How Ali Got Into UBC Science by Out-Thinking the Application

There is a number I could not stop thinking about. Tens of thousands. That is roughly how many applications land on the desk of a school like UBC, and somewhere in that stack was mine. I knew my grades. I knew my activities. What I did not know, sitting at my desk at the start of Grade 12, was the only question that mattered: out of all those people, why would they choose me? How do I make sure I am not just one more essay in the pile?

UBC was the school. Not a backup, not a hedge, the one I had pointed myself at. I wanted in, and I wanted in early, so I would not spend my spring refreshing an inbox. But wanting something badly and knowing how to earn it are two different things. The pool was deep, full of people who looked, on paper, a lot like me. Standing out in a crowd that talented felt less like a goal and more like a wall.

The Guidance I Was Looking For

What I needed was not someone to write the thing for me. I can write. The feedback my advisors gave me confirmed it, my drafts were already strong. What I needed was a way to see the application the way the people reading it would, and a system to push my own work until it was sharper than I could get it alone.

So I started with AdmissionPrep. It gave me the structure I had been missing: frameworks for how to build an essay, real feedback on every draft, and a clear picture of what a competitive application actually looks like. The work stayed mine. The lens got better. For a process this big, that was exactly the right kind of help.

Building an Identity, Not a List

Here is the trap I watched a lot of my peers fall into. They tried to do everything. Five clubs, six causes, a long list that looked impressive until you read it closely and realized none of it was deep. I went the other way, on purpose.

I picked a few things I genuinely cared about and went deep over years, not months. Politics pulled me in, so I started volunteering at my local constituency office. I joined youth councils. I built two or three focused areas instead of scattering myself across a dozen, because that focus does something a long list never can: it gives you an identity. When a reader looks at my file, I am not a person who dabbled in six things. I am a person who committed to a few, the kind of involvement that comes from caring, not from chasing a checkbox.

Reading the Rubric Before I Wrote a Word

Most people start their essays by writing. I started mine by researching. Before I drafted anything, I dug into UBC's admissions criteria, what they actually look for, what they actually reward. The admissions module helped me see it clearly: they are not asking you to talk about anything you want. They are scoring you against something specific.

That changed how I worked. For every prompt, I came up with two or three ideas before committing to one. Then I held each one against the rubric and asked a cold question: which would score higher? If a topic did not resonate, or did not hit what they were looking for, I dropped it and moved to the next. Starting early bought me that freedom. I was never locked into a weak idea at 11:59 the night before a deadline, because I had given myself room to restart.

The Joke I Was Terrified to Make

If you take one thing from my story, take this: the readers are human, and they are tired. Picture someone working through tens of thousands of essays, reading each one maybe once, maybe twice, before it goes into a pile. The question that kept me up was simple. How do I make mine the one they remember?

So I did something that scared me. I put humor into my essays. Not jokes thrown around for the sake of it, that is the fastest way to sink an application. Carefully placed, deliberately built humor, woven in so it revealed something about who I am instead of just trying to be clever. My advisor and I went back and forth on it more than almost anything else, line by line, because the line between memorable and reckless is thin. We got it right. In a stack of essays that all sound the same, a real moment of personality is what makes a reader look up.

Cutting Until Only the Truth Was Left

The harder work was not adding. It was subtracting. My first drafts said too much. The program taught me to structure my writing around what readers are actually scanning for, then strip out everything that was not pulling its weight. The fluff, the sentences that sounded nice and said nothing, all of it had to go.

What is left when you cut that hard is your actual contribution. Not "I was involved in a thing," but exactly what I did, the role I played, the result that came of it. That is the part students struggle with most, the instinct is to list everything you touched. The skill is pulling out the one true thing in each experience and letting it stand. Narrowing my focus did not make my applications smaller. It made them land.

The Early Yes

It worked. I got into UBC Science, my first and only real choice, and I got in early. No spring spent waiting. And the funding followed: roughly $8,000 in scholarships, more than enough to cover my entire first year of tuition, with applications still open as I write this.

The dollars matter. But the number that meant the most to me was not on a scholarship cheque. It was the fact that I had taken a wall that felt impossible, tens of thousands of applicants, and found my way over it as myself. I did not get smaller to fit in. I got clearer, and that is what got me through.

The Word: Differentiate

If I had to put this whole journey into one word, it would be differentiate.

Everything I learned bent toward that single idea. Going deep on a few passions instead of wide on many, that was differentiation. Reading the rubric before writing, so my topics scored higher than the obvious ones, differentiation. The humor I was scared to use, the relentless cutting until only my real voice remained, all of it answered one question asked over and over: what makes me, me, and how do I make a reader feel it in the seconds they spend on my file?

That is the thing nobody can hand you. A program can give you the frameworks, the feedback, the map of what readers want. But the part that stands out has to be yours, because the whole point is that it is unlike anyone else's. Learning to find that and trust it changed how I see not just applications, but myself.

A Note to the Next Grade 11 Kid

Start now. I mean it. Treat admissions as a two-year process, not a Grade 12 sprint, because schools like UBC look at both your Grade 11 and Grade 12 grades, and the activities that count are the ones you have built over years. If you wait until applications open, it shows. Last-minute looks last-minute, and readers can tell.

So if you are in Grade 11 right now, this is your window. Pick the two or three things you genuinely love and go deep. Set the goal, point yourself at it, and start chipping away while you still have the runway. And if you are a parent reading this, here is the honest filter. This kind of program does not write the application for your child. It teaches them how to think about it, then asks them to do the work. If your kid will take feedback, sit with a hard draft, and push their own ideas further, this is the right fit. It will not stand out for them. It will teach them how to stand out for themselves.

Where I Stand Today

I am still in the middle of it, more scholarship applications open, more deadlines ahead. But the hardest part is behind me, and it taught me something I will carry into every room I walk into next. You do not win a crowd by trying to look like everyone in it.

There were tens of thousands of us. I stopped trying to be one of them the moment I figured out the only thing worth being, which was unmistakably myself.