 Alright, before this video gets started, I just want to preface this by saying I seem super stressed, or if I seem like I'm talking really fast, it's finals week right now, so I'm a little stressed, not on the best day to mind, but I'm going to crank out this video for you guys. Look how ridiculous this vlogging setup is right now. I don't normally carry this thing around, but anyways, let's sit down and get this video started. What's up guys, it's Josh from We're Back Again with another video. As you guys know, for some of you, your college application deadlines are getting closer and closer every single day, unless, of course, you applied early action, and if you did that, shout out to you guys because you guys were on it early. For most of you, your college applications are going to be due midnight on December 31st. So that's three weeks, three weeks to fill out your application, finish your essays, get your teacher recommendations. It's not a lot of time. So to help you guys out in this video, I'm going to be talking about my last minute tips for your college applications, specifically making sure that I can help you guys knock your college applications out of the park, and hopefully get into your dream school. Even if you're not a senior right now, this video will definitely help you out into how not to get into the position that all the seniors are in right now, where they have three weeks left for their college applications. So feel free to stick around, I'm sure some of the tips will be helpful for you guys too, especially if you're a junior or a sophomore looking at applying to colleges in the future. So if any of that sounds interesting, stick around because I'm going to be dropping some knowledge. Oh, wait, I forgot to introduce myself for those of you that don't know. My name is Josh Beasley. I'm a sophomore at Yale University studying electrical engineering and computer science. This video consists of sit down videos like this. I do a lot of Yale vlogs, like showing what a day in the life at Yale is like. I think I've done like 23, 24 of those just this year and then a bunch of last years so far. So if you're interested in that, feel free to check out the blogs. And then I do just like some interviews, a bunch of other stuff like that. So if any of that sounds interesting, please consider subscribing. It would help me out a lot and I love when people enjoy my videos. So without any further ado, let's get into the video. All right, first of all, I just want to start this off by saying I love you guys because I've been receiving a lot of personal messages on through email, through my Instagram DMs, just asking about specific aspects of the college application process as these deadlines have begun to approach. And I have to let you guys in on a little secret. If you're wondering about a specific aspect of the college application process, chances are I've probably done a video on it. So to help you guys out and make sure you have full access to all the knowledge you're going to need, I've spent hours coming through all my cringy videos. Look at that hair. We're not going to talk about that to find all the little morsels of information that are going to help you get into your dream school. So talking essay tips, resume tips, activities section, short answer, essays, everything. Literally, I've done everything. And a lot of you guys don't realize that because they're kind of older videos, but it's all there. All the information is there. So I've actually compiled them into a massive playlist with every single video that relates to the college application process. So I've compiled it all into a playlist. I'm going to entitle Josh's big, giant, ultimate, ivyly success playlist of pure, ubiquitous knowledge. So that's going to be linked in the description below. Maybe I'll throw a link up here. I don't know. Check out that playlist. Of course, after you watch this video and after you finish this video, because it probably has all the answers to your questions right there. So before you leave this video, the purpose of this one is to kind of give you those last minute tips, give you a little guidance of which directions to actually go, what videos to watch, what stuff is going to be most helpful for you to make the most of your last three weeks. So stick around. Let's talk about essays. Essays are definitely going to be the most important part of your application and the part that you should allot the most time to. Don't push them off till December 30th. What makes an essay good is not coming up with a great idea and throwing 500 words on a page. What makes an essay good is the repeated edits and the gradual refining of your message and the theme of your essay as you kind of gradually begin what exactly is a story that I want to tell. So just a general rule of thumb. If you're still sitting on like 12 to 15 essays to write, I would generally recommend having a draft of at least all of them before Christmas. That way you'll have the last week purely to edit. Yeah, I mean drafting an essay isn't hard, but editing it over and over again and making the essay exactly what you want it to be, at least in my opinion, that's probably the hardest part. Also, keep in mind, most of you are going to be on a winter break during the two weeks leading up to the application deadline. So take a break from baking cookies and making snow angels and go to glue yourself in a chair for six hours and try to crank out some essays. It's going to suck, but it's not going to suck as much as getting rejected from your dream school. So put in the work. All right, moving on. Today is December 12th, which means most of you are still probably in school right now. And what is in school? Teachers. What do you need from teachers? Teacher recommendations. That's right. Hopefully you asked your teachers to write you recommendations for all your colleges a while ago. But hey, if you didn't, luckily you still have time. So get on that immediately. Next year essay, your recommendations are probably the next important factor that goes into like, hey, is this kid actually a human? Or is he just a set of numbers on this page? Kind of gives you a peek into what it's actually like having you as a student. So recommendations definitely play a pretty big role in the application. Make sure you talk to all your recommenders to make sure that they've either submitted your recommendation or they're near submission of your recommendation. Because I knew people who had teachers that forgot to submit the recommendation letter because they didn't remind them, so don't let that be you. So all this information may be really overwhelming right now, or maybe it's just overwhelming because I'm talking really fast. But if you're feeling stressed, worried, maybe you're not even a senior, but you're a junior who's just hearing all this stuff that they're going to have to do next year. And it's just like, ah, so I have something for you. I have a solution, a solution in the form of the sponsor of today's video, Crimson Education. If you've been watching my channel for a while now, I guarantee you you've been recommended at least one of their videos that have been created with the student in mind. Crimson Education's goal is to connect students with the team of strategists, tutors, and mentors to help them craft a successful college application. Whether this be SAT prep and tutoring, extracurricular and leadership help, or even, you know, college essay topic brainstorming. The best part is, is that it actually works. And they've had over 460 offers to top 50 colleges just since 2015. If you're an international student, don't worry. They have over 25 offices across the globe. If you've ever felt bogged down in your college applications, or you just want to stand out in the growing competition that just seems so intense these days, especially when it comes to college applications, highly recommend checking Crimson out. They'll create an affordable plan and will work with you through the entire process. So I'll leave the link below. Feel free to check it out. Just get in touch with them. So with that, moving on. All right, for my last tip, I'm going to share a very important piece of advice that I haven't heard anyone talk about before. And that is reviewing your application. We're checking it once. We're checking it twice. Make sure you go through every single tab of that application and have everything filled out correctly. A lot of these schools have like comprehensive short answer questions and there's a bunch of them. You want to make sure you've answered all of them. You want to make sure you've answered them correctly. Once you're good, you've checked everything. You think you're ready to submit? Don't. A lot of people don't know this, but before you actually submit your application, you have the option to view the entire thing as a PDF. And that's actually the PDF that the admissions officers are going to print out and lay down on the table when they're looking through your application. So I highly recommend downloading that PDF, scrolling through it and making sure there's no errors in the way that all this information you just typed in was actually put into the PDF. Because a lot of the times you're just typing into these text boxes and you don't know, you can't see everything that you've typed in and you don't know like what it's gonna look like when it's out on the actual page. So a lot of people don't do this, but make sure you go through the PDF and make sure everything's formatted and all the information that you typed in is actually there. You put so much time into this application, you don't want a small mistake to just ruin it all. Once you're done, click submit. That's it. All you seniors, college applications were probably, I mean, they were the hardest part of my senior year, trying to juggle all my senior classes in the fall with college applications and interviews and all the stuff that goes along with that. It's definitely a lot. So I wish you guys the best of luck and once you're finished, other than like probably the 10 to 15 scholarship applications you're gonna have to fill out if you're like me and need money to pay for college, that's definitely gonna happen. But it's not gonna be anything compared to how bad the college application process was. So just a little message from me. Make sure to make the most of the second semester of your senior year. It's gonna be the last time you really spend with your high school friends. Like a lot of my high school friends are still going to college together and they still kind of have their groups and everything, but like I'm up here in the Northeast and on my own and I don't get to see them as much anymore and just kind of make the most of the last semester of your senior year because there's a lot of fun times to be had, a lot of people to hang out with that you're not gonna get a chance to very much anymore. So enjoy it. High school is gonna be some of the best years of your life. So make the most of it, enjoy your last semester. Have fun, party hard, don't pull a C and get your full ride offer to Duke rescinded. Just be safe about that. And with that, I think that's pretty much it for this video. If you enjoyed this video, if you heard something in this video that you hadn't heard before, so you grabbed some useful piece of information, then I did my job and I highly recommend dropping a thumbs up down below because it helps me and supports the channel a lot more than you think. If you have any other friends that are procrastinating on their college applications as well, send them the link to this video. It'll probably help them out and come on, keep working. I have a video on procrastination. It's in the playlist. Go check it out if you need that as well. And if you haven't subscribed yet, if you're new here, feel free to click the subscribe button. There's a lot of fun to be had on this channel. And with that, I guess, I guess you guys should comment down below any questions, comments, concerns, anything, any future video ideas. I'm gonna be struggling through finals for the next couple of days. So I think I still have a bunch of videos backlogged to post. But yeah, other than that, I'm gonna be on the grind. So with that, I guess I'll see you guys in the next video.