Learn Russian: Студентка очень старается, чтобы поступить в хороший университет. - The student tries very hard in order to enroll in a good university.

The word чтобы means "in order to". When the same person is doing the action in both halves of the sentence (the student is trying, and the same student is enrolling), we follow чтобы with an infinitive verb like поступить. Notice that Russian always requires a comma before чтобы.

Why use the perfective verb поступить instead of the imperfective поступать?

The perfective aspect focuses on the successful completion of an action. Her goal isn't just the ongoing process of applying or taking entrance exams (поступать), but the final result of successfully getting accepted (поступить).

Why is it в хороший университет (accusative case) instead of using the prepositional case for location?

In Russian, enrolling is treated as a direction or movement into a place, so it takes в + the accusative case. Since университет is an inanimate masculine noun, its accusative form looks exactly like its nominative (dictionary) form, and the adjective хороший matches it.

Why does the verb старается end in -ся?