How Gabriella Went From a Small BC Town to U of T Social Sciences

It is quiet where I grew up. A small town in British Columbia, the kind of place where everyone knows the same few streets and the big city is something you mostly see on a screen. For a long time that was the whole map. Then I started to picture a different one: a campus on the far side of the country, a program in a field I actually cared about, a life with more room in it than the one I could see out my window. I wanted it badly. I just was not sure a girl from here got to have it.

I will be honest, I was a little late figuring out what I wanted to be. A lot of students seem to know at fourteen. I did not. What I did know was the shape of it. I cared about people, about social justice, about understanding the experiences that other people carry. My upbringing opened my eyes to that early, and my own family shaped it. So even without a job title in my head, I knew the direction: sociology, anthropology, the social sciences. I trusted that if I kept walking toward what I was passionate about, I would figure out the rest. The part that scared me was everything between the want and the plan. The deadlines. The essays. The leap itself.

The Program I Decided to Trust

I had seen the AdmissionPrep ads for a while before I did anything about them. I was skeptical, the way you are about anything that promises to help. But by the July of my Grade 11 year, that natural stress had started to build, the quiet realization that I needed to lock in if I actually wanted to reach my goals. So I decided it was worth a try.

What I found was not someone who would do the work for me. It was guidance that taught me to do it well myself. I learned quickly that there is a lot more to an application than typing in your information and sending it off. I started to approach the whole thing more carefully. Every so often I would sit down with an advisor and we would talk through my goals and the next steps to reach them. That rhythm took something enormous and made it feel like mine to carry.

Building Something Real

Here is what I wish more students understood: admissions is not a contest over who collected the most titles. The people reading your file are looking for someone real, someone who actually serves the people around them.

I was lucky that service already came naturally to me. I am the president of my school's environmental club, and one of the projects I am proudest of was revitalizing a garden at a local senior home. I helped assemble food packages for humanitarian aid sent to countries living through conflict. I ran garbage cleanups in our local park. I have spent time with the elderly in our community since I was young, back when I used to perform ballet at senior homes just to connect with the people there and brighten their day. None of it was for a checkbox. When it came time to tackle the supplemental questions for a school like UBC, my advisors kept pushing me to go deeper and to polish, to make sure the work spoke for itself. By the time applications opened, all those scattered things had become one honest thread, and the thread was mine.

The People in My Corner

When I first joined, I was overloaded. There were so many factors I had never considered, and my first thought was the one every student has: how do I break this down and still reach my goal without missing a single deadline? The advisors made it straightforward. They helped me digest the requirements one piece at a time until the mountain looked like a set of stairs.

What I did not expect was how much the encouragement would matter. Whether I was sending essays to the editing team or talking through my goals with my advisor, the message underneath was always the same: you can do this, and we will help you do it well. These were people who did not really know me. They still made me believe I could reach the things I was reaching for.

The Essay I Could Not Write

If you take one thing from my story, take this. The hardest part of my application was not a grade or a deadline. It was a blank page that asked me to talk about myself.

I applied to around six universities, and one of them asked for a supplemental essay, the kind that wants to know who you are beyond your transcript. I froze. I have never been good at articulating my own achievements. I know I am a good student. I know I contribute to my community. But the moment I had to say it out loud, on a page, a voice in my head asked whether I was even allowed to be proud of any of it. The fear of sounding arrogant loomed over me right up to the deadline.

What got me through was a shift in mindset. I stopped trying to manage how I would be seen. I started talking about what I had done as plainly as if someone had just asked me about it in the moment it happened. It was uncomfortable at first, because I was so far inside my own head. But I realized something I think a lot of us need to hear: being proud of yourself is not inherently arrogant. Watering down your own successes is a habit, not a virtue. You can name the things you are proud of without performing humility about them. Once I let myself do that, the page stopped being a wall.

Across the Country

My grades had been climbing the whole time, from a range in the high eighties and low nineties to a 95 average by Grade 12 that I am genuinely proud to have held. When the decisions came in, the University of Toronto, for social sciences, was the one that mattered. U of T had been on my radar from the start, and now it was real.

It is exciting and a little overwhelming all at once. I am leaving a small town in BC for a much bigger city on the other side of the country. There is a whole support system I will have to rebuild, and all the ordinary stress that comes with a new chapter. But I like a challenge. The prize was never just the acceptance. It was the freedom to choose the bigger, harder version of my life on purpose. There were other options. I knew which one I wanted, and I told myself I was going to get it.

The Word: Encouraging

If I had to describe this whole journey in one word, it would be encouraging.

Not once, across the entire process, did I feel like maybe I should not be here, or that what I wanted was out of reach. Every time I met some kind of adversity, I was sure I could work around it, because the people around me had made me sure. That is what the encouragement gave me. It was never about inflating my ego. If I had needed honest criticism on something, I would have gotten it, and I am grateful the feedback was always real. But the steady belief underneath it taught me to believe in myself, and to finally let my own voice come through.

A Note to the Next Grade 11 Kid

My biggest advice is almost embarrassingly simple: just explore, and start small. You do not need a master list of universities and contacts on day one. If you are already on your phone, and most of us are, use it. Search a few things about programs you are curious about, or even what you would need for a dorm, and watch your algorithm start to feed you more. Pair the new habit with something you already do. Instead of binging a whole show, I would spend fifteen minutes, not even every day, going down a rabbit hole about a program or a school. It really does not take as much time as you fear to begin.

And mindset is everything. Telling yourself this is so overwhelming, I have so much to do, never once helped me in the moment. Sometimes you have to fake the confidence until it becomes real, and find small ways to keep yourself moving. If you are in Grade 9, you genuinely have time, so do not pile pressure on yourself, just stay curious. If you are in Grade 11 like I was, there is a little more urgency, but the same rule holds: take one honest step, then the next.

And if you are a parent reading this, here is the honest version. This is the right kind of program for a student who is willing to do the work themselves, take feedback without flinching, and stay disciplined when no one is watching. It will not carry your child. It will teach them how to carry themselves.

Where I Stand Today

It has been a rocky road, and I did not let any of the hard parts diminish my drive. I am proud of where I am, and prouder of who I had to become to get here: someone who can finally say what she has done without shrinking from it.

I am still a girl from a small town. But the map got bigger. This fall I cross the entire country to a city and a school I once only pictured, and for the first time the distance does not scare me. It just looks like the next honest step.