Last edited October 2026

Introduction

Applying to foreign universities when you’re an international student can be intimidating. The process is opaque and uncertain, making it hard to navigate. There’s no singular test to ace, and no counsellors to ask for help. In India, there’s entire companies set up to help you through this process… if you can pay to play. They argue that there is an ideal college applicant, and that they can help you achieve this cookie-cutter ideal. I disagree. I argue that their process is counterintuitive — they paint all students with the same colors. In short, I think they are ripping you off.

This article is a survival guide for the basics. This is written for high school students in the Indian education system (CBSE/ICSE) and their parents. Its primary goal is to help shift one’s perspective from entrace through aptitude exams to the holistic perspective of foreign university applications. Others might find the content of this post blindingly obvious.

Breakdown

Part I: A Very Simple Guide to Incentives

As an aspiring college student, there’s a few things I imagine you care about when applying to colleges:

  • You want to get into a reputable college whose degree holds value in the industry you’re planning to pursue a career in.
  • You want to find a college that would help you grow into the kind of person you want to be, and have the resources to do so.
  • You want a college where you’ll be surrounded by like-minded individuals, where you feel like you can fit in.

The college you’re hoping takes you also cares about a few things:

  • Bluntly, it wants to be able to earn a profit on you. Colleges are for-profit organizations.
  • It is trying to find the best alumni set it can– it’s betting on your future.
  • It is trying to make a tight-knit community.

Notice how this arrangement works when you put these incentives together:

  • Colleges are looking for quality people. You are looking for a quality university.
  • You’re both looking to see, as with any good relationship, whether you suit each other.

Part II: Who’s Reading the Apps?

College application readers don’t have much time to give to each application. They read more applications a day than most of us would see in our entire lives. They are excellent at cutting through your bullshit and getting to the facts.

Your application needs to be straight-forward, clean and compelling. There’s a few things that need to be true for this to happen:

  • “Who you are” should be clear and obvious from a cursory reading of your application.
  • Everything should have evidence. If you don’t provide solid examples as evidence of your claims, they have no reason to believe you and no time to check.
  • They’ve seen all the tricks. Using them doesn’t help you.
  • You can’t fake excitement or passion. They seen hundreds of students faking it. You have to be honest through this application process.

Part III: Start Being Introspective

Now that you hopefully understand the need for honesty, it bears asking — how do you be honest and yet compelling?

The way to figure out how you are uniquely amazing is to be insightful. College are looking for people who have the potential to be impressive, while being a positive influence on their campus. The easiest way to measure a person’s ability to grow and have a positive impact is their thoughtfulness.

To write an impressive application, you need to get thoughtful about your actions, your history, and your mistakes.

Part IV: Finding Passions

The easiest way for a university to evaluate you is based on your passions — by their breadth, and the depth you invest in each of them. Your passion is the metric you probably want to maximize on your application.

There’s a few myths about being and showing passion to collges that I want to dispel:

  • There is no right thing to be passionate about.
  • There is no need to have to be passionate in what you’re planning to study at the university (though it admittedly doesn’t hurt)
  • There is no right way to be passionate.

I know that some of you are reading this with growing worry— AMKS, I’m not passionate about anything! What do I do?? You are passionate, it just may not be about something you’ve been taught is important. Do you spend hours grinding League? Perhaps an egregious amount of time writing fanfiction. Maybe way too much time playing cricket. Maybe a deep fascination with cooking.

A passion is just something that you end up doing more intensely than other people. Everyone is passionate about something.

You passion does not need to be your major. I’m studying computer science and economics right now, but spent most of my time doing debate and theatre in high school. It’s not something that I use much anymore, but it was one of the primary focuses of my application.

(If you’re still in 9th or 10th grade, you still have time to drill down into what you have fun doing, and do it as much as possible. This is your passion, and I encourage you to chase it deeply.)

If you’re older, look back at your high school journey and figure out what you’ve spent most time doing, most intensely. That is your passion, and that’s what you probably want to write about.

Part V: Demonstrating Passions

You might be the most passionate person in the world, but if you don’t know how to express it, colleges aren’t picking you. Like an eye-catching painting, you need to frame it.

Life is messy — you start things, stumble, forget, do things you don’t care about. Our story is zig zaggy and unclean. A narrative is a reduction — an easy-to-follow version of your experiences. You don’t need to share your life — the word limit on the application won’t let you do that anyway.

Answer these questions about your passion to understand how to start writing about your passions:

  • Why are you passionate about this in particular?
  • When did you start pursuing this? Why did you first pick it up?
  • What are all the ways you’ve demonstrated your growing passion and mastery over this domain?
  • What were some of the pitfalls you faced while chasing this passion?
  • How has being passionate about this made you a better person?
  • How are you planning to continue pursuing this passion post-high school?

These questions are a trick for you to start getting introspective. These are things that make for a good explanation of why you are who you are.

Try to reduce your passions to specific moments, victories, mistakes. Can you think of turning or critical points? These are moments that demonstrate who you are, and these are moments you’re looking to highlight in the application.

Part VI: Do Your Research

Don’t give a flimsy reason to want to join a college. They know that their college is prestigious. They know that their college has some really fun classes. They know that their college produced 4 living presidents. They don’t need fun facts about their university.

They are interested in why you are interested in their university. What about the university connects with you? Forget the facts that anyone can look up — start searching through university subreddits and facebook groups. See where you might fit in to that ecosystem — perhaps the university has a huge underground improv comedy scene that few outsiders know about. Perhaps you enjoy some obscure tradition. Perhaps the university has a culture of being honest about your struggles that you connect with.

This is good advice not just for an application, but for finding a university that’ll fit you in the first place. Don’t blindly optimize.

Part VII: Evidence? Objection, Your Honor!

Application readers don’t believe you. They do not have the time to check your background, and they have enough people being dishonest on applications.

If you write about how you’re a great debator, a compelling speaker, and amazing at leading a team, it’s likely to be glossed over. You need to provide stories for any claim you make about yourself. So you’re a great team leader — talk about a time your team was going through a rough phase, and you lead them through it. You’re a great debator? Talk about a time you snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and how.

There’s a common saying in screenwriting —show, don’t tell. I’d suggest taking this to heart in your application process.

Part VIII: Don’t Play the Process

Contrary to what I’ve been saying this entire article, let me tell you an unfortunate secret: College applications are crap-shoots. You might be the perfect candidate, and get rejected. You might be below all the universities’ statistics, and still get in. If you go to a university that doesn’t fit you, you’re going to regret it forever — even if it’s an extremely prestigious place to study. Find something that fits you more than finding the most highly rated place that’ll accept you.

Part IX: A Few Words to Parents Reading This

I’m sure that this article will reach as many, if not more, parents that it will students. This section is for you, parents.

Allow your child to explore various things, and to abandon just as many. High school is probably the best time to explore what you’re interested in — give them the space to do that. Yes, trying ice-sculpting for a semester then abandoning it might not help them through college apps. But it is only through this process that they’ll find what they’re truly passionate about. Invest in their passions once they find them, monetarily and time-wise. They need your support, steadfastness, and sometimes they need you to be as passionate as them about something. Teenagers are flaky, hormonal, emotional, and confused. Finally, the most important — don’t set unrealistic expectations. Please give them the liberty of messing up.

Conclusion

This article talked majorly (and specifically) about the big picture stuff. There’s so many more details to worry about — SATs, AP Scores, grades, extra-curriculars, yada yada. If you’re reading this, you probably are already worrying about all of that. If you have any specific questions about any of those, drop me a line at hi@amks.me.

And of course, all the best! You’ve got this.