the nation and the UCs are just for the California UC system and the one question I think we can have while we're waiting for more questions in university I think that's the why don't I keep this one up the prompt you had asked was sort of like how do you navigate that right yeah like when he was saying I think a really important thing to think about too is like especially at UC Berkeley and I know at UC Davis as well and I think really across the UCs there's really strong Muslim students associations and I know that like we're all involved in those associations so you know as you're still in high school and you're looking forward to college like this is like joining this email list can be one way that you can stay in touch with us we also want to be like mentors for you guys but I guess from the undergrad perspective how was it like sort of your high school MSA versus Berkeley yeah so I think it's really it's drastically different right so when I was in community college in Sacramento I spent you know a little bit of time exploring other universities in their Muslim life so I was a part of the thing called MSA West and I got to like travel to like UC Irvine, UC LA, UC San Diego and UC Davis and I got to really be a part of like their communities for a little bit from time to time just with the work I was doing with them and I think the biggest difference is when you're in high school you're kind of just thrown into a school you know you might have 100 Muslims at your high school or you might be one of like you your sister and like some random person would be the only Muslim that you're at your high school which is like the situation was for me and you kind of in order to really be involved in high school obviously you have to just kind of make friends with like random people but the biggest difference when you go to college especially when you go to like a big UC is that like you have thousands tens of thousands of people at the school and you can very easily find a solid group of people just from within you know the university that you go to that have you know the common interest that you're like that you also have so it's a lot easier to make friends to hold you accountable in your faith however on the contrast everybody is coming in as like new you know just left their parents house everybody's coming in at the same time and it's at the same time very hard for you to like get used to keeping yourself accountable when you're not around those people so it's this balancing act and it's a very big learning curve of like understanding that like hey it's also time I need to pray but all and like you know maybe your flatmates at your dorm are not Muslim so you're just like not really held accountable to that extent at the same time you have you know times when you're around your Muslim friends and it's like everybody's just going to go pray so it is this contrast where it's some ways better in some ways just I wouldn't say it's worse but it's just a challenge or it's a struggle that you have to kind of like figure out throughout your life and you have to really hold that discipline towards another thing is like you can be around when you're in college I mean you can be around whoever you want right so you don't necessarily you might not necessarily initially choose to be around Muslims and that becomes difficult when you have to kind of isolate yourself to go pray or it becomes harder to do so so it's really a matter of recognizing that at the end of the day the Muslim community is there for you and they're a community that really hones your faith in your values and when you when you go to college unfortunately a lot of times the culture doesn't necessarily hone into the same values that you believe in as a Muslim and that can be very you know dangerous and a lot of parents are very concerned about those about those harms as well so I would say personally I moved in I came in as a transfer so I moved in with just a bunch of Muslims so it's very easy for me to just always stay around Muslims and just kind of you know protect myself in that community but I can see that you know coming in as a freshman sometimes or you know coming in even as a transfer you putting yourself in these in like non-Muslim environments where you're living there not just seeing them from time to time you definitely have to build that resilience and that discipline to kind of holding yourself true to your faith and values because that's what's ultimately going to last even when you leave that company I might sound like an uncle in that sense but yeah that's essentially like my two cents Anyone had any quick question I have sorry so I have a niece who's applying I have my son who will be in Inshallah applying soon so what advice would you give should I be giving them in terms of how to select a college because we all everybody wants to go to the Harvard's and Stanford's and all of that but when they're preparing that list of 15 like you guys were talking about what criteria should you keep in mind and be realistic from that perspective I mean I think you know if you know yeah it's a great question it's a great question I think definitely if you're interested in California schools trying to apply to like many of the UC's and sort of the great California schools in Southern California I know there's like the Pomona and there's like the is it the McKenna schools the Claremont McKenna yeah the Claremont schools they're really excellent schools in Southern California and then you have Stanford and you have I think like six UC's so I mean you're already looking at like 15 colleges just in California that I think are excellent I think just like what when you just said earlier you know choose five or six colleges that are your reach schools you know like the schools that maybe have you know really high GPAs for entry or sort of like you know are everyone's reach school then choose sort of like seven that you know you're comfortably in sort of in your GPA and your scores and sort of like your classes and then choose you know five or six that you're comfortably you know you feel like you have a really good shot at getting into and have that kind of spread I think you know some students are really interested in going out to the East Coast for school and I think that could be a really cool experience you know I really think so but it's it's it's sort of like it's a decision that sort of you guys all have to kind of I guess come together because like we've said before there's also like the financial aspects of going out of state for example that we can you know think about but I think that's my general advice I think another thing is that like understand like like obviously you know a student in high school might have an idea of what they want to do but they might want to change it but you know some students will be like I want to do something in engineering I don't know what but something in that like realm I'm not too good with like you know medicine or I'm not really interested in law or something else or the student might be like hey I'm interested in something in politics or or law and so based on those things certain schools have their strengths right there's there's schools that have way more resources or research opportunities and and just certain subsets of academics and that can be one way understanding like what you want to where you want to go another thing like for me big determinant was like if I want to work in tech like going to school in the Bay Area even though like you know a program somewhere else might be just as good but going to school in the Bay Area gives me a lot more opportunities around you know being around startups and other types of like tech related things so I think I think there's a lot of like aspects and factors another thing for me was like being I mean my family lives in Sacramento going to Berkeley was like you know a two hour drive home and it's not like a flight home so I can I can come back you know relatively whenever whenever I want so that was a very that was very like big determinant as well so I didn't want to be too close and I didn't want to be too far either so it was a nice sweet spot in terms of location and then you know some some kids are just like you know I hate the weather here I want to go somewhere else or I love the weather there or whatever and there's there's a lot of different factors but ultimately I think I think it really comes down to just like academically someone wants to wants to pursue and how feasible is that just considering just life situations so so your question is like in terms of like workload shift between high school and college okay okay I would I would just make a side note so when I was in high school we had this like IB program in my high school and we had a few AP classes but the IB program was like the most like like like the big one and I would say that program was probably had more work than college in general and that's like unanimously amongst all the alumni people graduate from that high school and went into college, went to Berkeley, went to Stanford or whatever they realized that that program just worked them a lot harder and I and so like as an exception to that like that like there are those situations where you will work a lot harder in your AP classes for your AP exams than you ever will for college class that's just something to like keep in mind I think it's a lot less of like a workload difference than like a strategy like the courses are just built different than they are in high school like the way it's structured and the way your exams work and the way you take your classes are a lot different and I think that's where the transition really comes into play more so than just like the time it takes to do it and that that's just like your first semester is going to be brutal it's just like known you want to kind of take that first semester or quarter like really like light relatively speaking just so that you can get used to the groove of like how things work I think that's a lot of a better, like gives you a better understanding for like what to like look forward to I don't know if you guys agree or disagree with that Yeah I think you know if you can take a few AP or IB classes before graduating I think those can be a great indication of what like intra-college courses will be like. Yeah I think same thing just like how you have to, how you have to end up studying for the classes end up being a little bit different so just a little bit of an adjustment period also like you know in high school you come in and the teacher is going to be talking at you and then you're also going to be talking, sorry, you're going to be talking to people next to you and talking in groups and colleges like that is more like in most classes especially your first few years are a lot more separate you're going to have one class and it's a lecture you have your professor sitting in the front and he's going to be talking at you for an hour in front of 500 people you're at a concert hall basically 500 people 400 depending on what classes you're taking of course and then you also will have like a smaller like maybe once a week or something like a smaller group discussion where you're having a class and a little like a TA teaching it and so it changed a little of the schedule I guess class like in terms of your class hour you spend less time in class in college than high school which is great it gives you a little more flexibility there like I'll tell you for the last few semesters I've had classes maybe three days a week usually I haven't had class on Friday since my sophomore year of college so which is great you know drama is free always and of course you spend you know you have to spend a lot of time outside of class studying or working on things but like your time in class is you're not spending seven hours a day five days a week in class like that doesn't happen which is great and that's why you know in college you're able to some people are able to work you're able to kind of spend a little more time on extra curriculars in that and all that so sometimes that becomes a balancing act I know personally for me this last year that's what it's been balancing classes make sure I'm focused on that but also all the other responsibilities and clubs and research and all this that you're doing so it becomes like a fun thing to try to balance but that sometimes that that kind of becomes the challenge after you get like acclimated you had mentioned about the community pathway to get into you got into Berkeley can you just highlight like what point you make the decision okay do I want to do this and what are the chances of getting into the Berkeley or the other Ivy League schools yeah so actually like I mentioned earlier my college journey was like around it was actually around my sophomore year high school when I decided like hey maybe I want to graduate high school early go straight to college and then you know do college you know at a young age and then just transfer and then and then it was actually after during my junior year when I actually ended up like pulling the trigger on that you can actually take that exam to Chesapeake like as soon as your sophomore year it's a very easy exam for like high school students to take I will also mention that like personally I didn't do very well in high school I had like a two point something GPA I wasn't really like very academically driven at all and that played a role in so I was like I'm going to go to community college anyway but I have a lot of friends I learned about this from my friends who were very academically driven and they were like I'm wasting my time in high school I'd rather just spend this time in college instead of taking AP and IB classes I should rather just take real college classes and get full college credit for those classes and that was the angle that they that they took with it for me was like well I'm not really learning anything here might as well just progress and for me that jump to going from high school and failing my classes in high school to going to college and being like listen this is all on me now it was enough for me to be like okay now I can it was enough for me to draw be driven enough to do well in community college now I've done a lot of research on admission statistics specifically from California community colleges to the University of California so the UC system and essentially the UC system and the California community college system have like a contract where they have to admit as many community college students from California as possible and it is significantly easier to getting into UC Berkeley specifically from a community college than it is through any other route if you're coming from international, out of state, in state from high school anywhere transferring from community college it has the highest probability of getting in and that was a big thing for me so I think and that goes across the board for like other UCs as well so the UCs that don't accept TAG that don't accept a guaranteed transfer program is UCLA UC Berkeley and UC San Diego however all three of them still do accept like over 90 something percent of their transfers from community colleges and it's I think it's about 25 to 30 percent of their incoming class every year of transfers for each of these schools and all these schools are very competitive and very rigorous institutions so at the end of the day I think going into community college actually puts you at such an advantage in terms of admissions that you also have multiple tries like let's say a student doesn't do well and they apply after their second year at community college they can just apply again the next year and they'll get in the next year and that's totally fine there's no timeline associated with these things you go through college, you graduate, you get a job and you're good inshallah so like I said I think community college is very underrated and you know there's a whole stigma of like people will be stuck there forever and the sandy other I usually I do this thing like I'll like sit down with a student and I'll like run them through a two-year plan so I make sure they transfer in two years and Alhamdulillah like this past year I worked with six different students and all six of them got into UC Berkeley so like it's like maybe if you have somebody like me I'm more willing to help anybody out with that to kind of go through that process and what have you I think it makes this a lot more seamless overall so yeah if there's any other questions maybe from the online community or anyone here basically inshallah if you fill out this 10 year old form I know it says 10th and 11th graders on the form but it's also for 12th graders too and we'll make sure that we have two lists separate for we'll send you out the slides we use for today we'll get you the information for the seniors who are attending to get paired with UC Berkeley or get some more targeted feedback as we sort of enter the last last few stages of the application process but thank you all so much for coming and inshallah may Allah bless you all and what's great for your destinies and thank you all for your time thank you so much for joining me