Both my parents were educators, so interviews and college applications and shaking hands and looking people in the eye and feeling confident and knowing what you can bring to any project or audition - I've known about these things my entire life.
American universities have never considered academic merit the sole criterion for admittance.
If I was going to go to college, I had to have a scholarship. By my sophomore year, it was evident golf was not going to be the path.
Because I did well at the prep school, I got to have more options as some different universities gave me offers.
I think you are going through so many 'firsts' as a teenager, and it's a charged time because of that. You don't have much autonomy in life. Everything is just kind of crazy, and there are so many huge decisions to be made, like where are you going to college or who you date. These things can really affect your whole life.
I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and another who is in the 11th grade of high school.
I'm sure that being an applicant from the American School in Vienna helped get me into all seven colleges I applied to.
I didn't apply to different schools. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do.
I want to graduate high school, so it's very important to me, and I'll be focusing hard on that as well.
I don't attend an actual school but I'm still following through with high school. I do work with a tutor for about six hours a day. It's hard core but definitely worth it, and it's my main focus now - finishing up high school before I release my new album and apply to college.
At some of our most competitive universities, 17 times the amount of students that can go to the school, apply. And these applicants are from all over the country, and admissions officers need ways to sort through them. The SAT is just one of those things.
It all started with social media, building a fan base via Tumblr and YouTube, doing covers, and releasing a project with original music. Labels started to peel interest then. It was around the same time I was applying for college.
I'm visiting my high school. Every half year I do the exams, and then this year I'm going to graduate.
When I was 17, I was excited to graduate from high school!
Education was a big focus for me, before the show and during the show. I applied to four or five colleges and universities and got into three and was planning on going.
Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work.
It's a hard process to navigate... to figure out where your kid ought to go to college.
I was involved with my theater program in high school, and I was involved in a festival where I could audition for a lot of different schools.
When I was in high school, I didn't feel like I had to pile on the APs in order to look good to colleges. High-achieving classmates didn't use private tutors.
My public school teachers did a great job of saying, 'Check this out. You're qualified for this. You should explore these opportunities.' They're the ones who said, 'You know, apply to Harvard. You might be a good fit here.'
As a parent, you have to be good coach and bad coach, and I think in the college-application process, I didn't want to be bad coach. 'This is amazing! I'm so proud of you!' That's the role I wanted with my kids.
When I was applying to college, my mother told me I could apply to any school within the Boston subway map.
I'm 18, I'm going to graduate high school in a few months.
Am I going to be able to provide a real home for her, man? An education? A real life? What's her college application going to look like: 'Raised on Spooky Island by wizard with GED, please help'?
I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.
