What It Actually Takes to Stand Out in College Applications

Standing out has nothing to do with what's on the page. It has to do with what's behind it.

Families spend years building the page: the grades, the titles, the hours logged. Necessary, sure. But none of it is what makes a reader stop and pay attention. What does is something harder to manufacture: a clear, focused, and at times unexpected sense of who a student actually is.

So if you're a student, or a parent watching your student, staring down another summer of "building the resume," here's where I'd point your attention instead: the four things that actually help a student stand out in college applications, and none of them have anything to do with how many activities you can list.

Creativity

I don't mean artistic talent. I mean the willingness to solve a problem your own way instead of the expected way. Admissions readers see the same handful of “founder of a nonprofit” and “started a club” stories on repeat. Not because students lack ideas, but because they're reaching for the template that seems safest. The students who stand out let a genuine curiosity take them somewhere unscripted, even if it's smaller, or stranger, or harder to explain at a dinner party. A messy, original idea reads as more real than a polished, borrowed one, every time.

Personal alignment and mission

I spend more time on this piece than any other, because it can't be manufactured in a single summer. Alignment means your activities, your essay, and your voice all point back to something true about who you are, not to something you think a school wants to see. I've watched students give up activities they loved because someone told them it “wouldn't look good.” That abandonment shows up later, in their writing, as a kind of flatness you can't quite name. When a student's choices actually reflect their values, admissions readers feel it. That coherence, more than anything else, is what separates a profile from a list.

Depth of impact for college applications?

Breadth is the easiest trap to fall into. I see it constantly: a student joins five clubs to look well-rounded and shows up meaningfully to none of them. Depth asks a different question. What did you actually change, build, or move forward, even in something small? A single project you stuck with for two years, one you can speak about with real specificity, will outweigh a stack of one-semester memberships every time. Impact isn't measured by scale. It's measured by whether you can tell me exactly what was different because you were there.

How this helps you stand out in college applications

Can strategy help? Landing an impressive summer program or international award help? Of course. I'd never tell a family to skip an opportunity that's a genuine fit. But the students who jump off the page are rarely the ones with the most recognizable name on their resume. They're the ones who can tell you exactly why a program mattered, what they built or changed because of it, and how it connects to something they already cared about before they applied. Strategy can open a door. It can't walk through it for you.

None of these four things can be manufactured in a weekend, and none of them require a longer resume. What they require is reflection, the kind that gets crowded out when the process feels like a race. My job, and the job of everyone on our team at Sendero, isn't to help students look more impressive. It's to help them get clear enough on who they are that the impressiveness takes care of itself.

None of this has to stay theoretical. Sometimes the clearest way to find your own perspective is to just build something, without worrying about getting it right on the first try. That kind of freedom is where real creativity tends to show up. And more often than not, what a student builds ends up teaching them something about who they are and what they actually want to offer the world.

About the Author

Nathalie Galindo-Lee is the Founder, CEO, and Head Coach of Sendero Education. A former Harvard Admissions Officer with nearly 20 years of experience across Harvard, UC Berkeley, and NYU, she helps families navigate the college admissions process with strategic expertise and a commitment to student wellbeing.