When you start 9th grade, college still seems like it’s an eternity away. But, as soon as you walk into your first class of freshman year, your path to getting into college starts. Yikes!! Every grade counts towards your GPA, and you have no excuse not to get involved with clubs or access resources your school has to offer. Getting started on building your specific area of academic interest (we usually call it your “niche” or “brand”) is really important, and starting now is what you need to do to get into a top-tier college.
We’ve talked about what you shouldn’t do in your freshman year, but now we want to talk about things that you can and should do to really make yourself stand out. The best thing you can do (outside of great grades!) is use your extracurriculars to prove that you’re interested in what you say you are.
So, What Is A “Niche”?
Let’s talk about what exactly we mean when we say that you should be building your niche. To help visualize it, let’s do a thought experiment:
You’re an admissions counselor at Prestige University, one of the classiest, fanciest schools in America. Prestige has several programs for pretty much any subject that a student could want to major in, but they also have the best law school in the Northeast. You enter your office early on a Tuesday morning with coffee in hand and have two applications for students who want to enter the Pre-Law program so they can eventually go to Prestige U’s law school, and they both have a 4.0 GPA and a 36 on the ACT.
Student 1 is the captain of the debate team and took AP Government. Between their junior and senior years, they participated in one of the UC’s mock trial summer programs. They’re also treasurer for the student council at their high school and captain of the varsity baseball team. Pretty good.
Student 2 has done everything that Student 1 did. They’re on the debate team, took AP Gov, but they did UC’s mock trial program as a freshman. With the extra time, they volunteered with a nonprofit organization that helps refugees in their city, began participating in Model UN, and took an online class about immigration law. After they finished those, they took another class on human rights and worked on a project with the ACLU’s advocacy institute. Junior year consisted of continuing work with Model UN and interning at a local law or District Attorney’s office. Between junior and senior years, they helped a law professor at their local university research asylum laws in the U.S. and how they impact refugees from the global south and were credited in the published research.
If you can only let one student in, who should it be?
Student 1 definitely has an impressive profile, but there isn’t focus in it. Student 2, however, shows a clear interest in law, and narrowed that law interest down to immigration law for refugees. That’s a niche - figuring out what general topic you’re interested in and then funneling it down to specific details about what you like. So, the question you might be having is: “How do I even do that?”
Read
You can’t know what interests you until you know it exists. You might have a vague idea that you’re into law or science, but to figure out your niche, you need to start exploring ideas. We recommend reading books! Pretty much every field and subject has entry-level books that should help you get an idea of what they’re about, and once you read a few, figure out what parts of them really caught your eye, and then look for books related to those parts. Rinse and repeat until you have a specific subject. Funnel it down!
Online Classes
It’s actually wild how many free or low-cost online classes are available. Coursera, The Great Courses, and Open Yale Courses all have a smorgasbord of classes available to you, on any topic you can think of. If you’re interested in computer science, there are also a ton of free code camps that will let you start learning new programming languages. From there, you might find that you’re interested in Python or Java, and take a class specifically on those. From there, you might be interested in designing user interfaces or working on code that handles data security. See? Funnel!
Summer Programs
Once you have a vague idea of your niche figured out (which, it can take a while), look for resources and programs that might help you get some real experience or explore it in a fun way during the summer. You might not be doing the super specific stuff like Student 2 was during their summers (yet!!!), but there are a ton of colleges and organizations that have stuff for interested students to do for a couple of weeks during the summer. We’ve also talked a lot about specific things that students can do for each subject during the summer on the blog.
Internships and Jobs (And Job Shadowing)
It’s not easy getting a meaningful job or internship when you’re just a freshman, but it’s not necessarily impossible, either. Also, child labor laws exist etc.
If you do (legally) find a job as a freshman, make sure that you’re doing something meaningful that helps you build experience. If you’re working in something like a law office, maybe see if you can sit in on some courtroom action (or whatever’s applicable to what you’re doing) and see what it’s like to actually work in that field.
As a freshman, you have a ton of time to explore and figure out what you want to study in college. But, you need to start that process sooner than later – it might make a difference in getting you into your dream school. If you already have your sights set on top colleges, then you know you need to put in some work. Start exploring, figure out your niche, and do the work to prove to schools that you’re passionate about that topic. And, if you find that your niche isn’t for you, then you have time to swap to something else.
There’s a lot that goes into figuring out your niche. If you need some help funneling, let us know. We’re great at helping students find their academic passion.