11. Ask and answer the one important question that a university won't ask you, but you wish they would.

How hard did you work to get here?
If colleges knew how hard some people worked to get to there and if they had any personal struggles interferring with their journey and still overcame them, I'm sure the acceptance rate would double. No one knows how hard some people work. Luckily, many become stronger along the way and so does their determination making the situation to be a "win-win". I obtained horrible grades my freshmen year of highschool that I'm ashamed of but quickly learned to put conflicts irrelevant to school out of the way. But I still struggled to get homework done due to lack of time and switching homes every other week. Being in sports year round cuts your free time especially if you practice on weekends because sports is also one of your priorities. It's easier when practice is right after school so when it's over you just go home and start your homework, but I've had practice at 5 pm even 7pm on some seasons and sometimes I can't go home because i live too far and don't have transportation. My next reason has been tremendously vexatious but did teach me responsibility, often when I switched parents' houses (they're divorced) I would forget my materials needed to do my homework. I have 2 binders, 4 notebooks, 1 portfolio, and 1 textbook needed every week so they're hard to keep track of. I wish colleges and universities did ask how hard I worked because then I would tell them all I've wrote and I would add that I still learned to keep all of my priorities balanced, such as school, family, friends, and sports even with family problems, distractions, sports practice, and personal struggles. Because who said being a teenager was easy?