How to Start a Passion Project in High School
The project that never started
A 10th grader decides his passion project will be a nonprofit that brings coding lessons to schools across his state. He designs a logo, buys a website address and writes a mission statement. Six months later, nobody has been taught anything, and he feels he has failed.
During those same six months, he has spent every other Saturday at the senior center where his grandmother lives, helping her neighbors set up video calls and fix their phones. He has never thought of that as a project. It is much closer to one than the nonprofit.
What a passion project is, and whether you need one
The phrase "passion project" comes from counselors and admissions websites. Colleges do not use it as a requirement, and none of the admissions offices quoted here asks for one.
What they do describe is the quality a good project shows.
- MIT looks for students who take initiative with the opportunities around them, and says applicants should be excited about "doing something" to help solve problems, and not only about thinking about them.
- Stanford says it wants to understand the impact a student has had in their job, family, school and community.
- Turning the Tide, a report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education written with admissions offices, encourages service that is "authentically chosen" and sustained over time.
A project of your own is one way to show initiative. It is not the only way. A student who takes on real responsibility in a job, a team or a family is showing the same thing. So nobody needs a passion project, and nobody should start one only to have something to list.
If there is something you already care about and would like to do more with, the steps below are a realistic way to begin.
Five steps to start
The example throughout is the 10th grader from the opening, once he sets the nonprofit aside and looks at the Saturdays he was already spending at the senior center.
1. Start from something you already do
Look at your own week before you look for ideas online. What do people already ask you for help with? What do you do without being told to? For him the answer was obvious once he looked: older people kept handing him their phones.
2. Name the people it is for
"Helping seniors with technology" is a cause. "The residents of my grandmother's building who cannot video-call their grandchildren" is a group of people he can go and talk to. A project needs the second kind of description, because real people will tell you what they need.
3. Make the smallest version within a month
Do not plan a year. Plan one event, one page, one lesson or one prototype that you can finish in four weeks. He asked the center's director for a table in the common room on one Saturday morning and put up a sign. Six residents came.
4. Write down what happened
Keep simple notes after each session: how many people came, what they asked, what went wrong, what you would change. After the first morning he noted that five of the six people had the same two questions, and that nobody could remember his answers a week later. So he wrote the answers on one page, in large type.
5. Decide whether to stop, repeat or grow
After the first version, choose honestly. If it bored you, stop, and you have lost a month. If it worked, do it again on a regular schedule. Only then think about growing, and grow in ways that follow from what you learned.
What one year can look like
| When | What he did | What existed afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | One Saturday morning at a table in the common room | Six residents helped, and a list of the questions they asked |
| Months 2 to 4 | The same table every other Saturday. He wrote a one-page guide for each common question | About 20 regular visitors and five large-type guides |
| Months 5 to 8 | Two friends joined him, so the table could run every week | A small team, and a schedule that no longer depended on one person |
| Months 9 to 12 | The director asked him to show new volunteers how the sessions work. The town library asked for copies of the guides | A project other people now use and can continue |
He never needed a logo, a website or the word "founder". The project cost him the price of printing. It also gave him something the nonprofit never would have: a year of specific things that happened, which he can describe truthfully on an application and in an essay.
Four mistakes to avoid
- Starting with the nameA logo, a website and a title feel like progress and help nobody. Begin with the first person you can help or the first thing you can make.
- Choosing a cause because it sounds impressiveA project the student does not care about rarely lasts beyond the first setback, and it shows.
- Planning something too big to begin"Across the state" has no first step. "This Saturday, in one room" does.
- Starting in 12th gradeA project begun a few weeks before applications has no time to produce anything. 9th to 11th grade is the time to start.
How Pursiva helps
The hardest parts of a project are choosing one that fits and knowing what to do first.
Pursiva starts from the student's profile, so its suggestions grow out of what the student already does and cares about. It proposes a few project directions that fit the student's theme (Pursiva calls it a Core Narrative), and for the one they choose it lays out a small first version with steps and dates. As the project goes on, Pursiva's Activities module keeps the record of what happened, including the numbers and results, so the details are ready when it is time to fill in the application and write essays.
A project also strengthens the rest of the application when it connects to the theme. The courses, the activities and the essays then point in the same direction.
The 10th grader's first idea would have taken a year to plan. His second took one Saturday to try.
Sources
Find a project that fits you, and a first step for this month.
$49.90 a month, every module included. Cancel anytime.
Get started