There are 9 undergraduate UC schools, and they all use the same application. While they are all public research universities, each has its own flavor. Generally, our students gravitate towards Cal (aka The University of California, Berkeley) and UCLA (The University of California, Los Angeles). Our students have also fallen in love with UC San Diego’s impressive STEM majors, UC Santa Barbara’s commitment to research, and UC Davis’ environmental programs.

The UCs vary widely in competitiveness and . For example, the UC with the lowest acceptance rate is UCLA, at only 9.4% last year. The highest acceptance rate is typically at UC Merced, which clocked in at 95% last year. You should also note that this is an overall acceptance rate. The others all fall somewhere in between, like Cal at 11% or UCSD at 28%. These rates are only part of the story. If you are an out-of-state applicant, the rates will be significantly lower, and if you are a California resident, they will be slightly higher. Also, the UCs have candidates apply directly into a major and popular majors can have far lower acceptance rates than the overall average (we can help you navigate this; it’s actually pretty complicated).

Also, take note: the UCs are test-blind. That means they don’t care about your 35 on the ACT. They won’t even look at it. Your transcript, resume, GPA, and essays need to be impressive. The UCs attract a lot of talent. For example, last year, the average GPA for UCLA was 4.20–4.30 and 4.15-4.29 for Cal. Even Merced had an average between 3.54 and 4.15. Look at all those above 4.0 averages. That means their students are taking advanced weighted classes en masse. We routinely work with students as early as their freshman year to ensure they are the type of applicant that top UCs are working with. It takes time to build the type of resume that schools like Cal and UCLA are looking for. If you don’t know where to start, reach out; again, we can help!

There is a lot to love about the UC system, and if you are applying to one, it is easy to add more to your application. We recommend researching each school, and we can even help you decide which to apply to if you need advice! We also wanted to share some of our tips for the UC application essays. We work with students every year to craft these essays, and if you want to ensure a high-quality, standout application, our counselors have you covered.

The UC application asks you to write any 4 essays from a set of 8 prompts. Each one should be 250-350 words.

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.

This is a classic question asked by multiple colleges, not just the UCs. The trick to this essay is to make sure it doesn’t sound like a regurgitation of your resume. Often, when we start brainstorming topics for this essay with our students, they tell us about administrative or organizational tasks they do for a club they are on the board of. Technically, a story about scheduling club events as the president of the robotics team answers the question, but it doesn’t feel exciting. It is kind of what is expected in the role.

We greatly prefer when our students tell stories of leadership outside of official duties. For example, we had a student who wrote about leading auditions for her dance team. When she first joined the team as a freshman, auditions were competitive and unfriendly. She wrote about the steps she took to change that culture and make it a more supportive and positive experience. We love this approach because it includes an emotional component, and this story shows how she creates welcoming spaces. This is a skill she can bring to college. It is also a story about something she chose to do rather than what was expected of her in her role on the team. She could have approached auditions like past leaders had done for years, but she chose to be a positive influence on new members and the club itself. That’s the kind of story they are looking for!

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

If you are an artistic person, this is a great prompt to tell an interesting story about your artistic practice. We have had students write about everything from poetry to upcycling clothes to playing the harp. However, you don’t need to be artistically talented to answer this question. We love when students write about creative ways of thinking or problem-solving. We had a student write about solving issues in code and finding ways to get kids excited for camp activities as a counselor. Creative problem-solving can take many forms. If you are a creative thinker, this is also a great prompt for you. Tell us a story about how you approached a problem creatively and how you solved it.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Sometimes our students are nervous about writing this one. We think this has to do with the word “greatest.” We have a little trick to get around this. We often tell our students to choose a quirky talent they haven’t yet had a chance to discuss in their application, and then use that talent to discuss something bigger. We love when students write about a mundane or surprising talent and connect it to a larger interpersonal skill or personality characteristic. Cooking can be about curiosity; free diving can really be about accepting limits; reading body language can be about emotional intelligence (yes, these are all from past students).

We had a student write about his passion for rock climbing, but he used rock climbing as a way to talk about trusting his intuition. In rock climbing, there is a mantra, “trust your feet,” and this mantra not only helped him grow as a climber but also as a person. His greatest skill was really confidence, but he got to write about something more concrete, as rock climbing helped him develop it. We find this approach takes some of the pressure off the word “greatest” and allows for more solid stories.

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

This question isn’t for everyone. If this doesn’t immediately sound like something you have experienced, skip it. We would say that over 95% of our students don’t answer this question. This is a really tricky prompt to answer well without introducing any red flags to the college. That being said, this can be a place to write about educational barriers that you need to explain. If this does sound like something you could write, we would highly recommend working with a professional to write it.

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

Much like the previous question, most students should just skip this one. The biggest word here is "significant." Don’t write this question about failing a test once. The challenge has to be big. Even if you have a big challenge, we don’t always recommend writing about it. Sometimes big challenges can look a lot like red flags to colleges.

While colleges say they want all kinds of students, what they really want are students who will succeed at their school and graduate in four years without incident. Talking about an ongoing challenge can make you sound like a student who won’t do well at their school.

Still, sometimes you need to explain an issue with your academic record. For example, we had a student who was chronically ill their sophomore year. They had to miss a lot of school, and thus their grades sophomore year didn’t match the rest of their transcript. They used this question to write about their health challenges and how they had to work hard to catch up with their studies junior year. They finished this essay with how they were now doing well. This is important: if you write this question, it has to end with you thriving. Sometimes a happy ending can feel disingenuous, but they are essential for this type of question.

This is another prompt that we would highly recommend talking to a counselor if you are tempted or need to take on.  

Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

While the other three prompts you take on are kind of up to you, you should do this one. We advise every student we work with to write this essay. This is your chance to talk about what you hope to major in, and talking about your academic interests is kind of a must to get accepted. The UCs ask you to choose a program at each school you apply to. We work with our students to choose the right programs, build resumes that reflect their interests, and strategically apply. Ideally, by the time you apply, you have a solid academic plan, but at very least, you should know what you want to study and that your program choices are similar enough for you to write a single essay about a topic that connects to them all.

Sometimes we have a student who applies to slightly different UC programs. For example, we had a student who was applying to Engineering Physics at Cal and Mathematics at UCLA. UCLA doesn’t have an Engineering Physics major. Thankfully, he had pursued an independent math research project in his junior year, which could connect to both majors.

This question says “inside and/or outside of the classroom,” but your answer really needs to include outside of the classroom. When we start working with a student early, we make sure they explore academic interests outside their normal school day. This can be through advanced classes or programs, research, internships, or fellowships. These are the types of experiences that will impress top UCs and will allow you to write a great essay for this prompt.

What have you done to make your school or your community a better place?

This prompt is pretty similar to the first one. So close that we sometimes advise choosing one or the other. You can write both, but they should feel different if you do. Don’t just write another story about a leadership position you hold. Tell a good story about what you have done for your community.

A lot of our students are passionate about volunteering. You can certainly tell a story about volunteering to answer this question, but it shouldn’t feel like a regurgitation of your resume. Choose a specific story.

Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

You can approach this final question just like you approached the Common App Essay (yes, we have a whole other blog about that too…). Honestly, many students cut down their Common App essay for this prompt. You are going to be writing so many essays during the application process. If you can strategically reduce the amount of work you have to do, that is great. However, it doesn’t work with all Common App essays. Sometimes cutting the essay in half is just too hard.

The UC app is long (we didn’t even talk about their activities and awards section here!) Make sure you give yourself enough time to write, brainstorm, and edit. If you are serious about attending a top UC (especially if you are an out-of-state student), we also recommend working with a counselor. We can help you at any stage of the college application process, including writing outstanding essays. The UCs have an earlier deadline than most colleges.

Reach out to get started today!

Families often assume UVA is simply evaluating whether students are smart enough to succeed academically. Well, sure, but that question is usually answered fairly early in the review process. The real question comes down to everything else in the application.

So how can you build an application that stands out in the crowd? Let’s get into it.

Who Actually Gets Into UVA?

Students love searching for admissions statistics because numbers feel definitive. GPA, class rank, SAT scores, acceptance rates – they create the impression that admissions can be reverse-engineered if you gather enough data. Yes, you need strong stats to get in, but that’s not the main factor, at all.

Successful applicants challenge themselves with the most rigorous curriculum their schools offer. Strong grades in AP, IB, dual enrollment, honors, or other advanced coursework remain one of the clearest indicators that you can handle UVA’s academic environment. When standardized test scores are submitted, competitive applicants generally fall well into the upper ranges nationally, particularly among out-of-state applicants.

Reading successful applications, you often notice something beyond achievement. Students seem engaged rather than simply busy. They pursue ideas because they're genuinely interested in them. They become deeply involved in organizations not because leadership looks good on a resume, but because they actually care about the work.

So yes, academic excellence gets applicants into the conversation. What students choose to do after they get the grades is what keeps the conversation going.

What Does UVA Really Want to See?

There's no single answer to “what does a UVA student look like?”, but there is a consistent pattern. The admissions office wants students who are going to engage with the school once they get there. It doesn’t matter what your interests are, but how you chose to pursue them while you were in high school.

A student who becomes fascinated with constitutional law and spends years reading Supreme Court opinions, competing in mock trial, and writing for the school newspaper demonstrates passion for their topic. So might a student who develops an independent research project after becoming captivated by a question that wasn't being explored in class.

UVA's campus places a tremendous amount of responsibility on students. Organizations are largely student-led, and most on-campus academic opportunities often reward initiative. The university assumes that students are capable of directing much of their own experience. So the best way to prove you’ll be that self-starter they’re looking for? By self-starting in high school.

By the time your application reaches the admissions committee, it should answer a fairly simple question: if this student were given enormous freedom, responsibility, and opportunity, what would they do with it?

How Does UVA Decide Who Gets in?

Colleges often describe admissions as holistic, but that word doesn't really explain what admissions officers are doing once applications are academically competitive. “Hollistic” really only comes into play if you’re meeting the academic standards, and that word doesn’t mean a 3.6 GPA can easily slide into UVA because of enough resume padding.

UVA is trying to build a class that matches their overall vibe. As always, academic performance remains the first question. Can this student succeed in demanding classrooms? Has the student consistently challenged themselves? Do the transcript and curriculum suggest readiness for the pace and expectations of the university?

Once that hurdle is passed, admissions officers are trying to understand how applicants think, how they've chosen to spend their time, and what role they tend to play within the communities they're already part of. The university is also balancing institutional priorities that applicants don't always think about. As Virginia's flagship public university, UVA is constitutionally mandated to keep 2/3rds of their student body from in-state. Or in-commonwealth, whatever.

That makes out-of-state applications extra competitive. Reading successful applications, you often come away with a clear sense of the student's judgment, character, and personality. Not simply their intelligence, but how they make decisions, what they value, and how they engage with the world. Those qualities are difficult to measure numerically, yet they’re pretty important to a university that asks students to exercise considerable independence from the day they arrive.

How Can I Get into UVA?

Admissions officers spend months reading applications from students who all describe themselves as hardworking, intellectually curious, and involved in their communities. None of those qualities are bad, in fact, they’re all very good! The problem is that they don't tell the admissions office very much.

The strongest UVA applications usually have a clearer sense of direction. They want to see students who have spent enough time exploring their interests to talk about them naturally. Their coursework, activities, and recommendations all point toward someone who enjoys learning for its own sake. They don't sound like they're trying to manufacture an admissions profile – they sound like students who have gradually become more invested in the things that genuinely interest them over time. Natural development is the name of the game.

Building that deliberateness into your application is extra necessary, because UVA doesn’t use supplemental essays anymore. Every other piece (your transcript, activities list, recommendations, and Common App essay) has to carry a little more weight. Your activities should demonstrate how you've chosen to spend your time, your recommendations should reinforce the kind of student you are in a classroom, and your Common App essay should provide a perspective into who you are that the rest of the application can't.

Academic excellence will always be the foundation of a competitive application, but at UVA, thoughtful choices made over several years are often what separate memorable applicants from students who simply have excellent grades.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

Applications become much stronger when students begin making intentional decisions well before senior year. And that's where much of our work begins.

At The Koppelman Group, we help students identify the academic interests that genuinely excite them and think strategically about how those interests can develop over time. Sometimes that means pursuing independent research. Sometimes it's finding a professor to mentor a project, identifying a summer opportunity that deepens an existing interest, or simply helping a student recognize that the activity they've been treating as "just a hobby" is actually one of the strongest parts of their application.

Just as importantly, we help students avoid wasting time. Highly selective admissions has created an environment where students often feel pressure to say yes to everything. More clubs. More leadership. More summer programs. More resume lines. That’s exhausting! In reality, applications often become more convincing when students make thoughtful choices about where to invest their time.

By the time application season arrives, we guide students through every component of the process, including course planning, testing strategy, college lists, the Common App essay, and overall application review. Our goal is for every piece of the application to reinforce the same clear picture of the student without feeling manufactured.

Admissions officers read enough applications to recognize when students are trying to perform for a committee, so we help students communicate who they are with confidence.

Conclusion

UVA expects their students to think independently, contribute thoughtfully, and take responsibility. That expectation begins on day one, which is why the admissions process starts on day one of high school.

Strong academics remain essential, but they are only the starting point. The applications that work belong to students who have developed genuine intellectual interests and proven that they are ready to take ownership of the opportunities they'll encounter in college.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

UChicago is one of the hardest schools in America to get into. Their acceptance rate usually hovers right around 4%. Yes, it is that competitive. Serious applicants need to be the full package. This means incredible grades, amazing scores (they are test-optional, but if you have good scores, it really helps), an impressive resume, engaging essays, and a solid strategy. We can help you with all of that! We work with students to craft UChicago-worthy applications. Whether you are just starting high school or a rising senior, reach out; we can guide you through every step of the college admissions process. Trust us, for schools like UChicago, working with an expert can make all the difference. We know what we’re talking about–for the past few years, we’ve had a 100% acceptance rate ED to UChicago. 

For their supplement specifically, UChicago wants to see how you think. They have one of the most challenging supplements of any US college and categorize essays as “very important” in their selection criteria. It is essential to get their supplemental essays right if you hope to get in. These are just the basics, so if you need more help, we can work with you!

The UChicago supplement has 2 questions (the first everyone has to answer and the second has several prompt options). Unlike most colleges, they don’t have word counts. Instead, your answer should be ‘one- or two-pages,’ uploaded as a PDF. This isn’t the time to get fancy on spacing or font. They don’t give specific guidelines, but it should be single-spaced in a font like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman, in 11- or 12-point, with standard margins. Don’t try to make your work seem longer or shorter if it doesn’t fit in their 1-2 page guidelines. Trust us, it isn’t fooling anyone. Be cool.  

Question 1 (Required)

How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.

This question is the far more standard of the two. Many colleges ask similar questions. UChicago has one of the longest versions of this essay, but that just gives you more room to be specific and make your case. 

You need to cover a couple of topics in this essay. The first is what you hope to study at UChicago. Don’t be undecided here. The students that get into UChicago know what they want to study and have already started pursuing those academic interests. You need to show that you are that kind of student. Your answer should include not only what you want to study but why UChicago is the place to study it. 

Give yourself time to research the school. This essay needs to include specific references to your major, classes you hope to take, professors you hope to work with, academic opportunities offered by the college, etc. The more specific you can be, the better. You also need to connect these opportunities to you, your experiences and your interests. 

For example, a few years ago we worked with a student who hoped to study Neuroscience and Psychology at UChicago. We helped them connect their past experiences to their academic pursuits. They wrote about the Department of Psychology’s Undergraduate Research Initiative and how they would pursue a project in their special interest between music and mental health. They connected their interests to their volunteer work in music and mental health outreach programs. They spoke to specific classes, such as 25620: How Children Think, connecting it to the behavioral psychology course they took one summer and to their work as a teen mental health ambassador. The more you can establish an overlap between your interests and university offerings, the better. 

UChicago has a very specific culture and way of instruction. You can also weave this into your essay. We encouraged this student to explain their interest in the Core and being able to explore liberal arts classes even as a pre-med. Think about what drew you to U Chicago academics and write about that! 

The question doesn’t just talk about “learning;” it also talks about community. UChicago wants to know how you will get involved in the community outside of class. However, this should also feel specific. You need to write about clubs and extracurriculars at UChicago that relate to your past experiences. For example, that same UChicago applicant wrote about joining musical groups like The Ransom Notes since they had been a vocalist in their high school choir. This is an excuse to write about how you are already involved in your community and how that will transfer to your life in college. 

This essay is long. We helped this student take a lot of specifics and make it flow together as a cohesive story about mental health, music, and neuroscience. You need to tell a story about how you would be an amazing UChicago student and how UChicago is the best college for you.  

Question 2: Extended Essay (Required; Choose one)

The second essay allows applicants to choose between several prompts. They are designed to test your creativity and thinking skills. They are all kind of wacky, but we think some are better than others. Let’s break them down. 

Food for thought: How do thoughts eat?

If you have a great idea for this, go for it. Generally, we don’t love these kinds of pun-based prompts because it can be hard to write over a page on a question that can feel a little thin. You also need to make sure it's creative. If your answer is “thoughts eat knowledge,” maybe you should try pushing yourself a little further. 

If you really feel drawn to it, that is fine, but otherwise, we think there are better prompts further down. 

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, utilized origami-inspired techniques to compactly store and deploy its sunshield in space. Choose an artistic practice and use its principles to propose an elegant solution to a problem.

This prompt is great for artistically talented or inclined people. While this prompt is new, we have had many artistic UChicago applicants. One of those applicants was an accomplished harpist. She could have easily written about how the 47 strings and 7 foot pedals of the harp could serve as a model for earthquake retrofitting in her native San Francisco. The harp uses a complex mechanical system in which the pedals allow the harpist to adjust the strings' tension. Harpists do this to be able to change notes instantly and play in any key, but maybe a similar system could be used to build the next generation of earthquake-resistant skyscrapers.  

We like this answer for two reasons. 1) You want to be able to tell a story about the practice, and this is far easier with at least some hands-on experience. You don’t have to be a master, but you should know the art well before jumping in. This story would allow her to write about her passion for the harp as well as an issue affecting her hometown. 2) The problem isn’t related to the arts. They want to see you use art for a seemingly unrelated problem. Remember this is all about creative thinking; it should feel unexpected.  

Sometimes metaphors get mixed up. For one reason or another, one could say, “we'll burn that bridge when we get there” or “the world is your china shop”. Make up your own mixed metaphor. Explain how it could make sense, be understood, or even applied.

We like this prompt because it immediately allows for creativity. You need to make up a new metaphor! Well, that isn’t exactly right. Really, what they are talking about here are metaphor portmanteaus. They want you to mash up two (or more) established metaphors. This might call for a little bit of research into popular metaphorical sayings. While you are doing this research, you should also be thinking of good stories from your life that might relate to your new metaphor. If you don’t have a story, it is going to be hard to write over a page about this. 

For example, if you want to tell a story about how you perceive time with your busy schedule, you could mash up “time is money” and “life is a rollercoaster” to “time is a rollercoaster.” Then you should have a story about making breakfast and how it is like the ascent of a theme park ride, as the “proof” for how you see it making sense. 

The Olympics have long celebrated the pinnacle of human athletic achievement. But what if they expanded to honor the mundane? Imagine a new Olympic event built around an everyday activity like speed dishwashing or competitive grocery bagging. How is it scored, officiated, and judged? Why is it a worthy addition?

This is a really fun prompt. Ideally, you want to use a mundane skill that you have. Choosing the right skill allows you to talk about yourself. This prompt can be used as a way to show off a hidden talent of yours. Mundane talents are a great way to show humor, define personality traits, and connect to more important skills. We advise not choosing anything too resume-speak-esque. Don’t say time management or organization. 

That being said, you can connect a more physical/mundane skill to something lofty like “organization.” For example, if you said ‘sorting socks without losing any,’ you can use that mundane skill to imply the importance of organization without sounding like a resume bullet point. 

AI: Allen Iverson. NASA, or the North American Saxophone Alliance. Share a potentially confounding, comedic, or captivating example of MIA (Mistaken Identity of Acronym) and tell us its backstory. 

The important part of this prompt is the backstory. You should start this essay with a story you want to tell. Making up the acronym to fit that story is the easier part. BRB could turn into ‘Best Roadbiking Bridge’ if you have a story about your passion for biking. It could also turn into ‘Bird Review Bash’ if your story is about trying to get your friends into bird watching with you. Technically, this prompt is trying to force you to create a backronym from an existing acronym. If you are great at acrostic poetry, this one might be for you. Try to have fun with it and tell a good story. 

And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option! In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun!

We usually tell students to stay away from this question. UChicago has so many fun prompts that we think at least one will speak to you. If you do choose to respond to this prompt, you need to be really creative. Push yourself further than you think you need to. 

UChicago’s supplement is both long and creative. It is made to be challenging. We would recommend giving yourself plenty of time and highly considering working with a professional if you are serious about applying to UChicago. We help our students brainstorm, write, edit, and craft high-quality and eye-catching UChicago supplements. Have questions about the college process?

Reach out today to speak with a dedicated counselor! 

The stats back this up: BC is an and a . Boston is an exciting urban hub on the East Coast, and BC offers a true campus experience with access to the city; students enjoy the benefits of a tight-knit, socially conscious community while getting a top-tier education developed with personal purpose and professional applicability in mind.

BC is test-optional, but, as we’ve covered, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get in. The average standardized test scores for admitted students range from 1440 to 1540 for the SAT and from 33 to 35 for the ACT. Admittedly, we can assume this range is higher than it would be if BC required all applicants to submit scores, because students who scored at or above a college’s reported median are more incentivized to submit their test results. However, this isn’t a small sample size that highly skews the average; two years ago, submitted test scores.

There’s no way around it: the standard for admission is high, and you’ll need to meet it to secure a spot. BC is a popular destination for high-achieving, academically ambitious students who want to make an impact, and, year after year, we help clients get in.While grades and scores are fairly black and white, the supplemental essay gives you more agency to make creative choices, show your personality, and set yourself apart. In this post, we’ll break down the writing section so you can see how we set up our students for acceptance to their top-choice school.

Writing Strategy

First, let’s how BC introduces their writing supplement to get a broad sense of the requirements. :

We would like to get a better sense of you. Please respond to one of the first four prompts below (400 word limit). Students applying to the Human Centered Engineering major should respond to Prompt #5 instead.

The guidelines here are straightforward. The word limit here is not optional. The essay you submit may not be longer than 400 words, and you should make good use of the space you’re given — so your essay should not be shorter than 350 words, either.

If you’re applying as a Human Centered Engineering major, your only option is Prompt #5, and you can head straight to our advice about it at the end of this blog post. Everyone else has their pick of Prompts #1-#4, but not all your options here are equally strategic. When advising students who were later admitted to BC, we guided them to the choice best-suited to help them shine. We’ll walk you through each of the prompts below, so make sure you read through each of them to identify the pros and cons for your application before writing your essay. This decision matters!

1. Strong communities are sustained by traditions. Boston College's annual calendar is marked with both long-standing and newer traditions that help shape our community. Tell us about a meaningful tradition in your family or community. Why is it important to you, and how does it bring people together or strengthen the bonds of those who participate?

The first few sentences here don’t directly relate to the question you’re being asked, but it does tell you important information about why you’re being asked. In sharing a BC value, admissions is telling you what they’re looking for — students who care about honoring legacy and upholding community ties through shared ritual. While your essay won’t speak to BC’s specific traditions, the way you write about a tradition of your own demonstrates why you’d be an excellent addition to their campus and how you’d contribute to school culture.

We’ll let you in on the guidance we’ve given successful BC applicants in the past: while the tradition you highlight can be anything, you’ll want to select something specific and personal to you. This is true for several reasons. The first is that it ensures you check all the boxes you’ve got to cover in your response, most importantly why this tradition is important to you; the second is that it will allow you to stand out and give a better understanding of what you care about and how you think. If, for example, you write about opening presents on Christmas morning, you’ll technically be answering the question, but we’re not learning anything about you since almost everyone who celebrates Christmas does the same. At best, it’s forgettable; at worst, the lack of originality and creativity in the approach gives the impression that you didn’t put much effort in.

And, while you need to take the prompt and its focus on tradition seriously, the topic you choose does not need to be serious to make a great essay! We’ll tell you the same thing we tell our clients to take the pressure off brainstorming. Your tradition does not need to be “formal” or emotionally intense to be meaningful. In fact, it’s the small things — the inside jokes that turn into annual family activities — that are more illuminating and personalizing.

Opening presents on Christmas? Not so groundbreaking. Opening presents on Halloween because it’s your mom’s favorite holiday? Delightful. It’s unexpected, it’s endearing, and, while light-hearted, it can have deep significance. It might be something you joke about on the surface, but it also speaks to your mom’s legacy and your relationship to her. How this became a way to spend time with your mom, eating candy and watching scary movies, once you’d outgrown trick-or-treating. How it helps you remember the zeal with which your mother approached putting together your costume every year as a kid, which is really a sign of how she supports and cheers you on in everything, reminding you that you can be anything you want to be — whether that’s a benevolent witch, an astronaut, a classical pianist, or the first female president of the United States. Now that? That’s an essay we want to read!

2. The late BC theology professor, Father Michael Himes, argued that a university is not a place to which you go, but instead, a "rigorous and sustained conversation about the great questions of human existence, among the widest possible circle of the best possible conversation partners.” Who has been your most meaningful conversation partner, and what profound questions have you considered together?

Okay, we admit that this prompt is fascinating, but you need to take care in how you answer it to avoid common pitfalls. Again, the set-up to the actual question itself gives you important information. BC is looking for the kind of person who views doubt as an opportunity to grow, an invitation to seek more knowledge in pursuit of answers; that means they want someone open-minded, thoughtful, capable of respecting and listening to others, and humble enough to change their mind. They’re looking for someone curious, smart, and collaborative. If you choose to tackle this prompt, you need to make sure your essay speaks to how you embody those qualities.

Every year, clients come to us with their first draft of this essay, and we help them reimagine their response, ensuring that their best attributes come through in how they frame their answer. The mistake we see most often is an essay that, despite being beautifully written and philosophically resonant, fails to communicate anything about the applicant who wrote it. Yes, you need to identify the conversation partner who has most impacted you, but it can’t be all about them or the knowledge they’ve imparted.

This essay should not become a profile of a person you admire or a deep-dive of a topic you find interesting; it should be an anecdote that shows why dialogue matters, how you show up to a conversation in good faith, the way you speak your mind but intentionally create space for others to do the same. The best way to do this is to choose a concrete example, a conversation that left a big impact on you and is representative of the types of conversations you tend to have with this person. That way, you don’t bite off more than you can chew in 400 words, you don’t get lost in generalizations or abstract concepts, and you can illustrate the unique qualities you possess that make you a meaningful conversation partner, too.

3. In her July 2009 Ted Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned viewers against assigning people a “single story” through assumptions about their nationality, appearance, or background.  Discuss a time when someone defined you by a single story. What challenges did this present and how did you overcome them?

This option is another prompt that definitely has merit but comes with a caveat. The biggest risk is that, in relaying an experience where someone defined you by a single story, you’re addressing a misconception someone had about you because of an aspect of your identity. Ironically, that means you might spend the essay focusing on that aspect of your identity when the whole point is to show why none of us should be defined by one part of who we are.

Let’s go through a hypothetical to get at this question more clearly. Maybe you’re from the American South, and it bothers you that people jump to conclusions when they learn you grew up in a red state. They treat you like you must be narrow-minded or uneducated, and they ask if you ride a horse to school. Those are unfair assumptions, definitely, and an essay about setting everyone straight by explaining that you have a driver’s license already and highlighting your achievements could be triumphant and funny depending on how you write it. Still, though, this narrows you down to a label, characterizing you primarily by what you are not. This is a completely valid, perhaps wonderful piece of writing about how you’re not what most expect from a Texas girl, but you’re still being distilled into and identified with a category.

The way to do this right is to make sure you push through “the single story” you want to debunk by taking your essay one step further, elaborating on what you are not by revealing what you are. In talking about an experience where someone flattened you through their assumptions or reduced you to one dimension, make sure you include all the things they left out. Recognizing the complexity and full humanity of every person is the real point of Adichie’s talk, and writing this essay with that in mind will allow you to exhibit a rich and compelling portrait of yourself as a multi-faceted applicant.

4. Boston College’s Jesuit mission highlights “the three Be’s”: be attentive, be reflective, be loving – core to Jesuit education (see A Pocket Guide to Jesuit Education). If you could add a fourth “Be,” what would it be and why? How would this new value support your personal development and enrich the BC community?

Prompt #4 has some of the same drawbacks — it’s easy for students to get pedantic or moralizing here and spend more time talking about the virtue they’re hoping to represent with a fourth “Be” than about their plans to better themselves and their community. There’s no need to force a response, so if this prompt doesn’t elicit an authentic response from you, don’t choose it in an attempt to win points with admissions officers. If BC thought that responding to this question is the only way to prove you’d be a good fit for the school and its Jesuit ethos, they wouldn’t give you three other options. An uninspired essay is the worst kind, so don’t waste the opportunity a supplemental essay gives you by submitting something that sounds like it was inauthentic and painful to write.

If you are genuinely fired up about this option, that’s great! Just make sure that you don’t spend the essay explaining your addition or lecturing. Tell a story that shows the importance of this quality; make sure your essay conveys something about you by illuminating why you chose the fourth “Be” that you did; aim to evoke an emotional response in your reader so that they leave with a fuller conception of who you are and why they should root for you. You’re going for maturity, thoughtfulness, and maturity in vibe — avoid coming off like a hall monitor, and you’ll be good.

5. Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) Applicants only: One goal of a Jesuit education is to prepare students to serve the Common Good. Human-Centered Engineering at Boston College integrates technical knowledge, creativity, and a humanistic perspective to address societal challenges and opportunities. What societal problems are important to you and how will you use your HCE education to solve them?

If you’re applying to the HCE program, this is the only prompt that matters as far as you’re concerned. You still only need to write one essay for BC, but there’s no choice involved — this is the question you’re required to answer!

When working with aspiring engineers, they’ve often told us they find this prompt overwhelming and have trouble starting. The key here, as we’ve informed them, is to simplify: the prompt says “societal problems,” but of course it feels impossible to address multiple deeply entrenched, interdependent social issues and your proposed solutions to them with a mere 400 words. Instead, choose one societal problem and identify aspects of the HCE curriculum that are unique to BC’s engineering program and would prepare you to address that one problem. Because multiple factors feed into almost any social injustice or structural dilemma, you’ll be able to talk about a variety of challenges, satisfying that plural “problems” from the prompt while providing a cohesive, complete response.

It’s easier to approach this response by identifying the many underlying causes of nutritional deficiencies and proposing several angles from which to consider and combat hunger and malnourishment, for example, than it is to provide a succinct and complete answer to this question that brings together climate change and maternal health outcomes.

No matter what you choose, though, create a personal connection beforehand. Tell a brief story that establishes why you care about this topic and how you discovered this academic field when seeking solutions. That allows you to grab readers’ attention before segueing into the specifics of HCE and how you’d leverage the resources at BC to make positive social change.

And that’s all, folks — everything you need to know to write a knock-out supplement and complete your BC application!

For personalized essay support from professionals who have been getting students into Boston College for years, contact us today.

One of only eight schools in the Ivy League, and founded in 1701, Yale is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education in the U.S. With a fairly small student body just shy of 7,000 undergraduates, Yale prides itself on providing the benefits of a close community alongside the formidable . (To this point, Yale 1,200 research labs and funds over 800 undergraduate research projects each year). A lot of student life takes place on its campus in New Haven, Connecticut — Yale sorts all incoming students into its 14 residential colleges, and 100% of freshmen live in college-run dorms (as do 77% of undergrads overall).

So just how competitive is it to get into Yale? It currently boasts a 4% acceptance rate, and it has returned to that requires all students to submit scores from either the SAT or ACT. Admissions is upfront about the importance of meeting their high academic standards, “prospective applicants should know that the overwhelming majority of Yale College students score above the 95th percentile.” Its most recent data shows the 50th percentile scores for admitted first-year students were a 1540 on the SAT and a 34 on the ACT, and, disregarding the rare exception here or there, you should have scores at or above these thresholds to have a real shot at admission.

Once you’ve got your junior-year grades and finalized your test scores, though, the objective criteria for your application are out of your hands. That’s why the focus of this post is on the more subjective portion of your submitted materials, the portion where you can exercise more control: the supplemental essays. Keep reading for a complete breakdown of the additional writing required by the !

Yale admissions are competitive no matter how qualified you are, but the Koppelman Group has the highest Ivy acceptance rate of any college counseling firm in the U.S. Learn about us.

Writing Strategy

Yale has a pretty involved writing supplement, and we’ll go through each of its three sections — “Short answers,” “Short takes,” and the “Yale essay.” The prompts cover a range of topics, but, regardless of the subject or length of your responses, you should always write them keeping in mind: namely, why Yale is the school that would best empower you to achieve your academic and professional goals. In other words, why do you want to go to Yale rather than any other “elite” school, and why should they admit you? How would you make use of Yale’s unique opportunities and resources, and how would you contribute to their student body and future alumni network?

We get students into Yale every year, in part because we remind them to never lose sight of the big picture as they answer individual questions. Remember that every written element is being weighed against these unstated questions in addition to the prompt, and you’ll have a focused and compelling supplement when you’re ready to submit.

THE SHORT ANSWERS

Students at Yale have time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. Many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. As of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably? Please indicate up to three from the list provided.

This one is exactly what it sounds like! “The list provided” takes you to offered at Yale, so you should list three majors you are most likely to pursue.

We’re always warning our clients away from this one mistake, however. Note that the academic areas you select should NOT be random: yes, Yale encourages intellectual curiosity and academic exploration, but the possibility of “modifying” your academic goals or switching it up entirely does depend on having an academic direction in the first place. Basically, don’t declare a future major in Computer Science and Economics if you spent the last few years in AP English and AP Psychology and didn’t bother to enroll in your high school’s compsci and econ offerings. That’s simply not believable.  

When working with successful applicants, we’ve explained that the bottom line is this: you should be genuine here and list your actual academic passions, but make sure they correspond to the classes on your transcript and the activities you pursued outside of school.

Tell us about a topic or idea that excites you and is related to one or more academic areas you selected above. Why are you drawn to it? (200 words or fewer)

We love this one, because it gets straight to the point and allows you to demonstrate your authentic interest in an academic subject. (That’s why it’s important that the majors you choose above correspond to your track record.) A few caveats though: 200 words is not enough space to comprehensively cover any academic discipline, and admissions officers are reading so many of these applications a day that a general or dry answer can risk being forgettable.  

A lot of the work we do with our clients involves helping them distill complicated ideas and big feelings like passion and inspiration into a succinct, gripping, and comprehensible paragraph. So rather than “telling” us what draws you to an academic area, show us with a short anecdote that engages readers off the bat and grounds them in specific details. Stories make a great response to this prompt because they focus and tighten your answer; they allow you to pinpoint small details that are real, relatable, and entertaining, and they serve as an example for a larger point or “so what” without drifting into philosophical ramblings or complete abstraction.

THE SHORT TAKES

By far the most economic portion of the writing supplement, these questions ask for bite-sized replies. (Honestly, Yale might as well have called these “hot takes” — it’s a way for them to get to know you a bit better and infuse some personality into their application without weighing the supplement down with too much fluff.)

While the length and open-ended nature of these mini-essays seem more fun and informal than the other sections, the character-count constraint can make it difficult to personalize yourself as an applicant while communicating why you’re a serious contender for a spot in their next incoming class. We help students write and polish creative answers that strike the perfect balance — here’s how! 

If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be?

Your response to this question can be anything, but regardless of content it should follow this format: provide the title (of the course, book, or art piece) and a description of what it is, what it does or intends to achieve, and why. 

What is one aspect of yourself that you hope to grow or develop during college?

Think of this as similar to the classic interview question, “what is your greatest weakness?” Don’t misunderstand us — this is not a place to air your dirty laundry or make a negative impression for no reason. Rather, we mean your approach should be similar in that you should be honest (choose something that really does come to mind regularly for you, like “the ability to synthesize information across disciplines rather than getting intellectually siloed in one field”) but strategic (make sure your framing demonstrates positive character traits, like humility, intentionality, drive, and a willingness to look inward). 

When we work with future Yale students, we encourage them to pick a characteristic that shows depth and consideration — that’s far more impressive than picking something superficial or trying to show off how perfect you are already. Don’t be afraid of being real here; wanting to develop an aspect of yourself doesn’t imply you currently “lack” a skill or trait. It’s attractively self-aware, and fundamentally human, to admit that you’re a work in progress. In short: be genuine rather than pandering, but your focus should ultimately be on your ability to grow and convey optimism about what changes you’ll achieve.

What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

Kudos to Yale for this question, because we love to see schools making room for the small things outside of the classroom that makes a person who they are — or, to put it simply, that makes a person a person, not just a collection of grades and scores.

As you brainstorm here, think small and think personal. When advising students who later got accepted to Yale, we’ve urged them to take this question one step further. What is something that would otherwise never come up on an application or show up on a resume but that really matters to you? An unusual talent, a family tradition, a personal ritual? There are no limits here, but make sure it’s singular and meaningful to you.

THE SHORT ESSAY

This is the final portion of the Yale writing supplement, and you’ll need to respond to one of the following prompts in 400 words or fewer. It’s interesting to note, however, that although none of these options mentions the college by name, the admissions website labels this assignment “the Yale essay.” We see the best outcomes with applicants who take our note that they should keep that top of mind when drafting a response, regardless of the specific prompt. Ultimately, you need this essay, no matter how general the question may seem, to make an argument for why you’d thrive at Yale and why they’d benefit from having you there.

Option 1: Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. Why did you find the experience meaningful?

We’ll be honest that this prompt wouldn’t be our first choice, but it’s a common supplemental question these days and it’s certainly possible to write a great response to it. We’ve gotten students into Yale who wrote essays about disagreement, and these are the tips we gave them.

First, think about a college’s goal in asking a question like this. They’re trying to weed out students who are belligerently argumentative and to identify applicants who are respectful, curious, and open-minded in debate. Because of the current political climate in the U.S. and the antagonistic attitude of the current administration toward higher education, most colleges will not ask overtly political questions in their supplement. However, because any student body will be made up of members with diverse backgrounds, life experiences, and opinions, admissions officers are looking for candidates who are capable of changing their mind and tolerant of peers who hold different positions.

The key to answering this question is choosing a topic that isn’t a highly contentious, hot-button contemporary issue and that isn’t likely to paint either side in a fully negative light. Generally, it reflects negatively on you to use a straw-man example; if you write about debating someone whose view is so deplorable that any decent person would condemn it, you risk looking biased, self-serving, or prone to public shaming, but more importantly you lose the chance to demonstrate the qualities colleges are seeking with this prompt. Instead, be sure you select an example where both sides could make reasonable points. That’s not only more likely to avoid offending the reader of your application, whose exact politics we can’t predict, but it means that you are capable of reasonable discourse, that you listen to others, and that you can build community or forge relationships with people who don’t think or live identically to you.

Option 2: Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like.

We’re much more enthusiastic about Option 2! Our students have had great luck with it, too, because this prompt allows you to tell a story, and we’ve found that the most effective essays are narrative. It also gives you another chance to show more of yourself to the admissions committee by sharing the way you think. How you define community, and how that community has shaped you, gives a lot of depth to your profile.

As the prompt states, there is no single version of “community” you need to adhere to in this essay. Whether you’re talking about your neighborhood, your athletic team, the friends you made volunteering, a demographic or affinity group, or your found family, all that matters is that you identify the community and illuminate its importance to you and impact on your life.

Option 3:  Reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?

Okay, this prompt is… fine. Frankly, it’s not entirely dissimilar to Option 2; it’s just a bit vaguer, and that’s with good reason. The 2023 Supreme Court decision that ended affirmative action made it illegal for colleges to ask questions that directly address certain aspects of a student’s identity, but many schools still want to leave room for applicants to address how their lived experiences have affected their academic trajectories and aspirations.

While there may be some possible overlap between the prompts, there are topics that can’t be adequately or appropriately addressed in an essay about how you define community. Option 3, then, might be the best choice for an applicant that went through hardships or had a complicated upbringing that impacted how they would approach college. We’ve helped students use this option to their advantage by ensuring their answer reflects why Yale appeals most to them for their undergraduate years and provides context important to the evaluation of their application to Yale. If you choose this prompt, follow the same general principles as you would for Option 2: tell a story, invite readers into your world, and keep your essay specific and personal.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

Last but not least, all applicants have the opportunity to submit “supplementary materials.” Don’t let the use of "supplementary" confuse you; here, it means an entirely optional portfolio of work in addition to the required portions of the Yale supplement (all of the writing we’ve covered in the sections above). These “supplemental materials” can include, but are not limited to, musical or dance performances, original musical compositions or dance choreography, visual art, film, academic research, independent academic projects, and creative writing.

If you’ve got something that fits the bill, go ahead and submit it! Why not? BUT, and this is a big but, don’t use this as an excuse to provide a bunch of filler materials because you think it shows you’re going above and beyond. The goal here is to show evidence of labor and talent that hasn’t been adequately showcased anywhere else. Submitting work that is bad, rushed, or irrelevant makes you look thoughtless, arrogant, or entitled. If you submit supplemental materials, make sure you put your best foot forward by reading the guidelines first and sending a streamlined, well-considered sample of your work. Less is more!

If you don’t believe it, take it from the horse’s mouth (or, as some people call it, ): “Most successful Yale applicants submit only the required application materials. Because these required elements receive the most weight in Yale’s admission process, we recommended focusing your energy primarily on those elements.”

Most. successful. Yale. applicants. submit. ONLY. the. required. application. materials. Reading between the lines, that means this is truly extra, and not a trick requirement, and also please be normal about it.

INTERVIEWS

The last factor in your application to Yale would be an interview if you are offered one. Yes, that’s right — interviews are , so you can’t request one, and not every applicant will receive one.

Don’t panic at this news. If you don’t receive an invitation to interview, it doesn’t mean that you’re not being seriously considered. Often, it comes down to scheduling and interviewer availability. Once again, we will refer you to Yale’s own paper trail on this point. Their exact words are “interviews are not required, and many successful applicants are not interviewed.” And if that doesn’t get through to you, they also state that “not receiving an interview invitation is not an indication that your application is not competitive.”

Basically, there’s no action you need to take here! Unless you are offered an interview, in which case you absolutely have to accept the invitation and attend. But there’s nothing to worry about if you don’t get scheduled for an interview, and there’s nothing you need to do to make it happen.

After all, the other portions of the supplement will keep you busy enough as it is. Start early, make a plan, tackle it piece by piece, and edit as thoughtfully as you write. Good luck, and you’ve got this!

When it comes to Yale, it helps to have experts in your corner. Reach out to us today for personalized help.

A key piece of Penn’s draw is the structure of the undergraduate experience. There are , each offering globally renowned programs. You can choose to apply to (and hopefully gain acceptance to) The Wharton School, Penn Engineering, Penn Nursing, or The College of Arts and Sciences. Wharton, Penn Engineering, and Penn Nursing are known for being focuses, intense, and admissions requires a deep demonstrated interest in the field you’d be working to enter. The College of Arts and Sciences is the school that offers the most room for exploration, experiment, and discovery. Students don’t need to know what they want to be someday when they arrive at Penn for the College of Arts and Sciences, but that doesn’t mean you can get in as a generalist.

When students first reach out to us, they often have one question on their minds: “Can I get into Penn?” There is no easy answer to that question because it is the wrong question. Instead of asking if it is possible for you to get in, you need to be asking what you need to do to make it happen. Yes, this is because gaining admission to the College of Arts and Sciences is actually in your control. There are steps you can take to make admission nearly certain, and there are things you can refuse to do that make your application, at best, a long-shot.

In this post, we’re going to put you in the driver’s seat of your Penn application. Focused on the College of Arts and Sciences, we are going to break down the application process and provide you with the tools to start making the right decisions to get in. Remember, though, that this is just the beginning. When we work with our students, there is so much more that goes into an application that is personal and specific to your interests. Blanket rules are where you can begin, but eventually the best next step is to tap in an expert.   

A Penn acceptance requires strong strategy. Get yours. 

As we said, in this post we are focused on the College of Arts and Sciences. While some of our advice is transferrable to the other undergraduate colleges at Penn, don’t assume that it is all copy and paste. What you need to do for Wharton is not the same set of actions you need to take for Arts & Sciences, so if you are looking at another of the Penn undergraduate colleges you should definitely get in touch.

Step 1: Brush Up Your Grades and Scores

Ideally, you’ve already been doing this. You are applying this year! There isn’t time to do much of what we implement with our sophomores and juniors, like strategic course selection. What you’ve taken is what will be on your transcript, plus your senior year which may well be set in stone. That said, there is still time to make sure that Penn sees you in your best academic light.

The number one thing here are your grades. We’ll talk scores in a moment, but it really all starts with grades. If your school doesn’t follow the typical grade scale, this does not exempt you from Penn’s expectations. They want to see you thriving in the hardest courses you have access to, both in your prospective area of focus in college and in the subjects you might not be all that into. The grades , and 90% of recently accepted and enrolled students reported an unweighted GPA between 3.75 and 4.0. 59%, they say, reported a 4.0.

When the statistics are made available by your school, Penn also wants to see how you measure up against your peers. Nearly all accepted and enrolled students fall in the top 10th of their graduating class when high school class rank is reported:

The Class of 2030 was the first class since 2020 admitted without required SAT or ACT scores. The reinstatement of the testing requirement caused in the number of applications submitted, which is only important in as far as it impacted how many students got in. Most students who didn’t submit scores when they were optional, however, were not admitted anyway. For example, for the Fall of 2024, of admitted and enrolled first-years had submitted scores. This was, remember, during a time that it was quite hard for many to even access the SAT or ACT — let alone ace it. Still, most students who got into and enrolled in Penn had done just that.

For us, this underlines how important test scores are to Penn when they assess an applicant. In short, they matter.

The problem with these ranges, though, is that they can be misleading. It kind of opens up the idea that you can get into Penn with scores below the 50th percentile. The issue is that these statistics include applicants who have special considerations that lower the academic bar a bit — whether they admit it or not. This could include being a recruited athlete, having strong family connections, or a child of a large donor. If any of those apply to you, you probably aren’t reading this. If they don’t, you need to aim for the 75th percentile.

Step 2: Pick a Passion

Ideally, your academics point towards a passion. For many students with limited elective and advanced course options, their transcript doesn’t say a ton about what drives them in or outside of the classroom. It’s critically important, then, to decide on an academic direction and build a narrative around it. This is even — and perhaps especially — true if you aren’t sure what you are going to major in.  

When we work with our students to identify a passion, we look at how they spend their time outside of the classroom and where they are most successful academically to find points of synergy and overlap. This might not be what you would call a passion in the ‘real world,’ but for the purpose of a Penn application it is perfect.

Step 3: Niche Down

Next, we need to zoom in. Having a passion is crucial, but it isn’t the end of the process of building the central academic narrative of your application. You may like biology, for example, and would even call it a passion, but what we want to guide your towards is the corner of the biological universe that most strongly aligns with who you are and what you do.

When we work with students, we like to find a niche well in advance of pressing submit such that we can craft activities, experiences, and supplementary academics around the passion. When there is less time, it’s often more of a matter of framing. We’re looking to tell a story of focus, which can mean choosing not to include certain things that may distract from the narrative of your application. Even with less time, though, there are typically ways to augment your extracurriculars for impact.

Step 4: Edit Your Extracurriculars

The narrative around activities or extracurriculars and college is almost uniformly that you need to do more. We hate that, though. The activities section has only ten spots to put an activity in. You have almost certainly done more than 10 things during high school. Some, then, will have to be cut. We work with our students to make sure that what gets included actually improves their application. However, we also often add an activity at the eleventh hour that underlines their passion and niche. This could be an internship, a relationship with a nonprofit, or even an independent project.

When assessing what to add, we look at your activities from three angles that are particularly important to Penn:

• Scholarship

• Leadership

• Curiosity

There isn’t just one way to address any of these ‘buckets,’ and we might pull from places like these when you’re on a tight timeline before submitting:

• Research

• Internships

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Part-Time Job

• Long-term volunteer work

What comes next is pulling all the pieces together into an acceptance-earning application.

Step 5: Apply!

The last step should be obvious: It’s time to apply.

Penn heavily favors applicants. It is important to know, too, that any boost, like legacy, that your application may have only applies in the Early Decision round. If you apply RD, being a legacy will not help you. If you apply ED, it can make a big difference. It won’t make up for flawed grades or scores, but it still makes a large impact. Penn the Early Decision results for the Class of 2030, but in their most recent Common Data Set they share that 14.2% of ED applicants were accepted. Compare the early and regular decision results:

It’s obvious based on this data that applying Early Decision is your best option if you want to get in. If you aren’t ready to commit yet, start your application early enough to accommodate an Early Decision application just in case you change your mind.

As you dig into the application process, remember that the qualitative aspects of who you are matter deeply. Once you check their boxes on academics, both GPA and scores, the way to stand out is through how you spend your time. We’ve already dug into passion, focus, and extracurriculars, but it’s helpful to see how Penn self-reports prioritizing things.

Penn has not released their 2025-2026 supplement yet, but they are in outlining the core questions they are seeking to answer about who you are and what drives you:

• “We want to get to know you better, understand what you will bring to the Penn community. Stories can often be a good way to share this information!

• What motivates you, inspires you, and how does it connect to Penn?

• What do you hope to gain at Penn? What impact do you want to have? What do you care about? How do you like to learn?

• Why are you interested in Penn specifically? What about Penn will make it feel like a new home to you?

We’ll be digging into the precise strategy for the 2026-2027 supplement once it comes out, but don’t wait to start writing. Try drafting stories about experiences, motivations, and what you hope to gain from Penn in advance of the supplement coming out to begin flexing your college application muscles.

Conclusion

Getting into Penn doesn’t just happen. Even if you have great grades and super strong scores, you probably won’t get into Penn unless you implement a real strategy to communicate your values, dreams, and drive. So, let’s do it.

If you want to craft the perfect application for Penn, reach out to us today. 

Students apply to UCLA for the options. They want to conduct research as undergraduates, intern in one of the country's largest cities, study alongside ambitious classmates, and have enough academic flexibility to follow new interests as they develop.

And of course, this has made UCLA one of the most selective public universities in the country. Admissions has become increasingly competitive, but not because UCLA is searching for one particular type of student. The university enrolls artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, musicians, athletes, activists, researchers, and students whose interests span multiple disciplines. The challenge for admissions officers isn't identifying talented applicants. It's determining which students seem most likely to thrive in an environment where opportunities exist almost everywhere you look.

Who Actually Gets Into UCLA?

Unlike many highly selective universities, UCLA admissions begin with one important difference: There are no SAT or ACT scores.

The entire University of California system is test-blind, which means standardized tests play no role in admissions decisions. Whether you earned a perfect ACT or never took the exam at all, UCLA evaluates applicants without considering those scores. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!), that places even greater emphasis on everything else.

GPA and academic performance now become so much more important. You need to be getting the best grades in the hardest classes your school offers – whether that be AP, IB, dual-enrollment, or honors. Because testing is removed from the equation, your transcripts will carry even more weight than they do at many peer institutions, especially for out-of-state applicants. TL;DR: 100% of total first-time, first-year (freshman) students submitted their GPA and their average GPA was 3.93.

The challenge, however, is that exceptional academics have become remarkably common. Every admissions cycle includes thousands of students with near-perfect grades, demanding schedules, and impressive accomplishments. UCLA rarely decides whether an applicant is capable of succeeding academically because most students who make it to the decision table are already demonstrating that they can do so.

When you look at strong, successful applications, you see students pursuing interests with genuine enthusiasm rather than treating high school like a checklist. Some become deeply involved in research. Others immerse themselves in music, public service, athletics, journalism, entrepreneurship, community advocacy, or creative work. Their accomplishments vary, but their applications generally reveal students who enjoy learning, seek out opportunities, and continue exploring beyond what is required.

What Does UCLA Really Want to See?

At large state schools, students and families think they want well-rounded generalists. That’s not entirely true.

UCLA wants students who have already developed a habit of exploring their interests rather than waiting for someone else to create opportunities for them.

A student who develops an interest in psychology might begin by volunteering with a peer support organization, then become interested in adolescent mental health, pursue independent reading, assist with research, and eventually create programming for younger students. Another applicant might combine filmmaking, history, and political science into documentary work about local issues. Someone interested in engineering may discover a fascination with sustainable design that influences coursework, independent projects, and community involvement.

It’s less about what you want to do than the conviction with which you pursue it. UCLA is a big school, and students have to take advantage of what surrounds them on their own. Whether those opportunities involve undergraduate research, internships across Los Angeles, student organizations, artistic collaborations, or interdisciplinary coursework, students who thrive at UCLA rarely wait for someone to tell them what to do next. And admissions officers are trying to identify applicants who already have that instinct.

How Does UCLA Decide Who Gets in?

At UCLA, admissions officers review academic performance alongside context. They consider the rigor of a student's coursework, grades earned over time, educational opportunities available at the high school, sustained extracurricular involvement, leadership, special talents, significant challenges, and the information students provide through their Personal Insight Questions.

Now, part of the challenge for UCLA is that there simply aren't enough seats for the number of qualified applicants. Every year, tens upon tens of thousands of students demonstrate that they are academically capable of succeeding there through their grades, but building a freshman class is more than that. You see this reflected in the kinds of students UCLA ultimately enrolls. Future scientists learn alongside musicians, engineers share classrooms with political science majors, actors, economists, mathematicians, entrepreneurs, and educators. The university benefits from intellectual diversity, and the admissions process seems designed to preserve it.

Because UCLA is test-blind, admissions officers spend even more time understanding the story the rest of the application tells. The transcript establishes academic readiness, the activities show how students spend their time, and the Personal Insight Questions provide context, personality, and perspective.

How Can I Get into UCLA?

Students often approach the UC application the same way they approach the Common App, which is a mistake. Sure, they’re both applications with similar elements, but they’re not the same thing.

The UC application asks applicants to answer four Personal Insight Questions, and they serve a different purpose than the single, narrative-driven Common App essay. That’s four different windows into who you are, how you think, and what you value.

Rather than repeating the same themes four different ways, successful applicants use the PIQs to reveal different dimensions of themselves. One response might explore an academic interest that has evolved over several years, while another could demonstrate leadership in a way that feels personal rather than performative. The third essay might explain a challenge that changed the student's perspective, and the fourth might highlight creativity, initiative, or an aspect of the student's life not visible elsewhere in the application.

Students should also spend time understanding what makes UCLA worth applying to in the first place. Many applications talk generally about wanting a great education, excellent professors, or undergraduate research. Those things describe dozens of universities. Stronger applications are usually informed by a genuine understanding of UCLA's academic environment, its research culture, its location in Los Angeles, and the kinds of opportunities students hope to pursue once they're there. Understanding why you know what you want to study and why UCLA is the best place for that is one of the best ways to start.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

Families often assume they can write all the other essays for the other schools, make a few edits to answer the Personal Insight Questions, and call it a day. In reality, the strongest UC applications are usually built from a different strategy.

At The Koppelman Group, we help students think carefully about how each part of the UC application contributes to the overall picture. The Personal Insight Questions shouldn't compete with one another or tell the same story four different times; instead, they should work together, revealing different strengths, experiences, and perspectives while avoiding repetition.

However, long before application season, we also help students make decisions that strengthen their future applications. Starting early means we can help students refine their academic interests, identify meaningful extracurricular opportunities, pursue research, select rigorous HS classes, plan summers strategically, or simply help students invest more deeply in the interests they already have.

By the time senior year arrives, we guide students through every part of the admissions process, from activity descriptions and PIQ strategy to college lists, application review, and broader admissions planning.

We know many students struggle to present their experiences in a way that feels thoughtful, cohesive, and memorable, and helping students communicate their story clearly is where our work begins.

Conclusion

UCLA attracts students because it offers an extraordinary range of possibilities. Few universities combine world-class academics, extensive undergraduate research, a global city, and the resources of one of the nation's leading public institutions in quite the same way. Students arrive with different interests and ambitions, then spend four years discovering opportunities they often didn't know existed when they first applied.

UCLA isn't searching for one ideal applicant. It enrolls future physicians, engineers, filmmakers, teachers, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, journalists, and scholars. What many successful applicants have in common is a willingness to pursue opportunities with genuine enthusiasm and make the most of the resources around them.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

Now, we should note that the 4.5% acceptance rate is from the Class of 2029 admissions cycle, which was 2024-2025. Princeton has delayed the release of their admissions data since 2021. While they have more recent numbers than for the Class of 2029, they have chosen not to release that information — yet. Historically, they do release the more recent data eventually, but it isn’t out yet. Based on trends across the Ivy League and comparably competitive universities, we expect the acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 to be between 3.5% and 4.5%.

Those odds are very long, and it’s easy to think of getting into Princeton as a matter of chance even for very strong students. The thing is, though, that is it’s a throw of the dice. Instead, getting into as a first-year applicant Princeton is a matter of long-term planning and strategy. In this post, we’ll give you a look behind the curtain, sharing some of the tools in our toolkit to set you on a strong path. If you really want a leg-up, though, we can help.

A Princeton acceptance requires planning and strategy. Get yours.

We like to break the Princeton admissions process into five steps, and only the last one is actually writing the application. The first four steps are what build towards a strong application, and should be started years in advance. This is why we love starting with our students as early as sophomore year. If you have less time before applying, everything will be okay — but you have to move quickly.

Step 1: Polish Your Grades and Scores      

The most important credential for getting into Princeton are grades. Admissions isn’t all about numbers, and simply having the numbers certainly isn’t enough, but you can’t get in without an impressive transcript. This can be seen in the unweighted .

Don’t stop reading here and jump to the conclusion that not submitting scores actually makes it okay to have a lower GPA, though. The conclusion here is that having perfect or nearly perfect grades is what you want when applying to Princeton.

Princeton is in the process of transitioning towards reinstating their testing requirement, but they aren’t quite there yet. Like basically every college and university in the country, Princeton paused any required testing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, they are reverting back to the policy they had before. This will come into play in the 2027-2028 application cycle, but for now whether to submit an SAT or ACT score.

While Princeton states that students who apply without scores in the 2026-2027 cycle will not be penalized for their decision, the numbers say something different. We can’t know how many students took advantage of test optionality in the past few years, but we do know how it panned out in the end. For the fall of 2025, submitted either the SAT (60%) or ACT (20%).

So, yes, you can decide whether to submit scores — but not submitting strong scores drastically lowers your chances of admission. Like your grades, Princeton wants to see you thriving in the hard things. We work with our students to be in the 50th percentile at minimum, when compared against recently accepted students.

A huge blind spot for students driven towards Princeton, though, is that academics aren’t everything. Having the grades and scores is a prerequisite, but it doesn’t at all mean that you get in. We are frequently emailed in a panic after early decisions come out by panicked students we’ve never worked with before wondering why their application didn’t result in an acceptance. Most of the time, there is one answer: they were missing passion.   

Step 2: Pick a Passion

College admissions in the United States stands apart from nearly every other nation globally because who you are as a person is nearly as important as what is on your transcript and score report. Many students overlook the importance of communicating your passion, and what truly drives you, when writing their Princeton application. They think that the courses they picked and the extracurriculars they developed will tell their story. Sorry if this is harsh, but that is a horrible plan.

Instead, you need to take an active role in building your story beyond simply a list of activities, courses, and credentials. That means pinpointing a passion. This passion should be related to your academic interest, but doesn’t need to be purely academic. For example, if one of our students cares a lot about politics, we will work with them to develop that interest into a passion through steps 3 and 4. If they don’t have something that they care about deeply beyond simply succeeding in school, the process is a bit more complicated. We need to develop a passion, which takes time. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to start now and to get guidance.

Step 3: Focus In

A big picture passion is like a swimming pool. There is a lot in it, it’s tons of fun to play around in, but it’s also a generalist narrative. If a student has a passion for politics, we need to focus in on a region of that big picture passion to make the central story of their application. This is personal, truly, but let’s just say that we make ‘local political races’ to area of focus. By zooming in, we make their passion more unique to them and simpler to turn into a compelling narrative. We’ve gone from playing in the whole swimming pool to focusing on, say, swimming lane #3. That’s not to say that all you do in your entire high school life needs to be in lane #3, but a high level of intention needs to be put towards showing that lane #3 is where your heart and attention are.   

We’re using politics as one example to illustrate the concept of focusing in, but remember that this concept can be applied to literally any passion, from biology to literature. Once you have your focus, then, you need to give your extracurriculars a strong look.

Step 4: Edit your Extracurriculars

If you are applying to college in the 2026-2027 application cycle, it is highly likely that you feel like you have your activities, or extracurriculars, set. You are applying in just a few months, after all. The question we have to ask, though, is whether you have even looked at the activities & honors section of the Common Application.

If you haven’t you aren’t alone. Most students don’t look at the section until it’s time to fill it in, and they are understandably shocked to find that there are only 10 slots for activities with less than a sentence (150 characters) to describe each. You have spent years working hard to do impressive things, and now you are faced with an application that probably doesn’t even fit everything you have done.

We work with our students to streamline their activities in the months up to graduation to ensure that they have their energy going where it will be most impactful. By “impactful” we don’t only mean an acceptance. You need to be doing things that you find fulfilling, that excite your curiosity, and that read as impressive for application readers. We think of this as ensuring that you are addressing three Princeton buckets:

• Leadership

• Scholarship

• Community

If you see your application as coming up short on any of those categories, you need to move now to get back on track. There isn’t much time to add in an internship, undertake research, build a relationship with a community organization, or even get a part-time job that is relevant to your academic interests. Much time, however, is not the same as no time at all. We are experts at finding eleventh hour opportunities that make a Princeton application sing.

Step 5: Apply!

It should come as no surprise that the final step is pretty obvious. In the end, you need to apply. Deciding how to apply, though, is less obvious.

Princeton offers to first-year admission: Single-Choice Early Action and Regular Decision. Single-Choice Early Action is like Early Decision, with a mountain of caveats. It is not binding, but it does drastically limit your early application options. SCEA applicants can apply early to nonbinding public universities or service academies (like West Point), or to international universities through a nonbinding track. However, you cannot apply Early Action or Early Decision to any private college university in the US.

The trade-off for these limitations is, in theory, a much higher chance of getting into Princeton. Based on past numbers, this is true. However, Princeton has not published round-by-round admissions data since the figures for the . These are the numbers we have:

Given what has been going on across the Ivies, with acceptance rates plummeting, we expect the SCEA acceptance rate to now be in the single digits, with the RD acceptance rate still far below it.

Once you have a path picked, you need to start writing. There is the personal statement, of course, and the Princeton-specific supplements which we will do a whole post on soon. What fewer people expect in advance is the required graded paper, so as you start brainstorming essay answers remember to make sure you have a recent paper to submit that you believe represents you well and fits . Through all of this, remember to center the qualitative aspects of who you are that Princeton :

Conclusion

Now that you have the tools, you need to put them into action. A key piece of this process, though, is recognizing and admitting when you are out of your depth. Having an expert external perspective on your application and your profile as an applicant is often the difference-maker for a Princeton-driven student, and that is where we can help best.

If you want to craft the perfect application for Princeton, reach out to us today. 

UT offers the resources of a major research institution, nationally recognized programs across a wide range of disciplines, a massive alumni network, and a campus culture that manages to feel both ambitious and distinctly Texan. Students arrive interested in everything from engineering and business to journalism, government, computer science, architecture, and the arts.

Families often search for a single explanation of what UT wants from applicants. The challenge is that there isn't one. The admissions process looks very different depending on which college a student is applying to, what they hope to study, and how they have prepared themselves throughout high school. So let’s talk about what you can do to set yourself up for success, even as an out-of-state student.

Who Actually Gets Into UT Austin?

Most admissions discussions begin with GPA and test scores, but UT Austin doesn’t publish testing data. Plus, a more useful place to start is their admission system. Texas students benefit from automatic admission policies that guarantee UT admission for top-performing students from public Texas high schools. A significant portion of each incoming class is effectively determined before the broader review process even begins, which makes the pool of out-of-state students much more competitive.

The other issue is that getting into UT doesn’t guarantee admission to your college or major of choice. A student hoping to study History faces a very different admissions environment than a student hoping to study Computer Science, Business, Engineering, or Nursing. The university's most sought-after programs often receive waaay more qualified applicants than available seats.

While they don’t publish the data, from experience, we know that academic excellence is the first thing they look at. Successful applicants generally earn perfect grades while taking the most rigorous classes available at their schools. AP classes, IB programs, dual enrollment coursework, advanced math, etc., all help demonstrate that you can handle the advanced work UT’s going to throw at you.

Strong testing is also important. Competitive applicants frequently present SAT and ACT scores that place them near the top of the applicant pool, particularly within the university's most selective majors. Students applying to their most popular programs, like Engineering, Computer Science, or Business, should assume they are competing against applicants with exceptional (read: Ivy+ level) credentials. Think 1550s and 35s, minimum.

Now, this is just a baseline, and many, many applicants possess the grades and scores necessary to succeed at UT Austin. In reality, admissions officers need additional information to determine which students deserve to join their next incoming class, and this is where the bulk of your work begins.

Why UT Austin Is So Much Harder for Out-of-State Students

Families are often surprised by how difficult UT Austin can be for students applying from outside Texas. Part of the reason stems from Texas's automatic admission policy. Every year, a substantial portion of the freshman class is filled by high-achieving Texas students who qualify for automatic admission under state law. While those students are not automatically guaranteed their first-choice major, they do receive admission to the university itself.

The result is that a significant number of seats are already allocated before the main admissions process even begins. For out-of-state applicants, this creates a much more competitive environment than the university's overall acceptance rate might suggest. Students from California, New York, Florida, Illinois, and other large states are competing for a relatively limited number of remaining spaces, particularly within highly sought-after majors such as Business, Engineering, Computer Science, and Nursing.

Families often misread UT’s “27%” acceptance rate and think it applies to all students. It doesn’t. Out-of-state acceptance is more like 10%, and it’s only getting smaller every year.

What Does UT Austin Really Want to See?

Students often assume that choosing a major on a college application can just be “whatever.” Bzzt. No. Wrong. You need to declare a major, and you need to build proof throughout high school that you actually care about that thing.

UT contains a number of colleges and programs that are competitive enough to function almost like separate admissions processes. McCombs, Cockrell Engineering, Computer Science, Nursing, and several other programs routinely attract far more qualified applicants than available seats. As a result, admissions officers are not simply deciding whether a student belongs at UT. They're deciding whether there is room within a specific academic program.

That doesn't mean students need to know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Most teenagers don’t, and no one is expecting you to have everything figured out – however, having some direction and some level of engagement is necessary.

A student applying to McCombs does not need to have launched a seven-figure startup, and a future engineering student does not need a patent. But admissions officers are looking for evidence that students have spent meaningful time exploring the topic they claim to care about. Coursework, activities, independent projects, competitions, research, work experience, and essays can all contribute to that picture.

The strongest applications usually make academic interests feel believable. For example, the aspiring journalist has written, reported, published, or created. At the same time, the future engineer has sought out technical challenges rather than simply declaring an interest in engineering three weeks before submitting an application. Students who thrive at UT often arrive with that kind of momentum already established. The university provides a lot of opportunities, but most successful applicants are already moving in a particular direction before they get there.

How Does UT Austin Decide Who Gets in?

UT’s admissions are clouded by institutional priorities that affect decisions before applications are even discussed. Texas residency matters. Capacity within specific majors matters. Some programs have significantly more demand than others. All of those realities influence how admissions decisions are made!

Academic preparation remains the foundation. Students need to prove they can succeed in a rigorous academic environment, particularly within competitive majors. And having strong grades, challenging coursework, and solid testing establish that foundation. Once you clear that hurdle, however, admissions becomes more about context.

The admissions office is trying to understand how students have spent their time, what interests they have developed, how they have responded to opportunities, and whether their application supports the academic path they claim to want to pursue. Part of the reason admissions outcomes can seem inconsistent is that different majors are solving different enrollment challenges. The student admitted to one program is not necessarily competing against every applicant in the pool. In many cases, they are competing most directly against other students seeking admission to the same academic area.

This is why families occasionally become confused when comparing applicants. Two students may have nearly identical grades and test scores, but receive completely different outcomes because they are effectively participating in different admissions competitions.

How Can I Get into UT Austin?

A lot of students spend years building applications for selective colleges without ever asking a fairly important question: What do I actually want to study? Because admission is often tied so closely to specific colleges and majors, students who put together the strongest applications usually have some level of academic direction by the time senior year arrives. Not because they have their entire careers planned out, but because they've spent enough time exploring interests that they can speak about them intelligently and support those interests with their coursework, activities, and experiences.

Part of the reason this matters is that UT receives no shortage of smart students. Every year, admissions officers review applications from students with excellent grades, strong testing, leadership positions, and impressive resumes. Academic ability alone rarely explains why one student is admitted, while another is not. The applications that stand out are often full of evidence that a student has already started engaging with the field they hope to study.

Students interested in business often have a genuine interest in markets, entrepreneurship, finance, or economics that extends beyond the classroom. Future engineers frequently seek out technical challenges because they enjoy solving them. Students applying to journalism, communications, government, architecture, or the sciences often have experiences that demonstrate sustained engagement with those subjects.

And none of this requires extraordinary accomplishments! Just genuine engagement. Students sometimes assume they need a startup, published research, or a national award to become competitive. Those things can certainly help, but admissions officers are usually trying to understand something much simpler: does this student's interest seem real?

Applications often become weaker when students try to appeal to everybody. They become stronger when students clearly communicate what excites them and why. UT Austin is a place where students have access to tremendous opportunities, and the strongest applicants generally arrive with a sense of how they might use them.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

One challenge families frequently encounter is that admissions advice tends to become increasingly generic as colleges become more selective, but UT Austin requires a more specific approach.

The admissions process looks very different depending on the major, college, and academic path a student intends to pursue. A strategy that makes sense for a prospective McCombs applicant may not make sense for somebody targeting Cockrell Engineering. Likewise, students interested in communications, government, architecture, computer science, or the natural sciences often benefit from different experiences and different application strategies.

At The Koppelman Group, we help students understand those distinctions early enough to make strategic decisions. Sometimes that means refining academic interests. Sometimes it means identifying research opportunities, competitions, internships, summer programs, or independent projects that align with a student's goals. Sometimes it means helping students avoid common mistakes, such as applying to highly competitive majors without having built any meaningful foundation in the field.

We also guide students through the practical side of admissions: course selection, testing strategy, college lists, essays, supplements, interviews, and application planning. Families are often surprised by how many important decisions occur long before applications are submitted.

Conclusion

UT Austin has become one of the most competitive public universities in the country, but admissions makes considerably more sense once you understand how the university views applicants.

Academic performance remains critically important, particularly for competitive majors, but grades and test scores rarely tell the entire story. The strongest applicants usually provide evidence that they have spent meaningful time exploring their interests and preparing themselves for the path they've chosen. They understand what they want from the university, what opportunities appeal to them, and how their experiences connect to the field they hope to pursue.

And for a university as large and opportunity-rich as UT Austin, that sense of direction often becomes one of the most useful signals an admissions office can receive.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

When students come to us aiming for Stanford, there is often one question they lead with: “Can I get in?” If you have the grades and the scores (we’ll go deeper into what that means further down), there isn’t an easy answer to that question. It’s a complicated web of accomplishments, narrative, vision for your future, and support from your teachers and counselors that can lead to a Stanford acceptance. Lose any piece or drop any ball, and the answer can quickly become a hard “no.”

For us, the goal is always to open doors — and then keep them open. In this post, we’ll break down the key steps you need to be taking to make Stanford a real option for you, and then to keep it on the table. If you want the kind of personalized guidance that helps our students get into Stanford and similarly competitive colleges and universities, get in touch. This is the beginning of your journey, so there is lots to do before you press submit.

A Stanford acceptance requires strong strategy. Get yours.

Ideally, we start working with students as early as sophomore year to get them on a track towards a dream school. We’re able to help pick courses, focus extracurriculars, identify internships and research opportunities, and plan summer breaks, all with the goal of outstanding acceptances. When we have less time, though, there is still a lot to do. Whether we start working with a student years, months, or even just days before they submit their Stanford application, the same rules apply.

Step 1: Ace Your Grades and Scores          

Most students who put Stanford on their list know that the academic bar is ridiculously high. There is no ‘fudging’ an impressive transcript for Stanford by taking a few easier classes to bump up your GPA. Similarly, there are no awards that can erase bad grades. Succeeding in debate means nothing if you didn’t ace AP US History. The average GPA of an accepted student in the 2024-2025 cycle was . You can’t avoid that fact.

Despite this, some students and their families point to the GPA distributions, which show about 11% of accepted and enrolled students getting in with a GPA under 3.75. The problem is that this is extremely misleading. Stanford is a heavy recruiter of athletes, competing for top performers from across the country. Student athletes make up of the student body, and are held to a markedly lower bar academically when they apply. There are also the children of faculty and large donors who get special consideration. It may not be ‘fair,’ but it is a fact that a normal first-year applicant without a star soccer resume or powerful parent is not receiving the same type of review and someone who does have those things.

Below is the unweighted GPA breakdown, but keep this in mind as you measure yourself up against it.

Stanford doesn’t just care about your grades when it comes to academics. They also want to see how you stack up against your peers — when the numbers are available. of students recently admitted to and enrolled at Stanford were in the top 10% of their high school senior class.

Stanford does require that you submit an SAT or ACT score as part of your application. They consider standardized testing to be a useful and important measure of your readiness for college, so pairing your impressive academics with a strong test score is incredibly important. That said, there are no minimums for your application to be considered. We see that as more of a technicality, though, as you certainly are not getting into a school with a 2% acceptance rate without impressive scores unless there are outside circumstances, like athletic recruitment, that also mean that you probably wouldn’t be reading this post.

Remember, those are the , which means that it spans the 25th to 75th percentile. Yes, some students get in with lower scores, but 25% of first-year admitted students get in with higher scores. To stand out, then, you need to be at the top of the range or above it.

We say all this with one caveat. The most recent data Stanford has shared for the SAT and ACT was from a year when submitting standardized tests was optional, which means that many students did not submit scores as part of their application. Those students, however, by and large did not get in. For the fall of 2025, only of accepted and enrolled applicants did not submit scores. This is why being at the top of the range for accepted students is so important. You can submit a 29 ACT to Stanford if you want to, but it wouldn’t improve your odds of admission and would actually do the opposite.  

We work with our students to build impactful applications that empower them to unlock an acceptance to a dream school. We can’t magic the quantitative bits, though, and that is why getting your grades and scores in order early is so critically important.  

Step 2: Pick a Passion

Parallel to attaining academic excellence, you need to decide what your ‘thing’ is. We are not saying that you should pick one activity to solely pursue, dropping all others. That would be no fun, and probably to the detriment of everything in your life. Rather, you need to pinpoint a subject area that is academic that you can center a large amount of your out-of-school hours on. 

For example, maybe your favorite thing to do is hiking. You can’t only hike and get into Stanford, even if you have a great GPA, but hiking can be the gateway to your passion for the outdoors, conservation, and resource management. So, you can keep hiking, but by drawing a bigger circle around that passion for walking in the woods you are able to bring together your academics and your extracurriculars into one strong central narrative.

When we guide students towards a passion, it truly is about finding a match between what they are doing outside of the classroom and what sparks your interest most at school. Sometimes, it’s obvious. Often, though, this is a creative process of developing curiosity into a true passion.

Step 3: Niche Down

The next step is to get specific. General interests are great, especially as a teenager as you are still figuring out what you like in the world. Being a generalist does not, however, lead to a Stanford acceptance. They want to see clarity, direction, and specificity.

Now, Stanford is not crazy. They know that you could — and probably will — shift your interests in some way after arriving on campus. You could arrive planning for a pre-med track and end up a history major. Anything can happen! But they want to know that you can develop a passion, clarify an interest within that passion, and excel in pursuing it.

So, we call the next step “niching down.” With our students, this means developing their passion in a particular direction. We support them in picking a direction and then pushing that way through internships, activities, research, and other opportunities.

Step 4: Streamline your Extracurriculars

In the world of college admissions, there is a false narrative that doing more gets you in. Taking more courses, submitting to more competitions, and piling on the activities is not the answer. A longer list is more impressive, right?

If you take a look at the activities section of the application, though, you’ll notice that there actually isn’t a lot of space. It’s very likely that there are ‘prestigious’ summer programs that won’t even make it onto your application due to lack of room. When we advise our students, we often work with them to envision what their top 10 activities will be. If someone won’t make it into the top ten, there is a simple answer: don’t add it.

If you are also already doing something super similar, that’s another reason to maybe deepen into something you are already doing instead of adding a whole new commitment. There is one good reason to add something new, though: developing the three themes Stanford needs to see.

When Stanford is assessing the non-academic side of an application, there are three things they need to be blown away by:

• Leadership

• Community

• Passion

When we assess a student for Stanford, we look for compelling expressions of their leadership experience, care for community, and passion for their academic interest. If they are missing things in any of those ‘buckets,’ we need to find something to fill in the gaps. This could include:

• Research

• Internships

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Clubs at school

• Jobs

• Long-term volunteer work

• Team sports

• Individual sports

There isn’t one recipe that builds a perfect extracurricular package for a Stanford application. It truly is all personal, and that is where working with an expert helps.

Step 5: Apply!

Stanford offers to admission: Restrictive Early Action or Regular Decision. Regular Decision is the latest deadline, which means that you have senior grades to submit. If you need those grades to strengthen your application, or you are taking courses as a senior that will underline your academic interests (like AP US History if you are a prospective history major), RD may made sense for you.

Most of the time, though. Restrictive Early Action (REA) is the best choice if you want to amplify your odds of getting into Stanford. It is non-binding, which is great, but it also means that you can’t apply early to nearly any other schools — no Early Decision, no Early Action. There are a few exceptions. You can apply to public universities through non-binding options (like rolling or Early Action), which is something we highly encourage our students to do as getting a few acceptances under your belt is important in case of a Stanford rejection or deferral in the REA round. You can also apply to non-U.S. colleges as long as their decision is non-binding, or to any military academy.

While Stanford the Restrictive Early Action acceptance rate in recent years, we project that the REA acceptance rate is as much as twice the RD acceptance rate. This doesn’t mean that it will be easy to get into Stanford all of a sudden, but it is certainly easier than trying for an RD acceptance.

As you work on your application, remember to keep in mind what Stanford most and what doesn’t matter to them. For example, they don’t consider state residency when assessing an application. However, who you are as a person matters a lot. If you don’t come across as likeable on your application, you aren’t going to get in.

Building an application doesn’t happen in an instant. In the best case scenario, you have years to work with. On a tighter timeline, though, there is so much that you can do to turn Stanford from a maybe into a probably. So, let’s get to it.

Conclusion

We help strong students achieve exceptional admissions outcomes. Stanford is an extraordinarily competitive university with insanely high standards for applicants. Obviously, the academics are the biggest piece of the puzzle. You can’t get in without those scores and grades. But it’s about much more than that, and having the transcript and score report doesn’t get you much of anywhere if you don’t pair the academics with something deeper than that: passion, purpose, and a strong drive towards excellence throughout your life, not only in the classroom.

If you want to craft the perfect application for Stanford, reach out to us today. 

For families, this growth has created a new challenge. Evaluating college counseling firms is no longer simply a question of reputation or visibility. Advising philosophies differ substantially. Some organizations prioritize long-term positioning and essay development, others integrate tutoring into the admissions process, and some are designed around specific populations such as artists, student-athletes, or students with executive functioning challenges. A firm that works exceptionally well for one family may be completely misaligned with the goals of another.

The rankings below reflect those differences. Rather than treating every organization as though it serves the same applicant, this report emphasizes specialization and fit. Scores are based on a weighted methodology that considers personalization, counselor experience, organizational stability, scope of services, support structure, and overall client sentiment. Importantly, these rankings are not intended to suggest that one approach works for every student. Instead, they highlight firms that have developed strong reputations within distinct areas of the admissions landscape.

Best International College Counseling Firms – 2026

Methodology: How We Evaluated These Firms

Comparing college counseling organizations presents a unique challenge because firms often serve entirely different populations. A boutique consultancy specializing in Ivy League admissions should not be judged by the same standards as a practice focused on conservatory auditions or transfer pathways. For that reason, this evaluation framework was designed to assess overall advising quality while accounting for specialization and organizational consistency.

Personalization of Advising Model: admissions counseling is ultimately a relationship-driven service. Firms received higher marks when their advising models emphasized individualized guidance rather than standardized programming. Student-to-counselor ratios, communication style, and the extent to which recommendations were tailored to the student all contributed to this category.

Scope of Advising Services: not every family needs the same type of support, but breadth still matters. We evaluated whether organizations offered assistance beyond applications alone, including academic planning, extracurricular development, financial aid guidance, tutoring, portfolio preparation, recruiting support, and career exploration.

Counselor Admissions Experience: strong counselors come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are former admissions officers, while others have developed expertise through years of educational consulting or specialized work within particular fields. Experience was evaluated based on relevance, depth, and demonstrated knowledge rather than any single credential.

Founder Leadership Experience Score: leadership often shapes a firm's advising philosophy and organizational culture. This category examined the background of founders and senior leadership teams, including years in the industry, thought leadership, and strategic expertise. Organizations with a clearly defined approach and long-term track record scored favorably.

Average Employee Tenure: continuity matters in an advising relationship. High turnover can create inconsistent experiences and weaken institutional knowledge. Firms with stronger retention and more established teams generally received higher marks in this category.

Student Focus and Specialization: one of the primary goals of this report was to recognize organizations that serve distinct populations. Specialization was viewed as a strength rather than a limitation. Firms focused on athletes, artists, students with learning differences, transfer applicants, or cost-conscious families were evaluated within the context of those populations instead of against firms serving entirely different needs.

Application Support Structure: families often underestimate the importance of organization. Clear workflows, deadline management, communication systems, and accountability structures play a significant role in reducing stress throughout the admissions process. Firms that demonstrated strong operational systems scored well in this area.

Online Review Sentiment: public reviews rarely tell the entire story, but they can reveal consistent patterns. Review sentiment was analyzed to identify trends in responsiveness, communication, expertise, and overall satisfaction. Particular attention was paid to recurring strengths and recurring limitations rather than isolated comments.

No ranking system can perfectly capture the nuances of a highly individualized service. For that reason, these scores should be viewed as directional rather than absolute. The strongest advising relationships typically emerge when a family's goals align with a firm's philosophy, communication style, and area of expertise.

Evaluation Criteria and Weighting

Total Weight: 100%

1. The Koppelman Group

Best for: Students pursuing highly selective colleges who benefit from extensive application strategy and narrative development.

Top strengths:

• Strategic positioning and application architecture

• Deep essay mentorship and revision support

• Experience serving highly selective applicants and legacy students

Possible drawback: The advising process tends to be intensive and may involve more collaboration and revision than some families expect.

Unlike firms that approach admissions as a series of independent tasks, The Koppelman Group emphasizes how each piece of the application contributes to a larger narrative. Academic choices, extracurricular involvement, essays, and recommendations are treated as interconnected parts of the same story rather than isolated boxes to complete. The firm has become particularly well known for its writing process and strategy-first approach, which tends to appeal to students applying to highly selective universities. Families looking for highly structured support throughout the process often value this depth, though students seeking lighter-touch guidance may find the process more involved than they anticipated.

2. Next College Student Athlete (NCSA)

Best for: Student-athletes hoping to combine recruiting opportunities with the college admissions process.

Top strengths:

• Large recruiting network

• Coach communication support

• Extensive athletic exposure tools

Possible drawback: The organization's focus is less on college admissions and more on recruiting, which may not work for students targeting Ivy of NESCAC schools.

NCSA occupies a very different niche from traditional admissions consultants. Rather than centering essays and application positioning, the organization focuses on helping student-athletes connect with college coaches and understand recruiting timelines. Its digital platform and extensive network provide access to opportunities that many families might struggle to navigate independently. Athletes pursuing Division I, II, or III programs often appreciate the structure and exposure available through the platform. Families seeking boutique-style essay development, however, may find that the service prioritizes recruiting over broader admissions strategy.

3. Moon Prep

Best for: Students pursuing film, theater, animation, visual arts, and other creative disciplines.

Top strengths:

• Portfolio guidance

• Creative program expertise

• Strong understanding of arts-focused admissions

Possible drawback: Students applying primarily to traditional academic programs may not need its specialized services.

Moon Prep's advising model reflects the reality that creative admissions often involve very different requirements from traditional undergraduate applications. In addition to essays and school selection, students may need portfolios, artistic supplements, or program-specific guidance. The firm's consultants appear particularly comfortable helping students navigate specialized programs in film, design, and performing arts. Compared with firms that focus primarily on highly selective academic admissions, Moon Prep places greater emphasis on creative work and program fit. This specialization makes it especially attractive to students whose artistic pursuits are central to their applications.

4. Music School Central

Best for: Students applying to conservatories and university-based music programs.

Top strengths:

• Conservatory expertise

• Audition preparation guidance

• Knowledge of music-specific admissions requirements

Possible drawback: Students pursuing non-music degrees may find the firm's specialization unnecessarily narrow.

Conservatory admissions differ dramatically from standard undergraduate admissions, and Music School Central has built its reputation around that reality. The organization focuses on helping musicians identify programs that align with their artistic interests while also preparing students for auditions and pre-screen submissions. Its advisors understand the nuances of performance, composition, and music education programs in ways that general admissions consultants often do not. Students pursuing highly specialized music paths may find this focused expertise particularly valuable.

5. College Aid Pro

Best for: Families prioritizing affordability and long-term financial planning.

Top strengths:

• Financial aid expertise

• Merit scholarship strategy

• Cost-conscious college planning

Possible drawback: The advising philosophy places greater emphasis on affordability than on highly selective admissions positioning.

Instead of beginning with prestige or rankings, College Aid Pro starts with affordability and return on investment. Advisors help families understand financial aid formulas, scholarship opportunities, and the true cost of attendance across institutions. This philosophy appeals to families trying to minimize debt or maximize merit aid. Students focused primarily on ultra-selective admissions may prefer organizations that devote more attention to application positioning and essay development.

6. Private Prep

Best for: Students who need academic tutoring and college counseling under the same roof.

Top strengths:

• Integrated tutoring and admissions support

• Strong familiarity with competitive high schools

• Flexible service model

Possible drawback: Students pursuing highly selective admissions may prefer firms that place a greater emphasis on application strategy.

Private Prep occupies a niche between traditional tutoring organizations and dedicated admissions consultancies. Its model allows students to receive academic support while simultaneously working through the college process, making it particularly appealing for busy families balancing coursework, testing, and applications. The firm's familiarity with private schools and academically competitive environments gives it useful context, though its advising tends to emphasize broad support rather than intensive positioning. Families looking for a one-stop resource often appreciate the flexibility this structure provides.

7. Mansfield Hall

Best for: Students with executive functioning challenges, learning differences, or transition support needs.

Top strengths:

• Executive functioning coaching

• Holistic student support

• Experience with neurodivergent populations

Possible drawback: The model focuses heavily on student development and support rather than maximizing admissions outcomes.

Mansfield Hall occupies one of the most specialized niches in the college counseling world. Rather than centering prestige or rankings, the organization focuses on helping students develop the skills necessary to succeed both during and after the admissions process. Coaching, accountability, and transition support play a major role in its philosophy. Families with students managing ADHD, executive functioning challenges, or learning differences often value the holistic approach. Compared with firms built around essay strategy and highly selective admissions, Mansfield Hall places greater emphasis on long-term success and independence.

8. Oxbridge Applications

Best for: Students applying to Oxford, Cambridge, and other highly selective UK universities.

Top strengths:

• Deep expertise in Oxbridge admissions

• Interview preparation and test support

• Subject-specific application strategy

Possible drawback: The advising model is highly specialized and may not be particularly useful for students applying exclusively to U.S. colleges.

UK universities place far greater emphasis on academic specialization, subject mastery, and interviews than their American counterparts do, and Oxbridge Applications' advising reflects those priorities. Students applying to Oxford or Cambridge often require support with personal statements, admissions assessments, and intensive interview preparation that differs considerably from the holistic approach used in the United States. As a result, the organization occupies a niche that few American-based firms attempt to serve. Students pursuing international options or dual US/UK applications may find this expertise particularly valuable.

9. College MatchPoint

Best for: Students seeking career exploration and practical college-fit guidance.

Top strengths:

• Major and career planning

• Personalized advising

• Emphasis on long-term fit

Possible drawback: Students targeting highly selective institutions may desire more aggressive application strategy.

College MatchPoint approaches admissions from the perspective that choosing a college is ultimately about finding the right environment rather than simply chasing rankings. Career exploration, major selection, and personal fit play central roles in the advising process. This philosophy appeals to families seeking clarity around academic interests and future goals. Compared with firms focused heavily on essays and selective admissions positioning, College MatchPoint places more emphasis on helping students understand themselves and identify schools that align with those interests.

10. TransferGo College Consulting

Best for: Community college students and transfer applicants navigating complex pathways.

Top strengths:

• Transfer admissions expertise

• School selection support

• Understanding of articulation and transfer requirements

Possible drawback: The service is designed primarily for transfer applicants rather than traditional first-year students.

Transfer admissions presents a different set of challenges than first-year applications, and TransferGo has built its model around those complexities. Advisors help students understand transfer requirements, course sequencing, application timelines, and essay expectations. The process often requires balancing credits, articulation agreements, and institutional policies that traditional consultants may not specialize in. Students coming from community colleges or considering a change in direction frequently benefit from this focused expertise.

Frequently Asked Questions About College Admissions Consultants

What does a college admissions consultant do?

College admissions consultants help students navigate the increasingly complicated application process. Depending on the firm, services may include academic planning, extracurricular development, college list construction, essay guidance, interview preparation, financial aid support, and timeline management.

Not every consultant approaches admissions in the same way. Some specialize in highly selective universities, while others focus on recruiting, artistic programs, learning differences, or transfer pathways. The best advisors tend to provide both strategic guidance and accountability throughout the process.

Are college admissions consultants worth it?

For many families, the greatest value comes from reducing stress and bringing structure to an otherwise overwhelming process. Consultants can help students avoid common mistakes, maintain deadlines, and make more informed decisions.

That said, value depends heavily on fit. A family pursuing conservatory admissions may benefit from a specialized music consultant, while a student-athlete may gain far more from recruiting expertise than essay coaching. The question is often less whether counseling is worthwhile and more whether the right type of support is being used.

When should a student start working with one?

Many students begin during junior year when college planning becomes more urgent. Starting at this stage allows enough time for list development, testing decisions, and application preparation. Our favorite time to start with students is sophomore year.

Some families begin earlier, particularly when they are interested in long-term academic planning or specialized goals such as athletic recruiting or arts admissions. Students can also seek support later in the process, though earlier planning generally provides more flexibility.

Can they guarantee admission?

No reputable consultant can guarantee admission to any college. Admissions decisions are ultimately made by universities and depend on factors outside any advisor's control.

Strong counselors can improve organization, strengthen applications, and help students present themselves more effectively. They cannot, however, promise outcomes. Any organization making guarantees should be approached with caution.

Conclusion

Choosing a college admissions consultant is ultimately less about finding the highest-ranked organization and more about finding the right match. Students pursuing conservatory programs, athletic recruiting, transfer admissions, or affordability planning often require very different kinds of expertise. What works exceptionally well for one family may be completely unnecessary for another.

The firms included here represent a wide range of philosophies rather than a single definition of success. Some emphasize strategic positioning and essay development, while others focus on financial outcomes, executive functioning support, or specialized admissions pathways. No single organization is best for every student, and that diversity is part of what makes the modern admissions landscape both challenging and increasingly personalized.

UNC is one of the country's premier public universities, which means it carries two responsibilities that occasionally pull it in different directions. It needs to compete academically with some of the nation's strongest universities while also primarily serving the state that funds and supports it. That balancing act influences everything from enrollment policies to admissions decisions.

Students sometimes approach UNC expecting a slightly less selective version of Duke, Vanderbilt, or Georgetown. It’s its own thing! UNC has a strong culture of public service, student involvement, school pride, and community engagement. Like the schools they’re compared to, of course, academic excellence matters here. But UNC is also trying to build a campus filled with students who will contribute to the university, participate in its traditions, engage with their communities, and take advantage of the opportunities available to them. So, how do they do it?

Who Actually Gets Into UNC?

Most admissions conversations begin with grades and test scores. At UNC, the more interesting place to start is geography, even though grades and scores are right behind it.

State law limits the percentage of students who can come from outside North Carolina. That means in-state and out-of-state applicants are often navigating very different systems. A student applying from Charlotte or Raleigh is competing within a system designed to prioritize North Carolina residents. A student applying from California, Texas, New York, or Florida is competing for a much smaller number of available seats. You can see this in the in- and out-of-state applicant stats:

Part of the reason UNC's admissions statistics can feel confusing is that these two applicant pools are often discussed together, even though the application experience can look very different. Their testing range may look wider than Duke’s on the surface, but we’re willing to bet the out-of-state admits are almost identical in academic strength to those of more selective schools.

Academically, admitted students are exceptionally strong. Successful applicants generally earn excellent grades while taking demanding coursework throughout high school. Honors classes, AP courses, IB programs, dual enrollment, and advanced academic opportunities all help demonstrate your ability to handle college.

Testing can strengthen an application, too, and we always recommend it for our out-of-state students. Competitive applicants often submit SAT and ACT scores that place them near the top of the applicant pool; the same goes for GPA. However, the challenge is that academic strength is now common among applicants, and you need more than perfect stats to stand out.

First-time, first-year students with scores in each range:

Toooons of students apply with transcripts that suggest they can thrive academically, but admissions officers are not spending most of their time trying to determine whether applicants can succeed in college. They want to learn how students might contribute once they get there.

Strong applicants to UNC join, or better yet, start organizations. They take on leadership roles that make sense, not just because it looks good. They participate in service initiatives, publications, research projects, student government, cultural organizations, athletics, and community programs. And that’s what separates all the 4.0s and 1550+s from each other.

What Does UNC Really Want to See?

UNC’s culture has really emphasized involvement, leadership, collaboration, and service. Students who flourish at Carolina frequently become deeply connected to organizations, causes, and communities that matter to them. They are often the people who volunteer to organize events, lead initiatives, mentor younger students, improve existing programs, or help institutions function more effectively. While this is often not a huge concern for other elite schools, being engaged in service opportunities in HS can really help you stand out at UNC.

You also want to develop a strong, clear academic interest. The strongest applicants demonstrate genuine engagement with subjects they care about, and their resumes reflect that. Their activities sections and essays contain evidence that students pursued interests beyond the classroom, explored questions independently, and developed expertise over time. But those interests also should exist alongside meaningful contributions to schools, teams, organizations, and communities.

You do not necessarily need to present yourself as a future world-changing visionary. That’s not really UNC’s vibe. That intensity can be saved for UChicago and Stanford, and if that’s how you present and feel about yourself, UNC might not be the place for you! Of course, they enroll ambitious students, but they also want students who understand how to work with other people, contribute, and, honestly, can hang.

How Does UNC Decide Who Gets in?

UNC claims their admissions are holistic. Our least favorite buzzword. Sure, it’s holistic, but only if you already meet the academic benchmarks. Semi-holistic or whatever.

A better way to think about the process is that UNC is trying to assemble a class capable of serving multiple purposes at once. The university needs future researchers, physicians, teachers, journalists, business leaders, public servants, and engineers to fill out a full class. They also need students from different parts of North Carolina, different regions of the country, different socioeconomic backgrounds, and different life experiences.

The admissions office is not ranking applicants from strongest to weakest, and they’re paying close attention to how students have used the opportunities available to them. In reading applications, admissions officers often try to understand whether students have demonstrated initiative, engagement, resilience, leadership, or intellectual curiosity within their particular environment.

As we’ve said before, perfect grades in the hardest classes possible are mandatory, but admissions decisions also usually involve a broader set of considerations that transcripts alone can’t capture:

The only things they don’t care about are your interview, geographical residence (i.e., having a fair balance of students from all states), your religious affiliation, and your level of interest. Everything else is on the table.

How Can I Get into UNC?

Students who put together compelling UNC applications usually have a clear understanding of what they actually want from the university. They know why they're interested in Chapel Hill instead of one of the dozens of other excellent public universities around the country – or even one of the other University of North Carolina schools! They understand the academic opportunities, programs, research centers, professional pathways, or campus experiences that make UNC particularly attractive to them, and they can articulate them in their applications.

Students can pursue undergraduate research through the Office for Undergraduate Research, become involved with public policy through the Carolina Center for Public Service, work with faculty, participate in global programs, contribute to student publications, and take advantage of resources that many students don't fully discover until after they've enrolled. And all of these things (and more!) can, and should, be mentioned in the essays.

Applications are strongest when students demonstrate they have done more than glance at rankings and acceptance rates. The admissions office spends all day reading applications from students who claim they want a great education, but with no substance to back it up. What tends to be more interesting is evidence that a student understands how they might actually use the opportunities available to them.

Academic preparation remains extremely important for our out-of-state hopefuls, but you can’t have that and a bland resume and hope to stand out. Students who do stand out often have a sense of direction, interests they want to explore, skills they want to develop, communities they want to engage in, etc., etc. Making sure that’s communicated clearly through your application is crucial.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

A lot of families indulge in the increasingly performative ritual of college admissions they see touted online. Students feel pressure to optimize every decision, pursue every opportunity, and build applications that look impressive from a distance. In the process, they often lose sight of two simple questions: what do I actually want to do, and where is the best place to do it at?

UNC is a large, dynamic school with tons of opportunities. Because of this, students can have dramatically different experiences depending on how they engage with the university, what college they’re targeting, what programs they’re considering, and more. Understanding that fit, and what your goals are early on in the process often leads to better, more strategic decisions throughout high school.

At The Koppelman Group, we spend a great deal of time helping students identify where their interests are leading them and how different colleges align with those interests. Beyond optimizing for their number-one school, we might refine their college list, help them pursue opportunities that deepen an existing academic interest, or point them toward an academic field they might not have considered. We also help strategize testing, pick classes for high school, plan for summer, and handle anything else that comes up before applications open. We also guide students through the practical realities of admissions: essays, supplements, interviews, and application strategy.

Most students don't need more activities, they need better strategy. Helping families make those decisions earlier and more intentionally is what we do best.

Conclusion

UNC combines the resources, opportunities, and academic strength of a major flagship institution with a campus culture that remains unusually connected to its traditions, community, and public mission. That vibe attracts a wide range of students, and the competitiveness of admissions reflects that.

UNC is not searching for a single type of student, they’re assembling a class that will take advantage of what the university offers in different ways and then contribute back to the institution in return. That means your application needs to reflect the values UNC cares about, and students who understand that tend to have better results.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

We say ‘estimated’ because UChicago has delayed the release of their recent admissions data for the past few years. The most recent official data is the , which shows admissions data for the Class of 2028. Unofficial statements by admissions officers have hinted at the acceptance rate in the two most recent application cycles being between 3% and 4%.

The at UChicago is consolidated into one school, The College, which offers nearly 70 majors, 60 minors, and dozens of areas of specialization and pre-professional preparation. When students come to us with UChicago at the top of their list, the question they usually start with is, “Can I even get into the College at UChicago?” We understand that approach, because it would be really efficient to get a yes or no answer. The problem is that college admissions strategy isn’t a yes or no game.

We work with our students to address a different question: “What needs to be true for me to get into the University of Chicago?”

The answer to this question is never yes or no, and that is by design. It is almost always possible to find a way into UChicago if you have two things: drive and time. You need to be determined, hungry, and willing to work hard. You also need to have the time to put your plan in action. Truly, the more time the better.

In this post, we will take you behind the curtain of how we build an admissions strategy for the University of Chicago. Our goal is to empower you to build an impactful application, but for a personalized strategy and hands-on support you should get in touch.

Getting into the University of Chicago requires a personalized plan. Get yours.

There is nothing that can substitute for strong academics when you are applying to the University of Chicago. Their expectations are high, and you need to exceed them or risk your application falling into the proverbial wastepaper basket. So, let’s take numbers first.

Step 1: Polish your Grades and Scores      

UChicago is a seriously academic undergraduate school. “But aren’t all colleges academic?” Well, yes and no. Most strong schools are strong as schools, but Chicago is a bit different because the academic experience doesn’t end when you step out of a classroom. Rather, it follows you everywhere. Students are Chicago are extremely driven to excel in their academic area of focused, and that bleeds into every corner of the school. To maintain this ethos, they accept applicants who are similarly passionate about school. If your favorite thing to do is to talk about a book, unpack a mathematical concept, or debate the merits of an economic policy, and your grades measure up, you’re in a great place already.

We work with our students to do more than just measure up. That means strategizing on course selection and developing the skills and opportunities to stand out from the pack. They want to see you taking the hardest classes that you have access to and excelling in them — and this is not simply in the area of your major.

Another key place to stand out can be the SAT or ACT.

Technically, Chicago is test optional. They also have a “” policy that states that an applicant won’t have not submitting a test score held against them. The data, however, doesn’t quite play out that way. While not submitting scores may not hurt your application, a strong set of scores most certainly does help. For the fall of 2024, 76% of accepted and enrolled first years submitted test scores — and those scores were high.

The data shows us that you want to be able to submit a 35 ACT composite score, or a 1550+ score, and we work with our students to achieve that goal. Outside of studying, though, there are other things to do that are not about numbers.

Step 2: Identify a Passion

Caring is cool, you know this. But let’s make it bold and underlined. Chicago wants to see you caring about something deeply. You can care about more than one thing, of course, but you need to pick one to be your passion. This will help you focus your extracurriculars in a way that tells a compelling story through your application of determination, resilience, drive, and, yes, passion.

When a student has a passion already, great. When it is relevant to your potential area of study, awesome. If you don’t have a specific passion yet, though, or the passion you do have is irrelevant to your prospective major, we guide our students to their strongest passion personally and when connected to an application to Chicago.  

Identifying a passion is the top of the funnel. It isn’t where this journey ends, truly it is just the start.

Step 3: Niche Down

Now, you need to jump into the funnel and take a giant leap toward specificity. A broad passion, like loving economics, is great for you as a young student. It is not, however, strong narratively. And we’re working on a UChicago application, so the narrative is mandatory. That’s where niching down helps.

So, you love economics. Finding your niche means identifying a specific type and application of economics that you can majorly zoom in on. This applies for any passion. When you niche down, you need to find a passion within the passion that you can then build story on in your application.

For our students, identifying their niche often comes naturally, but that doesn’t mean it is always obvious or intuitive. High schoolers and their parents often focusing on doing more, and spreading the net of their passion as far as they can, so challenging them to narrow the funnel and focus in can be counterintuitive. That discomfort, though, is often where the best and most impactful work happens.

Step 4: Amplify Your Extracurriculars

Once you have your passion and your niche, it’s time to take a hard look at your extracurriculars. You are a driven and high-performing student, so you probably already have a packed schedule. As we said, it can be hard to wrap your mind around, then, taking things out to build other things up. This is exactly what we often have to do to make UChicago a strong possibility, though.

College admissions is not a game where doing the most makes you a winner. It is all about building connections between what you do, what you love, and what you want to study in college. Some of these connections are obvious, but many aren’t.

For example, we rarely advise that a student quits a sport that they love deeply just because they aren’t being recruited for it. We do, however, challenge our students to find ways to make a sport fit into their passion. For example, if you love basketball and are interested in healthcare or education, you could coach for the local Special Olympics program. Or maybe create a series of activities for a STEM camp that combine basketball with physics study.

What you need to keep in mind as you refine your activities are three buckets that UChicago cares about deeply when assessing applicants from a non-academic angle:

• Exceptionalism

• Leadership

• Care for Others

The University of Chicago loves awards. They love recognitions. They love it even more when they see you helping others excel through leadership. They also want to see care for others, but that doesn’t have to be through volunteering. It could be formal mentorship or paid tutoring, for example.

You should also be looking to add research and an internship to your roster. The internship can’t be a weekend one summer, though. For an internship to be impactful, it needs to be at least a few weeks long and include doing real work. We work with our students to find opportunities that fit the bill, which often means convincing someone to create a program that didn’t already exist. Other activities that may make sense for you include:

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Clubs at school

• Jobs

• Long-term volunteer work

• Team sports

• Individual sports 

The most impactful extracurriculars are a long game. If you do a summer program, it builds on top of past experiences. If you find a job, you hold it for more than one summer. These are of course ideals, but we work with our students to achieve them.

Step 5: Apply!

The final step is to put all the pieces together and apply. The University of Chicago is notorious for ridiculous essay prompts that require much longer answers than most supplements. Since one of s is to answer any past prompt that you want to answer, the time to start working on your UChicago supplement is today. Literally, whether you are weeks, months, or even a year away from pressing submit you should absolutely start working on ideas now — and that is exactly what we do with our students.

As you brainstorm essay ideas, you also need to decide what application path to take. Choosing how to apply to a top-choice college is easy if you do the work in advance. Early application gives you your best odds of getting in, but if you haven’t built a compelling applicant profile in the lead up to applying, choosing to apply early to UChicago could tank your whole college application process.

Chicago offers . Like all the options possible. They do Early Decision I, Early Action, Early Decision II, and Regular Decision. As is normal, the Early Decision options are binding, and the EA and RD options are not.

At minimum, you need to apply Early Action. It won’t give you the same boost in acceptance rate as the ED options, but it is still important both for Chicago and for your well-being through the college application process.

UChicago does not report their EA and EDI and EDII acceptance rates separate from the overall acceptance rate, which is . Making it into that small group of acceptance applicants is the challenge before you, and it takes more than great grades and exceptional scores. You need to stand out from all the other top students hoping for a spot, and that’s why steps 2-4 are so important. As you can see below, Chicago cares about who you are, not just what grades you get.

The University of Chicago likes students who are passionate about learning, who carry that hunger with them wherever they go, and who think differently. Just like how caring is cool, quirky and nerdy are both also cool at UChicago. So lean into your niche harder, explore deeper, and bring others along for the ride.

Conclusion

When we work with students on UChicago, our focus is on helping all facets of our students’ shine, but through a particular perspective and working towards a specific goal. That goal, obviously, is getting in. Every year, we pull it off.

If you want to craft the perfect application for the University of Chicago, reach out to us today. 

The answer is that it can probably get much lower. Yale is part of a small cohort of colleges with magnified social capital. As many call the plummeting acceptance rates across college admissions a bubble that is bound to burst as demographic shifts reduce the number of graduating high schools, Yale, the rest of the Ivy League, and the comparably coveted Ivy adjacent schools are unlikely to lose ground. What Yale offers can’t be replaced, it’s just that valuable.  

When a student comes to us with acceptance to Yale at the top of their wish list, they often start by asking one question: “Can I get in?” The answer isn’t simple, and that isn’t the right question to be asking anyway. Instead of asking if you can get in, you should be asking: “What needs to be true for me to get into Yale?”

This is where we can help. We work with students on crafting individualized action plans for achieving Yale admission. In this post, we’ll take you behind the proverbial curtain to see how we break down the application process, and how most of the work actually happens before a single supplemental response is even written.  

A Yale acceptance requires strong strategy. Get yours.  

For the purpose of making things simple, we’re going to break the application process down into five parts. Obviously, there are a lot more than 5 steps, they tend to run concurrently or to overlap, and wading through this mess without a guide is understandably overwhelming. Thinking about 5 steps, though, offers more manageable and digestible action items that can at least get you headed in the right direction — the right direction, here, meaning a Yale acceptance.  

Step 1: Perfect Your Grades and Scores    

There are many strong schools that will stomach a B sophomore year in a course unrelated to your prospective major. Yale is not one of them. With around 50,000 applicants for only about 2,000 spots, they have more than enough straight-A options and simply tossing the applications with weaker grades is a strategic and necessary way of beginning to sort through the pile.  

This means that you need the highest grades it is possible to get all through high school. An A- is all the blip you are really allowed unless you are a recruited athlete or another ‘special’ case.

Simply having straight As isn’t everything you need to do academically, though. Those exceptional grades need to be in the hardest courses that you have access to. Strong Yale applicants aren’t just strong in their grades, but show tenacity in their course selection as well.

Only about a third of students applying to Yale come from schools that report class rank, but shows that being at the top of your class matters deeply. The way most achieve this is through exactly what we’ve been harping on: outstanding grades in outrageously hard classes.

After a number of years as a test-optional Ivy League university, Yale to requiring the SAT or ACT as part of a first-year application. Yale does not prefer either test, but most accepted and enrolled students in recent years did submit the SAT.

Now, the recent data on what constitutes a competitive SAT or ACT score for Yale are potentially skewed due to the test optionality of the past few years. If a student didn’t have a strong test score, they simply didn’t submit it. However, it is important to keep in mind that over of accepted and enrolled applicants did submit SAT or ACT scores as part of their application for entry in the fall of 2025. In our estimation, the small number of students who did not submit scores and still got in are a massive outlier and the data from accepted students is actually pretty much on point.  

Below is the percentile breakdown for composite scores for the most recent application cycle available (2024-2025).

First hard fact is that you never want to be at or below the 25th percentile. This is where recruited athletes, children of large donors, and other special cases reside. Objectively, a 1480 is not a terrible SAT score when compared against scores across the US. It is, however, unacceptable for most Yale applicants.

Ideally, you wouldn’t be in the 50th percentile, either. This is the coin flip region of the score spectrum, and it’s an uncomfortable place to be.

We coach our students to aim for above the 75th percentile to have the best chance of getting in.

A high score, like a high gpa, doesn’t get you a golden ticket, though. It’s simply the starting point. You still need to hook the application readers with passion. 

Step 2: Pick a Passion

If you are seriously considering Yale and believe yourself to be a strong candidate, we feel confident assuming that there is something in your life that you would characterize as a passion. Ideally, this something is somewhat related — even loosely — to what you want to study. If it isn’t, though, we need to find a passion that links to your academic interests.  

One of the first things we do with our students is to pinpoint a passion that links to existing interests and offers the opportunity to amplify them. For example, a student interested in space may be able to access internships or research opportunities linked to studying the stars. If your interest is ocean marine biology and you live in a land-locked state, however, we may need to find a different take on the passion (lakes are marine, too!) to focus on in your college applications.  

This passion will become a strong central narrative in your application, and the next layer you need to add are the details.

Step 3: Find Your Niche

Loving math is great, but we want to see our students focus in with a level of specificity that makes their passion truly theirs. For example, maybe you find the most joy in teaching math concepts to younger students in ways that bring them to life. Or maybe for you it’s actually all about puzzles, and you love puzzling through super complex problems to find seemingly impossible solutions.

Whatever it is you love, when we say “niche down” to our students what we are really asking for is for you to pick something within your passion that will become your point of focus within your passion. This niche will be a differentiating factor in your application that is enormously important because it doesn’t just set you apart, it also gives you a framework for a strong application narrative. The way you take a niche and turn it into a narrative is through how you spend your time.

Step 4: Fine-Tune Your Extracurriculars

You are already doing a lot, we know. Our goal with step four, then, isn’t to add more to your plate. Rather, we need to refine and, sometimes, even reduce. When we work with students aiming for Yale, they have often spent years collecting impressive experiences and pursuing activities that they have been told will sound good. The problem with this, though, is that you have been filling up your time with thing that may not actually serve you. You’ve been doing the work, but the work may not return the favor when it comes time to write your application.

We counsel our Yale-focused students to first sort their activities into three categories based on what they show about you on your application:

• Leadership

• Teamwork

• Service

There will probably be activities that bridge between these, and by “service” we don’t only mean volunteering. Rather, it should be any activity that you do that primarily works towards the benefit of others.

Once you have your extracurriculars sorted, you need to rank them. We work with our students to prioritize their activities based on length of commitment, relevance to the themes we will be emphasizing in their application, and the strength of their passion for it.   

Things we often see include:

• Research

• Internships

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Clubs at school

• Jobs

• Long-term volunteer work

• Team sports

• Individual sports

You should not be trying to have something for each of those categories. Instead, focus on what makes most sense for you and include a strong emphasis on long-term commitments as Yale wants to see continued investment of your time towards things that you care about.

Step 5: Apply!

All of the work we’ve laid out so far leads you to this moment — the time to apply. Before you apply, it’s helpful to revisit the statistics.

In the winter of 2025, Yale admitted of Restrictive Early Action applicants.

In addition to admitted applicants, 18% of REA applicants were neither admitted nor denied. Instead, they were deferred to the Regular Decision cycle. A few months later, Yale admitted a tiny portion of Regular Decision candidates. The Regular Decision acceptance rate to Yale is actually quite misleading, though, because it includes the over 1,200 students deferred from REA in the 2025-2026 application cycle. That means that students who apply RD are at a severe disadvantage, as they are going up against students Yale liked enough to want to see more from before reevaluating in the RD cycle. 

If you have the grades and scores, the way to end up on the winning side of Yale admissions isn’t to do another internship or lead another club. While it may include one of those things, it’s actually all about as a person. This is shown in what Yale reports prioritizing in their Common Data Set.

Something to remember when you review the chart below, though, is that this chart isn’t a reason to cut something out of your life because it isn’t ‘worth it’ for Yale.

For example, volunteer work is not considered simply as volunteer work, but volunteering as part of an ongoing service commitment that shows up in your extracurriculars does matter. Basically, they don’t care how many hours you’ve done, but they do care about the impact you’ve had.

These things become super important when you dive into your supplementals. Yale recently released for the 2026-2027 application cycle, which is awesome because it is early. We are going to break down the supplementals in a dedicated post soon, but ponder the questions in the meantime.

Students at Yale have time to explore their academic interests before committing to one or more major fields of study. Many students either modify their original academic direction or change their minds entirely. As of this moment, what academic areas seem to fit your interests or goals most comfortably? Please indicate up to three from the list provided.

Tell us about a topic or idea that excites you and is related to one or more academic areas you selected above. Why are you drawn to it? (200 words or fewer)

Short Takes (200 Characters)

• If you could teach any college course, write a book, or create an original piece of art of any kind, what would it be?

• What is one aspect of yourself that you hope to grow or develop during college? 

• What is something about you that is not included anywhere else in your application?

Essay (400 words, pick one of the following prompts)

• Reflect on a time you discussed an issue important to you with someone holding an opposing view. Why did you find the experience meaningful?

• Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected. Why is this community meaningful to you? You may define community however you like.

• Reflect on an element of your personal experience that you feel will enrich your college. How has it shaped you?

We love this set of supplementals because they give your plenty of room to share what makes you awesome, but not so much room that your risk losing your way through them. Working with students on questions like these is one of the reasons we absolutely love what we do.

Conclusion

Getting into Yale is statistically extremely difficult. Just looking at the numbers, your chances are low. We work with our students to transform Yale from an impossibility into a likelihood. If you don’t have as much time before you’ll be pressing submit, we can still help you build a future at Yale. So, let’s get into it.

If you want to craft the perfect application for Yale, reach out to us today. 

A lot of that comes from Silicon Valley's overt influence. Students arrive to find themselves surrounded by startups, venture capital firms, research labs, and some of the most ambitious people in the world. But reducing Stanford to technology or entrepreneurship misses a huge part of the picture. The university has spent decades cultivating a culture that rewards experimentation, and that culture shows up in their admissions process.

Stanford receives applications from tens of thousands of students who have already achieved remarkable things. Academic ability matters enormously, but it only explains part of why certain applicants rise to the top of the pile.

Who Actually Gets Into Stanford?

The academic profile of admitted Stanford students is about what most families would expect. Near-perfect grades and scores across the board, especially while taking the most rigorous high school classes available to them. Whether that means AP courses, IB classes, dual enrollment, advanced research opportunities, or some combination of all three depends on the school, but admissions officers expect students to challenge themselves academically whenever possible.

Overall admissions data for the Class of 2029:

Testing remains important. While Stanford's policies have shifted over the years, admitted applicants are operating in extremely high ranges. Think SAT scores that frequently land in the 1500s and ACT scores clustered in the mid-30s. This is nonnegotiable for Stanford.

When so many applicants have as-close-to-perfect scores as possible, individual profiles become more important. Their admissions office reviews applications from students who have won national competitions, published research, launched organizations, and generally exhausted nearly every academic opportunity available to them.

Middle 50 testing data of admitted and enrolled first-time students:

The students who perform best in the process have a noticeable pattern and momentum to their applications. It’s not just score/grade/resume stuffer collecting! Their accomplishments matter, duh, but they're a side effect of genuine engagement rather than the driving force.

Stanford's admissions office has repeatedly emphasized that it values intellectual vitality. That's a somewhat vague phrase, but in practice it usually refers to students who are energized by learning, curious about the world around them, and inclined to turn interests into action.

What Does Stanford Really Want to See?

Stanford wants to see that you care deeply about something, have goals, and have taken the steps to make them happen.

A student fascinated by climate science might spend years conducting research, organizing local sustainability initiatives, and building data projects around environmental issues. Somebody else may combine computer science, public policy, and education to create tools that help younger students access academic resources. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the topic is, but that you’ve actually dug into it.

We see this in successful Stanford applicants every year. They go out on their own to create things. Sometimes that's a research project. Sometimes it's a nonprofit. Sometimes it's a publication, a business, a community initiative, a creative endeavor, or an entirely new idea that didn't previously exist and we haven’t even thought of yet.

The admissions office wants students who take advantage of opportunities, or make them themselves.

How Does Stanford Decide Who Gets in?

Families often want admissions decisions to be clean and easy. We’d love that, too! They often think that if Stanford admits or denies a student with similar grades and scores, there must be one simple reason. Sometimes there is (cough grades and scores), but sometimes there isn’t. From Stanford:

“At Stanford, we practice holistic admission. This means that each piece in your application is reviewed as part of an integrated and comprehensive whole. We want to learn how you would grow, contribute, and thrive at Stanford. Academic excellence is the foundation of your application. Your preparation through challenging coursework and your potential to succeed are key factors in our contextual review.

Academic Excellence: The primary criterion for admission to Stanford is academic excellence, which means flawless or nearly flawless grades in rigorous courses. We expect you to challenge yourself throughout your educational journey and to do very well by maintaining a strong academic record.

Context: Just as no two Stanford students are the same, each applicant to Stanford is unique. This means that as we review your application, we pay careful attention to your unique circumstances. We take into account your background, educational pathway, and work and family responsibilities. By focusing on your achievements in context, we evaluate how you have excelled in your school environment and how you have taken advantage of what is available to you in your school and community.

Extracurricular Activities: Learning about your extracurricular activities and nonacademic interests helps us understand your potential contributions to the Stanford community. Students often assume our primary concern is the number of activities they participate in. In fact, an exceptional depth of experience in one or two activities may demonstrate your passion more than minimal participation in five or six clubs. You may also have work or family responsibilities. These are as important as any other extracurricular activity.

Intellectual Vitality: …Through your application, we hope to learn about your intellectual horizons. We want to hear about the ways you have expanded your perspective and sought new opportunities. We hope to envision how your energy, curiosity, and optimism would make a mark on Stanford and the world.”

As you can see, pretty in line with what we’re telling you.

For more insight into the process, there’s an old article from Stanford Magazine that explores how Stanford chooses their students: . This article is from 2013, but it still covers a lot of the steps that go into how the decision is made in the room.  Additionally, you can take a look at the non-academic factors Stanford considers to see what sways them beyond grades and scores:

The admissions office is trying to build a cohesive, successful class. Stanford classrooms are demanding, and students need to demonstrate that they can thrive in that environment. Beyond academics, though, admissions officers are evaluating a much broader set of questions.

How does this student engage with their interests? What motivates them? What kinds of contributions are they likely to make on campus? How have they used the opportunities available to them? What perspectives might they bring into classrooms, residence halls, labs, performance spaces, and student organizations?

Context matters tremendously throughout this process. Part of the reason Stanford admissions can seem unpredictable is that the university is trying to create a community rather than assemble a ranking of applicants. Some students stand out because of their research, others because of artistic achievement, leadership, entrepreneurship, service, athletics, writing, or intellectual contributions that don't fit neatly into any category.

Reading successful applications, you frequently get the sense that the student is already exploring ideas, building things, creating opportunities, or pursuing questions that genuinely interest them.

How Can I Get into Stanford?

First, get excellent grades and scores. There is absolutely no way around this. Yes, one B+ will hurt you. Beyond that, it’s all about the story you’re telling with your application. Sorry, we know that’s vague!

GPA range of admitted and enrolled first-time students:

Stanford students are unusually proactive, so you need to be, too. The university is filled with students pursuing independent research, launching projects, collaborating across disciplines, and taking advantage of resources that require initiative rather than simple participation. They want students who already demonstrate some version of that behavior before they arrive on campus.

This doesn't mean every applicant needs to found a company or create a nonprofit. Social media has done a remarkable (read: sarcasm) job convincing students that elite admissions requires increasingly elaborate accomplishments and a million extracurriculars that only prove you know how to join a club. But Stanford's admissions process is usually more nuanced than that; they want to see engagement. To requote what we already quoted, “...an exceptional depth of experience in one or two activities may demonstrate your passion more than minimal participation in five or six clubs.” See, they agree.

Stanford's essays also play a significant role in helping admissions officers understand who you are and what you’ve done, and their supplemental questions tend to reveal personality remarkably well. They ask a lot of questions, and they want to learn something new from each one. The strongest responses usually feel specific, reflective, and comfortable in their own voice. Students sometimes assume that writing for Stanford requires sounding oh-so-impressive, but in practice, we recommend the opposite approach. Admissions officers already know your resume; they want to see who you are.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

One challenge families face with Stanford admissions is that the school values qualities that are difficult to manufacture quickly. Initiative, intellectual vitality, creativity, and genuine engagement develop over time, and they can’t emerge from a last-minute effort to "look Stanford." Starting early is your best bet to get into Stanford.

At The Koppelman Group, we spend a great deal of time helping students identify the interests that genuinely excite them and then finding meaningful ways to develop those interests throughout high school. We help students narrow a broad academic interest into a more focused niche and explore research opportunities, competitions, internships, independent projects, summer experiences, and leadership opportunities that deepen and prove those interests.

Many students have interesting interests but struggle to translate them into experiences that demonstrate growth and engagement, while others have done remarkable things but find it difficult to explain why those experiences mattered. Admissions officers only see what appears in the application, which means thoughtful presentation becomes almost as important as the experiences themselves. That’s where the right kind of help comes into play.

We also guide students through Common App essays, interview prep, and Stanford supplemental essays, but we also help with HS course planning, testing strategy, and college list development. Perhaps most importantly, we help students avoid building applications around assumptions. Stanford admissions is filled with applicants trying to reverse engineer what they think the university wants, which produces boring, bland, over-polished students. They don’t want that.

We aren’t trying to magically create a Stanford applicant, but rather help students understand their strengths, pursue opportunities thoughtfully, and communicate those experiences in a way that feels clear, compelling, and authentic – and developing those strengths can turn into a Stanford acceptance.

Conclusion

Stanford's admissions process reflects the culture of the university itself. The school values academic excellence, but it also wants students who are actively engaged with the world around them. That's part of what makes the process so competitive. Stanford receives applications from extraordinary students across every imaginable discipline. The admissions office is trying to understand how applicants think, what they care about, and how they might contribute to a campus filled with ambitious, creative, and deeply engaged people.

Understanding what Stanford wants won't eliminate the uncertainty that comes with highly selective admissions. It does, however, provide a clearer picture of what Stanford appears to value. And for applicants trying to make thoughtful decisions about how to spend their time during high school, that can help you strategize the right way.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

UChicago has spent a long time building an environment that rewards curiosity, intellectual playfulness, and students who derive genuine satisfaction from understanding things. Students sometimes approach UChicago expecting another version of Harvard or Stanford. In reality, UChicago’s culture has far more to do with who gets in and who doesn’t. Strong stats might get you in the door, but that doesn’t mean you’re going through their door.

So how does UChicago decide who belongs? Let’s get into it!

Who Actually Gets Into UChicago?

The funny thing about UChicago admissions is that almost everyone who seriously has a chance of getting in is already an outstanding student. Their academic expectations are very real. UChicago students usually take the hardest courses their high schools offer and earn exceptional grades in them. Most admitted students rank near the top of their graduating classes, and strong standardized test scores are common as well. A 1500+ SAT or a 34–35 ACT certainly won't guarantee admission, but scores in those ranges are very normal among enrolled students. If you're significantly below those numbers, the rest of the application needs to do a lot of heavy lifting.

Middle 50 Testing Data for Admitted and Enrolled UChicago Freshmen:

Of course, that's where things become frustrating for applicants. UChicago rejects plenty of students with perfect grades and near-perfect test scores every year. In fact, the admissions office probably sees enough 4.0 GPAs and 1550 SATs to wallpaper a room. Academic excellence is expected. It's difficult to distinguish yourself through numbers when everyone around you has excellent numbers too.

Once applicants meet a certain academic threshold, admissions officers begin asking questions that don't have easy answers. How does this student spend their time? What subjects seem to genuinely excite them? When they encounter something interesting, do they leave it in the classroom or do they continue exploring?

The admissions office isn't trying to identify The Most Impressive Transcript in America™. Plenty of universities could fill their classes with those students, and that's why outcomes can seem so unpredictable from the outside. Two applicants may look almost identical academically: both have perfect grades and elite scores, both have done research and held leadership positions. But one application somehow feels more alive, because their interests are easier to identify.

What Does UChicago Really Want to See?

Students spend an enormous amount of energy trying to figure out what UChicago wants. In some ways, that's understandable. The school has cultivated a reputation for valuing quirky students, and applicants sometimes interpret that to mean they should try super hard to present themselves as eccentric or unconventional. That usually produces disastrous essays and even worse attempts at manufactured personality.

Admissions officers aren't searching for weirdness. They're searching for evidence that a student has an active intellectual life and thinks in the kind of way UChicago students think. A lot of highly accomplished students have impressive resumes but surprisingly little curiosity underneath them. They've learned how to succeed, how to collect accolades, and how to optimize their time, but ambition by itself isn't especially interesting.

What's more compelling is the student who became obsessed with urban planning after noticing strange traffic patterns in their city and then spent three years reading about transportation systems. Or the student who started writing satirical short stories because they became fascinated with Kurt Vonnegut. Or the aspiring biologist who fell into evolutionary game theory and somehow wound up reading economics papers for fun. It doesn’t really matter what you’re interested in, but how you engage with it. UChicago wants to see authenticity!

How Does UChicago Decide Who Gets in?

One reason students find elite admissions so maddening is because they assume somebody in an office is assigning points to GPA, points to activities, points to essays, and then admitting the students with the highest totals. That would certainly make life easier, but it would also make colleges uninteresting, less vibrant places – UChicago included.

Admissions offices often talk about building a class; they aren't trying to admit a whole class’s worth of the same student. A campus full of identical economics majors with identical resumes and identical personalities would be unbearable. What they're trying to create is a community of students who approach ideas differently, challenge one another, and contribute to the “intellectual life” of the university, which they care about a lot!

Academics matter enormously, obviously. Nobody is getting into UChicago without demonstrating the ability to succeed in an extremely rigorous environment. But after that point, the application becomes much harder to quantify. Essays, recommendations, extracurriculars, personal context, and academic interests all begin interacting with one another. The admissions office is trying to understand how these pieces fit together and what kind of person emerges when they do.

Context matters quite a bit as well. Students come from vastly different educational environments. Some attend elite prep schools with dozens of AP classes and built-in research opportunities. Others attend public schools where simply exhausting the available curriculum requires extraordinary effort. UChicago understands this, and admissions officers spend considerable time evaluating students relative to the opportunities they actually had rather than some imaginary universal standard.

Applications that feel overly polished often lose some of that humanity. UChicago admissions officers have seen enough high-achieving teenagers to know when they're being shown a performance. What seems to resonate more often are students who sound like themselves – thoughtful, imperfect, occasionally funny, and genuinely excited about the things that matter to them.

How Can I Get into UChicago?

A lot of students become so focused on appearing "UChicago enough" that they stop sounding like themselves entirely. The famously quirky prompts aren't really a creativity contest, they're the admissions office trying to figure out how you think and approach complex questions. The students who do well here usually don't force weirdness. They lean into whatever naturally interests them and let their personality show up in their writing.

At many elite schools, supplements serve mostly as "Why Us?" exercises. And while UChicago also has a Why Us essay, their creative essays are very important. UChicago's prompts often reveal more about an applicant than almost any other part of the file. Two students with nearly identical academics can separate themselves dramatically through the quality of their thinking and writing.

Academic Factors UChicago Considers:

Outside the essays, the same principle generally applies. Students sometimes assume they need some impossibly impressive passion project or national award. Those things certainly don't hurt, but the admissions office isn't sitting around with a checklist that says "one nonprofit plus one research paper plus one international competition." They are looking for evidence that you care deeply about something and have spent meaningful time engaging with it.

For one student, that might mean a years-long fascination with architecture that led to sketching buildings, reading urban history, and spending weekends photographing neighborhoods. Another student might have immersed themselves in narrative writing, ancient languages, astrophysics, constitutional law, or marine biology. These students aren’t just stuffing their resumes with every leadership title available, and they usually do have leadership and sports and all that jazz, but it’s not the focus of their high school career.

Nonacademic Factors UChicago Considers:

Long-term planning plays a role too, although perhaps not in the way people think. Strong applications rarely emerge because somebody woke up during junior year and decided they needed to optimize everything. The students who thrive at UChicago are rarely chasing prestige for its own sake. They tend to be the kinds of people who would still care about their favorite subjects even if nobody handed out trophies for them.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

Students often assume they need to transform themselves into somebody entirely different. They start collecting activities, adding leadership positions, and trying to reverse-engineer what they think admissions officers want to see. By the time applications are due, some students have built a profile that looks impressive on paper but doesn't really resemble who they are.

That approach almost never works, and schools like UChicago tend to expose it very quickly.

At The Koppelman Group, we spend a lot of time helping students identify the interests and strengths they already possess and then developing those organically over time. We help students narrow their broad interests into something more focused. We might do that by helping them identify summer programs, research opportunities, competitions, or independent projects that align naturally with what they already enjoy.

We also guide families through the more technical side of the process. From choosing classes in high school to test prep, all the way through college list development, essay brainstorming, supplemental strategy, and interview preparation, we help families every step of the way. Applications don't come together accidentally, especially at schools where thousands of applicants might possess nearly identical academic credentials.

Our goal has never been to manufacture a UChicago student. Those students already exist! The challenge is helping them communicate who they are in a way that feels authentic, thoughtful, and memorable, and we do it successfully every year.

Conclusion

UChicago has always attracted a certain type of person, although that type is probably broader than outsiders assume. Some students, of course, arrive obsessed with economics. Others care about physics, literature, philosophy, public policy, or things so specific that most people have never even thought of them.

Plenty of students have exceptional grades and remarkable accomplishments, and UChicago has no shortage of those applicants. What the university seems to value, over and over again, are students whose curiosity feels durable and who are excited about the university itself.

UChicago remains one of the most selective universities in the country, and extraordinary students are denied every year. But it does make the process easier to understand. Students often spend years trying to become what they imagine colleges want. UChicago, perhaps more than most places, rewards students who spend those years becoming more themselves instead.

If you need help strategizing your UChicago app or writing those challenging UChicago essays – reach out to us today.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

Yale receives applications from thousands of extraordinary students every year. Most are perfectly capable of succeeding academically. Admissions officers aren't trying to determine who can survive four years in New Haven, they're trying to imagine who will contribute to the type of community Yale has spent centuries building.

So how can you turn your experience and record into a Yale acceptance? Let’s get into it.

Who Actually Gets Into Yale?

The academic expectations are probably the easiest part of Yale admissions to understand.

Students who enroll at Yale usually arrive with exceptional grades, demanding schedules, and testing that sits near the very top of the national applicant pool. Test scores are often in the 99th percentile, and GPAs are often 4.0s. Most successful applicants have exhausted the rigor available to them in high school, whether that means AP classes, IB courses, or dual enrollment.

Obviously, academics are foundational – they have to be! Where things become much less straightforward is after that initial hurdle.

Middle 50 Testing Data for Admitted and Enrolled Yale Freshmen:

Yale has access to an almost absurd number of students with pristine grades and elite scores. Every admissions cycle includes applicants with perfect transcripts, national awards, published research, nonprofit organizations, and enough leadership titles to fill a LinkedIn profile before they're old enough to vote.

Part of the reason outcomes seem unpredictable is that Yale is trying to identify students who will actually enjoy being there. Students who thrive in New Haven often possess strong intellectual interests, but they also become invested in on-campus activities like publications, a cappella groups, intramural sports, theater productions, research labs, or causes they genuinely care about.

Strong applicants usually possess impressive credentials, but their applications rarely feel like collections of credentials. There is generally some sense of personality running through them. You get a picture of someone who has interests, opinions, and enthusiasm for the things they spend their time on.

What Does Yale Really Want to See?

Families often assume that schools like Yale are searching for students who can do everything. Perfect grades, research, community service, awards, leadership positions, summer programs, music, athletics – the longer the list, the better.

Academic Factors Yale Considers:

And we get it! Elite admissions has created an environment where many students feel like they need to become professional résumé builders, but Yale applications often become stronger when students stop trying to prove they can do everything and start demonstrating that they genuinely care about something.

Part of the reason academic niches matter so much is because they give admissions officers a clearer sense of who a student is likely to become once they arrive on campus. A student fascinated by public health may pursue biology courses, volunteer in healthcare settings, write for the school newspaper about healthcare policy, and spend summers conducting research. Somebody interested in architecture might become absorbed in urban planning, art history, and photography. A future historian may gravitate toward debate, archival research, writing, and community projects tied to civic engagement. And none of these students are following some magical Yale checklist. Their interests simply started to shape the choices they made, and Yale values that kind of intellectual ownership.

Nonacademic Factors Yale Considers:

Part of what gives the university its culture is that students arrive with distinct passions and then spend four years exposing each other to those passions. Building an academic niche doesn't mean you have to become perfectly narrowly specialized at sixteen! It means providing admissions officers with evidence that your interests are genuine enough to influence how you spend your time.

How Does Yale Decide Who Gets in?

People spend a lot of time searching for the secret formula, which we wish there were – but there’s just not. (and admissions in general) doesn't really work that way.

The Yale admissions office has no shortage of exceptional applicants to sort through. They could fill several classes with students who have perfect grades and outstanding scores. Their challenge lies in selecting one class from thousands of equally impressive options.

The committee is also trying to build a campus community rather than a collection of résumés. Some students distinguish themselves through scientific research. Others through music, writing, debate, athletics, entrepreneurship, community engagement, or work experience. There are future engineers and poets, future doctors and documentary filmmakers. Yale has always wanted a variety of students, and its admissions process reflects that. And again, it doesn’t matter what you want to do, but that you actually went for it as much as possible.

Another piece families sometimes underestimate is personality. Not personality in the sense that everybody needs to be charismatic or extroverted, but personality in the sense that admissions officers are trying to understand who a student actually is and if they’ll be a good fit for the campus. Reading applications for long enough gives people a strange ability to tell when somebody is presenting a fake version of themselves versus describing the things that genuinely matter to them. This is one reason why essays are so important.

How Can I Get into Yale?

Tons of students spend years preparing transcripts, accumulating activities, and chasing accomplishments. A lot less spend the same amount of time thinking seriously about who they are, what they value, or what excites them intellectually. Yale wants you to be in that second group.

The university has always shown a preference for students who sound like actual people. Looking at successful Yale essays, you’ll get a sense of humor, curiosity, vulnerability, enthusiasm, or even occasional weirdness. Our students have written about family traditions, books they can't stop recommending, niche interests, silly stories, and ideas that genuinely matter to them.

Part of the reason Yale's essays carry so much weight is that they provide something grades cannot. A transcript tells the admissions office what classes a student took and what grades they got. The activities section tells them what you did outside of school. But essays reveal what occupies that student's mind when nobody is assigning homework! And that’s a lot more you than just doing school!

Activities still matter, obviously, but not because admissions officers are counting leadership positions. They are trying to understand how students spend their time and where they invest their energy. These kinds of strong applications emerge over time – your interests evolve as you discover what you genuinely enjoy and become better at articulating why those things matter to you. There is no magical summer program or hidden extracurricular combination that unlocks admission. Most successful applicants simply spent years becoming more invested in the things that already interested them.

How Can 91̽�� Help?

At The Koppelman Group, we spend a great deal of time helping students figure out what genuinely excites them and how to pursue those interests thoughtfully over their high school career. Sometimes that means identifying research opportunities or summer programs, or encouraging a student to lean more heavily into writing, theater, community work, music, entrepreneurship, or independent projects that might otherwise get dismissed because they don't fit somebody's old-school idea of a "perfect" applicant.

We also guide students through the technical side of admissions. We help with class selection, test strategy, building college lists, Common App essay development, supplemental brainstorming, and even interviews. By the time applications are submitted, every piece should work together naturally rather than feeling like it was assembled by a committee.

Perhaps most importantly, we help students avoid that fake posturing and performing that Yale hates. The strongest applicants usually feel comfortable in their own skin and fit naturally into the Yale community. They reveal somebody with interests, values, quirks, and aspirations rather than somebody desperately trying to guess the right answers.

We don’t want to manufacture a Yale applicant – instead, our job is to help them communicate who they are with clarity and confidence.

Conclusion

Yale combines extraordinary academic rigor with a culture that remains deeply invested in people and communities. The residential colleges, the arts scene, the publications, the traditions, and the emphasis on discussion all create an environment that rewards students who enjoy being part of something larger than themselves.

Plenty of Yale applicants have perfect grades and extraordinary accomplishments, but what seems to separate many successful applicants is that they feel like people who will slot into Yale’s culture easily – all of which can be proven through building a smart strategy.

There is no shortage of brilliance at Yale. And if you want to be a part of that culture and campus, we can help. Reach out to us today to get started.

Need help getting into a Top 20 school? Reach out to us today.

The University of California Berkeley has an especially iconic college, the, that is the largest college at the university with more than 60 departments spanning the physical and biological sciences, humanities, and the arts. It is known as “the heart” of UCBerkeley. It’s not surprising, then, that UCBerkeley guards admission to the College of Letters & Science closely. Like all of UCBerkeley, getting in is extremely competitive. Students with California residence have a real advantage, but it isn’t easy for anyone — even if you are outstanding academically.

When students come to us with an interest in Berkeley, there is one question always in the front of their mind: “Can I get in?” That is an understandable question, but it’s also completely the wrong approach. Instead of asking if Berkeley is possible for you, we guide our students through addressing a different question: “What needs to be true for me to get into Berkeley?”

In this post, we’ll give you a peek into our process when we start working with a student and begin setting the foundation for an acceptance-earning application.  

Applying to top schools requires superior strategy. Get yours.

Below, we’ve broken the application down into five steps. Each of these steps is best addressed through years of work, patience, and planning. If you have less time before submitting, it is still possible to implement the best practice guidelines we lay out. It is, however, harder. In the past few years, we’ve lost count of the number of parents who thought they were helping their kid start early by opening up the college conversation early in Junior year. Unfortunately, they find out that they are at least a year late and now have to rush to catch up. While it is possible to pull together a great application on a short timeline, we highly recommend starting very early in your high school career for the best outcomes.

Step 1: Solidify Grades and Scores

There isn’t a ton about college admissions that is set in stone. Students come from all over the world with all types of educational backgrounds and a multitude of interests. What is mandatory, though, are the numbers. To get into a top college, you must have top grades. This is non-negotiable.

UCBerkeley has, like all of the University of California schools, stringent academic requirements for an applicant to even be seriously considered. These include a minimum GPA (although you need to be far above the minimum to get in) and , such as a minimum of two years of study in a foreign language. Remember, these are minimums. You do not get into Berkeley by coasting along on minimums. Instead, you need to be taking the hardest classes that you have access to, and excelling in them, while exceeding the minimum requirements. But you don’t want to study science in college? Too bad. You are still taking lab science to get into Berkeley.  

The range for accepted and enrolled first-years — remember, the middle — is 4.15-4.29. This means that 25% of accepted students are above a 4.29 and 25% are below a 4.15. That is more than a little bit absurd, but it’s also the bar that you need to surpass. Do not, we repeat, do not, ever assume that you are so awesome that you can fall into the bottom 25%. That region is typically monopolized by recruited athletes and applicants with special considerations, like being a child of a faculty member.

UCBerkeley does not use standardized testing, either the SAT or ACT, in admissions. Getting high scores does not matter for your UCBerkeley application, as they don’t look at them. You won’t only be applying to Berkeley, so you should still aim for a high score on the SAT or ACT for other applications. For Berkeley, though, it’s your transcript you need to worry about most.

After you meet Berkeley’s academic expectations, you’ve only started the process of getting (and keeping) their attention.

Step 2: Pinpoint a Passion

Academically, Berkeley is a juggernaut. Culturally, it’s a beacon. Berkeley is a place where ideas are born and nurtured, cultural currents are directed, and moments become movements. This has been true for decades, now, and is something they treasure about their community. A crucial piece of what makes it possible is the mix of students they bring onto campus in the first-year class each year.

So, what are they looking for? Once you have locked in that you will surpass their academic expectations, the next thing to do is to identify a passion to pursue — or to continue pursuing — that both brings you enormous joy and is linked to something at least relevant to what you want to study in college. We work with our students to identify and develop passions that sustain them and that serve them. By that, we mean that a strong passion for college admissions needs to be both authentic to you and connected to an academic narrative that will be compelling for application readers.

For example, maybe your passion is surfing. Perhaps you are interested in studying something related to understanding or protecting the ocean. That’s the kind of passion we can work with.

Step 3: Niche Down

With your passion picked, we work with our students to crank in the details. A big picture passion is great, but it isn’t enough to lead to the admissions outcome that you want.  

To stick to the surfing example, that might mean focusing in geographically (ideally, close to home), focusing in on a community connected to the beach you love, and focusing on an initiative, or set of initiatives, that support that place and community.  

This isn’t to say that all you should do outside of school is pursue your niche within your passion. That would be quite draining, probably, and risk a one-note application. What we do need you to do, though, is to dedicate a significant enough amount of time that you can make a real, measurable impact.

Regardless of what your passion is, the same logic and process can be applied. But, again, it isn’t the final step.

Step 4: Develop Your Extracurriculars

So, you have a passion and you’ve identified a niche. You probably also have an overfilled extracurricular schedule and the idea of fitting anything else into it is daunting at best. This is precisely the problem that we face when most of our students when we first start working together. It isn’t that they don’t have anything to do, it’s that too much of what they are doing isn’t doing anything for time.  

We aren’t simply talking about college admissions-wise here, either. If you rotate your whole life simply for a Berkeley application, it will almost never pan out like you planned. Instead, it’s about finding meeting points and middle ground between enjoying where you are and working towards where you want to be come first-year fall.  

To do this, we take a critical look at a student’s commitments and activities with a specific eye towards their passion and niche. We are also looking for things that fill three crucially important buckets for Berkeley:

• Leadership

• Service

• Intellectual Rigor

These buckets are different for different schools, but for Berkeley they really want to see you leading, you serving others, and you engaging intellectually outside of the classroom. This rarely means you need to be doing an activity like debate or Quiz Bowl — unless you love it! You can develop your intellectual extracurriculars through a multitude of avenues, and same goes for leadership and service. When possible, though, we like to see at least one of the three addressed through something directly linked to your academic interest. Again, there are many ways to accomplish that, including (but not limited to):

• Research

• Internships

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Clubs at school

• Jobs

• Long-term volunteer work

• Team sports

• Individual sports

If you have a few years before applying to Berkeley, that is obviously ideal. We love being able to craft a compelling mix of activities with our students from the beginning rather than having to reverse-engineer a story. However, it is possible to make what you’ve already done work for you with the right helping hand guiding the amp up to application.

Step 5: Apply!

As a University of California school, UCBerkeley does not practice early admissions. There is one application process for everyone, and you can’t boost your chances of acceptance by applying early.

Overall, about of applicants have been admitted in recent years. While many people on the internet claim to know the more detailed California vs. out-of-state statistics for recent years, Berkeley has declined to publish them. Like most public universities, though, the priority given to in-state applicants means that the acceptance rate is elevated for California kids and depressed for out-of-state applicants. Do not assume this means it is easy to get in as a California applicant, though, nor impossible from out of state. Nearly anything is achievable with strong strategy and the time to execute on it.

As you consider your next steps for Berkeley, remember that nothing is more important than your academics, but there are that can take a strong academic application and push it over the edge to an acceptance. That is where passion, niche, and activities come in, and UCBerkeley shares what matters most to them outside of the classroom.

The place to highlight these ‘intangibles’ is in the , which are the UC application answer to the Common App personal statement and supplemental questions. Applicants are required to respond to four of the eight prompts, which are the same across all of the UC schools.

There are often opportunities to repurpose writing for the Common App for the Personal Insight questions, but remember that this isn’t a process measuring how adept you are at copy-and-paste. They want to see you in your best light, and that means working hard to communicate with admissions to totality of your awesomeness.  

We begin working with our students on writing for the UCBerkeley application as early as six months before submitting. This isn’t because it takes six months to write a response, but because the best work develops over time. We are strong advocates for the creative process, and every essay needs to be a unique representation of who you are, not a form response generated based on what someone on TikTok says worked for them. College admissions, especially to highly-selective schools like Berkeley is personal, not formulaic.

Conclusion

Every year, we help driven students pull off acceptances that others may have deemed as ‘unlikely,’ including to UCBerkeley. What we know, though, is that nothing is unlikely if you do the work to make it happen. This means years of commitment, months of concerted efforts, and more than a few hard decisions. But it is possible, and we can help.

If you want to craft the perfect application for UCBerkeley, reach out to us today. 

Over the past 10 years, the acceptance rate to UCLA has dropped 10% and the acceptance rate for the College of Letters and Science has plummeted . This has transformed the university from a target for strong students into a reach for even the best and brightest from beyond California.  

We work with students on getting into dream schools. Yes, it’s college admissions, but it’s also about accomplishing something that a student has worked for and dreamed about, often for years. For us, that perspective makes it personal. This isn’t about finding a way into the 11% of accepted applications for the College of Letters and Science, but about crafting an application such that UCLA is excited to admit you. It’s not about what it takes to get in, then, but about how to help UCLA see how awesome you are.

In this post, we will give you a peek into our process of helping a student differentiate themselves, develop their passions, and build their most impactful application possible. We’ll especially be focusing on the College of Letters and Science, which is the largest of UCLA’s undergraduate programs with over 27,000 students pursuing a massive array of courses of study from traditional humanities to cutting edge STEM.  

Getting into UCLA from outside of California requires a strong strategy. Get yours.  

The foundation of any strong UCLA application is the same regardless of what you want to study. It’s all about the numbers. UCLA has such a massive pool of applicants to choose from that they can set an exceptionally high bar for students. Let’s dig into what that actually means.

Step 1: Sky-High Grades    

First things first, you need to have super high grades. A drop sophomore year because you were distracted does not fly with UCLA, and even ‘good’ excuses for a lower score are just that — excuses. You will also need to make absolutely sure that you will exceed the University of California system’s for an applicant to even be eligible. Once you’ve exceeded the minimums, you need to use the electives and advanced options at your school to dial in on an academic area of focus.

Neither we, nor UCLA, think that all teenagers know what they are going to do for their academic future. This isn’t about subscribing to a set in stone path, but it is about showing focus and drive.

Make sure, too, that you don’t pick what you emphasize in school to try to appeal to UCLA. While that can sound like a winning strategy, it actually creates big messes when it comes time to actually pull your application together. It is, however, helpful to know what most students look to do at UCLA before even arriving on campus.

For freshman enrolling in the Fall of 2024, of the first-year class were interested in pursuing a degree in STEM. The largest number were specifically interested in the life sciences (35%), which includes students planning to pursue medical school next.

You shouldn’t shy away from focusing in the life sciences just because UCLA is the dream, but you also can’t assume that because the program is so large at UCLA they will have space for you unless you are exceptional. What matters most is simpler than statistical strategy: what interests you most?

We guide our students to follow their passion to their greatest success through careful course selection, extracurricular development, and more.

What about standardized test scores? Well, for better or worse UCLA does not consider SAT or ACT scores as part of their admissions process. This goes beyond test optional. They simply don’t use them at all. Because you can’t lean on a strong score to stand out beyond your transcript, steps 2, 3, and 4 are more important than ever.

Step 2: Cement Your Passion

Some high school students are 100% certain of what they want to major in and then pursue as a career. Rarely does life actually pan out exactly how one has it planned, but having that confidence and clarity is awesome and it gives us great guidance when we start working with a student. These students have their passion, and that is very cool.

Most students, though, don’t know precisely what they want to study in college and they don’t necessarily have a passion that is linked to an academic pursuit. They have interests, but not a passion. That isn’t a problem, either. In fact, it offers opportunities for experimentation and exploration that are exciting. 

One of the first things we do with students is to work towards pinpointing a passion that is tied to a deep academic interest and offers opportunities for development and growth before they need to press submit on their UCLA application.

Step 3: Identify a Niche

Pinpointing your passion is actually only the first step in fine-tuning the specific angle for your application, though. This is because we need you to deepen into your passion by identifying a niche that you can then build what you do outside of the classroom around. Now, it is definitely easier to do this if we have a few years before you will be applying, which is why we work with so many sophomores early in their high school experience.

If you have less time though, there are still ways to construct a niche by analyzing how you have spent your time, finetuning what will actually be included on your application, and maximizing for the conveyance of a clear and powerful message of academic direction, passion, and purpose.

Step 4: Fine-tune Your Extracurriculars

All of this leads you to how you spend your time outside of the classroom. There are three things that UCLA College of Letters and Science wants to see you doing outside of your academics. These are:

• Leadership

• Service

• Work Experience

Yes, UCLA likes to see job experience on your application. This comes as a surprise to many strong students who are so focused on academics and academic pursuits that they don’t get a summer job. We can’t blame them for the intensity, but it can have unintended consequences when UCLA looks at your application and only sees things that are pretty standard, even if impressive, and not much that speaks to your life when you aren’t thinking about school.

A job scooping ice cream is a powerful thing on a UCLA application, or being a troop leader for a Girl Scout troop. You can build a business tutoring younger students, or mow lawns on the weekends to save up for your first car. We actually prioritize one or two of these types of things over yet another academic extracurricular that feels ‘copy and paste’ from the standard academic gameplan.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be pursuing a high level of success in academically-minded extracurriculars, too, though. We guide our students to find a balance between a variety of types of activities that speak towards the core themes of their passion and that underline their niche.

This could include:

• Research

• Internships

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Clubs at school

• Jobs

• Long-term volunteer work

• Athletics

UCLA also looks for students who want to make a difference in the world. That difference doesn’t have to be becoming a world leader, as that isn’t practical for anyone let alone a teenager. Rather they are more interested in students who want to make a difference on a local level that could be scaled up, but that doesn’t need to be. It is crucial, then, that you show this care for community and desire to make a difference in your application. To do that, you need to plan in advance. We work with our students to build relationships with local nonprofits that can deepen and grow through regular, long-term commitment.

Step 5: Apply!

Once you are ready to apply, it’s time to write. The University of California schools conveniently have one application that applies to any UC school. The writing for that application is called the “.”

UCLA does not offer an early application option. It’s regular decision or bust, one could say. To help your application stand out, though, you have the . There are 8 prompts, of which you have to pick 4 before answering each of the questions you select in a maximum of 350 words.

There are not any objectively good or bad personal insight questions to pick, but we do have themes that we guide our students towards. First, you never want to be repeating yourself. That includes the obvious things, like repeating the same story or writing about the same activity, but it also applies to themes. For example, if you write one essay that emphasizes leadership, you don’t want to repeat that emphasize in another personal insight response. Each question should have a unique story and a unique angle on who you are and what you would bring to the UCLA community.

Standing out through your writing for the UCLA application is especially important as the odds aren’t in your favor for admission — even if you have all the quantitative measures on your side. This is why we work with our students not just to excel in school, but to build a roster of extracurriculars, passions, and hobbies that become a gold mine for your application. 

Now, it is true that UCLA ranks academics as the most important part of your application. They don’t even label anything nonacademic as “.” Things are important or considered, or not considered at all, but not marked as very important.

Some students see this as permission to not worry about anything other than their academics. We hope we have already dissuaded you of this notion, but in case we didn’t we’ll give one more push. Remember, UCLA receives over 145,000 first-year applications. They could only look at the applications of students with perfect academic records and still have far more quantitatively qualified students than they can accept. So, the way you stand out isn’t another A. It’s what you do beyond your transcript.

Conclusion

Now you have the tools, but the question is how you will use them. Simply knowing what to do isn’t, after all, the same as being an expert in implementing it. Each year, we support students through their applications to UCLA — and they get in. That isn’t a fluke; we know what we are doing. And we can help you, too.

If you want to craft the perfect application for UCLA, reach out to us today. 

USC is not, it is important to remember, part of the University of California system. It is a private university, and it does not give students from California preference in admissions. This means that students who are super strong, and who will have an easy time getting into UC schools, will not have a leg up in USC admissions based simply on their home address.

When a student comes to us with USC high on their list, their first question is normally, “can I even get in?” That is, however, the wrong question to be asking. Yes, you can get in. That is nearly always true. What you need to ask to make it possible, though, is “what do I need to do to get into USC?” And the answer is obvious to us. There are clear actions that you can take to increase your chances of admission to USC. It is in your power to make USC possible, and that’s where we can help.

We work with students, often starting as early as freshman and sophomore year, to chart impressive trajectories that clarify their interests, cement their passions, and build an applicant profile that supports them in being their best self. In this post, we’ll give you a peek at how we think about the pieces of an eventual application, and what goes into building it. If you want a winning approach, though, it’s important to make it personal. 

Getting into USC is an uphill battle. We smooth the slope. Get your strategy.

When we think about a future application, it helps to break it down into five big chunks. Each of these fits together, and you really can’t leave one out without the whole application falling apart. Like , application creation is holistic. You must address all parts of yourself for any hope of your message getting through to the admissions officers. Now, let’s get into them.

Step 1: Stellar Grades and Scores

USC received nearly 80,000 first-year applications for the Class of 2030. They accepted only a tad over 11% of applicants focused on Dornsife, which means that they were able to set their academic bar extremely high. This was not an outlier of an admissions round. Rather, it showed the continuation of a trend towards increased selectivity and exclusivity. Again, this means the academic bar is high. The first-year admittees across the university charted the highest combined grade point average (GPA) in USC history: 3.92.

So, you need to get exceptional grades throughout your high school career to add up to an average that measures up. Beyond the numbers, USC has distribution requirements when it comes to what you take. While many schools only recommend a certain course load, USC requires 4 years of English, 3 years of math, 2 years of language, .  

Parallel to strengthening your grades, you need to be preparing for the SAT or ACT well in advance of taking either test. USC does not require that first-year applicants submit standardized test scores. As a result, most students don’t. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t, though.

While only of applicants for 2024 admission submitted scores (the most recent data USC has released), strong test scores underline and further strengthen a strong application. The lack of requirement does, however, skew the scores that do get submitted higher than they would be otherwise.

What the date shows on score distributions for accepted students fascinating to us, because it conflicts a fair bit. On the SAT, the scores are very high. If one were to be in the 50th percentile on both sections, you have a 1520, and we advise students to aim for the 75th percentile for a score to stand out and improve your chances of admission when paired with an otherwise impressive application.

When we look at the ACT numbers, the scores shown for the 25th and 50th percentile are significantly below what we would advise a student to submit to USC, and especially when it is test optional. That suggests to us that perhaps a certain group of students is being advised by the university to submit their scores. Since scores are optional for all applicants, including athletes, international, and homeschool applicants, we are curious as to whom these students are who are submitting lower scores — and getting in.  

It is possible that this is a statistical artifact that lingers from prior to the NCAA removing their testing requirement and minimums for athletic eligibility in 2023. The requirements were quite low compared to what USC usually expects to see in an application, and it’s possible that recruited athletes who submitted scores following NCAA requirements of the time pulled down the averages. Now that the NCAA the requirements on testing, we are interested to see how the score reports for accepted applicants adjust.

Whatever your scores, you need to pursue exceptional grades. While test scores are optional, grades aren’t. They are looking for a remarkable academic track record that shows you thriving through a rigorous academic set of challenges.

Step 2: Develop a Passion

Alongside your academic successes, the most important piece of your USC Dornsife application is the specific passion that you make a centerpiece of your case for admission. This passion does not need to be purely academic, but it does need to be linked to what you hope to study.

Identifying a passion starts with pinpointing your deepest interests, and we work with our students to not only find a passion, but to filter through their current passions if they already have a collection to focus on what will serve them best in USC admissions. For example, if you are passionate about football but are not going to be a football recruit, there is some planning that needs to go into making football an asset on your application, not a distraction. Without care, a large portion of your time could be taken by something that actually works against your candidacy. With support, though, you can keep playing the game you love and make it a cornerstone of an exceptional application — but more on that later. 

If you don’t have something you absolutely adore, we help you find it. The more time the better with this, but we have had outstanding results helping students closer to application deadlines pivot their application towards emphasizing a passion.  

Step 3: Niche Down

Once you have identified a passion that your USC application will be centered on, you need to make it more specific. Whether you are aiming towards a pre-med track or leaning towards a literature degree, simply being interested broadly in a field doesn’t make for a compelling application. So, you need to niche down.

When we say, “niche down,” we mean picking a specific area of your interest and then zooming in as far as you can. This will develop the unique angle of your application. You aren’t an aspiring pre-med, you are an aspiring future pediatrician. You aren’t obsessed with literature writ large, but have been devouring everything you can find from the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

This process of niching down comes naturally to some students, but for many a supportive guide and mentor is crucial. We work with our students to develop their passion towards a specific perspective, or niche, by using strategic extracurriculars and opportunities that go beyond the classes on offer.

Step 4: Develop Your Extracurriculars

Obviously, you are already doing extracurriculars. You may be in clubs, playing sports, and working during the summer, and it’s possible that your schedule is completely packed with little room for anything else. That’s a problem, though, because being busy is not the same as strategic application planning.

When we start working with a student, they are typically already fully booked with roles and responsibilities. We aren’t there to simply add more to an already full docket, but to recalibrate their commitments to stay true to who they are while strengthening their eventual argument for admission to USC. This can include things like moving from a volunteer role to a formal internship, streamlining your clubs to emphasize where a leadership role is most likely, and a lot more.

As we put together a new activities approach, we’re looking at a bunch of possibilities, including:

• Research

• Internships

• Outside classes

• Summer programs

• Clubs at school

• Sports

• Jobs

• Volunteer work

What we are really trying to address, though, are three main buckets:

• Teamwork

• Leadership

• Service to Others

USC Dornsife cares a lot about you caring about others. This can be in a granular, daily way, like long term commitment to a service initiative, but what they really layered on top of regular volunteering is an interest in systemic solutions. “What problems do you want to solve?” is a favorite question at USC Dornsife, and they want to see an answer to this question clearly included in your application. Your activities are one place to do that, and your essays — or the stories you tell — are another powerful tool for communicating your care for others.

Step 5: Apply!

When junior year ends, it’s time to start writing. Supplements are released over the summer, and there is the main essay to do of course, too. You can to apply to USC Early Action, Early Decision, or Regular Decision. The Early Decision option , as they previously did not offer a binding early application avenue to admission.

Because Early Decision is new, we do not have statistical data on how it will play out — but we are excited for when it is released! For now, we can compare applicant outcomes between Early Action and Regular Decision.

The higher acceptance rate for RD applicants who were not previously deferred has led some to argue that applying EA is not an advantage. We disagree with that perspective for a few reasons. First, if the difference is only 1% or 2%, that is a blip on the radar. But applying EA offers more benefits than a simply difference in acceptance rate. Applying EA sets you up for a smoother college application experience overall, which is a key piece of what we offer to our students. Applying to college can make a dream come true, and be a far less than painful process. Some of our students even enjoy it! 

The most important thing when USC evaluates your application, whichever route to admission you choose, is your academics: the rigor of your course load, your GPA, your test scores, your essays, and your recommendations, there are nonacademic factors that also matter. for you.

So now you know what USC Dornsife wants and you have the guidance to begin to put the pieces together, but turning a bunch of guidelines into a compelling application is actually a lot harder than simply having the right information.

From here, we can help. In the meantime, consider the USC Dornsife , which invites you to share something you care about.

Many of us have at least one issue or passion that we care deeply about – a topic on which we would love to share our opinions and insights in hopes of sparking intense interest and continued conversation. If you had ten minutes and the attention of a million people, what would your talk be about?

If you feel inspired, start writing. Putting ideas on paper is, at this stage, one of the most important things you can you do to spark new ideas and find fresh opportunities.

Conclusion

While we stand by the idea that applying to college can truly be enjoyable, it is unavoidable that it is hard work. There is the work that goes into writing your applications, but also the years of work before you can pull all of the pieces together and press submit. We guide our students through all of it, resulting in outcomes that defy the odds and offer exceptional outcomes, including many acceptances to USC Dornsife each year.

So, if USC is a dream, we can help.

If you want to craft the perfect application for USC Dornsife, reach out to us today.