​I would advise all future applicants to start their preparation for applying to colleges as soon as possible. Applying to colleges is a long process involving many steps like deciding what kind of a college you want, preparing a college list, preparing the applications, writing the essays, etc. The more time you devote to this to try and improve this, the better it will be for you

The process as a whole was something that I never had to tackle before in my life.  Right from getting standardized testing scores in order to writing and editing 50 odd college essays and even running after teachers for recommendations felt new and challenging. This is probably what makes it hard for me to pick out one particular aspect of the process and brand it as “the most challenging”. I feel everything took the same amount of effort and should be given equal importance.

I found it difficult to differentiate between colleges or understand what they would be like through their websites, which is why I found it really helpful to talk to students who were already in college. There is no point wasting valuable time applying to a college you are not excited about attending. 

If there is one thing I learnt this Admissions season, it was that, above all else, colleges seek kids who bring in unique perspectives to their campuses. They look for high achieving kids or, at any cost kids who've made the most of the resources available to them.

My mistake was that I never concentrated on school studies. After I received rejection letters from a couple of colleges with the reason being my low school GPA, I realized where I had slipped up. So future applicants, never neglect your school exams. They are very important.

​Time your mocks, mark your weaknesses and work on those as much as you can. Honestly, there is nothing ‘hard’ on either of these tests, but there is that crunch of time you’re bound to. So, I tried my best to get used to the pattern of these tests, create my own strategies for certain type of questions and implement most of them on the test day!

​I would tell future applicants to start the process of application with a good number of months in hand because I found a number of last minute additional things I had to get done which was stressful. So to be stress free and get everything done on time and properly, I'd say give yourself 4-6 months to get it all together.

The open curriculum at Brown will allow me to pick whichever courses I want without any requirements, which is a (very) welcome change after the rigid structure offered by Indian schools; so I can actually experiment and with the guidance of experienced mentors, arrive at a major tailor-made to suit my ambition.

​I'm really looking forward to the honor-code system in place at Mudd which will allow me to take all my tests in my dorm room, have access to all the facilites on the lab round the clock and just develop this different sense of trust with the people around me, that seemed lacking to a large extent at school.

Don’t be blinded by the popularity a university has in India. Small liberal arts colleges that you might have not heard of are just as good because of the personalized attention they offer and the post grad college placements they end up getting you.