 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. All right, let's get started. I'm going to let Shariah introduce himself, and then we're going to dive in and talk about how to get into the best college today. All right, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So we are going to dive in just real briefly. Sadia mentioned. We are both the co-founders of the Success Company. My name is Shariah. We started this organization about five years ago. Before that, both of us graduated from UC Berkeley. And before that, both of us had to kind of figure out the whole college admissions process. And it was a bit difficult because we were the first in our family, or not the first, but she was the first. I was the second. Our parents had not really gone through this process much before. It's similar to a lot of parents and a lot of those who came from other countries. It's a little bit difficult to understand what's the SAT, what's the ACT, what are all these subject tests, what are college applications, what are college essays, and so we went to different mentors to kind of navigate the process. Eventually, after graduating, we said, hey, we want to figure out a way to kind of give back to the community. We started doing workshops in our local communities, and then it eventually led to our organization. So today, we're going to be talking about a couple of different aspects of the college process. I just wanted to see a quick show of hands for both parents and students. So who is either a student or a parent of a freshman? So, okay. And then sophomores. Got it. And juniors. Okay. And seniors. One more time for seniors. How many? Okay. And then can you community college students? Got it. Okay. So we actually feel like it's a pretty good split and then there's not as many seniors. So we will be talking about the process from the time you enter high school all the way to the time that you end. We'll actually probably spend more time in the first three years, given that there are more people here in the first three years. We'll still dive into the actual specifics of college essays and how to actually write successful college essays. So we'll go ahead and dive in with the first section, which is the college application process. So college is not just something you start thinking about when you are a senior or even a junior. It's actually something that's very important for families and for parents and for students to start thinking about early on. Because what you do in high school has a huge impact on the type of college that you're going to go to. And so you have to really make sure that you have a plan and a strategy that is set for every single year of the high school process. So the first step is... Let's go like this. So the first step is really all about strategy. So it's important when you're in late middle school and especially by the time you get into freshman year that you start looking at schools you start thinking about the type of colleges that you would want to go to. It's also important to take a step back and not just go on Google and search for best colleges in America and then make that your list. That's not what you want to do. You don't want to just go on the US news list and then make that your list. You want to actually think about what cultures, what values, what aspects of a college are the most important to you, and then you base your list on that. There's no set rule that the best college in the world for you is Harvard. It might be the most highly ranked college, but it could actually be the worst college for a very specific student. The success of an individual in life, it is somewhat determined by the college that they go to, but mostly it's determined by the hardworking nature of that person. And so that's really, really important again, especially when we live in a society where rankings are so, so, so much of a focus for a lot of students to not just base your list off of rankings, but to really start thinking early on, what do I want to get out of college? Then start having conversations with people, right? So you might know somebody who went to, you know, Santa Clara University or San Jose State University or UCLA or Stanford or Arizona State University or a variety of different universities. Start actually asking them, hey, what was your experience like? What's good about the school? What's not so good? What should I keep in mind? Do that research. That's actually really important. Go on their website. Read the descriptions. Go watch your videos, YouTube videos about student testimonials and what faculty are saying. And that'll start to help you and especially parents. It will help inform you and students about what types of universities are going to be beneficial when you actually go to apply. Also, it's important to understand that you don't have to decide your major by ninth grade, not at all, or tenth grade, or eleventh grade, or even twelfth grade. A lot of people come in and they think in high school they have to have it all figured out and by the time they graduate high school, if they don't know if they want to be a doctor or an engineer, which are the two things everybody in our community seems to want to do, then things are not going to go well for them. That's not the case. You can pick your major when you actually get into college, but you should have an understanding of what different types of majors are out there, what different types of tracks are out there. So, for example, a lot of people say, I want to do pre-law or pre-med. There's no major that you would select that says pre-med. That doesn't exist. There's no major that says pre-law. There's no major in whatever you wanted. For medical school, you have certain requirements, primarily science classes. For law school, you have certain requirements and you just have to make sure those are completed. Once you complete those, you take the tests, MCAT, LSAT, these different types of tests, and then you go ahead and apply. But it's very, very important to just have a sense of that going in so you're not confused because you don't want to go to a college thinking that there's going to be some major that's going to kind of set you up perfectly for medical school. That doesn't exist. You can major in English and still go to medical school or major in biology and go to law school. There's not necessarily a focus there. And the other thing is visiting campuses. So it is important if you can make time. We always suggest like combine it with a vacation or something, but go visit different campuses. So if you're going to LA already, you know, go to Irvine, go to UCLA, go to UC Riverside, go to, you know, some CSU State schools down there. Go and visit and that'll help. Same thing with the Bay Area. There's so many schools. There's Santa Clara, Stanford, UC Berkeley. There's a bunch of schools in San Francisco. There are schools all over kind of other parts of the Bay Area. There's schools locally here. So it's just important to visit. And so you actually get a feel because it's college is about a lot more than what you read on the news and what you read in rankings. It's important to visit, see what it's like. If you can go sit in a class, if you can visit on a weekday and go sit in a class and they have no problem with students doing that, just going and sitting in a lecture and learning a little bit and understanding what's going on. That would also be helpful. The last thing I'll say about the strategy and the planning process is take a step back and we're not going to talk about this that much in the presentation, but we're more than happy to discuss it later at some point. Take a step back and as students especially, think about what you want to do and what you actually enjoy. Don't just do something. Like I was talking to a student yesterday actually and he was literally like talking to me about majors based on jobs and then based on research he had done about salaries and based on research he had done about how many hours you would have to work at that job when you actually get the job. And he's like in 10th or 11th grade, I was like dude, you're thinking way too far. Don't worry about all that stuff right now. Which job has the most pay and don't worry about any of that. Just figure out what you actually enjoy doing and there should be some viable career track with that, but that's it because the way things are changing, you have no idea what the landscape is going to look like in the job landscape in 10, 15 years by the time somebody's actually done and secondly, don't just base things off of oh, doctor makes the most money so I should be a doctor. That's not solid reasoning right? You want to make sure you're doing something you actually enjoy because getting through medical school I don't know if there's any doctors in the room but you could tell us better than I could. Getting through medical school is difficult so you don't just want to do something because of the money and then parents it's also important to remember that alhamdulillah where we live especially in the Bay Area there are a lot of different opportunities don't just pigeonhole your child and force them to do anything this happens a lot in our community parents literally give them three options doctor, engineer, lawyer and most of the time it's doctor then second is engineer and then say oh you do computer science and that's it and you give your child no room for creativity no room for thinking and then they end up doing something because they don't want to displease you they don't like it most of the time they struggle with it and they get bad grades then you get mad at them or why are they getting bad grades and this cycle continues and can I see this all the time I've been seeing this for 20 years easily and it continues and continues so just keep that in mind that like you know have a conversation what do you enjoy doing give advice and then let your student and the students for you come up with what you actually like yourself and then it should be an ongoing conversation as you take classes and you learn more about it so once you've done that then you start planning for different components there are three to four components of high school you have your grades you have your SATs you have your extracurriculars then you have the actual college apps and internships are captured within extracurriculars so the first thing to do is again you lay out what kind of colleges maybe you'd want to go to from there you actually start to plan out for your standardized tests this is now starting to happen starting to happen earlier and earlier a lot of students sometimes wait until junior year sometimes late sophomore year to start thinking about SAT I highly recommend you start thinking about SAT I guess soon as you get into high school if not like late eighth grade start thinking about SATs and standardized tests and it's okay if you haven't done that don't worry but this is just something to keep in mind whether it's for you or for you know for your siblings, the younger siblings to just remind them right in ninth grade you want to take practice tests for the for the PSAT the practice for the practice so the PSAT is the practice SAT if you do really well in it get certain scholarships and whatnot don't focus too much energy on this one focus on the real one SAT with the real SAT with the real ACT but by ninth grade you should buy a book for the SAT start doing prep regularly the one amount I would recommend is about three hours a week three hours a week very doable for most people do one or two hours in the week days one or two hours in the weekends three hours a week and you do that every single week throughout your ninth grade and you'll be in a good place just go online to Amazon buy a Kaplan SAT prep book and you can start to do the prep by tenth grade you can either enroll in the prep course which are really expensive and I don't recommend prep course we don't recommend prep courses unless if you are somebody who's self-disciplined the way reason prep courses help is these are like Elite and Kaplan Princeton Review what are some other ones C2 there's all these other ones sometimes they cost anywhere from $1,000 to like $7,000 so I don't recommend these unless you actually don't have any discipline they help you get disciplined they're not teaching you any like amazing secrets that you can't figure out on your own but they do help you get disciplined because you have homework you have assignments you have to go to the class et cetera et cetera and so you'll see a lot of people taking those in our communities and there's nothing wrong with it but you can do it on your own you'll definitely be able to save some money there by tenth grade you should be doing one practice test per week so the SAT is a four hour test the ACT is also a four hour test I would just block off time on a Saturday or Sunday and do one practice test a week and you'll be able to again get in a good rhythm if you're already in tenth or eleventh grade and you're not doing that start doing that the year just started you can definitely get into a good rhythm there eleventh grade we would recommend taking the test sometime in eleventh grade ideally in the beginning of the year like the official exam register for the exam and then going and taking the exam in eleventh grade either in early eleventh grade or late eleventh grade and then twelfth grade you also would have time that you can retake you can retake the SAT and ACT as many times as you want ideally you don't do it more than two or three times but if you need to you can and the summers are very, very important summers for high schoolers are not vacations they're staycations they work you stay home and you work where you take a vacation for a little bit but like it's really important to be doing SAT to be doing a job of some sort to be working on your study habits to be working on your sleep habits to be working on yourself generally so that you can be in a good rhythm when you get to school and obviously relaxing and having fun is important as well but you'll have lots of fun when you're in college inshallah alright, step three extracurriculars and leadership also important to plan out early on I won't walk through all of these but these are some different examples of what you should be considering when you do extracurriculars a lot of times we have students or parents come up to us and they ask like oh what's the best kind of extracurricular that I can do like for example like should I get my child into this sport or should I get to do this and do that and then it has no consideration for what this child is actually good at or what their passions or interests are the answer to that question is the best sport or extracurricular or club that you can do is something that you actually enjoy so if you enjoy skateboarding it should be something related to skateboarding if you enjoy writing it can be something related to writing if you enjoy computers it can be something in relation to that whatever you enjoy art it should be something related to that so what we'll say for extracurriculars is get deep in a few areas you really enjoy instead of joining like 10 clubs and not really going deep in each you want to ideally pick a few clubs at the beginning of your high school career and then go be a member and then go apply for officer and then you want to be like a VP and then by senior you're your president of like a few different clubs and that's sufficient you don't want to go all over the place and just be a member and a bunch volunteering things like that but again you want to pick a few things and do it really well so if you're going to do the masjid be like there for all three four years and really build an impressive experience if you're volunteering at the masjid don't just volunteer okay there's a creek cleanup here and there's I mean these are all good things to do just for your own self and for the sake of Allah but from a very specific college application point of view it's not beneficial they're too disparate there's no story there's no theme they should all have a theme they should be connected and then finally what colleges are looking for is they're looking for growth leadership and some type of journey they don't just want you to show oh I started this and then that was it if you started something what was the path to get there why did you decide to found this club why did you decide to find the path since then what have you grown what have you improved upon etc so just keep that in mind alright so that was extracurricular leadership and now we're gonna talk a little bit about the actual specific college application process so the application process this is now it starts your senior year so right now we're in the thick of it September if you're senior you probably already know this if you're anywhere else it opens up like late July early August they're due apps are due you see apps are due at the end of November and most private school apps are due anytime between November and January most being due in January 1st so these are months now you don't just wanna start working on them in October you wanna start a long time before then right what is the point of the college application it's the opportunity for you to really highlight your unique achievements really talk about how to evaluate you based on these four or five criteria grades, academics standardized tests extracurriculars and your essays a lot of people you'll spend four years on your grades at least a year or two prepping for your standardized tests a bunch of time extracurricular activities then when it comes to the essays people will spend a couple weeks maybe sometimes a couple months you wanna spend a lot of time on your essays they're really important this is your time to actually show that you're more than a number that they can tell so that's just something to keep in mind for the application process do you wanna alright so we're gonna not talk about specifics about each application so the UC application as we mentioned it's due November 30th SAT, ACT one of the two is required does anybody we can actually feel free to ask us in the question answer session about SAT, ACT specific questions but basically SAT is one test ACT is another test there are just different governing boards you can take either one to get into college once you've taken in you got a good enough score don't worry about it after that there's also something called the SAT subject test which they are available in math, science, history and a bunch of different other categories there's lots of different subject tests some schools will require it most private schools do require it UC's it does sometimes depend on your major so engineering, computer technical majors will require specific technical subject tests so that's just something to keep in mind this is a test that takes one hour it's out of 800 points and you can go and buy a book at or nobody goes anywhere to bookstore you can go to Amazon and then you can go and buy a book for SAT subject test and biology and it's really recommended to pair these with AP classes you take AP biology you should take the AP you should take the SAT subject test for biology if you take AP US history take the SAT subject test for US history it's all the same material phrased differently and you'll kill two birds with one stone so that's the what's required application simple you're listing out a bunch of things you're filling out your major you're listing out all the things that you've done this is not the significant part of the process the most important is the actual essay so when people refer to college apps they're not referring to like filling out the actual application they're referring to the actual writing of the essays so for UC's that's what the UC essay is about now these four questions are they reflect a lot of different types of experiences you might have had they ask you about a variety of different things of challenges you've been through your favorite subject these types of things so it's important actually early on to just get a look just take a look at the questions and say hey what would I write about even if you're a freshman what would I write about right now okay I don't have too much to write about let me start doing things so I have something to write about that's important there's a lot of schools Stanford Harvard Princeton Santa Clara most of these schools are on the common application so it's not and it doesn't matter what rank of private school there are they're generally there it's very easy you just have to create an account on common app and then this one is a little different there's not four essays one essay it's longer it's about 650 words you can pick between seven prompts and when you write that essay so you don't have to go to like Harvard site and create a separate Harvard application it's just all done on the common app and then what you have is what are called supplemental essay questions these are usually essays between 50 to 250 words and they'll ask you about like for example Stanford has one that's famous it's like write a letter to your future roommate interesting essay topic and then a bunch of other types of smaller questions and larger ones but the goal is what's in your game plan this is important regardless of what grade you're in it applies whether you are in 8th or 9th grade or 12th grade and you're thinking about applying to college when you think about applying to college you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket what we see a lot of students do is apply to one school they would die to go to they apply to their dream school and they're like the only option That's a bad strategy. When you think about applying to college, you should be applying to a variety of schools. There are so many universities out there that are good at different things, that have different programs that you would really excel in. So do your research early on to figure out what schools would I be interested in going to? And then you create three buckets. So you create, those three buckets are reach schools, match schools, and safety schools. So reach schools are schools that you are your dream school, basically. You would just die to get in. You'd love to go. You would definitely say yes if you got into those schools. There are also schools that are generally more challenging to get into. But one thing to keep in mind is that all of these buckets are totally dependent on your personal scores. So a reach school for me might be different than a reach school for Sherry R, based on our GPA, based on our SAT scores. So really use the data that you have. And it's okay if you don't have all of your information yet, right? Like a lot of times we talk to seniors and they're like, oh, I still don't have my GPA yet or I'm retaking my SAT. Just use the more recent information that you have as a ballpark for making these decisions. So those are your reach schools. Sometimes there will be certain schools that are always in the reach school category. So even though UC Berkeley might have an average GPA posted on their website, it's a really challenging school to get into, similar to UCLA or Harvard or Stanford. So a lot of the times we see those schools show up in the reach bucket. Match schools are schools that you are about 80 to like 90% sure that you're gonna get into, right? Your GPA matches their average acceptance GPA. Your SAT scores are in line. Maybe they have a larger percentage of people who get accepted into that school. And these are schools that you would actually really enjoy going to as well. So they may not be, you know, the dream school, maybe they're not as intense to get into, but these are still schools you would like to go to. And same goes for safety schools. So safety schools are schools that you are almost positive that you are going to get into, right? Like your GPA SAT score is very high compared to their average. And again, a lot of the times people will put safety schools, they'll choose safety schools that they aren't that excited about. They'll say, yeah, like, you know, maybe like, I'll put UC Merced, but I would never go to Merced. By the way, Merced is an incredible school if any of you have not been, it's a smaller school. So you sort of get a private school feel for a public school price tag. But if you haven't visited and it's something you're considering, I highly recommend it. It's a really great school. But for that example, right? If somebody thinks that way, you should not be putting that school as a safety school. You should be choosing a school that you would still be really excited to go to. So you create this category, you create this game plan. So you know now that the odds are in your favor, whether or not you get into the schools in your top reach school category, you will still get into schools in your game plan. So that's the important piece to think about is really spreading out your odds. All right, so we're gonna talk a little bit about, oh, sorry, we don't need this. We're gonna talk about what to do when you're writing your essay. And this is actually really important for all of us to think about, whether we are in ninth grade, whether we're in eighth grade, whether we're in twelfth grade, this is just good writing. And it's actually something that I notice a lot of the time that students struggle with. Unfortunately, we live in an American country but our English is incredibly weak. So use this time in high school, in middle school, wherever you are to really try to strengthen these skills. When college admissions officers are reading your personal statements, they're not looking to see a resume. They're not looking to see the highest GPA. They're not looking to see the highest SAT score. Those things matter, yes. But what they're looking to see is, are you somebody that's interesting? Are you somebody that's gonna add color to the campus? Are you going to be somebody that will add an interesting flavor in the classroom? And so all of your personal statements or your college essays should reflect your unique character, your unique personality, and your writing style should reflect that as well too. So there are just a couple of do's that I recommend you think about as you write these essays. So the first one is be honest. I get asked this question sometimes. How do they know that I'm telling the truth? Well, first of all, a law knows when you're telling the truth. So that's the first thing. The second thing is people do audit sometimes. Like if the claims are almost preposterous, college admissions officers will look in to see if you're telling the truth. So it's always important, like we start with like the first layer, which is always be honest about your experience. The second one is be concise. Be really specific. And there are some ways that you can do this. One thing that I ask all of my personal students to do is prove to me that this sentence has earned its way on the page. So 350 words sounds like not that much. It's really not that much when you start writing. And when I work with students, I tell them that I don't wanna see a draft that's over a hundred words beyond the word limit. So if you're gonna submit a draft to me to review, it has to be less than 450 words. And that's a good exercise for all of you students as well too, is when you write your first draft, really put thought into it. Really think, is this sentence adding something unique to this page? Is this sentence showing a part of myself that maybe another sentence hasn't? Is this sentence really communicating and this idea in the most crisp way possible? One thing we struggle a lot with is being very vague. So this exercise will prevent you from getting too vague. The third piece is to show and not to tell. And the best way to do this is to really practice your storytelling skills. So I always recommend that all of your essays start with a story. And there's generally an outline I give students and that's my 20, 40, 40 framework. That 20% is that story where you're in the moment, right? So if you guys have watched a movie, does the movie start like if you're in an action movie? Does it start with like a narrator or usually does it start with like a speeding car or like an explosion or like something, something like really crazy happening that makes you wanna continue watching? Starts with the action, right? So think about your essays like that is like I need to start in the middle of the action. So you zoom in in that 20% and then you zoom out into that second 40%. And what you talk about in that body of the essay is what was the problem that you're trying to solve? So giving some context, right? The what and the how. So what was the problem and how were you solving that problem? So that's your body. So you have 20% which is the show part, the story part. Then you have your 40% which is the what and the how. And then your last 40% of the essay is what did you learn? What was the why, right? In your essay, what are the reflections? And the interesting thing is that that last 40% is the most important part of your essay. Like that is really what admissions officers are looking to understand is what have you learned as a result of this experience? And if you cannot articulate that, they don't really care. So it's really, really important to spend that 40% of the essay rounding out, reflecting on like, what is it that I learned from this experience? I always tell people to reach beyond your leadership positions. Don't use a list. Don't say I was the president of this and I was the VP of this and I have like 10,000 volunteer hours. Like they don't care. Really go deeper and think about, okay, I was the president of this and I helped do this many things. Like this was my impact. So don't think about your positions or lists. Think about your impact. Lastly, your personal statement should be an intellectual biography. So really like how have you changed as a person? Like I was talking about earlier, what are you interested in? How has it developed your character? And then of course have a central idea or a theme and build around it. So try to prevent your essay from meandering through multiple different ideas or themes. If you have one theme, stick to that theme and go deep in that theme. So if you're reading your sentence, you're doing that activity I said, where you go sentence by sentence and ask, does this sentence belong here? You can ask yourself, is this sentence supporting this particular theme or is it just kind of making a random side point that is not important to what I'm trying to communicate here? So remember some of those things in terms of thinking about how do you want to approach your personal statement? So this is an example. It's not, Sierra would ask something, sure. So one thing that's really important with personal statements is it's not just about what your writing skills are when you start writing the personal statement. It's about how you've developed your writing skills over the course of the last five, six years. So if you start your personal statement as a 12th grader, which everybody does, you should start developing your writing skills as like a seventh grader. What do I mean by that? In this day and age, it's very, very common for us to not read anymore, for us to not practice writing anymore. Reading used to be the equivalent of Netflix. That's what reading used to be. I kid you not. I don't know if any parents in this room, but if you used to just like read books for fun. But that was very common even when we were in elementary school. Just read for fun. Like there was not anything else you would do for fun. Reading was very common. But because now there's so much technology. We play video games for fun. People read like statuses for fun by reviewing our social media feeds for fun, et cetera. There's not as much emphasis actually put on developing that component in your brain which actually helps you formulate thoughts, which helps you dive deep into your imagination, which helps you actually put things together. And so the reason we mentioned that's important is if you want to actually write a really good college essay, just invest in your reading and everybody in this room has the ability to do it. The students in this room, masha'Allah, very, very talented. I know many of you, right? You're all very, very talented, masha'Allah. You can totally do it. It doesn't mean a huge change in your life. Just start reading one book a month, right? Start writing one short story or one article analysis a week or a month, whatever it is that you can do. But you will see it pay off a lot when you get to senior year and you actually need to think about, now I have to write about my life. Or journaling. Does anyone in this room journal? Like have a journal or diary? Or do reflect? I do it. Anybody else? Journaling is a really helpful exercise to get your, figure out how to actually express your feelings and talk about things that you've learned. So journaling, reading and doing some other types of writing exercises, I would recommend if you could take something away, if you're not a senior already, start doing that, right? A ninth grader, 10th grader, 11th grader, or if you're even younger than that. And that'll help you actually develop the writing skills to be able to write essays like what Saadi is about to show you. Your example on journaling I was just about to share. So my little sister entered her senior year at Cal. She's a public health major and she's what you guys would call pre-med. She's been journaling since she was about nine years old. Every day. She writes in her journal every day. Since she was nine, she's 21. And when it came time to apply for college, she pulled down like cardboard boxes upon boxes out of her closet. I think she had like four boxes. And I was like, what are these? And she was like, oh, these are my journals from when I was nine years old. And she went through her journals to say, to look at different parts of her life of, you know, how did I change when I was 13? How did I change when this experience happened? Like, you know, what were my thoughts when, you know, my grandmother passed away? Like, how was I dealing with that? And she used the themes that she saw in her own personal growth to write her college application essays. And that's really powerful because you're really not making it up, right? Like you have a source and you've really tracked how you've changed. And so it doesn't need to be like a dear diary writing for 30 minutes. Like, even if you spend five minutes in the morning just jotting down your ideas, this is really gonna be helpful for your own creativity. Before we move on to this example, which I want you guys to sort of tell me how we can make better in a second, I wanna ask the students, how many of you have a cell phone? Oh my God, the hands are like kind of, come on, raise them high. Okay, so, okay, so most of us. All right, how many of you guys have some form of social media? It could be Instagram, it could be Snapchat, it could be Facebook, it could be whatever, YouTube. Okay, how many of you guys listen to music? Okay, cool. How many of you guys listen to podcasts sometimes? All right, what about TV? Like, do you guys watch Hulu Netflix? Like HBO, any of that? Totally normal things, right? These are things that are part of our lives, right? Not trying to be, not trying to shame you guys. When you think, and this is actually an experience I've been going through for the past few weeks, how much of what's up here in my head are my own thoughts or my own ideas, my own creativity, and how much of what's in my head is what somebody else is telling me to think and feel. And how much space does that leave me to be creative and to produce content? I'm a writer, I'm a teacher, I'm a coach. How much room does that leave me to be creative when there's constant input in my eyes and my ears? And it doesn't even have to be bad. Like in the mornings I listen to a podcast, sometimes I listen to like the Cullum Institute podcast, like I love that. Even that, it's wonderful, it's great. But if I'm constantly consuming something, if I'm constantly stimulated, there's no time for stillness in my mind, there is zero opportunity for me to be creative. There's no way I can produce something. There's no way I can write properly if I'm not giving myself some time to just be bored, to just be quiet, to like give myself some time to breathe. And look, like I'm a bit older than the students here, right, like I'm in my late 20s and you guys have some time to go, but if you don't work on the challenges that I'm talking about right now and cultivating stillness in your life, when you're my age, you're gonna be like, oh man, I have so much work to do. I have so much work to do. I have so many friends who are struggling to find creativity and like peace in their life and they're not that old. They're in their 20s, they're in their 30s and they're struggling. And you can prevent that from happening for your own generation if you cultivate that time for yourself. So just keeping all of those things in mind, I think is important because speaking to this generation right now is really, really, I think, critical because your generation is being attacked in a way that our generation was not. We were absolutely not dealing with the challenges that you guys do. I really feel for you growing up right now. So think about like, how can I create stillness and peace in my life and ways for me to be creative so that I'm not dealing with some of these challenges later on in my life? Did you wanna add something? Actually, I think it'd be a good time right now to just see if there's any questions. So far in terms of what we've chatted about and then we can go ahead and respond and then we'll move on. Any questions or comments, thoughts? Or just other things that you've seen so far, what you would like to hear, what you were hoping to hear. Just wanna make sure we're addressing everything, especially since this is not all seniors and we're gonna be diving a little bit into essays. We wanna make sure we're addressing the concerns of parents and students all the way from whatever age until a junior or senior year. Yes, great question. The essay is, if you were to split it up, it would be anywhere from 20 all the way up to 40%. It's definitely at least one-fifth of your application is the essay. You have like assigned readers who take time to read it, multiple readers, a committee that reads it. But sometimes it can be so interesting or good or beneficial that it completely changes the mind of the whole committee. I know more like, for example, my roommate in college, he had quite a, like a low SAT score from, it was out of 2400 at the time and he had something closer to the 1700s. And this was, and he got into UC Berkeley, and this average score at the time was like 21, 22. But he wrote amazing essays. His mom was a teacher. He himself was good at writing. He was one of the best kayakers in the nation and he wrote a whole essay about that experience and a variety of other essays. And so it can be really, really significant. It's always quite important, but it can get to the point where it can completely flip your whole application if you do well. One more thing I would say is a lot of the times they're evaluating applicants who have maybe the exact same scores. So you have the same GPA, same SAT score, then it really comes down to how is this person different? And only you can write an essay that you write. So that's like, yeah, it's 20 to 40% of your application depends on what school you're applying to, but when it comes down to the wire, it can be what makes the decision. Great question. So there are some schools like UChicago that have stopped asking for the SAT or ACT score. So there are a few. The question is, do all schools require the SAT or ACT score? Do all schools look at it? Some schools have stopped because I'm just gonna say it, like a lot of times the SAT or ACT is actually not a measure of your aptitude and people are starting to realize that, but most schools still require it. So it's still one of those things. It's still kind of a game you have to play. Yeah, I would just, it's a quick Google, right? Like, which schools have stopped accepting the ACT or SAT score? But for now, and the question was, where can we find out which schools don't accept SAT or ACT? For now, I would operate under the assumption that every school almost is gonna accept required. It's very small amount and the ones that do are either schools that you might not have heard of or schools that are quite good, but you're gonna wanna apply, as we mentioned, to reach match and safety. So always operate under the assumption that you're gonna have to take the test and to start preparing yourself early on to take the test. Yeah, so it really doesn't matter. So the question is, do you have to take both or should we just take one? Because some people are taking both as a way to stand out on their applications, yes. So you don't have to take both. Colleges aren't gonna give you bonus points if you took both, that's not part of it. They're just gonna look at what your highest score was. So if you score better on the ACT then that's the one you should submit. You could submit both if you want to, but it's not gonna make you stand out anymore. And there's a lot of misconceptions like that out there. So really good question. If you have a limited number of hours in the day and a limited number of time, don't devote your resources and your time to having to do both, just do one. I did both because I actually was hoping to do better on one, so I took the ACT and I was like, I'm not really loving my score, I kept practicing, but it was difficult for me to improve in the ACT. Then I started taking ACT and I was like, oh, this test suits me better. I kind of should have done that earlier on and just figured out which one suits me better, but in that situation, it makes sense. Otherwise, don't just do both to add on something. You can spend that time doing something else for your application. Other question, yes. So the question was a lot of people go to community college first and then they go to college versus some people go to high school then they go to college directly. So what's our recommendation? If you know that you're gonna apply and you're not gonna get in or you have a low chance of getting in and maybe it's a better idea to go to community college, strengthen some of the fundamental skills and then apply, I recommend that. But if you have a student who's very competitive, who has a shot of getting in, they should go through that process of applying directly. There's nothing wrong with transferring. Community colleges are incredible. Actually, you're right, it's significantly easier to get in to especially some of the best schools to a UC in particular through community college. I would say one thing that the student should keep in mind is that the transfer experience and the four-year experience are very different. So the transfer experience, you get a very short amount of time on that college campus and there are a lot of things that you can't do or you just aren't able to do because of the limited time you have on campus. So for example, if you wanna run for office, right? Like it's really hard to develop the network that you have within- Student government, not US government. Yeah, student government, right? If you wanna run for UC Berkeley's or UCLA student office, for example, it's really hard to do that. Not impossible, but just more challenging. So it really comes down to the experience and the particular student. There are a couple of considerations so we'll generally kind of differentiate between what we recommend. One, community college is excellent if finances are a really, really important consideration, because you obviously save on two years of tuition. There's also a lot of financial aid available out there. So if that's a consideration, you should always keep that in mind. But you do save on two years of tuition and then you have to pay the other two years at the full-time school. The second situation is how they mention is if you actually had somebody who wasn't able to do well. Or third is if you have somebody, they prefer to stay close to home and that's generally what the preference is and then you make that happen. Or there's a family situation, the student needs to also work to support the family, those kind of situations. Where we don't recommend it is if you kind of get into high school, like, oh, well, this doesn't really even matter because a community college, you don't need to take the SAT, there's a lot of stuff you don't have to do. So if you just use that as a kind of an excuse to post through high school, be lazy, not work hard and say, I'm just gonna go to community college, that's you're just letting yourself down at that point, right? Because you could still go to community college and it's fine, but you should only do anything in life when you've put your full utmost effort out there. And then, if there's another option, there's another option, other questions, yes. So question is whether people who live in a certain state, like I'd say California, have a better chance of getting into other out-of-state schools. There could be a factor of that because certain schools charge out-of-state tuition, right? So sometimes they will apportion a certain amount of out-of-state students to get into the school because the out-of-state tuition is usually two to three times as much as the in-state tuition. But generally, it's not that true because like, for example, let's say you're a UC student, let's say you're going to apply to the UCs and you're applying from Nevada, they are reserving most of the slots for California students. It's much harder to get in from Nevada than it is from living in Pleasanton because CSUs, UCs, the whole reason they're created was for California students, then they have other students from outside. But sometimes that can be true, it really depends. I'm not sure in terms of like the secret sauce of admissions and what they're looking at, yeah. I think one thing I would add is like, the confounding factor here could be that just generally UCs are really hard to get into compared to other schools, right? Like UCs is like the most competitive public education system and it's getting more and more competitive every year. So if you compare your chance as a student getting into the UC compared to somewhere in Illinois or Texas, they're obviously higher there, right? Because generally the admission rates are higher there. So that could also be what's happening. Generally just ranked higher than most other school systems out there in the nation. So just in the interest of time, I think we should move forward and then we can save some more time for questions at the very end. I wanna make sure we get through the personal statement don'ts. And so knowing what to do is just as important as knowing what not to do. And I spoke to some of these things in the first slide, but the first thing is don't just like state what you've done and like let that speak for itself. Like don't do that. Don't just say, oh yeah, obviously I was like the head of volunteers at Kaiser and like that's what I did. Awesome, there are so many students who are applying who are also the head of volunteering at their local Kaiser. So please make sure that you differentiate yourself and just know that they're reading thousands and thousands of statements. And so there are a lot of people who are doing a lot of similar things. And this is the other reason why our answer to parents is always there's no such thing as like the right extracurricular, the right club, the right number of volunteer hours because if we said that to you and we said that to every single student we worked with, we would have a number of cookie cutter students who would have equally minimal chances of getting in. There would be no way to differentiate. So that's one thing to remember is like really try to go deep into why you chose that particular activity, why you chose the particular position or the place to volunteer, et cetera. Second is avoid cliches or expressions. Please underline the students, never start your essays with a quote, never do that, never ever do that, right? Like because that is like the best way to have the admissions officer put your essay on the side. It is not creative, it's not interesting, even I don't wanna read it. And so please make sure that you avoid any of those cliches or expressions or being vague. Do not rewrite your resume. Similar to what's at the top, right? Don't just go in a list and say here are all the things I've done, end of story. Each of your essays should focus on a particular topic, a particular theme, a particular story. And it does not need to be everything you've done, right? So for example, if you were in a student government, right? You don't need to list every single thing you've done as a student government officer. What you do need to do is choose a particular time during your time as secretary, your treasurer, president, whatever it might be, and go deep into that activity. Go deep into that situation. What did you learn from it? What did you come out from it? How did you transform as a result of experiencing that? So again, do not just give us a list of everything you've done. We talked about this earlier, don't be too general, don't be abstract, be really specific in what you wanna say, use specific language. I even have a list of bad words, like things that I don't let my students use that we do like a search for in their essays. So things like good, bad, hard, this, that, difficult, all of those words are not allowed. Like I said, don't use quotations. Using quotes, if you're doing dialogue in your essay, that's totally fine. So if you were trying to say, somebody said this and that made you think something, or somebody said this and then you responded, that's totally fine. What I mean by quotations is quotes by famous people. Don't use any negative comments or excuses. So don't write your essay about, man, it was really hard. I just like, don't blame people for maybe your shortcomings. So that's really important to remember. If you didn't get a good grade, right? Don't blame that on somebody else. Don't say, oh yeah, we moved and I wish my parents hadn't moved because I miss my friends and my parents are the worst. Don't do that. Use that example of actually moving was very difficult because it made me very lonely and I had to learn to sit with my loneliness and venture out of my comfort zone and make new friends. That's a much better way of talking about that experience. And then again, like I said, don't add too many irrelevant details because you don't wanna distract the reader and you don't have that much space. So again, this is just, I just wanna do this for the sake of time. So I actually have a couple of activities I wanna do with all of you. If you have a notebook and pen, that's awesome. If you have a computer or a phone, that's great too. Parents, you're welcome to do this as well too. It's just like a good activity and it's a self-reflection activity. I do this with all of my private clients. We work privately with students on their college applications. We start, even before we start talking about what activities have you done, you know, what places have you been to, et cetera, we start with the more fundamental frameworks. So these are called the four frameworks and they are big defining moments in your life. So what was a time when everything changed for you? It can be at any point in your life. It can be when you were seven, it can be when you were 13, it can be when you're 17, it could have been yesterday. It could be something big, like an illness of a parent or God forbid the loss of a loved one or a move or the birth of a sibling or it could be getting a bad grade on a test and realizing maybe you haven't been working that as hard as you need to be or maybe a moment where you felt like you were not being true to yourself and how that felt and how you decided that you were gonna be sincere moving forward. So anything that changed the way you think about the world. Second is your identity and your identity can be things like your gender, your religion, your nationality, your immigration status, but it can also be things like what you're passionate about. So tennis player, writer, pianist, comedian, it can be any of those things. So it's totally up to you on how you wanna define that identity. The third framework is your values. So not just honesty, sincerity, trust, but how you learn those values. So if your value is hard work, then you need to tell me the story about why you chose hard work. How did you learn that? So if my value is hard work, I would say my parents are immigrants. My dad came here when he was 19 or 20 and he really worked to give us the life that I have and I watched him struggle and I don't take any of that for granted because I know that I wouldn't want his effort to go to waste and that's important for me. So telling the story behind your value and then last, what are your goals? And by goals, it's fine to say my goal is to go to a good college, get a car, buy a nice house, have a nice career. Those are fine, but I actually want you to reach beyond those goals. I want you to think about the big problems in your life that you wanna solve. So what are the problems that just burn you up inside that keep you up at night? So these can be things like prison reform. It can be things like the refugee crisis. It can be things like mass shootings in high schools. It can be any of those things. So I want you to take a few minutes. I want everybody to just write down what comes to mind for each of these frameworks and then I would love for us to share and talk a little bit about them. So maybe we'll spend like three-ish minutes doing that and then we can do a quick share out. So the next thing we wanna do and then we're gonna get to question and answers but I actually wanna just ask you all a question especially for those students who might be you're not a senior yet. What do you think at the stage that you're at right now? What do you think is the most important thing that you can be doing in order to prepare for this whole college applications? The college application process. What do you think is the most important that you can be doing? And this is like, again, everybody just tell me what you think. I'm doing one or two people. Get good grades, okay. So we heard one, get good grades. That's definitely a good part of it. Yes, focus on leadership positions or actually there's good others. Yes, that's very good. I like that one. There's grow as yourself if you feel like, let's say you're shy to how to kind of continue to grow. That's really good, Masha'Allah. It's a very impactful one. A lot of, sometimes most people don't think about that. So focused on growing the application, they forget to grow as a human being. Anything else? Comes to mind. Parents, any ideas that you have of what you, oh yes, please. That's very good. That's very good. Identify yourself and then go through this whole journey so that you can really, really figure out not only who you are, but where you were and how you got here. Go for one more. Okay, so the one that I didn't hear mentioned, and we've actually done like entire presentations about this, but we're not gonna get into it in too much detail right now, is the most important thing that anybody can be doing when you're, for your college applications process, from the time that you start elementary school all the way to the time that you apply for college is actually learning how to manage your time. Learning how to manage your time is, your time is your most precious resource and it's the resource that's most under attack these days. If you had somebody coming into your house every five minutes and trying to steal your money, steal your jewelry, steal your laptop, steal something from you, you would be pretty concerned. You would figure out different security systems, you'd figure out different ways, you'd probably move, you'd get, you know, you'd figure out different ways. Unfortunately, we live, you know, Hamdallah, but we live in a time right now where there are lots and lots of different entities that are trying to steal your time. Every single application is trying to steal your time. Every single show is trying to steal your time. There are lots of different organizations, corporations that are trying to steal your time. The reason I mentioned is that the most successful human beings in history have been the ones that have been the best at managing their time. They have a goal, they stay focused, they don't get distracted and they just go towards it. And what is one of the largest inhibitors to that successful path today is we have a goal or we don't have a goal and we just get distracted every two minutes, every three minutes, every five minutes. Now it's getting to the point where it's literally multiple times an hour where we get distracted and we're not able to manage our time. So if you aren't at the college application process yet and you really wanna nail how to get good grades as you mentioned, you wanna nail how to work on yourself, how to start finding yourself. If you can learn to manage your time and build that essential habit of just being disciplined, understanding the importance of, and again, we're not gonna go into all the details, but the waking up early, not staying up late, making sure you have a certain amount of time you devote to social media and video games and that's it, you don't devote any more time, not getting sucked into the addictiveness of binge watching, game of thrones and all these different things that you could be watching, that you will be successful. So even if you don't go to the school that's at the top of the list, I guarantee you, inshallah, you will be successful because you will have picked up a habit and a skill that is the core skill of the majority of successful people today. So just keep that in mind. Learning that early on is very, very important and parents, I would recommend having a conversation, not a one-way, like, beta, I told you not to do that. You're doing it again and you're always playing video games, not a one-way. That's a monologue, have a dialogue and have a conversation and just saying look, what are you struggling with? Like what's, because a lot of times we meet students who are struggling and they want to get better with managing their time and they want to get better with figuring out how to not be so caught up in all this but they don't know what else to do. Literally you're being attacked, it's not even your fault. We just live in a society where those attacks are constantly coming in and it's a bombardment and when you want to do better, you just need someone to guide you, parents would definitely recommend having that conversation and students identified early on and don't make excuses. Just say, okay, look, this is something I struggle with. It's okay, I'm gonna work on it, inshallah and find somebody you can talk to, right? Find an elder, find a mentor, find a friend who you see who really is nailing it, who's doing well with their time because the secret behind every good grade is somebody who knew how to manage your time. Every good SAT score is someone or someone who cheated a lot but we don't want to get into that category. So I'm a secret behind every good college admission, every good extracurricular, somebody who's juggling a lot is just somebody who knows how to manage it. So find a mentor, find someone you can speak with and actually just have that discussion of, hey man, what are some skills that were useful to you? What's helpful for you? What's actually, what are different tips that you have for me to curb my Snapchat use or curb my Instagram use? You don't have to go to the end of deleting it. You could go to that end, I advocate that end a lot but you can just say, okay, I'm gonna just limit it to 10 minutes a day at the end of the day or 10 minutes every hour because if I'm doing one hour, if I'm doing 30 minutes every hour right now, that type of thing. So that's just the main piece to keep in mind. It'll be really beneficial for your college application journey when you actually get to that point and you won't feel the last thing anybody wants to feel. So you get to the time when you apply to college and you're just like, man, I could have done so much better. Like I really, because you'll have let yourself down. Everybody, I'm telling you right now every student in this room has the potential to not only get into the dream school but to do amazing things and you have to believe that. To do really, really well in your life, to accomplish your major goals, to whether it's helping human beings, whether it's making a lot of money, whatever your major goals are, right? Whether it's doing both of those at the same time, whether it's serving your family, serving your community, serving your parents, taking care of the people who brought you up, everybody can do it. It's just a matter now of are you going to start that process and are you motivated enough and can you find that motivation, especially when there's so many different things that are trying to keep us down from that. So with that, Insha'Allah, we'll open it up for some more questions and answers and then I think we're gonna wrap up, Insha'Allah. Any other questions folks have? Yes. Difference in preparation for SAT, ACT. SAT is primarily critical reading and math. ACT has critical reading, math, and it's more of a critical science section. It's not really testing your ability to know biology and chemistry but can you examine, like read a passage and pull out certain understandings? Can you understand what a graph is saying, right? So certain analytical skills. And then ACT also has a writing component. It's not really much difference in preparation. No, if you can just be disciplined, you'll do well on both of them and just watch things regularly. The biggest thing I'd say for both SAT and ACT is to do something regularly. Little bits every day, far better than a summer of cramming or a month of cramming or a weekend of cramming. Just doing little bits every day and getting oriented that early on. Even if you're like in seventh, eighth grade, you can start learning this stuff. It's not difficult. You go on Khan Academy, you can watch free videos and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, recommendations for books for SAT. I would say get a Kaplan. Kaplan is always good. You should search Kaplan, SAT, ACT. It's like 20 or $30. And you can also get it from the library if someone's not able to purchase it on Amazon. The question is, is Khan Academy a good source? Yeah, that's an excellent source. I mean, all of this has to be supplemented by personal studying and personal work. So you'll watch videos on there and then you have to still do a bunch of stuff on your own, but it's definitely a good source. There's also a lot of stuff available for free out there on the internet, free guides, YouTube videos, et cetera. But the most important thing is pick it and then just go for it. You do it regularly. It's very much, it's just practice-based. There's not a rocket science on there. There's no really impossibly difficult question on either of these tests. It's just, if you practice enough, you're gonna do well, Anshela. If you didn't practice, it's gonna be hard. You know? Yeah, question. A person who loses interest really quickly, how can you hold on to something and stick with it? That's a really good question, Satya. Can I recommend a book to you? I'm reading it right now. It's really good. Easy read. Grit the power of passion and perseverance. It's really good. And it will answer that exact question. Is how do you find a goal and stick to it? And what's the difference between just being naturally good at something, like having talent, versus putting in the effort over and over again? It's okay to change your individual goals, right? So the way the goal hierarchy should work is you have one or two big goals. Those are the big goals that are your compass for driving your life forward. And then you have some sub-goals, right? Or like, okay, how are you actually gonna get to that goal? And each sub-goal has smaller sub-goals, right? Like those are the tactical daily things that you might do, right? To win the full game, right? You can change those small goals. That's okay. You can replace those goals with something else, but you should have one compass that drives you forward day in and day out. And that book helps answer that question. I recommend it for all of the students here. It's an easy read. If you read it now, you will be in a really, really good shape. And grit, G-R-I-T, the power of passion and perseverance. It's by a woman named Angela Duckworth. Other questions? Yes. The best pre-med track. There is no best pre-med track. There's no such thing as a best pre-med track. You can do whatever you want. You can take English and take all your science classes and do well in the MCAT and do extracurriculars. You can do biology. You can do chemistry. You can do law. You can do dance. Anything. Because it has nothing to do with the school you go to. It has everything to do with the student you are. This is actually a big problem, is people think you can go to a school and it'll help you get into another school. It's not like that. You can go to the best private high school and your chances of getting to Harvard are no better than if you went to a low tier school in a low income area that is not highly ranked. It all has to do with how good of a student you are. So if you go to a college that's decent or good and you work really hard, you do well in your MCAT, you're doing extracurricular activities, you're a leader, you're exhibiting all the similar, it's what we mentioned here, same things for graduate schools, just they need to be a little bit more focused and you'll be able to get in each other. And if you don't do all that, it does not matter what you go or how much money you pay, you won't get in. There's a few things I would notice in college, if you're working on pre-med, because medical school comes after your undergrad rate in most cases. So I would say if the student decides to major in something other than science, making sure that they have taken all the science classes and they have a really strong science GPA, that is evaluated separately than your regular GPA. So for example, my sister is a public health major, that is like a common pre-med track, but she didn't wanna major in biology or chemistry or whatever, but she's still taking all those advanced bio-chem physics classes and she has a science GPA. The second part to keep in mind is research. So if your student can do some kind of research with the professor, that looks great. That's what medical schools are looking for, is having some kind of like research lab experience. And of course, the general things like extracurriculars and volunteer activities. And then the last thing is having a really strong MCAT score. So studying for the MCAT, which is like, for people who wanna go to medical school, the MCAT is essentially the SAT for medical school. Any last questions? Last questions, one more question. Yes, it's true. They look at them, they don't consider them. Yeah, you have a UC GPA that you can get on your transcript as well. So whatever school you go to, they'll have a UC GPA. But they still look at them. Like if you did really poorly freshman year, it's okay. But if you did really well, it generally will help you. Like if you did really poorly and you bounce back, it's great. But if you did really well, it also is gonna help you out because they sit there. Yeah, they're both good situations. Yeah, they know it's taking some time to adjust. Yeah. Question is they look at unweighted or weighted GPA without getting into the details. Unweighted is basically if you make all AP classes and everything equal to just 4.0 instead of 5.0, what's your GPA on that? They are looking actively at both. The only unweighted is easier to compare schools. If I went to a college that has zero AP classes in your high school and you went to high school that has 15 AP classes, it's not really fair if you have a 5.0 and I only have a 4.0 because I couldn't even take any AP classes. So then they'll look at my unweighted. If you have 3.8 unweighted, I have a 4.0 unweighted, it means it speaks to my ability to just constantly get A's. It is important though to have good at both situations. If you can take challenging classes, take them. One question in the front and then one question in the back. I would say all types of improvement are looked positively upon. So if you are working actively to get up to a higher GPA and that shows in your transcript, that's a positive thing. There could be lots of life experiences that might have caused you to have a 2.0 or a 3.0. As long as you're showing improvement, that's what colleges want to take a look at. The absolute best if it's not improvement is just staying high. Always having higher grades is going to be better than lower but lower and improving is better than higher and decreasing. Last question in the back. Now the comma is going on so I think we'll stop now and then we will, if anybody has questions, please feel free to find us after we'll be hanging out if anybody wants to chat. I mean, we do work with students one-on-one for college essays and applications so if you want to chat about that, let us know. JazakAllah khair subhanakAllah wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi Mas'Allah wa s-salam wa barakatuh