Georgetown is an internationally-leading research and academic university aimed at preparing the next generation of global citizens, with a particular focus on service, policy, and politics. The school is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States. While it’s eminently possible to have a secular experience at Georgetown, the Jesuit ethos guides the central identity of the school, adding a layer of care for others on top of each aspect of the university. Known as “the Hoyas,” Georgetown students are proud, active, and engaged. First-year undergraduate students join a community of over 6,000 peers across 5 undergraduate colleges including Georgetown College, the McDonough School of Business, the School of Nursing, the School of Health, and the Walsh School of Foreign Service.
The university is highly selective. For the fall of 2024, Georgetown received over 26,000 applications for first-year admission. Ultimately, they admitted 3,374 for an acceptance rate of just under 13%.
Applying to Georgetown isn’t as easy as checking a box and repurposing an essay, though. They have their own in-house application, and Georgetown does not accept the Common Application, nor do they accept the Coalition Application. Even though the Georgetown app isn’t all that complicated, simply the idea that it is its own thing makes some students anxious about how to tackle it and even more nervous about how to stand out.
However, applying to Georgetown is not actually all that different from applying to any other school. They look for the same types of things, and measure applicants in the same sort of ways — with, of course, a unique Georgetown twist that we’ll dig into later in this post. And, of course, Georgetown offers a restrictive early action program that is designed for “superior students” who know they want to go to the university.
What is Early Action at Georgetown?
The early action program at Georgetown has some unique rules. You can apply to other schools Early Action, and are not bound to attend Georgetown if admitted, but are not permitted to use this path if you are applying to another school Early Decision. Basically, Georgetown is saying that it’s fine if you want to keep your options open, but they truly need to be open.
Applicants through the early action program are expected to be strong applicants before senior year even comes into play. This is because they are primarily assessed on academic and personal achievements through the end of junior year, so planning for a Georgetown early application in advance is critical. The acceptance rate for early applicants is also comparable to the regular decision acceptance rate. For the Class of 2028, the overall Early Action acceptance rate was 10.3%, and the regular decision rate was nearly the same. For the Class of 2029, the early action acceptance rate rose slightly to 11%.
Early action at Georgetown offers the benefit of getting an answer early if you are accepted, but all students who are not accepted early action are automatically deferred to the regular decision round. Around 15% of deferred students are, typically, eventually admitted.
Also, when you break down the individual undergraduate colleges at Georgetown, the acceptance rates range from a little under 10% to a little over 10%, which isn’t enough of a difference for us to make a big deal of it.
In this post, we’ll make a big deal of each piece of the application, though. We’ll break down exactly what you need to be doing to craft your strongest Georgetown application. Read on to unlock how to get into Georgetown, early.
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The early action program at Georgetown is restrictive — you can’t apply anywhere Early Decision — and doesn’t offer much of a benefit when it comes to the acceptance rate. So, what is the point? That’s a valid question, so let’s address it first.
Why should I apply Early Action?
One reason to apply to a college early action or early decision is to get an answer, well, early. Another reason for applying early to most schools is that there is a better chance of getting in via the early round than the standard regular decision round. Unfortunately, that benefit doesn’t apply for Georgetown, as they work hard to keep their early and regular decision acceptance rates neck-and-neck. So, ultimately, the biggest benefit is simply getting an answer that will help you chart your future sooner, and we see great value in that.
What can you do to increase your chances of admission Early Action to Georgetown?
Below, we break down what you need to do to strengthen your application to Georgetown. Given the unique aspects of the Georgetown Early Action program, what you need to do is specifically tuned towards this particular non-binding program at a service-oriented Jesuit college.
Grades
You cannot get into a top school without top grades. This should be obvious, and it’s even more obvious for a school that doesn’t give early applicants a boosted rate of admission. 85% of accepted and enrolled first-years in the fall of 2024 were in the top tenth of their graduating high school class. Accepted students didn’t get to that spot by taking the easiest courses, but they also had some flexibility in crafting their transcript.
Georgetown has firm academic course distribution requirements for an applicant to be considered eligible for admission, but there is also a lot of room for customization. Students must have taken the following by graduation:
4 years of English
2 years of mathematics, minimum
1 year of science, minimum
2 years minimum of foreign language, social studies, and history
We repeated "minimum" here over and over again because it’s important to know that just because something is the minimum doesn’t mean that doing the minimum is enough to get in. Instead, it’s a starting point.
This is because Georgetown likes specialists, and they care deeply about a student’s “seriousness of purpose,” especially in the humanities and social sciences. So, the university has crafted their required course distribution to allow for students to have specialized course schedules in high school, developing their passions as fully as is possible through additional advanced courses and academic electives without abandoning the liberal arts ethos.
We encourage our students to pursue more science if they are applying to the school of nursing, more math if applying to the school of business, and more language courses if you want to go to the school of foreign service. This level of customization and deepening into a subject is precisely what draws students to Georgetown, and it’s exciting that applicants can start long before they press submit.
Scores
All first-year applicants to Georgetown are required to submit SAT or ACT scores as part of their application. The bar is extremely high for standardized test scores. Strong early applicants to Georgetown must strive for an SAT Critical Reading score above 750 and an SAT Math above 720. For the ACT, applicants should strive for a composite score of 33 or higher. Now, achieving these scores doesn’t mean that you are going to get into Georgetown, even when paired with great grades, but they do mean that the admissions officers and application readers will give your file additional consideration.
To achieve top scores, you need to prepare. Luckily, strong SAT or ACT test prep can be accomplished is a much shorter timeframe than it takes to develop an impressive transcript. If you give yourself 2-4 months to seriously focus on test preparation and, ideally, tutoring, perhaps over a summer, smart students can excel on standardized tests. It’s just about getting into that mindset and making it happen.
Unlike many other top schools, Georgetown also requests that applicants submit any AP test scores they have so that they can be considered as part of the application.
Activities
The ‘Georgetown Twist’ we mentioned earlier? The want to see service and a concerted and demonstrated care for others throughout the application. This ties directly into the Jesuit roots and values of the university, and hearing it shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve spent any time on the Georgetown website. They consistently and repeatedly state and restate that service matters to them, so you need to show them that it matters to you, too.
This doesn’t simply mean volunteering a few times a month, or doing one-off experiences that don’t build up to very much of anything. Instead, serving others must be foundational to how you operate in the world. However, you can make this your own by filtering the directive through your particular interests, priorities, and values.
Serving others can be volunteering, or it can be participating in research that is striving to benefit the lives of others. It could be working for a nonprofit or company that serves an under-resourced population, or it could be building your own initiative and rallying others around you to make an impact on an issue you care about deeply. And these are just rough ideas. Truly, you need to take the idea of ‘service’ and run with it in the lead up to writing your Georgetown application. For our students, we help them identify how they want to pursue service in their lives and then assist them in amplifying those experiences into their most impactful stories.
And, you have to do it early. If all of your leadership roles are going to happen senior year, that’s too late for it to make a difference in the Georgetown early action program, which focuses mostly on your experiences through junior year.
Essays
Like most top college applications, Georgetown requires applicants to write a series of short essays in response to prompts aimed at measuring if you are a strong fit for the college you are most interested in within Georgetown University. Each of these pieces of writing should be started months, if not years, before applying — but we aren’t crazy. We don’t mean, of course, that you should begin drafting that early. Rather, the essays ask you to share experiences that are meaningful, individual experiences that have defined you, and specific things about Georgetown that resonate with your goals and worldview. The cultivation of these stories should be a multi-month, if not multi-year endeavor.
Writing may only take a few weeks, but the stories that go into them are, in many ways, the sum of your life thus far. And that’s what we work with our students to build.
Remember, submitting early to Georgetown does not help your chances of getting in. However, submitting strong does. Writing that ‘clicks’ with the application reader, and that speaks deeply to who you are in a way that resonates through a screen, can be the difference between a deferral and an acceptance. We’ve seen this happen, as we’ve worked with students who, based solely on their transcript and scores, weren’t exceptionally strong Georgetown applicants managed to gain acceptance by crafting essays that were fully representative of who they are and developed a strong link between their hopes and dreams and what Georgetown can provide.
Essays are personal, and there is no formula (or, for that matter, AI) for an exceptional college essay for precisely this reason. Georgetown celebrates this, seeking an understanding of the you under the high-achieving student gloss.
What Comes Next
Remember that if you are not admitted to Georgetown early action, you will automatically be deferred. While you still have a chance of getting in regular decision, this means that the deferral says nothing about the strength (or lack thereof) of your application. So, if you are deferred by Georgetown you need to call in an expert to assess where your application may have mis-stepped and to implement a clear and decisive plan to ensure your best possible outcomes regular decision.
Remember, too, that “deferred students are strongly encouraged to maintain high senior year grades and submit any new information, such as standardized test scores, new honors or awards.” These are actions that you can take that will make a difference after a deferral if you play it right.
Work with Us
The secret to a strong college admissions strategy is knowing how to ‘play it right.’ Each school has quirks, and Georgetown is no different. Having someone on your team who knows the ins and outs of admission to each school, from what works to what can cause an application to be overlooked, is crucial for optimal outcomes. Less than 12% of applicants get into Georgetown Early Action or Regular Decision. We can help you beat those odds, and the best time to start is now.
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