At the highest level (and this won't really help you, this sentence at least) it's making yourself stand out.
I like to think of any application as a group of 100 people. I then ask myself, "What can I do to beat 40% of the pack?" Then you're in the top 60. What can you do to eliminate 30% of those contenders?
I'd say that doing a startup or having a project with traction would be a huge way to stand out. Colleges are easily impressed by numbers. If you can stay "I increased attendance at basketball games 700%," somebody's going to see that and take notice. I increased attendance at the University of Colorado Basketball games over the last 2 years by that magnitude and it turns into a story every time I drop the number.
Genuine references will help from teachers and possibly someone close to the university. So will a GPA and high SAT scores.
Name.com is the best. They have really quick and helpful customer support. Their website is incredibly clean and intuitive and they're not trying to sell you something on every page like GoDaddy does.
I bought a domain name from a guy in Brazil. We exchanged over 100 emails back and forth with the help of Google Translate and when it came time for the guy to transfer his domain, somehow Name.com had a woman on staff who spoke Brazilian Portugese who helped facilitate the transfer.
Bring a dry-erase marker in the bathtub and write on the wall next to you. It should erase. Test it with a small dot before you go wild. If you're not into that, Crayola sells shower crayons for little kids that come off easily with soap and water. Dream on your walls.
I get my best ideas in the shower and I take really long showers, water bill be damned. I love saving the great ideas that come to me in there.
This was beautifully articulated and makes me wish that I'd tried to understand math more in middle school and high school. I got by, got A's and B's but just didn't care.
I'm in the English/writer camp that the writer describes. I'm much more comfortable with words than numbers though I wish I had more of a mix of math in my expression.
I have huge respect for hackers in the way that they solve problems with numbers, at the root of it all. I'm not referring to binary here, just the fact that algorithms and number labels largely help to power our software.
I like to think of any application as a group of 100 people. I then ask myself, "What can I do to beat 40% of the pack?" Then you're in the top 60. What can you do to eliminate 30% of those contenders?
I'd say that doing a startup or having a project with traction would be a huge way to stand out. Colleges are easily impressed by numbers. If you can stay "I increased attendance at basketball games 700%," somebody's going to see that and take notice. I increased attendance at the University of Colorado Basketball games over the last 2 years by that magnitude and it turns into a story every time I drop the number.
Genuine references will help from teachers and possibly someone close to the university. So will a GPA and high SAT scores.