My choice of friends has had a far greater impact on my life than any other decision I’ve made. My friends have inspired me to pursue my interests, taught me critical soft skills, supported me through difficult times, and most importantly — they continually push me to strive to be the best I can.

Without a doubt, COVID-19 this past year has ravished the world in unprecedented ways. The pandemic has affected virtually all aspects of life, from personal to professional to academic. Many normal behaviors such as handshakes and hugs have now been restricted or disallowed by governments. Although the responses have varied much globally, I am most familiar with what has happened here in the United States. Particularly, I want to focus on what has happened to U.S. universities and how it will affect college admissions for those involved. Mainly, I want to explore the new reality for students applying, how admissions staff will have to respond, and the potential long-term results of COVID-19 on higher education.

It can feel hard to work on your project in the midst of global and local uncertainty. The first thing you should do is recognize that there are no wrong ways to react to the corona virus and that everyone handles stress differently. But there are a few other things to bear in mind...

My first year of high school, I joined the Service-Learning Team, a group that spent Tuesday afternoons at local elementary schools leading enrichment activities and spent Thursday afternoons discussing the socio-political components of our relationship with the students: underfunding of private schools, the cycle of poverty, and so on. I strongly believed in the mission of the group, but the work itself wasn’t for me—I wasn’t very good at arts and crafts or soccer, and I didn’t have a natural rapport with young children. So I made a decision that would ultimately come to occupy the majority of my free time in the next four years: I met with the director of the program, our school’s ethics teacher, and suggested we expand our outreach. In other words, I saw a missing piece, and I suggested how to fix it.

For U.S. college applications, there are many components that determine their success. Of course, your grades are paramount and without passing the requisite thresholds, most other things won’t matter. However, if you have been able to get decent grades, then it becomes very important to consider the other aspects of your college application.

When I started my freshman year of high school, I noticed that a lot of students would take advanced placement (AP) tests for classes in which they were not in (or that they were in the pre-AP or honors version of the class that did not have an offered AP class at my high school). I thought that was peculiar at first, but then I realized that was honestly a smart thing to do. Read further, and I will explain why.

One of the hardest parts of high school is balancing everything that is happening. People often joke that you cannot “do it all”, and realistically, you cannot while still maintaining your health, friendships, and happiness. The way around this is learning how to combine things to kill two (or even more) birds with one stone and be opportunistic with your environment.