We often tell our students that applying for a specific program or major is critical. That may seem crazy for a high school student who has no idea what they want to do with their life to start considering. But the truth is, college is SO incredibly competitive these days and the Ivy League is just out of control. In order to have a competitive advantage, our students cultivate a highly-specific academic niche throughout high school and leverage that to apply to majors and programs that are a natural extension of what they’ve already been doing in high school.
MIT Extracurricular Activities for High School Students
We often hear “My kid has a 4.0, can they get into MIT?” It’s not an easy question to answer, mostly because it’s not the right question to ask. Yes, having perfect grades is the absolute floor if you want to get into MIT, but it’s far from the only thing you need. So when we hear this question, we usually have to respond with a question, “What do their extracurriculars look like?”
Wake Forest Legacy Guide
The Best Extracurriculars for History Majors
History is one of the most popular humanities majors at American colleges and universities, and many colleges have subcategories under the ‘history’ umbrella focused on specific regions, cultures, countries, or communities. If you’re thinking about studying history in college, it’s important to go into the application knowing that it can be tough to stand out as a prospective student even if you have exceptional grades. Because there aren’t a ton of extracurriculars specific to potential history majors, and more high schools don’t offer a wide array of options for history electives, making a splash with your application takes some strategy.
The Best Colleges for your Astrological Sign: Libra
English Major Strategy: How to Stand Out
Fun Fact: English is one of the most popular humanities majors for students to list when applying to college. It has also been the default major for students who don’t know what they want to study, aren’t STEM-y, and don’t want to click “undecided” (which, by the way, is something you should never do). So, there are a lot of people selecting it and, if you truly do want to study English, it is important that you make yourself stand out from the pack. Here are some things that you can do before writing your application and in your application itself to ensure your application makes a serious impact.
Do Ivy League Schools like Scouts Progams?
Scout programs like Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and lots of smaller scouting programs, teach leadership, teamwork, and independence. We’d also include rural programs like 4H in this group, that similarly emphasize learning amongst peers while discovering what is special about oneself. Many students start these programs young — really young — with kids beginning in early elementary school as part of cub scout and brownie programs.
College Counselor for Ivy League
This year, Columbia admitted 3.9% of students who applied. Yale accepted 4.35% of students, Brown accepted 5%, and Dartmouth just 6%. Getting into the Ivy League used to be pretty straightforward—if you had the grades, the test scores, and a solid leadership position in a club or sports team, you were in the game. Now, students need to really stand out to have a shot.
The Best Places for High School Students to Publish Short Stories
At The Koppelman Group, we love working with student writers. After grades and activities, college applications are really just one enormous writing project, after all. While our number one goal is to help kids get into their dream colleges, we also want our students to become better writers, storytellers, and, essentially, communicators, outside of their college applications.
History Major Strategy: How to Stand Out
History is one of the most popular majors at colleges and universities across the United States. Students love to study history, and we get it — we love history too — but it’s also one of the most commonly listed “intended” majors listed on applications. This poses a bit of a problem because when colleges consider your application, they are looking at you within the context of what you want to study. Each department can handle only so many students, so they have to think about what you want to major in when they consider you. Colleges are flooded with prospective history majors and have to find the best of the best to let in.
How to Write a College Essay about Yourself
If you’re applying to college, you are in the midst of an experience that is all about you. It is you applying to college, after all. These are your grades. Your activities. Your test scores. And your essay. And it is all about you. Which takes us to the title of this post: How to write a college essay about yourself.
The Best Extracurriculars for Economics Majors
Economics is a social science that brings together political science, statistics, sociology, mathematics, engineering, psychology, history, and more — basically everything — within the overarching umbrella of money markets and value creation (or destruction, depending on the circumstance). While it is a social science, economics has some major quantitative components that mean it’s nearly as much a STEM field as a humanities field.
Stanford Legacy Strategy
“Will being a legacy help them get into Stanford?” It’s a question we hear all the time from parents. It feels like it should be an easy “yes or no” answer, but it’s actually a little more complicated than that, especially for top schools like Stanford. Since it's a complex question, we wanted to break down the ins and outs of Stanford legacy admissions and what your legacy needs to get in.
Transfer Extracurricular Club Strategies
Given that you’re reading this post, we’re going to assume that you are thinking of transferring colleges. While transferring to a different college isn’t a ‘big deal’ — it’s fairly common and we help many students navigate the process — orchestrating a ‘successful’ transfer does require significant planning. We should also explain what we mean by ‘successful.’ Most of the students we work with want to transfer to a college that they either didn’t get into when they applied to colleges as a high school senior, or that didn’t even seem like a possibility, so they hadn’t tried to apply. This means that they need to be a better applicant than they were as few as 10 months earlier. And a least three of those months were summer break. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to improve your application, so this whole process takes some strategy if you want the best possible outcomes.
The Best Extracurriculars for Foreign Language Majors
If you love studying and speaking a language that isn’t English, you may want to consider majoring in a foreign language in college. Majoring in a foreign language sets you up to serve the community that speaks the language globally, whether through teaching, non-profits, the private sector, government work, or even literary translation. It’s especially useful if you aspire to live and work in a foreign country. And you can major in a foreign language in college even if you are already fluent in it!
Does Science Fair look good for College?
When we say, “science fair,” some people think of students in taped glasses and suspenders standing next to nearly identical model volcanos most of which will, undoubtedly, fail to erupt. This image has been hammered in by sitcoms and animated movies, but it’s not what we think of. For us, science fairs are exciting and dynamic gatherings of outstanding STEM students who pursue inspiring projects. They are a place for competition, a place for community, and a place for imagination.
College Athletic Recruiting at Colgate University
Considered both a Hidden and Little Ivy, Colgate University is a tiny (less than 3k!) little liberal arts school located in Hamilton, NY. Popular majors include poli sci and econ, which is just so surprising for a liberal arts school in the Northeast. They also happen to be a pretty sporty campus, with 25% of students competing in varsity sports and 80% of the student population competing in any kind of on-campus sport. Unlike many of Colgate’s academic counterparts who bum it in the NESCAC, they’re an NCAA D1 school and compete in the Patriot League (wow, patriotic!). If you’re a student-athlete, you’re probably reading this and wondering if your athletic prowess can help you get into Colgate. Probably not, but maybe! Keep reading, because we’ll unpack this.
Best Undergraduate Colleges for Future Professors
We often hear students talk about wanting to go into education or becoming a teacher, but it isn’t as common to hear the word “professor” come out of their mouths. There isn’t a precise academic program for aspiring future professors at the undergraduate level, but it is a 10+ year plan from starting the first day of your freshman year of college to being qualified to be a full-time professor at a four-year college or university. In order to become a professor, you’ll need a bachelors and a graduate degree like a master’s at the very minimum. In order to be a full-time professor at a four-year college, you’ll need a doctorate degree too. And the more prestigious the school, the more they expect you to have on your resume.
How to Write a College Essay about Food
If there is one thing you should know about us at The Koppelman Group, we love food. We love cooking food, we love eating food, and we love working with students to write about food for a college essay. Food is a truly universal subject. We all eat, and so we each have a relationship with food. Over the years, we’ve helped dozens of students incorporate the universal nature of delicious (or not so delicious) carbs and condiments into acceptance-winning essays.