The ideal student says it's not enough to do it for myself - it's to help others. The world is filled with people who do things for themselves. The difference between an artist and a Princeton architect is that they do things to assist in the social good.
——Maurice, admissions interviewer, Princeton University
If you are going to Cal State Fullerton or some public school that's lower ranked, if you can perform and be a top student, that's probably better. You probably will end up getting your choice of jobs and then if you continue to exhibit success in your career, that compounds itself. If I'm thinking about hiring you for some role, I'm looking at your accumulation of experience. The further away you are from college is the less where you went to college matters.
It's surprising how many lukewarm letters of recommendation that we receive. We want to see something that really speaks to the character of the student -- something that shows the character inside of the classroom that translates to what they would do outside of the classroom as well.
As far as the way that we consider testing, if we have ten factors we look at and every factor is worth 10% between your extracurriculars and your grades and the testing and your essays, if you are a test optional student and choose not to submit them, essentially that gets removed from the equation and everything else takes on a greater weight. So, everything else may be a bigger factors now.
If it's an event that you are proud of, if there's not any reflection to it throughout the essay about how it's impacted you or how you walked away from it, feeling and thinking about it, then it doesn't help us to get a window into the kind of person you are and what you experienced and how you feel.
Making a sports team, maybe being cut during their junior year and then making it back during senior year, making a game winning shot or goal or touchdown. Really, the cliche essays.
Just stay away from talking about the location because that's not going to set them apart. Really ask them to dig within themselves and figure out "Why do I like this place? What is it about this place that is different from other colleges?" And then write about those things.