Would beauty pageant Winning Titles help on College apps?

[Anonymous]

Agree with the PP's. It's not necessarily what you do, but rather how/why you do it and what you've gained from it.

My DD who spent the bulk of high school obsessed with make up and beauty to the point that she did tutorials on you tube and worked at Sephora landed a spot at Stanford. You want to know why? She had great grades and scores, but she also wrote an essay that focused on shopping, consumerism, trends, and how a store drives people to buy certain things at certain times in certain ways. Her essay was literally titled "The Science of Shopping."

That kid is graduating next year with a degree in symbolic systems and is working at Amazon basically as a computer scientist who focuses on shopping. She loves what she does and I don't think she would have found this path if she didn't organically connect shopping (her love) with STEM (her natural ability).

So, focus on doing what you love and doing well in school. The rest is gravy.

[Anonymous]

Publicly no

Privately yes