Santa Clara University is a private, mid-sized Jesuit university in, you guessed it, Santa Clara, CA, aka Silicon Valley. SCU is best known for its business and engineering programs. They have extended their test-optional policy through 2024, and in previous years, only around 41% of admitted students submitted test scores. Their acceptance rate has fallen to around 44%, with their business and engineering schools typically being more competitive than their school of arts and sciences.

Washington and Lee is a liberal arts university in Lexington, Virginia. With only around 2,000 undergrads, this small school sits between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains. What we are trying to say is the area is gorgeous. The name of the college comes from George Washington, the school’s first significant benefactor, and unfortunately, Robert E. Lee… yes, Confederate general Robert E Lee was a former president of the college… However, W&L has become a far more accepting place since the 1800s.

Southern Methodist University, often called SMU, is a private research university in Dallas, Texas. SMU is surprisingly non-sectarian in its teaching… aka not as methodist as its name suggests. The school has become more buzzy over the years, partially for its undergraduate business school and campus traditions. They have extended their test-optional policy for another year and have around a 47% acceptance rate.

Connecticut College is a private liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. With only about 1,800 undergrads, it’s small. While it was initially a women’s college, it has been coed since the 1960s. The college is somewhat of a hidden gem, especially for those looking for a classic New England liberal arts experience. They are committed to being test-optional and usually have around a 40% acceptance rate.

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois, aka the Chicago suburbs. Northwestern is probably most famous for its journalism and music programs, but the university has over 130 majors and minors. Their acceptance rate is around 7%, and they take around half of their class during early decisions. They also extended their test-optional policy for at least another year. 

UMD, or the University of Maryland, is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. It’s a big college with about 30,000 undergrads, 12 schools, and more than 90 majors for undergraduates. There is a lot to love about UM, including excellent academics and sports. Last year, their acceptance rate was 34.3%. This was significantly lower than in the past two years as the amount of applicants has risen sharply.

Lehigh University is a small research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania located between New York City and Philadelphia — close enough to both for a day trip. The school has the resources of a large research school, but with a compact student boy of 7,400 students overall and 5,600 undergraduates among six undergraduate colleges. 85% of the undergraduate students are in the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Engineering & Applied Science, and the College of Business. The average class size is 28, and Lehigh leans into emerging technology, even encouraging professors to come up with class ideas that incorporate Artificial Intelligence technologies into students’ creative processes. Students appreciate this, and they receive 15,000 applications annually. The acceptance rate is 37%.

Okay, we’ll level with you here: Georgetown doesn’t go through the Common App, so you have to jump through a few additional hoops to apply directly through their system. Their defense? Having their own application allows them to “fulfill [their] commitment to this holistic admissions process” and “allows [their] applicants to best express their personalities, talents, skills and accomplishments.” Our personal opinion? The initial online form and subsequent application supplement are pretty standard, so… Sometimes people just need to feel special. (Get in line, George!) Speaking of special, last year Georgetown had an acceptance rate of just 13% for incoming freshmen.

Kenyon College is a free-spirited, quaint-but-mighty private liberal arts school in Gambier, Ohio. As intimate a college town as they come, Gambier has zero stoplights and is the hill-top home of this bastion of higher learning where 100% of students live on campus. The average acceptance rate is 34%.

Occidental College is a small private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California. While it was founded by the Presbyterian Church, since 1910, it has not been sectarian. It is located specifically near Glendale, so while it is one of the oldest Liberal arts schools in the West, you can still claim you went to school in “The North East...” as long as you mean the North East neighborhood of LA. Occidental, also sometimes just called Oxy, has around 38% acceptance rate during Regular Decision and 52% during Early Decision. Currently, Oxy is test-optional, and they have even said, “There is no plan to return to standardized testing requirements for any future entry term.”

Mount Holyoke is a small, women’s college that’s part of the Seven Sisters along with Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley and Smith. (Vassar is now co-ed and Radcliffe joined Harvard). It’s located in suburban South Hadley, Massachusetts, within several miles of many, many Boston-area universities. The acceptance rate is about 40% and the undergraduate population is around 2,000 students. While Mount Holyoke says its supplement is option, we feel that no piece of a writing on an application is optional. So, here’s our advice on how to tackle it:

If you are looking for Minnesota nice, you might be thinking about applying to Macalester. Macalester College is a small, private liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota. When we say small, we mean small. The freshman class is about 500 students. Their acceptance rate is around 28%, and they have a permanent test-optional policy.

Scripps College is a small, liberal arts women's college in Claremont, California. It is one of the Claremont Colleges, which also includes Pomona College, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Pitzer College. Students at the Claremont Colleges can use resources and take classes across campuses. So, while Scripps might be a women's college with only around 1,000 students, it is part of a much larger non-gendered community of 8,500 students across campuses.

There’s an art to writing the college supplement and writing the Carleton supplement is no different. Carleton College is a small, liberal arts school located in Northfield, Minnesota. There are about 2,000 students. The 2022-2023 acceptance rate was about 18%. Here are some tips for tackling the supplement:  

Wellesley is a small liberal arts women’s college 12 miles west of Boston. Founded in 1870 to provide an Ivy-caliber education to women, Wellesley continues in that mission today. Only those who have consistently identified and lived as women, regardless of gender assigned at birth, are eligible for admission, and the school identity as an institution for women runs deep. For many of Wellesley students, this makes the school a uniquely powerful place, and the alumnae community is known as one of the most powerful networks of women in the world. It also isn’t uniform, despite being single-gender. The campus is deeply diverse, with 40% of students identifying as students of color and 80 countries represented, and 52% of the admitted class of 2027 spoke a language other than English at home growing up. All this adds up to a special place, and lots of applicants agree. The acceptance rate is only 13%.

Syracuse University is a private research university in (you guessed it) Syracuse, New York. With about 15k undergrads, Syracuse has a lively and vibrant campus. If you google “Syracuse acceptance rate,” you will probably see 59%. Take that number with a grain of salt. While it sounds around right, Syracuse annoyingly doesn’t publish their acceptance rate. We have seen estimates from the low 40s to the high 60s. However, they have announced they will stay test optional through 2025, so at least we can count on that.  

The University of Virginia is comprised of 12 schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one additional college in Southwest Virginia. As a whole, the university is widely considered one of the best in the country, and has been routinely ranked as one of the top five public universities in the US for decades. Nearly 17,000 undergraduate students call the 13 colleges home, and UVA is especially respected for students interested in pursuing law, medicine, politics, policy, and economics. As a public state university, the majority of students at UVA are from Virginia, with 32% of students from out of state. This drastically impacts the acceptance rate. While the overall acceptance rate is 18.6%, the rate of acceptance for students from out of state is much lower and it is extremely competitive only amplifying the reputation of the university at a national level.