YouTube Deep Summary

## Welcome and Why Engineering Is So Competitive [00:00] All right, welcome everyone. My name is Coach David. You might have been expecting Coach Tony today, but I'm taking over for Coach Tony today. Uh, ## What Top Engineering Students Do Differently [02:00] and kind of going into, right, engineering, right? It's a major that a lot of students are hoping to get into, right? engineering, computer science, so on and so forth, right? There are some mistakes that people make along the way. And so I want to share those with you guys and also kind of tell you a little bit about what you should be doing instead. Okay, so it is right at 5:00. It is Monday, May 12th. Let's get straight into it. Okay. Now, for those of you guys that that do not know me that well, right, um I want to go ahead and provide you guys a little bit of information about me and also kind of what we're going to be going over today. Okay, so there's going to be kind of a couple things we're going over. The first is kind of like engineering students what should you be doing act academics and activities and also we'll talk about some of the biggest mistakes that students are making right now if you want to kind of uh you know see the replay or send it to your friends or those sorts of things right we will be posting this in our private YouTube channel we will also be posting a uh quick post on Facebook if you guys respond to that our team will make sure that you guys get this replay okay but a little bit about me uh I'm a former college and law school admission reader right Again, uh I've been doing this for 16 years, just as long as Coach Tony has. Uh and I've helped students get into schools like MIT, Stanford, Harvey Mud, Caltech, Carnegie Melon, Georgia Tech, UT Austin, UIU, just to name a few. Okay, so I'm very familiar with students that are going into those STEM fields, especially engineering, computer science, so on and so forth. Okay, so today, right, we will be talking about engineering. But before I start the training, right, there is one thing that I want to make sure that parents and kind of families are thinking about, right? The first thing is if you have a junior right now, has your student started thinking about applications? They might have, they might not have, but for our students, they've already started. Okay? Uh for students that are in our program or are in our college application service, they have started. We are starting our Kickstarters. We are starting our college application intensive. Right? So I want you guys to look at this next slide very carefully. Right? We do have a program that can help students that don't have an idea on where to start. Okay. Our college app intensives have started. Right? We are doing our kickstart our one one day event uh to help students get drafts of their different uh you know piqs or personal statements. We are doing those in April, May and June. Okay. uh our accelerator, which is our kind of second piece to our puzzle for our college application intensive, is a two-day weekend event where we work with our students to get to a final draft. Okay? So, if you're interested in that, please, please, please, right, go visit our website, collegeappointensive.com. You can find it there, right? I also have a link so you can link up with our team later on as well. Okay? Now, getting into college is obviously one part of the puzzle. We also have another program to help you get more financial aid, right? It is financial aid secrets. We have a Facebook group. You can definitely join that group as well. We have trainings on Wednesdays at 5:00. Okay. Um but without ## Engineering Class Schedule: Average vs. Competitive [05:00] further ado, let's make sure that we get into the training. Right. So today we are going to be talking specifically about engineering students. Okay. Now engineering is a very broad area, right? And there's a lot of overlap with a lot of different areas. So I kind of listed out some of the majors that you could be thinking of whether it's computer science or mechanical engineering, computer engineering, applied mathematics. A lot of applied mathematics is being used towards the engineering field. There is a large overlap, right? If you're thinking data science, civil engineering, environmental engineering, chemical engineering, etc. If there is an overlap, right? This applies to all majors that have that overlap with engineering, computer science, not just about CS, right? Or electrical, right? or other specific areas if there is an overlap with that engineering computer science area that these are the majors that we are talking about today. Okay. Now, these are some of the biggest mistakes I've seen, right? Specifically, I'm going to talk about in the academic section. I'm also going to talk about the activity section. Okay. There will be a part later on where I ask for a little bit of interaction with the audience here today. Okay? And so hopefully you guys have your keyboards ready, right? It's going to be a quick yes or no. Okay. Um but in this first academic section, it's going to be a lot more of me telling you what's going on. Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about the academics for engineering students. Right. Now, what we see from students and what we want from students are two very different things. Okay. Now, what I'm going to show you first is a general class schedule from a student that is kind of just following the normal progressions. Okay. So in ninth grade you might see the student uh in uh you know geometry uh English 9 biology PE health world geo and a foreign language in 10th grade right algebra 2 and trig right English 10 chemistry world history foreign language right 11th grade we have pre-calc English 11 US history AP biochem or physics right uh foreign language three and an elective right and then 12th grade we see them AP calc 12 government econ on AP bio, chem or physics or environmental science and an elective. Okay, this is kind of like a general kind of class schedule that we might see from a student, right? Now, if our student was coming from 30 years ago, right? So, they let's say that they were high they were graduating high school in well, it's going to be 2025 now, so in 20 or in 1995, right? this schedule would actually be a pretty good schedule for that student. Unfortunately, we are 30 years removed from that. The levels of everything across the board have gone skyhigh for engineering students specifically because it is the most popular and it is the most competitive major at any college that you will be applying to. Okay. So, with that, let me tell you what we would want to see from students. Okay. This is a schedule of a student that I think would be very competitive at all the different schools that they that they apply to. Right? So, you see that in nth grade instead of starting in biology, they start in algebra 2 trig. Well, how does that happen? Usually the summer before 9th grade, they take a geometry class somewhere. They're in honors English, honors biology, right? PE, health, right? Those are all classes that don't really have an honors, right? So, you're good there and a foreign language. Then in 10th grade, the student might be in AP like AP or honors pre-calc, English 10 honors, chemistry honors, AP world history, foreign language, and maybe AP computer science principles. Right? In 11th grade, right, you might see the student in AP Calc BC, AB, right? AP Lang, AP US History, AP Physics 1, AP Chemistry, foreign language, and AP CSA, right? And then in 12th grade, you might see them in AP Calc BC, possibly calc 3, right? AP Lit, AP Gov and Econ, AP Physics 2 or C, AP foreign language, and then maybe another computer science class that they have at their school, maybe data structures, right? If they have it. Okay, this is what we would love to see. Okay, a student that's pushing further that they're trying to go that they're going above and beyond, right? They're even doubling up in sciences some years. These are the things that we would love to see. Okay, but right here are the differences. Let's kind of walk through them them together. Okay, so this is the kind of like general class schedule. This is kind of like the one on top that I showed above, right? Uh for the general student, right? And then the ninth like the bottom one here is for a student that is looking more at engineering. If you see the differences are quite clear. One student is pushing heavily with their honors and their AP trying to show that rigor. And especially you will see that in their 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade when it comes to science, they are pushing very heavy and also in their math, right? So you see the math progression is very different. You also see that the science progression is very different. Okay. Now the other subject areas what we always ## How to Go Beyond School With Community College Math [10:00] tell our students is if you are able to push right it's not about just having the APs or honors on the schedule. It's about how many you can do and also be successful at. Right? Now that doesn't mean that we're giving people an automatic pass to be like oh you know what I'm going to take one less AP. I'm going to take one less honor. We want you to try and then most schools if it's not working out in the first two or three weeks they they give you the option to switch down to the regular class but I would always want this want to see the student pushing. Okay. Now there are ways to go even further when it comes to your academics. Okay. So this is the schedule of a student that is going to go even further than what I have just shown. Right? Again, the kind of accelerated pathway that the student took, the second schedule I showed you, that would be great as well. But this is a student that went even further than that, right? So, if you look, algebra 2 trig, right? English 9 honors, right? That all seems very similar. 9th grade, 10th grade, AP or honors pre-cal, again, very similar. Where things start to change is in 11th grade. You'll actually realize that this student does not have any math at school. Okay? They have AP Lang, AP US History, AP Physics, AP Chemistry, right? Foreign language and AP CSA. In 12th grade, same thing. You actually see that we do not have a math class, right? So, what did this person do to go further, right? Instead, what they did was for math, they took advantages outside of school, right? Students can usually take math outside of school, right? Whether at an online high school or community college, right? Now again, I know that it differs, right? And we'll talk about that later as well, but we have a lot of students that stop taking math at school after pre-calculus, right? And that's usually the stage that you need in order to graduate from high school, right? And instead, they take community college classes elsewhere, right? So, some high schools might have a two-year math requirement, some might have a three-year math requirement, right? Very rarely is there a four-year math requirement unless you're going to a private or some type of charter or magnet school. Okay? But if they do, then obviously this is a the kind of pathway I'm showing you is a little bit different, right? But if you go to a normal public school, right, usually you need two or three years of math or up to a certain level and it's usually pre-calculus, right? So instead, what this student did was they they decided to go further with community college classes. What they did in a kind of in the summer after 10th grade was that they took calc 1. Then in the in the fall of their 11th grade year, they took calc 2. In the spring of their uh junior year, they took calc 3, right, which is multivariable calculus, right? In the summer after 11th grade, they took linear algebra. In the fall of their senior year, they took differential equations. And in the spring, they got to discrete math. Discrete math is usually the last math class available at the community college. But if we look at what this student did versus other students at their school or high achieving students at their school, they went three, four, five math classes higher than where other students got to. Okay, so again, we're going above and beyond. Engineering, computer science students unfortunately do have to go above and beyond to show that they are competitive. Okay, so that's how you can go further in math. Okay, if you have questions about that, you can definitely reach out if you're part of our coaching program in our in your Discord channel, right? Uh or support channels and if you're in our Facebook group, right, you can definitely talk to us uh you know either in Facebook message, reach out to our team, uh whatever way you can get a a hold of us, we can try to help you that way. Okay. Now again, math is not the only area. You also want to think about science, right? So you want to take advantage of outside opportunities here as well, right? So students can also usually take outside science classes whether it is at an online high school or community college, right? But here is the one difference between math and science, right? If it's an AP level science course, we do suggest that you take it at an online high school instead ## Should You Take AP Sciences at School or Online? [14:00] of a community college because of the way that that it is perceived and what is actually learned. What I mean by that is that your your general biology class at the community college is very like your ninth grade biology class that you take at your high school, right? Uh there are even high schools that say if you fail your nth grade biology class, one of the ways that you can make it up is by taking the general biology class at the community college. So it's not seen as the same level as an AP course. Now, if you take it there, will you be given kind of like a weighted or like a higher rigger GPA? Yes, you will. Right? But the way that colleges understand it is a little bit different. So, we do suggest that if you're going to go into an AP science, you do it at a high online high school, right? uh instead of community college. Right now, if you are an engineering or computer science student, right, one of the areas that students need to be pushing for heavily are those physical sciences, AP Chem, AP Physics 1, AP Physics 2, AP Physics C. Okay, these are the areas where we want to go a little bit further. Okay. Now, a lot of you guys might be thinking, well, why do they need to be taking physics? Why do they need to be taking chem? All they need to know, right, especially for computer science, is they need to be a good coder, right? But AP Chem, AP Physics, right? Those classes, the physical sciences, they're very math driven, right? They're very logic focused, right? And so because of that, the colleges use these classes as a marker. And the same thing with math, right? To see if the student has the logical kind of mindset, right? And they have the analytical skills in or in order to do well in their program. Okay? So, AP Chem, AP Physics 1, AP Physics 2, AP Physics C, right? These classes have almost become uh you know the classes that you need to have to be competitive at those top engineering schools. Okay. So you might be thinking well I have to take biology 9th grade. I have to take chemistry in 10th grade. I can't really take four AP classes. That's where those outside online classes come into play. Right? The one great thing about kind of these online high school classes is that you don't need to get anyone's approval for anything unless you're trying to kind of take a class to move on to the next one. A a great example of that would be well let's say that your school has AP Physics C, right? And you decide that you want to take AP Physics 1 outside, right? Well, you don't necessarily need to get approval to take the AP Physics 1 class at UC Scout or BYU or any other online high school, right? But if you need it in order to get to AP Physics C, then yes, you do need to talk to your counselor. Make sure that that is an accepted way to take AP Physics 1 so that they can move you to AP Physics C. Okay. So again, you know, keep that in mind, right? Um, we have a quick question here. It says, is discrete math considered to be high level like linear algebra or differential equations? I'm finding the prerect to be pre-cal. Right? So going back to the math a little bit, usually again linear algebra or like multivariable or differential equations, right? You after you take calc 2, you can take any one of those classes, right? But discrete math like when you think about the progression of math classes and how kind of colleges set them up, they set up discrete math kind of further down the line, right? Because again, having an understanding of all the different math is going to help you kind of across the board. So usually what the progression is is pre-calc, calc 1, calc 2, calc 3, right? And then linear algebra, differential equations, and discrete math at the end, right? That's how they kind of have set it up. But again, depending on the scheduling kind of situations, things like that, if you're not able to make it into, you know, linear algebra, could you take differential equations or or uh what is it? Um or discrete math. Yeah, you could do those instead, right? Um but that's normally the progression that you see at every kind of college. Okay. So thank you for that question. ## Best Courses Beyond AP Computer Science A [18:00] Now there's also other areas that you can kind of show interest in. Okay. So in addition to your coursework you might be want to show you might want to show interest in your areas of engineering, coding, etc. Okay. Now generally speaking there aren't many engineering kind of just general courses available at the community colleges right. So there are intro to engineering courses, but a lot of students have those types of courses at school. So it doesn't really make sense for them to be taking those. Okay. So I kind of went into, you know, my my local community college and I went to show you guys how many more classes there are above the CSA level, right? I understand that some of these are at the CSA level. Uh but I do want to make sure that we kind of I kind of give you some options, right? So there are things like above and beyond APCSA, right? This is just a that's usually kind of like the very like basic levels for students that are going into computer science specifically, right? But intro to programming is more like CSP, CSA, right? Advanced programming with C and C, C++, program design, data structures, assembly language programming, object-oriented programming, advanced Java programming. So there are three, four, five, you know, six other classes that you could take to go above and beyond as well. Okay. So as much as you can, you want to be pushing the envelope, right? uh engineering computer science continues to be the most kind of desired major right and the most competitive so it is something that we have to kind of continue on doing right uh we have a question here and it's kind of has to do with math it says to be competitive is it enough to take multivariable calculus or do I need to take linear algebra differential equations as well the question becomes how much time do you have left right so if you're if you're just if you're finishing up cal 2 right now and then you're going to be doing cal 3 in the summer well why not do linear algebra and differential equations. If you have time, you should, right? If you don't have time and the highest that you're going to be able to get to is multivariable calculus, I understand, right? Um, some students, right, their their uh their high schools really restrict them or this or that, so on and so forth. But so, but at a very kind of minimum, I want to make sure that we do get to multivariable, right? And that's for students that are kind of graduating kind of next year, class of 2026. If you're class of 2030 and we're not making a plan to get you further than multivariable because that is the average kind of math level that students are at right now for engineering computer science then well we have a problem. We need to be getting further. We need to probably be getting to linear algebra or differential equations. Okay? Because in four years from now the the kind of standard is probably going to be raised again. Okay? So keep that in mind there. Okay? All right. So, uh, oops. I don't know why we have that. Okay, there's another section, right? And this is another huge problem area, right? And this is where I'm going to kind of ask you guys for a little interaction in a little bit. So, kind of get your keyboards out, right? So, we're going to be talking about activities. Okay. The first thing I'm going to do is let's say that there is a student and they took part in all of these activities. robotics, science fair, math club and team, engineering internships, STEM summer program, maker space, uh competitions, coding clubs, hackathons, CAD club, science olympiad. They did all these like I don't know 20ish different things that are on this list. Okay? Some some of your students might be involved in some of these things, right? But here is the interactive part, right? If you think that this list above looks great, right? type yes into the chat, right? If you think that this looks not so great, type no into the chat. Okay? But look at these things, right? A lot of great things here. So, if you guys think that this is a great list of activities, put yes, right? You can put in the Q&A, you can put it into the kind of uh chat area, wherever you guys want to do it. Okay? So, I see some yeses flowing in. I see some yeses ## Multivariable Calculus vs. Linear Algebra vs. Discrete Math [22:00] flowing in in the Q&A as well. Okay. So, that's great, right? Thank you guys for doing that. Right, so uh we'll just kind of give it a couple more seconds so that people can answer. So again, yes if you think that list looks great. No if you think that list looks bad. Okay. Um All right. So I have one no. I see a bunch more yeses. Um we have someone that says yes, but not necessarily all of them. One or two. Uh but doing good at it. Okay, that's great. Okay. All right. So yes, but too many. Okay. All right. So drum roll. Right? In my opinion, right, there is something super critical missing. Right? Now, you guys might be really surprised at what I think it is, right? But what I actually think it is is volunteering and community service. Okay? There's nothing there, right? Everything there was about the student. I want to get better at math. I want to compete in math. I want to compete in science. I want to compete in physics. I want to do robotics. I I I I I Okay. The biggest complaint from admissions officers about engineering students is that they are only doing things for themselves. Okay. Now, for for families that have kind of talked with me, right, one of the things I always tell them is this exact thing, right? You need to be doing things other things as well. Right now, for lack of a better way to put it, the way that the admissions officers I've talked to have put it is that engineering students are selfish. Right? But again, they're they're not saying, right, they're not saying that like the student is like greedy and selfish and they only think about themselves. They understand why students are doing it. Students are doing it because of the competition. They need to stand out. So, they're going to more hackathons. They're going to more competitions. They're trying to get more awards. But right you got here's a really big piece of the puzzle that people are forgetting about. The whole point of engineering and the mission of an engineer is to make our lives easier and better. Right? If a student cannot show that they have other people's kind of well-being and betterment in mind at this stage in high school, how can the college believe that they're going to be an engineer that can go out and change the world for the better in the future? they cannot. Okay. So, the biggest complaint, right? Again, I'm reiterating because I want people to understand if your student is an engineering or computer science student, look at their resume. If it's full of AMC, if it's and that's like AMC and hackathons and robotics competitions and this and that, but you guys see like one hour of volunteering a year, we have a huge problem. Again, the whole mission of like engineers is to make the world better. If you go to like the uh National Association of Engineers, you'll see that they're working on worldwide problems. Getting clean water to, you know, uh people that don't have it, making sure that internet is accessible for everybody, right? These are kind of worldwide problems that they're trying to fix, right? But if we're only focused on what our what our AMC math level is at, we have a problem. I have plenty of students that never did AMC, never did AIM, never did math olympiad and have made it to the top level engineering schools. Okay, it's not about that. It's about what does this student hope for in the future and what do we think that they can change. Okay, that is what engineering schools are looking for. Okay. So, one of the things that we do to make sure that our students are special, right, and make sure that our students are kind of like making like, you know, making an impact in their community is our is our kind of passion project or our personal project. Okay. Now, one of the things that I always hear from engineering or computer science students when I ask them about a passion project or a personal project is ## The Fatal Resume Mistake Most Engineering Students Make [26:00] one, I created an app. The second thing is I created a website, right? And so my follow-up question to students all the time is so what, right? Realistically, I could go on to one of those drag and drop website creators and I could go in and create a website in 15 minutes, right? So what is different about your website? What are you trying to do with it? Okay, so for those of you that have gone through a roadmap call with me, right? One of the things I always talk about during that is your personal project. And in that personal project, I have four questions that I ask students, okay? With follow-ups obviously, but four questions, right? The first one is, what is something you love doing? What is something that you're passionate about? What is something you really enjoy? That's question number one. Question number two is, what about that thing do you want to share with others? Okay. What has been so influential to you that you want to share with other people? The third part is what community do you want to share it with? Right? And the fourth is what are you going to do to create that impact or that change. Okay? Now, as you're thinking about those questions, right, you always need to in the back of your mind, you need to think that coach David is there asking you why you are doing this, right? Because if you say like, oh, what's something that you really love doing? What do you do in your free time? And the answer is, well, I love watching shorts on YouTube, right? And if the answer and if the answer to the second part of the question which is why is it's really fun it falls short of what we're looking for. We are looking for a deeper answer right a deeper kind of answer to that question. Okay so keep that in mind each of those questions comes with a after of why. Right now one of the things I always focus on especially is the community section. Okay, the community section, right, needs to be a community where right where that community needs your information, opportunity or resource. Okay, I always use this example in my road maps and my example is this, right? So, I live in a very uh welloff suburb in the San Francisco Bay area, right? If I went to any of my neighbors, right? And let's say that my passion was feeding people that were hungry and I decided to make 10 sandwiches a day and hand them out to people in need, right? If I went to my next door neighbor, right? I really do make a killer pastrami sandwich, but my neighbor does not need it. I'm sure they would appreciate my sandwich because it is a work of art, right? But they don't need it. But if I went to downtown San Francisco, especially, you know, more areas where there's kind of uh, you know, higher rates of homelessness, right? Um, there's more people in need, like the Tenderloin for instance, right? Then I would probably be able to hand out all my sandwiches very quickly, right? But in my neighborhood, I would walk around all the streets, all the different little culde-sacs, right? And eventually, I would not be able to hand out any of my sandwiches because no one would actually need them. Okay? So remember when you're thinking about what community to do, it does not have to be where you live. It does not have to be your school. Find a place that does need you. Okay. Now, one thing I want to make abundantly clear when we're talking about this project is this, right? Engineering, computer science students, you do not need to do a project that focuses on engineering or computer science or math or science. Maybe the thing you really love doing is re is writing creative stories, right? Maybe the thing that you really love doing is baking. That's fine. Okay, we can find a way to connect it back to your major later, but you need to be doing the student needs to be doing something that they really enjoy because if they don't, it's going to kind of fizzle out in two months. Okay? So, it needs to be something that the student is actually invested in. Okay? I always tell kind of parents the same thing, right? Parents are like, "Oh, yeah. ## How to Show You're an Engineer Who Cares About the World [30:00] Well, like it needs to be something that they want to study later. Well, I'm like, "Okay, parents, what do you do?" And the parents like, "Oh, well, uh, I'm an engineer, right?" And I'm like, "Okay, great. Does that mean that as soon as you get home from work, what you do for fun is look up new coding techniques?" I don't know. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, right? But people have other interests outside of what they are studying or what their job is. Okay? Because if we didn't, our lives would be pretty boring. Okay? Um, so remember it does not have to be in the area that you actually want to study. Okay. All right. So takeaways just really quickly, right? Engineering is competitive, right? You do have to push academically, right? Um, and the one thing that I will say is that even if your high school says no to a bunch of things, there are alternatives. So don't feel like you are stuck. There are different things that you can do. Okay. As far as activities, right? while doing all the things that I had mentioned in that long list. Those are also great things too, right? You also have to remember that engineering is not in a vacuum, right? It's something that's supposed to change this world, right? It's something where we want to try to make the world a better place, right? So, community service and volunteering are going to be critical on your application, right? I I've looked at a lot of students where it's like, you know, they've gotten to the highest levels of this, highest levels of that, right? uh they've done, you know, uh USAO, right? Um the, you know, coding Olympiads and they've gotten platinum levels and this and that, but they don't get into some colleges, right? And then they come to us asking, "Hey, can you guys take a look at my application to see why I didn't get in?" Right? Students that aren't ours. And I'm like, "Well, you just did things to make your resume look good. Where's the stuff that you did to kind of like change something in your community?" And they're like, "Oh, I didn't really do any of those things." And I'm like, "Well, that's why you didn't get in." Right? Because again, colleges want change makers. people that want to make change in their community, not just smart people. There's enough of those. Okay. So again, our students, we get different results, right? We have schools, students in at all these different schools here, right? Another page of schools here, right? So we our students are making it to those top tier colleges. They are making it to those schools where students are dreaming to go. Okay? And it's because we help them with the different pieces of the puzzle, their academics, their applica, their their their activities and their application kind of the final kind of, you know, ribbon. Okay. So, if you guys are, we're going to kind of transition to a little bit of Q&A, but if you guys want to reach out to us, want to talk to us, right, go ahead and text money, right? Uh to kind of talk to us about financial aid at 949-7750865. If you want to learn more about our programs, if you want to learn more about college application intensive, you can text college to 949-7750865. I also do have the QR codes there. You guys can use those to book your your kind of uh calls as well. Okay. But I do want to transition to a little bit of Q&A. Um and I do see a couple there. Um so we'll kind of talk about those. Okay. So I'm just going to ## Building a Passion Project: The Four Questions That Matter [33:00] take a quick drink of water here and let's get to some of the questions. Right. Uh so I answered the questions about linear algebra kind of and differential equations things like that. also answered about um kind of like if you can get further yes if you can get further past multivariable that is going to help you again stand out right be different than everyone else right uh I have another question here asking can you repeat the four questions okay so yes I can repeat the four questions when it comes to that personal project the first one is what's something that the student loves right or is passionate about or really really enjoys okay that's the first question you should be asking Okay, the second right is oh wow just went blank right but the second one is right wow my brain's not working today so the first one is obviously what does a student enjoy the second is what about that thing do you want to share up to with other people okay again it's about sharing it's about community it's about changing right so again the second question is what about that thing do you want to share with other people the third is what is the community that you are going to try and change, right? And the last one is what are you actually going to do activity-wise to affect that change. Okay? So those are the four questions. Remember there is something that comes after each of those questions which is the question why. Okay. All right. So uh we have another question here and says how do you show a variety of interest while also demonstrating a spike and not look wellrounded? So again, the spike, right? Um I didn't coin it. It's something that has been used, but it is a very apt example, right? Uh the colleges don't want well-rounded students. I feel like a lot of parents and and families feel like, oh yeah, they want well-rounded students. Yeah. Like again, 30 years ago, right, this is all information from 30 years ago. 30 years ago, they are they were looking for a more well-rounded student. But what they found is that at a college when a bunch of well-rounded students get together, it's super boring, right? It's just like this amorphous blob, right? Instead, what they want is they want a bunch of spikes and they want to be able to kind of put that all together. And when you put a bunch of spikes together, it forms this round spherical thing that when you look at it from far away, it does look like a round ball, right? Um, but as to the question here, how do you show a variety of interest while also demonstrating a spike? Well, parents, think about yourself, right? Obviously, you have your work, right? That's what that's what kind of like the major is for our student, right? But I'm sure you have other interests, right? Maybe you're a diehard uh Family Feud fan, right? Or maybe you really enjoy biking on the weekends or uh you really enjoy uh you know jet skiing, right? Whatever it is, right? You have other interests, right? So for colleges, they are looking for students with interests outside of academics, right? One of the things that colleges also kind of look out for is burnout. So if a student is just like, "Oh yeah, I'm really interested in mechanical engineering. I read mechanical engineering books on the weekends. I build projects on the weekends related to mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering, mechanical engineering, mechanical engineering. I would be a little scared if I read that. The reason is because the student has nothing outside of academics, right? Colleges are looking for students that do have other interests. Whether maybe they dance, maybe they play a musical instrument, right? Maybe they sing, maybe they draw, maybe they uh go to, you know, they they're really interested in history, so they do n national history day, right? whatever it is, right? People have multiple interests, right? It's not that multiple interests make us well-rounded. It's just that there's a lot of different things that we do and there's some things that we push really hard in, right? And that's what makes us a spike, right? So, having a wide base does not mean that you can't get to a spike, right? It just means that you need to focus and prioritize a little bit better. ## How to Show Depth and Balance in a Spiky Application [37:00] Okay. All right. Again, uh the two QR codes on the screen will take you straight to our booking links for either financial aid or for our kind of coaching programs. If you're a junior and you have not talked to me about financial aid, I'm not sure what you're doing. I've said it for the last two months. We do need to talk, right? Again, it's a free consultation. All of our consultations are free, right? Um and if our services seem like they can work for you, then we'll tell you about them during that call. Okay? um for our college pro or our coaching programs. Again, if you have a junior and you guys don't really have a plan about what's going to happen this kind of coming upcoming, you know, year, right, or this upcoming summer, right? This is probably a good time to talk to us to see if we can get you into a spot for a college application intensive. There's not a lot of spots left. We are actually sold out at a bunch of different locations and dates. So, please do that soon as well. Uh we have a quick question about any differences in prep for electrical engineering versus EEKES versus mechanical. Not so much, right? The the courses that you can take in high school are very limited, right? And so the course progression that I'd want to see is still the same, right? Um now for computer science, there's a lot more areas where you can go further at the community college because there's more classes, right? For electrical engineering or mechanical engineering, there's going to be less classes. So you might need to be a you might need to be showing that interest more by doing other projects and what are any projects like actual projects for that kind of uh major or you might be looking at different camps or programs where you can go further and show your interest. Okay, the summer camps or summer programs. Okay. All right. So I'll do a quick last call for questions. Again QR codes are there, our phone number is there, right? Multiple ways to reach out to us. Okay. All right. Last call. Last call. I don't see any other questions. Right. Um again, if you guys need to reach out to us, you guys can reach out. You can text us, right? If you're in our coaching program, reach out on Discord, right? If you're in our Facebook group, you can leave us a question there as well. We'll answer it, right? Uh so, just make sure that you're reaching out to us so that we can get you guys information. Okay? It was great having you guys here tonight. I'll leave this up just for a couple minutes after so that you guys can take a screenshot if you need to. And then if you guys have any questions, again, don't be afraid to reach out, right? We'll make sure to get your questions answered. Okay, everyone, have a great night. I will talk to you guys again soon or actually on Wednesday, right? For those coming to financial aid training. Okay. All right. So, everyone have a great night. I'll talk to you again. Bye-bye.