A student recently asked me, "How do volunteer work and service-related clubs look on applications? Do they, too, strike admissions officers as a sign of a complacent student whose main goal is to look good? What kind of specialized service opportunities TRULY give kids an edge in college and beyond?"

I'm about to give you some free advice. I'd normally charge a lot of money to tell you this. But since it's my sister's birthday, I'm feeling generous.

As a Palo Alto resident who has worked with countless Paly and Gunn students, I have followed the mental health situation with rapt concern and attention. In accordance with my 80-20 rule (research/learn/consume 80% of the time, create 20% of the time), I have published multiple blog posts on this topic, including: 

• When "Achievement" Is Toxic: Reflections on the (most recent) Gunn Suicide, and Raising Resilient Children
• APs Make You Look Complacent, Not Curious
• Going to Stanford Doesn't Mean You'll Get a Stanford Education (and going to a state school doesn't mean you won't)
• Getting Into Your First-Choice College is NOT an "Accomplishment"
• High-Achieving Teens Feel Empty. Therapy Doesn't Always Help - But This Might.

Getting into college is about more than grades and SAT scores. It's about demonstrating your ability to find and create unique opportunities. After all, as I wrote in The Two Biggest Mistakes Students Make on Their College Applications, the advantage of attending a top school isn't the quality of the book learning. It's the abundance of resources and faculty that you wouldn't have access to anywhere else. 

Moreover, colleges are looking for students with an interesting story -- students who have actively worked to fill their lives with passion, adventure and meaning.

Last week, Paved With Verbs published some valuable advice for aspiring doctors:

Indeed, "interdisciplinary" and "collaboration" are hot words in education right now. But there's one group of scholars I (completely unintentionally) left off my list:

UPDATE: THE PROMPTS HAVE CHANGED!! For the Complete Guide to the Stanford 2017-2018 Short Answer and Supplemental Essays, click here. 

For many students, Stanford is the dream -- but Stanford's application is a nightmare! After filling out eight short-answer questions, you've still got three more 250-word essays to go! 

Take these essays seriously. It may feel ridiculous to write a letter to your future roommate... but the admissions officers will read (and evaluate you on) every word. 

UPDATE: THE PROMPTS HAVE CHANGED!! For the Complete Guide to the Stanford 2017-2018 Short Answer and Supplemental Essays, click here. ​

So you're applying to Stanford. That's great! But, as I explained in this infographic, your odds of acceptance are about 1 in 17. You are competing with top students from around the world -- and about 70% of applicants with a perfect 2400 SAT score will be rejected. 

This means one thing: the only way to stand out to admissions officers (other than submitting AMAZING recommendations) is to take advantage of every possible space on the application to say something only you can​.

The best thing about running Paved With Verbs is how many engaging young people I get to work with every day. For example, last week, I met with a student who was writing his “Why do you want to go to Purdue” essay.
 
We talked about his interests – he loves technology, but he wants to be a doctor. Hearing this, I told him to check out the Purdue Research Park.
 
“You’d be a perfect candidate,” I told him, “Because medical breakthroughs aren’t happening in the field of medicine anymore. If you want to disrupt medicine, you need to take an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. You’ll need to work with chemists, psychologists, engineers, doctors, and computer scientists.”

​Last week, I reported a terrible Common App bug: for some reason, the last paragraph of essays are not always getting pasted over into the application. So, if you're not careful, your essay will just sort of end. 

This week, I return with another unfortunate bug to report: 

Sometimes (but not every time), when you put an ellipsis in your essay...

...

​It gets pasted into the application as a single period.