You Must Develop These Skills To Stand Out To College Admissions
Standing out in college admissions is tough. Colleges receive applications from countless students with top grades, test scores, and impressive extracurriculars. If you're number one in your school, so are 42,000 others. If you score in the top 5% on the SAT or ACT, 82,000 other applicants have done the same. You’re smart, and others are smart, too: unfortunately, the Ivy League doesn’t have enough seats for everyone who’s smart enough. To differentiate yourself, you need to take action now and demonstrate proficiency in a set of skills that will strengthen your application - and set you up for success long after.
The Skills That Will Help You Standout
We’ve curated the key skills that admissions officers repeatedly mention in blogs and articles as those they look for in applicants. It’s not secret information; these are the qualities they value most. You should know them, and work to develop them.
Your skills and talents will stand out to college admissions officers based on 3 factors:
Degree of excellence. How much better you are than the average.
Rarity of the talent. Not everyone is able to do it, and you truly enjoy it.
Relevance of the talent to college. Admissions officers need to care.
The skills below are highly relevant to college admissions officers, and are rare (which is why those officers write about them in their admissions blogs). If you are much better than the average in some or all of these, you will stand out.
Leadership
Leadership is consistently one of the top qualities admissions offices seek, for two reasons:
Colleges believe that students with leadership qualities take the name of the college a notch higher
Colleges want to build the leaders of tomorrow. They do so by accepting students who showcase leadership qualities and help them work on it
The Executive Director of the Association College Counselors in Independent Schools said this:
“Not only does leadership distinguish a student in a competitive applicant pool from other students, but also serves to foreshadow the impact the student could make on the college/university campus and the potential impact they could make once they graduate.”
However, leadership is more than just taking charge, you need to demonstrate that you can both activate a team to action, and also bring them together with strong emotional intelligence. One admissions consultant noted: “Colleges aren’t just looking for leaders; they want leaders who bring people together.”
Critical Thinking
Admissions officers also prioritize students who can analyze information, make reasoned judgments, and tackle complex problems, rather than just spit back memorized information. Critical thinking demonstrates that you're capable of thinking beyond what's in front of you.
According to the University of Pennsylvania’s admissions team: “Critical thinking is not just about what you learn but how you approach learning. Colleges look for students who can apply their knowledge to new situations and think beyond what’s immediately in front of them.”
Grit
Colleges want students prepared to persevere through challenges. Research by the University of Pennsylvania psychology Angela Duckworth indicates that grit might be a more effective predictor of success than IQ.
You can demonstrate grit with examples of challenging tasks you have persevered through after overcoming setbacks, the key is to show that you maintained enthusiasm for your goal. A college admissions expert notes that “students who demonstrate grit are more likely to succeed in the face of challenges and potential adversity.” She emphasizes that grit often comes from navigating significant life challenges, which can make applicants more compelling to admissions committees. The capacity for maintaining enthusiasm means that you are not only resilient, but consistently find motivation.
How To Develop The Skills That Matter To You
You probably already know that these skills aren’t developed as part of the high school curriculum. This is actually great news: it means that they are rare, and if you can demonstrate that you are proficient in them, your application will stand out from the crowd.
Learning about these skills is the first step, but real development comes from practice. Here’s a structured approach to developing the qualities that will help you stand out:
Learn the fundamentals: Read insightful content, like this blog or our article on grit, to deepen your understanding of the skills that matter.
Expand your knowledge: Use trusted online resources to help grow your understanding about the skill so you can start to think about applying it. We like Seth Godin’s views on leadership and The Open University's steps for improving your critical thinking.
Get real-world experience: Futures Forge is a resource you have access to that will help you develop them. Students at Futures Forge rapidly develop the skills we have spoken about through real-world business projects and challenges, where you receive feedback and mentorship on your performance in each of these skills. Students leave Futures Forge two-week camp with the confidence they need to continue developing their skills to excel in college and beyond.
On Being Unique
You may notice that many students around you invest a substantial portion of their time in stuffing their resumes with activities, such as a second instrument, participation in a generic club, starting a charity. Usually, they are not thinking that hard about why they are taking these on: they implicitly believe that a second instrument will help their chances in applying to college.
But this is what “everyone else” is doing.
We’d encourage you to think from first principles:
What do college admissions officers really want to see?
How can I demonstrate that uniquely?
As we’ve shown, college admissions officers are telling you what they want.
A second instrument or even stuffing clubs into your resume does not show up in any of their published content. Skill development does show up.
If you think about how you, in your life and your context, can develop and then demonstrate these skills, you will stand out tremendously. And this, according to those same college admissions officers, is how you maximize your chances of admissions in a packed field.
