 What's up guys, it's Josh and we're back again with another video. Specifically the next video in my Ivy League Secrets series. For those of you that don't know, I mainly post Yale vlogs and student interviews but every two weeks I get a chance to look back on the college application process, tell some of my own personal stories, and give you guys some tips. Today's video is the second in a mini-series where I go through each year of high school and give you guys tips for being successful. This means sharing my own experience, i.e. what classes I was taking, what extracurriculars I was involved in, and any other relevant details. This week we'll be talking about junior and senior year, which are probably the most important years when it comes to the college application process. Stick around so you don't miss anything. Alright, let's get into it. So the summer before my junior year, my family actually moved. As I've mentioned before, my dad was a pilot in the Air Force, so I spent a lot of my younger life just bouncing around between Air Force bases. And this summer was no exception. I moved from Abilene, Texas to Herndon, Virginia. If you want to know what I did that summer, you can check out the video I made about making the most of your summer, and I go into my tips for how to make your summers productive and competitive in the college application process, so check those out if you're curious. But in this video I'm just going to focus on the year itself. Anyways, I get to Virginia and I start signing up for classes. That year I was taking BC Calculus, AP Physics I, AP US History, AP Leng, AP Micro, AP Macro, and then I was doing orchestra and French Four, I think. It was a pretty heavy course load and it was definitely a little rough at first, but I was able to kind of get into a groove and it became manageable after a couple weeks. And it's nice because Micro and Macro were split between the two semesters, so it's not like I was taking them at the same time. Now the hard part about moving was losing all the connections I'd built up when it came to like my school clubs and extracurriculars. Like I said in the last video, you want to get involved in your school's clubs and extracurriculars as soon as possible, so you can start building relationships and making yourself a competitive applicant when it comes time for you to get a leadership position. Unfortunately, all those relationships I made in Texas were now completely useless because I was thrown into a new school and forced to find some way to get involved. It became really difficult to get leadership positions because your junior year is kind of the prime year for that and a lot of times clubs would do elections at the end of the sophomore year, so it's not like I even had a chance. Regardless, I tried my best and I think it worked out pretty well. Here's what I got involved in. As soon as I got there, I was inducted into the National Honor Society, which is a pretty common thing in most high schools. I also became a tutor in my school's math honor society and a member of the Key Club. That sounds like a lot, but these clubs at my school were pretty big and the time commitment wasn't huge unless you were in a leadership position. I continued with orchestra and that went well. I think it was like third or fourth chair first violin for most of the year. Orchestra was something I always put a lot of time into and practice a lot, but by no means was I like the best. At spring, I played on my high school diversity baseball team and that was a lot of fun. I'd have to say the biggest development on my junior year is when I jumped onto one of my friends' projects to help veterans, which eventually kind of transformed into a school club, the American Veteran Support Group. We kind of built the club from the ground up. I served as the publicist and the reporter for the year, which means I dealt with a lot of the charity outreach as well as trying to publicize what we're doing to the rest of the school and get more members. That was definitely a big part of my junior year and it was a great time. I definitely recommend starting a club. Don't just start a club to start a club though. If there's something that you're interested in or you see a need that needs to be met and your school isn't meeting it, then I highly recommend to do that. It was a great experience. Being one of the first, like, people to hold my leadership position and kind of being able to define what the club actually did in the community. I continued with Boy Scouts, but now that I was Eagle, I was definitely less involved. And that's about it though for junior year. Now let's get into my tips. You've probably heard this before, but when it comes to college applications, junior year is the most important year. Your grades and course load for that year will be heavily weighted and heavily evaluated in the eyes of the admissions officers. You really need to take this year very seriously and try to perform at a high standard. This means maintaining good study habits and making sure your grades don't slip. But along with that, you have to stay involved in your extracurricular activities. And by involved, I mean try to get leadership positions. You've been at the same high school for two years and involved in the same club. There's no reason why you shouldn't be competitive for one. Once again, I want to emphasize that if you were to just join a, like, random extracurricular club at your school and then throw it onto the end of your activity section on the common application, it would probably be, like, pretty meaningless in the eyes of the admissions officers. Say you joined, like, chemistry honors society or something. But now, if you were the vice president of chemistry honors society and you implemented, like, a new after-school program to help struggling chemistry students, now that's what they're looking for. Colleges would much rather see three or four activities that you're really involved in than, like, 10 activities that you just kind of show up to occasionally. I hope you guys see what I'm getting at. Also, start studying for the SAT a lot second semester and try to start taking the test more consistently that spring. Now, if this sounds like a lot and you're not sure if you can handle it, I completely agree, but I think I have something that might be able to help. I encourage you to check out the sponsor of today's video, Crimson Education. Crimson Education's main goal is to connect students with a team of strategists, mentors, and tutors that will help them create a successful college application, whether that be extracurricular leadership projects, college essay topic brainstorming and editing or SAT prep and tutoring. This means that they can help you get through all this junior year stress and succeed. The best part is that it actually works, and they've had over 460 offers to top 50 colleges since 2015. For those of you applying internationally, don't worry, Crimson has over 25 offices across the globe. If you ever felt lost in your college applications or just want to stand out in the growing competition, I definitely recommend getting in touch with Crimson, and they'll set up a customized plan that's affordable for you. A lot of my friends here at Yale use college consulting services similar to Crimson, and they only had great things to say. I'll leave the link below. Definitely check them out. All right, so you've made it through junior year, and you'll have that one final push. But really in my eyes, you pretty much only have one semester left. By the time second semester rolls around, you've already submitted to your college apps. Your scores on the AP exams for that year don't really even matter, and you just have all the fun stuff at the end of senior year before you graduate. But first semester, yeah, it's rough. My senior year, I took AP Physics C Mechanics, AP Biology, AP Environmental Science, AP Comparative Government, AP US Government, AP Literature, and AP Computer Science. And then I was also dual enrolled in Multivariable Calculus for a semester in Linear Algebra Second Semester at my local university. I would definitely not recommend that. I've told my siblings this, and I try to tell other people, try to stack all of your hard classes junior year when you actually have time and aren't doing college applications. And also then again, junior year is the most important year when it comes to college applications. I made the mistake of taking micro and macro and taking AP statistics sophomore year, which are known to be slightly easier classes that I probably could have pushed in my senior year. And that's what I tell people to do now just because I made a mistake. My senior year was definitely harder than my junior year, which it shouldn't have been. Definitely don't slack off senior year and not take any AP or honors classes, but just be smart about it. You don't want to end up like me who was so burnout by the time second semester AP exams rolled around. In terms of extracurricular updates for that year, I was elected president of the National Honor Society and also president of my school's rocketry competition team, which was started up at the end of my junior year. And then I continued with everything else I was involved in. But the thing that really makes senior year rough is the fact that you have to balance all your classes and extracurriculars trying to keep your grades high and stay involved with all the work you have to do for college applications that fall also. That's why as I've said in many of my other videos, start early, start during the summer, try to knock out as many essays as you can in August and your life will be so much easier. If you have any other questions about college apps or trying to balance college apps with schools specifically, I've made countless videos about the college application process in the past and I'll point you towards that way for any of your questions. I also do plan on making some more college application videos in the future, especially since the next application season is rolling around very quickly. But in general for senior year, stay involved, keep your grades up and power through first semester so you can relax and enjoy the rest of your senior year. If you found this video helpful, feel free to drop a thumbs up down below or maybe share it with your friends if you think they can benefit from it too. If you have any questions about the college application process itself or being successful during junior and senior year that I did not answer in this video, feel free to drop them down in the comment section below. I will try to respond to everyone. Check out Crimson if you have any concerns about your junior, senior year or college applications, I'm sure they can help. Once again, the link's below. If this is the first video that you've seen and you enjoyed it or you got something out of it, I definitely recommend subscribing to the channel because there's a lot more helpful content like this as well as some fun like vlogs and stuff that I think you'll enjoy also. So subscribe if you're new and I will see you guys in the next video.