Curious Cardinals Blog

Your kid’s school day just ended.

It's officially back-to-school season! Whether you are starting middle school or entering your last year of high school, we want to support you to start the year off on a high note!

It’s 10pm on a Thursday. Your kid’s door is closed, but light seeps underneath. You knock and open it. He’s staring at a blank Google doc. 

There’s no denying it: the transition from middle to high school is one of the toughest, most high stakes transitions in a young student’s life. Will they thrive and come into their own? Or will they fall behind with college applications looming? 

Last week I spoke to 10 parents whose daughters lacked confidence in math. I remembered when I got a C+ on my honors math test. Teachers told me to drop the advanced track instead of addressing the very real gender gap - I was one of three girls in my class - and empowering me to stick with it. 

Jaidyn Hurst, a rising senior at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, is busy, to say the least. When we interviewed her this summer, she was Zooming in from Barcelona, where she was a student on the Oxbridge program majoring in Spanish, taking lessons every day, doing international relations as a minor, and also soaking up the sites of the city, “walking and roaming around and going to the beach.” Just days after returning from Barcelona, she was set to start working at the Colorado nonprofit Valley Settlement, where she is designing a music program to teach in Spanish to adults and children.

There are some students who already know exactly what they are passionate about. They’ve got a packed schedule of activities surrounding a certain interest, and are fairly certain about their future college major and career path. So what do they need a mentor for?

Integral to Curious Cardinals is our focus on student agency, project-based learning, and our mission to create a space where students can research, design, and test their own ideas and explore their own passions. So when the possibility of a partnership with Colorado Academy’s REDI Labs came up, it seemed like a pedagogical match made in heaven. 

Abey Fuks, Ava Litman, Hayley Silvers, and Mischa Abend are testament that one is never too young to make a difference. The rising 8th graders at Horace Mann School in NYC are all close friends, Curious Cardinals students, and now fundraisers and co-chairs of “Kids Cancel Cancer”: a kid-created, kid-focused fundraising event on behalf of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation.

The college-essay writing process can be stressful and daunting. It's no easy task to sum up your personality, a major life event, an academic or extracurricular passion of yours, or an impactful story in 500 words or so! So how do you start to tackle the blank document screen before you, and get your ideas down in a way that is compelling and authentic to you?

Fear not! We asked Five Curious Cardinals mentors, now successful students at top colleges, to share their advice on where to begin, and how to make your way through the essay-writing process. Here are their top tips for approaching the dreaded college essay: