finmoon.net/content/blog/2026-02-05-usappweird.md

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title = "the weirdness of Applying to US Colleges"
date = 2026-02-05
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context:
> i am applying to several universities abroad, including in the us. the us has a specific quirk: most universities require that if you’ve already started studying elsewhere, you must apply as a transfer student—where the odds of admission are significantly lower. however, a few schools (like amherst and dartmouth) allow you to waive your previous credits and apply as a fresh-start "first-year." i’ve already submitted my applications there, while my transfer applications are still in the works.

_my thoughts_

all in all, the applications i’ve already submitted took about a hundred hours—not counting the two days i spent in kazakhstan just to take the sat. in that time, i’ve written about a dozen different essays, drafted five recommendation letters, answered roughly 200 questions, dug through every financial document imaginable, and prepared an absurd number of random facts about my life. in a word: reflection.

applying to most other countries feels like a checklist:
- in russia, you get a certain score on the exam, and you’re either cut or accepted based on a simple spreadsheet. or you check the boxes for the right olympiads.
- in germany or the netherlands, you prove you meet formal gpa requirements (sometimes these are converted into a local scale and, again, filtered by a spreadsheet).
- in japan, they evaluate essays and recommendations, but there’s a clear formula published on their official websites.
- in south korea, you present specific facts—sometimes compensating for one weakness with another strength—and you’re in.

in all of these systems, you can engage in straightforward optimization. you can grind for 1000 hours to get a perfect exam score. you can optimize your gpa. you can target specific olympiads. there are clear rubrics for your essays.

but the us is different. they use a principle called holistic review. essentially, it’s an attempt to look at you from every possible angle:
- they don’t have a hard minimum sat score.
- they aren’t looking for a "magic" set of words in your essay.
- they aren’t looking for a "perfect" extracurricular activity.

instead, they look for "spiky" students. they don’t want a room full of identical straight-a students from "perfect" families and elite schools. they need those people, too, but they’d rather balance them out with a guy from hungary who has a unique perspective on authoritarianism, or someone from a low-income background with a fascinating eye for art, or a first-generation college student.

of course, you can try to "optimize" for this, too. but while other systems require you to study a machine so you can fit into its gears, the us process is a two-way street: you have to open yourself up and let the machine see everything inside. "optimization" here means connecting the dots—weaving a "red thread" through your life’s disparate facts.

you’re telling a story. you’re trying—and yes, it’s cringe—to build a "personal brand." you’re trying to create something that will actually stick in the mind of the small committee reviewing thousands of files.

to tell that story, you have to understand it yourself. instead of just ticking boxes, you compile a list of everything you’ve achieved, and then you analyze it—and by extension, yourself—to see how it all fits together. why does your resume look so eclectic? why are you talking about computer engineering while studying law? why do you build servers and play dnd in your spare time?

the simple answer is "i just like it." but you’re expected to ask "why?"—and then keep asking "why?" until you hit something deeper.

in the end, you aren't just spending hours on essays and forms; you’re spending every lunch break and every night before bed in a state of constant self-reflection. finally, you reach your conclusions, finish the essays, nudge your recommenders to finally upload their letters, and re-read your application for the 1000th time—eventually losing the "cringe" feeling of praising yourself. then, you hit "submit" in the common app.

but it doesn't end there. next comes the financial aid application. us aid is often "need-based," sometimes guaranteeing to cover 100% of your demonstrated need. this means you now have to open up the financial side of your life for the university to scrutinize.

after six months of self-praise and deep analysis of your identity and goals, you are suddenly plunged back into the heavy reality of daily life. you’re hunting down tax forms and bank statements, all while staring at the massive barriers between you and the future you just described in your application. it’s a very strange sensation.

conclusion:
the "weirdness" of this process is that, under the guise of a college application, you end up exposing both your greatest strengths and your deepest vulnerabilities. you’ve essentially laid out a complete map of your life.

it is rare in daily life to create such a detailed, systematized document that captures your entire worldview. it requires massive mental labor—thinking through every detail without getting lost in the weeds—knowing this document will soon fly off to a stranger at a university.

maybe universities ask too much. we aren't used to opening up this much to strangers, and usually for good reason.

but at the same time, i don’t see any other way to account for "distance traveled." a simple set of test scores only shows a static snapshot of a candidate. it doesn't tell the whole story.

it’s hard to argue that a 1480 sat score from a native speaker in chicago—who spent years in a private prep school, took the test four times, and was driven to the test center by their parents—is the same as a 1480 from someone who flew to a foreign country at their own expense, took the test once with jetlag in an unfamiliar city, and wrote it in their second language.

i can’t think of any other system that does a better job of giving outliers a chance. i don't know if i’ll get an offer or not, but i definitely don't regret the experience.
it is hard to argue with the fact that 1480 on the sat from a native english speaker from near chicago, who was prepared for the exam for years at a private school, who had 3-4 attempts and was driven to a familiar place by parents in the morning and 1480 on the sat from someone who had to fly to a new country at their own expense without the ability to work with a tutor and in an unfamiliar city with jetlag and knowing there is only one attempt, writing the same exam in a foreign language.

i can't think of a different system that can give opportunities to outliers.

i don’t know if i’ll get an offer or not, but i definitely do not regret having had this experience