In this post, we’re going to break down what you need to be doing now, following a rejection from Johns Hopkins in the Early Decision round, to set yourself up for a dream school acceptance.

We help strong students bounce back from ED rejections. Learn more.

There are four steps that you need to be taking now to get into a top-tier school in the Regular Decision (and EDII, if you choose) cycles.

Step One: Take a Break

First you need to find time to slow down. Yes, senior year is crazy busy. You have classwork, leadership, commitments, and now a pile of writing to do. However, we’re going to ask you to do something a little wild: Stop doing anything. Giving yourself a day or two to slow down is extremely important if you want to do your best work on the applications still to come. Go on a long walk, gossip with good friends, or binge watch a show you’ve had on your list. Then, it’s time to get back to work.

Step Two: Strategize

Before you can start submitting Regular Decision (or EDII) applications, you need to finalize where you will be applying to. Of course, you probably have an idea of what schools you’d like to prioritize after your earlier college search work, but that doesn’t mean that your list is really calibrated for who you are.

Johns Hopkins accepted students in the Early Decision I round for the Class of 2029, and continue to prioritize ED applications for admission. Receiving a rejection from Johns Hopkins Early Decision tells us that there is something (or multiple somethings) in your application that didn’t work. The most common issue is quantitative. Your application may have been compelling narratively, but perhaps it didn’t hit the mark academically. The average GPA of recently accepted students, after all, is nearly impeccable at . There is not much room, then, for a dip during sophomore year or an outlier in junior spring. They expect excellence across the board.

The same holds true for . If your grades were on the cusp, scores that proved your academic chops were critical. Submitting an ACT under 34 or an SAT under 1540 would have put you in the bottom quarter of accepted applicants, which is not a great place to start when making your case for admission.

So, when re-approaching your college list, you need to keep this in mind — and you may need to recalibrate your list to reflect the realities of the quantitative facts of your application. A target is a school where you are squarely within the middle 50% of recently accepted students in regard to grades and scores. For a reach, you should still be within that middle 50%, but towards the lower end. And for your safety schools, you should be above the middle 50%.

All this may mean removing some schools from your list and adding others. Instead of mourning what isn’t a great fit, celebrate the opportunities and set yourself up for success with your next most important tool: the writing.

Step Three: Essays

In our years of working with students in an everchanging college admissions landscape, there is one thing that we have found holds true: great writing creates outstanding outcomes. The written pieces of your application are the most important parts still within your control. You can’t change your grades, scores, or activities, but you can hone the stories you use to tell the application readers about what you love and why you want to pursue a certain subject in college.

We work with students to tell these types of stories that make a difference, but you can also get started on your own. Put aside what you think sounds ‘impressive’, and refocus on showing who you truly are. It is less important that the application readers think you’ve done a lot of fancy stuff, than that they want to get a coffee with you after you move onto campus. If you aren’t likeable, they won’t let you in. And if you pull together writing that connects with the reader, they’ll look for a spot for you in the first-year class instead of looking for a reason to say no.

Start this process by tossing what you’ve done already. That isn’t because it’s all bad — we haven’t seen it, after all. However, starting fresh is a powerful move. Use it.

Step Four: Ask For Help

The final step is the hardest for a lot of students. You want to get into college on your own effort, and asking for help can feel like relenting ownership of your college application experience. Let us be really clear here: asking for help is one of the bravest, boldest, and smartest things that you can do in this moment. We can help you, of course. You can also seek out assistance from trusted teachers and school counselors. We do not, however, recommend workshopping your essays with friends or asking parents who last worked on an application two decades ago for college advice. They are fabulous for support and encouragement, but not experts in the college admissions field.

Getting into an outstanding school is possible after an Early Decision rejection from Johns Hopkins, but you need to thread the needle of school fit, storytelling, and where you feel you can thrive. So reset, relax, and get back into it!

With the right team in your corner, you can get into a dream school after a rejection. Learn more.

With an overall admit rate hovering around 7%, Pomona is incredibly competitive. The combined ED acceptance rate is around 13% – not a huge jump in your odds, but that little boost can seriously help. Pomona, like most selective colleges, cares a lot about their yield rate, or the number of students who enroll if accepted. This is where ED and ED2 come in handy. Though it doesn’t guarantee your admission, applying ED2 shows them you’re serious.

Why You Should Apply ED2

The idea of locking into another binding decision might feel risky, especially if you’re coming off a deferral or still holding out hope for a Regular Decision admit somewhere else. That hesitation is completely understandable. But if we’re just looking at it from purely a strategy perspective, not applying ED2 could put you at a disadvantage.

Colleges pay close attention to their enrollment numbers. When you apply through Early Decision (whether round one or round two), you’re telling the school: “You’re my first choice.” Pomona takes that signal seriously. They want students who want them, too!

If your current list leans too heavily toward long-shot schools and you’re looking for a tactical move with real impact, Pomona ED2 might be a smart move, depending on your academic profile. Now, let’s get into how to write the Pomona supplements to set you up for success.

If you’re dealing with a deferral or rejection from your Early Decision school, we can help. Whether you need a deferral letter, a college list for Regular Decision, polishing your Common App essay, an Early Decision 2 application, or even a complete rehaul for this next round, we have you covered. Reach out to us ASAP. Everything will be okay. 

The Supplement

Pomona has two questions: one short academic one, and one longer essay with three options.

What draws you to the subject(s) you selected as potential major(s)? If Undecided, share more about one of your academic passions or interests. (150 words or fewer)

First things first – you are not undecided.

Sure, you might still be figuring out the exact direction you want to go in academically, but for the sake of this application (and all of your applications), you’ve got to present a clear and confident case for a path you’re excited about. Also, picking a major here doesn’t lock you in forever. No one’s going to chase you down sophomore year and yell “YOU SAID YOU WOULD MAJOR IN BIO, WHY ARE YOU NOW STUDYING CHEMISTRY?!?!” at you across the quad. What matters now is that you choose an area of interest that aligns with your current passions and experiences, and then make a compelling argument for why it fits.

Start by zooming in on a specific moment — a time when this subject sparked your curiosity or made you want to learn more. Think of it as your origin story, but you need to keep this brief. With only 150 words, you need to get right to the point. From there, shift to talking about why Pomona is the place to pursue this interest. We recommend mentioning at least one class, a professor, and one other extracurricular academic opportunity that feels like a perfect match. Show them you’ve done your research and that your enthusiasm is tied directly to what they can offer you.

Pomona is home to a diverse community of faculty, staff and students who, through close ties and collaboration, enable each other to identify and explore their greatest passions. Considering this, respond to one of the following in up to 250 words.

Option 1: Reflecting on a community that you are a part of, what values or perspectives from that community would you bring to Pomona?

This is a good one if you’ve consistently invested time in a meaningful group or activity outside of the classroom. That might mean your cultural or religious community, a long-standing volunteer group, or a hobby you share with others. You can also think creatively when it comes to what “community” actually is – it doesn’t need to be some formal group or club, it can be something more nebulous like your family, your neighbors, the people on your commute, etc.

Whatever direction you go, it’s crucial that the focus be on shared experience – this shouldn’t be about something you do entirely alone. The bulk of your response should center around connection. Start us off by taking us into the moment, whether that’s a shared tradition, a late-night shift with coworkers, a weekly meetup at the local skatepark, or the pre-game ritual with your debate team. From there, zoom out: where is this happening, who’s involved, and what does this community mean to you?

Then, you want to reflect on how this experience has helped shape who you are. What have you learned from being part of something bigger than yourself, and what values or perspectives has it given you that show up in other parts of your life.

Finally, bring it back to Pomona. Be clear about how this community experience will influence how you’ll show up in college – in the residence halls, classrooms, clubs, or co-ops. It should also make sense with what you’ve already spent time doing; don’t name-drop specific clubs or organizations if they don’t match with what you’re writing about or what you’ve done in high school.

Option 2: Describe an experience you had outside the classroom that changed the way you think or how you engage with your peers. What was that experience and what did you learn from it?

This question works well for just about everyone, because we all do something beyond the classroom. That “something” might still be connected to your academic interests, and that’s okay, but we encourage you to find something a little deeper if possible. However, what matters most is that you choose an experience where teamwork and collaboration played a central role. This isn’t the place to spotlight a solo pursuit or individual win.

You should be answering this in story form. Show us what happened, who was involved, and how it unfolded. The lessons you took away should come through naturally in the telling – there’s no need to spell everything out, let the subtext work. Paint the picture, then let the reader connect the dots.

Keep your summary conclusion short and thoughtful. A nice trick is to circle back to the original moment or image from your opening, reinforcing the theme you’ve been building, instead of just saying “I learned XYZ.”

Option 3: Choose any person or group of people in your life and share how they would describe you.

This is not our top pick among Pomona’s supplement options. In fact, we really think you should write Option 1 or 2. But if you’re just totally dead set on Option 3, you’ll need to get creative with it.

Rather than tackling this prompt with a standard essay format, consider experimenting with structure. Could it read like a letter to your future self? A mock interview? A documentary voiceover? Breaking form can help soften the prompt’s slightly awkward setup. Do your best to avoid anything that comes across as too self-congratulatory. That’s not ideal when admissions officers are trying to get a sense of your character. You want to sound thoughtful, not boastful.

Submit and Wait

Pomona’s ED2 deadline is January 8th, and you should hear back by . Try and submit your application ahead of that deadline, because we’ve seen tech problems freeze people out before.

Trust the hard work you’ve put into your application and try not to stress too much, and definitely don’t send them lots of updates or addenda to your application. You’ve got this!

Deferred or rejected and need help with an ED2 app? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us ASAP.

The acceptance rate for Carnegie Mellon has plummeted in recent years, dropping from for first-years enrolling in the fall of 2019 to less than for students enrolling in the Fall of 2024. Yes, this was only a 3%ish drop, but it’s actually a massive deal. Carnegie Mellon has been a great school for a long time. But with an acceptance rate at, or above, 15%, it was a strong target for outstanding students. It wasn’t a safety school for anyone, but there were students who could nearly count on it. Now, with an acceptance rate in the sub-12% realm, it’s shifted into a different world. Instead, it’s only a target for a tiny fraction of applicants, including the Ivy League and Ivy-adjacent-minded students. Those students are applying to Carnegie Mellon in larger volumes as those schools report acceptance rates under 5%. This is driving the acceptance rate for Carnegie Mellon even lower.

This may not make you feel better, but it is important information as we figure out what you need to do next. In this post, we’re going to break down what may have happened with your application that led to a rejection, and what you need to do now to still get into an outstanding school.

Getting into a great school requires strong strategy. Get yours.

There are four distinct steps that you need to start taking today — seriously — to improve your chances of strong acceptances in the Regular Decision and EDII round. So, let’s get into it.

Step One: Take a Break

This first one is also the hardest for many highly-motivated students. We need you to slow down. We are not joking here, and if you’re response is “I don’t need to do that,” it’s actually even more important for you than for students who don’t require convincing. We’re about to tell you to toss a lot of hard work and start over. Doing that isn’t as simple as deleting drafts. You need to reset your mind. So, take a few days. Relax, sleep, and read something just for fun. Then, it’s time to get back to work.

Step Two: Strategize

The next step is to craft your strategy for the remainder of the college application process. Before you can do that, though, you need to have an understanding of what happened with Carnegie Mellon. Of course, we haven’t seen your application so we can’t offer specifics on your case, but there are some big picture possibilities.

If you chose not to submit SAT or ACT scores with your Carnegie Mellon application as part of the , you aren’t alone. For the , 75% of accepted and enrolled applicants submit an SAT or ACT score — so 25% of accepted students didn’t submit scores at all. Some accepted students do not submit scores, but having the choice over whether to submit scores has driven the average scores of accepted students up. As of the most recent Common Data Set reporting, the of accepted and enrolled students who submitted scores reported an SAT of 1540 or an ACT of 35.

What you couldn’t choose whether to submit or not, though, were your grades. As mandatory pieces of your app, these are highly reflective of the bar Carnegie Mellon is expecting strong applicants to meet. For students entering in the fall of 2024, were in the top tenth of their graduating class and 85.2% had a GPA over 3.75. Importantly, though, more than half that group had a GPA of 4.0 on a 4.0 scale. The average high school GPA of first-years was an impressive 3.89.

If your grades did not measure up to these averages, that is an obvious culprit in the hunt for “why rejection?” With such steep competition for spots in the first-year class, Carnegie Mellon does not have a need for accepting students who aren’t exceptional academically. But if you do have the grades and scores, something else went sideways.

Most often, we find that the additional issue can be found in the essays. Basically, you weren’t convincing. Let’s fix that.

Step Three: Essays

If you have the grades and scores to get into a school, there isn’t a recipe for the perfect activities list to get you into a school. Often, students who don’t get into a college Early Decision think that it is that they didn’t have a certain activity or leadership role, or even award. That actually isn’t what makes a difference, though. We’ve had students get into the most prestigious colleges in the country with every type of activities list. What makes the difference, then, isn’t what you do as much as how you write about it.

Winning college essays tell compelling stories. They don’t brag or boast. Instead, they illustrate who you are and what characteristics you’d bring to Carnegie Mellon through imagery-heavy stories that truly draw the application reader into your life and dreams for the future. Writing this kind of essay isn’t hard, but it also isn’t easy. Most high school writing assignments are the opposite of a personal essay. This poses a problem when a senior tries to write a college essay or supplement, because the type of writing that makes for a strong supplement isn’t the kind of writing that you’ve been doing.

We work with our students to not just craft strong essays for the college application process, but also to build the muscles to write this type of work when we aren’t there cheering them along. 

Step Four: Ask For Help

The last step is often the hardest for highly-motivated students. You need to accept that, while you are an expert on yourself, you are not a college admissions expert. There are things that you are absolutely the best at when it comes to representing yourself, but having someone in your corner to help can make all the difference.

Basically, let’s get you into a great school.

When it comes to college admissions, we know what we are doing — especially after early disappointment. Learn more.

What matters most, though, is what you do next. Do you let this rejection derail you, or do you pull things together to get to an even better institution? First, let’s talk numbers.

Northwestern is stingy with their data, but the overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was just over . This marked the next data point in a steady downward decline. A significant aspect of the consistently dropping acceptance rate is increased demand. As more people apply for the same number of spots, the acceptance rate is pushed downward.

As they filter through a larger pile of applications, they have also been able to become pickier about who they choose to let in. Northwestern has been test-optional in recent years, and about of recently accepted and enrolled students submitted an SAT or ACT. With a test-optional policy also comes the potential for a sort of score inflation. Students with weaker test scores choose not to submit them, so the averages rise for the scores that are submitted. An SAT composite score in the 50th percentile was, , a 1540. For the ACT, the 50th percentile score was 34. The average GPA of accepted students not reported, but we know it to be very high.

If you were a competitive applicant academically, something went wrong with your application to nudge them towards a “no.” In this post, we are going to break down the four steps you need to be taking now to right this ship and set a course towards a dream college.

We help strong students get into outstanding schools, even after early rejection. Learn more.

After a rejection Early Decision, it is easy to tuck into your shell like a turtle and tune out the noise of the world. It’s an understandable impulse, but it’s also the wrong one. Instead, it’s time to make bold moves and big changes to get impressive results.

Step One: Take a Break

Yes, we did just say that you need to make bold moves. The first one, though, is to slow down. Before you can do more, you need to do less — for a couple of days, at least. Take a few days to catch up on sleep, have long conversations with friends, and to dream. There is so much that is still possible for your collegiate future. Once you are recharged, it’s time to make it happen.

Step Two: Strategize

Next, you need a strategy. If you had a college list before applying to Northwestern, you don’t necessarily need to throw it out. It does, however, need a fresh look. You didn’t get into Northwestern, and you weren’t deferred either. Northwestern defers strong applicants that they still want to keep in consideration, but to only defer a small number of ED applicants. By not deferring you, they let you know that there was something about your application that made it necessary to rule out. And this is where there is a bit of a fork in the road.

If your grades were at the lower end of the averages of what Northwestern has recently accepted, or even below, you need to restructure your college list with this in mind. A strong college list must be crafted to fit your academic profile, and that means that even your reaches need to be, well, within reach. We advise students to build a college list with 2-3 reach schools, 3-4 targets, and 3-4 safety schools.

The other side of the fork is the writing. There is no perfect activities list or array of honors, so it’s much more common that, when a strong academic student is rejected, it is because how they talked about what they do.

Step Three: Essays

It would be nice to be able to reuse the essays you worked so hard on, but we don’t advise taking that path. Starting fresh may be frustrating, but you’ve learned a lot since you first started working on college essays. You know what you want to say better, and you have a clearer idea of what you want to do in college and into the future. Basically, you can do better work than you could have done a few months ago. So, let’s use that for your benefit.

Strong college application writing is narrative-forward, story-centric, and focused without becoming repetitive. We work with our students to develop a story for each supplement and essay, such that the stories build upon each other and show the applicant from a variety of angles.

If you are drafting alone, outline your ideas before you begin to write to ensure that you are treading new territory with each supplement. You should also have some fun with it. Remember that application readers are humans. They want to be entertained as much as they want to get to know you. This doesn’t mean that you should not take the applications seriously, but there are often opportunities to integrate lightheartedness and playfulness that only amplify the impact of your application.

Step Four: Ask For Help

There is a lot to do to get into a dream school in the Regular Decision or Early Decision II rounds, but you don’t need to go it alone. We work with students to craft applications that strongly reflect their personality and potential as a community member. You can also lean on a trusted teacher or school counselor, but don’t expect to get expert advice from friends or family members. College admissions is a very particular experience, and simply being able to write an essay doesn’t mean one knows how to ace a college essay.

You have the opportunity to turn your college application experience around. Go ahead, get into a dream school.

Strong outcomes require strong strategy. Get yours.

With an overall acceptance rate that hovers around 7–8%, Swarthmore is incredibly selective. However, their yield rate, estimated around 40%, is noticeably lower than some of their peer institutions. That means the admissions office pays close attention to how likely applicants are to enroll, and applying ED or ED2 signals that you will enroll. Their ED acceptance rate, while not a guarantee, is still ~16%, which gives you a significant boost. If Swarthmore is at the top of your list and you’re a strong match, applying ED2 is a move worth serious consideration.

Why You Should Apply ED2

Let’s talk strategy. If you're feeling unsure about committing to another binding decision, still holding out for an RD admit to your deferred school, or didn’t apply ED the first time around, you're not alone. It’s perfectly normal to hesitate. But from a purely tactical perspective, skipping out on ED2 can put you at a disadvantage.

As we mentioned above, colleges track their yield rates, aka the percentage of accepted students who actually enroll. When you apply ED or ED2, you’re signaling that you're serious. Swarthmore, in particular, pays attention to demonstrated interest and enrollment likelihood. Applying ED2 shows them that you’re serious about them and that you are incredibly likely to enroll. That can help you.

If your college list is way too heavy on reach schools, Swarthmore ED2 might be the strongest strategic card left to play. While much of the admissions process is out of your control, ED2 is one of the few remaining choices that can meaningfully influence your outcome. Swarthmore values students who know what they want. If that’s you, ED2 might just tip the scales.

If you’re dealing with a deferral or rejection from your Early Decision school, we can help. Whether you need a deferral letter, a college list for Regular Decision, polishing your Common App essay, an Early Decision 2 application, or even a complete rehaul for this next round, we have you covered. Reach out to us ASAP. Everything will be okay. 

The Supplement

Swarthmore has two supplemental questions.

SUPPLEMENT #1

Swarthmore College maintains an ongoing commitment of building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive residential community dedicated to rigorous intellectual inquiry. All who engage in our community are empowered through the open exchange of ideas guided by equity and social responsibility to thrive and contribute as bridge builders within global communities. Our identities and perspectives are supported and developed by our immediate contexts and lived experiences – in our neighborhoods, families, classrooms, communities of faith, and more.

What aspects of your self-identity or personal background are most significant to you? Reflecting on the elements of your home, school, or other communities that have shaped your life, explain how you have grown in your ability to navigate differences when engaging with others, or demonstrated your ability to collaborate in communities other than your own.

Swarthmore wants to understand how your identity, culture, or background has influenced your growth, and also how your background influences how you interact with others. The best way to tackle this is with a story.

It might be a good starting exercise to think about what values you were brought up with that are important to you. Then, think about times you’ve exercised those values. Now, you don’t need a dramatic story here – you just need something personal, thoughtful, and grounded in your experience. Honestly, smaller is better.

You might want to write about cultural differences with friends, generational differences between you and your grandparents, or how you’ve shared your values with other people. Try to pinpoint a singular experience, maybe a conversation, a community service trip, or study hall with friends.

And of course, tell a complete story with a specific beginning, middle, and end. You don’t have to spell out exactly what you want them to know about you from your conclusion, either. A subtle, well-crafted ending often says more than a neat little moral summary can.

SUPPLEMENT #2

Swarthmore’s community of learners inspire one another through their collaborative and flexible approach to learning. Swarthmore students are comfortable with intellectual experimentation and connection of ideas across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and interdisciplinary studies through a liberal arts education.

Tell us about a topic that has fascinated you recently – either inside or outside of the classroom. What made you curious about this? Has this topic connected across other areas of your interests? How has this experience shaped you and what encourages you to keep exploring?

We really love the intellectual curiosity prompts, and this is a great one. Our big, main piece of advice is to avoid writing about what you put down for your major interest – think outside the box. Swarthmore is a liberal arts school looking for liberal arts students, so they want to hear about what you’re passionate about that’s not necessarily related to your major. They want to see learning for learning’s sake!

Now, they do talk about connections to other topics, so don’t think you have to totally swing the other way and write a whole essay about English if you’re an engineering hopeful. You could talk about your newfound passion for fixing cars and bring the reader with you to the junkyard to find the perfect piece of car equipment you need to complete your task.

You can also write about something that’s just totally fun and separate! As long as you’re telling a story and showing off your passion and excitement for the topic, then you can’t really go wrong. They want you to really share who you are in these supplements, so go for it.

Submit and Wait

You’ll submit your ED2 application to Swarthmore on the same day as their Regular Decision deadline, January 4th. Since this is one of the busiest days of the year on the Common App, expect plenty of students rushing to hit submit at the last possible moment. We know it’s a crunch, but do yourself a favor and aim to finalize everything at least a few days early – just to avoid any last-min technical issues.

Swarthmore typically releases ED2 decisions around, if not a tad earlier than their Regular Decision ones. Once you hit submit, take a deep breath. Your part’s done. You’ve got this!

Deferred or rejected and need help with an ED2 app? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us ASAP.

Yes, a dream school. Getting into a selective, well-respected university or college is still possible. It’s not going to happen on its own, though. There are steps you must be taking to get yourself back on a trajectory towards success. Below, we break down these steps. First, though, some numbers.

The rate of admission for Early Decision applicants to BC is, , double the overall acceptance rate. While the total acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was , about 30% of Early Decision applicants were admitted. This isn’t because the bar was lower for ED applicants. The admissions officials had the same expectations, but the pool was smaller. Instead of competing against tens of thousands of applicants, there were just a few thousand. And BC wants to push their yield rate northward, so they are motivated to accept a large percentage of the incoming class in the committed ED rounds where they know that the students they accept will move onto campus in the fall.

Based on all of this, not getting into BC Early Decision — if you have the grades and scores (which we’ll break down below) — is sobering. The college is very competitive, but the ED round is more akin to a selective, not highly-selective, school. What does this tell us about you? More on that in a second.  

We help driven students bounce back from Early Decision rejection. Learn how. 

Getting into a great school is feasible after an ED rejection, but it isn’t a given. Simply applying to the list you had before the ED rejection with versions of the same essays you used for BC will not set you up for success, and will not get you a spot at a dream school. These steps will.

Step One: Take a Break

We’ve said that there is work to do, but the first step is to not do any. Seriously, we need you to slow down. An ED rejection is frustrating, upsetting, and can knock even the strongest student off course. Going straight from that unstable position into the Regular Decision applications is like trying to do a maze blindfolded and with your feet tied together — especially if you’ll be applying to a school Early Decision II. Instead, you need to reset. You need to recharge. You need to sleep and snack and vent to friends and cuddle with your cat or dog or baby sibling. This moment of rest, only two days or so, is a healing period. After it, you’ll be ready to do great work.

Step Two: Strategize

You were rejected ED from Boston College. That means that they did not assess your application as competitive enough to accept, or even to keep around through the deferral pool. Figuring out why BC was driven to reject you is critical to creating a successful RD strategy. We can’t tell you exactly why BC rejected you, of course. We haven’t seen your application. But we can break down the most likely reasons.

The first, and most likely reason, is quantitative. Perhaps, you simply don’t have the grades or scores for BC. to BC average an ACT of 34+ or an SAT of 1490+. Of course, there is wiggle room. However, it’s important to note that the lower end of accepted and enrolled first year ACT scores is still 33 (and 1450 on the SAT). An ACT or SAT much below the average would have been a problem, let alone the lower end thresholds.

BC does not report the GPA ranges for accepted and enrolled students, but they do share class rank of students from schools that share such data. of accepted and enrolled students submit transcripts that place them in the top 10% of their graduating class. So, the students getting into BC have serious academic chops, and a weaker transcript may, alone, have been a disqualifying factor for your application.

But what if you have the grades and scores?  Then it’s a writing problem.

We’ll break down the writing portion next, but first you have to do something with your grade and score data. You need a new college list.

It’s likely that you have a list of schools that you thought might be good to apply to if you didn’t get in ED, but you probably didn’t think too hard about them. Now you need to think hard, re-building your college list to actually fit your academic reality.

We advise our students to build a college list with up to 10 schools. Yes, you can apply to more, but 10 is actually the perfect number as it offers a range of options without overloading you or spending time on schools that you wouldn’t attend even if it was your only option. Those 10 schools can’t all be reaches, though. You need 3-4 targets — schools for which you are a strong academic fit — 3-4 safety schools, and 2-3 reaches. Those reaches should not be completely out of reach. This isn’t the time to lob a hail mary. Pick reaches that are just barely within reach statistically. You should be within their expectations academically, even if just barely.

Step Three: Essays

Once you have your list, it’s time to write. When students reach out to us after an ED rejection, we have to break the bad news fast: they need to start over. Nearly always, the writing is a key problem in the rejected ED application. Telling compelling stories is your most powerful tool in this moment to convince admissions officials to offer you a spot. Starting over might be painful, but it’s necessary.

As you begin brainstorming your new essays and supplements, always keep in mind that each piece of writing needs to tell a unique story. Whether the supplement is under 50 words or over 500, there needs to be a central narrative, strong imagery, and focus on something that isn’t spotlighted in any other essay or supplement in your application to a particular school. Repeating yourself isn’t reinforcing, it’s a waste of precious space.  

Step Four: Ask For Help

The last step is to know what you don’t know. You are an expert on you, but you aren’t an expert on college admissions. Your parents, friends, and siblings aren’t experts on college admissions either — probably, at least. Getting feedback that is specifically tuned to the world of getting into college is extremely important, so be open to review by your school college counselor and welcome, when possible, a trained eye.

Getting into college doesn’t need to be painful, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bumps along the way. As you’ve experienced, the road is rarely perfectly smooth. It is possible to get through it, though, and you can still get into a great school.

An ED rejection is a bummer, but it’s not the end of your path to a top-tier school. Learn more.

Northeastern is highly competitive, with last year’s acceptance rate dipping just below 6%. ED is competitive too, but they see much higher acceptance rates there – around 40%. According to the , ED and ED2 applications to Northeastern have increased by 660% since 2015. Six hundred and sixty percent! That’s a massive number! But, we can tell by the acceptance rate difference that Northeastern really values students who commit to them, and applying ED2 might be your best bet.

Why You Should Apply ED2

Before we get into the specifics of your application, let’s take a moment to talk about something we know you might be wrestling with: should you even go for ED2? Maybe the idea of another binding decision feels daunting, especially if you’re still processing a deferral or rejection. That hesitation is valid, but it’s not rational. From a strategic angle, opting out of ED2 could actually really work against you.

Yield rate matters to admissions offices – it’s the percentage of admitted students who end up enrolling – and applying ED or ED2 tells a school you’re locked in. That kind of commitment sends a clear message, and schools pay attention! Right now, Northeastern has approximately a 50% yield rate, and based on their ~6% acceptance rate, they’d like that yield rate to be higher. So, at a place like Northeastern, which is highly focused on managing its yield and optimizing its selectivity metrics, ED2 carries weight.

If you’re coming off a deferral or your list is full of high-reach options, ED2 might be your smartest remaining move. You can’t control most of what happens next, but you can choose to double down on a school that values early commitment. Northeastern likes commitment! If you’re still on the fence, consider this your gentle nudge: ED2 can work in your favor. If not to Northeastern, then to another school where you’d be excited to attend.

If you’re dealing with a deferral or rejection from your Early Decision school, we can help. Whether you need a deferral letter, a college list for Regular Decision, polishing your Common App essay, an Early Decision 2 application, or even a complete rehaul for this next round, we have you covered. Reach out to us ASAP. Everything will be okay. 

The Supplement

First of all, Northeastern has no supplement. We’re still going to have you write something, though. With those admissions numbers, you need more than just stats to stand out.

Demonstrated Interest Letter

Since there is no supplement, we’re going to suggest you write a letter to explain to Northeastern why you’re so excited about them. This should follow a pretty standard Why Essay format, with some tweaks:

Introduction

Start by introducing yourself, with your name and school. Explain why you’re sending this letter – something about how there was no formal place to talk about your interest in Northeastern, so you’re writing this to explain why you’re so passionate about them.

Origin Story + Major

Once introduced, start by telling them why you want to study what you want to study. If you want to study business, what experiences have led you to decide that’s your thing? Keep it brief, but end this by clearly declaring the major you want to pursue at Northeastern.

Connections to Northeastern

Now, we want to connect your major and origin story to the offerings at Northeastern. Look up their course catalog and find 1-2 upper-level classes that not only speak to your interests, but make sense with what you’re telling them. If you’re passionate about marketing, finance classes won’t make sense. You should also find a professor doing work in your interest area and talk about why you’re excited to study with them, and adding an academic club or extracurricular won’t hurt either.

Extracurriculars

You’ll want to pull in some academic extracurriculars, but we also encourage you to find some other extracurriculars that tie into the experiences you’ve already been pursuing in high school. If you wrote for the student paper in high school, you might want to write for the paper at Northeastern, too. Just make sure it makes sense with what you’ve already done or it’ll come across as disjointed.

Culture

This part is a little dependent on space, but you can spend a sentence or two talking about the culture or traditions you’re excited to take part in.

Sign-off

Thank them for their time (this is an unsolicited letter, after all), ask if you need to forward this anywhere else, and sign off with a respectful “Best” or “Sincerely” and your name.

The letter should cap out at 400 words maximum. Any longer and it’s not getting read thoroughly. You can address and email it to Northeastern Admissions, or if you’ve had a previous cordial relationship with them, you can email it to your regional counselor.

Submit and Wait

Northeastern’s ED2 deadline falls right alongside their Regular Decision deadline on January 1st. Since this is one of the busiest submission dates on the Common App calendar, we strongly recommend wrapping things up well in advance. Every year, we hear about students running into technical issues and missing a deadline because of preventable chaos.

If you apply ED2, you’ll likely hear back a bit earlier than the full RD wave in the spring. That said, with Northeastern’s rising popularity and the sheer volume of applications they receive, timelines can vary, so don’t count on an early release. Just get everything in on time, then take a breath.

Once your app is submitted, you’ve done your part. Now it’s just a waiting game. You’ve made a smart strategic choice – so hang tight, stay focused on school, and try not to refresh your portal too often. You've got this.

Deferred or rejected and need help with an ED2 app? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us ASAP.

In this post, we’re going to break down the steps that you need to be taking now to turn this REA rejection into a dream school acceptance. First, though, let’s talk some numbers.  

For the Class of 2029, the Restrictive Early Action acceptance rate was . The year before, REA was similarly competitive, and half the class was accepted in the REA round. The overall acceptance rate for Notre Dame that same year was 9%.

Now, though, you need to figure out what comes next. You can still get into an outstanding, dream school, but pretending that this Notre Dame rejection didn’t happen won’t get you there. Below are the steps that you need to be taking to pull off a top-tier acceptance RD or ED II.

We help students bounce back from rejection. Learn more.

Getting into a top school isn’t magic — it’s strategy. We would love to help craft an individualized strategy for you, but there are a few key steps you need to take whether or not we’re working with you.

Step One: Take a Break

First, we need you to slow down. Take a nap. Read something for fun, not homework. Do an activity or hobby that simply brings you joy. Recharging is extremely important before you dive back in for Regular Decision and EDII applications. Catching up on sleep will help you do your best work over the next few weeks, which go by very quickly. So be kind to yourself, take a moment, and get yourself ready to do outstanding work before the next slate of deadlines.

Step Two: Strategize

The first thing you need to do is to reassess your college list. Maybe you had one set in stone, or maybe you really thought you’d be done in the REA round. Either way, whatever you have needs a fresh look with a critical eye. The big thing to check for is whether your college list emphasizes schools that are a strong fit academically. These are your targets, and you should have 3-4 of them. Then you need 3-4 safety schools that you can confidently say you are likely to get in to. Finally, there are the reaches. These are often the ‘exciting’ schools that you are really jazzed about, and it can be tempting to put a large number of them on your application. We advise against that approach, as it isn’t strong strategy. Instead, pick 2-3 reach schools that are still within the realm of possibility quantitatively. Then, when you have your list, look back at what may have gone wrong with Notre Dame.

We can’t tell you why you were rejected, but there are a few potential obvious reasons. The first big reason for why your application may have been rejected is quantitative. If you don’t have the scores or grades for Notre Dame, you don’t get in. Students accepted and enrolled in the Class of 2029 an SAT of 1500+ or an ACT of 34+. They also expect strong grades to match.

Notre Dame does not include GPA in their class profile and Common Data Set reporting, but if you have weak spots on your transcript that could have been a red flag for them. And if your transcript isn’t rock solid and you didn’t submit scores, that’s a big problem. Strong scores can undergird a transcript, lifting up dips and showing college readiness. When you leave scores off, it’s like giving away a tool in your toolbox (if, of course, the standardized test scores are strong).

Small soft spots in your application can be exacerbated, when it comes to Notre Dame, by faith. As a Catholic university, Notre Dame prioritizes applicants who share their faith. In the Class of 2029, of accepted and enrolled students described themselves as Catholic.

This illuminates the other big potential reason that your application was rejected: the qualitative, uncountable, fuzzy stuff. Even if you have the grades and scores for Notre Dame, an application that does not connect with the admissions officials who see it and compel them to act positively (i.e., an acceptance) is like a slice of Swiss cheese. Sure, you have some of the things they want — but it’s an application full of holes.

Being Catholic is one of those soft things that you cannot change about who you are. You are either Catholic or you aren’t. If you aren’t, it’s harder to get into Notre Dame. That’s simply a fact.

You also can’t change what you’ve spent your time doing. There isn’t time to add a meaningful activity, get a new leadership role, or tackle an independent research project. What you have on your activities list is what you have to work with.  

As there is nothing you could or should do about your faith and activities, we’ll coast past these ones to the things you can control.  

The other big bucket of soft things are things you can change. It’s the stories. The way that you tell your story matters in college admissions.

Step Three: Essays

College applications are, ultimately, a storytelling vehicle. Some pieces of the story are nearly always dry and boring (your test scores, for example), and some pieces can be thrilling and exciting for application readers if you write them right. Those pieces are the written sections, including the main college essay where it’s used, supplements, and opportunities for creative expression.

We find that students who are rejected from Notre Dame REA who had the grades and scores all share the same application flaw: the stories flopped. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you didn’t have good things to say, but you didn’t say them well. You can be objectively impressive as an applicant, but also describe those impressive things in really boring ways. Being boring is like throwing massive hurdles in the way of your application. Just when you want the reader engaged and excited, they’ll be yawning and reaching for a takeout menu.

We work with our students to rewrite their applications. Yes, you heard that right. Students who come to us after an early rejection first have to accept that they’ll be starting from a blank slate. This is critical to achieving strong RD and EDII outcomes. It’s more work, but it’s worth it.

Step Four: Ask For Help

If all of this sounds overwhelming, we can help. You should also look to teachers, school counselors, and family friends with true expertise. Not everyone with an opinion gives good college advice, though. So don’t rely on your friends, or even your parents, to give strong application essay feedback. The right help is important to achieving strong outcomes.

If you want the right help, get in touch.

Strong outcomes require strong strategy. Get yours.

Vanderbilt has always been a great university, but over the past decade it has joined the upper echelon of colleges and universities that are extraordinarily difficult to get into. Now, let’s be clear. This shift hasn’t been because of massive changes at the school. It’s still the Vanderbilt it was 10 years ago, but the landscape of college admissions has shifted. With a small number of elite schools boasting acceptance rates under 5%, there are more exceptional students applying to Vanderbilt than ever before. This has made Vanderbilt’s former target students unavoidable reaches — and it’s really not a target, let alone a safety, for anyone anymore.

For the Class of 2029, the overall acceptance rate was only , below that terrifying 5% threshold. The regular decision acceptance that year was a measly 3.3%, but the Early Decision acceptance rate was a more hopeful  

In this post, we are going to break down what may have gone wrong with your Vanderbilt application, and what you need to be doing now to bounce back and get into a dream school.

We help strong students get into dream schools, even after an ED rejection. Learn more.

There are four key steps that you must be taking now to ensure successful outcomes as you continue applying to outstanding schools.

Step One: Take a Break

Before you start with Regular Decision applications, you need to slow down. We’re serious about this. Charging ahead into the RD cycle with the same list you had before your ED rejection, and with the same essays, is a sure way to guarantee unfortunate outcomes. So, you are going to have to do something different. And, to do that, you need to reset and recharge. Take a day or two to truly turn off any college conversations, both with friends and family and through online platforms. Give yourself time to sleep, go for a long walk, or bake a dozen cupcakes. Having a little fun in this moment will set you up for success for what comes next.

Step Two: Strategize

As you devise an approach for the Regular Decision round, or indeed EDII, it’s critical that you properly break down what may have gone wrong with your Vanderbilt application.

The first place to look is whether your grades and scores were a match for what Vanderbilt expects from applicants. If you did not meet the for academic distribution, that’s an easy answer for why you weren’t at least .

Next, look at your GPA. If you have a GPA below , that is another easy thing to point to and say, “that was the problem.” Of course, there is rarely one place that tells the whole story of why an application was rejected, but a low GPA is an easy culprit. This is especially true if you didn’t submit sky-high SAT or ACT scores.

Vanderbilt does not require the SAT or ACT, but of recently accepted applicants did submit them. This tells us that they are important, either to underline your transcript or to possibly counteract a GPA at the lower end of what Vanderbilt expects. A strong SAT for Vanderbilt is over 1540, and a strong ACT is a 35 or 36.

If your application was not a match for Vanderbilt based on grades, you need to rethink your college list. You are passionate and driven, but you are aiming at the wrong type of school. This doesn’t mean that you can’t get into a great college or university, but colleges with acceptance rates under 10% are probably not the best schools to aim for. Instead, recalibrate your list to have 3-4 true target schools, where your grades and scores are in at least the middle-50% of accepted students, 3-4 safety schools, and 2-3 reach schools that are more accessible than Vanderbilt.

If you have the grades and the scores, though, something else went on with your application: it simply didn’t click. Something about how you presented yourself did not make a compelling case for admission to Vanderbilt. Typically, this can be found in your essays. It isn’t that you didn’t do enough activities — it’s that you didn’t tell strong enough stories.

Step Three: Essays

Obviously, you can’t do anything to change your grades or scores at this point, and you can’t add new activities that will make an impact. You can, however, turn around the trajectory of your college admissions experience through one simple thing: better writing.

More than ever this year, we hear from students who are approaching essays from a place of anxiety. They’ve heard about what works and what doesn’t on social media, they are terrified of getting flagged for using AI despite producing all original work, and they know how much rides on this writing. The thing is that’s completely the wrong approach.

We work with our students to produce written essays and supplements that are authentic to who they are, not influenced by what some random person who doesn’t know them decides to promote as a ‘winning’ approach online. The key to this is to center all writing on stories that are personal, meaningful, and that are individual enough to be entirely yours while also speaking to larger themes that connect with the reader.

The point of all of this extra work rewriting and producing truly impactful writing is to make it hard for the application reader to say no. When you are a bunch of numbers and an anemic written portion, it’s easy to say no to you. When you connect with the reader on a personal level, though, it’s easy to say yes. 

Step Four: Ask For Help

The final step is to give yourself the best chance possible of submitting RD applications, and an EDII should you choose, that make an impact. And the best way to accomplish that, in our experience, is to ask for help. Don’t ask your friend who is a good writer or your parents who last applied to college in the 90s, though. Instead, you need truly expert guidance. This could be a school counselor, a trusted teacher, or a consultant like us, as we live and breathe elite college admissions.

Reframing your college admissions process and formulating a new strategy after the ED rejection isn’t just important — it’s imperative if you want to achieve dream-school results.

After a rejection ED, it’s time to ask for help. Learn more.

First, some numbers. The overall acceptance rate for the Williams Class of 2029 was only The Early Decision acceptance rate was much higher at but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is easier for a student to get in ED. One needs to meet all the same standards as an Early Decision applicant, which tells us that there is something in your application that didn’t exceed their expectations. It could be grades, as anything less than a perfect transcript can be a problem. It could be scores, which are optional but expected to be exceptional when submitted. But in most cases students who apply ED to Williams are at least within the lower end of what Williams wants to see. So, what was it?

For most of the students who reach out to us after an ED rejection from Williams, the issue wasn’t quantitative, it was in the soft stuff. In this post, we’re going to break down what may have happened with your application and what you need to do now to still get into a dream school.

Strong outcomes require strong strategy. Get yours.

An ED rejection is a tough pill to swallow. We’ve got four steps to not just get through it, but to achieve outstanding outcomes Regular Decision or Early Decision II.

Step One: Take a Break

First, you need to take a few deep breaths and give yourself a moment to reset. If you jump straight from a rejection into the next set of applications, you are going to repeat the same mistakes that led to the Williams rejection. In order to avoid that fate, you need to pause. Do something purely for fun. Give yourself a few days, and definitely catch up on sleep. Then, get back to work.

Step Two: Strategize

The first active step you need to be taking to move towards your next round of college admissions is to create a plan. Making a plan, of course, relies on an understanding of what went wrong with Williams to not at least garner a deferral.

We haven’t seen your application, so we can’t tell you why it wasn’t seriously considered. But there are a few things that are common potential issues. The first, and often most glaring, is quantitative.

About half of applicants chose to in the most recently reported admissions cycle, and those who did send scores did so because they were confident in them. It wasn’t required, so why would you submit anything low? For Williams, an SAT of 1535, or an ACT of 34 are the starting point. If you don’t have those, and you have weak spots on your transcript, we know where at least one problem was.

Williams has not reported the GPA distribution of accepted students in recent years, but we know for sure that they expect exceptional grades in the hardest classes that you have access to — especially in the subject(s) that you propose pursuing in college. While a weaker grade early in your high school experience can be offset by strong SAT or ACT scores, an application with such a dip and no scores is easy for Williams to choose to reject.

But there is something else Williams wanted to see in your application that, if you have the grades and scores, didn’t come through: they look for a true focus of interest and passion for learning.

As you craft your Regular Decision college list, and possibly pick an ED II school, it’s likely that more than a handful of the schools that are on your list have a similar interest in the alignment between your academic interests and how you spend your time beyond the structured classroom setting. How you communicate this alignment is crucial, and we’ll get into that next. First, though, let’s talk about that college list and your overarching strategy.

Not getting into Williams does not mean that you can’t get into a similarly competitive college. It is possible, but there is a lot of work to do to prepare your applications –—and your college list — to make that possible.

You need 10 schools for the next application round. You can apply to fewer if you list is heavily weighted towards safety and target schools, but you do not need more than 10 unless some schools do not have supplements or are, like the UC system, covered by one application. Crafting 10 exceptional applications is hard, so we emphasize for our students that it is much more impactful to have 10 outstanding applications than to apply to a longer list with less attention paid to each.

Aim for 3-4 target schools, 3-4 safety schools, and 2-3 reaches. Before you categorize any school as a target, safety, or reach, look at the data through your schools, college advising system, Common Data Set reports, or “Class Profile” announcements. The numbers aren’t the only thing you should use to make decisions, but they offer critically important data that should inform your choices.

Step Three: Essays

And then there is the writing. As we have mentioned, Williams wanted to see you and to feel the passion undergirding your interests. If you were rejected despite having the grades and scores, there were massive problems with how you presented yourself as a student and community member. Something in your writing did not click, and the reader was left feeling like they didn’t want to find a space for you on campus.

We don’t know you, but we do think it’s fair to assume that you are not an unlikeable human. You are passionate and community-minded, a leader and a learner. You would have been a wonderful addition to the Williams community, but how you presented yourself didn’t show that.

Ultimately, it’s time to rewrite. Going back to blank documents is overwhelming, but it’s also necessary. Every year, we help strong students bounce back after coming to us following Early Decision rejections, and every year we work together to start again from scratch.

This is because strong college essays and supplements are grounded in exceptional writing that spotlights different aspects of you in the best possible way. Applications rejected ED are often quantitatively impressive, but the writing feels like an add-on as if the student didn’t deem it to be important. In this moment, it’s time for the writing, and the sides of you your essays spotlight, to take center stage.

Step Four: Ask For Help

The final step is to decide not to go it alone. Maybe you followed feedback from friends or parents on your Williams application, or maybe you kept it all to yourself. Either way, you need better advice. We work with driven students to change the trajectory of their college admissions experience. Closer to home, a school counselor or trusted teacher may have wisdom to share. Getting fresh eyes on your work unbiased by previous efforts is an important piece of turning this train around.

An Early Decision rejection is frustrating and overwhelming, but it isn’t the end of the world. You can still get into an exceptional school, so start today.

We help students get into exceptional schools after early setbacks. Learn more.

Vanderbilt is a competitive school – last admissions cycle, they boasted an overall acceptance rate of 5.9%. That puts them in the same league as the actual Ivies. However, their yield rate is definitely not comparable to the Ivies, at around 61%. While this is slightly higher than some of their peer institutions, such as Duke, it shows they value students who commit to them. And we’re willing to wager that this higher yield rate is a result of their ED2 policy, which in turn means that if you’re a strong candidate for Vandy, then you should for sure apply ED2. 

Why You Should Apply ED2

Before we get into the application itself, we know that some students are hesitant to apply ED2. Some of you are scared of the commitment, while others are holding out hope after a deferral. We completely understand your trepidation here, but not applying ED2 is a bad strategic move.

As we mentioned earlier, colleges care about their yield rate. This is the number of admitted students who end up enrolling in the school, and when you apply under a binding program like ED or ED2, you’re signaling that you’re going to positively contribute to that statistic.

If you’re here because you got rejected or deferred, and especially if your college list is reach heavy, applying ED2 to a school like Vanderbilt is the last big strategic move you have in your back pocket. You don’t have a lot of control in the admissions process, especially if you’ve been deferred, but applying ED2 at a school that values ED applications is something you can control and can make a huge impact.

If you’re dealing with a deferral or rejection from your Early Decision school, we can help. Whether you need a deferral letter, a college list for Regular Decision, polishing your Common App essay, an Early Decision 2 application, or even a complete rehaul for this next round, we have you covered. Reach out to us ASAP. Everything will be okay. 

The Supplement

Now, let’s get into Vanderbilt’s essay question. Unlike a lot of their peer institutions, Vandy only has one essay question, and depending on your background, you’ll either tackle it like a classic Community or Diversity prompt. No matter which avenue you choose, you want to make sure you’re centering your essay around a story.

For both first-year and transfer applicants, we ask you to complete a short answer essay (approximately 250 words) based on the following prompt:

Vanderbilt University’s motto, Crescere aude, is Latin for “dare to grow.” In your response, reflect on how one or more aspects of your identity, culture, or background has played a role in your personal growth, and how it will contribute to our campus community as you dare to grow at Vanderbilt.

This is a short prompt, and it’s asking for a lot. They want to know about how you’ve grown, whether through “identity, culture, or background,” and connect that experience to what you will do at Vanderbilt. Your first objective is to consider what aspects of your life are currently not featured in your Common App – our students often write about a cultural tradition, a more informal community they’re part of, or their families.

Think outside the box here, because with a 5% acceptance rate, you cannot rehash what they already might know about you from your activities section. Avoid talking about a formal community service type deal or anything that might come across savior-y. We also advise you stay away from traumatic or difficult experiences, and we give you permission to not write about trauma. You don’t have to put your worst days on display to get into college, we promise. And we understand these experiences absolutely contribute to your growth as an individual, but those are often better suited for the Additional Information sections.

A good way to start is to think about the kinds of traditions you participate in, whether those are big, annual family events or smaller, more personal rituals. We can also tell you that essays about food are always a big hit with prompts like these! Like maybe a story about how you used to watch your mom make dumplings, but now your little cousins watch you in awe, or how you taught yourself your grandmother’s green bean casserole recipe to bring to Friendsgiving.

What’s most important is that you tell a story, and stories have distinct beginnings, middles, and ends. You should open by setting the scene – bring us into the space, what do you smell? Hear? Feel? Taste? See? If someone’s yelling something across the kitchen, you can use dialogue to hook your reader at the jump. This is also where you need to establish the what of your story. Is there a (small) challenge or hurdle you’re facing in your quest, maybe some kind of hiccup or you realized you need to change directions? Maybe there isn’t any drama unfolding at all, and you’re just clearly defining for us what it is you’re doing.

The middle needs to move the story along, with you working towards your goal. Maybe you’re finally figuring some crucial element out, or the party guests have arrived, or you’ve settled into a rhythm with your task. Keep the vivid language here.

The ending needs to be a satisfying resolution. What was the end product or goal? Why was the what important? Don’t end this with something like “I grew because XYZ” or any equally vague and clichéd summary. Instead, end the story as if you’re telling it to a friend, because you’re not trying to connect it to some big life lesson when you’re talking to a friend. Admissions officers are smart, they will understand the subtext of the story.

Now, for the most important part of this prompt – and it’s the one that students miss or mess up the most. “...how it will contribute to our campus community as you dare to grow at Vanderbilt.” Before we get into our must-dos here, let’s mention your must-don’ts.

�ٴDz�’t:

• Say something vague like, “At Vanderbilt, I will bring the same sense of community to campus,” and then just end it there.

• Write about vibes only, which you might be doing unwittingly if you’re talking about abstract concepts like “sharing values” and “diversity” without giving examples. Vibes only is always a terrible way to answer any college essay question!

• Use the phrase “dare to grow” in your response. Well, we guess you can if it’s well-executed (rare!), but so many other students are doing this. Also it’s hacky.

“TKG, that’s a lot of don’ts! What should I even write about, then?” Teens, we’re getting to that. Do get specific. Find opportunities at Vanderbilt that match, or at least relate to, what you’re talking about. Vanderbilt has a lot of on-campus clubs and a to learn about them. Use it!

If you spent your essay talking about making a traditional, cultural dish, then find an affinity group or cultural organization that matches your background. If you wrote about how you got the neighborhood kids to think you’re cool and now you play sports with them every week, find a service org that mentors kids or does something sporty with them. If, on your walk or bus ride to school every day, you struck up a friendship with an unlikely companion, you might look into orgs that work with homeless youth, provide translation services, work with the elderly, etc., depending on what most matches your story. Whatever you choose, it needs to be reflective of the story you told.

Then, connect the dots. How will you continue to honor your “identity, culture, or background” when you go to Vanderbilt? How will your skills and experiences benefit the campus community? Be specific. Once you’re done, make sure to thoroughly edit and have a trusted friend/teacher/parent/adult review it – but don’t ask too many people, or you could lose the plot.

Now, we understand that we just told you how to write this 250-word essay in well over 3x the word count, but it’s important because it’s the only supplement they have. You have to pack a lot into this short essay, and we recommend the story part taking up 200ish of the words, and the connection to Vanderbilt taking up around 50ish of the words, give or take.

Submit and Wait

You’ll submit ED2 to Vandy on the same day their RD is due, January 1st. This is also the deadline for a lot of other schools, which means the Common App will be very busy and full of students all trying to submit at once. We understand you are under a time crunch, but please try to get it in before late night on January 1st, because we’ve seen crashes happen before.

You will typically hear back from them before RD decisions come out. Best of luck!

Deferred or rejected and need help with an ED2 app? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us ASAP.

First, let’s look at some numbers. The overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was . The Early Action acceptance rate that same year was actually lower than the overall at 8.4%. This is because the majority of EA applicants were actually deferred — neither rejected nor accepted — and the percentage of deferred applicants who were eventually admitted was 5.7%.

This is all to say that actually only a small number of early applicants to USC are rejected. Out of 42,119 EA applicants for the Class of 2029, 34,983 were deferred, or 83%. Being rejected early requires a significant issue with the application. In this post, we’re going to break down what that issue may have been, and how an understanding of it should inform your next steps as Regular Decision and EDII application deadlines approach.

Achieving outstanding results after an early rejection require expert action. Learn more.

Below are the four steps that you need to be taking to increase your chances of strong college acceptances, along with insight into why your early application to USC may have been doomed from the start.

Step One: Take a Break

First, you need to cut yourself some slack. Not permanently, obviously, but for a day or two. Giving yourself a moment to recharge will benefit you in the coming weeks. So, eat some ice cream. Enjoy a guilty pleasure show. Go out to your favorite coffee shop with a close friend. Then, get back to work.

Step Two: Strategize

Before we can talk strategy, we need to do an application autopsy for your USC app. Ideally, we’d get to see your specific application, but there are three things that most likely lead to your early rejection.

First, you may not have had the grades for USC. The of applicants to USC for the Class of 2029 had GPAs between 3.59 and 3.97. This means that 25% of applicants had a GPA above 3.97 and 25% had a GPS below 3.59. However, the middle 50% of accepted students had a GPA that fell between 3.87-4.00. If you submitted with a GPA below 3.75, that is a strong indicator of why you were rejected.

The second possibility is scores. If you have a GPA within, but on the lower end, of the 3.87-4.00 range and either did not submit SAT or ACT scores, or submitted scores that were not impressive, that is another possibility for your rejection. A strong standardized test score underlines your academics, and can serve to augment your GPA when there are weak points (like a few less-than-awesome grades). If you did submit scores and your SAT was under 1500 or your ACT was under 33, that is a strong signal for why you were rejected.

The third possibility is more subjective: they didn’t like you or believe you. Something in your application was a red flag for them. They didn’t buy what you were selling, or didn’t want it even if they believed you. We aren’t calling you a liar — we don’t know you — but USC has strong enough suspicions to warrant a rejection over a deferral.

There is no one type of student who gets into a school like USC, as they look for students offering a range of perspectives and experiences. However, every highly-selective school is looking for students of strong moral character and with developed passions and deep interests.

As you reassess your college list, keep this in mind. You need 3-4 target schools, 3-4 safety schools, and 2-3 reaches that are strong matches academically, but that also match with who you are as a person. The next step, after making your new college list, is to figure out exactly how to communicate those key characteristics about yourself that will make a college excited to offer you a spot.

Step Three: Essays

After your grades and scores, the most important piece of your college applications is how you present yourself in writing. You can’t change your activities or suddenly gain another leadership role, but the stories you tell about who you are, what you love, and why you do it are what will guide an application reader towards checking “accept.”

We’ve had students get into Ivies who have included walking their dog on their activities list, so simply doing ‘impressive’ things isn’t the solution to your problem — especially since you don’t have time to revamp how you’ve spent the past three and a half years. Instead, it’s all about the stories that you tell and how you capture the readers’ imaginations. Storytelling, then, is critical. Using sophisticated storytelling techniques like dialog and imagery is critical. But what if you don’t know how to implement that sort of style? That’s where we, or even a trusted teacher, can help. Of course, having expertise in college admissions specifically is the best option, but a well-trained literary eye can still be a useful asset as you approach rewriting your essays and supplements.

Step Four: Ask For Help

The final step is to make the bold move of asking for help. It is easy to either try to go it alone on your college applications (they are yours after all) or to welcome feedback from all the wrong places. You friend who is a good writer, a sibling who got into a good college, or even parents who last applied to college two decades ago are not, in actuality, great resources for college admissions advice. They love you and they want the best for you, and they don’t really know what they are talking about. That isn’t for lack of passion or effort, but it is because they aren’t immersed in this world admissions cycle after admissions cycle. Getting support from a true expert makes a massive difference for outcomes — and that’s where we can help.

We help strong students get into great schools, even after an early rejection. Learn more.

NYU has gotten very competitive in the last few years. Last cycle, NYU had a 7.7% acceptance rate, and over 120,000 applicants total. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND!! In 2019, for comparison, they had an acceptance rate of 30% and 60,000 applicants. Absolutely bonkers! And while NYU does not publish ED or ED2 specific data, we know that the odds for ED and ED2 are much higher – estimates put it around 30-35%. NYU, while exclusive and competitive, still doesn’t have the yield rate they want to have, around 50%. That means when you apply binding, you’re locking in to attend, and at a school that wants more students to enroll? That’s a huge plus.

Why You Should Apply ED2

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of the application itself, let’s address something we know is on many minds: is ED2 worth it? Maybe you’re unsure about making another binding commitment, especially after feeling the sting of rejection, or maybe you’re still holding out hope after being deferred somewhere else. That’s totally fair to feel that way, but from a purely strategic standpoint, skipping ED2 isn’t doing you any favors.

Colleges track their yield rates closely – a.k.a. the percentage of admitted students who actually choose to enroll. When you apply through a binding round like ED or ED2, you’re essentially telling the school, “I will go here if you let me in.” Admissions teams like that kind of certainty, especially at a school like NYU, which is trying to rise in the ranks and increase its yield rate while decreasing acceptance rates.

If you’re reading this post-deferral or even after a rejection, and especially if your current list leans heavily toward reach schools, ED2 is your most valuable card left to play. A lot of things are out of your hands right now, but this is a decision that can seriously influence the outcome of admissions season for you. We strongly advise applying ED2, and if not to NYU, to somewhere else.

If you’re dealing with a deferral or rejection from your Early Decision school, we can help. Whether you need a deferral letter, a college list for Regular Decision, polishing your Common App essay, an Early Decision 2 application, or even a complete rehaul for this next round, we have you covered. Reach out to us ASAP. Everything will be okay. 

The Supplement

NYU asks three questions, and they ask you to “consider one or more” of the prompts. This means you could write three essays, but we suggest you don’t do that. NYU likes to ask a lot of similar questions, usually focused on some kind of trait or value they really care about that year. In this kind of situation, you only need to write one of them. Quality over quantity, people! Last year, it was community, this year it’s disagreement, and then one prompt we absolutely do not recommend under any circumstances. Let’s jump in.

We are looking for students who want to be bridge builders—students who can connect people, groups, and ideas to span divides, foster understanding, and promote collaboration within a dynamic, interconnected, and vibrant global academic community. We are eager for you to tell us how your experiences have helped you understand what qualities and efforts are needed to bridge divides so that people can better learn and work together.

Please consider one or more of the following questions in your essay (250 words):

Question 1: Tell us about a time you encountered a perspective different from your own. What did you learn—about yourself, the other person, or the world?

This is your standard disagreement question, and it’s become the hot new it girl of college admissions. (We got for saying that!) This prompt trips a lot of students up, because you either:

a) haven’t had a lot of life experiences that expose you to different people or opinions (which is okay, you’re 17)

b) are very conflict-averse and avoid experiences like these, or

c) are conflict-prone, but a lot of your experiences are hot-button in nature.

This question is a tightrope! You don’t want to talk about anything too controversial (like heavily debated political or cultural topics), and you don’t want to come across as ignorant, either.

There are a few successful strategies when it comes to this question. First is to think very close to you – literally. Do you disagree with your parents on your approaches to things (not politics!)? Maybe you come from an immigrant family, and your parents had a very clear idea of what they wanted you to pursue, but you made your case and followed your own interests. What about with your siblings? Friends? If nothing fruitful comes to mind, think about school: your teachers, classmates, administrators, etc. Focus on more minor interpersonal conflicts or people you fundamentally agree with on most things, but disagree with on approach or execution. In our experience, things that center on generational differences or philosophical approaches to life seem to play the best.

Now that you have an idea, you need to tell a story. Stories have a distinct beginning, middle, and end, and even short 250-word college essay stories need to follow that structure. Start with the differing perspectives to set the scene, and use descriptive language to describe where we are – make the admissions officers feel like they’re right there with you.

Once you introduce and expand on the conflict, you have to move the story along with a strong middle. This is where you can use dialogue or expand on each person’s perspective. Since the prompt asks about what you learned, use this space to reflect as the other person is explaining their side of things. Maybe you realize your friend has some strongly held values you didn’t realize, or that you’ve been defensive for no reason. 

The ending of the essay needs to be as positive as possible, even though we know not everything ends super perfectly IRL. No one has to switch sides, bow down to the other’s more enlightened opinion, or dramatically declare how terrible and wrong they were for this to be a good, strong ending to the essay. It’s okay to still disagree at the end, as long as it’s civil and the relationship is intact, just as it’s okay for you to have changed or opened your mind to something new by the end.

Question 2: Tell us about an experience you've had working with others who have different backgrounds or perspectives. What challenges did your group face? Did you overcome them, and if so, how? What role did you try to play in helping people to work together, and what did you learn from your efforts?

This question is the same question as above, but this time it’s about group dynamics and not just one-on-one. We actually like this one a little bit more, because it lends itself better to a story – and you can highlight your leadership qualities. Our advice on how to write is the same as above, but we will give you a few don’ts for this one. We’d avoid talking about group projects at school, or really any school-sanctioned thing that might show up on your activities section. Topics should be more along the lines of you mediated a conflict in your friend group, you assumed the role of leader when your scout troop got lost in the woods on a hike, you took charge when some kind of (low-stakes) emergency or crisis popped up at work, etc.

Question 3: Tell us about someone you've observed who does a particularly good job helping people think or work together. How does this person set the stage for common exploration or work? How do they react when difficulties or dissensions arise?

This is the one we do not recommend you write. Like, at all. It seems like NYU puts one of these prompt options in every year, and we wonder if it’s some kind of mind-game test. College essays are supposed to be about you. This prompt is specifically asking you to write about other people. This tells NYU nothing about you. Avoid it, please. For us? 

Submit and Wait

NYU’s ED2 is due a few days before their RD, on January 1st. January 1st is one of the most packed deadlines across the Common App, so we recommend you try and get it submitted well before 11:59 on the 1st, because we have seen crashes happen and applications go unsubmitted.

ED2 typically hears back a bit before RD decisions come out in the spring, but that isn’t a guarantee – especially with how popular NYU is and how many applicants they get a year. Either way, once it’s in, it’s just time to wait. You’ve got this!

Deferred or rejected and need help with an ED2 app? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us ASAP.

Historically, Barnard heavily prioritizes Early Decision applicants. They aim to accept (and sometimes ) of the first-year class ED, despite only receiving of applications in the Early Decision round in the most recently reported year. The expectations aren’t lower for ED applicants, but one’s chances are higher in the ED round. This tells us that something in your application didn’t match up with what Barnard wanted to see.

In this post, we’re going to break down what may have gone wrong with your Barnard application and lay out your best next steps for success in the Regular Decision (or ED II!) round.

We help driven students get into dream schools, even after ED rejection. Learn more.

There are four steps you need to start taking now to ensure strong outcomes in the Regular Decision (or ED II) round.

Step One: Take a Break

This may sound silly given the stress of college admissions, but we are very serious about slowing down — for a moment, at least. The college application process is not a chill time. It’s stressful, it’s grinding, and we can’t blame you if you are completely over it. The problem is it isn’t over yet. You have to apply to schools Regular Decision, now, and you’ll also need to rethink a lot of the approach you employed for Barnard (more on that to come). To prepare yourself to do your best work, you need to rest. Take two or three days to do things that you love, connect with friends, and get good sleep. Then, it’s time to dig back in.

Step Two: Strategize

Before you can start your applications, though, you need to finalize your college list. Maybe you have a college list already that was supposed to serve as a Barnard back-up, or perhaps you never put a list together because you didn’t think you’d need to anyway. Either way, a Barnard rejection ED suggests that you may need to reassess what truly is a target, safety, or reach for you.

To determine this, the first step is to do an application autopsy. Why, we want to explore, didn’t you at least get deferred? The most obvious potential possibility is quantitative. Barnard expects impeccable grades and SAT or ACT scores to match. The middle 50% for SAT scores of was 1470-1540, and on the ACT it was 32-35. That means that, yes, 50% were within that range, but 25% were above it.

If you submitted an application with the grades and scores to measure up to Barnard’s expectations, the problem is in how you told your story. The truth is that there is no perfect activities list, or leadership resume, that gets you into a school like Barnard. What makes the difference is how you tell your story. This is also where we most frequently find an application has gone off the rails. You can be the most amazing applicant in the world, but if your application doesn’t tell that story it simply won’t work.

In Step 3, we’ll get into fixing the written parts of your application. First, you need to right-size your college list. That means adding schools, and making sure they are the right ones. You need 3-4 true targets where you are firmly at the top end of the middle 50% of recently accepted students on GPA and scores. Then there should be 3-4 safety schools, where you are above that middle 50%, and 2-3 reaches. The thing with reaches, though, is that you should still be in the middle 50%, just towards the lower end. A school where you are below the middle 50% and don’t have a major connection or ‘in’, is not a good reach to have on your list.

That may be a major bummer, and a hard pill to swallow. We get it, but it’s also the way the game works.

Step Three: Essays

Whatever the issue was with your Barnard application, the writing needs work. Applying to Barnard is very specific, and much of the work you didn’t won’t cross over to schools that aren’t all-women’s. So, it’s time to write.

We advise students to start over from scratch after an ED rejection. This can be painful, but it’s also necessary. Getting outstanding results requires bold action, and starting with a blank page is one of the boldest things you can do in this moment.

As you begin to brainstorm, remember that what will get you into a top choice school is really, at its heart, one thing: story. Telling compelling stories that force the reader to connect with you as a human is critically important. This is because application readers work really hard, like really hard, to not care that much about the person behind the application that they, in most cases, have to reject. If they care, saying no is hard. If they don’t, it’s simple.

But we want them to care. That means connecting with the reader on a human level that they can’t coast past.

We aren’t just talking about the main college essay here, either. Every single supplement, from 500 words all the way down to 50, should tell a story. Sometimes it’ll be fully developed, and other times it’ll simply hint towards something in your activities section.

Step Four: Ask For Help

If all this talk about rewriting your essays and rebuilding your college list is overwhelming, we get it. It’s a lot to pile on your plate when you also need to be keeping your grades high and continuing with your activities and leadership roles. That’s why this is a great moment to ask for help. Maybe your college counselor at school gave you feedback on your Barnard application, or a teacher let you know what they felt wasn’t working. But if you didn’t get hands-on and on-going support, you are missing out on the personal touch that can push an application from a maybe to a strong yes.

Applying to college is stressful, especially after an ED rejection. We make it easy. Learn more.

We work with our students to highlight these traits in their college applications by addressing the foundation of the application: how you spend your time. Your grades and scores must be exceptional, obviously, but getting into a top school takes more than straight-As. The activities you do are the differentiating factor between another top student and yourself, so extracurriculars really do matter and make a massive difference.

In this post, we’ll show you how to make the most of your junior year to ensure that your application packs a punch come senior fall.

We make applying to college an affirming and transformative experience. If that sounds impossible, ask us how we do it.  

Below, we’ve broken down the key activity areas for juniors into a few big buckets. You don’t need to do all of these, but you do need to mix and match to create an impressive extracurricular line-up that shows how you have pushed yourself to prepare for the biomedical engineering field.

CLUBS & TEAMS

If you are not already in line to be a head of a club or an academic team related to engineering or STEM more broadly at your school by senior year, that is a problem. To stand out as a prospective biomedical engineering major, you need to have proven leadership and teamwork experiences. And you are a junior, so there really isn’t time to work your way up the ladder of a team you haven’t already been on — or haven’t committed to.

However, there is still time to stand out if you don’t have the guarantee of a leadership role. We advise juniors who are not already lined up for leadership to find opportunities for leadership within the organization. You may not be able to say “Captain” as your role for the club or team on your applications, but you could have “Build Team Lead”, or “Lead Mentor” appended to your name. These roles may not already exist, and you’ll have to figure out one that is ideal for your skills and passions, but you can create them through commitment and clear communication. A key piece of this is offering more than you are asking for. If you aren’t willing to give time and energy to a club or team at school, you can’t expect that group to do much of anything for you. But if you give it your all, you can get an amazing result that pays off come time to submit.

INTERNSHIPS

Internships are crucial for students interested in biomedical engineering, and junior year is the perfect time to make that happen. Now, you can’t expect to get an internship on the medical side, as there are regulations against untrained individuals having access to patients and personal medical information (although we have had students previously successfully pursue an EMT certification and work as a way of advancing an interest in medicine). That isn’t practical for most applicants, and it doesn’t address the engineering side of the biomedical engineering major.  So, what are you to do?

Well, look at that engineering bit and find an opportunity in your area for an internship (paid or unpaid) that is with an engineering firm. It may not be a biomedical engineering firm, and that is okay, but you do want it to connect in some way to an aspect of engineering that you are passionate about. This may mean shadowing someone in a lab, helping process data, or working alongside a device design team. It may be super fun on some days, and insanely boring on others. That’s ok. It also doesn’t need to sound insanely impressive. You are in high school — you finding, securing, and completing an internship is insanely impressive on its own.

A key piece of making an internship pay off for you is how you make the most of it on your applications. This may mean a supplemental recommendation and an exceptional supplement that highlights your passion and curiosity in addition to its being a line item on your activity section.

RESEARCH

If you have secured an internship already, or if you have hit a wall with finding an internship opportunity, participating in research in some way is critical. You are, except in extremely extraordinary circumstances, not going to do some groundbreaking independent research that gains national acclaim. That type of impressive project is not out of the question, of course, if you want to go for it, you should, but it’s not good if that is the only goal you have in mind. Instead, we advise our students to set incremental goals that you can check off throughout their high school experience.  

As a junior, you’re almost done with high school and your window of opportunity for research is narrowing very quickly. To make the most of the time you have left before submitting your college applications, we recommend that our juniors who haven’t already participated in research find a project that they can contribute to without having to start one entirely on their own. This may be something close to home, a project of a peer or educator, or it may mean connecting to with graduate students at a local research university. The best way to start, though, is by talking to your teachers who may have intel on opportunities you don’t know about yet.

SUMMER PROGRAMS

If you are a junior looking to strengthen your applications to college, summer programs are not the best place to start. You only have one summer left before you apply, and that is an ideal time for internships or research. It may also be a time you want to study for the SAT or ACT, but sometimes there are summer programs that warrant making time for. Remember, you are a junior, and you do not want to be doing a program full of freshman. Instead, any program you do should be for upperclassmen who are committed to biomedical engineering, or engineering more broadly. Ideally, this program would also be highly selective. Some are even free, although they require an intensive application process.

For example, the isn’t just free — students in this residential, four-week intensive for sophomores and juniors can earn a stipend.  

Those types of programs require planning in advance, though. If the summer of junior year is coming up quickly and you don’t have an internship or research opportunity planned, we recommend accredited summer courses that are taught, in-person or online, to the collegiate level — and, to prove this, they should come with transferrable college credits.

As a junior interested in biomedical engineering, you are in a very important place at a very important time. You know what you want to do, but now you need to get yourself there. That’s where we can help. We specialize in working with strong students on exceptional applications. For the best college outcomes, students need to address more than just the frosting. Strong essays are critical, but the bones, or, rather, cake, has to be there too. We guide students towards their best outcomes by helping them long before they press submit.  

For outstanding outcomes, you must take bold action. Learn more.

Differentiating yourself as a strong engineering school is about more than grades and scores. There are so many applicants that are academically exceptional that being at the top of your class is simply the starting point. It matters enormously to position you for being even considered for admission, but it doesn’t help you stand out. That requires something else. Instead of being all about what you are doing in the formal classroom, the way to differentiate yourself as an applicant happens beyond the normal class schedule. Instead, it’s all about activities.

We work with our students to build up applications piece-by-piece, developing layers of passion, leadership, and independent exploration. The more time we have to pull this off, the better. As a junior, though, the window of time for impacting your application is shrinking. In this post, we’re going to give you a peek behind the curtain at how we strategize with students, filtered for what is most important as a junior interested in mechanical engineering. Remember that college admissions is personal, so filter and shift the guidelines below to fit your unique interests and strengths.

We help strong students achieve exceptional college admissions outcomes. Learn how.

As a junior, you don’t have a ton of time. Even if it is only the very beginning of your junior year, the press is on to finalize your application package for early submissions senior fall. So, do what you can but skip what doesn’t work. You time is precious, and leaning into what matters most and resonates deepest with you it critical to putting together your best applications possible.

STEM CLUB/TEAM LEADERSHIP

At school, it is very important that you are appointed or voted a head, captain, or leader of a STEM-oriented club. This could be a robotics team, a general STEM club, an engineering team, or anything else that is directly related to engineering and that builds your leadership chops. You should have been a member of such a club for the past two years of school. This sets you up for pursuing leadership as a junior or senior. 

If becoming the club head or captain isn’t possible as a junior, or the competition for the role is stiff even as a senior, that is a problem — but it is also a solvable one. After all, the strength of a college app is less about checking certain extracurricular boxes than it is about telling stories. Being the person at the top of the club’s pyramid is awesome if you can do it, but if that isn’t going to happen this isn’t a reason to give up on building stories of leadership around the club. So, schedule a time to meet with the current club heads and ask them how you can best support them in achieving their goals for the group. Ultimately, the goal with this conversation is to leave with something that you are in charge of and can point to as an example of leadership. Maybe this is leading a sub-team, like a build team for a robotics club, heading a committee, or pioneering a new program or learning opportunity.

INTERNSHIP

Heading up a club, or leading a group within a club, will teach you critical leadership skills around communication, teamwork, and time management that will serve you well in an internship. Securing an internship as a junior is very important, but the name of the company you are interning with is far less important than what you do during the opportunity.

We often find that juniors, and their parents, are hungry for ‘prestigious’ internships. While an internship with a well-known company can be great when it is the perfect fit, students are often willing to give up the things that make an internship actually impactful. They sign up for internships that are short-term, or even virtual, where what you need is something at least three weeks long and in-person. If this means getting an internship with a small engineering firm or company close to home that is actually ideal, not a letdown. Working on a close team and being in the mix during decision-making leads to the powerful stories that make an application stand out.

RESEARCH

While club leadership shows teamwork and an internship shows initiative, conducting independent research is a powerful way of illustrating intellectual curiosity. We work with our students to pursue independent projects for presentation or publication, but you can do a scaled-down version of this that still packs a punch as a junior if you haven’t already begun a research project. We help our students secure research opportunities with professors, but this can be harder to obtain alone.

Look for local, regional, or state STEM competitions that you could enter, or set one as the goal. Then, work backwards from there. What are the parameters of the competition, and what are you most curious about? By measuring off of those two factors, you can calibrate a project for the best chances of success.

TUTORING

Finally, we want to see our juniors tutoring with a social good bend. Assisting students with their STEM studies is an exceptional way of showing that your grades aren’t a fluke. You know your stuff, and you pass along that expertise to others.

Tutoring students at school is great, and you should do that, but what we’re talking about here goes beyond the campus of your high school geographically. We encourage our students to volunteer with a local non-profit that introduces young students to STEM, or with your local public library through a student group, club, or program, to provide tutoring services to underserved students, or those who are historically left out of the engineering field.

Standing out as a junior interested in mechanical engineering, and striving for a top school, isn’t easy but it also isn’t hard. Like many an engineering puzzle, building your ideal application can be broken down into manageable pieces that come together to make an impressive package. Get in touch to start working on yours.

Applying to college can be overwhelming. We make it easy. Learn more.

Get the Grades

Brown is looking for A+ students. If you aren’t getting a 4.0 or very close to it, Brown might not be the school for you. If you are applying to the engineering school, you especially need to be crushing it in your math and science classes. Ideally, you are also building a challenging transcript by taking APs, Honors, or IB classes (again, especially in STEM fields). A great transcript lets Brown know that you will be a good fit academically, and that’s incredibly important.

It is also a good idea to get some strong standardized test scores. Brown is currently test-optional, but 85% of applicants submitted scores last year. The 50th percentile was 1540 for the SAT and 35 on the ACT. You should be shooting for similar scores, especially doing well on the math sections (the 50th percentile for just the math sections was 780 or 34).

Build a Niche

Which student would you rather accept, an applicant who wants to do “something engineering related,” or a student who is passionate about Chemical Engineering and has a resume that backs up that interest? The choice should be clear, and you should make Brown’s job as easy as possible. Being interested in engineering generally won’t impress Brown. You need to be specific and intentional in your academic choices. Ideally, it should be clear exactly what your interests are just by looking at your application or resume, but building that niche can be confusing. We have a couple of steps that you should take.

Courses and Reading

You need to show that you are exploring your academic interests outside school. Two great ways to do this are through supplemental reading and classes. The more you know about your niche, the easier it will be to pursue and write about successfully. We recommend reading books specifically. A lot of students don’t read books outside of class; you can separate yourself from the herd by making yourself a reading list. While we love books most of all, you can supplement them with journal articles, podcasts, tech news, etc.

Taking a class is another great way to learn more about your niche. Many universities offer online courses through resources like Coursera. Online classes are a great way to start exploring your interests. You can also check out your local community college or a summer program. Taking extra classes outside of the usual school day shows your passion and curiosity for your niche and helps you build a history of exploring it.

In-School Extracurriculars

You should join school clubs that connect to your engineering-focused niche. For example, if you are interested in mechanical engineering, you should join your school’s robotics team. Great initial clubs for engineers include science Olympiads, solar car teams, robotics teams, and computer science clubs, among others. If your school doesn’t have a related club, ask the administration about starting one.

Just joining a club isn’t quite enough for Brown. They are looking for students who take on leadership roles and commit to their extracurriculars. Challenge yourself to rise in the organization’s ranks. Trust us, Brown will be much more impressed with “President” than “member” when it comes to school clubs.

Out of School Extracurriculars

While you can do out-of-school extracurriculars all year long, you need to make sure your summers are helping your resume. We recommend doing an academic program at a university (Brown has its own popular summer program), doing an internship, and/or doing research. There are, of course, other opportunities that will also help you build a great resume, but generally, these three are always great choices.

Just like your in-school activities, your out-of-school extracurriculars should connect to your academic niche. For example, try not to just take any internship. Look into engineering companies, science companies, science museums, local NGOs in the science space, science camps, etc. If you are volunteering, volunteer at a repair cafe or to tutor kids in STEM. If you are doing independent research, make it connected to what you hope to study in college. The more overlap you can show between your resume and what you hope to do at Brown Engineering, the better.

Build Something Cool

You need some skills to be a great Engineering student. Whether it's computer programming or soldering, you can show what you know by building something cool. We have had students build computers, drones, solar panels, and many other projects. Building something related to what you hope to study isn’t only a great activity, but it also shows and strengthens your real-world skills. Push yourself to learn new skills and use them to build something you can be proud of.

Apply Early

We buried the lead earlier. We said that last year, Brown’s acceptance rate was just over 5%. However, that is their overall rate. Last year, their Early Decision acceptance rate was 14.4%. Make no mistake, 14% is still highly competitive, and you need to be an outstanding candidate, but it is still your best chance at getting into Brown. We highly recommend applying early if Brown is your top choice. If you are applying this year, don’t wait to start applications (especially if you hope to apply early). This summer is your chance to set yourself up for success!

Applying to Brown Engineering isn’t easy, but if you feel overwhelmed, we can help. Whether you are a rising senior or a rising freshman, we can help you get a competitive edge when applying to top engineering schools.

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This is also the best time to make the first visit to a school that you have a legacy connection to. Either you’ll get excited, or you’ll realize that, maybe, it’s not your best path. Either route is extremely valuable, and we love working with students through navigating these first few steps of the college process.

In this post, we’ll break down what you need to be doing when you visit schools, how to pick schools to visit, and what to do after a visit. This is also an amazing time to do things like lock down your social media by making everything private, and remember that colleges take note of what you do on campus. If you post from campus praising the landscaping, it will not help you get in when you apply in a few years. However, if you post something negative, they will take note. Remember that there are young people on staff in the admissions office, and they are clued into whatever app kids are using at any given moment. So, visit. Have fun. Follow the instructions below, but also be thoughtful. You may only be a freshman, but the college journey starts now, and that means holding yourself to the standards that exceptional universities have for their students.

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If you want to get into an exceptional college, you need to have a vision of where you want to go. Getting onto a campus and feeling the energy of a school is an amazing way to kickstart that passion and energy for your collegiate future. We encourage our students to add college excursions into any road trip or family trip. If you drive past a college, stop. And always, and especially as a freshman, stretch yourself.

STRETCH YOURSELF

As a freshman, you are in an amazing place right now. As we said, the stakes are low. So, you need to stretch yourself. You need to try things that may be outside of your comfort zone or that you are ‘certain’ you would never want. Think you want to go to a small college? Visit a big university. Think you want an urban environment? Visit some rural schools. Going outside of your comfort zone may confirm what you feel confident in, or it may open your eyes to options that you hadn’t thought of.

And remember, you can learn a lot from schools that you would never consider actually going to due to competitiveness or another factor. If you see a sign for a school, we challenge our students to stop. Visit. Even if you’d never apply, notice something. Find a few things you love, and a few you don’t.

HAVE CONVERSATIONS

Don’t just walk onto a campus, snoop around, take pictures, and then go home. You need to have conversations. If you can book an official tour, come with questions. Don’t expect your tour guide to know precise answers about your academic interests, though. Instead, ask them about what they love about the school. When you invite someone into sharing what they are enthusiastic about, they tend to light up. It sparks a conversation that can build to a much deeper understanding of the school than you can get from a website or info session.

But don’t be stuck to talking to a tour guide. Go to a game or match, and start a conversation with another spectator. Eat at a student café, or have a picnic on the quad. Understand that you are young, and you will stand out a bit (or a bunch) as being much younger than most students. Don’t be surprised if people are wary of talking to you, and we do advise keeping an adult or older sibling in the mix.

TAKE NOTES

As you are visiting, you need to take notes. We recommend carrying around a small notebook that fits in your pocket or bag to record what pops into your head in the moment. This is because colleges have a way of getting blurry. If you start visiting colleges as a freshman (which you should), you need to remember this visit for a long time. So, take notes. Don’t just record facts, either. You need to record the way places make you feel. “Big library,” means absolutely nothing. “Wow, I could study here for hours!” actually tells you something when you look back at these notes in a year.

SUSPEND JUDGEMENT…BUT TRUST YOURSELF

We also want to challenge you to challenge yourself. We know we’ve already said this, but freshman year is the ideal time to do something a little bit outside of your comfort zone. The reason isn’t because you don’t know yourself, though. Rather, it’s good to go through a process of confirming that your conceptual preferences resonate in real life. We’ve worked with so many students who swear off of a certain type of school for one particular reason (especially size, curriculum style, location, and Greek life) before they start doing visits, only to realize that their perfect fit actually is the opposite of what they had thought that they wanted.

One of the most valuable things a college counselor brings to the table when working with freshman is building a relationship that can help a student navigate through the uncertainties, confusion, and challenges of even finding what schools you should spend your time getting to know and aiming towards. It’s all about pushing boundaries, suspending judgement, trying new things, and laying the foundation for exceptional college admissions outcomes.

As you start visiting schools as a freshman, remember that some colleges do not prioritize underclassmen for tours or info sessions. It’s still worth visiting, but understand you may need to revisit a school that you love to truly get a full sense of it. Either way, tap into family connections. If you have family or friends at a school, ask to visit their dorm, to shadow them to a class (only if permitted), or even just to get coffee. And if you find a school (or a few schools) that ‘click,’ it’ll be amazing motivation to dig in and earn the best grades that you can and to pursue the most impressive extracurriculars possible to launch yourself on a powerful trajectory towards your application process. 

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Some students enter philosophy through a fascination with the Greeks, or through more recent philosophical writing like Roland Barthes, Bertrand Russell, or Hannah Arendt. Students may have a deep interest in the study of ethics, and a passion for the humanities not simply as an academic arena, but as a practice. Or maybe you’re vexed by existential questions of meaning. You may have a sense of wanting to understand human behavior, not from a chemical perspective but through the study of thoughts and actions. And, of course, there tends to be a love of writing. 

Every top liberal arts school has a strong philosophy program. A big reason why this is the case is that a primary route post-graduation for philosophy majors is academia, following the path from an undergraduate degree to a masters, to a doctorate, and to professorship, scholarship, and tenure. There are also many less competitive, but still very strong, schools that have a hyper-focused philosophy niche. The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard, for example, offers students specifically interested in the study of the 20th-century humanist thinker a particular path, with courses like “What Makes Us Think? Critical Judgement and Moments of Crisis.” Academia, for the record, isn’t the only path that students of philosophy can take, but it is the most popular.

In this post, we’re going to break down what you need to be doing as a sophomore to stand out as a philosophy-focused college applicant when you are a senior. This is especially important as philosophy offers some particular challenges. It is a study that is often solitary, but while reading alone in a nook in a library can be great for your academic development it is sort of a downer on your college applications. It is also a course that often offers few direct extracurricular paths in high school. Instead, you need to knit together different avenues and opportunities to make your ideal trajectory clear while also emphasizing the teamwork, collaboration, and care for your community that colleges want to see.

In this post, we break down what you need to be doing as a sophomore interested in philosophy to set you up for the strongest possible college applications. The great news is that you have time to explore and try new things. There is room to expand your mind, and your network. Let’s dig in.

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You may be at a high school with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to extracurricular options, and be overwhelmed and unsure of what paths to pursue. Or you may be at a school with almost no clubs or student organizations, a few systems for creating new ones. Most students fall somewhere in the middle. There are a good number of student organizations and clubs, but probably not everything we list below. This is where being a sophomore is such an asset. You don’t just have time to show enthusiasm, you have time to start something. If something on our list sparks your interest, but there isn’t a program you can plug yourself into — start it. Showing initiative and taking leadership will go a long way in strengthening your applications, and it’s just fun to build a club or organization from scratch.

PHILOSOPHY CLUB

If your school has a philosophy club, you must be an active member. This is a non-negotiable, as is working towards a leadership position by junior or senior year. But if your school doesn’t have a philosophy club, now is the moment to start one. The great thing about starting a club is that you get to be the head from day one. You also get to shape it to what you are most interested in and passionate about. Whether it’s reading philosophical works, themed by geography, time period, or belief system, running a debate forum, or bringing in speakers, you can build the club that you want to engage with and lead intellectually, welcoming other students into the subject that you are so passionate about.  

RESEARCH

On the other side of the social engagement spectrum, we want to see our sophomores interested in philosophy engaging in independent research and scholarship. If this sounds intimidating, we get it. You have a lot going on in school, and the idea of adding additional research and academic work on — let along self-directed — can be a lot. There are programs like that support students in research through mentorship, and publications like that are dedicated to publishing humanities scholarship by high school students. You could also work with a tutor, a local graduate student, or even a teacher you love to further and guide your work towards the ultimate goal: sharing it. Students pursuing research need to keep two potential end goals in mind, presentation, or publication. In order for your research to support your college applications, it needs to turn into something. There needs to be an end product that you can point to and say, “I did that.”

SCHOOL LITERARY JOURNAL

You should also be supporting your peers in sharing their work and writing through a school literary journal. If your school has a literary journal, get involved. Join the journal, and begin working towards an editorial and leadership role. Maybe it’s editing a section before you take the helm of the entire publication. Or perhaps it’s leading the charge to increase the number of submissions, opening the literary journal up to a broader community.

If your school doesn’t have a literary journal, the same things we said about a philosophy club all apply. Now is the time to start one, and you are the person to do it. Speak to your favorite literature, English, or history teacher, and ask if they will support you in this endeavor! 

SUMMER PROGRAMS

As a sophomore, you are at the perfect point in your high school career to do an academic summer program that broadens your awareness of the breadth of the philosophical field while also introducing you to a whole community of students who share your passions and interests. Look for programs that are more than a glorified summer camp. We like programs that are not just hosted at well-respected schools, but run by them. The instructors should be talented and proven teachers of philosophy, and while campfires are fun that shouldn’t be the primary selling point of the program.

As a student passionate about philosophy, you need to take the time now to differentiate yourself from the other students applying for humanities slots at prestigious schools. This is a critical time that will unlock future opportunities, so make the most of it.

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Now, it is true that most colleges do not take demonstrated interest into account anymore. Even 5 or 10 years ago, demonstrated interest, like visiting campus, was crucial to improving your chances of acceptance. However, colleges changed their policies in recent years to try to make admissions more equitable. This decision means that being geographically close to a school or having the financial means to visit a far-away campus does not benefit your odds of admission.

As a result, you shouldn’t classify your college visits as something that you ‘need’ to do, but they are something that we highly encourage. You will spend four years at the school you pick, and you want to make sure that those are the most impactful four years possible towards your future. Yes, you can transfer, but transferring is not as simple as many colleges make it out to be. We believe that it’s better to invest upfront on a visit than to have to invest even more down the line on a transfer application.

Below, we’ll break down what you need to be doing before and during your college visits as a senior, and how to make them as impactful as possible. 

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If you haven’t made an effort to visit colleges yet, we are hoping that you are early in your senior year and have time to implement a visit strategy before you press submit on your applications. We also understand, though, that for many students (not ours) the college application process is a game of catch-up. With that in mind, we’re going to approach college visits as a senior from two angles: first, what to do before you’ve applied, and then what to do after you’ve received an acceptance if you haven’t been to the school before but are seriously considering committing to attend.

BEFORE COLLEGE DECISIONS

If you do not have a number one school and early deadlines are approaching, it is imperative that you visit your top choice schools if you have the ability to do so. Early Decision, or Restricted Early Action, is one of your strongest tools as a college application. Using it correctly, for the right school for you, is critical. There are schools that you may be able to get into ED or REA that you almost certainly would not get into Regular Decision. This could be because you are a legacy, an unrecruited athlete with coach interest, an ‘edge case’ student but with an exceptional extracurricular, like being a world-class mountain biker, or a student at the tippy-top of the pile but with little to amplify outside of your classwork. There are so many reasons why you may be a strong candidate for ED, but not RD, and that is something that we work with our students to figure out as a key piece of their application strategy. It isn’t only where you apply, but how you apply.

So, if you do not have a #1 in this moment, and are nervous about committing ED or REA to a school you haven’t been to, visiting or revisiting is critical.

If you do have a #1 that you’ll be applying to early, but the rest of your list is not locked down yet, you need to visit the colleges you are considering to help you finalize your priorities — especially if they offer an EA option. So, get on campus. Talk to people. As a senior, admissions offices will prioritize your visit as long as it is ahead of application deadlines. Book a tour and info session, and communicate clearly and early with the admissions office that you are planning on visiting and would love to be able to have lunch with a student or attend a class.

When you are on campus:

TAKE NOTES

Write down what you notice and how it makes you feel, good or bad, along with details from any meaningful conversations. Even things that seem like there is no way that you will forget them have a unique ability to disappear from your memory in the chaos of college application season. So, write them down. 

SEND A THANK YOU

Always send a thank you to a school that you intend to apply to — especially if you are considering applying early. We love snail mail, but when you are close to the deadline it is often better to simply email. That doesn’t mean that it should be informal, though. Treat this like you’re following up on a job interview. That means “Dear Mr…” and all that. We encourage our students to follow this format:  

• Sentence 1: Give your name, city/state, that you are a prospective member of the Class of 202X, and share that you are writing to thank them for your recent visit.

• Sentence 2: Give someone a compliment. Usually, this is the tour guide simply because it’s the person you spent the most time with. If you don’t remember their name that is okay, but this is also why we encourage students to take notes.

• Sentence 3: Tell them something that you really loved. Not the landscaping and not the architecture. Say something specific and complimentary about the academic program you are interested in pursuing.

• Sentence 4: Keep this letter short and sweet, so now it’s time to sign off with a final positive thought about the school and your excitement to apply.

AFTER COLLEGE DECISIONS

If you feel like you still need to visit a college after you’ve been accepted, but before committing, the time is basically immediately. This is especially true if you applied regular decision, as it’s now spring and the admissions office is more focused on next years’ seniors than students like you.

And we do highly recommend visiting a school before you commit to attend. No matter how many friends and family members have said that it is your perfect fit, and no matter how beautiful the website looks, you don’t really know if a school is a strong fit for you if you don’t step on campus, experience a class, talk to students, and otherwise engage with the student body. It is always possible that a school sounds ideal on paper and social media and the web, but isn’t so great for you up close. And, if that is the case, it is much better to figure it out before you turn down other options and move into a dorm. 

IF YOU VISIT BEFORE COMMITTING

Colleges you have been accepted to may have ‘revisit’ days for accepted students who have not made a final decision on where to go to college — yet. If a school you are seriously considering does have one of these revisit days, go. It will be a great opportunity to not only get to know the school, but also to meet some of your potential peers next year.

Other colleges are less enthusiastic about making room for seniors to visit after decisions have come out. They have juniors to worry about now, and you may need to visit unofficially without a schedule tour.

IF YOU VISIT AFTER COMMITTING

Is it worth visiting a college if you have already committed to attend? Yes and no. You’re going to be there in a few months regardless, so this visit would really simply be an opportunity to get a measure of campus and community in-person before officially moving onto campus.

Personally, though, we feel like there isn’t much of a point, even if the college has an official revisit day ahead of orientation. If you haven’t visited already, and you are already committed to attend, there isn’t much of a purpose to visiting ahead of first-year orientation.

Ultimately, sure, you could go if you a committed senior curious about their future school, but don’t stress about it. You’ll learn everything you need to know soon.

As a senior, you are in the final countdown to your collegiate future. You are in a wildly exciting moment, and making the right moves now can make a huge difference in your college outcomes. We work with our students to make the most of this time, catapulting them to exceptional application results.

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