So, the best thing about applying to US universities compared to other popular study destinations is that you can complete all the application process by yourself from the comfort of your home.

I never had to go out of my home except for going to SAT. So, there is an app called common app. It helps you to apply to US universities for free (waiving application fee of ~90% universities). Firstly, set up your account by watching this video:

I discuss how to choose your universities in other articles; for this one, it is just for setting up the common app.

Now, you have to invite your counselor to your account, and s/he will need to upload your educational transcripts and give you a review as a student. Not only the counselor, but you’ll also need to invite your teachers (2) to the common app, and they should also submit their personal evaluation of you as a student. Both teachers and counselors should give you their Letter of Recommendations and upload it to your profile in the common app.

So, after confusing everyone, let me explain what I meant by explaining them below. In most of the Nepali schools, there is not a position of a counselor. So, your principal is your counselor.

But before going to your counselor, I want to give you some tips. So, what are the conditions in which you should go to your counselor instead of setting up an email account yourself and doing it yourself? The answer is that if your counselor has an "@edu" email, that is the official email of the school. If they don’t have that email, I’d suggest you create your own emails for teachers and counselors, saving trouble for you and your counselor.

But how to make it authentic while doing it yourself? Go to your school, ask teachers to write a letter of recommendation for you in English (should have your school’s letterhead). Ask them to sign that document. I will attach a copy of my recommendation here, but don’t copy my recommendation; it is trash. I wrote it myself and still couldn’t write it well, lol. Most of the teachers will be unknown about the LORs, expect that. I will share more resources on how to write LORs, but my LOR will give you a sense to show your teacher how you want it to be.

How to invite your counselor? See this

After that, you should go to your counselor, and it is pretty intuitive to do that. As my principal had never done that before, I did it myself (he was kind enough to give me access to his computer for some time). You can also do it yourself by going to your respective school.

Common App will ask for your digital signatures; you can submit just the name of your counselor.

Your teachers are not familiar with this self-application process, so they might get irritated, but they do want to help you. So, just be patient and explain everything to them.

My LORs, I repeat they are not good, but just reference to how to actually make them and show them to teacher: Trash LORs😂