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application strategies

How to get into the University of Michigan

It’s no surprise to us that University of Michigan is a very popular school amongst prospective students. Wolverines enjoy top-notch academics, a great college town, football, and a uniquely-balanced social life for such a high-ranking university. This past year, nearly 60,000 people applied for about 7,000 spots. That number might seem intimidating, but granted each kid we’ve ever helped with the Michigan application has gotten in, we are confident in our method:

To Play or Not to Play: Will Sports Get Me Into College?

Let us begin with a story.

One of our writers has an older sister who was captain of the high school basketball team. Her sister was a natural power forward with nimble feet.  Our writer was, well, better-suited for writing. As she entered high school, she thought being on the team with her sister looked like a lot of fun, so even though she had no idea what a layup was until the first practice, she joined. She subsequently developed the nickname “Bench” because that’s where she sat for most of the season.

How to Write the Colorado College Supplement

Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, CO. The undergraduate population is comprised of about 2,100 students. One of the most unique things about Colorado College is the Block scheduling system. Instead of the typical college schedule where you take 3-5 courses per semester or quarter, you take 1 class at a time. You attend class every day M-F from 9am-12pm for 3.5 weeks. Students then have a long weekend and begin a new class the next Monday. This repeats 4x per semester, and there are two semesters per year. We break down their supplement below:

How to Manage Time During the College Application Process

For many a college-aspirer, the application process can seem like an impassable mountain of paperwork. In the face of juggling both college essays and schoolwork the urge to hide under the covers can be real. Sorry, but that digital stack of to-dos isn’t going anywhere. Fear not, though, applicants, there is an end in sight and just on the other side of it is a beautiful college welcome week waiting to greet you.

What Should I Write About For The Optional Harvard supplement?

Harvard is fancy. If you didn’t know that already...well, that’s mildly (read deeply) concerning. Their admissions rate is one of the lowest in the world at just above 5% and they are notoriously finicky. If you want to get into Harvard, you have to be at the very very top in everything you do. You should have top grades, top scores, be a leader in your school and in your broader community, and (and this is where most people trip up) you need to have something interesting to say about all of that. You can’t be a damp rag when it comes to talking about yourself and sharing your work because the admissions officials are looking for just about any reason to toss an application.

How to Write a College Admissions Essay About Failure

Deciding what to write about for your college essay isn’t always easy. You want to stand out, but you don’t want to come off as totally off-the-wall crazy. You want to do something unique, but you know that writing your essay backward, in a spiral, in colored pencil is a terrible idea (if you were thinking of doing this, don’t, it’s a terrible idea). Within the mountain of grades and scores, your essay is the place where you get to be yourself and to reveal something about yourself that a college wouldn’t otherwise see, but it can be hard to know what to reveal, and how much.

How to Get into an Ivy League School with Average Grades

A student gets 2100 on the old SAT and gets into Harvard. No, this is not the start to a bad joke. Despite falling into the 25th percentile for Harvard’s class of 2020, a place that you really don’t want to be if you’re looking to get in, she got in. Not only did she get into Harvard, though. She got into all six of the Ivies she applied to. If you’re scratching your head, that’s understandable, but we’re here to tell you the not-so-secret secret to getting into an Ivy League school with average grades: a killer essay.

How Do I Submit An Arts Supplement?

Arts supplements are optional portfolios that schools allow students to submit in addition to their regular academic application. It’s a great chance to display and share your interest in and contribution to your creative medium of choice, . Your interest in the field should be notable and you should have the time commitment and talent to show for it. So, you’ve reviewed if the arts portfolio is for you, and you’ve determined it is. Now, how do you do it?

How to Write a 500-Word College Supplement

Ok! So we’ve covered , , , and now we’re in the final stretch of our Supplement Series: the 500(ish)-word answer. We’re adding ‘ish’, because (as you will see) these longer-form supplements have been known to range from 400 to a whopping 800 words, but the same strategy applies for all of them. Basically, each one of these is like a Common App essay where you don’t get to choose what you write about, but you should take it just as seriously. The awesome thing is that you are getting the intel on how to ace it from us, so they shouldn’t be a problem. If you want more, we even have that break down specific supplement questions, outlining our strategies for success! If we haven’t written a post on the supplement for a school you’re applying to, . While the tips below will give you a firm foundation, we’d love to help you build an amazing application :)

How to Write a 250-word College Supplement

Welcome to the third part in our supplement series! We’ve covered , and , but most of the supplement questions come across fall into the 200-300 word range. Colleges like the 250(ish)-word length because it’s concise enough to be a quick read, but it gives the student enough space to either do a really good job or to raise some admissions red flags. We want you to do a really good job, so we’re here to help you out.

How to Write a 1-Word College Supplement

Supplements are annoying, supplements are hard, and supplements are really important. Really important. REALLY important. The common app essay matters because it shows a school who you are, but the supplements show a school why you should matter to them specifically. Think about it like this, the common app is the present, and the supplements are the bow on the present. You can be a perfectly awesome present, sorry, applicant, without that bow, which is why some colleges go supplement-free, but having an awesome bow can cover up mistakes in the wrapping job. If that makes any sense...Anyways, the point is that we put a lot of emphasis on supplements because they are the thing that many students forget to set aside time for. Fall rolls around, school starts up again, things get lost in the shuffle, and the supplements end up rushed. Let’s not let that happen.

How to Write the Stanford "Short Essay" Supplement

We’ve already talked about how Stanford is hard to get into which makes your supplements matter a lot, and , so we’re not going to repeat ourselves here except to say: your supplements matter a lot. The short essays are a key part of Stanford’s ‘weeding out’ process, and they have a knack for coming up with questions that elicit a reaction of “Only 250 words?!? That’s crazy!!” We promise you, they do it on purpose. By limiting you to 100-250 words, they force you to give more than a Miss America answer while still ensuring that you’d don’t have much space to get anything in.

How to Write the Stanford "Short Question" Supplements 2017

Stanford is hard to get into. With an acceptance rate hovering around 5%, applying to Stanford isn’t something anyone should be tackling on a whim. The ridiculous number of applications flooding in every year means that Stanford, like other elite schools, has had to develop a sorting process that helps them filter out people who aren’t a good fit quickly and find the people who are a good fit efficiently. The first level of the filter is, of course, academic standing. Having as are impressive test scores, but Stanford wants more than cookie cutter kids. Stanford’s supplements are intense because they care deeply about who a student is behind the manicured metrics. They are looking for specific things in each supplement that aid them in putting together a class of thinkers.

How to Write the Smith College Supplement

Smith College is an all-women’s college in Northampton, MA. It has about 2,500 undergraduates and is a part of the five-college consortium: Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Smith. If you go to school at one of the colleges within the consortium, you can take classes relatively freely throughout all five.

How to Choose a Major for your College Application

Nearly every college supplement will include some question that basically amounts to “why do you want to go HERE?” Sometimes they will fancy it up to make it seem less harsh or direct, but it’s really just asking one thing: if you are qualified, and if we like the rest of your application, how would you make the most of your time at our school? The if’s are important because if you aren’t qualified and they don’t like your application, it really doesn’t matter how much you adore the work of that one professor in the English Department or how badly you want to walk onto the soccer team. However, if they are considering accepting you, answering this question correctly is crucial.