The Uncommon Applicant
Every year, we meet dozens of talented high school students who have spent lots of time outside class doing amazing things in their community.
But we also meet lots of students who admit that they WANT to do more, but simply aren’t sure where to start.
With this in mind, I decided worked with a couple amazing coaches to develop a program to help students develop a values-based project to both teach life skills and help them prepare for the college application process.
Program Overview
Through this program, students will meet with our leadership coaches and a cohort of 2-3 other students over six months to discover their values, build their leadership capacities, and develop a project that has a positive impact on their local or global community.
We call these self-directed projects and we believe they can not only help students create better college applications; they can, more importantly, help students become better humans.
If a student were to ask me, “Why should I develop a self-directed?” project, here’s what I’d say:
You’ll learn a ton about yourself. Building a project on your own will teach you to work outside your comfort zone, discover your weaknesses, develop new strengths, become more emotionally intelligent, and develop your confidence.
You’ll become a more confident leader. As the originator and decision-maker, you’ll learn entrepreneurial skills like how to create a clear vision; build a team; hold others (and yourself) accountable; assess your decisions; pivot; admit mistakes; fail in an environment where it’s safe to fail; get back up to reach your goals in a new way.
You’ll become more intentional in your learning. With a clear goal in mind, your intellectual and creative energy will become even more focused.
(And yes, okay) Your project can help you stand out on your college application. This reason is listed last because “getting into college” isn’t the best reason for doing a self-directed project.
Meet Your Coach
Hi, I’m Bonnie!
As soon as I arrived in high school, I felt like something was off. My school’s academic and social environment wasn’t a good fit for me.
Luckily, one of my friends gave me a copy of the Teenage Liberation Handbook. It seemed a little radical, but the author was actually advocating for ambitious students to drop out of high school as a strategy for getting into college and pursuing their dreams. I realized that I could probably be more productive outside of school, so I made the leap!
After I quit full-time school, I signed up for correspondence courses, volunteered at a local nonprofit, worked in construction, slung coffee (as we say in Seattle), traveled for several months in Australia and Fiji, learned to surf, taught English in Japan, attended community college, and then finished the International Baccalaureate at an international school in Norway.
When college applications came around, I was accepted to every university that I applied to, with full scholarship offers at most. After taking a gap year, I went to Stanford for a BA in History, then moved to Sweden, where I completed an MFA at Konstfack. I worked for a number of years as a producer with the Stanford Storytelling Project, and now I am back in my native Seattle, working as a writer, editor, and academic coach.
Those un-schooling years were truly formative in my life, and I'm grateful that I took that initial risk of doing something different with my time in high school. While I don’t think that dropping out of school is a good idea for everybody, especially students who are happy, I do think that learning to recognize one’s own sense of purpose and taking action toward fulfilling it can help one live a more authentic life.
That’s my goal with this program: to help you find your sense of purpose, and take action toward fulfilling it. And perhaps it will make your college application more competitive as well.
Interested in learning more?
Let's chat.
Interested in learning more?
Let's chat.
PLEASE SHARE A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF on the form below.
THEN, WE'LL CONTACT YOU WITH MORE INFORMATION and schedule a time to chat.
“Working with the College Essay Guy team, I discovered who I am as a person, what I value, and how I specifically developed and express my values.”
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These are our core counseling values...
"Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people can’t tell the difference.” - David Augsberg
I try to listen in my sessions more than I speak. But what kind of listening? I like the term musical listening, which to me means hearing both what’s being said and what’s not being said.
If a student says to me, “So… I broke up with my boyfriend last week,” I try not to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, that’s awful,” because I don’t actually know if that’s awful. Maybe it’s awesome. I try to practice accurate empathy. How? By staying curious. So I’ll ask something like, “How’s that going for you?” Because I never know what’s happening in their world. And I’ll learn a lot more if I’m curious about their movie rather than simply projecting my own.
I like to think of our role as a driver’s ed teacher: I try to imagine a student in the driver’s seat while I’m in the passenger seat. I have a steering wheel, a brake, and an accelerator, so I can steer, slow down, or ramp up a session when necessary. But ideally the student does the driving.
My friend Nicole once told me, “When someone is sharing their Truth, you shut up.” It can sometimes be tough to tell when someone is sharing their Truth, but if you sense someone might be doing so, I try to shut up.
Also, it can sometimes feel awkward to simply sit beside a student while s/he is writing. But sitting is great. In fact, sometimes it’s exactly right.
These two situations have one thing in common: “The being is the doing.”
Allowing someone time to process–either aloud or while writing–while I sit and simply hold space is a gift. And it’s enough.