We’ve spent the past few weeks breaking down each Common App essay prompt one by one, and now it’s time for the grand finale: our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. Sure, there are seven different prompts, but at the end of the day, every school is looking for the same thing: a story.
Getting waitlisted or deferred from your dream school is hard. We know it’s hard! You feel rejected, but it’s this weird non-rejection rejection that can leave you feeling lost and confused. And while a lot of things in college admissions are totally out of your control, there is something you can do if you’ve been waitlisted or deferred to give yourself another chance. A letter of continued interest, sometimes known as a waitlist letter or deferral letter, is one of the few, actionable things you can control when admissions decisions seem so out of your control. It’s your only chance to make a good second impression, and we help students write them every single year.
Getting waitlisted is the ultimate limbo – it’s not not a rejection, but it’s not a full-on denial, either. And depending on your circumstances, you could be feeling everything from mild disappointment to full-on panic. Don’t get yourself into a tizzy just yet, because there are things you can do to give yourself a shot at getting off the waitlist and make sure that you have a plan in place for the next year.
Hey, look, sometimes ED doesn’t work out the way we want it to, and we have to change strategies. If you just got rejected or deferred from your ED/EA option, we’d like to introduce you to our good friend, Early Decision 2. ED2 is just as binding as ED, and it signals to the school that you are serious about attending that school, and guess what? Schools like when you’re serious about them.
Here is a typical email (paraphrased) that we get this time of year…
My kid is applying to college, and we’re looking to hire someone to help us. He isn’t sure where he wants to go, so can you just do all of the Ivy League apps with him? We can do the rest on our own.
The only answer we give (albeit in a wordier and more *slightly* friendly format) is “N.O. Absolutely no.”
Applications are created, made, and broken with free time that students have (or don’t have). Colleges look carefully at exactly how you spend your free time. And if they can’t tell how you spend your free time while they’re looking at your application, then they’re betting you don’t do much. But…we don’t need to tell you that twice, right? Because you’re reading this blog post. Which means you’re interested in the Ivy League. Which means that you’re likely scheduled out for the next 2-4 weeks.
With students flocking to the Common App to get a head start before supplements are released on August 1st, many are encountering the “Activities” section for the very first time. It’s a weird section—a series of slots that ask you to describe what you do, but don’t give you enough space to say anything beyond the bare minimum. Then you have to say how much time you spend doing each activity, and how long you’ve been doing it for. Then you have to rank them.
Back in your parents or grandparents’ generation, applying to college usually meant applying to a handful of first-choice schools and calling it a day. There were no AP tests, less competition, and fewer essays to churn out. Gone are the simpler days. You might have heard recent news stories about kids applying (and being accepted into) 20+ schools, including . While we don’t think anyone should apply to 20 schools, we are encouraging our students to apply to more schools than perhaps their parents did. In our years of helping students become the strongest possible applicants they can, we have discovered a range of schools that works best for our students.
We recently had a student who was incredibly motivated and was interested in delving into the world of materials engineering. We gave them many online course suggestions, had them read a book from the book list we created, and helped them put together a plan to create a makerspace at their school. Over the course of three months, barely anything happened. The student was able to start the book and the online course, but kept putting off the real project: creating a makerspace at school. This was because they were so preoccupied with homework during their off-time between track tournaments and after-school track team practice.
Dear Student: Don’t Get Mad at Your Parents.
If you’re reading this we bet that someone in your family just had a tough conversation that made you mad: they talked to you about your social media presence. More likely than not, someone told you that you needed to either edit or take down your account completely. We get it—it’s annoying being told what to do. And it’s even more annoying being asked to take down something that you've worked hard on.
We live in 2018—it’s a pretty interesting time to be alive for a number of reasons, but it’s a particularly interesting time to be applying to college because of technology. Namely, social media. We get a lot of questions from (mostly) parents asking us what our best social media practices are. The answer is pretty simple: the best social media presence is no social media presence.
We think it’s awesome if you are 17 and have a more specific idea of what you want to do with your life, be it pre-med, history, or business school. There’s no time like the present, so why not just dive on in? The top undergraduate business schools have tricky admissions processes. If you're interested in business in a macro-sense, we suggest trying to start a business.
A lot of kids think of the as the ‘chill’ test, the one they can put off until senior year when they’re over the hump with everything else. We’re sorry to say, but we advise against putting off the SAT IIs. Or putting off anything. It was Ben Franklin who said, “don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” and I walked by that quotation etched in stone too many times at Penn to not take his advice. So now we're passing his wisdom to you: get the SAT IIs out of the way.
It’s April of your junior year. The sun has come out. Your classmates are planning the next all-school walkout, and you are probably using all of your strength to focus in history class for just a few more weeks so you don’t totally bomb the question about the Teapot Dome Scandal on your final exam. April also means that if you haven’t started thinking about the college process, you’re late to the game.
2018 acceptances for the Class of 2022 are out and what we predicted has come to pass: it is harder to get into college than ever. HOT TAKE. Acceptance rates are plummeting, and the rates at top schools have yet again hit record lows. At the same time, the number of applicants who were waitlisted is off of the charts. Colleges are becoming more conservative in their admissions decisions. Unfortunately, students are bearing the brunt of it.
The 2017-2018 college admissions season is officially over. Yes, waitlists are pending, but the vast majority of high schools seniors know where they are going to end up come fall. All of our kids got into one of their top choices, but our results are always outlines. For many students, the last few weeks have been a wakeup call. With acceptance percentages continuing to plummet, that was truer this year than ever. The question remains, though: Why? Why didn’t you get into that school you thought you were a perfect fit for on paper? Why didn’t being a legacy give you the boost you needed? Or why wasn’t your full-slate of extracurriculars what got you over the lip? Here are eight reasons you may have been rejected:
Acceptance letters are rolling out, along with dreaded rejections and often even more stressful waitlist notices. With Ivy Day (March 28th) creeping up, there will be more waitlisted students than ever before. Why? Well, it isn’t only because there are a ton of students applying to college, and that the average student is applying to more colleges than ever. Sure, that’s part of it, but there’s a lot more going on than just millions of kids competing for coveted spots. You see, college admissions is a game — and not just for the applicants.
The spring of sophomore year can be fun. You feel more confident about your place in school. Perhaps your parents are granting you more freedom and depending on where you live, you might even be revving up to get your driver’s license. We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but you’re also hitting that point in which everything starts moving faster and before you know it, you’ll blink and be in college. So, while it may seem a little early, there is no time like your sophomore year of spring break to start preparing. Admit it. We know you’re kind of excited.
It’s time to pick your safety schools. And while you’ve tried different ways to imagine that you’re not going to have to resort to going there, it’s all the same: your test scores are what they are and each school has an average range. The good news is, there are THOUSANDS of schools in this country. There are bound to be three to five you don’t hate.
To state the obvious, we often think of target schools as being that beautiful sweet spot between so-called “reaches” and “safeties.” While target schools are a crucial component towards achieving matriculation success, they’re a little more semi-sweet than totally milk chocolate. In fact, what you need to know is that target schools are not a guarantee. At all. While the whole college process can, at times, feel like nothing but a heartache, we’ve come up with a strategy to help you develop your target list.