Colgate is a small liberal arts school in the upstate town of Hamilton, New. With less than 2,000 students, Colgate is close-knit, offers an intensely personal education, and Colgate is careful about who they let into their community. They seek out students who are more than just smart, you also need to be driven, focused, and community-minded. They receive about 17,000 applications each year for a class of only about 800. The acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 was 20%.
That is, of course, the average acceptance rate accounting for both Regular Decision applications and Early Decision. The Early Decision acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 was just under 30%, which means that the Regular Decision acceptance rate was closer to 10%.
Colgate is test-optional, so you can decide whether you want to submit the SAT or ACT and only about 40% of accepted and enrolled recent applicants chose to submit them. Students who are admitted with test scores as part of their application have a fairly wide range of scores. The middle 50% SAT range for the Class of 2030 was 1460-1530, and for the ACT it was 33-35. What doesn’t change, though, is that they want high grades. About 80% of first-years were in the top 10% of their high school class. High scores and being towards the top of your class becomes substantially more important if you are applying Regular Decision — it never doesn’t matter, but if you are not committing to Colgate when you apply they want to see more from you to earn a spot.
If you have a parent or grandparent who went to Colgate, you have a major leg up. The legacy acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 was just over 50%.
When preparing your application, remember that Colgate has required course distributions to be considered for admission. Dropping a foreign language after sophomore year, for example, won’t fulfill the three required foreign language credits to be qualified for Colgate.
While Colgate wants to get to know you in your application, they don’t actually give you much space to show who you are beyond the standard personal statement. This makes applying easy, but it also makes applying hard because of the limited options for differentiating yourself. One thing they do offer, though, is the opportunity to share digital materials. We’ll did into that below.
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Colgate does not have a standard supplement. There are no questions dedicated to explaining your academic passions, creative curiosities, or dream futures. Instead, they ask for links.
DIGITAL PRESENCE
Some applicants wish to share additional digital materials which showcase their background, talents, or creativity. Some examples include creative works, Instagram accounts, YouTube videos, performances, Etsy shops, etc. If you wish to share any of these links, please use the space below to provide a brief description. Then select how many links you would like to share and enter the URLs.
Inviting links isn’t common, and most schools that give students a spot for links limit them to one. Colgate allows for you to share a nearly infinite number, though we would never advise that.
We do, however, advise that you take advantage of this opportunity to show different sides of yourself if you have something strong to add. No matter what, keep it to 1-3 links. Sending more does not mean they will spend more time on your application, so you want to keep their attention focused on what matters most to you. This means you could link a digital resume that includes separate links to news clippings or announcements, but they aren’t required to click through on those to get the big picture. Basically, a focused and targeted link is always better than a wide spray no matter how many times you have been recognized for your chess prowess.
Some students, too, think that by ‘digital resume’ we are talking about a personal website. Yes, both are online, but also no. Unless there is a strong reason for you to have a website all your own, building one for this application does not make your argument for admission stronger. Owning the URL for your name does not increase your chances of getting in. If anything, it could actually put a bad taste in the reader’s mouth as you risk coming off as self-obsessed. The quality of the graphic design, too, does not increase your odds. All links, including a digital resume, need to be three things:
Accessible on desktop and mobile
Simple, with limited colors and fonts
Not behind a paywall
That last one applies most to news clippings. If you want to share an article, but the publication requires someone to pay to read it, that is a bad link to include. By including it, you are throwing away half a minute or more of your application review time. Instead, download it as a PDF and then upload that to a simple landing page website through a builder like Wix or Squarespace. Our preference, though, is to simply build out a great LinkedIn page, which will serve you far beyond your college applications.
Many students are also curious as to whether they should include their social medias. Most of the time, the answer is no. Even if you have a lot of followers, our stance on that doesn’t change. First, follower count does not increase admissions odds. More importantly, though, social media isn’t a beast you control. Someone could hack your account right when you most need it to look perfect (and you don’t know when they will first pick up your application), or leave embarrassing (or worse) comments at the absolutely most terrible time. There are too many things you can’t control in that for us to suggest that you link to socials.
There is one exception, though. If there is something that they may be skeptical of in your activities or emphasized in your personal statement that can only be corroborated by social media, perhaps linking an account relevant to that thing would make sense. We say this because we. Can imagine a situation when it might be the case, but we’ve also yet to encounter it ourselves.
Remember, first and foremost, that the application readers will spend less than 5 minutes on the first read of your application. Time is precious, and you want to have as much control as possible over where their attention is pointed as possible. So, yes, you could send them 10 links, but they may not even click on each of them.
If you want to know how to capture and hold Colgate’s attention, get in touch.
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