For those of you that are worried where you will end up for College and are considering grad school in the future

Only research matters for the most part. I had lots of teaching experience, but it seems like it did not help as much as research.

The only essay that you have to worry about really is the statement of purpose. It matters to some extent, but here you have to motivate what you're bringing to the school and what you want to do research-wise. It's not a personal statement so treat it differently.

Letters of recommendation matter a lot too. Two of my recommenders are very well-known professors. I suggest you start doing research as soon as you can and move slowly until you land a very productive lab that will let you publish.

Unlike SAT scores, GRE scores don't matter whatsoever. I did fine in math and writing, but just like 5 years ago, I tanked the verbal section (sub-40 percentile). Nobody cared about it in engineering. They might care about it for other fields, though.

ECs don't count that much like they did in high school. I suppose if you're the editor in Chief of your undergrad journal or something similar it will definitely help. Maybe if you join a robotics club or your school's hyperloop team. At the end of the day, you want someone to write you a letter of recommendation (a professor preferably) who can talk about your research potential.

/r/ApplyingToCollege Thread Parent