GUEST STUDENT OF THE WEEK: Rohan is a freshman at Dartmouth (and loves it) having gotten in ED for the Class of 2023. He's here to debunk myths regarding admissions and student life at his school. ASK HIM ANYTHING!
Make sure to check out our May Checklists for HS Juniors and HS Seniors. Consult these quick resources to get you started on the process this month.
As we work to adjust to the current reality, make sure to check out these dedicated COVID-19 resources: our directory of virtual campus tours, our directory of extended deadlines, as well as the list of schools going test optional this fall.
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1. Know your high school’s application, admission, and enrollment history for each school. Good Naviance data is invaluable; otherwise, use your guidance counselors to give you real numbers.
2. Use the Common Data Set (CDS) for the schools to see what the scores and GPAs REALLY are for that school. Also, you can find demographics such as what percentage of males vs females apply and are admitted, etc.
3. CRITICAL: Know what grades and GPA are used for admission. For instance, some will not look at senior year grades; others want your senior year first QUARTER grades. If you are depending on an up-tick in GPA in senior year, you may be disappointed to find it won’t make any difference at some schools.
4. Consider Canadian universities if your strongest year is junior and/or senior year. Most of them throw out any hs credit marks from ms, throw out freshman, and some even throw out sophomore grades. (However, they also depend more heavily on test scores).
5. Look at department rankings rather than overall college rankings (such as are in the USNWR). There are certain undergraduate programs such as engineering, business, math where rankings really do matter – especially if looking forward to grad school.
6. Standardized tests: if applicable, use the College Board’s resources and purchase the online stuff that has autograding of essays online, practice section tests as well as a ton of full-length. They create the tests, so using another resource is not as efficient as using their formats. Practice, practice, practice. No amount of $$$ and classes will substitute for practice.
7. When you get a practice problem wrong, don’t just get the answer, find out why the correct answer is correct.
8. If you can afford the time and money, take some subject tests. If there is a subject you are really strong in, take the SAT II. It’s good to have a couple in your back pocket, and you’d be surprised at how high you might score.
9. Get organized; get a good printer; get lots of printer ink; a whiteboard helps; always keep copies of exact essays that were used for each school.
10. Apply to at least two match/safety schools in-state, with at least one of those close to home. You never know how circumstances or emotions may change over the course of senior year.
Also, one really can take their SATs one time, their subject SATs one time, and be done. I highly recommend it, I took them junior year! And I'm going to Yale.
Perhaps colleges outside Common App could notify you via email when your application was processed.
I'm so shallow, but I loved the tshirts, hats, stickers, doodads and other promotional materials the colleges sent.
The least will have to be the difference and complexity of EVERY SINGLE APPLICATION
Thought: That university uses Hobsons for its email marketing stuff. I've noticed that a lot of (all?) the cases of the unsubscribe-link-doesn't-work problem I've run into so far are from colleges that use Hobsons. Maybe the moral of the story is that the Hobsons system is simply broken?
Undoubtedly, the heaviest stress and emphasis are on GPA, SAT/ACT, and ECs. Other things will only matter contingent upon the deemed competitiveness of the aforementioned aspects. Duke, for example, explicitly says that they separate the entire applicant pool into halves of competitive applicants and noncompetitive applicants after their first read.
I want to point out that as long as you are solid on the aforementioned three aspects, you will end up in a great college. Nobody can predict the outcomes of the Ivies or elite institutions.
Lastly, this is an advice for future young grasshoppers regarding "dream schools". Yes, some of you will get into your dream school and be happy. However, do NOT narrow down your options unless you have weighed ALL of your options. Also remember that you can be just as happy and thrive at another school, if not more. I wanted to attend Columbia but my dreams shattered when I was rejected ED. Now in retrospect, I am extremely thankful for the great opportunities I were able to weigh and ultimately select my one home for the future years.
We also wish that some colleges would be a more selective about their mailings and emails.There were colleges contacting us repeatedly, almost every week! It was too much.
A poster mentioned personailzed acceptance letters--yes, those showed that someone in admissions cared enough to treat accepted students as individuals.
Keep doing: Emails targeting my son's interests were appreciated, rather then generic "we are a great college" emails. Emailing acceptance information was appreciated too.
What will confuse us is that my first son had a similar profile to me - eh grades and great SAT scores, and lots of AP and honors classes (by the skin of his teeth due to eh grades), but my next child has only one honors course, but has a high GPA, 3.9 UW. Should my second child be targeting the same schools as my first? Or is course rigor a deal-breaker?
What would be useful is for colleges to tell students upfront what they value most - grades, test scores, course rigor, essays, "the whole package", etc. It's confusing that many colleges that I know are excellent say that they are "holistic" but really the students need a bare minimum in certain areas, like 1400 CR + M and 3.7 UW GPA and rigorous courseload, but yeah, THEN we are holistic...
A classmate of mine is known to complain about certain teachers and say her teachers are harder than the other's in the subject area - such as complaining that her History teacher is harder than the other one, despite the other giving DBQ's every other week and a 7 page research paper and the other not assigning an essay at all, and arguing with several friends in the process - and has no personality while being extremely popular for being self-deprecating and showing off her talent in singing and dancing in the process, often whatever pop song is most popular on the radio. She is also extremely nice to her teachers, and has criticized unreasonably criticized them - complaining that the same History teacher as before didn't give her a 100 on an open note quiz despite her getting a question wrong on it, and getting angry for being corrected on a fact she remembered wrong. She also refuses to take any stance on any political issue or even celebrities, claiming she'll let people do what as they wish. I suspect that she will have glowing teacher recs and is an excellent writer, and is doing poorly in one EC, okay in most, and won a National Award in another, in a very, very long list. I feel that colleges should see if they could take any measure to see if teacher recs are good solely because the student is buttering them up for the future or because the student genuinely likes them/ is interested in the subject and a hard worker.
Another complaint is how people seem less interested in the material, and getting the best grade possible. I am doing poorly in a class right now, which is rigorous and cannot be studied for (Engineering Design - mainly drawing technical drawings), and have a B for the year in that and another 2 - I take interest in one, but have trouble remembering the facts and doing well on tests, and the other is due to being a language and having poor pronunciation. A close friend of mine only cares for getting the highest grade possible, and takes no interest in them; as a result, her grades are all A's, and colleges will have no idea that she doesn't actually like the classes, and is only doing it because she wishes to go to a HYPSM/her parents are very strict. Assuming that we have the same transcript save those B's I have, they would admit her over me, despite her not caring about the subject itself.
Another classmate is taking an easy class after school to have more credits on her transcript, as well as one during the school day where she has no homework, and gets a grade for showing up and speaking. She is also taking several 'easy' AP's she doesn't have interest in so it'll bring her weighted GPA up. I know colleges look at course rigor, however I think it'll give people a huge unfair advantage if course rigor is not scrutinized carefully.
I also agree the leadership thing, as well as community service, is a bit of a crapshoot. I currently hold a leadership position and intend to hold it for my entire high school career and intend to invest in a lot of time and effort expanding it, but there are plenty of officers of clubs at my school who do absolutely nothing, and only do it for college; they will likely hold the office all four years, but it might still reflect better on them than me because it's Student Council, and mine is an Honor Society in a subject that is considered 'easy' - Art. Another user said she went above an beyond on EC's, but it wouldn't look like that to colleges because it's a small town. Geography and what you do vs. what you typically CAN do should be factored in as well. And nowadays people are doing community service in order to pad college apps. The point of community service is to benefit the community by doing good, but when you do it for college, it's done in self-interest, creating an extremely self-centered outlook and creating an unfair advantage to those who don't need to work for money or have transportation/connections to do so.
So that rant is over. Some things I think are good:
Leadership, so long as it isn't just padding. People who actually try and do good because they care get a plus in my book. Unfortunately, those people are few and far in between.
Colleges sending out (certain) info on themselves. As a sibling of someone going the process themselves, I think it's nice when they talk about certain programs and anything else prospective students may find interesting.
I haven't gone through the process yet, but my sister has already decided where she wants to apply next year, so I would suggest looking into colleges as early as possible and trying to figure out where you want to be (at least vaguely) as soon as possible, and looking up which colleges are strong in what you think you may want to go into.
* Did go there for grad school, though—but that was because of the recommendations of faculty at my undergrad institution and the research they were doing in my field, and I sincerely doubt the skull candleholder I saw several years earlier influenced me at that point.
So here we are, the winner is @rhandco! Congratulations! I will be reaching out with more details.