Know Your Brand

What is a Student Brand, and why should I have one?

As an international student applying to the US, ask yourself, how do you plan to showcase yourself in a way that differentiates you from others? This is why you must know your brand, your identity or image, which singles out your application. For approaching any academic interest-related essay, it will benefit you to communicate how you will interact with your major in a streamlined, purposeful manner. Before you start your college essays, identifying a core idea that can be used consistently in such essays will aid your writing process and help the Admissions Officer understand your profile.

Here are a few examples:

• “With a Computer Science degree, I want to integrate AI in critical fields such as healthcare to make individualised essential services accessible to all.
• “As an undergraduate woman-of-colour aiming to demystify STEM for the women in my community, I want to discover and learn the areas we have been lacking in all these years.”
• “When I can connect deeply with the subject of labour economics through my fieldwork, I can meaningfully facilitate policymaking processes that honour them.”

All these students have a strong brand that differentiates them from the others and communicates their interests in an effective manner. When applying to a major, a sentence in the college essay that highlights your niche and hints at your plan helps the Admissions Officer visualise you as an applicant beyond the numerical scores. It may be called the IT factor of the student.

So, let’s break it down.

• A student’s brand must not be elaborate. It needs to be a sentence or two. 
• The brand should give an idea about what the student plans to do with their undergraduate degree.

To create your brand, start by referring to your background. Think about where you came from, the cultural practises you have grown up with, your academic and non-academic interests and experiences, and how they influenced each other to shape your profile. 

For example, a female student from South India living in the NCR region has a decade-long interest in Kathak and likes history because it tells humanity’s story of civilisation and progress. She can eventually choose becoming a South Asian Archival Historian as her niche. A student from a family textiles business in a small town can join a Business School so he can one day start and lead his firm of sustainable fashion with a regional focus. An architecture student from Mumbai wants to explore how highly dense populations live in megacities worldwide, and she aims at preserving individual identity within these environments.

The following are some examples of incomplete branding:

“I want to study Computer Science so I can learn new things in data interpretation and analysis and eventually work in an MNC.” 

This is a poor example of a Student Brand because although a student’s career goal of working in an MNC can be easily visualised, it is still too vague because it does not communicate any specific industry in which the student has an interest. The Admissions Officer is left with no information as to if he/she will join cyber security, design, biotechnology, etc.

“I want to study economics and psychology so I can understand what drives consumer behaviour.”

A Brand like this only explains what the student wants to study in college. It does not communicate what they want to do with their degree. A sentence about their decision to join academic research, policymaking, or a marketing firm would complete this student’s Brand.

Now, here’s an exercise for you. Write a 50-100 word paragraph starting with the sentence below:

I want to study ____ at the university level because I want to make/explore/ question/improve…

Question: What if I have nothing specific to say here? 

If you think you’re still exploring your options and you’re not quite sure of what academic field you want to be in, do not worry. There are plenty of high school students in the same position as you, and this exercise might be the first time you think critically about your potential field(s) of study. We simply want to encourage you to reflect on subjects that excite you and consider how studying them further could align with your goals and aspirations. 

Why do you see yourself studying this subject? Go through your CV and talk to your counsellors and mentors to get their insight.

Remember, you don't need to have it all figured out right now. College is a time of exploration and discovery, and many students change their majors in college as they learn more about different fields. The key is to identify areas of interest you'd like to explore further and start asking yourself the why question in relation to your future.