What should students be doing during each year of high school to prepare for admission to a top college?
On August 30, The Serica Initiative partnered with AtomicMind for The Road to Top Colleges: What Students Should Be Doing Each Year of High School, a free virtual community webinar designed to give students and families a clearer roadmap for navigating the college admissions process.
Led by Leelila Strogov, Founder and CEO of AtomicMind, the conversation explored how students can use their four years of high school to build their unique story, develop their academic and extracurricular skills, and become meaningful members of their community — and ultimately create a strong college application that captures their journey.
Watch the full webinar on our Youtube channel!
Or keep reading for some key takeaways from the conversation.
Start early — and think of high school as a journey.
One of the most important messages from the webinar was simple: don't wait until junior year to start thinking about college admissions.
Your junior year and senior year shouldn’t be a scramble to accumulate activities and accomplishments for your college application. Instead, students should use high school as a period to explore, grow, and develop.
Each year has a different purpose.
9th grade: Explore and build a foundation. Students should use this time to explore a broad range of interests and activities that they’ll build on in later years. Now is also the time to develop strong study and organizational habits that’ll form a foundation for the rest of high school
10th grade: Deepen. Students can begin narrowing their interests, taking on more substantial projects, entering competitions, and thinking about where they might eventually take on leadership.
11th grade: Bring it together. Junior year is when many of the pieces developed during the first two years of high school begin to culminate. Students take on their heaviest academic workloads, deepen research and extracurricular commitments, pursue leadership opportunities, prepare for standardized tests, and begin developing their college lists.
12th grade: Tell the story. By senior year, much of the substantive work has already been done. The focus shifts toward presenting that work effectively through essays, recommendations, applications, and a thoughtfully constructed college list.
The larger lesson: college applications are the culmination of a student’s high school journey — not a checklist that begins in senior year.
Find your “zone of genius.”
Top colleges aren’t looking for perfection. They’re looking for depth and authenticity.
Rather than expecting students to be exceptional at everything, Leelila encouraged families to identify what a student is particularly good at — and what genuinely excites them.
This "zone of genius" may not be a single subject. It could be an intersection of disciplines or interests. The important thing is to identify the intersections that feel authentic to the student and then develop them deeply over time.
That also means: though a perfect GPA and an impressive list of activities might look compelling on paper, more is not necessarily better. Students shouldn't feel pressured to participate in every possible club, competition, or activity simply to fill out a résumé.
Instead, they should embrace their story. A strong application isn’t simply a collection of impressive accomplishments. Rather, students should craft a narrative that ultimately helps admissions officers understand who the student is and what drives them.
Build relationships and make an impact.
Leadership isn’t limited to holding a title. Though being president of your class or club can certainly demonstrate leadership, it is ultimately about impact.
For example, students can demonstrate leadership by:
Creating a project that addresses a need in their community
Helping others access resources
Bringing classmates together around a shared interest
One of the most meaningful ways that students can make an impact is in their own classrooms. Teacher relationships were highlighted as one of the most important, and sometimes overlooked, elements of the college admissions process.
Strong recommendation letters don't come from simply earning good grades. Teachers need to know the student as a person and as a member of their classroom community.
Students can build these relationships, and their leadership in the classroom, by:
Participating thoughtfully in class
Asking questions
Being willing to say when they don't understand something
Demonstrating consideration towards teachers and classmates
“There are so many ways to make an impact, and there is no one road from A to B. The key is depth, authenticity, and really sustained development and showing this sustained level of interest.”
For AAPI students, embrace your story and your community.
In the live Q&A, Leelila also addressed questions from AAPI families navigating the current college admissions environment.
One piece of advice stood out: be a uniter.
Students can demonstrate their ability to build bridges across cultures, communities, and differences by using their interests and talents to bring people together and create meaningful impact.
For AAPI students in particular, this can mean embracing the complexity of their experiences rather than feeling pressured to fit into a predetermined narrative.
Whether through community service, research, the arts, leadership, or other pursuits, all students can show how their experiences have shaped the way they understand and contribute to the world around them.
The Bottom Line: Start exploring early, dive deep, and lead your story.
Each student is unique, and there is no single formula for getting into a top college. That means: your college application comes from how you lead a meaningful high-school journey.
Explore and find what excites you; develop your strengths, leadership, and relationships; challenge yourself to make an impact in your community and beyond. And perhaps most importantly, give yourself enough time to discover what makes your story uniquely yours.
In an increasingly complex and competitive college admissions process, the Serica Initiative is proud to partner with AtomicMind for this free community webinar, an important conversation that helps students and families have access to more information so that they can make thoughtful decisions about their own paths.
If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry — you can watch the full recording of The Road to Top Colleges: What Students Should be Doing Each Year of High School on Serica’s Youtube channel!
Thank you to Leelila and AtomicMind for providing your expert guidance and practical insights! Learn more about AtomicMind on their website: www.atomicmind.com
