The Zinch Report

This is Part 2 of the All-Star Series. Recently, USA Today came out with their annual All-Academic team, showcasing 20 of the most talented and accomplished high school seniors in America. I was able to catch up with a bunch of them, interviewing them about their high school accomplishments, asking about their college admissions experiences, and begging them to share some of their nuggets of wisdom with y'all. Read my introduction post.

Quick facts: Jason just graduated from Fox Chapel Area High in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He will be attending Harvard in the fall. He graduated with a 4.0 GPA (unweighted out of 4.0).

Accomplishments:He is the first high school student to have solo photography exhibitions in the main gallery of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Studio and in Carnegie Mellon's Hewlett Gallery of Art; president and founder of Thespian Society; directs, produces and acts in numerous high school productions, including lead role at Pittsburgh City Theater; wrote one-act performed at high school; Senior Outreach Society president and founder; physics club co-president; forensics club president and state semi-finalist in improptu speaking; wrote two novels and had poetry published in high school and city literary magazines.

Jason, you seem to do it all. How on earth do you do it? You seem super busy with all your extracurriculars, yet still do amazing in school. Share with us your knowledge and advice.
Surprisingly, I found that, yes, I was busy, but not super busy. Mostly I just found things that I loved to do, things that I was passionate about, like theater and art: they always say "if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." This definitely holds true for me; I never felt that I was constrained by my extracurriculars, or that I was not having fun. Most of my friends were part of the extracurriculars that I participated in, so I sort of "killed two birds with one stone" by participating in activities that I loved, while having fun with my friends. Also, I was never big on watching hours of TV or talking on AIM or anything like that. On occasion, I would spend maybe an hour online, and every night I watched about a half hour of TV to catch up on the news, but I just felt like it was such a waste to drain your time with TV and AIM.

I'm glad you like photography. I do too. I love it. It's one of my big hobbies. Anyway, what's the craziest thing you've ever photographed? (if you have a pic of this, send it to me and I'll post it too).
Most of my photography is very painterly. It is all very compositional; I have a very strange photographic process: I imagine and sketch my ideas and then I construct still lifes of my sketches and photograph them. So my photography is less like photography, and more like painting I guess. This probably is what contributed to my work's success; I had a new, creative outlook on the photographic process and curators really went for that. I have never really photographed anything "crazy," but I do have many, many crazy photographs (there's a difference).

This photo is called "Miss Milo."

You held plenty of leadership positions throughout high school. What lessons have you learned as a leader? What advice do you have for current high school students who lead their clubs, captain their teams, etc?
Although I am generally liberal, I love Machiavelli. So....I would say that as a leader in my high school, above all, I have chosen to make sure that members and participants think highly about the club, and that they don't always know when things are going wrong; this way, you don't lose support, and you can get things done without a billion complaints. Also, find a teacher that can really support you, and ask them for advice; you don't always have to take it, but it's nice to have his/her opinion. My biggest advice would be, especially if you are dealing with money, document everything....and always be fair. Set your goals SUPER high, that way, if the club's idea doesn't exactly come to fruition, then you can still be proud of your results. I know that aiming high and pushing the limits of my high school has really worked for me.

I love your "The Origin of Species" series. How did you do it and what inspired you to do it?
I worked for a long time actually, doing sketches and drawings. The idea is about the creative process (the subject's starting as a hand seems very appropriate when we consider the origin of man and his efficacy) and explores the evolution of thought. Artists I think, can be a lot like musicians: our work can mystify, can entrance, enthrall...and a magician NEVER reveals his secret.

What are your long term goals? What do you want to become, professionally and personally?
I would really like to go to law school after Harvard and I would love to go to art school and/or get a PhD after that. Education is really important to me, so I plan to stay in school for a while...or at least until (if) I get my "big break." Really though, I would like to by a writer, perhaps a playwright. Indeed, I would really like to continue being part of the theatrical creative process.

You've written novels, plays, and all sorts of other awesome things. I know you can write. So give us a little excerpt of part of one of your college application essays. Feel free to give us the context of it too.
Sure. This one is about growing-up in a really wealthy area. Although I cannot say that I share said wealth, my experiences growing-up in such an area impacted me greatly...here are the first couple paragraphs or so.....(something I learned from the whole college admissions process, is that they really don't care how long your essay is, so long as it doesn't ramble, and so long as its a killer piece.....they shouldn't want to put it down.)

"Eleven years ago, I had heard only rumors of the mysterious place to which we slowly drove- “Suburbia:” the territory where country club membership means assimilation, and where Wonder Bread is sold in surprisingly large quantities for a great many PB&J sandwiches.

Later, I would learn that the deeply suburban "Area X" was a surreal Xanadu for its 7th generation residents who hid themselves in the blind tones of their mostly-beige homes. Later, I would learn that it was this suburb that bore the homes of John Kerry and Teresa Heinz, Richard Gere, and a certain mysterious Greek princess.

But it was in the subliminal that my pre-teen person began to perceive a Suburbia polluted by a different kind of poverty, a poverty obscured by a surfeit of money and vast Gothic mansions. It began to seem that for Suburbia, the world and all of its attributes ended on the Allegheny River, that Suburbia insulated itself in the blinding glow of crystal chandeliers in florid galas, in the over-wash of a thousand fresh golf balls, and in the scorch of racially exclusive social societies.

Maybe it was because of these realizations that I would ascribe the barrier in the search for my “self” with the suburban monolith, with a stereotype that became synonymous with frighteningly competitive landscaping, and a hairline strand of seemingly misplaced minorities"

---I changed the name of the suburban area for privacy purposes....you an change it from "Area X" to whatever you like....maybe Hampton Falls.....that sounds fairly affluent...

What advice do you have for high school students trying to get into their dream school? Any college admissions nuggets of wisdom you'd like to share.

Colleges like to see passion and excellence. Devote yourself to one thing or many things and thrive. Also, admissions is fairly random.....all you can do is improve your odds tremendously......the best ways in my opinion:

Study for the SAT's---if you want to go Ivy League you better have something in the 1500's (not including writing) especially if your from the east coast or California. I had to take like a thousand practice tests to get good at the SAT's...

Take hard courses and get "A"'s (or as many as you can)...if you have a perfect transcript a one or two "B"s then have the teacher who gave you the "B" write you a letter of rec.---sometimes this can explain-away or even-out the B with the teacher's input about your good character.

Write a professional resume and put it one nice paper----never shorten a resume to one page for undergraduate admissions....its NOT like applying for a job, they want to know everything significant (its okay to have a 4-5 page resume- most kids I know who got in had very lengthy ones)....that being said, don't beef it up too much, they can tell.

I'm a little biased I know...but I think Princeton rocks! I'm wondering, why did you choose Harvard over Princeton.
Well, actually, like I said, college admissions is REALLY random. I got into to every Ivy League school....except for....PRINCETON....haha.....actually my first choices were (in this order....1st choice pair....2nd choice pair.....) Harvard and Yale....Columbia and Princeton.....and then Brown and Penn. And well....duh...I mean, its Harvard.....haha....just kidding...

What do you think about Zinch.com? Do you believe students are more than just test scores?
I love Zinch. Its a wonderful tool, and had I known about it before I applied and got into college, I definitely would have used it. Of course we are more than test scores, but, most importantly, it is our job (with a little help---from parents, and teachers, and especially Zinch) to prove that to admissions officers.