The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public university in the United States, and the university is especially well-known for the research that happens on campus — and that undergrads get to contribute to. The school is big, with over 50,000 students across multiple campuses, and they have and activity options that a student body of that size demands. Students dozens of majors across seven colleges and 29 schools, covering nearly anything you can imagine from the hard sciences to business, humanities to creative arts. One of the particularly innovative programs at Georgia Tech is the , the largest of its kind in the U.S. The acceptance rate for first-years is 14%.

Boston College is a private Jesuit institution grounded in the liberal arts but heavily involved in groundbreaking scientific research, too. Jesuit colleges are Catholic, but in ways that are sometimes surprising to people. The Jesuits prize the learning process, and develop communities of academic inquiry that push students to stretch themselves intellectually. That spirit runs deep at Boston College.

Tufts combines the close-knit community of a liberal arts school with the powerhouse academics of a major research university. They have , including rural, suburban, and urban settings, all around — or in — Boston. Across Tufts, there are 460 student organizations and clubs, and over 150 majors and minors. Nearly no matter what you want to study, from the humanities to the hard sciences, Tufts doesn’t just have a program — they have one of the best.

The University of Chicago is an outstanding Ivy-caliber institution in, unsurprisingly, Chicago, Illinois. The university truly is comparable to Harvard in caliber of education, but there are a few things about the culture of the school that make it stand out. UChicago is truly unique, and it doesn’t use the idea of being ‘quirky’ simply as a marketing gimmick. As you will see when we break down the supplement questions below, they challenge students to think outside of the box from day one. Being cookie cutter does not work for UChicago. The acceptance rate is only .

Northwestern is a top research university in Evanston, Illinois that has become iconic for combining a collaborative learning environment with innovative hands-on research opportunities. They a top engineering program, a top business school, a top education program (as in teaching future teachers), a top speech-language pathology program. If that sounds diverse, it is. Northwestern doesn’t pigeonhole themselves, and they excel across the board. It’s not surprising, then, that it isn’t easy to get in. There are about undergraduate students, and the acceptance rate is under .

If you are a junior interested in the classics, you are a pretty awesome student — and this certainly didn’t come out of nowhere. Building an interest in the classics while in high school typically means that you’ve been exploring ancient Greek and Latin language, philosophy, and history beyond the standard coursework available at school. Maybe you are taking an elective focused on the classics, or maybe you’ve taken online courses on your own, or perhaps you’ve been reading and studying independently. Whatever the course, you’ve had to build the path yourself, and that is exciting.