Forget About UWC (For my fellow Afghans)
Note: I am not a UWC official. I am not officially affiliated with the national committee of Afghanistan. The following are my personal opinions.
I am writing this essay for two main reasons. I get an overwhelming number of questions about UWC applications, and I want to share my thoughts on how Afghan students generally think about educational opportunities and the application process.
The first thing you need to do is to understand what UWC is. Don't think that you know UWC just because you know it's fully funded, has campuses all over the world, and students between the ages of 15-18 can apply. Try to learn what the core values of UWC are, why Kurt Hahn started UWC, how exactly UWC education brings change in today's world, what IBDP is, etcâŚ
You can go to UWC's official website and read as thoroughly as possible. You can also watch YouTube videos to see what different UWC schools do.
The second thing is super underrated, and it is to look at your life, your achievements, and your aspirations, and find all the similarities and differences between your values and UWC's. This is not a 5-minute activity, so it's okay if you spend hours or even days thinking about this, and do this with brutal honesty. You don't have to lose your authenticity in order to fit in. And definitely don't read this and go "oh, I know myself very well" because I bet you don't, and even if you do, you can know more. Study the underlying concepts, i.e, child-parent relationship, self-determination theory, etc.
By now, you will have a better idea of who you are and what you have actually done, and what an ideal UWC student looks like. In case you encounter terms like "change-making" or "international understanding", it should bring you to the next step, which is to learn more about the world. What are the biggest problems the world is facing right now? What is the world's biggest hope and why? How are people attacking the hottest global issues?
This is why you can't suddenly be a good applicant overnight, because it takes so much time and effort to ask yourself some deep questions and get uncomfortable. To understand the world and have domain knowledge of different industries.
Then comes the application process. I have to be careful here, so that I don't get into too much detail, but I would like to highlight a few things.
Don't try to impress too hard. Students tend to exaggerate their achievements, and they think this is the only way to stand out. What they don't realize is that it's not a "who got the most certificates" or a "who had the roughest childhood" or a "who is the most passionate about changing the world" contest. There are other areas where you can stand out, too, like your curiosity and how genuine you are.
A lot of people don't have outstanding "achievements," and if you are one of them, your genuineness is your strongest weapon, not your exaggeration. Also, the video section is a great chance to provide a closer look at who you actually are. Don't blow the chance by talking about how excited you are or how much you need this. Everybody is excited, and everybody needs it.
Less is more! Another trap to watch out for is the temptation to list things and not give them depth. The person reading your answers, which are merely lists of things you did, will have no idea what you did and will know very little about you (and that's the cheat code to failure). The lack of depth is the most common issue, in my opinion. The person reading your application doesnât want to know if you worked in GEF or founded BLC (the names of your organizations) or if you were the CEO or CTO or CMO there. Tell them why you chose to spend time there, what was the problem you were solving, how were you doing, is there a personal connection there, what did you learn from it, and how is that even related to the question you are answering. Skip the surface level stuff and dig deep. You wonât be able to do this right away, so you have to think hard and think about things from perspectives you probably never have before. Stay away from throwing around buzzwords and write as clearly as possible. Simple English. Understand everything to its first principles before you write it. I understand this is a bit vague and you might want me to explain more, but ultimately, it comes down to whether you are a deep thinker or not. Do you know the how and why (and asking âwhy?â 10 times) of your decisions/ideas or if you donât know, are you aware that you donât?
Evaluate your ideas. There are different methods to do this. You can grade them based on relevance, clarity, depth, etc. or you can visualize it by plotting them on a chart/diagram with the aforementioned dimensions. This is where AI can help you immeasurably.
Don't lie about your future plans. Students often feel like they must have it all figured out, and they decide on their future career as they are filling out the application form. And everything goes downhill from there on because now they have to say things that fit the unreal character they made up. Others can just feel like you are lying or you don't know what you are talking about because you have compromised your agency, and you don't have any strong reason to explain your choices. You are trying to act like somebody you are not. Most teenagers don't know what exactly they are going to do when they grow up. I don't know, either. As long as you have thought about it and explored one or more areas of your interest, whatever you want in the future, you will be fine. I am not saying you can get away with not giving a shit about your future; I am instead saying you don't have to be committed to a path. if you are, good and if you are not, it's still good.
A letter of recommendation is another thing. It's important, and please don't ask teachers/mentors who don't know you, but you think are famous or will most likely write a good recommendation letter for you. It's not so much about who, it's about how well they know you, so they can point out certain great qualities of yours as a student and a person. If you ask someone who doesn't know you well enough, they will most likely use a template or just ChatGPT it, and that doesn't mean anything.
Do not use AI. If you know me, you know how excited I am about AI, but it's just stupid to use it in this case. Yes, you can brainstorm with it, discuss ideas, dig deeper into some issues, but you can't just ignore your own input and go all in on AI-generated answers. I mean, what do you think? Nobody's going to find out? Maybe you can't tell the difference, but there are people who can in seconds. I wonder how disappointing it is for the person reading your answers. And some of you might rephrase some parts and make some sentences intentionally incorrect, so that it looks human, but I hate to break it to you that itâs not going to help. There are other indicators of AI generated material that you canât get rid off unless you rewrite 90% of it.
I can go on and on about these tips, but hereâs the thing, all the above is just a set of mistakes people need to avoid, and I would like to see that in people, but it's still not gonna help you much. What about your extracurriculars? What if you haven't achieved much so far, or if you haven't learned the things you were supposed to learn? And that brings me to my rant about preparation and how people approach opportunities.
It's the famous quote: "You have to be a champion before you become a champion!"
As a UWC graduate and after years of watching students navigate their educational opportunities, I have seen students spend months or a year (even years) on preparation. People go online and try to collect as much information as possible on how to get into UWC, for example. They are almost looking for a secret. When the applications open, there is a wave of online webinars where UWC students/graduates share their takes and tips on UWC applications (There's nothing wrong with that. I do that, too).
Here's my problem with what most of the applicants do:
Gamble a year of their most important years on an opportunity that is truly life-changing but has less than a 1% acceptance rate. Disregard their own curiosity and interests to do things that may look eye-catching on their applications. Set themselves up for heartbreak and lose their optimism pretty much.
What if you went after your interests, learned what you wanted to learn, worked on projects you wanted to work on, and chased your curiosity? That will help you not get limited by some acceptance criteria and make you an original, self-aware, and much better candidate.
Applicants tend to put on a show in their applications, thinking this will help them stand out. They show more interest than they actually have in whatever program they're applying for. They are too desperate, pushing too hard, and sometimes not even staying true to themselves. As I explained earlier, there is a difference between a seemingly great application and a good but genuine application. The latter is almost always more successful.
If you sat down for once, and asked yourself what your interests are or what are things that you certainly don't hate doing, and actually tried to do those things, you would one day end up finding yourself deeply in love with something, and you wouldnât know how to stop learning/doing it.
The high performing student is someone who really loves what they are doing. This doesn't mean they are doing one thing that they really like or are great at, but rather someone who prioritizes passion/interest in almost everything they do. And they are doing it to make a positive difference in the world in some way.
Most of the great applicants I have seen in general don't even think much about where they are applying because they understand that their application form is a translation of who they truly are, what they have done, and how much time and effort they've invested to improve themselves just for the sake of improving themselves or becoming a stronger force of change in the world/their life.
You are not late to the party. You can go and make shit happen, learn new things, build cool stuff, and at every stage of that, you will learn a lot about who you are, what you stand for, your interests, strengths, and weaknesses, and a thousand other things. I bet that's a far more enjoyable and certainly a more effective route than sitting around asking some LLM how to stand out. And when I say you can, I also want to remind you that I have lived my whole life in Afghanistan, so it's not as if I am being overly ambitious here.
Stop thinking about UWC, and start thinking about yourself.
Peace, Habib From Allston, Boston, MA, USA