Caroline Koppelman
Official Common App Essay Guide 2025-2026

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.

Caroline Koppelman
How to Write Common App Essay Prompt 7: Example ...

We’ve been waiting for this one: it’s finally time to dig into Prompt #7, the crown jewel of the Common App essay prompts.

Caroline Koppelman
Ultimate Guide to Letters of Continued Interest ...

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.

Caroline Koppelman
Ultimate Guide to Getting Waitlisted 2025

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.

Caroline Koppelman
Best Early Decision II (ED2) Schools 2024-2025

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.

college specific supplements

How to Write the Carnegie Mellon Supplement 2025-2026

Carnegie Mellon is a private research university based in Pittsburgh, PA, but with campuses around the country and internationally. Their 16,000 students (7,700 undergraduates) come from well over 100 countries. CMU takes being an international institution very seriously, and continues to push for innovation and new opportunities. By positioning themselves at the “,” CMU has become as an innovative — and highly selective — top university in the US across disciplines ranging from music and art to technology and business. In recent years, Carnegie Mellon has been tightlipped about their acceptance rate for first-year students immediately after the admissions cycle ends. They have refrained from publicizing the admissions numbers, so the best place to find true numbers is the hard data. For first years enrolling in 2024, the acceptance rate reported on the was . Based on overall trends, we can estimate that the acceptance rate for 2025 was within 1.5% of this, in either direction.