Uncommon Applicant

An Online Video Course & Community
for Students Building a Self-Directed Project

REGISTER

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Uncommon Applicant

A mini-course for helping students develop their leadership capacities, then brainstorm and potentially launch a self-directed project.

Have a cool idea for a project but just need some inspiration and tools to help you get it off the ground?

Or maybe you want to stay engaged, creative, and productive this year but just don’t know where to begin.

This course will provide you with the resources and information needed to get started.

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Develop Leadership Capacity

Receive access to the on demand video curriculum with all the tools you need to create a self-directed project.

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Find Your Project

Your Creativity + A Problem in Our World = Opportunity to Make a Difference

 

 

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Watch Workshop Sessions

Watch past workshop sessions with me (Bonnie), where we brainstorm ideas, give and receive feedback, and troubleshoot problems.

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Learn About Yourself

What are my core values?
What am I really good at?
What do I love to do?

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Create a Plan

Whether you decide to launch your project or just explore a new interest, you’ll have the tools and resources to make it happen.

“I signed up for this course so that I didn’t spend my summer doing nothing…but instead I was able to start my podcast like I always dreamed of doing!”

Linda

Uncommon Summer Student

A group of people sit at tables in a classroom setting, with one person standing and speaking while holding papers. A presenter stands at the front near a projector screen.
  • How to identify your core values and how they manifest in your life
  • How do you lead? Are you more comfortable out front (envisioning big ideas) or in a supporting role (helping others get things done)?
  • Receive access to an on-demand video curriculum with all the tools you need to create, launch, and level-up your self-directed project
  • Receive access to our recorded workshop sessions with me (Bonnie), where we brainstorm ideas, give and receive feedback on each other’s projects, and troubleshoot problems and roadblocks as a group
  • Read and watch a curated selection of great articles & videos about how to grow as a self-directed learner and generally become a more thoughtful and productive person
  • You’ll join a community of your peers where you’ll connect, collaborate, and share ideas
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  • Remain calm in the face of adversity
  • Identify problems in your community that matter to you and how to brainstorm potential solutions
  • Avoid the pitfalls of perfectionism
  • Scope a project (to avoid potential overwhelm)
  • Use the internet (better) to research your project
  • Write an effective vision and mission statement
  • Create a to-do list and schedule that works
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  • Want to brainstorm a cool project idea to keep them busy
  • Have a lot of creative ideas, but need some structure in order to put them into practice
  • Are already working on a project and looking for more ideas/tools/inspiration
  • Want to make a tangible contribution to their community or the larger world
  • Don’t have an idea for a project, but simply want to learn more about who they are and how they work

Here's a quick preview:

REGISTER FOR THE COURSE

Course Overview

Video Modules

  • Module One: Building Capacity and Getting to Know Yourself
  • Module Two: Selecting and Scoping Your Project
  • Module Three: Tools for Getting Stuff Done
  • Module Four: Recruiting Mentors & Building a Team

The on-demand curriculum is made up of 19 exercises that give you all the tools you’ll need to undertake a self-directed project, from start to finish.

We start with building capacity as a self-directed learner and leader, and finish with tools for marketing and reaching a wider audience.

You’ll have the guidance of the on-demand videos andthe Uncommon Workbook to hold all your work in one place.

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What exactly is a self-directed project?

Here are some examples from previous students:

  • Designing a line of up-cycled clothing and selling it on Depop Publishing
  • Producing a podcast about space flight
  • Creating a virtual speaker series at your school
  • Renovating a bedroom
  • Launching a food or clothing drive
  • Constructing native bee boxes in a local county park
  • Designing and creating a garden
  • Designing an online computer building course 
  • Hand-printing t-shirts and donating the proceeds to racial equity organizations
  • Launching an online custom illustration business on Etsy
  • Finding interesting ways to help homeschool your younger siblings
  • Building or renovating a bedroom, treehouse, or car
  • Writing or producing a book, podcast, album, film, app, video game
  • Organizing a virtual talent show, hackathon, poetry slam, storytelling night, concert, and art show
  • Creating a virtual career day panel to speak to students about their paths

I start a lot of projects, but I usually get stuck figuring out how to execute my ideas. This course provided a lot of awesome resources to help me reach my goal of continuing and staying motivated. Plus, so many of the resources were so practical.

Brittney

Uncommon Summer Student

Meet Your Guide

Hi, I’m Bonnie! As soon as I arrived in high school, I felt like something was off. My school’s academic and social environment wasn’t a good fit for me.

Luckily, one of my friends gave me a copy of the Teenage Liberation Handbook. It seemed a little radical, but the author was actually advocating for ambitious students to drop out of high school as a strategy for getting into college and pursuing their dreams. I realized that I could probably be more productive outside of school, so I made the leap!

After I quit full-time school, I signed up for correspondence courses, volunteered at a local nonprofit, worked in construction, slung coffee (as we say in Seattle), traveled for several months in Australia and Fiji, learned to surf, taught English in Japan, attended community college, and then finished the International Baccalaureate at an international school in Norway.

When college applications came around, I was accepted to every university that I applied to, with full scholarship offers at most. After taking a gap year, I went to Stanford for a BA in History, then moved to Sweden, where I completed an MFA at Konstfack. I worked for a number of years as a producer with the Stanford Storytelling Project, and now I am back in my native Seattle, working as a writer, editor, and academic coach.

Those un-schooling years were truly formative in my life, and I’m grateful that I took that initial risk of doing something different with my time in high school. While I don’t think that dropping out of school is a good idea for everybody, especially students who are happy, I do think that learning to recognize one’s own sense of purpose and taking action toward fulfilling it can help one live a more authentic life.

That’s my goal with this program: to help you find your sense of purpose, and take action toward fulfilling it. And perhaps it will make your college application more competitive as well.

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Uncommon Applicant

An Online Course & Community for Building a Self-Directed Project

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PAY IN FULL

One Time Payment

✓
Covers Everything from Casting Vision to Marketing Your Project to the World

✓
Uncommon Applicant Entrepreneur Toolkit

✓
20+ Video Lessons w/ 6+ Hours of Content

✓
Access to Past Live Q&A Sessions

$297
 
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PAYMENT PLAN

Four Monthly Payments

✓
Covers Everything from Casting Vision to Marketing Your Project to the World

✓
Uncommon Applicant Entrepreneur Toolkit

✓
20+ Video Lessons w/ 6+ Hours of Content

✓
Access to Past Live Q&A Sessions

$74/mo
 
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1-on-1 SUPPORT

One Time Payment

✓
Dig deep and uncover your unique story

✓
Craft outstanding college essays & applications alongside your coach

✓
Optional: Get college counseling & admissions planning support

Interested?
 
 

Pay What You Can Spots:

I offer pay-what-you-can spots for students from low-income households. 

It only takes a moment. Reach out below to request a spot.

SUBMIT A REQUEST

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have purchased any of our online video courses or live webinars, you can login by going to the website menu bar > Log In > Online Courses. You can view that page here. From there you can access all of your products in your library.

Not at this time. However, purchasing this course grants you access to the recordings of our previous live sessions.

All homework is optional. We will not grade it. We encourage students to complete the homework and use it as a supplemental tool.

Students have access to the course for one year from the date of purchase.

No. If you’re interested in getting your college application materials reviewed, check out our one-on-one essay coaching & admission coaching service.

This course is built for students who are doers, or at least ready to shift into “do something” mode. This is also for students who have a lot of creative ideas, but need the structure and tools to get started. (And if this isn’t you, here’s a list of 11 Things You Can Do This Summer That Don’t Involve Saving the World or our larger post, How to Spend Your High School Summer

Really, though, we want to prepare the next generation of leaders who are coming of age in a highly complex and unprecedented historical moment. In that sense, if you’re between the ages of 14 and 17 and personal development is your thing, we’d love for you to join us.

It depends. If you want, you can watch the four 90-minute sessions (so 6 hrs total) and learn a lot. Other students, however, will get inspired by the resources and ideas they discover and may end up spending 10 hours or more per week on their project.

All the homework is optional, so it’s kind of up to you.

Maybe. Colleges are definitely interested in students who take initiative and this can be a great way to do that. But we don’t think this is the best reason to develop a self-directed project. We hope this program will make you into a better thinker, leader, and human.

We mean your ability to stay grounded and present, even when your team is in turmoil and nothing is going the way you planned. We also mean both the ability to exercise your strengths and recognize when it may be time to ask for help. We believe compassionate leadership rests on a set of capacities that can be learned and reinforced with practice.

It probably will. The purpose of this program isn’t necessarily to finish a project (although you might!), but to have the tools and resources to more effectively identify good ideas, limit the scope of what you can realistically get done given your available time and resources, and navigate complicated situations as they arrive.

No need to have one in mind. This course will help you brainstorm ideas. And if you don’t come up with an idea by the end of the course, that’s okay too. You’ll still learn a lot.

Access is really important to all of us at College Essay Guy. It’s at the heart of most everything we do and is why so many resources on the site are free and pay-what-you-can. We offer pay-what-you-can spots for students from low-income homes. You can submit a request on this page at the links above. As this is something we are passionate about, we have an option to submit a pay-what-you-can request on each of our course pages.

My FAQ page has you covered. Or, if you can’t find the answer there, email [email protected].

REGISTER FOR THE COURSE