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.
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.
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.
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.
We scoured the internet for our favorite English major programs and made efforts to only include programs that focus on English, and not writing. These kinds of programs are often blended together, but not everyone who plans to study English wants to be a writer. Enter this list. As per usual, we do not create our lists based on rankings and look for unique programs with special opportunities.
Let us rejoice, there is a new common app essay prompt and it’s actually not half bad! Before we dive in, it’s only fair to mention that at TKG, we always choose prompt #7. Always. Prompt #7 is, in our opinion, far superior to the rest because you can take it in any direction you so choose. We’ve copied the prompt below for reference:
Let’s start with some hard facts! This may be disheartening to hear, but college admissions officers spend just a few minutes reading your application. We know, we know. You work on it for weeks, months even. It feels unfair, but it’s true. Let’s say they spend five minutes reading your application in its entirety. What this really means is that you have five minutes, and just a few opportunities, to add depth to your application and to show them that you’re a dynamic high school student who has a lot to offer to any given college.
The anticipation of applying to college is a lot. The pressure of getting in where you want to go is even greater. The idea of just doing it once and then being done is appealing to many students. But relief shouldn’t be the motivating factor in applying early decision to a school. While it’s true that acceptance rates for early decision schools trend higher, applying early decision is a huge commitment—it’s one you can’t get out of. In this post, we talk about what that means and the reasons someone might consider early decision as an option.
Last week, the New York Times published an article about their findings and thoughts on more than 900 college admissions essays that were submitted by high school students this year.
Getting waitlisted can be frustrating. You spend all this time working throughout high school to get into your dream school only to face uncertainty. It can feel like being in limbo, but there are things you can do to get yourself out of limbo, one way or another. In this post, we discuss how to proceed if you’ve been waitlisted.
Princeton University is an Ivy League school in you guessed it, Princeton, New Jersey. The student to faculty ratio is 5:1, just over 5,200 undergraduate students attend, and the academic programs are fantastic. The school is hugely popular for many reasons: exceptional resources, lovely facilities, loan-free aid packages, and its long-standing reputation as a school where smart kids have tons of fun. Princeton also has a long and checkered past with early action applications. We wrote a long-form blog post about it here, please read it!
We’re just going to start off by saying, transferring into an Ivy League is hard. There is a common misconception that you can go to a state school or community college for a year, do alright, and transfer into an Ivy. That’s not the case. Students who might be able to get into an Ivy as a transfer are kids who were already qualified to go when applying the first time around, but didn’t quite make the cut.
The pandemic has upended everything in the college application process. But the most radical change has to do with testing. Most schools have made standardized testing optional during coronavirus, or have done away with it all together. That’s because you can’t ask thousands of kids to cram into testing centers and classrooms across the country during a pandemic. Stanford is one of those schools, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the test.
It’s quite common to hear from colleges across the country that they received “a record number of applications this year.” Because it drives down their acceptance rates and makes schools seem more appealing, there are few things that colleges love more than an increase in applications. We usually take these kinds of statements with a grain of salt because we know to expect them, but in January, Colgate put out a statement that was truly astounding.
UPenn is a fantastic school. So much so that lots of people want to go there. In fact, with a 2020 acceptance rate of just 8 percent, it’s one of the most selective schools in the nation. That’s in part because of its unparalleled academic offerings. The school has numerous specialized and interdisciplinary tracks for students interested in things like international business. One of its most renowned programs is the Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology. In this post, we’ll tell you more about it and who should apply.
In the past, we’ve written blog posts about both the positives and negatives of touring colleges during the summer. If you’re too lazy to click the links, here’s a short version: Benefits include a more laid-back time table and opportunities to do non-college activities during the trip, and the deficits are related to the fact that a lot of students won’t be on campus when you’re there.
While we know the pandemic has changed a lot for students, this is sure to be an exciting time in life. A lot of parents ask us if freshman year is too early to start thinking about college. After all, nobody wants to put undue pressure on young people who are just getting their footing in this next phase of life. That said, the college application process is a long journey. It can be challenging and there’s a lot to accomplish. Our strategy is to have kids spread out the workload across four years, not only to build a more robust application, but also to make it all more manageable. Here are some ideas on how to spend the summer before your freshman year.
The pandemic has upended nearly every aspect of normal life. The college admissions process is one of them. Finding the college that’s right for you is a very personal experience. One size most definitely does not fit all and figuring out what exactly you’re looking for in a college requires more than just research—it often requires just feeling things out and seeing what your gut says. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), college tours look a little different these days. In this post, we talk about the differences between seeing a campus in person and taking a virtual tour in the time of Covid.
There are a lot of things that are important in the college application. We regularly emphasize the fact that grades are of the utmost importance. In a normal year, tests matter a lot, too. If you want to beat out the competition to a highly competitive school, your essays are going to be key. Then, there are all the ancillary things that add up to help put you over the edge in a very competitive college admissions environment. Demonstrated interest is certainly an ancillary component—in fact, it doesn’t matter all that much but it’s something that parents and students care a lot about. It’s also one component over which you can exert a lot of control.