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 Reevaluate and Create Your College List
It’s that time of year again! The weather is cooling down, back-to-school sales are in full swing, and it’s time to really evaluate where you are in your college application process. You’re going to be back in school pretty soon, so there’s never going to be a better time than now. Let’s talk college lists!
How Important is a College Interview?
The alumni interview is something that some, not all, schools offer. It’s a topic that we get a lot of questions on, from how to coordinate your interview and what to say to what to wear. Regardless of how much you’ve prepared for any individual school interview, though, it’s worth discussing. But how important is it, really?
Common App Schools Without a Supplement Essay 2017
Sometimes you just don’t want to have to mess around with supplements. We get it. If you’re applying to a specialized arts program, an honors program, or for certain scholarships, you probably won’t have a choice since supplements or portfolios are nearly universally mandatory. But if you’re applying for general admission it is quite possible to craft a college list completely devoid of supplements. Not just without optional supplements, because those aren’t really optional, but free of any supplemental essays at all.
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 Write a Good College Admissions Essay About Yourself
For most students, the college essay is the first time in high school when they are instructed to write about themselves. High school is full of writing. There are history papers, book reports, science lab summaries, and news items for the school newspaper, but, unless your school offers a creative writing program, there often isn’t a time when you’re handed a blank slate and asked to lay a part of yourself bare. Vulnerability isn’t something you can just switch on, good personal writing doesn’t come automatically, and writing about yourself can be very uncomfortable.
How to get into Pomona: Straight from an Admission Officer's Mouth
A lot of the time, the college admissions process can feel like trying to navigate a maze without a map. Or, when you do have a map, it’s in another language and torn into 100 pieces. There is so much information out there and there are so many who people say they are admissions experts that it can be hard to comb the good information out of the tangles of the internet.
How To Write the Harvey Mudd Supplement
Harvey Mudd is an amazing college. It’s small, with under 900 undergraduates, and located in Claremont, CA. Its primary focuses are math, science, and engineering, but it’s a liberal arts school with strong humanities departments as well. Their supplements require thought and storytelling. We break it down below:
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.
Are My Grades Good Enough for the Ivy League?
Ah! The Ivy League! There are thousands of colleges and universities in the United States, hundreds of which are highly respected, and dozens of which are completely outstanding. And yet, there are eight schools that capture the imagination more than almost any others - the Ivy League. Just the fact that you can refer them as a singular unit says something. There are children who are raised from birth to go to an Ivy League school, but wanting to get into one of the top (and most popular) schools in the country isn’t enough to get you that acceptance letter. You also actually have to be qualified.
Which Colleges SuperScore the ACT and SAT?
So you invested so much energy studying for the math section of the ACT that your Reading score went down, huh? If only you could be evaluated based on your Reading score from the first time you took the ACT AND the math score you just got on your most recent ACT. You can. No worries. Super score to the rescue. As a reminder, Super Scoring is the process of taking the highest scores from multiple SAT or ACT tests. Brush up on your knowledge and familiarize yourself with what it is. It's a great offering that many colleges have during the application process that maximizes your profile. That said, Super Scoring isn't something that every college does.
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, and we encourage students to submit one if appropriate. 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?
What Is An Arts Supplement and Should I Do One?
While most schools require that you complete a supplement specific to their school, often in the format of an essay or series of essays, some schools offer a slightly different kind of supplement—an arts supplement detailing your interest and contribution to a certain creative field. Here’s what you need to know:
How to Write a 500-Word College Supplement
Ok! So we’ve covered 1-word answers, we’ve buzzed through 50-word ones, we’ve broken down the 250 crew, 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 college-specific posts 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, let us know. 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 1-word answers, and 50-word answers, 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 50-word College Supplement
Welcome to the second part in our four-part supplement series! We have a bunch of college-specific posts that dig into specific supplements, but we get a lot of questions from students about how to address the word limits in their supplements more generally, so we decided to dig in, go deep, and help you write the best supplements you possibly can.
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 we’ve also broken down to the short answer questions for you, 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 an outstanding GPA is crucial 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.