"Action will destroy your procrastination."| A UPenn Student's Advice on Extracurriculars

We had the opportunity of interviewing Uday Tripathi, a student at the University of Pennsylvania about: Extracurriculars Uday is: The President of MUSE Consulting, The President of Engineers in Medicine, An Engineering Teaching Assistant, Co-Founder of Golden Gate Editing (college application consultant), Valedictorian of his class in high school, Scorer of 5s on all of 8 of his AP exams, Achiever of perfect scores on three SAT subject tests, A Merit Semifinalist, and a Scholar Athlete. Uday shares with us: "The main thing for me was and always has been avoiding procrastination - it can really do wonders!" "Several colleges have programs similar to these, but definitely watch out to make sure that they aren’t purely taking courses and focus more on ones that will give you real-world experience." Q: In high school, you held various leadership positions and accolades, from debate, to baseball, to FBLA, to Boy Scouts. How were you able to make time for this wide range of activities? A: The main thing for me was and always has been avoiding procrastination - it can really do wonders! Whenever I had free time and had an assignment or extracurricular I could be doing, I would try to finish it even if it wasn’t due for weeks. I also got in the habit of planning my days every morning (and sometimes weeks during busy weeks) so that I would have a general idea of what I could accomplish that day. Time boxing helps in this regard. Q: You also researched cancer and cardiovascular disease at Boston University and UC Irvine. How did you find these opportunities? A: These two opportunities were through organized high school summer research programs (BU RISE and COSMOS). I did a lot of research online to find research programs where I would get to do meaningful work and ended up applying to several of them . I really wanted to avoid taking courses over the summer and instead to produce actual projects, which is what led me to RISE and COSMOS. Several colleges have programs similar to these, but definitely watch out to make sure that they aren’t purely taking courses and focus more on ones that will give you real-world experience. It’s a lot easier to talk about the latter than the former in college essays; research is far more unique than taking a summer math course at Harvard, for example. Learn more about Uday and his experience on his LinkedIn account. Think you know someone or are someone that can give some advice? Fill out this form here ! Have more questions based on what you’ve read? Submit them here !