This came out long af, and I know it's for a niche audience (HS writers), but I have faith some of you will find it! Here is everything you need to know to leverage your creative passion into top-tier acceptances.

(0) The Baseline. This should go without saying, but if you’re serious about writing and want to do it in college, you should be reading and writing ALL THE TIME. I cannot stress this enough: you will have to crank out SO MANY shitty drafts before you get a single good one. Reading voraciously can speed up this process, but your goal is to get all of those embarrassing beginner drafts out of your system as quickly as possible. Keep a physical notebook in your pocket—there are lots of cool neuroscience studies showing how handwriting > typing for info retention—and eavesdrop all the time, on the bus, in the grocery store, in the locker room, wherever. Lauren Groff wrote, “I have held every human I’ve ever met upside down by the ankles and shaken every last detail that I can steal out of their pockets.” Writers are just magpies collecting shiny things. Embrace your inner magpie!

(1) Hone Your Craft. Whether you write poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, or some combination, you should be writing, revising, and submitting like crazy. Know that you will get rejected…over and over and over again. At first it sucks, but eventually it won’t even phase you—when I was working on my first poetry collection, it felt like I was getting 20 “no”s for every 1 “yes.” But even the most successful poets and authors get rejected at 90%+ rates; F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Bradbury both famously used their rejection letters as literal wallpaper. But to colleges, the very act of sending your work out at your age will demonstrate initiative and publishing industry know-how. You should become super familiar with Submittable (the go-to submissions platform), Duotrope (the essential lit mag / contest database and submissions tracker), and Lit Hub (the online writers’ “town square”)—doing so, you’ll already be ahead of 95% of your peers. Then, when you feel ready, submit short stories and/or batches of 3-5 poems to 5-10 literary magazines apiece, and once you land a few acceptances (again, likely after a million rejections), build yourself a simple website where you keep track of them. While you’re doing this, check out contests like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the YoungArts National Arts Competition, and the Bennington College Young Writers Awards (and similar ones for young writers), but again, you don’t need to win any of these; they’re just nice feathers in your cap (and chances to meet other writers for part (2) below). You can also apply to prestigious summer programs like the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, the Kenyon Review Young Writers program, and the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference (ofc this list is non-exhaustive, there are a ton of them). Generally, the more selective the program, the more it’ll boost your college chances.

(2) Build Communi…

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