Spike, Purpose & Narrative

Getting Started: Finding Your Spike, Purpose & Narrative

UCLA received 145,000+ first-year undergraduate applications in 2025. 

NYU, 114,000+. 

UC Berkeley, 126,000+. 

There are thousands of students who are good at math; thousands who are good at art; thousands who are good at biology. You get the idea. Being good at something alone does not show very much about who you are. What makes an application memorable is how your interests, experiences, values, and personality come together in a way that is uniquely yours. We call this your “spike” and “purpose.”

But here's the part that often gets lost in conversations about “standing out:" you are not a college application. High school is also four years of your life. Spend those years doing things you genuinely enjoy, being curious, trying things you're bad at, and spending time with people you love.

And while you're doing that, you'll find that you probably have way more than just one strength. Sometimes, what makes someone distinctive is the way different parts of their life intersect. A student who loves both math and art, for example, may discover something about themselves that neither interest reveals alone. A student who is good at math may have tutored algebra to peers and even won Math Olympiad. A student who is good at art may have volunteered at an art school and even won YoungArts. But a student who is good at both may have doodled visual explanations of math concepts they struggle to understand. They shared them with classmates. Eventually, they created a website because they realized other students found their visualizations useful. The student never set out to “build a spike”; they simply followed what they enjoyed. 

The second part is purpose. It answers a deceptively simple question: why do you do what you do?

Purpose does not have to mean solving a global problem. It can be curiosity, creativity, independence, helping people you care about, making things beautiful, understanding how things work, or simply challenging yourself. This is where your character and values begin to show.

Take the student who combines art and math. Maybe they initially created their visual explanations because they struggled with traditional ways of learning math themselves. Over time, they realized their drawings were also useful to students who learned differently. That experience might lead them to care deeply about making education more accessible to students with learning disabilities or neurodivergence.

As you move through high school, let your interests guide where you spend your time. You may discover that several of your activities naturally connect through a common interest, skill, or value. If they do, great. If they don't, that's okay too. Your activities don't need to form a perfectly coherent résumé. What makes you you, and so uniquely you that you couldn't be mistaken for anyone else? 

And not everything you do needs to help your college application. 

Play basketball because it's fun. Read fantasy novels that have nothing to do with your intended major. Learn guitar and never perform publicly. Hang out with your friends. Work a part-time job. Try an activity and quit because you didn't like it. You are allowed to be a teenager.

If you are a senior reading this and you still have not discovered some perfectly coherent direction, do not panic. This is where narrative becomes especially important. College admissions are not only about what you did, but also about how well you communicate what those experiences meant to you. Something meaningful can easily disappear inside an application if you never explain why it mattered; conversely, an ordinary experience can become deeply revealing if you are thoughtful about what it says about you. 

The goal isn't to build a student who looks impressive on paper. It's to help you become a person who is genuinely curious, engaged, and fulfilled—and then communicate that person honestly through your application.