We’re sorry to see you’ve been deferred from Brown. We know this has to be tough -- but if you’re here you probably are trying to do something about it. Take a beat to feel your feelings and give yourself a pep talk, then come right back here for our guide on how to get through these next few weeks.
Deferred from Cornell Early Decision
Getting deferred from your dream school can be hard -- especially if it’s a great school like Cornell. Don’t fear, you’ll get through this. Take a moment to feel your feelings, have a snack, and then jump into this guide to get some ideas on how to best strategize other applications and how to best handle the deferral.
Deferred from Harvard Early Action
So, you’ve been deferred from Harvard. We’re sorry you’re dealing with this right now -- and definitely take some time to process. But if you’re here, you’re probably a person of action, and you want to know what you should do next. Don’t worry, we have some action items that can help you give yourself a fighting chance to get in, and some strategies for applying to other schools too.
How Many Colleges Should I Apply to?
In the hyper-competitive world of college applications, one might think their key to success is to throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks. But we find that the best approach is to create an actual strategy, discover what elements of a university are interesting to you, and where you might be a good fit. You’re not going to be a fit at every school. It’s best to create a list of schools in which you will be. While some applicants apply to 30 schools, we find that 12-15 schools (a healthy balance between reaches, safeties, and targets) is a solid range.
What Does an Independent College Counselor Do?
Applying to college can seem daunting. For years, headlines have reported that college admissions rates are consistently plummeting, laying bare a landscape—once competitive—that can now feel impenetrable. Even schools outside of the Ivy League have been recording single-digit acceptance rates. While some students feel tremendous pressure to perform, particularly in their junior years, most can find success with some foresight. We strive to support our students in making the application process as manageable as possible, by providing a clear strategy tailored to every students’ progress, interests, and objectives.
How To Ask for a Recommendation Letter for College
Asking for favors is hard and the biggest favor you will have to ask during your junior year is for letters of recommendation. Don’t worry, most teachers won’t say no… you just have to know how to ask and then do it. While you can’t control what your teachers say about you, there are a couple of steps you can take to get the best letter that you can.
How do you Start off a College Essay?
Should I Write a Common App Essay about Travel?
This blog post could be one word, “no.” But let’s talk about why writing about travel is a bad idea. We promise we aren’t shutting you down just to be mean. There is a real reason not to write about traveling on your common app. There are two major types of travel that people tend to write about: service trips or traveling with family, and neither do you any favors.
How to Start Your College Essay
We talk on this blog a lot about the common app essay. What makes a good one, how to start brainstorming, and even examples of ones we loved. You can look through all of this and still be wondering, well how do you actually start to write it? You just have to follow a few steps to make your brainstorming ideas into an awesome essay.
How to Write the Best Activities Section of the Common App in 2021-2022
On our blog, we talk a lot about essays, but they aren’t the only section on the common app. If you are looking through the common app, you will see another big section: the activities section. This section is made for you to show off your extracurriculars and more. Everyone (hopefully!) does something outside of school and this is your time to show it off.
How to Research Colleges and Universities
If you just read this blog post, you might be ready to address the question of where you should go to college. But before you can do that, you need to do a hefty amount of research to learn more about what’s out there. When working with 91Ě˝»¨ clients, most of them don’t know exactly how to research schools. And even when they love certain schools, they’re unfamiliar with key details that will hugely impact their time there. Doing computer research is one of the best ways to decide if you should tour a school and apply to a school. It will also help you categorize it as either a safety, target, or reach school. Keep reading for our steps on how to research colleges:
Where Should I Go to College?
The question of where to attend college is one that comes up at various times throughout your life. It usually starts long before high school, perhaps over dinner with your parents or when you settled on Harvard after watching Legally Blonde. We’re all influenced in one way or another, either by a school list sent over by your high school or a late-night Google search. But when it actually becomes time to put together a school list, a lot of our clients have no idea where to start. If you’re currently in the “not sure where to even start” boat, keep reading for three tips that might help streamline the process.
Time Management Tips for Juniors
A few weeks ago, we got an email from one of our blog readers who was looking for summer plans related to climate change. We’ll be writing a separate blog post about that, but they were also looking for time management tips. In addition to wanting to pursue an environmental position, she also wanted a paying job, to keep up with an independent project, study for the SAT, and start her college applications. We totally get that balancing work, fun, and extracurricular activities can be challenging. Here are our tips for not going crazy this summer:
How To Craft A Killer College Essay
Early Decision Pros and Cons
The anticipation of applying to college is a lot. The pressure of getting in where you want to go is even greater. The idea of just doing it once and then being done is appealing to many students. But relief shouldn’t be the motivating factor in applying early decision to a school. While it’s true that acceptance rates for early decision schools trend higher, applying early decision is a huge commitment—it’s one you can’t get out of. In this post, we talk about what that means and the reasons someone might consider early decision as an option.
Do I Stay on a Waitlist?
Getting waitlisted can be frustrating. You spend all this time working throughout high school to get into your dream school only to face uncertainty. It can feel like being in limbo, but there are things you can do to get yourself out of limbo, one way or another. In this post, we discuss how to proceed if you’ve been waitlisted.
Should I Apply To Princeton?
Princeton University is an Ivy League school in you guessed it, Princeton, New Jersey. The student to faculty ratio is 5:1, just over 5,200 undergraduate students attend, and the academic programs are fantastic. The school is hugely popular for many reasons: exceptional resources, lovely facilities, loan-free aid packages, and its long-standing reputation as a school where smart kids have tons of fun. Princeton also has a long and checkered past with early action applications. We wrote a long-form blog post about it here, please read it!
Is The SAT or the ACT Better for College?
Should I Study For Standardized Tests During My Sophomore Year?
How To Show Intellectual Vitality
It’s no secret that getting into Stanford is incredibly difficult. Despite the lengthy supplement and the tragically low acceptance rate, many of our readers still choose to throw their hat in the ring year after year. If you were to google the holistic admissions process at Stanford, you would come across a section that is titled “Intellectual Vitality.” Here’s what they say: