It's WIP Week on Chromatic Conflux! I searched through my metaphorical blog post vault and found seven projects that I'm proud of — but may never "finish." So I thought, why not just publish them? Yesterday's post was "Jacob's College Application FAQ."
Today's post (the grand finale) has the same topic but a different spin. In December, as I was finally finishing college apps, I had an idea for the College App App (working title): a product that would make the college app process feel less horrible.
This could be a startup idea, I realized! The motto of Y Combinator, the preeminent startup funder, is "Make something people want." This product is something people would want. I know because I would've wanted it, and many of my friends say they'd have wanted it. It could make a lot of money, although I would be horrified if it was used to make a profit (god knows the process is already pay-to-win enough); my plan was to make it open-source and accessible to all. (Although I bet you could make a lot of money off donations from Patreon!)
The problem: I don't know how to code webapps. I could fix this, I thought. I could use the College App App as a way to learn how to code webapps. I did start learning Svelte a few months ago, actually, but sadly not enough to be useful on this.
I wanted to have the product ready by June, for the Class of 2025 applicants, but ... the reality is that, coming out of college apps, I wanted a break from thinking about them. I spent most of my project energy in February working on [insert puzzle hunt party here], and once it was March, and the message of the world was that I should have senioritis and slack off, the project kind of lost momentum.
But I do have something to show!
In February, I made a spreadsheet prototype / spec for the College App App. Like with my Ravniconlang post, I packed a lot into a humble spreadsheet. But before posting, I revised the spreadsheet further to be a product I'm proud of! It contains a detailed skeleton for organizing and formatting most of what you need in a college application:
a college list,
a Common App activities list,
a Common App honors list,
a UC activities & awards list,
an MIT jobs & activities & awards section,
and an at-a-glance outline of supplemental essays.
You can make a copy of it, and I promise it's better than any similar, publicly available spreadsheet that anyone told me about. I swear, my friends and I all rolled our own.
But first, I want to give my original elevator pitch for the College App App: the more ambitious version of this idea. If this feels like a project you would be interested in, that would be awesome! I would be so happy if this existed.
Compared to yesterday's FAQ, I'm targeting today's post even harder at people with direct involvement in the American college app process, or people potentially interested in helping make the College App App. If this isn't you, you might be bored.
But if it is, or you're curious about the project, read on!
the mission
I'm Jacob, and college apps crushed my soul and chopped it into pieces.*
I think I handled it worse than many, but the college application industrial complex looms large for everyone.
I feel like there's something uniquely cruel about a world where ambitious American high school seniors are essentially forced to spend so much time advertising themselves instead of spending their time doing fun things that contribute to the world.
I want to do something to help, something that would've made it easier on me and will help future applicants. Unfortunately, a lot of the problems with college apps feel systemic and intractable.
But not all of them.
*sorry this line is a bit much but maybe it's the right kind of a bit much.
the problem
College apps have a lot of subtasks that require managing. And there's not a good platform that does it.
I made an Ultimate College Application Spreadsheet. Many of my friends also rolled their own spreadsheets. One friend used Scrivener and Ulysses, which are more aimed at novel writing, to track supplements, and I think that had pros and cons maybe?
My spreadsheet did a lot of things:
Managing a list of colleges, and keeping track of many stats about them (lots of which are publicly available).
Organizing my activities and awards according to the complicated (and varying) specifications in the Common App, UC App, and MIT App. (I didn't apply to foreign universities, CSUs, Georgetown, etc., but many people do.)
Categorizing my supplemental essays by topic, so I could see them all at a glance.
And that's in addition to the docs where I had to copy-paste my prompts, copy-paste tons of things into wordcounter.io because Google Drive counts words differently from the Common App. (Seriously. On the application, words are just strings separated by spaces - so "puzzlesforprogress.net—my blog/site" is two words, while Google Docs considers it four. Meanwhile, a section separator like" ~ " is a word in the application but not Docs. Em-dashes, by the way, look ugly in the UC app. I spent too much time thinking about this...)
I'm lucky enough that I didn't worry that much about financial aid, but those forms are also a big deal to manage.
It required a lot of copying, figuring out what went where, headaches of managing everything.
Why did we have to make our own spreadsheets with all this information? To keep track of everything in different places, to have all these different tasks floating around?
the solution
The vision of the College App App is to be an integrated platform for writing and managing college apps that is actually designed to be a good interface.
Currently, there are all the writing platforms that are not specialized at all toward the needs of college apps, and the actual applications themselves which are not designed to be writing platforms (and aren't really designed to be user-friendly — CollegeVine is maybe the closest thing, but it just tackles the list management and probability assignment).
There is tons of low-hanging fruit: stuff that's not complicated technically, but could make the interface a lot nicer.
My vision is essentially for a "CRUD" (create/read/update/delete) app. It would have some sort of database that stores a bunch of user-inputted data about college, including their essays/activities/etc, and presents it in a variety of beautiful, editable views/widgets.
Example: You could transition between viewing an individual supplemental essay, all of that college's essays (as they would be formatted in the Common App!), a table of all your essays for all your colleges (or those that aren't "done"), a comparison between the original essay and a similar essay you're submitting to a different college...and be able to edit the essay in all of those views, and have the database update.
the mvp features
I have so many feature ideas. I can feel the scope of this project increasing.
But what has to happen for this to be superior to nothing? To form the Minimum Viable Product, or MVP?
Well, I think this spreadsheet is already the MVP of sorts (if I make it editable by anyone) but for the webapplication.
1. I think it's imperative to store the data well in order to accommodate a variety of future widgets with read/write access to the database. Therefore, I need to find a database structure. I don't have much experience with databases and would welcome suggestions from those who do.
2. A college list manager (see "College List") that has a bunch of publicly accessible data about colleges, as well as user-inputted data, and allows the user to specify which colleges they are considering applying to.
3. One of the following (ideally both, but not necessarily for the MVP):
(a) An activities/honors list manager (see "Activities" and "Honors" for Common App, "UC A&A" for UC, "MIT J&A&D" for MIT), that enforces all the word counts and stores everything in a nice table. This is an area where what's available now is pretty bad; editing this stuff in the application itself is kind of ridiculous, and Docs/Sheets doesn't have any of the requirements by default. [We're probably going to try to build this first, because we think it will be easier.]
(b) A supplement spreadsheet/manager (see "Supplementals: At A Glance"), with multiple different views like I was talking about in the example. A place to see what is being submitted to each of these colleges. It would be great if this was compatible with a word processor.
the nice-to-have features
Obviously both 3a and 3b together would be good. Would be cool to have the College App App approach a complete place to see college app info: a place to rely on, to take away the mental energy of looking at everything else (this is like the Getting Things Done philosophy).
"Export to Common App" might also be a cool feature; I think the Common App has an API, but does it actually support an operation like this?
Ideally this would also be a word processor / writing platform. I think the "writing platform" thing is difficult, because Google Docs / Microsoft Word / etc are already quite established, and we probably won't be able to match them on features — thereby not being "strictly better." What open-source writing platforms are out there? (I guess a starting point might be something like "Manifold comment box + word counter + color highlighting + customizable font"). Could there be some way to embed Docs or something? (Could also brand as a stripped-back "focus mode.")
A fun feature (maybe a marketable flagship feature) could be that you’d have a block of text that’s embedded into multiple essays for different colleges, and if you edited it in one place, it would automatically edit in the other place. (Other sorts of supplement cross-linking would be nice.) Some kinks to work out though, since often you want to modify the block of text differently for different colleges. This could also be helpful for activities lists.
Warning flag for common mistakes (mentioning the name of a different college in one's supplemental essay; "did you mean to apply to Cornell University instead of Cornell College," etc)
Map view for colleges.
Brainstorming boxes: e.g. like a notes box on each college, on each supplement, etc.
Financial aid application management. Not an area I know a ton about but a person I was talking to about this idea thinks it's pretty important.
Sharing functionality! Smooth for counselors / friends / other people to comment on or feedback your essays; you can choose how much of your app to share.
Integration with cc6's Manifold x College Admissions project.
I'm not sure if this is really a feature, but: aesthetics. I want this to look nice and inviting, a place people want to come to!
Gamification. Perhaps different aspects of your applications are "achievements," and you get "college points" for doing different things, or something. I think this should be a setting, so it's not forced on everyone, but I think it might have helped me if college applications was just a little more like a video game. However, would have to make sure that the video game achievements are very aligned with the college app goals, or else we're just helping people waste their time. ("the a2c effect")
Application portal organizer (suggested by Audrey). Keeping track of which portals you've made accounts for, what's in the portals, etc. With links. The Coalition App does this but not the Common App
Managing art/music/etc portfolios (SlideRoom also does some of this apparently)
I will think of more. I perpetually think of more.
the path forward
Building things is hard, and I have other ways of spending my time. But I do think this is probably a good idea that will positively impact the world?
I think it would depend on assembling a good team of people. Especially someone with experience coding similar webapps; also Class of '25 (edit: or Class of '26, or younger!) high schoolers who might use the technology. I'd also love to have people who have free time and are just enthusiastic about making this a good product, and have an aesthetic vision that's aligned with mine. Please let me know if you have any ideas!
I'd also love ideas for technologies (database, frontend, word processor) that would be good for making this a reality! Considering something like JS/React or Electron/React, but I would be learning said tool on the fly, which is a little worrying. See "Technology Options."
I think this idea could end up very financially successful if it was done well and sold at a high price point. Anxious parents will pay a lot for something that would help even a small amount toward college. But that doesn't feel right — it would only make college more pay-to-win in the long term. So I hope to make this resource open source and free. I think this means it wouldn't have negative side effects?
Anyway, I'm hoping to make some progress soon — some of February 12 will be set aside for this purpose. However, I want to figure out the right tools first.
In the other tabs, check out my spreadsheet prototype! It contains some examples, adapted from my own spreadsheet, to give a fuller picture of how this would be used in real life.
Thanks for reading!
Addendum
If you feel like you're the sort of person who could do this, that sounds awesome! As long as you're not planning to sell your product — if it's to publish freely, or for personal use — I'd love to hear about your efforts, and I'd be happy to help where I can.
So, no app. But what do I have?
A prototype of the College App App. My Ultimate College Application Spreadsheet!
If you're interested in it, head to tinyurl.com/jacobscollegespreadsheet and make a copy! (Note: if you're a Proof School student, use this link instead — shoutout to the internal 4-Year Plan that the administration creates, which was the "original version" of this! And if you're curious to see what my College App App spec looks like, click here.)
Let me give you a tour! First stop: tab 1, the college list.
Tab One: The College List
The first thing you might notice is that the spreadsheet is very colorful. Indeed, it has a ton of conditional formatting! Change "Yes" to "Maybe" and the color goes from cyan to yellow.
It's also in the default font. And it has a lot of fields which aren't filled in (and this increases as you scroll down). But ... this is WIP Week, you know. Hey, it's healthy to do your own college research! (I'm just lazy; if anyone wants to add data, let me know and I might give you edit access.)
There are also a ton of comments. Please read the comments! They help clarify some of the idiosyncratic Jacob-style choices that I made. I'll copy most of them below.
Comments
College Name: The colleges are organized in a deeply ad-hoc way, in rough proportion to how much I thought about them, with a few arbitrary changes thrown in to anonymize. Please reorder, rename, add details, etc!
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (MassTech): you have the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the California Institute of Technology. One is MIT, the other is Caltech. why??
Apply?: I used the labels Yes > Probably > Maybe > Imaginably > Doubtful to indicate my likelihood of applying, because they support the Z -> A sort nicely! (This baffled my parents for awhile.)
But if you want to be boring, you can use numbers from 5 to 1 and they have the same conditional formatting.
Tier: If you'd like to give a rough ranking of the colleges in the list (which can help with sorting), here's a good place for that.
I used the "1a / 1b / 1c / 2a / etc" style of tiers. Feel free to adapt the tiers in a way that works for you!
Acc.: Acceptance rate. I forget which year this is from - probably 2022-23. I expected my "real chance" to be 2-4x this number, based on my background; your mileage may vary.
CVine: There's a handy website called CollegeVine where you can input your stats and it'll give you a well-calibrated percentage chance of getting into the college. It's not perfect, and doesn't take into account all the information, but it can still be helpful.
Location: Sorry these are super inconsistent ... feel free to improve them with whatever system works for you
App: You'll probably submit a Common App and a UC application! The UC app is literally just a checkbox to add more schools, while Common App schools typically have supplemental essays - though colleges vary substantially in how much work/fun these are. (Stanford has a lot; Reed has only like one)
If you want to apply to MIT, CCS, Georgetown, or an international university, you'll have to do a whole other application I think.
Terms: When a college is "on the quarter system," they're usually including the summer quarter so it's secretly trimesters
Cost: I never put this into my spreadsheet, but it's an important factor to keep in mind. It's worth having an honest conversation with your parents about what you're intending to pay for college, since financial matters are often kept private.
If you aren't super affluent, note that many colleges give quite generous need-based financial aid. Stanford can be cheaper than a state school.
Reqs: I never really found a good way to quantify this, but it's so important! Colleges vary widely in how much class freedom you get, from Brown's Open Curriculum (where you basically take whatever you want) to Harvey Mudd's Core (where all freshmen take essentially the same classes)
R?: Some colleges with Early Action, such as Stanford or Yale, have "Restrictive Early Action" (R) which means they won't let you EA to any other schools (though sometimes you're allowed one public school or something). Others, like MIT, are not restrictive (N).
EA: EA (Early Action) = you can apply early, and get a decision earlier (though often not early enough to save on other RD applications, unless it's a prestigious school - check the school!), but it's nonbinding
ED I: ED (Early Decision) = if you ED and get in, you have to go (barring some financial aid circumstances, I think)
ED II: This is just the second ED deadline for some schools (usually the same as their RD deadline)
RD: RD (Regular Decision) = normal application
Deadlines in red are from 2023-24. It's suggested to replace them with the current year's deadlines! (But they can still give you an idea of which schools tend to run on earlier/later timelines.)
Other: For some colleges, to have a chance at some scholarships, you have to apply earlier
SR SAT: Most colleges allow you to self-report your SAT (until you get in), but some require you to send an official score from CollegeBoard with your application. Beware of this! It's more expensive if you procrastinate.
Interview?: Interviews these days do not live up to their full potential; they're almost a joke, sadly. You should do them when optional, to demonstrate interest and prove you're alive, but don't worry about preparing, because (my impression is) colleges don't care what their interviewers report back.
Except MIT, they do care! Also foreign universities, like Oxford, though those are often more technical interviews.
Students: You should populate this with other students you know at the college, if any! Most people like talking about their college, in my experience, so they can be valuable resources.
Int. Major: Colleges vary a lot in how much they hold you to what you put. Something to research!
Beware of putting CS; it will meaningfully reduce your admissions chances at most schools. But if your essays are all about CS and it's your real interest, then you should.
The question of intended major is also worded differently on different applications, sometimes it's more like "academic interests."
These are the intended majors / academic interests I personally put (or was considering putting; I didn't apply to all these colleges). You should delete them and put your own. It can be worth researching the majors available at different colleges, since there is a fair amount of variety.
Toured?: Tours aren't very useful in my opinion. It can be worth touring some colleges of different sizes (to get a feel for that), and the local bay area colleges because they're convenient, but I think by far the more helpful thing is to talk to people you know at the college.
Portal?: When you apply to colleges, you'll have to make an account on their portal, and this sometimes annoying
This column is to keep track of whether you've made an account on their portal, and any login credentials if you want to do that.
Jacob's Random Notes: a column to take with grains of salt.
College spreadsheets are pretty normalized, but I think where my product really shines is the activities and awards sections. It's really annoying to manipulate these in the application portal, awkward to make them in a Google Doc — and I think they're super important.
The next four tabs are all about activities and awards, starting with UC!
Tab Two: UC Activities & Awards
The University of California applications are mostly less involved (and considers fewer factors) than the Common App. Recommendation letters are ignored, for example. But they give you more space to describe your activities and awards! You can put 20 (in contrast to the Common App's 10 + 5), and you have around double the character count. (Note: character count, not word count.)
For this reason, I've put it before the Common App activities list, which you're likely to submit to more colleges. In my personal experience, it's easier to write more and edit down then edit something down and try to expand it.
Here, I'm going to copy fewer of the comments. Many of my comments are just fuller versions of the question posed on the application, since I abbreviated some of them for this spreadsheet.
Comments
Name: Here's the deal: the UC has a bunch of different categories for activities/awards, and they all have different follow-up questions, so I made this convoluted color-coded thing.
Basically, for each of your up-to-20 activities-or-awards-or-other-coursework, place it in the appropriate category, then answer the appropriate questions. The questions will be in a different order for different ones!
9 10 11 12: If something is during the summer, you're supposed to select the grade you were in before that summer
Hrs/week: I always found these stressful, but you can ballpark these. They say, "It's ok to estimate, but try to be as accurate as possible."
Booleans: or "yes-or-no questions," whatever
Tab Three: Common App Activities
The forerunner of this sheet is the Proof School 4-Year Plan. (Zachary don't sue me, I changed the font and some of the words so it's definitely fair use)
Comments
Activity type: I found the categories a bit weird, but they actually appear pretty large on the PDF that colleges see.
If you're feeling like procrastinating on college apps, you could come up with a color code for these, add conditional formatting for it, and let me know so I can add it to the official version :))))
Timing of participation: Bafflingly, these are checkboxes, so you can select multiple if you want. I never did.
Hrs/week: If you're like me, you find the challenge of estimating hours per week and weeks per year stressful. What I've heard: like with the UC ones, don't sweat it, just approximate something reasonable and the colleges are fine with it.
Similar activity in college?: "I intend to participate in a similar activity in college" - yes or no. This one is also not worth worrying about; you won't be held to it in any way.
Tab Four: Common App Honors
This section is more straightforward.
Comments
Honors title: You literally get no description for these. Keep that in mind! (It's in the "Education" section, by the way.)
Level(s) of recognition: This also felt to me like one of those weird college app things where you just have to make something up and put it down and colleges don't really care ... as long as it has the right vibe
Tab Five: MIT Jobs & Activities & Distinctions
Compared to the rest of the "college application industrial complex," MIT's application always filled me with a strange sense of calm. I'm not sure why; it's definitely idiosyncratic in its own ways.
Compared to the other tabs on the spreadsheet so far, the organization on this one is a bit more slapdash. All the best, because you don't need to worry about this if you're not applying to MIT.
Comments
Category: If I recall correctly, you get up to: five jobs, four activities, six "summer activities" (which are really weird and supposed to be casual maybe?), five "scholastic distinctions", five "non-scholastic distinctions"
They also have a special spot for AMC/AIME, and tutoring with schoolhouse.world (or something)
Participation period: For jobs and summer activities, they want a timespan. For non-summer activities, they want a set of grades. For awards, they want a set of years.
Description (40 words): You get descriptions for jobs and activities. Not other things! Also, note that here it's by word count, instead of character count.
Tab Six: Weird Supplementals: At A Glance Thing That I'm Not Really Satisfied With
I'm not gonna lie, this might need the College App App to be good.
Still, this spreadsheet can help you make sense of the overlaps in the set of all questions you need to answer, see what the themes are in your application, and prioritize your work.
Comments
I tried to organize my supplemental essays in a spreadsheet so I could see what was common and what wasn't between the schools I was applying to. I never ended up very happy with my format (I think [my friend] Andrew's spreadsheet is better on this). I have some dreams about making one of these with better sort options, for example. That's one of the ways this is work in progress...
Sort: This influences alphabetization
Heading: I used "Response" as more like "Topic" for alphabetization reasons
Status: "WIP" = Work In Progress
"DONE" = Done
" Maybe" = May or may not apply
If you have suggestions for overhauling this section, I would love to hear them!
Conclusion
So that's my spreadsheet version of the College App App! Again, you can find it and make a copy at tinyurl.com/jacobscollegespreadsheet, or by clicking here if you're a Proofnik.
If you would like to implement improvements, or code a proper webapp version of this, in line with the philosophy I mentioned originally, please let me know!
I hope you found this post valuable, and I hope you'll check out the other writings on my blog for WIP Week.
Comments