RU Nick’s 11 Get-Into-College Tips

The guys at Ranger Up know stuff, and from time to time we’ll try to pass on our cauldron bucket thumbnail of knowledge to you in the form of a Top 11 list. We’ll all take turns churning these babies out. For example, if you wanted to learn how to be curmudgeonly, then Crigger would take it. If you wanted to learn how to be genetically superior to everyone else and not realize that no matter how hard we try we’ll never touch your crossfit times, then Tim would take it. If you want to learn how to be loud, obnoxious, and did I mention loud, then Tommy Batboy will be all over it. If you want to learn how to work with a bunch of assclowns, then Garrett will write it. Well, you get the idea.

The Topic: How to get into College

Why you care: It’s never a bad idea to get some more school in (unless you’re one of those freaks that can’t do anything in real life and just collects degrees as if that somehow makes you a contributing member of society and/or smart) and with the economy sputtering a little, it’s the perfect time to set yourself up for success. Many of you also have GI Bill benefits. Use them!
Why you should listen to me: I went to two schools conventional wisdom says I should not have gotten into. When I was at Duke, I helped out with admissions conducting tons of interviews of prospective students, so I’ve seen how bad people are at it. Also, being around the selection process gave me a window into know how admissions looks at students and how they rate them. Also, I have helped twelve people apply to top schools. Eleven listened to me. Eleven got in. In short I am undefeated. Finally, I know how to translate military success into academia-speak.

The Top 11 Ways to Get into College

11. Plan ahead big time. Doing an application is not something you should knock out in a day or even a week. You need to complete recommendations, essays, and standardized tests, as well as prepare for interviews. The best thing you can do is target the very first application deadline for the schools you want to attend and plan backwards about three months from that date.

10. Apply to multiple schools. This is really important, no matter where you want to go, but especially if you’re hunting for the high brow, secret society, rich kid schools. Just because you have great grades, think you’re the shit, and really, really, REALLY want to go to Harvard, doesn’t mean they give a rat’s ass. There are thousands of kids just like you, so not only do you have to put together an awesome application, but you have to catch an admissions officer that a) likes what you have to say and b) is in a good mood. Unless you cured cancer or something, you’re not all that cool. Hedge your bets.

9. Test scores and grades aren’t everything. A lot of people were just okay or even bad in high school, then served in the military, found a whole lot of discipline, and are ready for college, but are worried that they can’t get into the schools they want because of grades or SAT scores. A lot of people that have a college degree already have the same concern when thinking about grad school after military service. Here’s the deal: Grades and Test Scores aren’t that important and they aren’t that unimportant.

First the bad news. If you scored only the minimum SAT score allowed by writing your name on the paper and you got everything else wrong, your aspirations for Yale are probably a long shot. Conversely, if you maxed your GMAT with an 800 and had a 4.0 GPA that doesn’t mean you’re money, either. When I applied to business school, there were forums everywhere where losers told everyone how awesome their scores were and how they’d only accept Harvard or Wharton because they were so good. Then they’d be crying because they didn’t get in. That’s because they were giant douchebags and the world generally unfolds as it should.

Now the good news. Every school has a listed average (unimportant) and middle 80% (very important). A school’s average SAT score might be 1400, but their middle 80% is 1500-1050. You want to be as close to the average as you can, but being in the middle 80% is really key. Your military experience is not easy to replicate that and admissions people know that. You just can’t make it too hard for them to say yes by being the 1%. Regardless, no matter how bad your score is, apply. Make them decide, don’t quit on yourself. You’ll often be pleasantly surprised.

8. Understand the premise of peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter candidates are the people that have the right grades, the right experience, the right jobs (if it is graduate school), etc. Think of them as the sure thing. They are the people the school knows will come in and get good grades and go get a corporate job and climb the ladder and finish out their careers as the VP of whatever and call it a day. Then there’s jelly. Jelly candidates are the guys who have done a lot of crazy shit in their lives and don’t necessarily fit into the mold of the school, but admissions is considering them out of sheer, morbid curiosity. They are the people that will get a great corporate job, climb the ladder, hate it, quit, and start a t-shirt company and hence, give their mom a near heart attack.

You want to be both. The good news is that if you served in the military you already have the jelly (but you can still add interesting hobbies and travel to spruce it up). Hell, if you’re a recent vet, you’re probably hanging on 2-3 deployments already. You don’t need much more jelly. What you need to do is show your job and responsibilities in the service actually took brain power comparable to what your civilian counterparts were doing. If you’re applying for undergrad, too easy, they were getting drunk. If you’re applying for graduate degree, you need to highlight the analytic, problem-solving, and leadership aspects of your jobs. Mortarman? You were using physics to calculate the precise location of high explosive impact. One screw up and people died. Quartermaster? You were engaged in a multi-national logisitics campaign as a key member of the world’s largest supply chain. You had to deal with international regulations, HAZMAT, language barriers, and the fact that the supplies you were delivering directly contributed to the success of the mission. Infantryman? You had to deal with language issues, public works problems, and police issues all while understanding and balancing the needs of the various sects in the area you were patrolling, and by the way, at any point you could be in a firefight. Try topping that stress with a PowerPoint presentation in front of the boss…

7. Understand stereotypes. Everyone carries stereotypes. Some are good and some are bad. You want to reinforce the good and minimize the bad. You are never going to change them (e.g. convince them that the military is not what they think) but you can prove to them that you are an exception to the rule. In the case of the military, the positive stereotypes tend to be: disciplined, calm under pressure, leader, and team player. The bad stereotypes tend to be: automaton droid, not creative, overly aggressive, needs a hierarchy to succeed.

To combat this, tell stories in your essays and interviews that showcase how far from the stereotype you are in the negative department, and reinforce the good stuff with stories that highlight those attributes.

6. Develop themes for your application. Applications work best when you pick themes to build around. Only you know what you want to highlight, but as a blueprint for a military guy or gal, I’d think about things like: leadership, teamwork, initiative, and intelligent risk-taking. Whether you’re writing essays or sitting in an interview, think about these themes as you frame your answers.

5. Write good freakin’ essays. If it wasn’t for the essay, I’d be screwed. Essays are the one chance you have to plan exactly what you want them to hear and make sure you tell them exactly that. You personally may not be a great writer, but every one of you knows at least one that will edit for you. Work on this until they kick ass. Edit the shit out of them. Let other people edit the shit out of them.

I am a big believer in telling first-person stories for at least one or two of your essays. We have the backgrounds that allow those stories to be really cool, and after reading a hundred essays that day about dealing with a challenging coworker at IBM or a mean boss at Morgan Stanley, what admissions officer isn’t going to perk up a little when the essay starts, “The explosion threw me a hundred feet, but I was okay, and more importantly, my rifle still worked”? Okay, a little dramatic, but you get the point.

4. Just because you know Michael Jordan, it doesn’t mean he should write your recommendation. Admissions officers have this weird code of honor. They don’t like to think they are being beaten into accepting someone because they know someone important, and actually “rage against the machine” when this happens. It’s fun to watch them get riled up and bitch about it.
So, if you didn’t work directly for Mr. Jordan, then he shouldn’t be writing your recommendation. Pick people that know you well, that you are CERTAIN really like you, and who you believe will put in the work to make sure they are good. Recommendations are the least important part of your packet, because for fuck’s sake, who out there can’t find someone to right something positive about them, but they can hurt you if you hand them to the wrong person. Ideally, the person should be a competent writer (look at your NCOER or OER as a starting point) but real passion for your success is most important.

3. Kick ass in the interview. When you interview (or write essays for that matter), use the STAR format. STAR stands for situation, task, action, result. What was the situation you were placed in? What task did you get assigned or did you take on for yourself? What actions did you take towards the completion of that task? What were the results of your actions?
Sounds easy, right? I’ve sat through hundreds of interviews at Duke and in corporate America before I started doing Ranger Up fulltime (we just make people pass obstacle courses and hazing rituals for employment). People suck at it. Bad. Real Bad. The funny thing about that is that everyone considers themselves a brilliant interviewer. You’ve all heard it. “If I could only get to the interview, I’ll get the job, because I’m great at interviewing.” You’re not. You suck at it, just like everyone else.
The interview is not about answering the questions or about being friendly. It’s about showing a history of success, showing that you will succeed here at school, showing that you will then graduate and succeed some more, and that you aren’t an asshole that will be miserable to work with. Seriously. Admissions people would outwardly argue with this fact, but it’s the God’s honest truth. That’s all there is to it.

The best way to do that is to use the STAR format and to stick to your themes. Don’t rush to answer the question. You’ll have multiple answers for any question, so think about which answer will best help you.
Example:
Question: Tell me about a time you were placed in a stressful situation and how you reacted.

Bad Answer: I was walking down the street with my squad and we got ambushed. I fought through it and killed everyone, then hung their severed ears from my neck. Later, the guys and I played soccer with the heads of one of the bastards!

Good Answer: I was walking down the street with my squad when an angry mob approached us. We were a little antsy as the day before we had been ambushed, so I was acutely aware that my guys might overreact. I grabbed my terp and walked directly towards the leader of the mob, making sure I pulled my hands off my weapon to seem less aggressive, even as I gave my team leader the order to do what was necessary the second it turned ugly. By doing this, I kept the mob away from my squad so they would have the standoff to engage if necessary while the interpreter and I determined what the problem was. Come to find out, they were simply angry because a tank had knocked in the side of a house. I was able to put a work order in to get it fixed and ended up having a very strong relationship with the village elders as a result, who began trusting us and passing information on the insurgents in the area. Had I not kept my cool, there was the possibility that this situation could have turned very ugly, and we certainly would not have garnered the positive relationship that we did with the village.

2. Make sure the school is right for you. People put a lot of effort into trying to get into the “right schools” but often don’t ask if the school is actually right for them. Research the school. Ask questions in the interview. Odds are that if you hate everyone you’ve met, you will not enjoy your experience. You’re the one that is going to pay these clowns a veritable orgasm of money to go to their institution and get their degree. The application process is not a one-way street! Make sure they are going to give you what you want.

Additionally, researching the schools will help you write better, more school-specific essays, as well as frame intelligent questions that show the admissions folks how much you want to be at THEIR school, not just any school. Schools are businesses just like any other, even though they like to pretend that they really do it all to serve the greater good (Harvard pretty much owns Boston and Brown pretty much owns Providence, but they get tax exemption for serving the greater good. WTF, over?). The only thing they hate more than accepting the wrong candidate is accepting the right candidate and losing them to another school (one of the school ranking criteria is yield which equals number attending divided by the number admitted). In short, be ready to highlight why school X is THE school for you.

1. Show them a history of success. When you think about this one, schools will annoy you. Sorry. Schools want to bring people in who don’t need them at all. They want to take hardworking, smart, successful people, stamp their brand on them, and then ship them out to go continue to be successful, and then have those successful people send them money later. Do you think Harvard teaches different shit than Umass Amherst? Do you think Stanford teaches different shit than UCLA? Same shit, folks, but they have marketed so well over time that all the super successful freaks want to go there so they feel good about themselves. Companies, in turn, want to hire the freaks that came from them so they feel good about themselves. It propagates a vicious cycle. So you want to fight that cycle, right? Fuck no! Convince these people that you’re a huge success and that they need you. Then do the same in industry and get the right corporate job.

Then quit that job and make t-shirts.

Good Luck!