Guide/02 Grades 9–11
Passion Projects: Starting One That's Real
How to find a project idea that's genuinely yours, start small, build real impact, measure it, keep it going, and write about it, plus the mistakes that make projects look fake.
A project you started yourself can be one of the strongest things on a college application. Everything that happened is clearly yours: the idea, the work, the setbacks, the results. That's also why fake projects are so easy to spot.
This chapter shows how to find an idea that grows out of a real interest, start small enough to finish, measure your impact, keep the project alive, and describe it honestly on your application...
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What’s in this chapter
- 1What counts as a passion project
- 2Step 1: Find an idea that's actually yours
- 3Step 2: Start small and finish something
- 4Step 3: Grow it into real impact
- 5Step 4: Measure what happened
- 6Step 5: Keep it going, or hand it off
- 7Writing about your project
- 8What makes a project look fake
- 9A sample timeline
- 10When not to start a project