 Hi guys, so I'm going to keep it really local today and talk about Miami-Dade honors. They have a couple essays and we're going to get to how to kind of think about them in a thoughtful and effective way. Stick around. Hi, I am Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. I talk about all things personal statements and college essay supplements. I will definitely give you the rundown today on Miami-Dade honors. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a video and thanks for stopping by. All right, so let's get started. So you're thinking about the prestigious Miami-Dade honors college and I'm going to give you the rundown on two things. We're ending with the essays, but the first thing is how do you qualify? And that's super important. I will kind of screenshot and link their website below so that you can have more information. But here's a rundown. Only first-time college students are eligible, right? So if you've taken dual enrollment classes or passing AP scores, that's fine. That's great. That's still considered high school. But if you have attended college in any way beyond dual enrollment, then you're not technically eligible. And so I'm going to rundown through some stats. The minimum preferred GPA is 3.5, weighted or unweighted depending on kind of your school system. So students should kind of hit the minimum standardized testing requirements and this is on their website. So you want to make sure that you have the most up-to-date information. I would call them an email, but they say, Reading 19, Math 19, English 17. They have SAT, they have Accuplacer, and they have PERT that will not be accepted. So you definitely, I'll link, like I said, the website, but you'll have that information. They will accept a score of 4 or higher on AP Spanish and Literature tests. Students who haven't taken Spanish before will be able to take the kind of translation tests that they have available to you. So that is kind of a rundown, general rundown on how you qualify to apply. Now into my wheelhouse, which are the essays. My mid-aid college, to be honest, is pretty close to the vest. So they don't really kind of have the essay prompts on their website, unlike other institutions. So I have pulled essays from previous students that who I've worked with and from a couple students from this year. So I'm going to tell you the ones I know for sure, and then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the previous ones that have been around for the last few years. So maybe they're on the application, but I just, I don't have access to it. So if you have any questions on any of the essay prompts, you're not sure how to answer one or another that I didn't cover, definitely comment below and I'll give you some feedback. The first one is what is the most important thing you learned in high school? So this topic, if you consider writing on this topic, you want to think about more journey less outcome. How did you show initiative? How did you take ownership of your education? I've seen students write about kind of, you know, a five minute presentation on the Cold War turned into a semester long paper on, and then they talked about, you know, different sub topics, historical sub topics, an English paper on a nonprofit turned into like a volunteering gig for a year. So it does what you learn, what you identify as what you learned is the most important does not have to happen in the classroom. But I would say that you want to showcase how you have taken initiative and leadership and ownership of your education. So that what you've learned most important is not a what, but a how to learn, right? A how to find information on how to authentically and kind of thoughtfully engage with content and find more information and deepen your knowledge. The second option, what has been the greatest failure? What has been your greatest failure and what have you learned from it? So this essay is all about percentages. I would say you have 500 words, so I would say you want maybe like no more than a third on the obstacle or the failure. And then the rest of it is how you shifted your systems, how you adapted, how you changed, how you took action to remedy the issue, right? So and then maybe you can kind of like reflect toward the end about what you learned. Why was this failure? Sometimes failure is way more kind of productive of a lesson and we change more than kind of something successful or going great the first time, right? So maybe that success after 10 times that that experiment went wrong really taught you something or you appreciated a little bit more. So think about it percentages. I don't want you to spend more than a third of the essay on the actual problem because sometimes students will kind of start ranting and focus 400 words on the actual failure and then just leave themselves 100 words to talk about what they did. I want to hear more about how you changed, how you adapted and how you grew. The third option is if you were accepted to the Honors College but granted a year off before starting, what would you do? I would say you want to kind of think about what information from your life, whether it's an extracurricular or volunteer experience, can you expand, right? So sometimes I see a lot of students say, oh, I want to travel for a year, which is interesting or I would do something they've never done before. I think is most productive and we get to learn a little bit more about you is take something that you've already done but on a smaller scale, right? Because you can only dedicate five hours a week to it versus if you had, you know, 40 hours of a work week dedicated to this one project. So take something that you've already done, start with a mini story about what you've done, get into the middle of the kind of experience and then how you've worked through it and then the rest would be how you would expand it. How would you make this service project a longer, broader, bigger scope? That I think is most interesting and then something you've never done because we can't really see you in action, we can only see you imagining and it's a little bit more passive. Part of this application this year is which person in history do you admire? This is a great topic. I tell students, you know, history is in real time. So history happened a hundred years ago, but it's happening today too. So you can find a historical figure that's present, that's alive or in the past. Less important is who you pick and more important is kind of how you connect with them. What do you find of their life that is value forward thinking, innovative, that is admirable, that you kind of want to emulate in a certain way? I can see, I've seen students write something similar for another school, for another supplement, but kind of basically the same prompt about Rosalia and her music and her collaborations with different musicians in different genres. I've seen students write about politicians. If you write about politicians or someone in the political kind of arena in any way, make this as apolitical as possible. So I would not even consider writing about their record because you don't know the political kind of inclinations of the person reading your application. But I would talk about their grassroots efforts, their fundraising efforts, what you learned. Maybe you were kind of get out the vote type of volunteer and you did it under the office of a politician locally. That may be interesting and it doesn't get to you having to defend a political decision or kind of corner yourself into like a political foothold. So less important is defending that. More important is why this person, what about them is just so kind of interesting? And then these are sample essays from the past, but they have been around for the last couple of cycles. So I'm not sure if they're this time around, but I want to kind of give you some two cents in case they are. So what activities outside of your courses, extracurricular clubs, volunteer positions, community service, after-school jobs, weekend or summer programs are most important to you and why. So this is 900 characters and they give you the option of kind of all of these, right? So you can do a couple, you can do a few. I would not do more than three or four because you really want to give yourself the space to show why it's of value. So explain them, don't kind of force yourself into basically listing all of the stuff like it's a resume. It's not a resume, you have 900 characters and I would say quality over quantity. Show, share experiences where you have leadership quality, where you showcase initiative, where you can tell that story. And that's kind of, it's building a theme for you, which I think is a value. And the last few, please respond to both questions below. You should upload your responses to the questions in one single file and they should be 500 characters or less for each. So aside from your, our generous scholarship and challenging curriculum, how will the Honors College move you forward to your transfer goals of attending a competitive institution? This one is your typical why us essay with future goals, right? So you want to think about kind of, they have a great website that you can look at how the cohort system works, the kind of projects that they're doing, the courses that you can take. So really kind of showcase student organization, really showcase. I would double down on the community building aspect. It's such an interesting thoughtfully run program and students get so much out of it. Every student that I have worked with that have gone, and then gone off to another to a four year college just has an exceptional experience. So really think about pinpointing a couple of the experiences that you could potentially have at the program. And then the next one is to what college or university you wish to transfer and why? So this is kind of, the first one is kind of why us Honors College. The second one is why NYU, why Michigan, why Berkeley? Why FSU, UF? So you want to kind of give them content as to why that school specifically. I would give them evidence base or another why us essay. I'm going to link that video above to kind of give you some road map guidance and further guidance and have a template actually in the description below if you need that as well. And so that really kind of should give you some scope as to the why us information. You really want it to be very research heavy. So you really want to show them that you know beyond the brand kind of evidence of their resources and student organizations and clubs and curriculum and how students thrive in these programs. And then the last one that I've seen is please share anything else you would like for us to know about you. This is kind of like a number of students who apply to my MIT Honors are also applying to other colleges and other four year institutions. So they have extra essays. I would think about what they're not learning from your candidacy. Is it community outreach? Is it identity and background? So what kind of element of your candidacy they're not like listening? They're not hearing in the rest of the application. And that's where this should go. Always showcasing your best self and how you learn and how you grow and how you adapt and you'll be good to go. I hope this was helpful. Give us a like please. If it was comment below helpful comment below any questions and I'd love to help you out. Have a good one. I'll see you soon. Bye.