In the Common App, How Can Your Applicant Shine?
- Nina Berler
- Aug 2
- 5 min read
It's August! I've prepared and sent a Common App tips sheet to rising seniors, emphasizing the key sections that will contribute to their holistic review. The underlying message to the student: you're in charge of managing the timeline and curation.
You'll find that word (curation) mentioned below in reference to a posting by NYU Stern's Scott Galloway. Increasingly, we're following the effect of AI on college and career readiness, and I found Professor Galloway's comments quite relevant.
Now that the Common App is open, how can a student shine?
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What are Colleges Looking For? Galloway's Three Cs
You may have heard about Scott Galloway, blogger and professor at NYU Stern School of Business who is often cited in the media. I receive his weekly messages, and a recent post caught my eye.
True, the professor was aiming for the early-career professionals with his Human Skills that Make You Irreplaceable in an AI World. To Galloway, the three skills that matter are curation, curiosity and connectivity. Certainly, an applicant can look to show off those skills as they navigate the Common App (or the apps for UC, Georgetown and others):
Curation: Galloway's "who or what you're curating for" can be an admissions reader and the app they examine.
Curiosity: Admissions professionals say they seek intellectual curiosity, often displayed in supplemental essays.
Connectivity: Galloway's "showing up with warmth" is akin to the community-building that colleges often look for in a student's essays, activities and recommendations.
There's yet another attribute students must learn:resilience. As featured in Inside Higher Ed, Hamilton College is rolling out a "fail better" campaign, designed to help Gen Z students who can be anxious in these uncertain, AI-fueled times. Moreover, Hamilton'sALEX(Advise, Learn Experience) Iinitiative offers studentsthreeadvisors: academic, career and ALEX itself. They also offer an Oral Communication Center, which helps develop "students’ abilities to express themselves with clarity and eloquence in a variety of modalities."
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Korean in College? A Pop-ular World Language!Is your student into K-pop? A few weeks ago, I read in a release from Superprof that Korean language lessons are booming! Gen Z in particular wants help "understanding song lyrics, watching K-dramas, or connecting with Korean culture."Which colleges offer Korean? I went searching, starting with Middlebury, which didn't have it. Same for Brown. Vassar has a Department of Chinese and Japanese (close, but still a no). Instead, I found that Korean is taught at West Coast universities such as USC, UCLA and the University of Washington.
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College Abroad? What to Know
It's no shock that my students are contemplating adding colleges outside of the United States to their lists. Citing data from UCAS, the system used to apply to U.K. Colleges, The Independent reports that a record number of U.S. students applied in 2024-25, up 14 percent from the prior year. That's the same year-over-year increase at the magnificent St Andrews (Scotland), which houses about 10 percent of U.S. students studying in the United Kingdom.
Is your student serious about receiving a degree from a U.K.college? If so, they need to understand that these institutions are very unlike those in the United States, especially in their approaches to admissions and curriculum.
Another option my students are considering is attending college in Canada, where heavyweights include McGill, Toronto and British Columbia. They also don't look holistically at admissions.
For more on what it takes to be a successful candidate at these international institutions, email me.
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Pickleball on Campus? There's an NIL for That!
With all the pressures cited above, students also need to chillax while at college. Could pickleball be in their future? As reported in Inside Higher Ed, America's fastest-growing sport is infiltrating college campuses, including some that are very popular with unCommon students: Duke, University of Florida, UVA and the University of Miami. In fact, there are over 200 college pickleball clubs!
Sure, pickleball would be a good way to get to know peers outside of class. But how can we forget that college students can now make a buck (or two) through name, image and likeness (NIL)? Take the University of Virginia, where the club team won the collegiate championships a year ago. The Wahoos then went all-in on sponsorships and apparel deals, turning club pickleball into "a fully operating, student-run business." That's what happens when the team includes a McIntire School of Commerce student!
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AI for College Recs? Seriously?
I feel for school counselors, who often have unmanageable caseloads that might involve far more than college issues. So even though I could write recs anecdotally when I worked in a small independent school, I understand why some counselors ask parents for brag sheets to help with students' recommendations.
Now EdSurge reports that some school counselors have begun using AI to write those recs. In the article, a counselor in West Virginia reports having to write up to 150 recommendations a year. For him, AI "can also fine-tune our letters to show the best in our students while also keeping our voice." A North Carolina counselor said she tells students that "ChatGPT helped." (She writes 350 recs.)
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AI on Campus
By the time a student is in college, they should know something about when and how to use AI. According to eSchool News, "college students are more likely than high school students to use AI tools, and they are also more diligent when it comes to verifying AI-generated content." It all sounds good - until we read that "nearly 1 in 5 say they rarely or never review the information AI provides."
In "Your Brain on ChatGPT," Tech Learning explains that MIT researchers looked at brain activity of students who used ChatGPT versus those who did not. The result: "ChatGPT resulted in less brain activity and inferior writing for students." The AI-enabled writing showed less variety in word choice and not as much style; human readers thought writing from different students sounded as if it had been written by the same author. That's not good, applicants!
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If you have rising senior, you know that reaching August marks a milestone in their journey to college. Hopefully, they will still be able to spend some time with the family with the added responsibility of writing supplemental essays, completing grids and previewing pages.
If you're the parent of a rising sophomore or junior, don't hesitate to reach out and schedule a meeting. After all, the onset of August reminds us that school will be in session before we know it.
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