Caroline Koppelman
Official Common App Essay Guide 2025-2026

We’ve spent the past few weeks breaking down each Common App essay prompt one by one, and now it’s time for the grand finale: our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. Sure, there are seven different prompts, but at the end of the day, every school is looking for the same thing: a story.

Caroline Koppelman
How to Write Common App Essay Prompt 7: Example ...

We’ve been waiting for this one: it’s finally time to dig into Prompt #7, the crown jewel of the Common App essay prompts.

Caroline Koppelman
Ultimate Guide to Letters of Continued Interest ...

Getting waitlisted or deferred from your dream school is hard. We know it’s hard! You feel rejected, but it’s this weird non-rejection rejection that can leave you feeling lost and confused. And while a lot of things in college admissions are totally out of your control, there is something you can do if you’ve been waitlisted or deferred to give yourself another chance. A letter of continued interest, sometimes known as a waitlist letter or deferral letter, is one of the few, actionable things you can control when admissions decisions seem so out of your control. It’s your only chance to make a good second impression, and we help students write them every single year.

Caroline Koppelman
Ultimate Guide to Getting Waitlisted 2025

Getting waitlisted is the ultimate limbo – it’s not not a rejection, but it’s not a full-on denial, either. And depending on your circumstances, you could be feeling everything from mild disappointment to full-on panic. Don’t get yourself into a tizzy just yet, because there are things you can do to give yourself a shot at getting off the waitlist and make sure that you have a plan in place for the next year.

Caroline Koppelman
Best Early Decision II (ED2) Schools 2024-2025

Hey, look, sometimes ED doesn’t work out the way we want it to, and we have to change strategies. If you just got rejected or deferred from your ED/EA option, we’d like to introduce you to our good friend, Early Decision 2. ED2 is just as binding as ED, and it signals to the school that you are serious about attending that school, and guess what? Schools like when you’re serious about them.

What's the Best College Essay You've Ever Read?

Here’s a question we get a lot: “So, what’s the absolute best essay you’ve ever read?”

The real answer is very long and it's never just one essay. We’ve read and helped write a ton of “best essays,” and that’s what we always say when people ask us that. Also, every person’s “best essay” looks different. The reason they ask us that question is because they want the secret to success. Unfortunately, we can’t give them that because the secret to success is a lot more than just the essay, but we will say that the essay is far and away the part of your application to pay the most attention to (you know, after you’ve aced your classes and tests) because it’s your chance to show your personality. The worst mistake that any top student can make is relying on their grades and scores to set them apart. They won’t. But, your essay will.

The 4 Best Ideas for a Gap Year

So, you want to take a gap year. We wish more students would take gap years. For one reason or another, they’ve gotten a bad reputation but in reality, they can be incredibly valuable. Whatever lead you here—whether you want to re-apply to schools next year in an effort to get in somewhere great, or you just need a one-year break before enrolling in college—we support you and we want to help you create the best possible gap year.

Tips for Admission at an Undergraduate Business School

We think it’s awesome if you are 17 and have a more specific idea of what you want to do with your life, be it pre-med, history, or business school. There’s no time like the present, so why not just dive on in? The top undergraduate business schools have tricky admissions processes. If you're interested in business in a macro-sense, we suggest trying to start a business.

A Guide for Juniors Who Don’t Have Summer Plans Yet   

While all of the kids we work with have summer plans by now, we understand that there are some high schoolers out there who haven’t firmed anything up just yet. We know the year has been really busy, but planning something productive for your free time is crucial to the college acceptance process. This process is not new, so while this may sound a little harsh, we’re wondering what you’ve been doing for the past several months. In this post, we’ll talk to you about how you should think about planning your summer. Ultimately, however, it’s all about planning ahead and being ambitious. So, it’s time to kick it into high gear.

When Should I take my SAT IIs?

A lot of kids think of the SAT IIs as the ‘chill’ test, the one they can put off until senior year when they’re over the hump with everything else. We’re sorry to say, but we advise against putting off the SAT IIs. Or putting off anything. It was Ben Franklin who said, “don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” and I walked by that quotation etched in stone too many times at Penn to not take his advice. So now we're passing his wisdom to you: get the SAT IIs out of the way.

Actionable Items for Rising Seniors/Current Juniors

It’s April of your junior year. The sun has come out. Your classmates are planning the next all-school walkout, and you are probably using all of your strength to focus in history class for just a few more weeks so you don’t totally bomb the question about the Teapot Dome Scandal on your final exam. April also means that if you haven’t started thinking about the college process, you’re late to the game.

How to Pick Your Sophomore Year Extracurriculars

Hey, all you rising sophomores, welcome to limbo! Sophomore year is a weird time. You don’t feel like you’re allowed to be doe-eyed and lost anymore because Junior year is within arms reach, but you still kind of are that confused freshman who wants to be able to check out of class sometimes because everyone’s been telling you that your grades don’t really matter...yet. (For the record, we completely reject that idea and grades don’t always matter, but so goes cultural programming.)

How Do I Start the College Application Process?

If you’re reading this, you’re going to apply to college (or your kid is going to apply, and you’re going to tell them about this at the dinner table, so it’s basically like they’re reading it anyway). Just knowing that you’re going to apply to college, though, isn’t enough to actually kick-start the college process, and figuring out how to start can feel crippling.

The Best Common App Essay Prompt To Write

The Common App essay prompts for the 2018-2019 college application season are out!!! If you’re not as excited as we are, we understand. While college application season is something we look forward to every year, it’s something most students will only deal with once. The plus side of this is that college applications can be very stressful (but we can help with that). The downside is that it means that every little decision can feel like something absolutely enormous. You only have one chance (unless you transfer), so it’s easy to become crippled by indecision.

2018 Acceptance Analysis

2018 acceptances for the Class of 2022 are out and what we predicted has come to pass: it is harder to get into college than ever. HOT TAKE. Acceptance rates are plummeting, and the rates at top schools have yet again hit record lows. At the same time, the number of applicants who were waitlisted is off of the charts. Colleges are becoming more conservative in their admissions decisions. Unfortunately, students are bearing the brunt of it.

Top 8 Reasons You May Have Been Rejected

The 2017-2018 college admissions season is officially over. Yes, waitlists are pending, but the vast majority of high schools seniors know where they are going to end up come fall. All of our kids got into one of their top choices, but our results are always outlines. For many students, the last few weeks have been a wakeup call. Wanting to go to a particular school doesn’t mean you get in. With acceptance percentages continuing to plummet, that was truer this year than ever. The question remains, though: Why? Why didn’t you get into that school you thought you were a perfect fit for on paper? Why didn’t being a legacy give you the boost you needed? Or why wasn’t your full-slate of extracurriculars what got you over the lip? Here are eight reasons you may have been rejected:

“I Was Waitlisted and Rejected from Every School I Applied to. What do I do now?”

College acceptances are out, and, as happens every year, we’ve been flooded with emails from upset parents and freaked out kids. These are NOT emails from our clients. Our kids did amazingly. They killed it, getting into the Ivy League and other highly-competitive schools, receiving impressive scholarship packages, and invites to honors programs. Our only kids who only got one acceptance are those who got in ED and so didn’t submit any other applications. Again, NOT our clients.

A Letter to Parents Whose Kids Just Got Into College (read: on Staying Sane)

Dear Moms & Dads,

Congratulations! Your baby just got into college, or is about to. You’re probably feeling a flood of conflicting emotions. Relief comes alongside anxiety, joy can collide with a feeling of impending loss, and excitement crashes into “Wait, this is real?!?” The arrival of any college acceptance, whether a dream school or a safety, should be a day of celebration, but for a huge number of parents, it is equally, or even more, terrifying.

A Letter to a Student Who Just Got Into College

Dear High School Senior,

CONGRATULATIONS! You recently got into college or will get into college soon, and that is totally awesome. You are probably feeling elated, but it’s also ok to be scared of what’s to come and confused about what to do next. All of high school can feel like a build-up to this moment, and now it’s here, and you still have to go to class. Weird, right?

My Dream School Waitlisted Me...What Do I Do Now?

Acceptance letters are rolling out, along with dreaded rejections and often even more stressful waitlist notices. With Ivy Day (March 28th) creeping up, there will be more waitlisted students than ever before. Why? Well, it isn’t only because there are a ton of students applying to college, and that the average student is applying to more colleges than ever. Sure, that’s part of it, but there’s a lot more going on than just millions of kids competing for coveted spots. You see, college admissions is a game — and not just for the applicants.

Schools Similar to Princeton

We’re onto Princeton with our “School Like” series. In this series, we’re taking schools that are considered reach schools (yes, for everyone—no matter what your GPA or ACT scores are, any Ivy or equivalent will always be a reach), breaking them down into their most distinct parts, and giving you a list of schools that possess those same qualities, “vibes,” or personality. These are schools that you may not have heard of before, or perhaps that you have heard of but hadn’t previously considered. Consider this your charge to think outside the box and have an open mind.

Schools Similar to Dartmouth

Our “Schools Like” series is where we take a school—a “dream” or a reach school—and give you a list of schools that are similar to that one school. “How could they be similar AT ALL?” you ask, when you’ve been wearing your mom’s Dartmouth sweatshirt since you were 4? Here’s a secret: there are only so many qualities that a school can have, and there is inevitably a ton of overlap when there are literally thousands of institutions of higher education in the U.S.