Gone are the days of applying to college undeclared. You also need to be more than just declared; you need to explore your passions and build out an extracurricular profile that just screams, “I love political science!!!!”
Poli sci is one of the most popular majors for college hopefuls and probably the most popular non-STEM major across the board (or tied with Econ, tbh). This means you have some stiff competition, especially if you’re interested in a top-tier school.
“Okay, TKG, but I’m a sophomore, do I really need to be thinking about this?” Yes. This is the best time to start thinking about college and starting to explore the topics that interest you. You also need to be smart about how you explore these potential passions, and we’ve perfected the strategy. Let’s dive into how we guide our clients through their sophomore year and set them up for success:
Identifying the Niche
This is the biggest thing and the thing that takes the most time. While we’d love to jump in with a ~vibe assessment~ and assign you your perfect topic, it just doesn't work that way. We’re passionate about helping you figure out what you’re passionate about. If you come to us with an interest in political science, we want to help you discover if that means you’re into international politics, or electoral politics, or political theory. Then we want to take it a step deeper – maybe you start with international politics, but then you realize you’re actually really interested in the differences in electoral systems in Europe. Then, we help you explore, research, and learn about that topic in depth.
This not only sets you up for a successful application down the line, but will help you in deciding if this is actually the thing you want to study. Sometimes students come to us and realize they like the topic, but don’t know if they want to dedicate four years of college to it. And starting as a sophomore means you have a lot of time to change up your interests if you need to!
But let’s talk more about how we help students discover that niche:
Exploring the Niche
As a sophomore, there’s a good chance you haven’t started learning about poli sci that much. There are three big things we get our sophomores started on to kick this off: online classes, books, and summer programs.
We’ll start by providing you with a personalized curriculum of online classes and books designed to help guide you through the process. Poli sci is a huuuuuge field, there are tons of subtopics and even sub-subtopics. We might start by having you take a class on the American Presidency, and you might latch onto FDR-New Deal stuff. From there, we’d have you read FDR biographies and do some personal research into the New Deal. Maybe then you realize you’re interested in policy, specifically progressive policy implementation in the US, and we have you read more and take some online classes on that subtopic. Boom, now we’ve gone from broad to specific, and you’re sitting near the bottom of your funnel.
Summer programs are another part of this, but they play a slightly different role. They’re typically pretty intro-level – which is great for sophomores just beginning to explore their interests. Since there are a lot of students who want to study poli sci, that means there are a lot of poli sci summer programs. Schools like Harvard, Columbia, Brown, UCLA, UChicago, Michigan, and Duke (and so many more) all have poli sci pre-college courses for you to explore. Some are very broad, like “Intro to Comparative Politics,” but some are specific, like Harvard’s “Politics of Health and Medicine in the United States” course. There are also programs not at colleges, some are through different think tanks, NGOs, or even places like The New York Times.
Summer programs are also beneficial because they can give you the opportunity to see and tour colleges that are at the top of your list. They can also go towards helping demonstrate interest, which some schools (like Duke), care about more than others. But let’s talk about summer a little bit more.
Planning Your Summer
One of the biggest things we do for long-term clients is plan their summers. It’s also one of our favorite things to do!! Summer is the biggest block of uninterrupted time you’ll have in your high school career. Yes, you have summer programs, but we think you can get more hands-on than that. And we love to help you find the right things for you!
Depending on what you find yourself most drawn to, you’ve got a lot of options when it comes to exploring poli sci outside of a classroom setting. We might have you sign up to volunteer for a campaign, intern with a non-profit or NGO, or try to start connecting with professors to research with. We also might have you get a summer job (responsibility is really good to have on apps), or undertake a personal research project. These will be your larger summer extracurriculars, but there’s other ones to consider throughout the year, too:
Extracurriculars
Helping you establish a good roster of extracurriculars is a big part of the process. These can be in school or out of school, but you definitely need to have them. And they can’t just be sports – they need to be things that fit into your interest area. For poli sci, things like debate, student government, political clubs, Model UN, and even the school paper can be really good additions. School extracurriculars are generally less in-depth than the things you’ll pursue outside of school, but you should still be engaged in your school community. Setting up new clubs or getting leadership in existing clubs and then actually doing stuff with those clubs is going to be key when it comes to making the most out of those memberships.
As a sophomore interested in poli sci, you have a lot of time to explore that interest further. In fact, you’re already a step ahead by actually knowing what you might be interested in studying in college. We love working with sophomores, and we know that our mix of helping you explore a topic, working on summer plans, and building out your extracurricular profile is the best way to set yourself up for success.
If you want to start strategizing for college, sophomore year is the best time to start. Reach out to us today if you need help with your college prep plans.