The University of Wisconsin-Madison is a highly-respected large public research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Students love Madison for mixing strong academics with broad opportunities and an iconic culture. Greek life and athletics are big at Wisconsin, and help to define the social experience whether or not you want to join a Greek organization or cheer on the Badgers in basketball. There are nearly 37,000 undergraduate students, and they receive over 65,000 applications for first-year admission annually. The overall acceptance rate, including in-state and out-of-state applicants, is 45%. Remember though, if you are applying from outside of Wisconsin your chances of admission are undoubtedly far lower than that 45%. Way back in 2018, the university shared that they aimed to admit 2/3rd of Wisconsin applicants. Using some back-of-the-envelope math, that means that about 25% of out-of-state applicants were accepted to reach a 45% overall acceptance rate. 

Williams is an iconic liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Home to about 2,000 undergraduate students, the college is particularly popular with students pursuing majors in biology, psychology, history, mathematics, political science, computer science, English, art, and most of all economics. This highlights the intellectual diversity of the Williams community, with students pursuing the hard sciences and the humanities hand-in-hand. At the core of this is the Williams liberal arts foundation. This has made Williams a coveted school for top-performing students, driving down the acceptance rate to only 8.5%.

UNC-Chapel Hill is an acclaimed public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The university is large, with over 4,500 first-year students in each class and an impressive array of opportunities and options. They are also known for an iconic athletic tradition, with students — sporty or not — lining up for hours, if not longer, to get into ‘Tar Heel’ games. Academically, UNC-Chapel Hill has strong programs in almost every field but is especially respected for biology, business, and media and journalism. The acceptance rate is only 15.6%, the most recent data point in a continual drop over the past 5 years. This decline can be attributed to a steep increase in applications, as well as increased attention nationally for academic excellence.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a top public university in the United States, and the university is especially well-known for the research that happens on campus — and that undergrads get to contribute to. The school is big, with over 50,000 students across multiple campuses, and they have the resources and activity options that a student body of that size demands. Students can pick from dozens of majors across seven colleges and 29 schools, covering nearly anything you can imagine from the hard sciences to business, humanities to creative arts. One of the particularly innovative programs at Georgia Tech is the cooperative education program, the largest of its kind in the U.S. The acceptance rate for first-years is 14%.

Boston College is a private Jesuit institution grounded in the liberal arts but heavily involved in groundbreaking scientific research, too. Jesuit colleges are Catholic, but in ways that are sometimes surprising to people. The Jesuits prize the learning process, and develop communities of academic inquiry that push students to stretch themselves intellectually. That spirit runs deep at Boston College.

Tufts combines the close-knit community of a liberal arts school with the powerhouse academics of a major research university. They have four campuses, including rural, suburban, and urban settings, all around — or in — Boston. Across Tufts, there are 460 student organizations and clubs, and over 150 majors and minors. Nearly no matter what you want to study, from the humanities to the hard sciences, Tufts doesn’t just have a program — they have one of the best.

The University of Chicago is an outstanding Ivy-caliber institution in, unsurprisingly, Chicago, Illinois. The university truly is comparable to Harvard in caliber of education, but there are a few things about the culture of the school that make it stand out. UChicago is truly unique, and it doesn’t use the idea of being ‘quirky’ simply as a marketing gimmick. As you will see when we break down the supplement questions below, they challenge students to think outside of the box from day one. Being cookie cutter does not work for UChicago. The acceptance rate is only 4.5%.

Northwestern is a top research university in Evanston, Illinois that has become iconic for combining a collaborative learning environment with innovative hands-on research opportunities. They have a top engineering program, a top business school, a top education program (as in teaching future teachers), a top speech-language pathology program. If that sounds diverse, it is. Northwestern doesn’t pigeonhole themselves, and they excel across the board. It’s not surprising, then, that it isn’t easy to get in. There are about 8,000 undergraduate students, and the acceptance rate is under 8%.